Gumbo Kitchen, Brunswick by Big Fil

There aren't that many food trucks around Melbourne. I've been told that this is mainly because the local councils don't really like them, which is why you only ever seem to see them in Brunswick and Northcote. I don't know why the councils don't like them, whether it's because of hygiene or parking concerns, or the impact on local residents, but whatever the reason Gumbo Kitchen seems to have gotten around it by parking itself at Lux Foundry to dispense a slap up feed of New Orleans favourites gumbo and po'boys.



It pays to get here fairly early. Arriving around six'ish we were able to walk straight up to the front and place our order. Twenty minutes later though the line was around 20 people long. The other thing is that there is only a limited amount of food available, and once it's gone that's it.

The variety of food offered isn't great, from memory a couple of gumbo's, two po'boys and one dessert, but then the kitchen doesn't have much space to work with. The punters are a real mix, from families to the too cool for school, but it gives the place a real friendly vibe.



First dish up was our seafood gumbo. While it came with a nicely flavoured broth with pieces of crab, prawns, calamari, fish and okra and served with a chunk of bread, we all agreed that it could have done with a bit more rice to soak up all the liquid. One unusual highlight, the alien face-hugger like crab that came with one serve.





The shrimp po'boy though was a bit of a letdown to me. It was certainly generous with the shrimp and the pickle added a bit of bite, but I thought it was a little bit salty and dry. Based on some other comments around the table that it could have used a little mayonnaise I don't think I was the only one who thought so.



Only one dessert was available, the lemon ice box pie. Sweet and tart, it was basically designed to appeal to me but didn't seem to be such a big hit with the others. With texture like a frozen cheesecake it's not too complicated or sophisticated but I could imagine sitting at home at the table or in front of the tea eating a slice or two in the hot, humid weather.



Overall
All up, there was nothing really wrong with the food but I didn't enjoy it was much as I expected. I don't know if it's the style of food or the execution, but other than the dessert it just didn't do it for me. Based on its obvious popularity I may be in the minority here though. I did enjoy the experience however and the Foundry is a great spot to set up.

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

Address
21 Hope Street
Brunswick VIC 3056

BBQ City, Adelaide by Big Fil

It was the last night in town, New Year's Eve, one last chance to sample hopefully some of the best that Adelaide had to offer food wise. I'd seen BBQ City earlier in the week with its roast ducks and chickens hanging in the window and it had seemed fairly popular. With Hungry Pete not having been before other than for a quick lunch the decision was made - it would be bbq night.



I do like the setup of this place. It's fairly basic and non-pretentious, with a TV and handwritten menus pasted to the walls. You could almost be in Kowloon, well if you wanted to ignore all the Aussie accents. Menus came out quickly and the offerings looked fairly typical in both range and price for this sort of place, so that the real test would be the quality of the food.



Unfortunately though, for a place called BBQ City, I was left pretty unimpressed with the crispy skin pork and roast duck we ordered. Both pork and duck are naturally fatty resulting in sometimes oily meats. I wasn't expecting this to be a problem for a restaurant that specialised in this sort of food though. The duck was particularly bad, with enough oil on the skin to render it greasy rather than crispy. The meat itself was a little oily too, though not as bad as the skin. The skin of the roast pork was much crisper but the pork was nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly not good enough to compensate for the duck.



Better were the beef brisket hotpot and the stir fried vegetables. I am very much the fan of a good beef brisket hotpot, and it's unusual for it not to be on the menu and not be ordered. This version had a fairly strong star anise flavour and the meat was tender, with a layer of bok choy underneath. I thought it was fairly typical in standard for this dish but Hungry Pete quite liked it. The best part to me, the gelatinous texture of some of the bits of tendon.



The vegetables were nicely crisp, mainly bok choy but with carrot, mushrooms and baby sweet corn as well. While only ordered to break up the heaviness of the other dishes, which were all meat based, this was my favourite dish of the night.



Unfortunately though our food ended on a bit of a down note. The Peking dumplings, a type of steamed pork dumpling, lacked flavour and the accompanying chilli oil sauce was pretty toothless.



Overall
The only Hong Kong style bbq place I noticed in town, I had really hoped for a little more. Surprisingly it was the roast and bbq meats which were the let down more than the other dishes. I had expected these to be the speciality of the restaurant but I didn't think they were quite up to standard. It can be a bit unfair, making a judgement based on a single visit, but there was nothing about them to make me want to try them again.

Service could also do with a bit of improvement. First dish to come out wasn't meant for our table, not a big issue but staff did feel a little disorganised. I'd probably have been a bit more forgiving except staff did also feel a bit uncommunicative, whether because of indifference or poor English skills I couldn't say.

Verdict
Food - 6.5
Service - 6
Ambience - 7
Price - 7

Address
84 Gouger Street
Adelaide SA 5000
Tel: (08) 8212 8299

Whipped Bake Bar Cafe, Semaphore by Big Fil

I don't often get down to Semaphore. Normally if Hungry Pete and I are looking for a beachside breakfast we will walk to Glenelg or Henley Beach (it's good staying halfway between the two). But having read good things about Whipped Bake Bar Café I managed to convince him to go for a drive and ended up very glad I did. Nice esplanade to drive along, interesting main street to explore but most important of all, a very good little café to eat at.



One of the things I particularly liked is that it just seemed to have a really nice local café feel to it. It's kind of hard to put into words but I thought it had a welcoming atmosphere comparatively early in the morning, when the suburb was just waking up and a few of the locals were wandering in for breakfast. All of the food behind the counter looked good and it offers a range of more speciality coffees, something I hadn't really noticed much in Adelaide before this trip (could be my oversight though as I am not a coffee drinker).



Menu wise more interesting than most as well, even with Hungry Pete going for the Big Breakfast of (nicely done) fried eggs, toast, bacon, tomato, spinach, mushrooms and a little unusually chorizo. While I didn't get to sample any it did look pretty good.



On the other hand I went with the sweet corn fritters, which came with poached eggs, smoked bacon, baby spinach, tomato, fried haloumi and tomato relish. Great juicy tomatoes, one egg perfectly poached but one slightly overdone, good well flavoured corn fritters and bacon which was ok but could have been slightly crisper. Best thing about it, the nicely fried cheese. Has to be bad for you but just salty squeaky yumminess on a plate.



With an interesting range of cakes available I decided on a slice of lime and coconut cheesecake for breakfast dessert. It was well flavoured but a little dry. Probably should have expected that though, as it was the last slice. Might have been improved by something on the side, say a little bit of lime or lemon infused cream.



We didn't go out the back but there did appear to be a courtyard dining option, as well as a couple of tables out on the street front if you wanted to watch the crowd pass on by. Service was friendly and reasonably quick with only a few other tables occupied.

Overall
Just a safe and pleasant café option in what for a long time was an underrated part of town. A thoroughly enjoyable start to my last day in town.

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

Address
35 Semaphore Road
Semaphore SA 5019
Tel: (08) 8242 3000

Marmalade Cafe, Brighton East by Big Fil

Located at the end of Hawthorn Road, Marmalade isn't one of Melbourne's great cafes. It is however a very good local café, the sort of place most people would be more than happy to have as their neighborhood favorite. And given that it's a good but appetite enhancing walk from my place I guess that includes me.



The set up looks appealing when you enter, the menu includes a few interesting options and the cakes behind the front counter look suburb, the brownies and slices up there with the best in Melbourne. Staff are friendly and its obviously well known and liked, so that I was lucky that I was able to walk straight up to an empty table on both of my visits. You've also got to respect an Elsternwick café that goes to the effort of sourcing its bread from Dench.



Two meals here and the results were one acceptable if nothing standard out, and one very good. On the good side, the quinoa porridge with soy milk, poached fruit and vanilla honey yoghurt and a slice of ginger fluff sponge cake. The quinoa had great texture and I don't find it as heavy as regular porridge, the fruit was very nicely poached and the yoghurt a nice complement. The ginger fluff sponge was a little bit short on ginger flavours but surprisingly light and fluffy, particularly given the layers of cream.





The pesto scrambled eggs with mushrooms, truss tomatoes, crumbled feta on Turkish bread was a bit more workmanlike though. While the bread was nicely toasted and the tomatoes full of flavour, the mushrooms were ok rather than great and the eggs not as fluffy as I would have liked.



There are also a few things that could use tweeking. You could in fact easily drive straight passed it, as it looks kind of drab in amongst a drab looking shopping strip. Once you get in it is noisy, as it seems its patrons includes a flock from the chattering classes. And despite there being a reasonable number of the friendly staff service did feel a touch less organised that some other places. It also carries a slight price mark up, not to be unexpected given its Brighton East address.

Overall
One of the better options in an area not renowned for large numbers of great cafes, somewhere I'd recommend trying if you were in the area but wouldn't cross halfway around town for. It's pretty and the food is good, and if you are at the end of the 64 tram line it's worth giving a go.

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

Address
763 Hawthorn Road
Brighton East VIC 3187
Tel: (03) 9593 2244

Choix Creperie Cafe, Melbourne CBD by Bureaucrat

For our Christmas catch up, Mr S and I met up at Choix Creperie Cafe. I had chose CCC because I wanted to branch out from my favourite Roule Galette. But CCC turned out to be a disappointment. I'm now even more of a staunch fan of Roule Galette (which I'll blog about in a few posts time).

Anyhoo, I chose CCC because The Age Good Food Guide said nice things about it. Usually I take the The Age's GFG recommendation with a grain of salt - I tend not to agree with their reviews. And this time it was no different.


CCC is located in a little alley way. I know Melbourne is known for its funky laneways, but this laneway didn't have much of a funky atmosphere. It felt more like well, a regular laneway.

In the deficiencies of CCC started with the fact that, unlike Roule Galette, it makes its savoury crepes with a regular wheat-based batter (Roule Galette uses buckwheat flour).


Because I had spent lunch with Big Fil and Snooze loading up on pinxos at Naked For Satan, I went straight to the sweet crepe - poached apple w cinnamon. The pancake was on the thick side (I wouldn't call it a crepe). You know when you make pancakes, the first pancake is either burnt to a crisp (because the heat is too strong) or its kinda undercooked and pallid (because the heat is too weak) - this was undercooked.

The plus side was that there was plenty of apples, which had a nice al dente texture. But overall, the whole thing was kinda bland.


Mr S went for the meatball crepe, which came with tomato sauce, cheese and spinach. Mr S said he liked his. Just based on looks, the meatball crepe looked much better than mine.

Verdict
Food - 6
Service - 6
Ambience - 5
Price - 7

Overall
CCC wasn't that good. Frankly, I've spent enough words on CCC.

I definitely recommend Roule Galette. I LOVE Roule Galette (lots of photos and the blog post to come soon). Plus, at Roule Galette, you have a much bigger range of sweet and savoury crepes, the crepes are properly thin, it has such wonderful atmosphere and they have the cutest French guys (with the lovely French accent) making your crepes for you.

Address
Choix Creperie Cafe
620 Collins St
Shop G22
Melbourne 3000
Telephone: 9629 1883

Saigon Light, Glen Waverley by Bureaucrat

Feeling lazy one night, the Lawyer and I headed down to Glen Waverley in search for dinner. Initially, we went to Wonton House Secret Kitchen inside Village Central City. I had friends and family giving positive reviews of WHSK.

We sat down. It's wierd - WHSK is located in an atrium, where people queue up to buy movie tickets. We opened up the menu. In my view, it was quite pricey for what it is. Dishes were in the $20+ range, and it had an odious rule of 'minimum spend of $20 pp for dinner'. I HATE places that do this - it's like they know how crap their food is and fear that you won't order enough of their crappy dishes for them to make an exhorbitant profit from you. Furthermore, I certainly wasn't going to pay $20 per dish and eat it in an atrium, whilst being gawped at by kids who were lining up to buy tickets for Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.


We left the place and wandered into Saigon Light, a Vietnamese restaurant that had opened up after I had left Oz two years ago.


Inside, it's your typical cheap eat-ish place. I was a bit dubious as to whether the food and service would be good. There were a few diners already, and a few tables that needed cleaning up, and the waiters seemed to take a rather laissez faire approach.


For starters, we shared prawn rice paper rolls. These were okay. Nothing to rave about. I thought it was a bit stingy to serve two. I had expected three paper rolls for the price.


The mains proved to be better. We got stir-fried lemongrass chicken w rice. A good strong fresh lemongrass flavour, and pretty good 'wok hei'.


Ditto with the seafood combination hor fun. Plenty of squid, fish, fish cake and prawns.

Verdict
Food - 7
Service - 6
Ambience - 6
Price - 7

Overall
The food at SL is reasonable. The service is a bit 'meh'. It was good to try it. There's nothing wrong with it, really, but I'm not sure I'd return again.

Address
Saigon Light
109 Kingsway
Glen Waverley 3150
Telephone: 9561 6888

Hahndorf Inn Hotel, Hahndorf by Big Fil

I like Hahndorf but it is very touristy. I mean, even when I was a kid it was a renowned tourist destination for people from Adelaide, our own backyard Bavaria, but each time I go back it seems busier and slightly more kitsch.

To cater for the hungry hordes there are a number of German themed restaurants. I've tried a couple but none recently, and S1 and family were keen on trying 'German food' and had chosen Hahndorf Inn.



After our visit here I must admit to mixed feelings about Hahndorf Inn. I can't say I liked it enough to want to go back or disliked it enough to want to never return. It was more of a kind of 'meh' experience, not good enough to drag me back in but not enough to drive me away either.

I think it does make an attempt to recreate the feeling of a real German Bear hall. It's a little dark, noisy, and lots of niece wooden beams and panelling. However, while I've only been through a couple of proper German beer halls or restaurants those that Hungry Pete and I have visited have something which Hahndorf Inn lacked, a feeling of history behind them. I know Hahndorf Inn itself isn't young but the dining area feels quite new, certainly not the hundreds of years old you can get in Germany.



The quality of the food I thought was acceptable but not great. Some reasonable sausages (that probably tasted a bit more similar to each other than they should have), some fairly mediocre sauerkraut and potatoes, smoked pork hock that was ok but not quite what I hoped for. Worst element though was the pretzel, which I didn't really want to eat. No issue with the serving sizes but given the quality they would need to be generous, because it's also a bit pricey here.





The one element though which definitely could do with some improvement is the service. It never tottered over the edge to disaster but it felt that the staff were pretty much on the edge. The Inn was admittedly busy but should have been used to that. It felt to me like some of the staff were feeling overwhelmed and maybe starting to get a little short with some of the guests. This isn't a good thing when you are selling the experience as much or maybe even more than the food.

Overall
A bit of kitsch fun and if you have never been to Germany it probably gives you some idea of what German food is about, or at least some traditional German food (my experience is that the German national dish is now the kebab). Somewhere I wouldn't take too seriously, treat it as part of the package of going out for the day and it is a worthwhile occasional experience. Not somewhere I'd go everyday though, or even every month.

Verdict
Food - 6.5
Service - 6
Ambience - 7.5
Price - 6

Address
35 Main Street
Hahndorf SA 5245
Tel: (08) 8388 7063

City Blue Fish, Melbourne CBD by Big Fil

Ah, Blue Fish, you were quite a disappointment. You used to be my favourite Fish and Chippery in the city, albeit an inconvenient one that I didn't get to that often. Good food and prices and functional style setup, when I brought people to visit they were always sceptical at first but won over by the end of their meal. I hadn't been for nearly a year but either we caught you on a bad day or your standards have dropped dramatically. Still the same prices and décor but the quality of the food was way down, to the extent that I'd have rated it as below average.



For example, feeling a little virtuous I decided to go with the 'healthy' option of grilled calamari and chips. The chips weren't the thick cut chips I'd have preferred but more like fries. Nothing stood out about them in either a good or bad way, neither crispy as I would have liked or soggy which I would have hated. The calamari though wasn't really up to scratch. For grilled calamari I would have liked small pieces of bare calamari, with little lines scorched into them by the grill. These instead were lightly battered, had no grill marks and were a bit soggy. While they didn't have the cardinal sin of being chewy and rubbery, they were not up to the standard of how I remembered the food.



Sally's choice was the fisherman's basket. Can't complain about the price given the size of the serve and that it came with a can of drink for just under $10 (I think). I didn't try any of it but I know she wasn't terribly impressed with the quality, and to be honest it did look a bit overcooked on the plate.



Overall
I don't know if it's the owners but it did feel that something has definitely changed from Blue Fish's heydays a couple of years ago. The price is still the same, the décor, the service (quick but of few words), but it doesn't stand out as somewhere to go to in this part of town anymore. Whereas once the size of the serves felt generous, on this day it felt more that it was compensation for dropping quality. I'd probably give it another go to check if it was just a bad day, but all places change and Blue Fish's may have been for the worse.

Verdict
Food - 5.5
Ambience - 6
Service - 6
Price - 7.5

Address
620 Collins Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Tel: (03) 9614 1476

Your Thai Rice and Noodle Bar, Melbourne CBD by Big Fil

It's cheap, it's popular, but I just don't get it and it's not for me.



Admittedly it isn't always fair to generalise on a single visit to a restaurant or café, but our visit to Your Thai was so disappointing I doubt either Bureaucrat or I will give it another go.



It's a bit of a pity really, because I'd always thought this place looked nice from the outside with its green walls and brown furniture (an underrated colour combination), and the photos of the food posted on the walls looked very good. The lunchtime meals are good value - based on price anyway - it really should have been a winner.



Unfortunately though neither of our meals were really up to scratch, below expectations even on Swanston Street (which to me is full of mediocre places to dine). Bureaucrat didn't even finish half of hers, and to be honest I didn't blame her. It sounded so promising that I'd thought about ordering it myself, grilled chicken on rice with vegetable dumpling and a basil seed with green jelly drink. But when it arrived I felt a bit guilty about being glad she had ordered it and not me. Both the yolk of the egg and the dumpling were an unfortunate greyish colour and neither appeared to be fresh. Bureaucrat wasn't game to try either but I can confirm that the texture of the dumpling was consistent with it having being frozen and reheated. However, not even I was game to try the egg. The drink looked interesting but turned out to be fairly tasteless.



My meal was better but still not really good enough, even at these prices. A Thai salad - which was 80% cabbage served with a sweet but moderately tasty dressing - and a beef noodle soup which looked reasonable when served but which turned out to be fairly tasteless even when the provided sauce was added for flavour. The noodles themselves were pretty ordinary but the one good thing about my meal, the nicely rare beef. And the coconut and green jelly drink, strong flavour of coconut and the jelly tasteless.





Overall
Both of us were unhappy with our meals. It is possible that we chose poorly from the menu as some of the dishes being delivered to other tables looked much better. As it is one of those cheap and cheerful lunchtime places you expect service to be brisk, but even so was a little surprised when the bill hit the table at the same moment we were lifting our last mouthfuls. Prices are fair enough and I do like the way it is set out, but not enough to give it a second chance.

Verdict
Food - 5
Service - 5.5
Ambience - 7.5
Price - 7

Address
255 Swanston Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Tel: (03) 9663 8010