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?
The words ‘comfort food’ call up images of slow-braised meat and robust soups. Winter food, in summary. But we need comforting in summer too, especially at the end of January when it’s apparent that the holidays are really over and those New Year’s resolutions aren’t going to keep themselves. Fitzrovia understands the need for a little salving so it’s serving up comfort food that’s suitable for warm weather.
There aren’t many Melbourne families like the Reymonds. Jacques Reymond has been at the pinnacle of the city’s dining scene for more than two decades with the inestimable support of his wife Kathy. Their four children have grown up and schooled up in dad’s restaurants. Now three of them – Nathalie, Edouard and Antoine – are in business together here (the fourth, Joanna, runs menu planning website Mum’s Lunch). The only comparable families I can think of are the Grossis, the Wolf-Taskers (Lake House) and the Laus (ex-Flower Drum, Lau’s Family Kitchen).
I reckon most people that eat on Victoria Street stick to a favourite Vietnamese restaurant so long as the rice paper rolls are taut and fresh, the broth is clear and wholesome and the noodles are tossed with gay abandon. It’s hard to see the point of tilling fresh soil when the old paddock is still producing, especially when new possibilities seem to differ little from the tried and trusty. But I love taking hits for the team so I usually steer myself to unfamiliar restaurants.
Ah Chapel Street, urban conundrum, threaded through my Melbourne story evermore. I’ve lined up at your nightclubs, bought silly trousers in your boutiques, walked home with a sloshy bag of goldfish from your pet shop. Many is the time I’ve cursed your seedy trams, hotted-up hoons and cyclist-smashing traffic. I’ve also glowed with love for your fab fashion, your Special Cake Shop spanakopitas and your sparkly $2-shop junk. Now I’m also a bit glow-glow for Eau de vie, a small year-old operation which does a nice job of segueing from daytime coffee stop to afternoon snackery and, four nights a week, morphs further into night-time eating house then late-night bar. At every step along that path, it does things in a welcoming and classy way.
When Pinocchio opened in South Yarra in 1971, pizza meant doona-like dough bases piled with industrial ham and elastic cheese. Gourmet offerings stretched to pineapple and anchovies. The South Yarra institution has moved with the thin-crust roasted-veg fresh-and-herby times and, since August, it’s been joined by an impressive bayside sibling which recalls Crown’s sleek, upscale Giuseppe, Arnaldo and Sons more than it does the pizza joints of yore.
Chester White has closed. The space has re-opened as Orto. There are restaurants that steer people and there are those that give them what they want. Chester White trots happily into the latter category. There’s stuff for kids, sizzling lunch deals, a BYO night, all-day pizzas (gluten-free available) and heaps of wine by the glass. A ‘say yes’ mentality doesn’t tend to stretch Joe Public but most people like a restaurant that preaches to them, the converted, and there’s nothing wrong with ticking the boxes when it’s done with Chester White’s finesse and fine taste.
Waverley Park was a football ground last time I came here. My team lost. I trudged to the car through an endless bog then crawled to the exit in a first-gear funk. This time, I zoomed along the M1, parked on asphalt and ate in a remnant of the old stadium, which now contains a grocer, a gym and The Last Piece. The oval, once the site of pitched battles in bootstud-pocked mud, is now an immaculate green surrounded by large villas.
There are those who don’t appreciate homestyle food in restaurants. Why would I go out for food I can cook myself, goes the thinking. I get that. I love the ‘wow, I could never do that at home’ mode of eating out. But I also welcome the old-slipper cosiness of eating a meal that yes, you could do at home, but really, would you make it so nice, and would someone else bring it to you, and would they do the washing up afterwards?
In a time of extravagant chocolate creations, when eight year olds temper chocolate on national television, it’s bold to put a bowl of chocolate icecream on a dessert menu. No ganache, no oozy pudding, no glossy crisp-snap layers, just scoops of the good stuff, made with Anvers couverture from Tasmania. It’s good, too: creamy and rich but not devastating or cloying thanks to leavening bitterness from the cocoa. It speaks of the Kitchen Cat’s approach: tasty, honest and moderately priced. The more-or-less Italian food is nice but it doesn’t scream ‘look at me!’ You get the feeling that celeb chef owner Tobie Puttock thinks restaurants are about communing to eat and chat and slurp wine, not stressing your way to the top of a waiting list then screaming to be heard.
A top chef opens a smart pub in a location that’s full of thirsty, cashed-up, glammed-up punters but lacking in exciting places to sip and be seen. The result? SmithSlam. Since it opened in mid-September, chef Michael Lambie and long-time front-of-house collaborator Scott Borg have been wrangling, feeding and watering the crowds that have flocked to the off-Chapel designer drinking and dining house they’ve carved from the wreckage of the old ETs.