The Burger Block, Kew (by invitation) by Benny

Burger Heaven has been found! It’s in a tiny, largely neglected shopping strip near the old outer circle railway reservation in Kew. 

Burgers have long been the food of the common man, so it should not be too surprising that some of the best come from modest surrounds. In the case of The Burger Block, the surrounds are not so much ‘modest’, as ‘dilapidated’. The shopping strip looks like it was built in bits starting in the 1920s and ending in the 1970s, with most of the shops showing little evidence of any renovation or renewal since. The exceptions are a couple of cafés that are clearly popular with Ladies Who Lunch.

While The Burger Block sports bold new signage, new tables and chairs and fresh flowers on the inside tables, the fundamentals look as if they have been serving the locals for quite some time. But don’t let this fool you – Bilby Blue confidently proclaimed her chicken burger as the best she has ever tasted! And my Asian-inspired beef burger was so amazing that surely it can’t possibly be good for me.

Cajun chicken burger

Owner Brenda has invited Bilby and me to sample her burgers, and after a warm welcome, allows us free range of the largish menu – six Fusion Beef Burgers; five levels of Block Legends (which are really the same burger, but just bigger, and bigger, and …); eight Fusion Chicken Burgers; and for the non-meat-eaters, a Tempura Fish Burger and a Vegie Patch Burger. This abundance is augmented by other bready goodies such as a selection of toasties and Turkish pides, as well as dim sims (fried or steamed). For those needing something sweet after their burger, there are Belgian waffles, muffins, slices and a selection of good-looking bikkies.

Camberwell Charcoal Chicken, Camberwell by Obelix

Camberwell Charcoal Chicken is our family's chicken go-to.  Despite curt customer service (I have yet to see the proprietress crack a smile), we keep going back and here are the reasons why.

Its chickens are far superior to the roast chooks of the supermarkets.  The charcoal flavours permeate through the moist meat.

Sister of Society, Prahran (by invitation) by Benny

Our hosts Fraser and Olivia are expertly working the room, giving all of their guests a friendly welcome, ensuring that this launch event is going to be a success. A lot of thought and work has gone into the design and set-up of Sister of Society – an on-trend bar and nightspot in the fashionable part of Chapel St.

The view through the tinted full length windows gives a hint of the modish interior and great-looking bar – enough to pique the curiosity and draw you inside. Low lighting creates a warm enticing ambience, tinged bright red by the SOS neon on the wall. A mix of seating ensures the perfect spot to match your mood and the size of your party: squeeze into a comfy booth, park on a bench at a coffee table, convene around a bar table, or perch on a bar stool for counter-style eating, drinking and conversing. Looking for a bit of privacy? Head right down the back past the bar and servery and you’ll find a very comfortable nook, ideal for a half dozen or so close friends.


Moroccan spiced lamb with pine nuts, hummus, labne and pomegranate

Inside you will find craft beers (bottle and draught, both local and international), trendy cocktails and a decent selection of wines and spirits, plus great friendly service (which, to be fair, is hard pressed tonight, but is holding up very well). And the reason that Bilby Blue and I are here – the food!

Flying Woks, by Obelix

I approached the queue of Flying Woks food truck with much anticipation.  They certainly had the theatrics down pat.  Mighty big woks and guys stirring the contents within with big spades.  It was how I imagine witches would tend their bubbling cauldron(s).  

I gather from the Flying Woks' website, they offer a manner of all things Asian such as noodles, steamed buns, as well as paellas and Moroccan tagines.  However on the day that they visited, they were serving two noodle dishes.  

One was a vegetarian rice noodles with a Tom Yum sauce.  This is what I had.  I ended up eating two of these noodle boxes as it was a scanty on the serves.  It was a bit lackadaisical.  The quality was akin to what I can cook at home (I'm not much of a cook).  It could have done with more vegetables and tofu.  

Rosie, Parnell (NZ) by Bilby Blue

It had been a hectic day at the office, and lunch had been overlooked in the rush to meet deadlines. I deserved a special treat and Rosie – one of the eateries in Auckland’s Hip Group – looked like it could deliver the goods.

Its focus is on locally sourced, fresh, seasonal food, with the aim of letting the ingredients shine. And based on my experience, Rosie totally nailed it.

When dining solo, I rarely have more than a main and dessert, but the entrée options sounded so good that I could not resist going that extra distance. For my entrée I chose the special of the day: fried zucchini flowers (from the Hip Group’s own farm) stuffed with pinenuts and feta, with charred zucchini, radish and zucchini puree. It was a great dish (the photograph does not do it justice). The feta by itself was extremely salty, but worked brilliantly when eaten together with the incredibly smooth zucchini puree.

Thresherman's Bakehouse, Carlton by Bureaucrat

Thresherman's Bakehouse brings back waves of nostalgia for me.  As bright-eyed 17-year old uni student (yes, I was once precocious), I stumbled into Thresherman's and got bamboozled by the communal tables and left the place without buying anything.  They say uni opens one's eyes, and yes, my hayseed eyes were wide open and couldn't comprehend why anyone would want to share a table with strangers.

Nowadays, I can cope with eating at restaurants that have communal tables, though I still struggle to understand why people would want to rub elbows at the dinner table with Tom, Dick and Harry.  I mean, in any other situation you'd want strangers seated as far away from you as possible... anyone who's travelled on public transport could empathise on that point.  Therefore, if I'm paying for a meal, I want a table to myself, thank you!

As a uni student (or indeed a salaried slave), you can eat like a king at Thresherman's.  Servings are large and the prices are cheap; even better, the quality is pretty good, too.  I was curious to see if things had changed since I last visited there 12 odd years ago.


Happily, very little, if any, has changed.  I was very glad that two items that we ate on a regular basis were still available, still tasted good and still at a good price.  I got both as a takeaway to share with the Lawyer as a nostalgic foodie trip.  The slice of lasagna is now around $10 - it's still meaty, cheesy and filling.  Good times!

Mr Burger, by Obelix

Mr Burger has been floating around in food truck land in Melbourne for some time now.  While Bureaucrat (Little Bourke Street outlet in 2015) and Snooze (Vic Markets outlet in 2013) have both reviewed the shop-front versions of Mr Burger, F convinced me to try their iconic Mr Burger from the original food truck.

So here it is in its simplistic construction:  a sesame bun, ground beef patty, cheese, pickle, mayo, ketchup, onion, lettuce and a slice of tomato.  To be honest, it is not much different from the Hungry Jack's Whopper in terms of its constituents.  But that is not meant to be a negative thing.  It's a classic presentation and represents what a burger is to many.  There are times in my life where I yearn for a soft shell burger on a charcoal brioche bun but then again, there are times when only a classic will do.

Di Bella Coffee Roasting Warehouse Melbourne, North Melbourne by Benny

If you are seriously researching the history of Victoria, online searches will get you only so far. Eventually you will end up in North Melbourne at the unassuming but amazing Public Records Office of Victoria. I was providing occasional assistance to Bilby Blue’s quest for knowledge, and a busy morning riffling through archival boxes guaranteed we were ready for lunch.


Baked meatball sub – pork and thyme meatballs, Napoli sauce, pecorino and rocket served with taro chips

North Melbourne is home to quite a few breakfast/brunch places. Our chosen venue was favourably reviewed by Snooze way back in 2010, so it was high time to revisit the Di Bella Coffee Roasting Warehouse Melbourne.

Shaky Isles, Newmarket (NZ) by Bilby Blue

My favourite go-to place for lunch on my regular visits to Auckland – or more specifically, Newmarket – is Shaky Isles. I love their house-baked bread in all its many varieties – crusty, seeded or unseeded, and incredibly flavoursome. Just like bread should be.

With the office just around the corner and time typically being quite tight, I generally grab one of the pre-prepared rolls to eat at the desk (oh, the glamour of business travel).

Over several days on a recent Auckland visit, I munched my way through a number of the takeaway options. Any of these represent a substantial lunch – every bread roll was quite sizable and generously packed with fillings. The serving staff offered to toast the rolls, but with bread that good and fresh, I think toasting is unnecessary.

Day 1 was a brioche-style bun with luscious pulled pork and coleslaw. The pork was juicy and meaty, with a fantastic sticky-sweet sauce– the whole thing was just divinely scrumptious.

Cafe Florentine, Brighton by Bureaucrat

Cafe Florentine is a fine dining (aka "Gold Card") restaurant in the 2016-17 Entertainment Book, which means that you can get a complementary main course, of up to $40 in value, when another main course of equal or greater value is purchased.  This year, the Eat and Be Merry Crew is fundraising for FareShare by encouraging our dear readers to buy a copy or two of the 2016-17 Entertainment Book - our goal is to raise $1,000 for FareShare (more details can be found in our post here)!  There's a book for each state and territory in Australia that's chock full of dining, entertainment and lifestyle offers.

For a family celebration, we took the opportunity to use the dining offer to try out a restaurant in a part of town that we don't usually head into.   Located on one of the main dining and shopping strips in Brighton, Cafe Florentine was already pretty full when we turned up for our 6pm reservation.  A few us kicked off the dinner with a glass or two of pinot.

Snagga's Healthy Sausages, by Obelix

Snagga's food truck specialises in all things snags.  No surprises there. Their selection includes all hooven creatures of God, think pork, beef, lamb sausages as well as a chicken snag and a vegetarian option made of beans.  Whilst I would have normally picked a vegetarian option, I was a bit apprehensive about how appetising it would be.  So I went with the hot dog with the clawed feet, the chicken.

My little chicken snag rested on a brioche roll and nestled in a side serve of chips.  My first impression after seizing a huge bite was "yikes, this hot dog is sweet!"   Whilst the menu described it as meat marinaded with honey, it was still quite a shock as I expected the sweetness to be balanced with a bit of savouriness.  The brioche bun was sweet.  The condiment was sweet.  And what was a bit disconcerting, the sausage itself was sweet.  The chicken snag had bits of nut (cashew?) within so from that aspect I was pleased it was a healthier snag than one made of pure animal by-products but I couldn't get pass the sweetness.  Maybe I was comparing it too much to the gold standard tuck shop hot dog of my childhood: a pink frankfurt of dubious meat origins on a crusty white bread roll with a squirt of tomato sauce.

The chips were a bit underdone.  Not quite at the crisp stage so they felt oil sodden.

Po Hing, Mount Waverley by Bureaucrat

Po Hing is a blast from the past.  When yours truly was in her teens, this was one of the Chinese restaurants that my extended family used to go to on high rotation.  The appeal, back then, was that it served pretty decent food at a pretty decent price - a great way to feed a big family without breaking the bank.  Time moves on, and we started going there less and less.

My last visit to Po Hing would have been about 15 years ago(!) and I was curious to see what had changed.  The drab brown brick exterior is still there but there are new owners and it seems like Po Hing is now a Vietnamese-Chinese restaurant - with a heavier focus on the former.  While the interior is still your typical suburban drab decor it's an improvement from times gone past.  A new lick of paint, brighter light bulbs and the addition of interior window in a once plain wall provides much needed light into the room.


The Lawyer and I ordered two dishes to share.  The stir fried rice noodles with beef had a good wok hei.  Lots of beef, charred rice noodles and lots of aromatic egg and onions tossed through it.

Gelateria Primavera, Melbourne CBD by Bilby Blue

Various sources had been giving us good reports about Gelateria Primavera, so it had been on our radar for quite a while. However since Benny and I are rarely in the CBD at the same time, in the end we had separate solo visits, within the same week.

Close to the Princess Theatre, Gelateria Primavera is at the front entrance of the Spring Street Grocer. The gelato menu – handwritten on brown paper – changes daily, with around 16 flavours including dairy free sorbets. All the gelati is made fresh each day by Primavera’s two gelati chefs from seasonal natural ingredients, with no additives, and is stored in shiny round pozzetti tubs inset into the red marble counter top. Cold pressed juices are also available – so you can combine a healthy fruit or vegie juice with your gelato.


Cardamom and roasted pistachio with rose lassi gelati

The day I visited was a public holiday and the menu was festooned with a number of sticky notes – “none left”, “all gone”, “in the works”, “maybe next time” – proclaiming that those flavours had run out, even though it was only late morning. But there were still plenty of options left. When Benny visited at the same time on a regular weekday all the flavours of the day were still available.

La Revolucion, by Obelix

I've been spying the La Revolucion food truck around the traps in Melbourne of late and finally decided to give it a go.  They specialise in Latin street food and what can be more Latin than tacos?


I sampled their pulled chicken tacos and was a bit disappointed in the chicken.  Whilst the taco shells were warm and supple and the salsa and mayo flavourful, the chicken itself was rather bland and rather dry.  I wondered whether they have forgotten to season the batch of chicken I had?

About Life supermarket launch (by invitation), Port Melbourne

Eating well is easy enough - as Aussies, we have it pretty good when it comes to choosing fresh produce and packaged foods that are healthy and locally-made. However, eating fresh, healthy and local doesn't always come cheap - it's often easier, and understandable when money is tight, to pick the mass produced option, which isn't the best option for us or the environment in the long-term.

A selection of About Life's private label range (photo credit: About Life)

That's why Ms G and I were excited to attend the launch of About Life - a new one-stop-shop for all your everyday groceries, with a cafe and ready-to-eat takeaway servery to boot! About Life started out as a humble juice bar in Sydney 20 years ago and has grown into six thriving supermarkets. Opening its first shop on Bay Street in Port Melbourne, Melbournians can now get to treat themselves to all sorts of tasty edibles and home products that are sourced from producers that have an ethical, eco or sustainable ethos.

Pablo Honey, St Kilda (by invitation) by Benny

A lot of people think that Pablo Honey (the St Kilda bar and restaurant) is named after the first album released by grunge rock group Radiohead. According to part-owner Brad Jones, Radiohead has nothing to do with it (sorry, Radiohead fans): ‘Pablo’ was chosen as a popular and catchy South American name; and ‘Honey’ for the colour of really good tequila. Pablo Honey (the restaurant) brings a taste of South America to St Kilda, and matches it with really good tequila. Brad is passionate about tequila, claiming most Australians have tasted only the cheap stuff. Pablo Honey has grown out of the owners’ fond memories of London’s tequila bars – an experience they are bringing to Melbourne.


Brazilian milk pudding

Honeycomb shelves displaying dozens of extravagantly decorated plaster human skulls capture your attention as you enter Pablo Honey, referencing the Mexican holiday, the Day of the Dead. Tear your eyes away and you’ll find yourself in a modern and attractive bar and restaurant. Elegant room dividers continue the honeycomb theme, subtly creating a series of friendly dining spaces. One area provides comfy couches and coffee tables for the more laid-back diners. Couples and groups of friends are clearly welcome here.

The drinks menu is quite extensive, including wines, beers, South American-themed cocktails and no less than two pages of tequilas ranging in price up to an astronomical $200 per shot. Does anyone ever indulge in those $200 tequila shots? They sure do – and are immortalised on an ever expanding honour board. While no non-alcoholic beverages are listed, our waitress Isabella assures us that the bartenders are up for just about any request, including mocktails.

Tolga Woodworks Cafe, Tolga (QLD) by Bureaucrat

One of my dreams is to build a beautiful log cabin and decorate it with gorgeous, hand-crafted furniture and knick knacks that's made from solid, old-growth timber - and I'm not talking about the dime-a-dozen pine, compressed wood shavings or solid wood veneer stuff that you get from all the mainstream furniture shops. Ever since I lived in Canberra, I just simply heart/love/adore the food and furniture (in equal measure) at the Bungendore Woodworks Gallery and Cafe in NSW. I love it so much that whenever I'm in Canberra and have a car with me, I'd most definitely make a visit to the gallery and cafe - it's just that wonderful. While Canberra may be 'meh', if you're ever near the town of Bungendore (which is only 20 minutes outside of our nation's capital), seriously, get yourself out there and see for yourself!

At the tail end of our Cairns trip, we made a stopover in Tolga, which is located in the Atherton Tablelands.  I wanted to check it out because there was the Tolga Woodworks Gallery and Cafe. Though it's a smidge smaller in size (in terms of furniture and menu options), Tolga Woodworks Gallery and Cafe boasted impressive furniture and delicious food as its Bungendore counterpart.


Arriving there around 2pm, we were just in time to place our orders for a late lunch before the kitchen closed.  Mr Strong chose the soup of the day ($11). By memory, it was a spiced broccoli-based soup, which he loved.

Sartoria, Preston (by invitation) by Bureaucrat

Adriana Agricola is a powerhouse of food and fashion.  Having taken over her parents' dressmaking and bridal wear business in Preston, Adriana has transformed the family warehouse into Sartoria - a new cafe that's already won praise from Broadsheet and The Age Good Food Guide. Sartoria stands out as a beacon of that quintessential Melbourne brunch scene in a part of town that's often associated with light industrial workshops.

Hailing from Italian stock, and her years of hospitality experience in New York, Sartoria offers modern Australian fare with nods to her Italian culinary background and a good dash of Asian ingredients.  The result is a food and a dining experience that's laid-back, effortlessly classy and generous.

The Lawyer and I got to try three of Sartoria's signature dishes.  My favourite was The Designer - a duo of buffalo yoghurt hotcakes served with green tea cream, caramelised pineapple, tropical fruits and coconut cream.  The buffalo yoghurt gave the hotcakes a gorgeously fluffy texture with a hint of lactic acid.  While this looks rich, it isn't overly sweet - you'll be licking the plate clean, like we did!

Happy Camper Pizza, by Obelix

I approached Happy Camper Pizza food truck with a bit of apprehension.  Can a food truck do good pizza? I wondered.  I was half anticipating food court grade pizza or worse still, the type of frozen pizza from the supermarket.  But I was pleasantly excited when I found out that Happy Camper had a wood fire oven built into the van and they were knocking out pizzas to rival a good pizzeria.


I ordered two of the same pizza (greedy, I know).  Everyone in the queue in front of me were ordering the same salami pizza so I figured I would jump on the band wagon.