Roger McShane

I need help! Constant craving for laksa has taken me to many cafes and food courts around Australia. But so many of them are sickly sweet pale imitations of the robust versions that you find in Malaysia or Singapore. So far, the best I have tried have been at the Penang Coffee House in Hawthorn, Melbourne (probably the best I have tried in Australia), the Chinta Ria establishments in Melbourne and Sydney and the Asian Noodle House in Canberra. Can anyone, anywhere help me with other places where I might find an authentic laksa!

Well, we have just returned from Bangkok and have eaten our way through a range of restaurants and road stalls. This is a very special food city. Unlike Singapore which has done its best to eliminate street food and to make everything 'neat', street food culture is still alive and well in Bangkok. The best restaurant dining experience we had was at Celadon, the worst was at the Spice Market and the place we wanted to go back to all the time was Ton Pho on the river. The food here is very authentic and a nam prik of fermented soy beans was a taste sensation. A surpise (pleasant) was a very trendy new restaurant in the Emporium Towers on Sukhumvit Road called Kao Gub Kaeng. Even though the restaurant was super cool, the food was uncompromising and very interesting. Well worth a visit. Possibly the most interesting dish from the roadside was a noodle soup with fish balls, tofu and congealed duck blood that was flavoured with tamarind. The stall is in behind Silom road just off Sala Daeng. More details about all the places we visited will be posted on foodtourist.com shortly.

Fascinated to see the terms 'coffee' and 'espresso' differentiated! To me coffee is espresso and espresso is coffee. The drink commonly found in American diners made with the drip-filter process is so far removed from what a coffee should be that a new name should be invented for it. It just goes to show that your palate craves for what you are reared on! (That is why Australians miss the strange taste of the dark black beef extract called Vegemite.) To me the quintessential taste of coffee is most clearly expressed in the coffee 'palaces' of northern Italy - in Milan and Turin. There, as in Middle Eastern countries for hundreds of years previously, coffee is an end in itself, not something used to finish off a meal. It is the focus of a social occasion. But it is the espresso (or preferably the ristretto) that marks the purest form of the art of coffee making. And this is why so much money, pride and effort goes into the centrepiece of these establishments, which is the espresso machine itself. But having the machine is not the complete answer. The way it is cleaned, the freshness of the beans, the type of roast, the skill of the barrista in packing the group (too much coffee and the steam will burn it, too little and the full flavour will not be extracted), the type of water used and dozens of other small items all go into the making of a good coffee. I agree with Steve Klc that Illy is one of the best commercially-available mixes. I also partly agree with Steven Shaw about tea. When accompanying food, tea is a more subtle (and sometimes more complex) flavour and therefore sits more comfortably with food. In red wine terms, tea is pinot and coffee is shiraz. There is a place for both. And it depends on the type of tea. Often one of the better Formosan oolong teas will be an ideal way to finish a meal. In the afternoon with a light snack, a single estate Darjeeling is perfect. A Japanese green tea such as Gyokuro, however, I prefer to drink on its own as a refreshing pick-me-up. I recently attended a meal for a large group of wine lovers. It was a northern Chinese restaurant and we ordered the standard dishes such as dumplings, jellyfish, mock goose, Peking Duck done three ways along with silver thread bread (mantou). The wines had been chosen to accompany the food. After an hour or so I introduced pu ehr tea (also known as bo lai) to the table. It was a twenty year old version so had developed a nice mellow pungency. The wine tasters at first rejected it. But after a few more courses they started to drink it and by the end of the meal nobody was drinking wine, they were all drinking the tea. They had become obsessed with the way the tea enhanced their appreciation of the food as well as its ability to stimulate the appetite and to assist with digestion. But back to the coffee theme. I agree that Starbucks produced a leap of some sort in the appreciation of coffee. However on two recent trips to the US where I have been trapped in places where Starbucks was the only place for a coffee fix I have noticed that the vast majority of customers order some strange perversion of the coffee concept – often with something sweet added to it in syrup form. Yuk!!!!

Calstock is a beautiful Georgian house near Deloraine in Tasmania. Heather, you correctly say that the proprietor was associated with Banc before moving to Calstock. Sue and I stayed there about three months after it opened. We had a lovely meal and some great wines and whisky but people going there need to be aware of a couple of things. First it isn't cheap by Tasmanian standards. Our rooms cost $A250 each - so we were up for $A500 before we started eating! (The restaurant isn't open to the public.) The food was very good and the service pleasant. The wine list features a wide range of very good Burgundies as well as Australian wines. After dinner we were delighted to see one of the most comprehensive collections of Scotch whisky that you are likely to find in Australia. We finished our meal with a Lagavulin, a Springbank and a Highland Park! So, our personal experience was first class. We really enjoyed the accommodation, the food, the wine and the service. On the other hand, we have had two reports of the type you mention so would be interested in feedback about Calstock - either positive or negative.

Thanks David for the info about Celadon - others have also recommended it. Has anyone eaten at the Spice Market or Bussaracum?? These seem to figure prominently in a lot of the guides.

I have just had a look at your Grubshack report - it was very useful. Thanying and Cabbages and Condoms were two of the restaurants we were planning to go to. I agree with your description about Thai food in the US. It never captures the essential salty, sour, sweet flavours that you find in 'real' Thai food. We tried the food at Arun's in Chicago a couple of years ago and were very diappointed - especially as it had just been nominated as the best Thai in the US!

I am thinking of going to Bangkok for a few days and would like some recommendations for authentic Thai food places. I would like to visit a mix of restaurants and food stalls. I want to avoid places that have toned down the food to satisfy tourists. Does anyone have any recommendations please.

This thread is interesting because you could substitute all countries with a similar backgound in this way. It is almost impossible to define an Australian cuisine in the same way that it is difficult to pin down what American cuisine or Canadian cuisine means. There is also the distinction between what the 3% of the population who is excited about food experiments with and what the 97% eat on a monotonously regular basis. At the time of white settlement of Australia there were two countries eager to colonise - the French and the English. Bummer - the English won! Just imagine what our food could have been like if the French had decided to settle here. One trend that we are noticing is that those who treat food seriously are much more open to Asian flavours. The clean, clear flavours of especially Vietnam and Thailand. Due to the migration patterns of the past fifty years we also have a significant population of people with an Italian and Greek background - particularly in Melbourne. This means that there is a very strong thread of Italian and Greek influences in that city. The standard lunch snack used to be a meat pie - now, like everywhere else in the Western world, people buy sushi for lunch.

Just to add to the Melbourne/Sydney discussion. Sydney now has a rival to Sud. It's a place in Potts Point in the space that was previously the Paramount. It is called Osteria Moana. There is a fixed antipasto (no choice) and then a choice of three main courses. Communal tables (although when we went back last week there were a few single tables ina new space at the front) that seat about eight people make it a noisy restaurant but the food is real!

Grahame has made some good points here! We think that Hanabishi serves the best Japanese food in the best surroundings in Melbourne. All our meals here have been stunning. Yu.U is an absolutely wonderful place as well, but it is just so hard to get a booking because of its popularity. We will comment further on the top end of Melbourne's restaurants in the near future.

We had a meal at Hostellerie de Levernois about eighteen months ago and thought it was incredibly boring. There were absolutely no 'wow' factors at all. Nothing was particularly bad, but how they got any Michelin stars is a mystery - but then again Don Alfonso on the Amalfi Coast has three, so anything is possible! The most honest food we have eaten in this area was at a small restaurant in Chambolle-Musigny called Le Chambolle-Musigny Restaurant. Cheap, cheerful and very well-cooked local food.

I'm pleased you mentioned El Rey chocolate. Perhaps the slightly different taste comes from the fact that it is manufactured in Venezuela. I have tried this chocolate a couple of times and thought it was particularly good. My understanding is that they use criollo beans from Venezuela for the production.

The Melbourne restaurant scene is dominated by a publication called the Age Good Food Guide (the Age being the local newspaper). They rate restaurants on a numerical scale of 1 to 20 and award one chefs hat for restaurants gaining 15 points ranging up to 5 chefs hats for those achieving 19 or 20. This year's results have just been announced. No restaurant achieved 5 hats and only the Flower Drum received 4. Jacques Reymond was dropped from 4 to 3 and Marchetti's Latin from 3 to 2. Some of my favourite places gained hats such as Da Noi and Hanabishi but others, such as Sud didn't. Also radii gained three hats but I have had very indifferent food there. The same comment would apply to ezard at the adelphi (the lower case names are rampant in Melbourne folks!!). Any comments. Anyone have any other restaurants that they thought should have been awarded a 'hat'? Should Akita have a hat or is it living on past glories?

I agree with Margaret. Having spent a lot of time this year working in the United States in corporate offices I just can't get over the fact that if we have a meeting at 7am they will bring in trays of donuts and danishes covered in various forms of sugar and then nearly everyone in the meeting will drink a Coke for breakfast!! There is a serious sugar addicition problem. No wonder so many restaurant dishes are loaded with honey or caramel. However Scharffen-Berger chocolate is an exception (mamsters reply). It is a very well-made product and reminds me of the quality of, say, Valrhona from France. Good chocoloate should taste of chocolate not added sugar.

While I agree with Anil that Singapore is a great place for street food, it has become a lot more 'sanitised' over the past twenty years thus making the food much safer and slightly less interesting. But the congee with raw fish at the Maxwell Street food stalls is memorable. My two fondest memories of brilliant, vibrant food flavours were both from Greece. Sue and I tried a charcoal-grilled lamb skewers at the central market in Thessaloniki (Saloniki) in northern Greece. They had been coated in coarse salt. The texture of the salt and the charcoal flavour were a perfect match. Furhter along the coast in the wonderful town of Kevala we tried barbecued red mullet. Again simple, yet perfect - and so cheap!

Heather I agree with you about Sailors Thai. I particularly like the Canteen upstairs, Sue and i try to eat there every week we are in Australia. I also agree about Cheong Liew. His food is very special. In fact Adelaide, given its size, is lucky to have four world class restaurants, namely The Grange, Nediz (run by Genevive Harris, formerly of Bathers Pavilion), Bridgewater Mill and the Penfold's Magill Estate Restaurant. I am sure you really would like Rockpool. The food there is very clever. Also the produce he uses is first class. I agree about the marketing of the Perry phenomenon - too eager and too agressive. It is interesting, however, that he has retreated to Rockpool. All his other restaurants no longer exist (although there are the persistent rumours of him opening in London). Yu.u is a lovely place and different in that they go out of there way to avoid publicity. Another place we really like is Sud for 'home-style' southern Italian cooking. Very simple, very plain and very good. Nice people run the restaurant too. Probably the best seafood in Melbourne is Toofey's in Carlton. The rest of the high end non-ethnic are a problem. Circa, est est est and Jacques Reymond are too inconsistent. And Simon. We will just keep sending our chefs to London to teach you all how to cook!

Gil The Fifth Floor is an interesting restaurant that is producing some good food. It also has an outstanding wine list. I would recommend that you order dishes that are not too 'tricked up'. A dish of duck done four ways looked good for a magazine shoot but lacked soul. We thought that the chicken baked in clay, however, was a very good dish. For a food experience, I rate it about the same as Gary Danko which is a bit below Chez Panisse and the French Laundry.

Having viewed a lot of comments about great restaurants in France and the US, I feel it is incumbent on me to point out that Australia is where all the action is these days (apart from London where they import Australian chefs!!). Let me just mention three. Tetsuya Wakuda's eponymous restaurant in Sydney, is simply one of the greatest in the world. This man is a culinary genius. Another that stands out is the Flower Drum in Melbourne. We have rarely eaten better Chinese food anywhere (certainly not in the United States). For seafood, then Neil Perry's Rockpool in Sydney would give Le Bernadin a run for its money! What we lack is a fine French restaurant in the style of Ducasse. There is nothing like it here. Sadly, we also had an unrivalled Thai restaurant called Darley Street Thai but it has closed and David Thompson has moved to London and opened a similar establishment there. Our loss is London's gain.

I agree with Robert. There is nothing like a slightly chilled manzanilla as an aperitif or with some light tapas style dishes. I also agree that Lustau produce a particularly good manzanilla (as are all their sherries). Another one to look for is Hidalgo's La Gitana manzanilla. This excellent sherry is available in the US, Europe and Australia is half bottles. This makes it ideal, as you and a friend can drink the lot in one sitting thus making redundant the problem of rapid oxidisation! (Edited by Roger McShane at 6:19 pm on Aug. 14, 2001)