Still here
August 21st 2008 00:05
Yep, sorry, still here, just a bit swamped with work and all - will try and get back into my blogging soon!!
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Martin Frimet
AUSTRALIA
Joined March 25th 2008
Number of Posts:
23
Number of Comments:
1
Karma:
5
Recent Posts
 By BasiaJune 4th 2008 06:03
It must be rare to want to go back to a place where the food was moderate at best but, if I am ever passing through Hawthorn around lunchtime, I feel almost certain I would not be able to resist popping in to By Basia, on Burwood Road, again. Considering just how uninspired I was by my meal, it is a strange statement to make.
Unable to decide between a plate of cous cous served with mediterranean vegetables and a pasta salad with pesto and chicken, my waitress offered to give me half-serves of both for the price of one. Thus a large, pristine white bowl came packed with carbs and dotted with spots of colour by way of grainy-green pesto and a sunshine assortment of vegetables. However good it looked there was much here that had gone awry. In the cous cous dish, coriander was little more than a garnish when it should have been integral; a paucity of olive oil left the grain disappointingly dry, while hospital-cut cubes of vegetables meant it lacked something in both flavour and texture. Similarly, though there was plenty of chicken in my pasta portion, the pesto I was most keenly anticipating was not nearly dense enough to make much impression on my taste buds. Instead, this dish came to be more coloured with the deep-green of fresh spinach, an odd, flat addition, which gave little of note in either taste or touch. Though these were hearty portions of modern lunch classics, here they seemed to have been translated from paper to plate with little attention to rendering any of the definite contrasts and flavours that can make both dishes so enduring in the right hands. The cous cous was dry, crumbly and dull and the pasta far too plain. Why then, would I ever go back to somewhere with such simple food? The reason for such apparently misplaced loyalty is twofold. First, the coffee at By Basia was sensational. My flat white came served with an artful, exuberant fan pattern etched onto its frothy top which was crying out for attention. Underneath, the rich coffee came with a sweet-but-subtle chestnut flavour, which meant I could give my attention to little else. It was a coffee that wouldn't have felt out-of-place with tasting notes and a spittoon. And what made By Basia even more delectable was service that was truly joyful. Smiles and greetings were abundant without being sickly; water and cutlery delivered cleanly and on time and every other request catered for. My young waitress not only helped by suggesting I combine the two options I was dithering interminably over, but was also keen enough to remember me after I had initially asked for more time to make my choice, and in spite of the swamp of business people who had then deluged her. Thus, despite somewhat insipid food, there was something about both the caffeine and the culture of By Basia that could make you notice the sun in the sky and the glow in your stomach all the more brightly, and will thus keep me warm to the idea of a return visit. By Basia 460 Burwood Road Hawthorn
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No points for mayhem at messy Yeah MaanMay 25th 2008 12:28
With the rival eating attractions of Richmond and St Kilda just a few minutes away by car in either direction, any restaurant that sits on booming, busy Punt Road is going to have to work pretty hard to draw in its fair share of customers. To that end, using everything from its very name and nature onwards, Yeah Maan seems to have tried to approach the issue by offering things not readily available elsewhere in the city; not only is it one of the very few Jamaican restaurants in Melbourne, but it is also defiantly alternative in the way it looks, feels, and even sounds. A relative anomaly in a city that concentrates so heavily on Asian and European cultures for its cuisine, I hoped my visit here would be well worth its detour.
That things are a little off-centre at Yeah Maan is immediately evident. Decoration is voluptuous and varied; posters of Jamaican heroes vie for attention with landscape paintings that come blasted with reds and blues and yellows. It is different, certainly, but also slightly incomprehensible; in truth, I felt as if one of the house cocktails had exploded in my face but, with a packed Saturday night crowd who seemed to be happily tucking into their meals, I was more than prepared to re-focus my attention and get down to business. Before we could eat, however, there were several tests still before us. First was the trick of getting used to music that, in trying to be absolutely representative of Jamaican culture veered wildly amongst the country’s leading creative lights. Mellow Bob Marley at one minute was ramped into raucous rap the next; that might then slip into the smooth pop etchings of Shaggy before we were blasted by some local big band music. I understood that the idea was to bring a little slice of Jamaica to another world entirely but, by speaking about so much at once I felt as if I was able to understand nothing of the ideas and influences that might have shaped the nation. And somehow before we ate, worse was still to come. Like so much else at Yeah Maan, even the menu itself, worded in a tar-thick Jamaican patois, took some getting used to. Starters, for example, became “entrees n’tings”; a main of Jerk Chicken threatened to make my taste buds “start quarrelling & dancing & mingling with one another”, while Caribbean Coconut Prawns were likely, apparently, to start “ja making you crazy”. It was here that ‘chilli’ became ‘chilly’ and ‘restaurant’ was even turned to ‘rastarant’. It was another blunt and boring attempt at imparting some personality to the place which, again, ended up veering closer to incomprehensible than incisive. After all that, I definitely needed a drink, but even that was disappointingly done at Yeah Maan. In suitably scatter-gun fashion, water was at our table when we arrived but glasses didn’t arrive until after our starters. Alcoholic drinks were a touch on the expensive side ($6.50 for a bottled beer) and a tropical fruit cocktail that I was hoping would be bursting with all the sun-ripened flavours of the Caribbean arrived looking drab, with little love or life to it and, truthfully, tasted about as fresh as carton concentrate. And yet, the food still looked and smelled fantastic and we had high hopes as a shared starter of Chilli Janga Roti – spicy prawn mix wrapped in roti bread – at last arrived. Once again on what was turning into an exasperating night, we were, however, left confused as four tiny morsels for which we’d paid nearly $15 sat before us. Yes, the bread had a nice, just-baked softness and the spicy prawn and vegetable inner had a just-right kick, but it was still impossible not to taste some bitterness at paying so much for so little. It was an unfortunate frugal approach that seemed to continue throughout our meal. Stock foods like rice and beans were abundant, yet many of the more crucial ingredients seemed to go missing. Rasta Ginger-Tamarind Chicken, for example, made little of the eponymous duet of spices that it was supposed to triumph – had this dish been labelled as chicken curry and charged at half the price, we might have been impressed but as it was this tasted like another element of Yeah Maan that had somehow lost its sense of proportions. Curried Chana and Potatoes were good but nothing I hadn’t tasted many times before at any number of Indian restaurants, while the much-trumpeted Jamaican rice and peas might just as well have been a boil-in-the-bag Mexican mix so short was it of the coconut cream, herbs and spices that was supposed to define it. That we then waited ten minutes or more after paying our bill only to see our change returned to the wrong table was a suitably scrambled finish to our evening. Whether you’re eating Jamaican food for the first time or Italian for the thousandth, I still expect fair value, good flavours and efficient service when I eat out. Inelegant, expensive and surprisingly unoriginal, Yeah Maan had none of these and truly felt like it had no idea. Yeah Maan 340 Punt Road South Yarra
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Not quite enough pep for all Cafe Vue's promiseMay 18th 2008 02:50
Everything was perfectly set. A warm day, an empty stomach, and an earthy, outdoor seat in amid granite greys and grassy greens. Add to that engaging and attentive staff who were outgoing without being sickly, an intriguing menu full of new flavours as well as a liberal spread of older favourites like croque-monsieur, filled Yorkshire puddings and home-made burgers, and not forgetting its well-inked reputation, and I will admit to having a ripple of excitement running through me as I waited to eat for the first time at Cafe Vue on Little Collins Street.
Though opened as a sidearm to the massively successful Vue De Monde (recently voted among the top 100 restaurants in the world) Cafe Vue has been doing good business all of its own for some time now, offering a range of affordable lunchtime staples like salads and sandwiches, as well as its now-famous lunchbox, comprising four or five small courses, changed on a monthly basis, and all yours for just $15
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Get in the mood at Noodle KingdomMay 7th 2008 23:58
Noodle Kingdom, on the outskirts of Melbourne’s Chinatown and smack in the middle of the CBD, is one of those rare and exciting places where you can pretty much trace the course of your dish from its very creation to its eventual presentation before you. First, walking along Russell Street, your eye is immediately drawn inside as a man who seems half-chef and half-fairground entertainer feverishly rolls, stretches, slaps and then slices large wads of dough into the restaurant’s eponymous main dish. Venture further inwards, and it is then possible to sit and watch a large, open kitchen where a highly charged troupe of other workers scurry around beside this Noodle King to stow, season and serve your order. As dining experiences go, it’s certainly more AFL than it is a la carte.
And yet, intriguing as it might be to see such a base, butch kitchen in action, the main reason I was here was not for the show, but to see how well fed I would get on one of the large selection of noodle dishes on offer for under $10. I was not to be disappointed
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Beautiful Barista gets it bang onMay 1st 2008 00:22
Do other countries do the barbecue with quite as much vim and vitality as Australia? Can anyone outside the US really understand the rules of American Football? Or presidential elections? And how does Kevin Rudd’s Chinese accent sound and do some locals steal a secret snigger when they hear it? Trying to transfer elements of one culture on to another can be a hit and miss affair and it was with that in mind that I turned up an interested eater at Barista by Italcaffe, hoping to find out whether one of Australia’s biggest coffee bean importers could bring an authentic slice of Italian cafe culture into their very own cafe.
To that end, the owners at Italcaffe seemed at least to have chosen the perfect spot. While only seconds away from the bag-swinging and foot-stomping of the Chapel Street shopping precinct, Barista itself sits on a quiet side street which might easily pass for a winding lane in Rome, Florence or Venice. Move closer and, happily, this image does not falter
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Bubbling Baths defy expectationsApril 28th 2008 04:37
Sorrento, 90 km east of central Melbourne on the beautiful, beach-laden Mornington Peninsula, suffers something of an image problem. According to local legend, for example, it is the area with the highest concentration of tennis courts per square metre in the whole world; though one wonders whether the residents of Malibu or Monaco might have something to say about that, there is certainly no shortage of white lines and net cords on view behind the massively managed hedgerows and towering iron gates that mask so much else of Sorrento.
Probably unsurprising then, Sorrento now has something of a reputation of being overly pricey and pretentious to those outside of this tennis glitterati; worth a weekend for its brilliant beaches and smooth surf but a little sickly for too much longer than that is the general gist
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Blunt Vegie Bar lacks a cutting edgeApril 25th 2008 01:55
The credentials on the way to Vegie Bar, on Brunswick Street, were abundantly clear. Not only does this long-running Fitzroy staple share a border on one side with a plant and garden store (green produce from which blooms out onto the street as you walk up), but the billboard at the corner of its nearest intersection has even recently been decked out in an enormous poster for the local Green Party candidate’s attempts to become a Senator. As both vegetarian and organic get ever higher in many people’s everyday esteem, I wondered then what surely one of the greenest establishments in Melbourne could offer me.
From the very start, Vegie Bar seems to have taken its green theme with the utmost seriousness. Thus, as I sat down and stared at the high, slanted ceiling, at the slow twist of the overhead fans and at the assortment of plain wooden furniture, I frankly couldn’t help but get the impression I were eating in a shed somewhere. And with a heavy, hypnotic sun streaming in through the large window fronts and slow, languid music on play, I almost felt as if a selection of farmyard animals were about to wander through the premises at any moment. And somehow, in that setting, I don’t think I would have minded that
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Taco Bill topples at the lastApril 23rd 2008 06:14
I admit I was expecting the worst as we walked toward Taco Bill in Camberwell. Though un-affiliated to its American near-namesake, Taco Bell, the slightly grotty exterior of this Camberwell institution did nothing to dissuade me from the gut-rumbling feeling that the Mexican cuisine I was about to eat was going to be all grease and no guile.
Things got worse before they got better. The atmosphere in the dining room was painfully stale, the walls washed in ugly brown and – always a sin and an especially big one in a relatively small dining room such as this – the TV was on, beckoning concentration away from both friends and food. Maybe that, I figured to myself, was another sign of what we were in for, and that those at Taco Bill would rather us remember what we watched here than what we ate
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Delicately different Breadwell gets it just rightApril 21st 2008 00:57
Walking through some parts of Melbourne’s CBD looking for a late lunch, it can sometimes seem hard to find anywhere that doesn’t fit into a certain, almost identikit profile. Countless central cafes offer the same line in clear glass frontage, straight black tables and do-it-by-heart sandwich or salad options. Many of these places, of course, are good at what they do but few are memorable for it. Breadwell cafe however, buried amongst a stack of eateries on Flinders Lane, clearly has other ideas and, from start to finish, does things just a little bit differently.
Breadwell’s attempts at making a stand come before you even step in the door, as its rather peculiar emblem, a kind of heraldic, bread-giving hero, draws your eye from way down the street
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