Wednesday 28 March 2012

Grossi Florentino (MFWF Lunch)

80 Bourke St
Melbourne, VIC 3000


Pinch me, I must be dreaming. Through what’s nothing short of a miracle, Chris and I found ourselves lunching at the ridiculously pricey Grossi Florentino Restaurant for a mere $35 per person. The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival’s amazing Restaurant Express event allows diners to sample a two course lunch with a glass of wine at restaurants that would normally be well out of most people’s price range. And judging by the line forming out the door when we arrived for our 11:45 sitting, we weren’t the only ones eager to take advantage of this excellent opportunity.




Whilst the downstairs cellar bar and the grill were dark and elegant, the restaurant we were led upstairs to was opulence defined. The glass chandeliers, gilded ceilings and oil paintings put one more in mind of a 19th century estate belonging to royalty, than a restaurant in the heart of 21st century Melbourne.



Set Menu

From a list of 3 entrees, 3 mains, and 3 desserts, we were allowed to choose two courses each, along with a glass of red or white, and coffee and tea for afters.

Complementary Bread
 
Free bread excites me more than it should, and this perfect basket of rosemary and sea salt ciabatta nearly sent me bouncing up and down in my seat, especially when slathered with some unsalted butter. I should also be more ashamed to admit that when the waiter came back to refill our fast emptying bread basket, I had to look down at my plate so he couldn’t see my grin of glee. I guess I’m just bread for this.

Bread and Red Wine
White Wine
 
We were poured a glass of wine each; Chris got the red because it apparently went with his main of beef, and I got the white because I don’t like red. So keeping that in mind, neither of us thought much of the red, but I found the white to be crisp and fruity, and very easy to drink, even for my untrained palate. Too easy I would say, considering that I had a lecture after.

Vitello Tonnato

Our first dish was an entree to share. The Vitello Tonnato consisted of thin slices of poached veal, topped with a tuna flavoured sauce, and a scattering of capers. The tuna sauce was rich and creamy, though I found that it overwhelmed the delicate pink slices of veal. The capers and the surprising addition of small grapefruit segments lifted the whole dish with their sour notes, leaving us hungry for more.

Pollo Ripieno
 
My main was the Pollo Ripieno, which was rolled chicken with herb stuffing, white wine sauce, and chickpeas. This was honestly nothing special at all, I should have just wheedled for a double serve of the veal or something. And some more bread.  

Spezzatino Con Polenta

Chris' Spezzatino Con Polenta fared a lot better. Tender chunks of beef swam in a sweet tomato and wine sauce on top of a cloud of smooth polenta. The only complaint the he had with the dish was the dish itself. It was so big that it was impossible to put your cutlery down, lest they fall right into the bowl and gets covered in sauce and polenta (guilty!).


Look at it, just look at it. Chris said birdbath, but I was thinking more of a midget Colosseum.

La Torta
 
To top off our meal, we ordered the La Torta, a hazelnut and chocolate cake served with a small scoop of ice cream. Once again, this was unexciting, the cake dense and dry. But I was even more upset when they took away the bread basket. I WASN’T DONE! I WILL NEVER BE DONE! This post is starting to sound vaguely insane. It is 4am after all.

Flat White and Biscotti

A short while later, we were offered our choice or tea or coffee. Chris drank neither, so we just got a flat white for me. The coffee wasn’t the best I’ve had, but it was strong with a guttural punch to it, which is probably good considering the glass of wine had made me a bit sleepy.. The coffee was also served with two pieces of biscotti, which were fragrant with orange peel, and hard to the point where I was worried that my molars would shatter before them.

SUGAR!!
 
IT’S SO CUTE! I WANT ONE!

Grossi Florentino was surprisingly warm and welcoming, considering how fancy it is. The waiters were friendly and efficient, and their casually dropped phrases in Italian only served to complete the experience. That said, I wouldn’t cross Grossi Florentino off my to-eat list yet. This meal was decent for the price, but when I come back to drop $200 on an 8 course degustation, I will be expecting great things. 

Rating: 12.5/20 – pending a repeat visit

Grossi Florentino on Urbanspoon

Sunday 25 March 2012

Samurai

804 Glenferrie Rd
Hawthorn, VIC 3122


What’s the one cuisine you can never resist? For me, it’s Japanese. The nourishing and healthy, yet flavoursome dishes make it a good candidate for almost any circumstance, be it when you’re trying to be healthy, wanting something with punchy flavours, or just in need of some comfort food in the form of a curry don. So it was lucky that Chris chose Samurai for dinner last Friday, because I was having a pretty fussy week when it came to food. Believe it or not, that happens to foodies too!


Samurai is a teeny small Japanese restaurant located two stone throws away from Swinburne University. It does a roaring trade at both lunch and dinnertimes; whatever space there is that isn’t occupied by rickety chairs and tables are full of patrons waiting for their take-away meal.

The most popular order at night is without a doubt, the dinner special. For just $16, you can get your choice of soup, entree, main and dessert. But in the interest of our waistlines and common sense, we decided just to order a few dishes to share. That was a bit difficult, considering that I had fallen in love with the menu at first sight. There was nothing I haven’t seen before, but I loved how they served a good variety of comfort food, sushi and sashimi at a reasonable price, and a large selection of entrees consisting of almost every Japanese snack you could possibly want. Ignoring the lack of ramen, the menu at Samurai ticked every single box. Extra thumbs up for serving toasted rice tea free of charge!

Takoyaki ($4 for 5)
Takoyaki ($4 for 5)

We started our meal with an order of piping hot Takoyaki ($4 for 5). Generously slathered in kewpie mayo (yummo!) and BBQ sauce, these were creamy and soft on the inside, and studded with chewy chunks of octopus. Fair warning though, they’re also extremely hot once you bite through the crispy exterior, and I ended up burning half the skin off the roof of my mouth. Ouch.

Salmon Avocado Sushi ($7 for 10 pieces)
 
Eager to see how their sushi stacked up, I ordered a serve of Salmon and Avocado Sushi ($7 for 10 pieces), which were served with pickled ginger, and daubs of wasabi in little dishes. You can’t really go wrong with creamy avocado and tender pieces of fish, though I would personally prefer the rice to be vinegared a little more heavily. On a side note, I’ve finally started appreciating wasabi with my sushi (though I don’t have it with sashimi; I think it overwhelms the fish), but I got a little too carried away this time, and ended up with wasabi all over my takoyaki-burn. My poor mouth really isn’t having much luck today.

Chicken Katsu Curry ($8.8)
 
And of course, the omnipresent Chicken Katsu Curry ($8.8). The katsu has lost its crunch from being submerged in the gravy, but it’s tender, and the portion is generous. I was quite impressed by the gravy; it’s usually watered down, or doesn’t have enough depth of flavour, but this one managed to avoid both pitfalls. The hearty chunks of carrot and potato were a bonus. 

I walked out of Samurai with a very happy tummy, a really miserable mouth, and an unexpected lesson learnt. For the last 2 years, I’ve always done thorough research on places that I plan on eating at; reading all the reviews, looking at all the photos. And sometimes, it feels as if I’m not so much forming my own opinions as I am taking everyone else’s opinions for my own. There are times where I miss out on things I really want to try because something else is a ‘must order’, and other times where I’ve convinced myself that I love a restaurant simply because everyone else does too, even though deep down I wasn’t all that impressed. I’m not saying that going in prepared is a bad thing; it’s probably saved me from many horrible meals, and pointed me to many more excellent ones. But at the same time, it pays to remember that my blog is a way for me to share my own thoughts and opinions, not everyone else’s. Reading through the reviews for Samurai afterwards, I noticed that not everyone loved it. But I really enjoyed my experience there, and that’s what matters.     

Rating: 14/20 – untainted opinion 

Samurai on Urbanspoon

Friday 23 March 2012

1000£ Bend

361 Little Lonsdale St
Melbourne, VIC 3000


This is the first meal I had in years that I haven’t planned myself. Chris has kindly agreed to take over the organising of our Friday date nights, so I can sit back and unwind a little from the week, before having to head into work for an 8 hour shift the next day. I’ve completely forgotten the excitement of walking into a restaurant, and having no idea what to expect. Ok well that’s not completely true. I may not have planned this visit to ­1000£ Bend, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t read about it plenty in the past.


The claim to this being one of the most unique spaces in Melbourne is justified. At first glance it seems to be a perfectly generic grungy cafe, but upon closer inspection it actually doubles as a bar.

Warehouse At The Back

And an art gallery. And a warehouse cinema. And a place to hear everything from acoustic guitar to street opera. And there’s pilates upstairs every Thursday.



1000£ Bend is popular with both impoverished students and the older crowd thanks to its laid back service and chillaxed atmosphere, where you’re almost expected to linger over your coffee. And let’s not forget the free Wi-Fi and board games. On a sunny Friday afternoon, the big warehouse space at the back is abandoned, with all the action happening at the front of house. It’s loud, it’s warm, and it’s just a little bit boisterous thanks to the copious amounts of beer downed by the TGIF crowd. 

The menu here is short and sweet; half of which are breakfast options, and the other half can be described as bar food with a twist. There are no beef burgers, only kangaroo or saganaki. There are no garden salads, only buckwheat noodles with marinated tofu. But it was the Share Plate for Two ($24) that caught our fancy that night.

Share Platter for Two ($24)

Uh-huh. How good does it look?

 

The long rectangular plate was piled high with thick slices of chorizo, squeaky golden slabs of pan-fried saganaki, deli ham and olives and sundried tomatoes and peppers...


... and thin slices of feta, eggplant dip and some hommus, all topped off with a tangle of rocket.


Not to mention a whole bowl of lightly toasted and incredibly moreish fingers of sourdough. The highlights of the platter were definitely the juicy chorizo and the generous serve of salty saganaki. Everything else from the platter was pretty standard, the kind of stuff you could get from the Safeway deli. It was a perfect dinner for a warm Friday night, though towards the end the salt and oil began to get to us, and we longed for some greenery to cut through it all. Or a cold beer. Maybe that was their plan all along, those sneaky, clever people.  

I don’t know what it is about 1000£ Bend that made the experience so enjoyable. The food was good but not fabulous, the service is friendly but languid, we didn’t manage to snag one of the comfortable couches, and by the time we left the music was verging on too loud. But despite all that (or is it because of all that), I had a great time there. It feels like the cool hang-out you’ve always wished for as a kid but never had.

Rating: 13.5/20 – 1000£ more than the sum of its parts

1000 Pound Bend on Urbanspoon

Tuesday 20 March 2012

Ramen King

Main St
Box Hill, VIC 3128

Don’t get too excited. The ‘ramen’ portion of Ramen King does not refer to the delicious, hearty, slurpable noodles served in cloudy tonkotsu broth. What you would assume, by name, to be a Japanese restaurant is actually a Chinese canteen-styled eatery dishing up a conglomerate of food from different parts of Asia, though like most Box Hill restaurants, the emphasis is on Chinese food.  

Ramen King was just over half full when the family picked me up after work for an impromptu dinner. Browsing through their 15 page long menu, we came across what seems like every Asian cuisine under the sun – Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Vietnamese, and even a couple of Korean snacks. It took us a while to order, but once we did we were immediately handed the bill and told to pay up front. 

Beijing Boiled Pork Dumplings ($8.8 for 15)

My sister ordered a plate of Beijing Boiled Pork Dumplings ($8.8 for 15), which were pretty mediocre, especially given the price and quality of the dumplings you can get nearby. The filling was a little too sweet and bland, but at least the skin wasn’t gluggy. The chilli oil served with it was spicy, but lacked the wok-fried flavour a good chilli oil should have.

Spicy Pork on Rice ($9)
 
My dad, the perpetual chilli-eating carnivore, ordered the Spicy Pork on Rice ($9). This was fairly tasty, with paper thin slices of pork belly stir fried with a myriad of crunchy vegetables in a whole lot of chilli oil. It was also quite salty, which meant that the portion was more than enough given the amount of rice we had. Definitely not a dish for someone watching their health. 

And then we waited. And waited. And watched diners left and right get their steaming bowls of beef noodles (which I’ve had in the past, and found them to be pretty good), despite having ordered a good 15 minutes after us. After half an hour of waiting, my dad flagged a waiter down to inform him of our missing dishes, which were finally brought out a few minutes later.

Rice Vermicelli with Grilled Lemongrass Pork ($9.5)
 
Not accustomed to eating so late in the day, I wanted something light. Normally I would never consider ordering a cuisine in which the restaurant doesn’t specialise in, but there wasn’t much in the way of healthy Chinese dishes. So I ended up with a bowl of Rice Vermicelli with Grilled Lemongrass Pork ($9.5), traditionally a Vietnamese meal. A big bowl of vermicelli came topped with shredded lettuce, cucumber batons, tomato pieces, and a large handful of crushed peanuts. Mixed in with the bowl of fish sauce served on the side, this was a warm, filling salad that didn’t leave me feeling weighed down. The two grilled pork chops served on the side was generous in size and tender from the grill, but the lemongrass wasn’t very prominent. Overall, it was a simple dish done without mistakes, but with no stand-outs either.

Bread Vermicelli with Hot and Spicy Sauce ($5.5)

Mum ordered a much smaller dish than the rest of us, an entree-sized serve of Bread Vermicelli with Hot and Spicy Sauce ($5.5). The wide, but disappointingly soft strands of noodles was spicy and oily once mixed in with the sauce, but it lacked depth of flavour and was ultimately bland. At least it was more filling than it looked.

There’s a reason that Ramen King is only half full on a Saturday night in Box Hill, where most other places have lines out the door. The food is average at best, and the service is scattered. Forgetting orders at any time is poor form, but it’s even worse when the restaurant wasn’t anywhere near full. And being asked to pay up front just doesn’t feel very nice, no matter how it’s phrased. I say, if there’s no nice way to do it, then don’t do it at all.

Rating: 10/20 - bad service and mediocre food


Ramen King on Urbanspoon

Sunday 18 March 2012

Purple Peanuts Japanese Cafe

620 Collins St
Melbourne, VIC 3000


I’ve been to Purple Peanuts Japanese Cafe in the past for lunch and spoke about the quirky decor and friendly wait staff in that post, so let’s just cut to the chase and talk about the food this time. 

Chris and I were heading to a concert by Switchfoot later that night, and we needed some pre-gig nourishment. Purple Peanuts was right near Okonomi-Ju, which we were originally planning to go to, until we discovered that they were closed until later in the month. Bummer. 

Chicken Curry ($9.2)

Chris' Chicken Curry ($9.2) was smooth and mild with chunks of potato, carrot and onions in the gravy. The chicken was lean and smoky, albeit slightly dry. I did however miss the red pickles that all Japanese curries come with; I think they just had a memory lapse in the kitchen, because pickles were mentioned in the description of the dish. 

Teriyaki Chicken ($8.5)
Teriyaki Chicken ($8.5)
 
My Teriyaki Chicken ($8.5) came with a serve of the same smoky chicken that was in the curry, but the serving was substantially larger, and the chicken was much moister. The sweet soy sauce at the bottom mixed in nicely with the rice, and the little salad at the side was crisp and refreshing. Funnily enough, we didn’t realise until we had finished eating that we had ordered the exact same dishes at DonDon before the last concert we went to!


And a nunchuck-wielding-guitar-playing octopus, just for kicks. I wonder if they’ll let me buy it off them.

Rating: 13.5/20 – good solid Japanese; get the tsuke don for WOWZA

--- 
And because the Switchfoot concert was so amazing, I’m going to gush about it a little, even if it has nothing to do with food. At one point the lead singer, Jon Foreman, got off the stage and stood on a table in the middle of the crowd and sang from there. I was lucky enough to be able to make my way to a spot right in front of him. And during one of my favourite songs, he bent down, looked me in the eye, and sang to me! JON FOREMAN SANG TO ME! HE SANG TO ME AS HIS GORGEOUS BLUE EYES LOOKED INTO MINE! I’ll just say goodbye to my heart right now. 

Jon Foreman

Tuesday 13 March 2012

Red Pepper

14 Bourke St
Melbourne, VIC 3000



You know a restaurant is going to be good when you can smell it from across the street and down the road. Red Pepper is an Indian restaurant situated at the Parliament end of Bourke Street, next to its fancier sister, Green Pepper. During a weekday lunch time, Green Pepper in all its linen tablecloth glory may be devoid of customers, but it’s more than made up for by its bustling sibling next door.

Al-Fresco Seating
 
The interior of Red Pepper reminded me a lot of a boarding school mess hall (not that I ever went to boarding school), all wooden floorboards and whitewashed walls, with a couple of paintings hung here and there. But because it was such a nice day, we decided to sit outside and watch Bourke Street pass us by as we enjoyed lunch.

View of Bourke Street
 
After ordering at the counter, we took our number and plonked ourselves outside under some umbrellas. The wait for the food was longer than you’d expect from an eat-and-go place in the city, but maybe that was just because I was extra hungry. To the Chris' disgruntlement, I spent most of the 15 minute wait staring at the two businessmen at the next table dipping naan into their curry, instead of talking to him (sorry Chris).

Lamb Roganjosh ($12.9)
 
Chris' order of Lamb Roganjosh ($12.9) was served with a side of rice, or two naans, or half and half. This was an excellent curry. The gravy was meaty and slightly gamey from the lamb, which was tender and lean; no dodgy off-cuts here! There was quite a wallop of spice, and no coconut milk to tone it down – just the way I like it. Chris had a great time spooning fluffy mounds of rice into his curry. Then we ran into a hitch.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Mixing my curry and rice.” He replied.

“And the curry goes into the rice, not the other way around, or you’ll run out of sauce.”

“No, the rice goes into the curry, you get more sauce that way.”

“But you’ll run out!”

“But you get more sauce this way!”

In the end we reached a compromise; that’s to say I had my way. I’m such a bully (sorry Chris. again.).


Not wanting something that’ll weigh me down for the rest of the day, I ordered the Daal Tadka ($7), which was a dish of yellow lentils prepared Indian style, served with two pieces of naan. The lentils were well cooked and heavily spiced with an emphasis on the ginger. But the real star of the show was the naan. Buttery and flaky, two pieces weren’t nearly enough, despite being of a very generous size. Definitely ordering an extra serve next time.

Our lunch was nicely rounded out by a waitress coming out to check up on us and take away our plates; she even had a short chat with us afterwards. I would’ve loved to have lingered some more and people watch, but unfortunately we both had lectures to go to. 

Rating: 14/20 – curry goes into the rice.


Red Pepper on Urbanspoon