Eating Melbourne

In which we eat some rather tasty sandwiches and OD on macarons.

EARL Canteen, 500 Bourke St (Little Bourke St courtyard), Melbourne. www.earlcanteen.com.au

I had arranged to meet my brother Dan for lunch today, so it seemed like an excellent excuse to visit the newly-opened EARL Canteen – a gourmet sandwich bar that opened last week in the little courtyard underneath MoVida Aqui at 500 Bourke St.

(I should mention here that the twittoblogosphere is very excited about EARL, because the people behind it are Jackie [Eating with Jack] and her partner Simon – self-confessed “food nerds”, both with quite the Melbourne hospitality pedigree. Not to mention Duncan’s macarons- but I’ll get to that in a minute.)

EARL Canteen is pretty much a sandwich bar – but not as you know it. Sandwiches, yes, but “gooor-mett” sandwiches.  I ordered the “Bacon Rage” ($13): thick cut Otway bacon, spicy kimchi and green leaves on ciabatta.

I confess that my main motivation for ordering this was my glee at the idea of a  #momofukurage-themed sandwich. Fortunately it was also delicious – the spicy kimchi added a lovely zing and heat to the salty-sweet bacon.  Also had a coffee to accompany my meal – they use Coffee Supreme beans, and make a very pleasant latte.

Dan ordered the Wagyu Meatball ($12.50): Moondarra wagyu meatballs in sugo, with zucchini pickles and shaved parmesan on a baguette.

Again, very tasty, although the meatballs could have been heated up a bit more – they were lukewarm in the middle. And not a sandwich that I’d try and eat on a lunch date, it’s a bit hard to get one’s mouth around without getting meatballs up one’s nose. (A classy look.)

To finish, we had to have macarons “By Duncan”. Duncan writes the Syrup and Tang blog, and is a macaron guru. (In fact I can thank his blog exclusively for teaching me how to successfully make macarons. I use the Italian meringue method, btw.)  Duncan is now also not only writing about macarons, but making them – and exclusively for EARL. That’s a big WOO and HOO for the macaron-loving people of Melbourne!

We tried “Clancy Dark”, finger lime + dark chocolate; and “Yannic Intense”, salted caramel. ($2.50 each.)

I should confess at this point that I never really understood the appeal of macarons before. Yes, I’ve baked them (after seeing Zumbo’s on Masterchef last year), and they’re a nice challenge for a try-hard baker like me… but they never tasted that great, and for all the trouble they took, they weren’t as popular as, say, sponge cake.

Duncan’s macarons? Finally I get what all the fuss is about! I’m now inspired to have another crack at baking them myself. So light and delicate in texture, but very intense in flavour. Macarongasmic.

My only quibble is that they are very small, so the macarongasm is over far too quickly.

Highly recommend EARL for a tasty weekday lunch in the city. In fact I wish to bob there was somewhere like this closer to my work.

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.

Lunch. 10 courses of tapas. 13 different Spanish wines. MoVida, the Spanish Acquisition and Rathdowne Cellars teamed up for this special event, and what an awesome lunch it was.

MoVida was packed to the gills with excited foodies and booze hags – the whole restaurant had been booked out for it. At the door we were greeted with a glass of Cava, 2006 Raventos i Blanc “L’Hereu” Reserva Brut. “Oh that’s nice,” I thought, “they’re starting us off with a full glass before getting into the tastings.” Little did I know that the full glass was a sign of things to come…

No sooner had we taken our seats than suddenly our glasses were being refilled with another Cava – this time the 2006 Raventos i Blanc “L’Hereu de Nit” Rosé. Absolutely delicious too! This was teamed with the very first tapa, boqueron (pickled white anchovy pincho):

Yum yum yum. I do love Spanish anchovies. And next up – yay – more anchovies! This time it was anchoa, hand filleted Cantabrian anchovy on a crouton with smoked tomato sorbet. Always one of my favourites at MoVida. The matched wine for this dish was the Delgado Zuletta “La Goya” Manzanilla sherry, a very dry sherry that tastes to me a bit like sea air, but went beautifully with the food.

So at this point we’ve already had three wines. And not 20ml “tastes” either. They just keep topping ‘em up…
…and then suddenly there are another three wines for tasting in front of us. The 2008 Orden Tercera Verdejo was very bright and fruity, a bit too fruity and sav-blanc-ish for me. The 2008 Pazo San Mauro Albariño was a little drier, I liked it. And then the 2008 Capçanes “Mas Donis” Rosat de Garnacha – I adored this, it remained probably my favourite wine of the day. (I think I may have ordered some. Maybe. The end of the day was a little fuzzy.)

We drank these three wines with la trucha del océano, cured ocean trout with beetroot and horseradish cream; pulpo, slow cooked octopus with potato; and de ternera con atún, braised veal cheek with yellow fin tuna and piquillo pepper.

Five tapas and six wines down. We’re only halfway through. Press on!

Onto the reds now. I didn’t finish my whites/rosé in time so had to pour the remainders in the spittoon – the shame! The first three reds were the 2008 Artazuri Garnacha; 2007 Telmo Rodriguez “Gaba do Xil” Mencia; and 2008 Telmo Rodriguez “LZ” Tempranillo. They were teamed with two raciones (= larger sharing style tapas): confit green asparagus with slow cooked eggs and jamon Serrano; and slow roast baby goat. I really dug the asparagus – would make an excellent brunch dish!

It was about this point that things start getting messy. So messy in fact that I got a picture of the next three red wines, but not the next two food dishes.

The final bracket of reds were all tempranillos from Rioja – quite intense, very dark in colour: 2005 Remelluri Reserva Tempranillo, 2006 Artadi “Vinas de Gain” Tempranillo, and finally 2005 Roda “1” Reserva Tempranillo. I confess I do not remember a whole lot of detail about these wines. (I know, I know… I’ve let you all down… I am an embarrassment to booze hags and food bloggers everywhere.) I do however taking my first sniff of the Roda “1” and thinking “oh HELLO!!” Very very beautiful nose on it. But so it should have for $145 a bottle.

There were two matched dishes with this final red bracket: menestra, tomato braised spring vegetables with jamon Serrano; and carne de wagyu, braised wagyu intercostals with Jerusalem artichokes. The wagyu was delicious.

Executive chef Frank Camorra and his head chef David then came out to say a few words about their food:

I have to say though, this wasn’t the best food I’ve had at MoVida. Everything was nice enough, but without the “oh-my-god-oh-oh-OH”-ness of the cecina (air cured wagyu with truffle foam and poached egg). Where was the Pedro Ximenez braised beef cheek? the quail, jamon and cheese croquettes? the scallops with jamon and potato foam?

But I’m getting ahead of myself – we haven’t even had dessert yet! Which was a chocolate fudgey thing with olve oil sorbet and fennel torta, served with a glass of Sanchez Romate Moscatel “Ambrosia” sherry. (Pardon the pic – my sorbet melted while I was busy gasbagging with the very lovely Claire (from Melbourne Gastronome) and Anna aka Eatnik. And Claire’s dad, who is so exactly like my dad it’s hilarious.)

Eh… I don’t go much on chocolate desserts, so it was a bit wasted on me.

Speaking of wasted… oh my god. Thirteen glasses of wine in four hours?! And then they gave us the wine order forms, the cheeky buggers. I know I ordered a few bottles but I don’t entirely remember what and how many, so I guess I’ll find out when I get a call from Rathdowne Cellars! I’m hoping I ordered the pink Cava (2008 Raventos i Blanc “L’Hereu de Nit” Rosé) and the 2008 Capçanes “Mas Donis” Rosat de Garnacha.

All in all it was a great lunch. Extraordinarily good bang for buck too, at $120 a head. Hopefully they’ll do it again next year – make sure you’re on the mailing lists for either the Rathdowne Cellars or Spanish Acquisition so you don’t miss out!

Lygon St used to be the place to go for authentic Italian. Sadly these days most of the restaurants there are overpriced tourist traps. To get real Italian food, you now need to go a little off the beaten path… in Journal Canteen’s case, this means finding a mezzanine level in the CAE library on Flinders Lane. (Walk in, turn right past the Journal Cafe, and go up the stairs.)

When you get there, you discover the kind of decor that is politely described as “modest”. It’s actually very evocative of that fabulously daggy cafe fitout that you find all over Italy – the sort where the family that owns the cafe did a “modern refit” in the early 70s, complete with laminex, fluorescent lighting and chrome chairs, and sees no reason to change 30 years later. I just love it.

It has a great view of Flinders Lane and Centre Place. I really did feel a bit like I was in Europe.

The chalkboard menu is simple, brief, and changes daily, with an antipasto plate, four choices for mains (all around the $20 mark) and a featured dessert.

I chose the lasagne but it had sold out, so my next choice was the veal shank with risoni pasta:

I don’t often order shanks, as my partner has a fabulous recipe that most restaurant shanks don’t compare to. I think this one gave him a run for his money. The meat was falling gooily off the bone, with a delicious gravy.

My partner ordered the roast chicken, which was fabulously juicy and lemony and herby, served rustically with a few potatoes on the plate:

We were also given a simple salad to share – just some iceberg lettuce and fennel with olive oil vinaigrette.

The meal was very filling but we were intrigued by the dessert of the day, a “sweet ravioli”, so we ordered one to share. (Andy, one of the chefs, is a mate of my brother’s so he gave us an extra one. Thanks Andy!)
The sweet ravioli was a deep fried pastry, filled with ricotta and sultanas. Not exactly health food but very very tasty.

Journal Canteen is a really tasty and well-priced lunch in the CBD and I’m looking forward to visiting again soon.

Yeah, yeah, so I’m probably the last blogger in Melbourne to finally review Coda. It only opened a couple of months ago but is already So Hot Right Now that it’s next to impossible to get into.

I booked dinner for 3 on a Sunday evening, about three weeks prior. The day before, they called to confirm my “booking for two people”. Uhhh, no – three please! They ummed and ahhed as to whether or not they could now fit us in, but eventually agreed to change the booking to three.

The three of us rocked up on Sunday night. Can you guess what happened? Yup – booking wasn’t changed, and now they had nowhere for us to sit. They asked us to wait for 10-15 minutes, but there was nowhere to wait apart from standing up in the foyer. The sommelier asked us if we wanted to order drinks while we waited, which we did, but only discovered at the end of the night that these drinks were marked as 100% discount on the bill. Nice gesture, but they would have got more mileage out of it and cheered us up more by telling us at the time!

Anyway, finally we got to sit down and take a look at the menu. As you’ve no doubt heard already, the menu is a combination of Asian and European inspired sharing-style “tapas” dishes. I’d already read a lot about the comparative weakness of the Euro dishes so we decided to stick to the Asian ones.

When we came to order, two of the dishes (including the signature Coda roll) were sold out. Gaahhh! The waiter then suggested that perhaps he could put together a menu for us, and I’m always happy to roll the dice when it comes to tapas style meals, so we agreed.

First up was the famously misspelled “beetle” (ha!) leaf, with crab, galangal, roasted chilli and lime. Few too many fried onions on the top but otherwise tasty and zippy.

Next was the very pretty citrus-cured kingfish with fresh wasabi and pickled radish. What a great combo of flavours, with the tart-sweet citrus and spicy wasabi! And it didn’t overpower the fish either.

Next, the nifty sugarcane prawns – minced prawn wrapped like a Dagwood dog around a stick of sugar cane and rolled in crispy noodles, with a dipping sauce of hot mint and chilli. I loved the flavours, and the presentation was innovative, but I found the texture a bit odd – there was none of the prawn’s original texture left in the mince, it was more like a squidgy prawn paste.

Next we had the Hanoi style crispy rice paper roll with lettuce and nuoc cham dipping sauce. Meh… this was ok but pretty much like every other rice paper roll you’ve ever had, only fried.

Then there was the roasted Coffin Bay scallop with pearl tapioca and salmon caviar. I don’t remember eating this (my visit was nearly 3 weeks ago now) – I would have forgotten it altogether if it wasn’t for the photo evidence. So that’s probably a good summation of the dish.

Next, the “quail lettuce delight” – i.e. a quail san choi bow. Very tasty. Flower Drum does a better version of this, but the Flower Drum version ain’t $5 each.

Our last small dish was the seven spiced cuttlefish. This was my least favourite dish of the night, and the only thing I didn’t finish my share of. I found it too salty and I didn’t love the cuttlefish texture either – little bit too thick and a tiny bit rubbery.

The next thing to arrive on the table was the pork belly. Ohhhhhh, the pork belly. Hell this was good, and I don’t usually like pork belly. The crispy crackling! The soft tender meat! The gelatinous caramelised goodness!

The pork belly is not on the menu. I asked our waiter about it and he said they order in whole suckling pigs for the pig terrine, but they save the belly and cook it up when they’re done making the terrine. So, if you go, ask nicely for pork belly – I thought it was best dish of the night.

Finally, we had the yellow duck curry with lotus root. If we hadn’t just had orgasmic pork belly, I probably would have been more excited about this – it was really good but just couldn’t stack up to the pig.

The service, after the initial booking stuff-up, was good. Casual, and not always super efficient, but certainly enthusiastic – all the staff seem genuinely excited by the food and keen to make sure you have a good evening. Travis the sommelier was very helpful with wine choices to match the food – no simple task given the powerful flavour combinations in the Asian dishes.

Coda seems like it ought to be a cheap night out, with many of the small dishes under $10; however one does find oneself carried away, and before you know it you’ve had ten different dishes and three bottles of wine, and spent well over $100 a head. (Restraint: not my middle name.)  The three of us all had a great time though, and I’d definitely return.