Restaurant Reviews – Page 31 – Dani Valent

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?

Trocadero

The best thing about Trocadero is that it’s there at all, serving drinks and food at a jaunty clip to Arts Centre visitors and Southbank browsers. A seamless saunter from Hamer Hall takes you into the bar. The upper Southgate concourse spills into the restaurant’s terrace, soon to be winter-proofed with glass and heaters. Your Trocadero view might be of an outdoor lift shaft or the more enchanting sight of Flinders Street Station and the city. Last time, I succumbed to a reverie of overcrowded trains and Myki beeps but you can insert your own magical Melbourne moment.

Gladioli

It’s not that I don’t like Geelong but I do love the new bypass that skirts our second city. On a good day, it feels like you zoom down the Westgate Bridge and three songs later you’re halfway to Adelaide. (Well, we were listening to Neil Young, so it was actually two songs later.) Inverleigh is about 20 minutes west of Geelong, not an obvious place for exciting contemporary food, but the unlikely location is part of the adventure and the joy.

Entice

Allergies, intolerances and special diets aren’t going anywhere anytime soon so canny chefs know where gluten, nuts and fructose lurk and they accept that gelatin and chicken stock have no place in otherwise vegetarian dishes. Entice, a modest, welcoming year-old restaurant in the south-eastern suburbs, is one restaurant that’s responded to today’s phobic diners with an allergy-aware menu. The restaurant is simple but comfortable with homely touches and a funny little courtyard out the back.

Woodlands Hotel

I can’t honestly say I liked the décor at the Woodlands, an old pub that’s been given an extreme makeover, but I was amazed and sometimes flummoxed by it. In the upstairs dining room, massive nutcracker soldiers loom over tables, one of which is headed by a large throne. The carpet works like an Alice in Wonderland optical illusion, there are plush blue booths and a general impression of gleaming fanciness. It’s comfortable and quiet.

Top Paddock

Lots of people eat lots of avocado without ever seeing an avocado because avocado is that creamy green stuff that comes with breakfast. Not here. At Top Paddock, an impressive new cafe from the owners of Two Birds One Stone, avocado is served in its skin and you spread it yourself. As avocado varieties come in and out of season, the dish will look different. It’s a small, direct way that chef Jesse McTavish expresses his farm-to-plate philosophy. I think it’s great.

St Ali North

If you were putting a cafe in a time capsule to show the future what Melbourne 2013 was like, you might as well stuff in St Ali North. Everything about it is indicative and plenty of its features could vie for best of breed. There’s the urban playground nature of the place: on a bike path, behind a cycle shop and with a tangle of two-wheelers in the parking lot. There are showcase piercings, hipster tattoos and conceptual hair arrangements – and that’s just the staff. There’s the little dude phenomenon: kids in cool t-shirts eating from a children’s menu that doesn’t read like a what-not-to-eat chart. There’s even a Jimi Hendrix colouring page on the reverse for the Voodoo Child that likes pencils. The interior is very now: stone and glass and shouty-loud, clean lines splotched with a little kitsch and art. Then there’s the food (thorough, DIY restaurant approach, cafe angle, allergy friendly), the drink (coffee as culture) and the service (professional, totally chilled with sprinting power when necessary).

Cafe Amalia

Why does a very French cafe in a clutch of boutiques near Toorak station say as much about Melbourne eating as its more trendy, obviously ‘Melbourne’ counterparts? It’s because character is revealed in relief as well as in demonstration. Cafe Amalia operates with French culinary priorities of doing things correctly. In France, for the most part, people order omelette or salad nicoise or steamed mussels because they know exactly what they will be getting. There’s no expectation that the chef will put a creative twist on things because the success of the dish is in its proper rendering. Au contraire in Melbourne, ambitious cafes strive to present dishes with an individual spin.

Brooks

Right now, when people ask me where they should eat, I’m telling them Brooks, Brooks, Brooks because the food is interesting and delicious, and the experience fun and flexible. Basement restaurants can feel cut off and claustrophobic but Brooks emanates a tingling feeling of potential.

Belle’s Diner

Any notion that Belle’s Diner is trying to be an authentic American eating place is hosed down by the short menu: the ‘Dinerr Burger’ is a sneaky reference to the Double R Diner in 1990s television series Twin Peaks and right away it’s clear that Belle’s is gesturing towards American tropes both real and imaginary rather than trying to import an experience from overseas. Dressing room lights spelling out ‘diner’ recall fantasy highways ruled by mile-long Chevrolets. The cool plywood booths (ex-Myer cafeteria) are rickety as a film set and the timber panelling is early Madmen on a Brady Bunch budget. It’s playful and full points for that.

Mamak

Melbourne is quiet but some restaurants don’t know how to take a holiday and those of us who are town-bound in January are allowed to be glad about it. The diners’ part of the deal is to hit these restaurants hard and keep the wheels spinning. For a busy Malaysian hawker restaurant like Mamak, slowing down might feel like a space-time glitch and we don’t want that to happen – rotis are at risk here, people!

© Dani Valent 2024