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?
Sometimes when I witness other restaurant customers greeted as regulars, swiftly despatched ‘the usual’, kissed as they leave with a ‘see you soon’, it makes me feel chilly and jealous. But at Centonove, it only makes me want to come back and get my kiss and ‘ciao bella’ too. That’s because there’s love left over for those of us who don’t have a regular table and it’s also because I really like the food.
Steady-as-she-goes restaurants like The Point often miss out on the caressing attention offered to just-launched queues-out-the-door places. But older restaurants are often better, more consistent exemplars of hospitality. What they lack in see-and-be-seen factor they make up for in really good food and service that understands the restaurant’s particular mission. The Point has been here since 1996 and has maintained a clear direction – a focus on great steak, a crisp approach to fine dining – through ownership and chef changes. Current stewards, owner Rabih Yanni and chef Justin Wise, have steady hands on the wheel and The Point feels as good as it ever has.
In the olden days, when people were glad of the technology that bestowed gears and brakes upon their pushbikes, beef cheeks were dog meat and bought for copper coins. The occasional bewhiskered human would eat these gelatinous chunks, treating them with ancient magick best not spake out loud, before taking them into their own creaky bodies. Today, oh changed world, dogs eat bone-shaped biscuits and humans have gone nose-to-tail, and verily, cheek to cheek.
It’s hard to open a restaurant but it’s much harder to keep it open, let alone keep it relevant, enticing and hospitable for 21 years. That’s the achievement of Jacques Reymond at his grand 19th century villa: his food is elegant, creative and beautiful and a meal in these sumptuous high-ceilinged chambers is a special occasion even if it doesn’t coincide with a birthday, proposal or anniversary.
The duck won tons weren’t the first thing I loved about my recent visit to Flower Drum but it was those silky dumplings that cemented the romance. Two warm welcomes – at the street entrance then at the first-floor dining room after a stocking-adjusting, butterfly-bellied lift ride – were a good start. Adding to the sense of occasion was a long, escorted parade to my table through the proudly conservative rose-hued dining room with its timber screens and origami napkins. The solicitous discussion of menu was heart-warming, as though the bow-tied veteran waiters really cared whether we had a good dinner. And indeed we did. The pace, the presentation, the silver service and the food! oh, the food! were nigh on perfect.
The most exciting new restaurants are those that balance a spry freshness with a settled feeling, that are original but comprehensible, that tap into an existing sense of what hospitality should be and can be. On all counts, The Town Mouse succeeds. This is a restaurant that knows what it wants to be, for both staff and diners, and that’s a great basis for good times. For the owners, New Zealander restaurant professionals with Melbourne history, Town Mouse is a nimble, durable neighbourhood business of manageable size. For customers, Town Mouse is a place to drop in for a solo bite at the bar, to meet friends for six or sixteen smashing snacks, to bring a date for cocktails, shaved calamari and moodily lit conversation. It’s in the building which most recently housed Embrasse and before that Three One Two and Donnini’s. Put simply, it’s a wine bar with great food.
Queues must make the heart grow Fonda because the heaving Richmond cantina that opened in 2011 has been joined (upstaged?) by a precocious little sister in where-it’s-at Windsor. The new Fonda is in a huge high-ceilinged shop which used to house the Salvos. It’s been freshened up with whites and brights. I love the colourful string-backed banquettes, vibrant painted floor, blond timber tables and spunky wire-framed chairs. It’s dazzling and bustling with an eat-and-go vibe. Hard surfaces, loud music and no bookings play to a youngish crowd and, at busy times, the waitlist is managed by tablet and text message. The upstairs bar Atico suggests a little more lingering.
Three words should be all it takes to get you interested in Candied Bakery: apple pie shake. Planning a visit now? This frothy cinnamon-scented concoction is a crazy blitz of apple pie and vanilla soft serve, including chunks of apple and hunks of pastry that are too large to be slurped through the fat straw provided. It’s a dessert in a cup but drinks don’t land in the dessert stomach so it shouldn’t stop you from having cakes and biscuits too.
Unless I’m wearing a stupid skirt I’m always happy to sit at the bar. I like grabbing that little slice of workaday restaurant life – the glass polishing, the change counting, the greeting and the grumbling. There’s also more opportunity to engage with or spy on fellow diners and to glean must-haves and best-avoids among the dishes and drinks. However, I’ve never before experienced what happened to me at Bar di Stasio, the new holding pen and hangout next door to love-it-or-hate-it institution Cafe di Stasio.
If ever a restaurant’s name made its intentions clear, it’s BangPop, a playful version of Bangkok. ‘Bang’ because it’s a noisy place that pushes a good time not a long time. Also, ‘bang’ is Thai for a town on a river and BangPop is at South Wharf, a reinvented, promising Yarra bank village. ‘Pop’ because the place is contemporary and light-hearted and a background bass beat is delivered with a punchy rhythm that’s picked up by the food and service.