Eating Melbourne

My little sister is a second-year apprentice chef in Hobart, and is possibly even more obsessed with food than I am. So when she makes plans to visit Melbourne, the phone conversation usually goes something like this:
“I’ve booked tickets over on the 28th of January. Can you pick me up from the airport, and can I stay at your place?”
“Uh, yeah, sure.”
“OK, good. Now where are we going to eat?”

She always wants to go to wherever is new and exciting, so this visit I suggested Mezzo Bar and Grill – the brand-new incarnation of Oyster Little Bourke. Same owners, same staff, same location, but whole new menu and fitout. (There’s a cute video of the transformation here.)

I never actually went to Oyster Little Bourke, but I gather it was a little more formal than Mezzo. The new menu is designed for sharing, so you choose from small dishes (“stuzzichini”) and larger main-course-sized dishes (“tesori della cucina”), some of which are also available in extra-large-sized dishes for sharing amongst larger groups.

There were four of us – me, J, Foodie Little Sis, and Noush – so we went to town on the menu and ordered:

Ricotta-stuffed zucchini flowers, in a sort of tempura-ish batter. Delicious.

Tuna crudo on crostini with avocado and bottarga. (I had to Google “bottarga” just now – apparently it’s salted dried fish roe.) The flavours here were lovely and fresh, but my crostini was a bit stale and soggy, like the dish had been assembled too long before being served. 

Scallop carpaccio with lemon verbena, citrus and pistachios. Oh, this was divine. I don’t recall ever eating scallops uncooked before, and I can’t imagine why not – such a delicate flavour and texture! If I could eat them prepared like this all the time, I’d never order cooked ones again.

(Sorry about the photo on this one, they turned the lights down.) This was the octopus “salami” with vin cotto and parmesan. Looked like they had pressed the octopus into a roll before cooking and then slicing it. Quite an interesting idea, and tasty, although I think I prefer the slow-cooked octopus at Cumulus.

Slow cooked pork belly, with silverbeet and licorice jus. Beautiful flavours; this was J’s favourite dish, and he said it was better than Coda’s. I thought Coda’s was better, as my piece of pork had a slightly chewy rind and a little too much visible fat – I would have preferred to have a crispier rind and more of the fat rendered away. That’s being really nitpicky though, it was still delicious.

Cavatelli with meatballs, broccoli, potato, and pecorino broth. Possibly this is the ultimate comfort food dish. Cavatelli are little nuggets of egg pasta, somewhere between rigatoni and gnocchi; I’ve never liked the stodginess of gnocchi, but these had just enough chewiness to avoid being stodgy. I can’t wait to come back and eat this dish all to myself on a cold rainy Melbourne winter day.

The final dish: panfried stuffed baby calamari with capers, pickled radish, pumpkin seed and rocket pesto. There were also some kind of anchovy or sardine fillets strewn over the top. Hmm… this was probably my least favourite of all the dishes. The calamari were nice and tender, but I felt like there were a few too many competing strong flavours and it all tasted a bit too, well, fishy.

We’re getting pretty full by this point. Did we have dessert? Well of course we did. Not only did we have dessert, we star
ted with cheese.

The cheeses of the day were a washed rind and a parmesan – sorry, I forgot the names.
We also chose three sweets to share between the four of us:

The tiramisu was brought to the table in a large bowl, much as it would usually be made at home, and then our serving was scooped into a dish. I believe this is the best tiramisu I’ve eaten outside of Italy – and possibly also better than all the ones I ate in Italy too. I’m glad they didn’t put the whole bowl of it in front of me, because I don’t think I would have been able to stop myself.

Sicilian doughnuts with citrus cream (left), and the icecreams/gelati of the day. These were both perfectly nice dishes, but frankly all I could think about was the tiramisu. (Did I mention I liked the tiramisu?) I did like the cute presentation of the citrus cream in the mini preserving jar.

I should mention that the service throughout the meal was 100% spot on. Attentive, efficient, and knowledgeable, the staff were always right there when we needed them, and also not  there when we wanted to be left to enjoy our meal together. In fact the last time I’ve had service that good was at much more expensive venues like Attica or Royal Mail Hotel.

I’m keen to have a bit more of a crack at the wine list, they had a lot of very reasonably priced Italian wines (as well as locals).  Noush enjoyed a very pleasant cocktail called the “Henley” – Pimms, guava and mint.

The bill worked out to $100 a head, including drinks and tips. Considering we left feeling like we’d just eaten Christmas lunch, I thought this was fabulous value. I highly recommend Mezzo, and plan to visit again – in fact, I might just go there tomorrow night.