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 Table is awash with ideas: it’s aiming to be a convivial eatery that picks up local buzz about Latino cooking then takes it to a higher level. Owner-chef James Blackman spent the past seven years working for an American billionaire, much of it managing a Caribbean estate, so he’s well versed in black beans, blue corn and the like. Back home, his new restaurant gestures at fine dining with elaborate food dotted on oversized sail-shaped plates (the same ones for every dish). It also keeps things casual, with an open kitchen and a welcoming pavement presence. The namesake table was once the heart of Blackman’s childhood home; it’s now at the restaurant’s entrance where it looks more like a monument than a place for eating.
Yesterday wasn’t only notable because Great Aunt Meg kissed the dog under the mistletoe then they both ran away leaving brandy butter footprints. It was also special because it’s the one day of the year Sapa Hills closes its doors. Today it’s back to business as usual. Aunt Meg is in her recliner, Blackie is waiting for the cricket to start and everything from the rice paper rolls with prawns and pork (item #1 on the menu) to fruit salad with icecream (#214 on the menu) is back on at Sapa Hills.
Now I know why we need the word quirky in the English language: it’s to deal with Disco Beans, a rather peculiar but extremely winning Japanese restaurant more or less transplanted from Osaka’s underground art scene, where founder and chef Yuka Hart used to live. Art exhibitions and occasional performances are the backdrop to careful, simple homestyle Japanese food. It’s vegetarian (plus a little fish) and accommodatingly vegan or gluten-free if that’s the way you roll.
Hamilton Street, Mont Albert, is the phrase for which ‘sleepy shopping strip’ was invented. It’s been tumbleweeds in the evenings – until now. Mark Cornehls and Nick Blackburn bought an old haberdashery two years ago, opened a cafe, and applied for a liquor license. In September, after enough red tape to wrap a truck, the license came through. Then the owners went all radical, scrapped breakfasts, banned the ‘just for coffee’ crowd, set noses out of joint, and refocused as a night-time operation.
Sometimes one dish is all it takes to remind me why I love restaurants. Right now Maurice Esposito’s fabulous flathead is it. It’s not often I order flathead in a restaurant – what can a chef do with a fine piece of fish that I can’t do at home? So long as I don’t trash it, it’s going to be good. But Esposito elevates great produce with smart ideas and superb cooking.
Steer is a Brazilian-leaning restaurant at the Olsen, the Art Series hotel opposite the Como. There’s plenty to like and much that could be tweaked. The biggest problem is that the South American spin suggests excitement but Steer is light on Latin thrills.
Ho-ho-horrible shopping can be made bearable when it’s punctuated with a visit to a good cafe. As well as the physical refuel, replenishing time out of the retail ruckus is an opportunity to wonder if the person who has everything might really love that inflatable vase or goblin-themed candle snuffer, or whether you’re risking regrettable regifting come Christmas 2011.
Some people shudder when there’s talk about tofu. ‘It’s a shivery, bland excuse for food!’they propound. (Imagine how much worse the trembling and denouncing would be if the stuff wasn’t called ‘tofu’ but was instead known by the less percussive but more descriptive ‘pressed curdled soy bean mash’?) Happily for fans of (and, indeed, future converts to) animal-free protein, there are places that do interesting things with tofu, among them En Izakaya, a casual Japanese eating house in the bagel belt.
The summer dining dream calls for good food, warm vibes and balmy weather. The City Tiler delivers the first two and, when God bestows the third, the Tiler has the outdoor area to take advantage. A spacious garden abuts the old Port Melbourne courthouse, a stately cream brick 1860s building, now home to an upscale tile business, relocated last summer from South Melbourne. Of course, single-pronged businesses are dead, dude, so while the mornings are busy with mosaic tiles, the afternoons kick along with excellent cakes and coffee made in a cult-fave Synesso machine. There’s breakfast and lunch on Saturdays only: follow an appetite-sparking beach stroll with organic scrambled eggs or a toastie. In the evenings, the Tiler morphs into a wine bar with unobtrusive live music, dangerous vodka-spiked sangria and honest food. A night on the tiles was never so much fun.