david's
Highlights: white chocolate dumplings
URL: http://www.davidsrestaurant.com.au/
Physical: 4 Cecil Pl, Prahran, VIC (just off Chapel St)
Hit David's for a cheap and cheerful lunch. The Age has loved this place since forever (well, 2002 or something), so I figured they were worth a shot. Their prices are sensible. Their priciest banquet, even, is reasonably priced considering that David's is good. For $14 I received a substantial serving of shredded duck meat, vegetables and steamed rice. Amazing? No. But the sort of loving comfort and warmth I needed after a couple of days of too much wine. But good, yes. Good. Where David's shone, though, was with the dessert--and really, it was this one little dish on the menu that compelled me to hike down Chapel Street from South Yarra station, passing a million other places that were probably okay. The dessert was a ($6) serving of steamed white chocolate dumplings. Casings of just the right thickness loaded up with a white ganache of lava consistency, served just warm with some coconut crumble. On the basis of this dish alone I'll have to go back for the banquet. Or maybe $60 worth of the ganache dumplings. Either way.
la luna
Highlights: cured pork, horse, steak, wine (but not the moscato)
URL: http://www.lalunabistro.com.au/
Physical: 320 Rathdowne St, Carlton North, VIC
Hit La Luna Bistro last week. Went all out: tasting menu, matching wine, off-the-menu special. And this place, I liked it right away. Even before I went in, the menu and book won me over. I liked the sound of the dishes on the menu. I've enjoyed every single thing I've cooked from the book. I like Adrian Richardson's approach when it comes to educating people about meat. Really, I was seduced before I even had a sip of wine.
This place, tho', it's not what I'd call intimate. I mean, not unless you're dating someone who really, really, really likes their meat. It's kind of loud. Cramped. The dining room is small. But man, when I walked in and right away saw a bar full of good beer (White Rabbit, etc) and wine and a huge picture of a steer, all divided into common Australian cuts and everything, I was further seduced. Legs spread and eyes begging for love.
And I got it. I got it good. The first course was easily one of my best pork experiences ever. Richardson, see, cures his own smallgoods. We got a selection of the month's finest--salami, pancetta, cured cheek, lardo (basically slivers of cured fat) with crispy bread and olives, pickled onions and chillies--presented nicely on a wooden board. A divine offering. The meat all salty fatty porky delicious. An essential experience for anyone unlucky enough to have only experienced cured pork in its mass produced form. I know, I know, I know everyone goes on about small producers and everything, saying how expensive, difficult-to-find, free-range, organic, hand-made products kick the non-organic shit out of the factory-made stuff, but in this case, at least, everyone is right. This stuff is good. Really fucking good. I know that for the rest of my final semester at uni, I'll have trouble focusing in class because I'll be knowing this piggy goodness is a few minutes away. I could walk there, load up on salted and air-dried animal, and be back in the space of a hour. Easy.
The secondi course wasn't my favourite thing in the world. Not bad, no, but really, I'm just not a cheese souffle kind of guy. Love the French. Truly. Love cheese and eggs, too, but the package doesn't work for me. Not in the deeply offensive way of chocolate and mint, but not something I'd cook or order a la carte.
The pasta course, tho', wow. We were told by our lovely waitress--I say lovely because, when we gushed about the pork, she snuck us some lardo on toast--that normal times, we'd get orecchiette with clams and etc, but if we really wanted, given we clearly liked meat and all, given we 'got it', we could have something special: orecchiette with braised horse shanks. The braise, of course, being finished off with bitter chocolate (always an excellent idea--I suggest you try it with braised boar or venison or roo or, really, even chilli con carne). Horse is a wonderful meat. It's, well, meaty. Mr Ed is nowhere near as intense as, say, Possum Magic (seriously) or Skippy, but he's got more oomph than Daisy. More on this forbidden treat later.
The sausage course and steak course were good good good. Crispy and charred, but not carbonised to shit, on the outside, pink on the inside, which sounds v wrong. Richardson ages beef on site and, supposedly, will let you have whatever cut you want--not just the standard porterhouse, rib eye, rump--if you're buying his steak a la carte. I like this idea.
For dessert we were offered creme brulee or whatever, really, but the default was an orange granita paired with moscato (loved every wine offering up to this point, figured I'd dig moscato, too--how fucking wrong I was). After all that meat and starch--the orecchiette, the mashed potato that came with both the sausage and the steak--I was in no state for baked custard or mousse or anything of the sort. Nothing involving dairy fat or eggs. Granita sounded perfect. And it was nice, really. Altho' scarily, it seemed savoury--yes, this thing loaded up with frozen orange and fuck off sized sugar crystals--when consumed after a sip of the wine. Just say no to moscato, kids.
ping's
Highlights: leaving
URL: n/a
Physical: 330 Clayton Rd, Clayton, VIC
I feel betrayed. Used. Abused. Violated, even. Ping's, you see, used to be good. Most places local to me are shit. Most. The one decent Indian place, Sarawan, was recently gobbled up by (the shitty) Anshumann Da Dhaba. The place that's in the Cheap Eats book, Wah Kee, leaves me cold. The place that's in the Good Food book, River Kwai, gave me food poisoning and generally just sucked. But Ping's was different. You could go in any time of the day, any day of the week, and it'd be packed. The pork dumplings were bang on. The other stuff, too, as inoffensive as it was (no big plates of steaming pig guts here), was pretty good. Perfect? No. But the comforting sort of deliciousness you feel happy paying ~$10 for.
I wasn't alone in digging the Ping. This place opened up and right away got sort of a cult following. Everyone came and saw and conquered and got good dumplings from the cold waitstaff and loved it. And maybe, or perhaps probably, management realised everyone liked Ping's and figured they could cut costs and trade off their popularity. The past two times I've been it's been bad. The dumplings, which were once salty porky MSG-laden delicious, best enjoyed with the natural goodness of chilli grease, were just sad. Not as bad as Chinatown's Shanghai Dumpling. Not yet, anyway, but well on their way down to that level.
embrasse
Highlights: everything
URL: http://www.embrasserestaurant.com.au/
Physical: 312 Drummond St, Carlton, VIC
This place I like. The whole place, really. Service. Atmosphere. The plates, even. But fuck all that. The food is excellent. It's fine and fancy while being rustic and comforting. It's posh stuff that gives you flashbacks to your childhood and nods to classic pairs--those smoked sweetbreads that taste a little bit like bacon, of course they're paired with an egg. This is a place I'd go back to several times quite happily. And that's a real Something: I want to knock over as many of The Age's hatted restaurants as I can, so I don't have much time for second or third visits.
Everything was just, truly, right on target. The appetiser, a steamed sort of bread loaded up with a sardine, was refreshing and wonderful in a way that's kind of surprising, given we're talking about those things that are mostly sold canned and half laid, half smeared on to toast. The entree, the sweetbreads with the sous vide egg, was wonderful. My only complaint: not enough sweetbread goodness. Granted, given I could eat those things like popcorn, no restaurant could sate me no matter how generous its portions. A serious complaint about the entree menu is that, really, it's nigh impossible to decide between them. A friend ordered the smoked kingfish and it looked so good.
The main impressed me even more. I came away feeling that, really, I'd never truly understood the potential of baby cow until I had theirs, which they'd smartly paired with fennel and lemon confit, cabbage and pumpkin and celeriac. The simple sauce that accompanied the perfectly cooked veal kicked me back in time to the family dining table: the packet gravy that my mum used to put with her beef schnitzels, which she used to basically stew in oil and their own fat (I guess that's confit, really) until the meat went all chewy and the breadcrumbs all soggy. Do not misunderstand the comparison. The dish was superb. The sauce was a world away from packet gravy. But there was just something there that took me back.
People on the table ordered aligot, which is a typically French invention: mashed potato loaded up with cheese that melts all stringy-like and, according to Larousse, rendered bacon fat. Proof the French truly have excellent heads on their shoulders. If you go to Embrasse you must order this. Must.
The dessert was simple but nice. Like everything else, it was presented like a work of art. Sensually delicious art. A fitting end to a meal that was just plain fucking awesome the whole way through. A soft meringe snowball coated in crusty sugary sugar and some passionately fruity cream and blood orange segments.
I came away very happy with a muchlighter wallet. You want to go here.
maze
Highlights: smoked kingfish, cute baby octopus, roast venison, mashed potato loaded up with horseradish sauce, chicken skin and seafood
URL: http://www.gordonramsay.com/mazemelbourne/
Physical: Level 1, Crown Metropol (coming in from the main Crown complex, you'd go past the cinema and through the shopping centre, tuning away from the food court when you see it and down a dim kind of passage way)
This was an interesting place. I've heard a lot of bad, that it's not creative or anything else, but really, fuck that. There's a place for creative, but there's also a place--a large place that I like--for food that tastes nice. I don't care if other people have used your idea, made it their own, maybe made it even better. I don't care if someone else came up with an idea and everyone is doing it. I don't. If you do it well, I want it.
And, mostly, maze Melbourne does it well. The place has an ambience I'm not totally sold on. I can't decide if it's intimate or sterile. It's dark inside and maybe that's why the tables seem really far apart. You can't hear what anyone is saying on other tables which is both a good thing and a bad thing: you can chat to your partner and it's lovely and intimate on one level, but the near complete silence takes away that essential restaurant feeling. Lots of noise can be a bad thing, especially when you're having some romantic experience or attempting to impress a potential shag, but no noise just feels odd and cold.
Again, though, it's all about the food. I can forgive a lot of things if the food is good. And it is. The menu you see on the website is generic. Possibly it applies to all of the maze restaurants in the world. Expect to few of those items on the menu in the actual restaurant.
All of the savoury dishes we ordered were varying degrees of nice. The smoked kingfish, which arrived first, gave off a strong aniseed smell. The 'candy floss' and the slightly firm, smoky flesh were the perfect way to start the evening.The next dish, a serving of slow-cooked baby octopus paired with crispy chorizo and other nice things, was equally nice.
If you're ordering a la carte, like we were, the menu is a smartly designed document. Going down the page, and working left to right, the dishes get more substantial, helping you organise your order in a way that'll work.
The wonderfully rich braised ox tongue was good on its own, but the moment you mixed it with a lump of the creamy, horseradish-y mashed potato you were eating very well. The pork belly was nice, but nowhere near as good as Bistro Guillaume's. The rare roast venison with bitter chocolate was wonderful. The sort of thing I wish I could have as a main. The sort of thing I wish I could make so perfectly myself.
And then there was perhaps one of the more confrontational dishes I'd had recently: a fillet of cod wrapped in chicken skin and then pan fried in what I imagine to be the culinary world's second best frying medium--butter (which trails somewhat behind duck fat). The way it's sliced and everything, it looks just like a perfectly cooked chicken breast--you know, done sous vide and then browned in a pan and sliced thickly--and it smells like a perfectly cooked chicken breast and the skin, man, the skin tastes like that of a freshly cooked chicken breast. And then you run, smack bang, into the robust flavour of a white fleshed fish. I wasn't sure if I liked it, so I ate more, willing it to work. And it did.
Dessert was somewhat of a letdown. Not bad, no. The fondant was, well, fondat. The violet sauce was nice, but yeah. Fondant. Partner's choice, tho'. And there's the rub: the choice was very limited. Nothing on the dessert menu was particularly interesting. A mousse. A fondant. Something else not especially memorable. A selection of cheeses that wasn't really a selection at all. I'm sure everything would've been okay--good, even, for what it was--but after the contrast of tastes and textures and everything else of the savouries, it would've been swell if something better and more interesting was on offer for dessert.
No comments:
Post a Comment