Eater – Page 24 – Dani Valent

We’ve all got to eat so it might as well be good! I’ve been a restaurant critic for almost 20 years, and have been writing a weekly restaurant column in Melbourne’s Sunday Age since 2006.

My approach is to always take a restaurant on its own terms: there’s no point slamming a burger joint because it doesn’t have white tablecloths. I try to be constructive in my criticism and I’ve always got the diner in mind: there are many places you could choose to go. Why should it be here?

 

Lupino

Lupino is a wily ‘little wolf’, a knowing, thronging Italian-but-oh-so-Melbourne restaurant. Clubby but welcoming, rigorous but high-spirited, it’s run by Richard Lodge and Marco Lori, hospitality die-hards who came together at Moretti on Exhibition Street more than 20 years ago, decamped to open Becco, then five years ago joined forces with Made Establishment’s George Sykiotis to create this smart trattoria.

Quinces on ABC Afternoons + Pot-roasted Spiced Quinces recipe

Quinces are just coming into season now: they are strange, hard, knobbly, furry fruits and rather unappealing at first glance. They do have a beautiful perfume though – and they’re cheap, around $3 a kilo. To me, they smell pink, which might sound strange, but makes more sense when they are cooked, because they turn from a pale yellowy green to a deep, glossy ruby. It’s the kind of alchemic kitchen magic that can make you fall in love with a fruit, and I am definitely in love with quinces.

Three Monkeys Place

It’s been scientifically proven that photographing food makes it more enjoyable to eat, because the ritual of considering, positioning and snapping elevates perception of the observed dish, and also because it delays gratification. It’s true! I read it in Psychological Science! However, the same study suggests that watching someone else take a photo does not enhance enjoyment and (according to my own anecdotal experience) can actually be really, really annoying.

Smith + Singleton

If it wasn’t for the unfortunate context of sick kids, the Royal Children’s Hospital would be a lovely place to visit. A coral reef aquarium plunges through two floors. Family-friendly films screen in a beanbag-strewn cinema. Beautiful landscaping includes neat grassy knolls that beg to be rolled down in fits of giggles. There’s even a groovy Art Hotel with an in-room yoga channel and free bikes.

Fox in the Corn

If the most important aspect of a pasta restaurant is the pasta then I have good things to say about this new place in hip, happening Footscray. I also like the spacious room with impressively large (too large?) plywood booths and the handsome bar which will offer eight tap beers when the liquor license finally comes through. I’ve never seen pasta and beer as inseparable companions but hopefully others will. Wine will also be available.

Dinner by Heston

Have you ever wondered what people ate in England over the past 600 years? No, me neither. I assumed it was mushy peas with the odd partridge and kipper thrown in. But lo, apparently there was more to it, and chefs Heston Blumenthal and main man Ashley Palmer-Watts have discovered what made Blighty mighty, digging into fusty recipe books then developing modern interpretations of old-timey dishes. They’ve been served at Dinner in London since 2011 and here since October in a flash dining room that picks up where the Fat Duck left off.

Char Dining

The last time I ate Mathew Macartney and Gavin Evans’ food it was in the stately dining rooms of Eleonore’s at Chateau Yering, set amidst formal gardens in the Yarra Valley. This time it’s in the chefs’ own restaurant, a modest shopfront in Balwyn with views over a carpark shadowed by a supermarket. Luckily, food can be transporting.

© Dani Valent 2024