ChrisTaylor

I was thinking of this the other day, actually, when replying to annachan's thread. The answer is 'yes' and I'm somewhat surprised to hear/see myself say that. Why? Because it seems the standard in Sydney is slightly higher. Or let me rephrase that. Go to 10 restaurants in Melbourne and 10 restaurants in Sydney. There's a greater chance you'll have more awesome meals in Sydney than you will in Melbourne. There are truly great restaurants in Melbourne and I'm sure I've yet to experience some, but Marque, Bentley, Four in Hand and est. in particular are hard to beat. When I went to describe the quality of Jacques Reymond, Marque popped into my head as a point of reference. It's good, sure, but it's not Marque-level great. It hasn't ruined Victorian restaurants for me: it wasn't long after my trip to Sydney that I went to and really enjoyed Daylesford's Lake House. Only rabbit dish in there is young white rabbit with wakame, cashew and zucchini. The book also has a recipe for poached duck egg with salt and vinegar cabbage. eta. I'd better add that each recipe in the book is somewhat conversational. He doesn't have the traditional ingredients, methods, etc. Also, he does not do substitutions: if he uses a pacojet, that is what is in the recipe; similarly, vacuuming fruit or vegetables to achieve a texture is written as if you have this machine. The foreword is by Rene Redzipi, which gives you some idea of the level of recipes included. This is a high-end cook's book. The cashew and wakame recipe is indeed the rabbit in question.

Monsieur Truffe Tasting a small piece of each bar at the moment. In case the labels are difficult to read, there's white (36%, no origin statement), milk (38%, Venezulean cocoa), milk (40%, Ghanian cocoa), milk (42%, Ecuadorian cocoa), milk (49%, Venezulean cocoa) and dark (52%, no origin statement). My father's sample box has a different selection. All of the chocolates are nice. I don't eat enough chocolate to be able to offer serious, detailed tasting notes, but ... in the white 36% I can taste the cocoa, which is nice--in fact, this is by far the best white chocolate I've ever had the four different milk chocolates are all very good--my favourite being, by a narrow margin, the 49% from Venezuela--not surprising, tho' as I tend to enjoy chocolate that sits at that ~50% mark least favourite is the 'dark'--the single origin stuff is much better. Truffe sort of focuses on single origin chocolate and I understand that chocolate from Ghana is different to chocolate from Ecuador or wherever else, but I kind of expected a blend of cocoa from all those places to still be good. And it is ... if you compare it to, say, a bar of Lindt or whatever, but it's easily the weakest bar in the box next time I'd like to get, say, the 49% Ghanian, Venezuelan and Ecuadorian, just so I could make a direct comparison between the three points of origin (I don't know if Truffe gets cocoa from anywhere else) there's a piece of paper in the box that mentions 'like coffee [and] wine, the natural flavours will depend on the type of tree, the quality of soil and the know-how of the chocolate maker.' They offer chocolate appreciation classes in-store.

I don't know: it's still in the post. The restaurant is incredible. I'm hoping there are recipes for the rabbit and duck egg dishes we had.

Henry of Harcourt's Perry. I haven't had this before: I've only had their Original and Duck & Bull ciders, the latter being me favourite cider. These are ciders (and perries) made fairly close to home, by the way--Harcourt is a town maybe 90 minutes drive (which, in Australian terms, isn't much at all) from the Melbourne CBD. It's known for apples. A couple of small-but-decent cider places do their thing out there--Henry's, obviously, and Bress (which also makes wine and, of course, has a Bresse chicken as its logo). Cider is very popular in Australia at the moment, altho' the style of cider that's popular is very different to what Henry makes. Think very sweet drinks that may or may not taste a little bit like sweet apples or pears. Some of it's made locally, some of it's imported from Scandanavia. The Duck & Bull is a fairly dry, cloudy cider and is, pretty much, everything I like in a cider. Most of the French (and a lot of the English, such as the Weston's range) cider that's sold at Dan Murphy's is drier than big sellers such as 5 Seeds, Rekorderlig and Strongbow. The perry is nice, by the way. Tomorrow's plan of attack? It's going to be warm, although not as warm as today (about ten degrees cooler), so I reckon I'm going to be BBQing again. This time, however, I'm going to buy some seafood from Oakleigh. A mixture of things that look good is the plan--could be shellfish, could be prawns, could be garfish, could be a whole trout. While I'm there I guess I'll wander around the market and a few of the food-related places (cake shops, butchers, nut and bean places, etc). Oakleigh, unlike Clayton, has remained very, very, very Greek. Lunch will be at PM24, a recently-opened and well-regarded French bistro in the CBD. And too, given I'll be in the CBD and have already knocked over a couple of the big destinations--Queen Vic and the Food Hall--I might show you a bit more of the city itself.

I'm not a fan of Koko Black or Max Brenner either, but in my limited experience with their products (I've only had a couple of his chocolates before and haven't opened my sample pack yet) I like Monsieur Truffe. A lot. Until the place became well-known thanks to food blogs and such, they didn't seem to give a shit about the cafe aspect of the mothership store (and the Brunswick place didn't exist at that time)--it was all about the chocolate. And to me, that's a good sign. There are lots of cafes in Melbourne--a few of them very good, even--so it's not like we really need another one. I didn't see a particularly interesting selection of jamon when I was there. A lot of the meat products they make themselves. You could try a few of the delis in Carlton (I'm thinking of a place on Lygon Street, just down the way from the Brunetti mothership) or basically everywhere Keith_W suggested. I've been to South Melbourne market only once and even then, it was a very brief trip--I had limited time and it was looking for something specific, so I ignored everything else about the place. All of the markets I've been to--Queen Vic, Footscray, Springvale, Prahran, South Melbourne, Dandenong, Springvale--are worth the trip at least once, I think. They all have their strengths and--and maybe this isn't the correct term at all--weaknesses. Prahran, Dandenong and Footscray markets in particular are surrounded by lots of interesting places to eat or shop, ranging from The Essential Ingredient in Prahran to some of those shops (and a few I skimmed over) in Dandenong. I've yet to check out Camberwell's market but I've heard good things.

The demon rum My wine collection. It's mostly made up of French and Australian reds, plus a few Italians, South Africans, Spanish, New Zealanders, Americans and Argentines for good measure. Most were in the $20-30AUD price range, which down here, at least, can buy some reasonable plonk. Most were purchased from either Dan Murphy's or Nick's, a wine and spirits retailer that's well worth checking out if you're in either Doncaster or Armadale. The three standing bottles are an organic shiraz I bought earlier today, some Penfolds 'Bluestone' port and a sparkling shiraz. Most notable bottle is, I guess, the '03 St Henri, which I'll probably be opening up on Thursday. The goal of the collection isn't to put everything away for a long time, altho' there are a handful of bottles I'm hoping to keep for 10+ years. Basically I decided that I wanted a collection that covered as many varietals as possible as I wanted to try new things. Spirits, liqueurs and such. Minis: Appleton Estate 8, Sullivan's Cove Double Cask (rum and bourbon), Patron Silver, Midori, St Germain, Jameson Whiskies: Canadian Club, Maker's Mark, Woodford Reserve, Wild Turkey Rye, Bushmills 10, Hellyer's Road Original (Pinot Noir finish), Smith's Angaston 8 Rums: Mount Gay Eclipse, Green Island Brandy: Martell VSOP, Grand Marnier Gin: Hendrick's, Tanqueray Other: Pernod, Amaretto, Galliano Vanilla, Americano Rosso, Green Chartreuse, Campari, Espolon Reposado, Absolut, Chambord, Cointreau, Kahlua, Maraschino Etc: rose water, orange blossom water, Angostura bitters, bullshit grenadine Not pictured: sweet red vermouth, tonic water, soda water Single malt scotch. Aberlour a'Bunadh (batch 28) AnCnoc 12 Ardbeg 17 (ind. bottling) Ardbeg Uigadail Auchentoshan Valinch Bowmore 18 (ind. bottling) Coal Ila 11 (ind. bottling) Coal Ila 28 (ind. bottling) Glenfarclas 15 Glenfiddich 12 Glenfiddich 21 Gran Reserva Glenmorangie Nectar D'Or Lagavulin 16 Laphroaig 18 (ind. bottling) Talisker 10 Talisker Distiller's Edition (1996) Literature The book collection. Not pictured are some recent purchases/gifts still on their way to Australia: Marque - Marque Best Eleven Madison Park - Daniel Humm MoVida Cocina - Frank Camorra Joy of Mixology - Gary Regan Wine Bible - Karen McNeil Serious Barbecue - Adam Perry Lang Nobu Vegetarian - Nobu Matsuhisa On the matter of finger limes ... Here's what a finger lime looks like when you cut it open. Here's what it looks like when you dump the 'caviar' into a glass, muddle it up some (so the little balls don't just float on the surface of the drink) and then proceed to make a gin and tonic in the same glass. Steak and etcs Following the Hawksmoor at Home way of seasoning: black pepper at a 50:50 blend of regular salt and smoked salt. On the BBQ. Meanwhile ... Rare. A bit more smoked salt and pepper, too, at this point. Incidentally, rare grass fed steak and foie gras pate go together really, really, really well. The lazy man's tournedos rossini.

You should have a nice meal and birthday there. When I went (same thing happened, annoyingly, with the Royal Mail in Dunkeld) I was far too sick to enjoy any of it, but got the impression it was very good. Degustation with matching wines, I hope. >_>

Monsieur Truffe [Collingwood store] Monsieur Truffe, which started out as a little stall at Prahran Market, is an interesting chocolate shop. Not interesting because it sells very nice chocolates, no--if I just wanted nice chocolates, I could buy maybe some Valrhona much closer to home--but because it's one of only a couple of chocolate shops in Australia that actually roasts cococa beans and, you know, actually makes--in the true sense of the word--its own chocolate. The roasting and whatnot isn't done at the Collingwood store, no. That all takes place at their (newer) store on Lygon Street in Brunswick East (which isn't too far away under normal circumstances, but isn't going to happen when I'm mostly travelling on foot in mid-30s heat). A selection of chocolates. Monsieur Truffe sells large bars (pictured), sample-size bars and various gift packs (which you can pack yourself, if you want to, say, sample chocolate of x% made from beans harvested in a bunch of different countries, or if you maybe want a broad spectrum of chocolates starting at white and ending at, say, 90%). They also sell baked goods, filled truffles and a selection of other chocolates, but the focus--especially for takeaway customers--is very much on the plain-packaged bars. They sell cocoa powder and drinking chocolate. There are tables and chairs where you can sit and get, say, a chocolate croissant. Baked goods including croissants and macarons, chocolate truffles, chocolate bars adulterated with various things (i.e. nuts) and samples of various new products ... Such as these roasted hazelnuts. Smith and Johnston Streets, Collingwood Smith Street, Collingwood, used to be known for heroin and crime, but gentrification rolled through and the street--while still a bit grotty--is now known for bars, cafes and restaurants, ranging from cheap and cheerful Vietnamese places to vegan places populated by greenorganichipsters with a taste for organic ale and lentils. Josie Bones, a restaurant/bar that specialises in two things, mainly: beer and offal. Two of the people behind this place were competitors on the first season of MasterChef Australia. I've yet to visit Josie--Collingwood is a bit of a pain for me to get to--but I own the book. A random organic store I wandered past ... and then into, when I saw that they sold beer, cider and wine. Aside from the gaia-friendly booze, they sold all the usual stuff for an organic shop--expensive fruits and vegetables, a selection of oils and vinegars, nuts and lentils and cereals of various kinds, juices, coffees and teas, herbs and spices and other things with alleged medicinal qualities. I turned down Johnston Street, destined for Fitzroy's famous Casa Iberica deli. Just before I hit Casa Iberica I ran into this place: a store specialising in awesome beer and wine and, to some extent, cider. They also sold a selection of whiskies, vodkas and other spirits, but I didn't pay too much attention to those offerings. The beers and ciders were mostly Australian, but there were a few from other places: Belgium, France and the US to name a few. They stocked a lot of Australian beer and cider that's difficult to get elsewhere (you either need to go to a store like this, order online, go straight to the manufacturer or maybe try your luck at Sword's). Casa Iberica Located in Fitzroy is Casa Iberica, a deli that specialises in products from Spain, Portugal and Latin America. You can buy chorzio and morcilla and imported ham. You can buy anchovies, both salted and canned, and other preserved seafood products. Most of the deli-type stuff can be had elsewhere--the same brands of canned beans and extra virgin olive oil and vinegar and paprika are avaliable all over the place, including sometimes in supermarkets--but there are a few things you'd have a hard time finding anywhere else in Melbourne, such as a wide range of dried chillies from Mexico (at very reasonable prices when compared to, say, the spice shop in Carlton), fresh corn tortillas (the supermarkets only sell the flour-based kind), cans of corn smut (I was tempted but didn't cave--spending a bit of money at that beer and wine shop probably discouraged me), some interesting sauces (I saw a couple made from Amazonian chillies and whatnot) and other assorted goods (industrial-sized cans of tomatillos and several kinds of pre-made mole). They also sell a limited selection of kitchenware. Before MoVida and MasterChef came along, you'd have to visit a shop like this--and there are very few of them around--to buy a paella pan and bomba rice. Queen Victoria Market There are a few markets around the inner 'burbs--South Melbourne, Footscray and Prahran are all a short drive/tram ride/train trip/bus journey from the CBD and all have a different focus. Prahran Market is all about expensive but very good quality produce, as it's in a wealthy area. Want the best salmon steaks, the best racks of lamb, the best mangoes? Go there. Just be prepared to pay through the nose for the privledge of eating well. Stalls at the Footscray market, however, tend to compete with each other based on price rather than quality. A lot of them cater to the area's high population of Vietnamese people (and other migrant groups). Queen Victoria Market has a little bit of everything, I think. Many stalls sell the same thing as their neighbours and compete on price rather than quality, but there are also a few stalls that treat money as if its no object and offer very good quality produce (or totally organic/free-range/natural/vegan, if that's your idea of good). There aren't really any stalls that cater to the Asian market as well as, say, Dandenong or Footscray markets do. The few 'ethnic' stalls at Queen Vic cater to Europeans--Greeks, Italians and, to a lesser extent, the French and Spanish. Incidentally, if you're a tourist in Melbourne, you'll probably come here. It's worth the trip. If you're staying a hotel but feel tempted (and why not?) by the steaks, seafood, 'roo or whatever, you can always buy your meat and tram it down to some public BBQs--there are a few along the banks of the Yarra (just don't touch or even look to closely at the water)--and cook yourself some dinner. There's African shop, the photo of which I lost. Sells mostly ready-meals--beans in sauce, meat and beans in sauce, etc--as well as a few other, often very expensive, products, including biltong, droewors and mealie meal. I think this shop has gone down hill. When I first stumbled upon it maybe three or four years ago, there was a Nigerian guy at the helm. He sometimes sold ostrich biltong (it was expensive but very good and, because it was ostrich, worth the obscene asking price) and large dried fish (a very West African ingredient). He was a decent bloke, too. Shame. One of a couple of bakeries in the market. This one does a bit of everything. There's another that focused mostly on Middle Eastern stuff (bagels, pide and whatnot) and yet another that sells pies and cakes. The bakeries form a significant and attractive portion of ready-to-eat food at the market. There's a couple of food court-type places that I've never bothered with, a couple of cafes, a chicken shop or two and, finally, a couple of places actually worth bothering with: one that sells very cheap, very good Middle Eastern wraps and the Melbourne Bratwurst place, as featured on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. The bratwurst--I recommend the hot bratwurst with French mustard, saeurkraut and grated cheese in a roll--is worth experiencing at least once. It's good. A cafe that also sells a very large variety of coffees and teas. Butchers and poultry stores. Some, as you can see, compete on price (there's one, even, that sells huge trays of insanely cheap, but surprisingly not terrible, meat in large quantities) whereas others focus on quality. I've never got around to checking out the expensive organic place. My favourite is the one just down the way from the organic place, actually: it sells lamb and goat, but its main focus is great steak. You can get wagyu, Black Angus (very popular in Australia at the moment--even McDonald's and Four-n-Twenty pies use the stuff), Cape Grim, Riverine and other examples of premium Australian beef. Having worked through the selection when I was at the University of Melbourne and trammed past the market twice a week, every week to pick up dinner, I'd say without a doubt that the Cape Grim--the one grass fed option--is the best. The steaks are cut to order, meaning you can ask for a nice roastable piece or some thin sandwich steaks or pretty much anything in between. The butchers are very good at eyeballing what 300 grams of rib eye looks like. The Queen Vic branch of Koko Black, a very popular chain of chocolate shops. For a while there--and it's still on-going, I guess--stores that sold decent chocolate and let you sit down for a hot chocolate/coffee/whatever were very, very, very popular in Melbourne. Koko Black and its rivals, including the Lindt Cafe and Max Brenner (which, amusingly, often attracts leftist/socialist/anti-Israel protests) made/make a killing. The deli section. Most of the delis sell pretty much the same selection of products, altho' there are three or four that specialise in one line of products or anything. The French place is a good example. It sells a wide variety of cheeses, terrines, rillettes and other goods, including tins of foie gras. There's also a Polish deli. A stall that specialises in honey. The egg place. Some seafood vendors. Things that might jump out at you: yabbies: these are a (very nice, by the way--I suggest buying some of them for your BBQ on the Yarra) kind of freshwater crayfish the large, salt water crayfish: what passes for 'lobster' down here bugs, either from either Moreton bay or Balmain bay, are the things that look a bit like small lobsters, I guess: they taste similar, too Swords, a stall that specialises in beer, cider and wine. Again, the focus is on smaller producers, imports and unusual beers. My favourite vegetable shop--expensive, yes, but not as expensive as some of the organic places just down the way. This stall has a little bit of everything (it's only small) but tends to have an interesting selection of tomatoes, mushrooms and fruit (you'll sometimes find, say, Buddha's Hand or Australian truffles for sale). Kenzan @ GPO It seemed like a good day for sushi, so I headed to the GPO branch of much-loved and long-standing Japanese restaurant Kenzan. The mothership is locaed on the other side of the CBD. Their GPO branch is smaller and targetted at people looking for a quick but good lunch--either takeaway or sit-in--during their break at work. A reasonable and 'free' miso soup. The main-sized sushi selection. They offered to give me nothing but salmon, but I prefer variety. The sushi was nice. Perhaps not as nice as what's served at the sushi bar in the mothership, but well worth the $23 asking price. It's made to order, by the way (altho' if you're in a hurry, you can grab a little plastic tub of the pre-made stuff to takeaway). GPO A chocolate stall in the GPO. The GPO, by the way, was once Melbourne's main post office but is now an expensive shopping centre. David Jones Food Hall The grocery section of an upmarket department store. Some nice, and sometimes interesting, products ... with prices to match. Bits and pieces of Clayton Some photos I took on the very short walk from the train station to the supermarket. The view from the Dandenong-bound side of train station: a few Indian restaurants, a (shit) bakery and a couple of Indian grocers, including large India at Home. A very popular but shit Indian restaurant. There's one exactly like it pretty much exactly across the street. The shame of it is that that the place that used to be here, Sarawan, offered very nice curries for a very reasonable price. India at Home's most serious competition--there are a lot of other Indian grocers in the area, but Sarawan and India at Home are by far the largest. As with IaH, Sarawan doesn't just sell food (spices, a limited selection of fresh vegetables, large sacks of rice, beans, canned goods, frozen goods): it also sells music, movies, religious trinkets (little statues of gods and whatnot), cosmetics and haircare products. One of a couple of Japanese restaurants in the area. Very cheap and ... not bad. Not great, either, but for $9 the 'Jyu Jyu box', which contains rice, three gyoza and some teriyaki chicken isn't a bad meal. At the very least, it beats most of what's locally avaliable. Used to be part of the Sarawan empire (they had the grocer, the afore-mentioned restaurant, this place and a butchery around the corner). Sells Indian food and pizzas, some of which are Indian-themed (i.e. there's a goat mince pizza jacked with spices). A small Greek shop that sells a very large range of nuts, beans, dried fruit, grains, tea, coffee and lentils. Also stocks canned goods, spices, biscuits and other pre-packaged sweet things and a few small selection of Greek cheeses (small as in maybe 2-4 different kinds). The afore-mentioned butcher, a Korean cake shop, an Indonesian restaurant, a Korean restaurant. A selection of kangaroo products sold in one of Clayton's two Coles supermarkets. Two supermarkets from the same chain are kept apart by no more than a carpark (one of them used to part of the chain's 'cheap' label, Bi-Lo, but the company rebranded all of it's Bi-Los to Coles, so they were left with two stores and, presumably, decided that was a better situation than vacating one, which would allow the competition to move in). The haul Two gift packs from Monsieur Truffe--one for myself, one for my father. Smoked paprika from Casa Iberica and a bottle each of beer, cider and wine from the organic shop. Beers and ciders from the beer and wine place in Collingwood. Saison Dupont, incidentally, is one of my favourite beers. Henry of Harcourt produces excellent cider: I've yet to try their perry or 'last apple', but the Duck & Bull is my favourite cider of all time, standing up nicely even to expensive French ciders. Some of the products I purchased at the Queen Vic. A little can of foie gras, some raspberry beer and finger limes (the plan is to use them in a gin and tonic). Not pictured: Black Russian tomatoes, Swiss brown mushrooms, a bread roll and 300 grams worth of Cape Grim porterhouse.

I went to the Boma at Victoria Falls, yes. I posted a travelogue about my (food-related) experiences there and elsewhere in the country. Mostly, what I pick up I've heard about from other people--could be friends, could be the forum, could other food-related sources [cookbooks, magaine articles, websites. Boerwors caught my eye years ago because I saw a recipe thought them and figured, hey, a sausage with beef and pork and coriander? That sounds like something I want. Sometimes a product will just call to me from the shelf. 'Wild' olives? I know I want that. And too, I tend to approach many food-related things with classic spectrum obsessiveness. When I found out I could go to a butcher or poultry store and order meats I'd never tried before--rabbit, hare, possum, muttonbird, pheasant, wallaby--it was pretty much an instant decision to not stop until I'd had everything. When I go to a restaurant, whether it's here (and it was the same when I went to Zimbabwe), you can bet I'm going to order the fillet of blesbok, the braised kudu, the braaied warthog steak. The rest of the menu ceases to exist. Melbourne is a city of coffee drinkers, many of them very serious about their favourite source of caffeine (we're getting that way about tea, too, thanks to, er, T2). And, too, as you'll maybe pick up on at Queen Vic market, there's a bit of that greenorganichipster thing going on here. Mostly concentrated in little pockets on the city, aside from the odd cafe here or there. It's, er, not big out my way--Springvale and Dandenong and to a lesser extent Clayton (as much as it's home to Monash University's largest campus) are very different places to some of the inner suburbs. Too, Cumulus Inc (and Cutler & Co, for that matter), attracts a crowd that at least in part has the whole greenorganichipster feel about it. You'll possibly see a bit more of that side of Melbourne today, as I'm intending to visit Casa Iberica in Fitzroy and Monsieur Truffe in Brunswick East. I haven't shown a lot of that because as much as I like nice coffee and whatnot, that's not--and has never been--where I live. Looking at QV Market today and will maybe get the chance to hit Prahran market and Malvern road. When annachan is settled and such in Melbourne we should use it as an excuse to have an eG dinner someplace.

That's a long list. I only know a handful of those places. And I've only been to two: Jacques Reymond, one of our three hatted (in the Age Good Food Guide) restaurants. Check the 'lunch' thread for my photos from late last week, even. It's nice--not amazing, not the best in Melbourne or anything like that, but nice. And I've been to Grossi Florentino (the restaurant, not the steakhouse). It's okay ... it's not a shit meal or anything, no, and if I got a very cheap (thanks to a $100 voucher) meal there I guess I'd be pretty pleased--I wouldn't be regifting it--but it's nothing special. The place is--altho' maybe to a lesser extent now--a Melbourne icon, but it's grossly overrated. It's a one hat restaurant at best. At best. It's possibly not even deserving of that ranking. I've heard very good things (and it's not just me--they've been awarded in The Good Food Guide, etc) about the following: The Grand Hotel, Richmond Esposito Koots Ladro (a pizza-focused place, the sort of thing I'd check out if I was in the area rather than making a special trip for) Mezzo MoMo (then again, I've also heard a few negative remarks, but hey, the Malouf couple always publish pretty books) The Flower Drum is a Melbourne icon that's gone from having an excellent reputation to a shit one to one that's slowly, maybe, possibly becoming great again. If it was me? Well, $100 isn't going to get you very far at Jacques Reymond (of course, you can top it up with cash and whatnot, so I guess you could consider it a nice discount), so I'd be looking at maybe the Grand or Mezzo--I'm meaning to visit those at some point in the near future. But I've been to Reymond. In your case, tho'? Jacques Reymond all the way. And, when you've exhausted the voucher and are looking for things to eat, here are some places (maybe even in some kind of order, too) to check out: Embrasse (Carlton) Attica (Ripponlea--inner south, south-east, well worth booking in advance and making the trip) MoVida, MoVida Aqui, MoVida Next Door (all in the CBD, well worth booking in advance/trying to get to a no-bookings table early) La Luna (also in Carlton) Cumulus Inc and Cutler & Co (CBD and, iirc, Brunswick or somewhere around there) Rumi (Brunswick Nth? Brunswick something)--get the banquet Libertine (close to home--Nth Melbourne) Kenzan (sit at the sushi bar, order sushi and sashimi--it's in the CBD) Burch & Purchese (I didn't care for it a whole lot, but if you feel like a trip to South Yarra they sell kind-of-interesting cakes) Vue de Monde (the awesome value $70 lunch is a thing of the past, but the $150 four course meal is probably worthwhile--and too, you get a nice view of the CBD now) Dainty Sichuan (South Yarra also--not amazing, no, but some of the dishes are good) Chez Regine (whisk[e]y bar in the CBD) Mamasita (CBD--if you can get in for, say, an early lunch--it's okay, but hardly worth the standard two hour lineup procedure) The Point (Albert Park--only if 'roo is on the menu, really, as their 'roo steak is the best I've had) The All Nations Hotel (Fitzroy, purely because everyone, at some point, needs to eat a burger that contains beef, chicken, bacon, a hashbrown, an egg, pineapple [this is Australia, after all] and maybe pineapple, plus wedges and a salad) The Press Club (CBD--not amazing or anything, but a nice meal) Andrew's Hamburgers (Albert Park--surely not the best burgers in Melbourne, as many will say, but a very good example of a 'fish and chip shop'-style burger) Bergerac (CBD) Bistro Guillaume (CBD) Dalmatino (Prt Melbourne) Grill'd--all over the place Travel for: The Lake House, Daylesford (go there for a few days, actually, as there are lots of nice places to eat and drink) Avoid Lygon St and Chinatown--there are a couple of good restaurants in each of those places, sure, but mostly Lygon St and Chinatown are vile tourist traps The Age Food Guide is a generally reliable source for recommendations. I've struck a couple of duds in it and its Sydney counterpart--Pier, Abla's, Pearl--but I've otherwise had meals that were good, great or excellent. It does miss a few places, every now and then, that really should get a nod (or, say, a better ranking than one hat), but on the whole it's at least worth Googling for the list they upload to their website upon the release of each year's guide (no need to throw down $30 on the book--if you're really keen to hear more about a place, you can always look up the menu or get some more feedback from Urbanspoon). So. Yeah. Go to Jacques.

Tonight's dinner: braaied peri peri chicken, boerwors and corn and the tomato salad from Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. I sprinkled the tomatoes and red onion with salt (and, in the case of the tomatoes, black pepper too). The finished salad. The excess salt is washed off. Tomatoes and red onions tossed with basil leaves and a vinaigrette made with balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. The meat goes on the braai. The corn is added, after a ~30 minute soak in cold water. I've never bothered to soak corn before BBQing it, but I've been told it moistens the end result some. The cooked meat. Sorry about the shadows. Time for an Old Fashioned. Tomorrow: Monsieur Truffe chocolates, Queen Victoria Market, lunch (I'm tossing up MoVida Aqui, Kenzan @ GPO and Bistro Vue) and good Australian steak.

A product akin to beef jerky. Name refers to strips of rump, basically, even tho' it's not necessarily made from that cut. Essentially, it's lean meat that is rubbed with spices (including coriander seeds) and then air-dried.

The South African Shop A little shop in Caulfield South that caters to the area's sizable South African expat population. It also has a cafe ('The Shebeen') and growing competition down the road and online. Boerwors, a heavily spiced sausage (if you're curious about what the name means, 'boerwors' is Afrikaans for 'farmer's sausage'). Normally, you can buy a few varieties of wors here--the pork and beef combo is my favourite and, sometimes, a lamb one--but today they only had the 'traditional beef'. An assortment of preserved protein-rich goods--a few kinds of biltong (plain and chilli, stokkies [sticks] and large strips), droewors ('dried sausages') and a few seafood products, including kingklip. The South African Shop is the only place I've been to that will actually slice biltong for you--everywhere else claims (possibly correctly) that the stuff will ruin their slicer. The price for this 'homemade' biltong is, incidentally, damn near half that of the mediocre, mass-produced stuff that's readily avaliable at many Australian delis. That being said, the batch I bought today wasn't very good (the last time I went to the shop, the biltong was incredible), paling in comparison to the stuff I had in Zimbabwe. Part of the booze section. The wine is mostly cheap stuff, although there are a few more expensive bottles--$70 worth of '04 Rust en Vrede, for example--floating around. The South African Shop also sells a few South African beers and soft drinks. In addition to meat products and alcohol, the South African Shop sells a variety of cereals, lollies and non-food products (i.e. hair care stuff). And, of course, it sells mealie meal (maie meal, more refined than both Zimbabwe's sadza and Italy's polenta). Big Boy BBQ By this stage, I felt like lunch. The Shebeen, the South African Shop's cafe, has some shit reviews on Urbanspoon, so I decided to take a drive down to Glen Huntly Road and test the Urbanspoon app's 'nearby' feature. It pointed me in the direction of Big Boy BBQ, a place that specialises in American-style BBQ. The only place I've seen in Melbourne, actually, that specialises in American BBQ (I mean, sure, you might find BBQ pork ribs here and there, but that's where the selection begins and ends). The menu. The 'two meat' sandwich. It contains lamb and chicken. If you want, you can assemble two meat sandwiches based on other combinations of beasts (choosing from a selection of pork, beef, lamb and chicken). And, too, yeah, onion strings. The sandwich was good--I don't know if I'd make a special trip to Glen Huntly for it, not that Glen Huntly is especially far away, but I'd probably go back if I was in the area for some other purpose--but the onions were just okay. There weren't greasy or anything, it's just that all I really got from them was salty crunch and the taste of vegetable oil. Vegetable shopping Next door to Big Boy BBQ, I spotted a fruit and vegetable shop--mostly normal stuff, but some organic produce and assorted goods (such as pasta for people with weird diets, expensive balsamic vinegar, pre-packaged cured meats, olives) too. I figured I'd pick up the rest of the ingredients for the evening meal while I was in the area. The haul and, too, dinner plans Biltong, boerwors, corn, a couple kinds of tomatoes, red onion, basil and achacha. Afternoon snack of biltong and Sierra Nevada's pale ale (which, incidentally, was one of the two beers avaliable at Big Boy BBQ). Chicken 'drumettes' (the, er, 'upper-arm' part of the wing) sitting in store-bought peri peri marinade. Tonight's dinner? I figured I'd better test out my new gas BBQ with a braai. 'Braai' is the Afrikaans word for BBQ and while Southern Africans prefer coal/timber-powered BBQs (as I do), being able to light the gas jets and start cooking whenever I want to is a really nice thing I've been living without for a while. The boerwors and corn are also going on the BBQ. The tomatoes, onion and basil will form a tomato salad.

Little India Sadly, Dandenong's Little India is under threat. Part of cleaning up Dandenong means redeveloping, er, some of the shadier areas near the train station. And that's where Little India is--right near the train station. Little India isn't shady, it's just that years ago these shops--restaurants, butchers, grocery stores, sweet shops, clothes shops, cosmetic shops, etc--happened to go where the rent was cheap. Some of these businesses have already closed down. Maybe for good. It's not as simple as saying oh, I guess they can move somewhere else, either, as the whole idea behind the Little India setup was that, hey, I (an Indian migrant) might not travel just to buy some coriander seeds, but I'll travel if my wife can buy clothes and we can get a nice meal and then take some sweets home for the kids. The businesses boost each other's sales figures through the power of proximity. One of many restaurants that specialises in Indian and Sri Lankan sweets. I didn't go in because, honestly, these products are far from my favourite thing in the world. The savoury side of Indian cooking is great but the sweets are far, far, far too sweet for my liking. One of the longest surviving Indian restaurants on the strip. A shop that caters to Fijian Indians. MKS MKS, a Sri Lankan shop, isn't part of Little India--it's a couple of blocks down from that area--but it's a very large business that, unsurprisingly, attracts a lot of Indians (and, of course, the area's Sri Lankan location) with its wide selection of spices and other goods. The hot food, selection, is mostly Sri Lankan. A section dedicated to the wonders of chilli sauce. Spices. Hot food and sweets. For a fairly low price, you can sit in the 'restaurant' and have a plate of rice, curry and dahl. I bought a couple of samosas. They were pretty good given I paid a total of $2. Middle Eastern shops Near the market, there are a couple of Middle Eastern shops (there are a few elsewhere, too, but these two have the best locations)--one used to specialise in Turkish goods, including freshly baked breads and sweets, and the other used to go for a sort of pan-Arab feel. Both, now, provide that. The Turkish shop has seemingly changed hands. The selection of baked goods was smaller and the grocery selection was missing a few obvious things--they didn't stock rose water, for instance. Halal butchers There are a lot of Muslims in Dandenong, so naturally there are a few halal butchers doing business in the area. Some tongues. Restaurants In addition to some small, specialist grocery stores aimed at these markets, there are restaurants selling food from Africa and Central Asia. The Afghan place in the third photo, by the way, specialises in freshly baked naan. It is very, very, very good. There's other food, too, but it's really all about that awesome bread. Rob's British Butchery Rob's Butchery has been operating in Dandenong since forever and has always been known for its excellent sausages. It also stocks a variety of goods that are hard to find elsewhere--both imported groceries (lollies, biscuits, condiments, cheeses) and their own black puddings, white puddings, fruit puddings, haggis, potted hough, savoury pies (both the kind you eat hot and cold pork pies) and gammon and British-style bacon and pork crackling and other cured pork products. They also stock aged steaks (these weren't in the display case today: I assume they're something you have to ask for). The service at Rob's is and always has been very good. Rob was happy for me to take photos and didn't mind individually bagging and labelling my order of sausages (I asked for one of everything). If you visit on Saturday morning, when they're at their busiest, you'll maybe be able to taste samples of each of the sausages, as well as some of their other products. Imported goods, ranging from chutneys to biscuits to soft drinks. Some imported British lollies. Cans of soft drink, cheeses and a few other odds and ends including pickled mussels (which also used to be a fixture of the counter at every Australian fish and chip shop--those sinister-looking jars have disappeared in recent years). Pork crackling. Eccles cake. Gammon and other ham-type products. Potted hough, pork ribs and pasties. Haggis and a couple of different varieties of black pudding (Irish and Scottish, thin and wide). Note that black pudding, like haggis, is avaliable in large pieces or individual portions (so if you want to sample haggis, you can simply buy a little 'puck' of the stuff and pan-fry it). I've seen some of Rob's offal-based products stocked, with a little bit of a mark-up, in David Jones' Food Hall (the grocery section of an up-market department store). Pies in various sizes and flavours. Today's selection of sausages. The menu seems to rotate. You'll find other sausages, including very good boerwors, avaliable here sometimes. They're mostly fairly traditional sausages made in accordance with fairly traditional recipes. The morning's haul Pork pies. Sausages. Some products I purchased at Nan Yang (mostly because I felt weird about that lady following me around) and the two Middle Eastern stores. The latter I actually set out to find there, as I figured they could maybe be interesting additions to my cocktail-mixing kit.

Early this morning I caught a train to Springvale. Springvale, as I mentioned earlier, is home to a lot of people who migrated here from Vietnam and Cambodia. It's Chinese New Year today, and I also visited just after 9AM, so a lot of places--including a couple of shops I really wanted to show you--are closed, but I figure you'll be able to get a feel for the place. Just imagine a lot of cheap, often grotty, sometimes delicious, family-run pho and dumplings places. A bowl of noodles, stir-fried chicken with whatever and rice or a platter of pork dumplings will set you back about $7-10, depending on where you eat. Picture, too, a couple of gigantic yum cha places that are obviously dead at 9AM on a Monday, but packed on Saturdays and Sundays. I don't spend a lot of time eating in Springvale: there's some nice food to be had, but there's also a lot of shit. This Chinese bakery is in Clayton, not Springvale, but there are many such establishments in both suburbs. Note that this isn't to be confused with the cheap Vietnamese bakery that sells pork rolls (banh mi) and maybe a couple of other 'Asian' things in addition to the standard Australian lineup of baked goods--jam tarts, loaves of bread (often significantly cheaper than the supermarket), rolls, eclairs, etc. No, BreadTop/Bread Kingdom/etc sell a mixture of sweet and savoury products, ranging from green tea-flavoured macarons to small loaves of garlic bread, from sweet buns filled with mini frankfurts ('little boys' in Australian parlance) to pork floss. There are three such stores in the Clayton shopping centre itself. Here's an example of one of the afore-mentioned Vietnamese bakeries. Sadly, it--along with pretty much all the others in Springvale, aside from BreadTop--was closed this morning. The banh mi at this bakery is slightly more expensive than what I used to get just down the road in the Springvale South shopping centre when I worked in the area last year. We tend to refer to a banh mi as a 'pork roll' (for obvious reasons, really, given the most popular variants come with either a smearing of pork liver pate and, depending on your preference, a selection of cured pork products or freshly roasted pork belly) ... altho' going back a while, some people used to call it a 'two dollar bread'. Inflation has taken its toll. Incidentally, back in the late 90s, Springvale was famous for a number of things--nasty cases of food poisonings from the pork rolls being second only to being able to buy heroin before getting stabbed. Springvale (and, too, Dandenong) have been cleaned up a fair bit in recent years by the police and local council. Nan Yang Supermarket Luckily, what is maybe the area's best East Asian supermarket was open for business this morning. Nan Yang sells goods mostly from China and Vietnam, but also Cambodia, Thailand, India, Japan and South Korea. It's a very large store, with small sections dedicated to fresh meat, fruits and vegetables. I wanted to take more photos than I actually did, but I felt the need to get out of there quickly--the little old lady that runs the place was following me around, presumably figuring I was going to steal something. Some teas--both the kind you drink for the sake of drinking tea and the kind you drink if you're into quackery (teas with magical healing powers, etc). Most of the grocery stores around here dedicate considerable shelf space to dried goods, beverages and other products with widely-accepted-but-unproven healing properties. A freezer full of products including ducks, quail, meat/fish/vegetable/tofu/edible balls, fruits, vegetables, spring roll pastry and dumpling wrappers. The latter two have, in recent years, appeared in supermarkets. A selection of dried goods including fruits, vegetables, fungi and seafood. A selection of condiments. Some canned goods. Products range from the usual--fruits and vegetables--to the protein-heavy, such as seafood of various kinds (tuna, anchovies, mulched up prawns), liver pates, luncheon meats and roast goose. Nan Yang's meat section. Some other Springvale retailers A couple of the smaller fishmongers. I was making a beeline for the largest of them but it, too, was closed (it's interesting not so much because of the massive range of shellfish and fish that you can buy at stupidly low prices, but because it has the largest range of live seafood in the area--on any one day you'll be able to get 3-4 kinds of fish, mussels, pipis, oysters, crayfish and large mud crabs, in addition to maybe yabbies [a kind of Australian freshwater crayfish], tiny crabs, abalone, sea urchin and maybe a couple other kinds of shellfish). Most places in Springvale sell the fish whole, entirely untouched. If you want it scaled/gutted/etc, you need to ask. The prices are very low--I'll show you Queen Victoria Market and maybe Prahran Market later in the week so you can make a comparison--but the quality varies dramatically. You need to know what you're looking for and you need to be able to identify the good stuff from the shit. Many fishmongers also sell a range of frozen goods. In fact, there's a store (one in Clayton, too--I'll go take some photos tomorrow morning, before it gets too hot) that focuses entirely on frozen seafood. The range runs from what you'd expect--soft shell crabs, lobster tails, whole fish of various kinds, dumplings and 'fish balls'--to some more interesting things, including crocodile tail fillets and sinister-looking bailer shells. [imghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v75/WormsAu/springvalefruit1.jpg Some grocery stores with a selection of fruits and vegetables on display out the front. My vegetable shop of choice, Saigon Fresh, was (again) closed. In addition to all the usual suspects--tomatoes, oranges, onions, potatoes, lettuce, whatever--it stocks a wide range of Asian vegetables, from durian to taro to snake beans to sugar cane to Vietnamese mint. All at very reasonable prices. The quality is generally good. A butchery. The place next door was closed, which is a shame--they sort of cater to the offal crowd nicely, selling the livers, hearts, kidneys, feet, intestines, heads, tongues, stomachs, livers and god-knows-what-else of a few species. The species of bird--hard to make out, I know--include chickens (roosters, too) of various sizes and grades (the standard ones, boilers and little ones), quail, 'silkie' (Bantam or 'black' chickens) and ducks. You'll sometimes find pigeons, both little squabs and large 'boilers', in these butchers. Oh, yeah, and those long, tail-like things? They're 'roo tails. A shop that sells a variety of roast, deep-fried and other cooked meats. You can buy pork (in various forms) and duck, of course, but also chicken and quail. You can also buy a big bag of duck heads, too. The same shop: a selection of buns, sweet and savoury.

I had to do a bit of research on this, as to be honest I didn't know a lot--other than that they don't farm 'roo, they shoot in the wild. And that, too, owning a rifle and having the permit to use it doesn't mean you can go out and shotgun Skippy's mum--you need to have a special permit to shoot 'roos on top of the standard and very involved documentation for owning a firerm. The government gets people to cull 'roos, as yes, there are a lot of them and they don't really have any natural predators other than us. Every year x percentage of the 'roo population is shot, often by people riding in helicopters. The carcasses are inspected (to check for disease, etc), before and after being dressed, then trucked off and butchered, with a couple more inspections by officially important people along the way. It is then packaged for sale. Most supermarkets sell the Macro Meats brand 'roo, but I've seen 'roo distributed by other companies--Yarra Valley Game, Wangara Game--through butchers. To the best of my knowledge, the offal isn't avaliable for human consumption. Franck Foods sells kangaroo pate, but the liver component of their river comes from venison (and that'd be farmed venison). Kangaroo meat is, I guess, inexpensive in comparison to decent quality beef--and certainly in comparison to most game (farmed or wild-shot). It's the most readily avaliable game meat by far, too. Cumulus Inc -- restaurant in Melbourne CBD For breakfast this morning we hit Cumulus Inc. Cumulus Inc, located in the city of Melbourne itself, is a very popular bar/restaurant helmed by Andrew McConnell--the guy behind, too, the equally successful Cutler & Co. and Golden Fields, as well as a couple of other (now-closed) establishments. He has a book and, if you have it, he's mentioned in the tome Coco (nominated, iirc, by Shannon Bennett of Vue de Monde, another highly regarded Melbourne restaurant). This place--and Cutler and Vue, by the way--are highly recommended if you're ever down my way. To this list I'll also add (and I'm talking purely the CBD and inner 'burbs, here) Embrasse, La Luna (which you'll see later in the week), Attica, Kenzan (only if you go for sushi and sashimi, mind you), Libertine, Mamasita (probably not a big deal for those in the southern half of the US--serious and decent Mexican is a very rare thing in Australia), MoVida (in all its variants), Rumi and The Press Club. All of these are good, great or excellent. If you can hire a car, make a trip out to Daylesford to visit The Lake House. Anyway. The breakfast menu. The regular menu, if you're interested, can be found on the restaurant's website. I highly recommend the foie gras parfait and, when avaliable, the Fergus Henderson-inspired dish of pig's tail, snails and watercress. The latter is one of my favourite dishes in the history of ever (and worth lining up at Cumulus for, even if you order nothing else). The ham and cheese sandwich. Very rich. Good. The coffee (taken black and unsweetened) was decent enough--not amazing, but very drinkable. I'll try and show you a couple of my favourite coffee spots during this week, actually--Melbournites tend to think they're the greatest coffee/cafe (and, too, bar) city in Australia. My girlfriend's order, based on my recommendation from last time I breakfasted at Cumulus Inc--a sous vide egg, some sausage and beans. A very serious start to the morning, accompanied by the very gentle pick-me-up that is Earl Grey tea. The interior of the place (we were seated against the wall). It's small and, yes, it's usually this busy. Unless you're coming with, say, nine of your best friends, you can't book a table--you need to line up like the rest of us (same applies, incidentally, to the wildly popular Mamasit, which is located just around the corner, as well as a few other fairly new and trendy Melbourne eateries). Australian Open A cup of Heineken (there was a choice between regular Heineken, Heineken draught and some unnamed light beer, as well as some cheap Australian plonk [wine]) at the Australian Open. Those tiny figures on court? Nadal and Lopez. The food offerings at the Open were pretty miserable unless you wanted to fork over a lot of cash (not that the soggy, cold chips were a true budget option). The less said, the better. Kangaroo pt. 2 The fillets drained of the marinade. At this point I probably should've used some paper towel to get rid of the 'dry rub' component of the marinade. The fillets after 10 minutes in the smoker at 100C. I could've and should've given them a bit more time in there--maybe 15 or 20 minutes. I used hickory chips, by the way. Meanwhile, I prepared the braised radicchio, parsnip puree and polenta. The finished dish. The 'roo came out perfectly cooked, although the spice rub dominated the smoke flavour--it wasn't horrid, no, but I guess I really wanted the smoke to make its presence known and it just didn't. Even with smoked sea salt (which I admit I used sparingly, as I was more afraid of overdoing things than underdoing them). I mean, if you tasted it and I hadn't told you beforehand I was aimed for a smoked taste, you probably wouldn't pick that part of the process--you'd assume I'd just marinated the steaks in spices, dropped them into the grill pan and then rested them in a 50C oven. Still, they went down alright with the Sierra Nevada IPA. What's the plan for tomorrow? Still deciding, but I'm very tempted to head to Dandenong to show you my favourite Sri Lankan shop (which sells some nice curries and dahls in its little 'restaurant' [i use that term loosely]), the British butcher, Little India and maybe one of the gigantic halal butchers. Plus, too, maybe the Turkish shop. And, hey, maybe Springvale, the home of a very large Cambo-Chinese and Viet population (and lots of restaurants, grocers, supermarkets, fishmongers, butchers, etc). And, yeah, I'll tidy the place up at some point so I can get non-embarassing photos of my booze and book collections, as well as the kitchen.

Yes and no. There are still plenty of people who are conservative. We are Indian/Italian/Chinese and eat accordingly, save maybe the odd meal at Nando's or McDonald's. Plenty of Anglo-Australians are like that, too. And yet India at Home has a lot of white customers. And you see people of every background in restaurants. A lot of people take advantage of the sheer variety of groceries, restaurants, etc available to them, especially if they live around migrants, like MasterChef or a trendy restaurant or chef is involved. The low prices at many Asian-run grocers, butchers, fishmongers and restaurants doesn't hurt, either. As I said, in recent years a huge selection of 'ethnic' goods--pastas, cheeses, meats, fruits, vegetables, condiments, grains, seasonings, cured and preserved goods, etc--have appeared in supermarkets. Plenty of us make, eat and order risotto, red curry, moussaka and butter chicken.

Kecap Manis, an Indonesian variety of soy sauce.

Welcome to the 2012 season of eGullet Foodblogs and welcome, too, I guess, to my corner of Melbourne. Now, it's not Sunday. Not yet. Not even here. It will be soon--it's Saturday night--but I figured I'd post my prep for Sunday's dinner now, given early on Sunday I'll be spending most of the day at the Australian Open. I must apologise in advance, too, for the quality of some of the photographs. When I'm in a store somewhere I tend to prefer using my iPhone to my hulking SLR, a decision that often results in shitty photo. Some context. I live and have always lived in Melbourne's south eastern suburbs. I've spent most of my life in suburbs with a very high population of migrants from all over the world. Australia's culinary scene is shaped by migrants. The Italians and Greeks and others from that part of the world, back in the second half of the 20th century, they brought pizza and pasta and capsicums and salami. In the later part of the 20th century, the Vietnamese, Chinese and Cambodians brought over a wide array of condiments, fruits and vegetables. Every batch of refugees and immigrants has brought their food with them--from boiled bagels to biltong, chorizo to bok choy. Entire suburbs became, and to some extent remain, 'enclaves' for various ethnic groups--Springvale, which I'll show you some time during the week, is home to a great many Vietnamese and Cambodian-Chinese. Clayton, where I am now, was once home to many Greeks and Italians--they're still here--but now has a very large population of Koreans and Indians. Dandenong, which you'll also see, has a lot of Sudanese, Sri Lankans, Indians, people from what used to be Yugoslavia and many others. The nation's collective palate has matured, too. At some point, not too long ago, supermarkets started selling frozen packages of 'stir fry' vegetables and a selection of dried pastas that went beyond spaghetti and 'macaroni'. Products I once had to look for in specialist stores--one of the many local Indian grocers, for instance--I can now find in most supermarkets. Much of this change has been in my lifetime. In my family home the menu evolved from variations on bangers and mash to include an increasing selection of heavily Australianised Asian and Italian dishes. The South East Asian influence is very obvious in the menus of our fine dining scene. I could show you many different parts of my city. If you visit here as a tourist, you're likely to visit Queen Victoria Market and maybe a couple of the big name restaurants in the CBD. I'll show you a little bit of that, but my focus will instead be on where I live and the surrounding suburbs. The preview pictures Canned grubs from South Korea, as avaliable at the 'Hong Kong Supermarket' just down the road. Not a mango or orange tree. It's a lemon tree in my backyard. Many Australians own lemon trees and we tend to get a bit weird about paying for lemons in the supermarket, even tho' they're typically only $3-4 per kilogram. Harry's Deli, a large Greek grocery store located at the end of my street. Reasonable selection of spices and dried goods, as well as olives, Greek cheeses and 'homemade' dips. A selection of umami boosters that, as a couple people pointed out, includes vegemite. I very much prefer savoury flavours to anything else. One of the local butcher shops. Australians might recognise these titles as coming from local chefs/authors. We also have reasonable-sized Indonesian population in Clayton. This is one of two Indonesian restaurants--very cheap and not bad, either. The food is very much like what you'd imagine getting in an Indonesian home in terms of presentation and menu options. A small part of the spice section in India at Home, one of the two larger Indian grocers (there are two big 'supermarkets' and a lot of smaller places, most of which also sell hot food items such as samosas) in Clayton. Also sells products from elsewhere in southern Asia, Fiji and South Africa. Some of the cheeses sold in one of the local Italian delis. Also sells a small selection of non-Italian products, including Spanish paprika and canned fish from Portugal. Harry's Outlet -- Greek deli I ducked into Harry's in search of juniper (not Greek, sure, but their spice selection is decent)--no luck--but ended up stocking up on some of their 'homemade' dips. Oasis Bakery -- Middle Eastern bakery, grocery store, etc My search for juniper led me to Oasis, a Middle Eastern grocer five minutes from home. It's 'Middle Eastern' in its focus but also sells a lot of interesting foodstuffs--some modernist cuisine-type additives, canned snails imported from France, a variety of canned fish eggs, a decent selection of Mexican chillies, etc. The spice selection is easily the most extensive there is so close to home. It's a nice shop. Vine leaves, obviously. A selection of dips, including all of the usual suspects--hommus, ful, tzatziki, roasted capsicum, etc. A selection of duck and goose products including fat, confit and rillettes. Salmon roe, lumpfish caviar and a few other varieties of 'fish egg' priced between these two points. Actual caviar is not sold here, of course. We're not in the right area for that. A selection of olives, ranging from hulking kalamatas marinated in a variety of ways to pricey little ones from Italy. Part of the section dedicated to oils and vinegars. Avaliable are products such as raspberry finishing vinegar, organic sesame oil and a truly baffling variety of infused extra virgin olive oils and fruity/spiced vinegars. Opposing this shelf is a shelf dedicated to sauces, including a selection of peri peris from Portugal and southern Africa and some 'gourmet' chutney. A section of the (long) wall dedicated to nuts and dried fruit, running from macadamias to slices of pear. A section dedicated to pre-packaged Turkish delight, running from cheap bulk packs to expensive organic stuff. A line of tajines they're pushing. Part of the spice, herb and powders section--you can pre-made blends, a variety of different chillies (in powder or whole form) and chilli blends, vegetable and fruit powders, natural food colourings and essences, whole and powdered spices and additives. A selection of salts, ranging from the usual--table salt, rock salt, etc--to some flavoured salts (wild garlic, etc), expensive Maldon sea salt and a few interesting ones, such as black salt and hickory smoked salt. Selection is actually superior to that of the ultra expensive gourmet shops such as Simon Johnson and Jones the Grocer. Part of the pickles section--runs, again, from industrial-sized cans of pickled onions to little jars of chillies. Freeze dried fruits and vegetables, sitting atop a freezer that holds icecreams, pastry, savoury and sweet-filled pastires, dough, ready meals such as their housemade Lebanese pizzas (avaliable hot in the restaurant), desserts of various kinds and a huge selection of frozen fruits and berries (want 3 different kinds of cherry, by any chance?) Just near here, too, is a whole wall of cheeses and a counter that sells a variety of pastries, ranging from baklava to macarons (insanely popular in Australia at the moment, thanks to Masterchef). Some honey--again, the range includes expensive local stuff (Manuka, organic, etc) and some imported ones from Greece and other places. Still cheaper than Simon Johnson, Essential Ingredient and other places aimed at wealthy inner suburbanites. If I find the time I'll show you one of those stores as a nice bit of contrast. A section dedicated to dried beans and grains, ranging from farro and organic quinoa to chickpeas and navy beans. Some dessert-type products, including Persian fairy floss, orange blossom water and rose water. Around the corner is a selection of chocolates, mostly imported or good quality local ones. Some beverages. There is also a large selection of teas and coffees for sale at Oasis. Oasis also has a restaurant, which sells--both for takeaway and sit-in customers--Middle Eastern dishes such as Lebanese pizza, doner kebabs, salads, desserts and a wide selection of stuffed bread/pastry-type products. The food is reasonably priced and, in my experience, very good. I don't eat there often--my shopping tends not to coincide with lunchtime, as Oasis is insanely popular and it's difficult to get in/out of the carpark, as it's on a busy main road--but I've never struck a dud dish. The haul. I went in looking for juniper--I need it for Sunday night's dinner--and came out with smoked sea salt (I'd been on the look out for this stuff since buying the Hawksmoor at Home book, so it was hardly an impulse purchase), goose rillettes and some wild Australian olives. The olives, which I ate with some of the imported brie I bought the other day. Very nice olives. Dan Murphy's I'm cooking kangaroo on Sunday night so I figured I'd want some beer to go with it. Luckily, Dan Murphy's is just down the road from Oasis. Dan's is a chain of booze outlets owned by one of the two big supermarket chains. It has very good prices and a very good selection of some of the finer things in life--craft beer from Australia, wine from Australia and elsewhere, spirits and, of course, single malt whiskies. I have enough wine, whisky and spirits at home, so I was only in search of beer. Part of the liqueur/spirit section. Looking out over the wine section. This store, by the way, seems smaller than the other near near my house. Cider has become popular in Australia in the past couple of years. In addition to the shitty overly sweet 'apple, strawberry and bullshit'-type stuff, there's also some good quality imported French and British (as well as a few local) ciders. At some point this week I'll try and track down some of the better Australian ones--they're not sold at Dan Murphy's yet. Part of the beer section. The selection runs from the mass produced locals and imports (VB, Carlton, etc, as well as Stella, Corona, etc) to locally made craft beers, a few that straddle the line between mass produced and crafty (James Squire, the Matilda Bay range) and some nice imports (Duvel, Chimay, Leffe, Sapporo) from Belgium, mostly, but also France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam, South Africa and other places. A wider selection of, say, Indian beers (Kingfisher, Haywards 5000, etc) can be had at some of the smaller bottle-os in Clayton, which service a large Indian clientelle. The haul. Note the Sierra Nevadas--I've heard very good things. All of the others (aside from the minis) are local beers. Spiced and smoked kangroo -- prep Why did I head out in search of juniper and ale? On Sunday night I'm cooking kangaroo, working from a recipe in 32 Inspiration Chefs -- South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia [and some other places] for springbok. In the original recipe, some springbok loin is marinated in a spice mix, tea-smoked and then seared in a pan. It's accompanied by, among other things, a verjuice reduction, an apple chutney, parsnip puree and braised radicchio. It's a little more involved than what I'd normally make for dinner, but it's the weekend, school holidays (I'm a teacher) and the moment I saw some of the springbok/kudu/etc recipes in that book I was really keen to try all of them with 'roo fillets. Kangaroo, incidentally, is the most widely avaliable game in Australia--most supermarkets will sell the 'Macro Meats' brand fillets, steaks, 'kanga bangers', hamburgers, mince, mini-roasts and a variety of pre-marinted products, including sis kebabs and spiced steaks. Through a decent butcher, you can also order in--or sometimes even find, if you're lucky--kangaroo meat from other companies and in other cuts, including tail. In Queen ViC Market you'll maybe find 'roo biltong or salami. It's very lean and a bit like venison in terms of flavour--a bit sweet, a bit of iron, a meat for people who like meat. It's disgusting if over- or under-cooked, too. A lot of people don't like it because their one experience was negative--it's so easy to ruin. An increasing number of fine dining restaurants, including Vue de Monde, The Point and Jacques Reymond, are starting to include 'roo on their menus. The 'roo fillets, sitting in a marinade comprised of cumin, coriander seeds, chilli, mustard seeds, juniper, salt (I used some of the smoked salt), black pepper, soy sauce, treacle, olive oil and Worcester sauce. Verjuice reduction (water, sugar, verjuice). The apple chutney (Granny Smiths, red onion, sultanas, tomato paste, garlic, ginger, celery, brown sugar, red wine vinegar, water, cinnamon, nutmeg, bay, cardmom and cloves). When I return home from the Open I'll set to work on the last minute elements of the dish--the parsnip puree, the radicchio and some polenta (corn meal seemed like a nod to the African origins of the dish, while ticking off the starch requirements nicely). Instead of smoking the fillets in the oven with rooibos tea, orange zest, star anise and cinnamon as in the original springbok recipe, I'll load up my smoker with some hickory chips. The dish shall be served with much beer.

'Indian' chicken wings c/o the latest issue of Gourmet Traveller.

I'm planning such a meal for a smaller group. Have you access to a little charcoal grill (of course, you could do these on the stove, no problem)? What about some marinated chicken and lamb skewers? You could grill them in the morning and reheat them in the oven later. Nice and accessible for people who aren't 'food-focused'--everyone loves a stick of animal.

Hit Jacques Reymond for lunch. The lunch special is, I think, pretty good value. The glass of burgundy, priced at what I'd normally pay for a nice bottle of red? Well. It was very good. I did like, tho', that the by-the-glass selection offered wines at a range of price points (it's common to find, say, everything at $20-25 per glass ... when what's a lot nicer is to get a spectrum of offerings starting at something reasonable and working up to costlier options). Apologies for the low quality of the images--I took them with my phone. watercress soup w/ marrow tempura, tartare vinaigrette seared yellowfin tuna w/ miso dressing, chlorophyll veil, red cabbage relish, freshly grated wasabi, duck neck tempura lacquered sweetbread w/ quinoa, pickled radish salad, crispy potato kangaroo w/ 'light Asian dressing' of soy and ginger, tofu and sweet chilli jam pork fillet w/ lentils, lemon dressing, beetroot bigarade, brussel sprouts w/ yoghurt millefeuilles of vanilla & lemon custard w/ caramelised banana, orange sauce macarons Any good? Sure. Maybe not Marque or Four in Hand or Bentley (Sydney) good, or even Embrasse or MoVida (both Melbourne) good ... but probably above some of the other well-established big names, such as Grossi Florentino (Melbourne) and Quay (Sydney), I've dined at. The food plays it safe to a point, but I get the impression game--whether it's roo or hare or whatever--is always on the menu in some form. And that's nice. Indeed, the highlight of the menu was probably the 'roo, altho' there weren't any dud dishes (the dessert and soup weren't mine, by the way). The coffee was nice enough. Service was good--fine dining efficient without any stuffiness or wank.

Add a few more to the list: Local ones Gingerboy - Teage Ezard MoVida Cocina - Frank Camorra Some others Joy of Mixology - Gary Regan Nobu's Vegetarian Cookbook - Nobu Matsuhisa Serious Barbecue - Adam Perry Lang And a couple I bought in South Africa 32 Inspirational Chefs -- South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Mauritius & The Seychelles - various Reuben Cooks Local -- Reuben Riffel

Just fired up the smoker again. This time it's a piece of pork belly, seasoned with no more than salt, pepper and a little garlic powder. I'm debating whether or not I'll glaze the thing with some BBQ sauce later on.

A glass of a very good New Zealand 'wild' Sauv Blanc, some marinated kalamatas, a piece of imported brie and my first ever can of Ortiz anchovies. My God. These things, the umami kick is just incredible. Even the white anchovies I buy from the lcoal Italian deli pale in comparison in terms of flavour.