A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a horse of course,
That is of course, unless the horse,
Is the famous Mister Ed.
Does anyone else remember this show? And did anyone else ever want to now why Mister Ed talked? Or why he only talked to Wilbur? Did Mister Ed *really* speak or was Wilbur crazy? So many questions!
Fortunately Mr Ed the cafe doesn’t throw up quite so many questions. It’s a newish cafe on Racecourse Road, and must have opened in the past couple of months because I noticed it the other week when we drove past.
There is Guinness on tap, some pretty good pub meals, but there’s definitely no quiet.
The Guinness is a clue to the background of The Quiet Man: it’s an Irish pub on Racecourse Road in Flemington. Alastair and I have eaten there several times, and the food is generally pretty good. The menu is quite large, covering classics like fish and chips, chicken parma, and steak, plus other dishes with an Irish twist.
Several months ago, Alastair and I had an impromptu dinner there. We were lucky to get a table – I recommend booking on Friday or Saturday nights as they do get quite busy.
I’ve written about Streat before, and I’m posting about it again because I think it’s a bit underrated.
The food at Streat is good, drawing inspiration from different cuisines and places around the world, so it’s not just about bacon, eggs and toast. They don’t need a slick fit out and the latest shiny coffee machines. I like Streat so much that it’s our second most visited cafe (after Reading Rooms).
Note: this is a scheduled post while I’m away. Replies to comments/emails will be even slower than usual. 🙂
Streat is great. Here’s four reasons why:
1: Chipotle spiced beans with pork belly. For breakfast.
2: It’s a social enterprise and assists homeless youth with hospitality training.
3: They have a breakfast called Dogs breakfast that has hushpuppies. CUTE.
4: See reason 1 again (it deserves to be noted twice).
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.
How many Malaysian style restaurants can Flemington support? Judging by Laksa King, Chef Lagenda and newcomer on the block – Chillipadi Mamak Kopitiam – at least three seems to be a reasonable answer! Though Penny says that Chillipadi does Tamil Muslim style Malaysian food, so it is a little different from the other two restaurants at least.
Alastair and I have eaten at Chillipadi Mamak Kopitiam several times now, the first time being a couple of days after opening, when there were still some minor issues to be ironed out, and a lack of a liquor licence (which was finally granted last week). (more…)
After our short trip to Sydney, we returned to Melbourne with my in-laws, Annette and Terry in tow. Terry in particular really loves food, so I was keen to take them out for some good meals.
One evening we went to the Abyssinian – and because Terry is outrageously well travelled, he has actually eaten Abyssinian food before…. IN Abyssinia (what’s now known as Ethopia and Eritera). Well. At least Annette had never experienced it before!
The Abyssinian is a very popular restaurant that does food from the Horn of Africa, serving traditional Ethiopian and Eritrean cooking. Every time we go there, it is always packed. We normally order the combination platter, but this time I decided that we should order dishes from the menu.
We had a couple of starters to whet our appetite (not that our appetites needed whetting!). We had the Melaznzany ($6.00), which were cubes of grilled eggplant that had been seasoned and marinated with fresh garlic, olive oil and chillies.
We also had the zucchini starter ($6.00), which was sautéed zucchini with a light, spicy berbere and tomato sauce that had been sprinkled with crushed chillies seeds.
(Note: berbere is a hot spice mixture that is a key ingredient in Ethiopian and Eritrean food. Injera is a sour, pancake like bread that is traditionally made of teff – a grain that isn’t available in Australia. At the Abyssinan it’s made with self raising flour, rice, red sorghum and corn flours. To make injera, the flour is mixed with water and allowed to ferment for several days, before being baked into large pancakes. It comes out soft and spongey, with lots of air holes on one side.)
Both starters came with injera bread rolls. They were fantastic – spicy and packed with flavour. They were oily though. This is not a place that does diet food!
For mains, we ordered five dishes to share between us. A large platter of injera was brought out and the stews were tipped on top. The food is eaten by ripping off small pieces of injera and using the bread to pick up stew.
We had:
The shiro ($15) which was finely ground spiced chickpeas that had been cooked and simmered with olive oil and chopped garlic. Mhmm mhmm, check out that oil. I did say already that it’s not diet food! It made for a spicy, nutty sauce, although I would have loved it if some pieces of chickpea had been left in for texture. This was served in a little pot, and we spooned the hot sauce spooned over the injera as we ate.
The dubba ($18) consisted of large cubes of pumpkin in a thick berbere sauce. This was great, rather spicy, with the pumpkin lending its usual sweetness.
The dorho kulwha ($18) was strips of chicken breast that had been marinated in ghee and African spices and sautéed. It was topped with pureed tomato and simmered in a light creamy sauce with turmeric.
My favourite dish of the night was the derek tibs ($18) – strips of marinated lamb that had been seasoned with spiced clarified butter, green chillies, onions and rosemary and then grilled on a hot pan. The meat was cooked until very dark – and almost burnt – which gave it a deep, almost bitter flavour. It was also very spicy, which I loved! To keep the meat hot, this was also served in a little pot, and we spooned some on to the injera as we ate. I also appreciated the fresh tomato that was a touch cooling against all the spiciness.
And last, we also ordered the goat on kemmam sauce ($20). The goat had been slow cooked with a tangy sauce made of lemon, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon. The meat was tender in the moreish sauce.
We also ordered an extra serve of injera ($1) so we could keep mopping up the stews. The problem with having the stews directly on the injera is that the parts below get all soggy and hard to pick up. So extra injera was essential!
I really like the Abyssinian. The food is inexpensive, filling and flavoursome. If it’s your first time, the combination platter is hard to beat, but otherwise I think ordering off the menu is the way to go.
Recently, to celebrate a friend getting older and wiser, we had a meal at an Ethiopian restaurant located in Flemington, the Abyssinian.
The food is based on recipes from the Horn of Africa. The menu was rather long, so we took the easy option and ordered the meat combination platter. The platter comes with slow cooked stews: chicken, lamb, fish and vegetables, on a large enamel tray lined with injera bread. The cost is $25 for one person, $45 for two and then $22 for each additional person. There is also a wholly vegetarian platter.
Injera is a spongy, sour flatbread. Traditionally, it is made with a small round grain called teff. The flour is mixed with water and left to ferment for a few days, which gives it a slight sourness and an airy, bubbly texture. At the Abynissian, the bread is made with self raising rice and corn flours. You rip off a piece of injera, roll it around a bit of stew and eat.
We’ve been to a different Ethiopian restaurant before, and found that the injera was too sour for our tastes. The injera at the Abyssinian was much nicer – very soft and not too sour. However, the parts of the injera that sat under the stews soaked up the sauces and became too soggy to pick up. Thankfully, even though cutlery isn’t traditional, we had also been given spoons, which helped us scoop up every last bit of stew and injera.
Dotted around the tray on the injera were several different stews. There were several diffferent vegetable stews: lentils cooked in a light sauce, cabbage and carrots, spinach and beans, and pumpkin. They were all pretty tasty. For the meat stews, we had some lovely tender goat, a rather spicy (and therefore awesome!) lamb, a chicken stew and the last was a mixture shrimp and nile perch in a slightly spicy and tangy sauce.
Being a little group of gluttons, we polished off the lot and really could have eaten more. There were five of us, and I think that if there had been one more person, we might’ve gotten another platter (I was eyeing up other tables to see what they got).
It was a good place to celebrate a birthday. The atmosphere is casual and lively, and the service is friendly, although a little sporadic.
The Abyssinian 277 Racecourse Road, Flemington Phone: (03) 9376 8754
