American Hotel, Echuca by Foghorn Leghorn

I love smoked meat. On a recent trip to Echuca, Mrs Shiraz and I discovered a pub with so much smoked meat on the menu that we had to eat there twice.


Smoked duck

It’s the American Hotel. Echuca in general has lots of good food, but only the American Hotel has enthusiasts who spend the first half of the day loading up the smoker. You walk in at lunchtime, smell the smoky fragrance, and say “I’d like to order whatever they’re smoking”. The waitress says “Sorry, we don’t serve the smoked stuff at lunchtime, it’s only at dinner.” So what do you do? You come back for dinner, of course.

Gaylord, Docklands by Big Fil

I had been a while, several years in fact, since I accepted an invitation to try out a new restaurant. However, I was intrigued by the name Gaylord and whether it had any relationship to the now closed Indian restaurant in the old disco in Chinatown (complete with mirror walls), now a Chinese hot pot place. So on a coolish Saturday night Snooze and I were off to see what this new addition to the Melbourne dining scene had to offer.

Beetroot tikka

Located in the Grand Hotel, one of my favourite buildings in Melbourne, Gaylord is a different creature to your normal suburban Indian joint. For a restaurant aiming at a fine dining experience the style is much more semi-casual upmarket hotel club bar than formal dining establishment.