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?
There aren’t many generalities you can throw at vast and varied India but there is one sight that is ubiquitous from Gujarat in the west to Bengal in the east, from the northern Himalaya to the southern tip of Kerala. It’s the Tata truck, produced by India’s largest auto company.
Some dumplings make me happy and some dumplings make me glum. The upsetting ones are pedestrian parcels filled with who-knows-what, careless production-line bundles of stodge and sadness. The joyous ones are jewel boxes, precise, poised and perfectly crafted. Oriental Teahouse trades in the latter: it’s happy dumplings all the way.
You know you shouldn’t lick the plate. You know it’s not okay. But you’re also sure it would hurt a lot to watch a plate of delicious shellfish butter be taken to the kitchen to be scraped into a bin. Then, while you’re weighing up two evils, a waiter asks a question so insightful and timely that you’re not sure whether to answer or merely weep. “Would you like some sticky rice to mop up that butter?” Yes. Oh yes. Make it happen.
‘Dear Abby’ is a US advice column known since the 1950s for its crisp wit and no-nonsense wisdom. It’s also a tortured John Prine ballad from the 1970s (“Dear Abby, Dear Abby, My fountain pen leaks, My wife hollers at me and my kids are all freaks…”) And, since late 2016, it’s also a magnetically appealing cafe opposite the Moonee Ponds Woolworths carpark.
There’s something to be said for jumping before you’re pushed. In a series of bayside ripples, Middle Eastern restaurant Mr Lawrence has decamped the about-to-be-redeveloped London Hotel. It’s now in the two-storey premises previously occupied by pan-Asian chow house Tenpin, which has the same owners and executive chef. Tenpin has bowled itself down the road to a corner spot once taken by Mon Ami bistro. Got it?
It’s always a pleasure to see an undercapitalised neighbourhood landmark given new life. Built in the 1940s as a boatshed and rebuilt in the mid-noughties when the adjacent floating marina was constructed, Anchorage always toddled along but the dining rooms were a little stuffy and the food somewhat staid. The view carried it: sparkling water, sleek swans, big skies and the sweep and swoosh of the West Gate Bridge are easy to love and, because it’s the west, cranes and shipping containers are part of the tableau too.
I was sitting in the grand dining room at Woodland House, sunset bathing my padded table in a luxurious golden glow, nibbling on a fried duck tongue, wondering if this kind of restaurant matters anymore. Fine dining has been buried a thousand times. I’ve written stories declaring it dead myself. People want casual. They want to get in, get fed and get out. They don’t want to spend.
The pork hock is gone. The sticky, spicy caramelised pig’s knuckle that’s been an Ezard signature for 16 of the restaurant’s 18 years made its last trot to the dining room in December. The hock’s departure is symbolic of a shift at this Melbourne fine dining institution.
Some restaurants arise out of strategy and spreadsheets, others spring from the heart. Northern Eatery is in the latter camp, operated by a Greek guy from Preston (Anastasios Stamatiou), the business partner he met during 12 years in Greece (Tony Tzoumabas), and the life partner and now chef he brought back from Athens (Dimitrios Petrakos). If that makes it all sound very Greek, it isn’t. Northern Eatery is a restaurant for the northern suburbs of Melbourne, cosmopolitan in outlook and welcoming to all.
Finally, it’s opened! For a year, Elsternwickians have been watching the long empty Caulfield Rifle Club and adjacent plaza transform into an indoor-outdoor space for all-day eating and meeting. They could not have dared hope it would be this good.
