eating out

No35: MFWF express lunch

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The decision to have an express lunch at No35 was the most annoying process ever. It started off innocently with an email from Thanh asking which restaurants we wanted to dine at during the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival (MFWF). After several, several, SEVERAL emails back and forth, we finally settled on a few dates, one of which was the Labour Day public holiday. But could we decide on a restaurant on that day? Nope. It was worse than herding cats. For a group who like to eat and who are normally very decisive about where we want to go – we were hopeless. It got to the point where we were all a bit exasperated and it looked like we wouldn’t be eating anywhere.

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Embrasse: MFWF express lunch (closed)

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Wouldn’t it be good to be able to tap into a collective memory? Then you would always have access to important details, and it wouldn’t be a problem if your mind was crowded with useless things like the lyrics to “Deep deep trouble” even though you haven’t heard that song for 15 years. (Oh, is that just me? And yes, I do know the words. I can totally bust it out at any time. HELP I CAN’T FORGET IT.)

Fortunately, I have friends who help me remember things. When I eat out I sometimes can’t recall all the details and will message whoever I ate with: “Hey, do you remember what was in that dish?”

After our lunch at Embrasse, Thanh and I had the following conversation.

“What was the fish again?”
“Ummmm. I can’t remember.”
“It was silver something, wasn’t it?”
“Oh! It was silver dory!”

Food bloggers hive mind win. With our memories combined, we are… one normal person!

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Chinese Spicy and Barbie Kitchen

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There’s an inner glutton in me. She is mostly tamed and kept deep down inside, but occasionally she rises to the surface. Normally she comes out in the presence of other gluttons ie Ms Kat. However, I discovered the other night that my glutton is only a glutton in training in comparison to Kat.

Kat wanted to go to Chinese Spicy and Barbie Kitchen to eat Sichuan food and “shit on sticks” (my terminology – translation: meat/vegies on skewers). Since it’s my side of town, I was keen and we gathered up Thanh, Kat’s partner Josh, Alastair and Bro for a visit one night last week.

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Steer Bar and Grill

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Disclosure: We dined with Thanh, who is friends with the staff at Steer. The Chef put together a tasting menu for us. So – special treatment alert. However, we did pay for our meal.

This post is for all the beef lovers out there.

Steer opened just over a year ago, starting off as a steakhouse with a Brazilian influence. Since then, it has evolved into a New York steakhouse, obviously still with a focus on beef. Just after Christmas, Alastair and I had dinner there with Thanh, Michele, April and her hubby. With all our stomachs stretched from Chrissy, we were ready to eat ourselves some meat!

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Wayside Inn

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Disclosure: Alastair and I dined courtesy of Wayside Inn.

Located on a stretch of City Road that doesn’t seem to have much else around it, Wayside Inn was taken over late last year by the team behind Station Hotel. Being a big fan of Station Hotel (see posts here and here) I was pretty keen to check it out. And so when I was invited a bloggers dinner there before Christmas with stickifingers, Claire and Gem, I was a happy gal indeed.

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Loam, Drysdale

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Loam - inside

At the risk of sounding like a 90 year old – the modern world constantly impresses and delights me. Even though I grew up with so many technologies that we now take for granted, when I think about them they still amaze me. For example: GPS. We all know what GPS is, since it’s now an everyday thing, but have you ever thought about what’s involved in making it work? It’s a space-based global navigation satellite system – hello, SATELLITES in fricking SPACE. That tell you exactly where you are. If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is.

However, even with all the wonders of technology, it’s not exactly foolproof. Case in point: last year we used the GPS to direct us to Loam in Portarlington. It sent us down a dirt road and then said, “You have arrived at our destination.”

Except… we were still in the middle of nowhere. We were definitely not at Loam.

Did we have the right address? Were we even in the right suburb? Where on earth were we?! (Well, the GPS told us, but could we trust the GPS?) We kept driving down the road, and then lo and behold: LOAM. We had arrived! (Mostly thanks to the GPS.)

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St Katherine’s

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KFC

Remember last year when we went to Taste of Melbourne? Alastair and Bro were so enamoured with the KFC (Katherine’s Fried Chicken) served by St Katherine’s, that I knew we would have to schedule a fried chicken dinner there one night.

Well, it took a while but fried chicken dinner finally happened this month, thanks to the organisational efforts of Mazza. A couple of other friends were roped in, and off we went.

Located in Kew, St Katherine’s is a big, busy restaurant seating 140 downstairs. Tables are bare and you grab your own cutlery and napkins from the tomato tin in the middle of each table. The menu has the previously fried chicken, as well as other Middle Eastern style dishes that are meant to be shared. If you don’t want to make a choice, there’s a few set menu options ranging from $45 to $75 per person.

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Kokoro Ramen

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Kokoro Ramen

There’s something about ramen that seems to inspire almost fantatical devotion.

If I hadn’t eaten truly good ramen before, I wouldn’t understand it. Because if you break it down, ramen is just noodles in broth. But it seems to be more than the sum of its parts. It can be amazing: nourishing, comforting, and filling. In particular, tonkotsu is fantastic – it’s made by boiling pork bones for hours, and results in a creamy, salty pork broth that’s also sticky and creamy and full of flavour.

So when the guys from doublecooked advised that a new ramen joint had opened on Lonsdale Street, I took Alastair and Bro down there quick smart.

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The Smith

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The Smith

On Tuesday I had dinner with a small group of colleagues to celebrate the end of the year. After the drama of finding an evening that worked for seven people in December – almost an impossibility but I managed to find one date – the next question was where to go. It couldn’t be too expensive (no Vue de Monde), but not too cheap (no $5 dumplings). No one was fussed on the kind of cuisine, but there was a specific request for no restaurants in the Casino.

I spent AGES racking my brain trying to think of somewhere suitable. Why is that there are so many restaurants in Melbourne, and yet it’s so hard to find somewhere to eat?! So when one of my colleagues suggested The Smith, I just went ahead and booked a table. It was a bit of a risk considering none of us had eaten there before, but it saved me hours of thinking time!

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Gasometer (closed)

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Condiments

Bro and I had been speaking about checking out Gasometer for a while. Located in Collingwood, they’re a pub that serves American style diner food. Bro loves American food, and I’m a food enabler, so ever we found out Gasometer serves chicken and waffles, it has been on our “to visit” list.

It was my birthday on Tuesday (thank you thank you) and I wanted to go somewhere casual and not too pricey. So I figured we may as well cross Gasometer off the list.

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