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?
Is this Melbourne’s most magical transformation? Late on a steamy Saturday night DJs tag team, the room is heaving, and the conversation swells and crashes like waves. Just a few hours later, the sun beams handsomely through tall windows, everything gleams and you can converse in whispers. It’s a rare creature that can morph from party monster to bright-eyed darling in mere hours but maybe that’s the enchanted power of Magic Mountain. This place is, variously and vigorously, an old pub, a Thai restaurant, a cocktail bar, a hangout for curries or coffee, and a Tardis-like two-storey pile that wants to fill you up with food and fun.
Like Minded Projects is a small food court with three complementary outlets and all the neon signage, raw food and nut milk necessary to denote a hip, modern hangout. The three businesses are Coffee Supreme (coffee to have here or away, brew gear to take home), Fred Gets (healthy vegetarian food, some raw, all gluten free) and Ace (raw, gluten-free, sugar-free cookies). It’s all very bright and cheery. Just looking at the profusion of pot plants makes me feel oxygenated and energetic.
Let’s start with the gnocco fritto, because I’d love an excuse to think about them again. Not to be confused with gnocchi, these gnocco are fried bread puffs laced with pork fat, served very hot, and eaten with cured meats. You tear gnocco, stuff them with salami, prosciutto or mortadella mousse and let the fat melt in your mouth. Eating is always in the present tense but it doesn’t always seize a moment: this does.
If dumpling dogmatism delivered us from evil I’d screech and shout about them until dusk on doomsday. However, it doesn’t, so I’m not going to make a pronouncement about which of Melbourne’s dumplings is best. Rather, I’m going to celebrate the fact that we’re in any position to have hair-splitting arguments about dumplings at all. It wasn’t always so. Shanghai Street is not the newest, biggest or most photogenic purveyor of pastry packages but it’s so unrelentingly popular that there are three branches in the city (all with queue management policies) and another in Prahran.
If expensive consultants brainstormed and blue-skied to create the perfect neighbourhood restaurant, they’d come up with something like The Graham. It’s a 19th century corner pub so it feels like it’s meant to be here. It’s contemporary too: brothers Tony and Peter Giannakis have run the place for 15 years, adjusting course as befits their changing neighbourhood and their own ideas of welcome and value. The offering is flexible. Plan restaurant lunches either discreet or rollicking. Keep it casual with steak sandwiches in the bar. Take a date for degustation dinner. Confidently book a special occasion in a private room. Whatever it is, you’re in safe hands.
It’s a warm spring night and Oakleigh’s Eaton Mall is pumping. Chatty lines spill from tricked-up souvlaki joints. Kids zoom around the pedestrian concourse. Teens in clean jeans preen. Toddlers coat themselves in ice cream. Hotted up hoon-mobiles prowl the cross streets. I love it all: Melbourne is a city of neighbourhoods and this Greek hub is a beauty. The biggest, shiniest entity on the strip is Vanilla, a two-level 500-seat ever-expanding megalopolis run by Helen and Arthur Spanos, their four children and their children’s partners. The food is Mediterranean with a skew to Greek and a sideline in pub classics. You can eat downstairs, outside or upstairs: expect queues for all areas. You may be approached by the restaurant’s photographer to be snapped for Vanilla’s own glossy magazine. Yes, a restaurant with on-site paparazzi and a publication arm: it’s an amazing place.
Here’s the optimistic bar and restaurant that will unpick any lurking jibes about not-hip-enough Depreston, one pint of craft beer at a time. You could think of Stray Neighbour as a gastropub in industrial skin: there’s an astroturfed beer garden out front and the massive ex-panelbeater interior has been gently demarcated into bar, dining room and handsome saloon with pool table. Tin ceilings and factory windows could make the place cold but the heating is good and a forest mural and swooping touches of green bring warmth and whimsy.
Friends don’t tell friends to open cafes. If they held back, there’d be fewer places run by misguided souls who do great dinner parties (“This pasta is amazing, you should open a restaurant!”) but don’t have any idea how to deliver hospitality. Businesses fuelled by unfocused food dreams might be full of heart – even delicious dishes – but being in them can feel like riding a runaway train.
Bendigo’s 19th century gold boom is still writ large and lovely in its grand, optimistic buildings and broad streets. Less immediately evident but more easily devourable is the local food boom forging ahead now – people are growing and cooking with passion and nowhere with more gusto or appreciation than at three-year-old Masons.
When I hear that a chef is doing Italian but with F words (fancy and fusion), I feel worried rather than excited. Italian food isn’t about tricking stuff up. It’s about channelling nonna, having a grand romance with produce and keeping it simple. But when contemporary and edgy is underpinned by respectful and authentic then I’ll stop fretting and start enjoying.
