Groove Train, Harbour Town by Bureaucrat

For a family event, we headed down to the Groove Train in Harbour Town.


I find Harbour Town/Docklands as a weird place – I say that with no real reason and full of bureaucratic prejudices. I work in a tall building in the city, and I can see all the wonderfulness of Melbourne below me. Everything looks nice, green and populated until you see Docklands. It’s sparsely populated, accentuated with the fugly expensive but cheap-looking apartment building complexes and the big, ugly, broken Ferris wheel (don’t get me started on that....too late. Who are the morons who think that having a Ferris wheel adds class or interest to a city?! I know London has one, as does a few other European cities. But at least with London, the Big Eye isn’t so much an eyesore – mainly because the building density is such that it fades into the background, and what little you could see is effectively masked up by the pea soup).


Anyhoo, we ensconced ourselves in a horseshoe-shaped booth. I’m not a fan of horseshoe-shaped booths – it’s bit of a pain to get in and out easily (especially if you need to go to the loo).


Bubba Chuck went for the children’s chicken nuggets with chips, which she enjoyed. I was lucky enough to try one of the nuggets – only because Bubba Chuck wanted me to give her my calamari....


...Beaker went for the chicken salad...


...Mr P went for the chicken parma...


...Mother Hen got the club sandwich. Unlike the rather ‘meh’ and deconstructed club sandwich that we had at Cafe Vue at Heide a few ago, the club sandwich here was properly toasted, stacked and stuffed full of ingredients....


...Mr Strong got the seafood pasta, which he quite liked. He particularly liked the good mix of seafood and the white wine sauce...


....and I went for the calamari salad. I was quite impressed – lots of fresh calamari, which was perfectly grilled. The salad leaves were fresh and crunchy. Bubba Chuck wanted in on the calamari and convinced me that it would be a fair trade for me to give her three pieces of calamari for one of her nuggets.

Overall
The GT is a pretty good place for us. Lots of menu options and the service was prompt, friendly and the food was big and tasty. Afterwards we wandered around the shops in Docklands and made an obligatory trip into CostCo (and that’s when I bought a 1.8kg bag of Reese Peanut Butter Cups... yummo!).

Verdict
Food - 7
Ambiance - 7
Service - 7
Price - 7

Address
Groove Train
Level 1
3-6 Star Circus
Harbour Town 3008
Telephone: 9670 4662

Big Mama, Melbourne by Big Fil

I think I confused Snooze and Bureaucrat a little when I told them we were going to a place called Big Mama. Bureaucrat asked whether it was a sandwich shop, and I must admit when I first saw the name my thoughts were of somewhere doing Creole or Caribbean food. Instead it’s actually quite a nice Japanese/Korean cafe, somewhere that aims for just a bit more than the typical student style eatery.


Big Mama is located in a slightly weird spot on Swanston Street, in between the CBD and Melbourne Uni. Consequently it has to have something about it to attract patrons away from closer lunchtime haunts. It does this through an extensive menu (several pages long), generous serves, well prepared and presented food, and staff who were polite and friendly. And I almost forgot to mention a very cute feature wall.


At one stage I thought there was going to be an arm wrestle over the eel, with both Snooze and Bureaucrat saying they wanted to order it. It’s also one of my favourite dishes at Japanese lunchtime places, eel on rice (Unagi don). In the end Bureaucrat won out, Snooze went for the teriyaki chicken bento and I went for my other regular choice, katsu kare don.


Both Snooze and Bureaucrat commented favourably about the smoky flavours of their dish. While I didn’t sample any of Bureaucrats eel I did try Snooze’s chicken and found it well cooked and indeed smoky, although I think most of that flavour came from the strongly flavoured sauce rather than through the cooking itself.


I think the others were appropriately jealous of my lunch choice when it arrived at the table. While not the most photogenic Japanese dish around katsu kare don (fried pork cutlet with a mild curry sauce on rice) generally smells and tastes great. Very different in style to typically available Indian curries, it has a soft flavour and texture. In some ways it reminds me more of a lightly spiced western gravy. It’s great winter food, easy to eat, comforting and warm.


For a bit of variety I ordered the agedashi tofu, lightly fried tofu which is crispy on the outside, soft and creamy on the inside. Served with sweet sauce and mayonnaise on top, liberally sprinkled with dried bonito shavings, I like this dish for the texture more than anything else. While I felt the skin could have been a little crisper the serve was massive, easily the biggest I have seen.


Overall
Nothing spectacular but a good honest place, with both quality and price slightly higher than most of its contemporaries. Staff were friendly, helpful and polite, and other than a wonky table (partially rectified by a handful of paper napkins) it was a nice enough place to eat.

Verdict
Food – 7.5
Ambience – 7
Service – 7
Price – 7

Address
466 Swanston Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Tel: (03) 9347 2656

Ebi Fine Foods, Footscray by Snooze

Since Big Fil and I started our eating odyssey a few short years and many kilos ago, he invariably chose the better of our meals (although I've recently been making inroads). What I will never top is Big Fil's ability to find the most interesting places with good food ... and our visit to Ebi Fine Food is his most recent triumph.


Big Fil and I arrived almost on the dot of midday to find the door closed, and we stood there wondering what to do next. Lucky for us the door opened almost immediately, and we were welcomed inside. Ebi Fine Foods is tiny, seating about a dozen in close quarters. We occupied what I thought of as the best corner at the back and Big Fil had to move his bag and umbrella to make room for people to sit at a neighbouring table. But for me that was part of its charm, and unlike some small places I didn't feel crowded.


Ebi Fine Foods was my choice for choice for lunch but only because Big Fil offered me a choice of a couple of places for lunch and I opted for fish and chips, a treat I don't often indulge in. So when we arrived I was surprised to find Japanese as well as fish and chips, a combination I never expected but which seems curiously Australian. Feeling hungry myself (and Big Fil always a bottomless pit), we shared a number of things and curiously chose exactly the same items from the menu for us to eat.

The fish and chips arrived as small pieces of battered John Dory, chips and salad. If I was asked to sum this up in word I'd choose delightful but I'm going to use more than one: light beer batter, moist fish, and the salad was actually a salad and not just salad greens doused with appalling olive oil. I don't know everything in the salad but it was different and enjoyable. The only downside and negative to the entire meal: my pet hate for chips which is too much salt.


The choice for Bento box was a Big Fil favourite: pork belly which came with braised daikon, egg, rice and the same salad. No issues with this dish. The bento box arrived with three succulent pieces of pork that melted in the mouth and despite my preference for removing all fat the pork belly was melt in the mouth. I especially enjoyed the egg and the topping on the rice, and I was more than happy for a second order of the salad.

Still ready for more we shared the tofu cheesecake and got the very last mandarin curd donut. The tofu cheesecake was beautiful to look at and was displayed with a coffee maple syrup sauce, and topped with candied lemon peel. I can't say the cheesecake in itself was a standout taste wise but its texture was soft and creamy and didn't compete with the delicate sauce and the crunch and acid of the lemon peel. I often find myself liking the garnish or the salad to a meal, and the lemon peel garnish to the cheesecake was a standout


I spied the donuts as we entered and given my surprise re the fish and chips and Japanese food combination thought these lived outside my expectation but how nice they looked all the same. By the time we got around to ordering sweets there was one left and we thought ourselves lucky. the donut was light and hot, covered in crunchy sugar and filled with a delicately sweet mandarin curd. Something I think I'd order early if I was in the area again.


Overall
Accessed by us from West Footscray station, the station itself and the streets around Ebi Fine Foods are unproprocessing. But the location is the only thing that fits that category. From the time we arrived we were greeted so nicely by the owner/chef who shared with us his love of Japan, of cooking and for life in general. And what is so disappointing is that if Footscray can deliver the standard of food it does what is the southern suburbs thinking.

Verdict
Food - 8
Ambience - 7
Service - 8
Price - 8

Address
18A Essex Street
Footscray VIC 3011
Tel: 03 9689 3300

Bluebird Espresso, Collingwood by Big Fil

I know it’s a bit tacky to say it, but Bluebird Espresso put a real song into my day. Perched near the front window and served by chirpy staff, I would have been happy to nest here for the day dining on some delicious breakfast options.


If you haven't heard about it on the grapevine you’d probably just fly on past tough. It’s located in a fairly dead seeming part of Johnston Street between Smith and Hoddle Streets. However, if you go for a walk along there and you’ll almost certainly be surprised at just how many cafes and small restaurants can be found, all the way up to the train line.


Even if the food wasn’t good I'd be willing to forgive them almost anything so friendly was the welcome. You occasionally get unfriendly glances or comments as a blogger when taking photos, in some ways it goes with the territory. It's in fact one of the reasons we usually try to get their just as cafes open – not only does it leave most of the day still free but it also means that you don’t disturb other diners by getting them in the shots, probably the grievance about bloggers that I have most sympathy with. However, staff here laughed and seemed genuinely pleased that we were interested enough to take photos, a pleasant and most welcome surprise.


In some ways the café is fairly similar to most of its Fitzroy or Brunswick cousins. A few tables out the front, a narrow shop with open kitchen area, and what appeared to be a courtyard out the back. On the inside anyway it's a bit of a compromise between an adequate number of tables for people wanting to eat there and sufficient spacing between them, particularly on a fairly cold and wet day. A few knick knacks on a shelf behind the counter to draw the eye and amuse, completing the picture of a serious café that didn’t seem to take itself too seriously.

The menu contains a few interesting options without including anything which regular Melbourne café visitors wouldn’t have seen before. It also satisfied one of the tests which Snooze has recently started to apply, not using an overly long menu to disguise a lack of imagination or give the impression of variety in their fare.

Both of our breakfast choices were good. My own choice of the Mexican style eggs came on tortillas rather than the more usual bread and a salsa which I neglected to note the main constituents of except for a generous amount of corn. The eggs themselves were lightly fried so that they came with the same liquid centre you get from well poached eggs and for a bit of a kick some optional chorizo, a spicy sausage. All good, but not as good as Snooze’s choice.


It was quite funny, when her Dukkah eggs arrived the first thing Snooze said was how wonderful it smelt. Ten minutes later, after the same dish arrived at a neighbouring table we hear ‘Just smell this’. To be honest, I was somewhat jealous myself given that it did smell very good, and was generous in size to boot. The size was generous and came with two perfectly poached eggs, so perfect that they were still oozing at the end of the meal. The only downside was the chorizo (or as Snooze calls it the "new bacon"). The chorizo was a tad too spicy for the delicate dish and iI would have preferred it with bacon.


Overall
Bluebird Espresso is a good and very friendly café somewhere where you wouldn’t expect to find one. Better than just a good local and somewhere worth travelling to try.

Verdict
Food – 8
Ambience – 7.5
Service – 8
Price – 7

Address
134 Johnston Street
Collingwood VIC 3066
Tel: (03) 9078 7047

Mongkok, Adelaide by Big Fil

After our failure to secure a table for Wasai Japanese Kitchen around the corner Red and Hungry Pete suggested Mongkok as an alternative, somewhere they had eaten at a few times but that I had never been to. While I was quite annoyed at the time, having asked Pete several times to make a booking, what it led to was the most enjoyable Chinese restaurant meal I’ve had in Adelaide.



It didn’t look that promising to start with. With a name like Mongkok – a very densely populated area of Hong Kong - you’d expect that they would specialise in Cantonese dishes. However, when you peruse the menu the first half is all Sichuan style food, which is from a very different part of the country. From talking to Pete and Ruby afterwards they think that one of the Chefs may have come over from another Sichuan style restaurant on Gouger Street rather than having Cantonese style cooks preparing Sichuan food.

Once you enter the setup is slightly different to most of the Chinese restaurants in town. Firstly it’s more upmarket than your typical student dive. Secondly, it seemed to have more large tables than normal, so that it is aimed more at groups and customers that have made bookings than those just walking in off the street (although there were certainly a few of those to including us).



If you’ve never had Sichuanese food before some of the contrasts with the more common Cantonese food is that much if it is spicy, a bit oily and makes use of Sichuan Peppers which give a real distinctive numb feeling to your mouth. I really like it but if you don’t like spicy food you’d want to be careful about which dishes you ordered. The menu at Mongkok is very extensive but we were able to choose quite quickly because we all had particular dishes we want to try.

Both Hungry Pete and myself have a bit of a fondness for offal, with its varying textures and flavours. Consequently his choice was the cold beef and ox tongue in chilli sauce, something which Red has confirmed is a typical style of dish in Sichuan. Even with a bit of green and a few seeds on top it isn’t a terribly visually appealing dish but it does burst with flavour in your mouth. Ox tongue wasn’t the only offaly good cut which had been added to the dish as we also noticed heart and tripe in there as well.



Once I saw it on the menu there was no way I was going past the spicy pork ribs with cumin. This was a bit different in style to how I have had it previously, with the meat cut closer to the bone and different herbs used to replace the Sichuan Peppers I was expecting. This was still spicy enough to bring a slight sheen to the brow though when eaten, and good if not my favourite ever version of one of my all time favourite dishes.



Last up was Red’s choice of the boiled fish with pickled cabbage and chilli. While I had thought the sizes of the other dishes was generous this was huge, more designed for a table of six than the three of us. With thin, almost translucent noodles, tender fish, sour soup and the occasional flash of chilli this was very good, so that even with all of us bursting at the seam we made sure we finished all the fish and almost got through all the soup as well.



Overall
I loved the food here and while it’s only based on a single visit possibly my new number one favourite Chinese restaurant in town. That’s without even trying the Cantonese end of the menu which is hopefully as good. My only caveat, be careful with how much you order as two mains between three is likely to be enough for most.

Verdict
Food – 8
Service – 7
Ambience – 7.5
Price – 7

Address
83 Gouger Street
Adelaide SA 5000
Tel (08) 8231 9456

Rickett's Point Tea House, Beaumaris by Snooze

For Mother’s Day, my kids (Miss W and Miss C) offered to take me out for lunch—their treat. My family has two places we generally go to: Miss W loves yum cha and that’s our usual choice but we’ve also been to the Rickett’s Point Tea House for afternoon tea a number of times and I opted for there as it’d been quite a while.


The tea house is at one of the best beachside locations in Melbourne and looks out over the rock pools that form part of the Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary. (If you’ve never heard of the Sanctuary it’s around 115 hectares in size and stretches out into the bay.) I live within ten minutes walk of a beach further south and Ricketts Point is still a place my family has visited over the years, winter or summer.


I can’t recall whether we had to wait to be seated, but Miss W (who suffers from hypothermia when the temperature gets under 20C—I kid you not) found herself a spot parked in front the gas powered log fire. However, there’s no table service, and while I was collecting chilled water from the tap Miss C ordered our lunch.


I found the menu long but uninteresting and opted for the salt and pepper squid. When I eat out with the Eat and Be Merry Crew this is a frequent and generally good choice but I was unimpressed. The main size dish came with a decent portion of calamari that was well cooked but it arrived on a bed of rocket drizzled with olive oil. Note to chef: drizzling a salad green with second rate olive oil does not a salad or salad dressing make.


Miss C went with the quiche lorraine, the quiche of the day, which she didn’t finish. She explained to me that it was greasy and reheated, a common occurrence with quiche, which I find never improves the taste.


Miss W opted for the best dish of the day: fish and chips, with salad. She finished her fish and chips, which was generous in portion, and I got to try the fish which I thought was OK. It was easily the best of the three meals, except for the salad. I’m a salad and vegetable buff and the small bowl of salad was passed to me, but it was less a salad than salad greens drizzled with balsamic vinegar and the same olive oil. Note to chef: see my comments above regarding drizzling a salad green with second rate olive oil which applies equally to drizzling a salad with balsamic vinegar and second olive oil!


Overall
The food is basic and might have been considered adventurous during the 1980s but is now dated (and seriously crying out for a visit from Gordon Ramsay). Add the price, lack of table service and some of the food being reheated means I can’t recommend eating there. I will offer an upside and that’s if you’re looking for afternoon tea in a fabulous location—our usual choice in the past—the café is OK and I’ll personally stick to afternoon tea in the future. What I seriously recommend is that if you’re visiting Rickett’s Point and you’re there at lunch time—take a picnic with you or use one of the electric BBQs there.

Verdict
Food – 5
Service – 5
Ambience – 8
Price – 5

Address
420 Beach Rd
Beaumaris VIC 3193
Tel: (03) 9589 3040

Grain Express, Box Hill by Bureaucrat

Alright, I'll admit this isn't going to be my best post. Heck, I'm only writing this one up because I was surprised that food court eateries are listed on Urbanspoon. We had been shopping for furniture around Nunawading and needed a quick and conveniently located lunch. This is how I found myself at Grain Express, which is located in Box Hill shopping centre's food court. As a rule, I normally avoid Box Hill - it's all a bit much for me - what with the hordes of shoppers. Another rule is that I try and avoid eating at food courts - and to mix some metaphors, they're not exactly tasty beacons of foodie experiences.

I was informed by Mother Hen and Mr Strong that Grain Express does reasonably priced and reasonably tasty food. Going by the other diners in the food court, about 3/4 of all diners were eating Grain Express dishes, and there was pretty much a near constant crowd waiting to put in their orders.


We ordered beef hor fun. This was a fairly generous serve with lots of tender beef. It also had lots of scrambled egg which gave it flavoursome eggyness.


The salt and pepper calamari was a bit average. I couldn't fault the generous serve, but it was obvious that they cook the calamari some time ago and then blitz it in the microwave when someone orders it. As such, the batter and calamari was a bit chewy.


We got some stuffed tofu and capsicum. The stuffing was made with minced pork and prawn. I had the stuffed capsicum. However, I can't really give an opinion on this, as I rarely eat stuffed tofu, etc so I can't really compare this with other places (I don't see what the appeal of this dish is). We also got a serve of congee w century year old egg. This was the best dish that we ordered. A reasonable amount of century year old egg; the congee itself was a nice flavour and consistency.


And who can resist an egg tart - not us, that's for sure. These were okay - the pastry was reasonably flaky but felt a bit stale (perhaps too long in the pie warmer thingy?) and just a wee smaller than what I'd normally expect.



Overall
Going by the diners in the food court, Grain Express is clearly the favourite among the locals. For me, the food was okay - I'd rate it as clearly food court quality food, but it was a bit better than the average Chinese food court eatery. Although the food was a smidge or two above average, the price and serving size was pretty good.

Verdict
Food – 6.5
Service – 6.5
Ambience – 6.5
Price – 9

Address
Grain Express
Box Hill Shopping Centre
17-21 Market Street
Box Hill 3128
Telephone: 03 9899 6118

Lucky Lupitas, Bedford Park (South Australia) by Bil Fil

I must admit to not knowing that much about Mexican food, at least not authentic Mexican food. I do know that locally it generally seems to fall within two types, stodgy Tex-Mex or sexed up overpriced street food. Given that I don’t like either of these I am pleased to say that Lucky Lupitas appears to be aiming for that much rarer third category, decent food (if a little unadventurous) at a reasonable price.


Empanadas 

First up I really liked the look of the place. Arriving just after opening finding a park was difficult and with the rate this place filled up we were lucky to get the second to last seats. Once you enter you are confronted with a small, cosy dining area with exposed copper piping and concrete floors. The staff are friendly and drink offerings include an unusual prickly pear margarita. And in something a bit unusual for Adelaide it was funny to see someone else taking photos of their food.


Between the three of us we decided on two appetiser style dishes while we were waiting for our three larger meals to arrive. The Tostones, twice cooked plantain chips with black bean mash, crema and habanero-tomato sauce weren’t quite what I was expecting. Plantains are similar to bananas and I was expecting something similar to fried banana chips. These however didn’t have the crisp texture nor the slight sweetness I was looking for, being a little mushy and with a more savoury flavour. For the price it was a smaller serve that I would have expected as well. Not something I’d choose to order again.

I thought the empanadas were much better (see first pic). Empanadas are like the South and Central American of a pasty although they come in a much wider range of versions than pasties, and can be baked or fried. Filled with smoked pulled chicken, roasted corn, cheese, green onion, cilantro (coriander), guacamole and sour cream, these were light and delicate and two bites worth in size. Again given the price I would have preferred a couple more in the serve but these were good.


First and least successful of the mains was the Chilaquilies con pollo. This dish came with pulled chicken, salsa, guacamole, black beans and sour cream. What looked like corn chips when it hit the table turned out to be fried tortillas (I had to look this up afterwards). Loved the tasty pulled chicken but not the tortillas, which had the consistency of soggy nachos. I think the main issue was that it just reminded me to much of what I don’t like about Mexican food here.


Better was the Mole de Colorado con pollo. Mole is a sauce that exists as many varieties through different parts of Mexico, and at its best is deep in colour and complex in flavour. I don’t know much about it but my understanding is that the best regarded versions come from near Oaxaca and include chillies and chocolate. This version was a bit more like a paste than a sauce to the few times I’d tried it before and I remember enjoying it on the night.


Competing for dish of the night though with the empanadas were the Lucky ribs, smoked short beef ribs. With good flavours and very tender, the meat could have been a little moister but still very good.





Overall
One of the difficulties of commenting about Lucky Lupitas is a lack of knowledge of the region’s cuisine. Consequently if there was something I liked or didn’t like about our meal I don’t know whether it was because of the dish being something I wouldn’t particularly like (we can’t like everything) or because of the way it was prepared here. On the whole though, a major advance from the starchy gloopy mess that generally passes for Mexican food around town. It’s quite a fun place, full of middle class rowdies and tables squished a bit tight together. And on a side note, it was amusing to see the couple at the next table independently order exactly the same five dishes as us.

Verdict
Food – 7.5
Service – 7
Ambience – 7.5
Price – 6.5

Address
1/4 Rupert Avenue
Bedford Park SA 5042
Telephone: (08) 8277 4004