Henry and the Fox, Melbourne CBD: Private invitation

Bureaucrat and I were invited to a special dinner for bloggers held by Henry and the Fox in the Melbourne CBD. Henry and the Fox is a relatively new venture by iconic Melbourne chef Paul Mathis and is headed up by Michael Fox, Age Good Food Guide Young Chef of the Year 2011.


Accepting invitations isn't something we normally do. The blog Eat and Be Merry grew out of colleagues who ate out regularly together recording their thoughts for other work mates (and anybody else interested). Accepting our first invitation has left me feeling as though we've left our natural home--and leaves us feeling exposed at reviewing a restaurant I didn't pay to attend.

With that in mind, Bureaucrat and Snooze had to come up with a way of jointly reviewing Henry and the Fox as we didn't agree with each other about everything. We've separately reviewed our experience and it's interesting to compare and contrast our views.


Review: SnoozeMy approach is very simple: to concentrate on the things I enjoyed and liked and and mention the negatives that really stood out. Given my interest in vegetable over meat dishes, I found quite a few vegetable side dishes that interested me.

Review by Bureaucrat:
I’ve provided more comments for the dishes that stood out (in a good and not so good way). I won’t provide comments for the dishes that I was ambivalent about.

Fried zucchini flowers

Snooze: I quite liked these. They looked really pretty on the plate, lightly browned. Inside the filling was delicate and I'd order these again.

Confit ocean trout, salted cucumber, radish and horseradish cream

Bureaucrat: I love the presentation of this dish. Fresh trout and clean flavours.

Roasted Moreton bay bug tails, cauliflower puree with spiced cauliflower

Bureaucrat: Lovely crispiness on the outside, and juicy, plump flesh. The cauliflower puree went well with the bugs. It was a wee bit salty but I didn’t mind – I could easily wolf this down with a nice glass of dry cider. We were all a bit puzzled with the little crispy bits that adorned the dish. It kinda looked like toasted rice.

Seared scallops, apple and celeriac remoulade, caper and raisin puree with toasted pumpernickel

Bureaucrat: This was one of my favourite dishes for the night (the other is the cured kingfish). As with the Moreton bay bugs, the scallops had a delightful crust with a melt-in-your-mouth texture on the inside.

Snooze: This dish was also one of my standouts for the night: the scallops were beautifully brown but moist, and the remoulade balanced the dish beautifully. In my usual, almost perverse style, what really stood out on this dish was the pumpernickel bread.

Cured kingfish, coriander and fennel seeds, mandarin with coriander shoots

Bureaucrat: I loved this dish. The fresh fish, the fragrant and juicy mandarin segments. So clean, so simple, so delicious.

Goat's cheese, roasted baby beets, pickled shallots, shiso with raspberry vinegar

Snooze: This was another standout for me. I love baby beets and have them whenever I can. I haven't had them with goat's cheese before and it's a perfect combination together with the onion. Definitely something I'd like to try again.

Mulloway, avocado, chickpea, chorizo and red pepper

Bureaucrat: Of the mains that were served, this was my favourite. As with all their other seafood dishes, the fish was fresh, tender and succulent – perfectly cooked.

Rocket, pear and roasted walnut salad

Bureaucrat: I loved this salad. It’s such a simple side dish, but it offers a much needed lightness to go with the mains. The salad is refreshing, and in context of all the food that we had eaten that even, it was bit of a palate cleanser.

Brussel sprouts, smoked bacon and chestnuts

Bureaucrat: The sprouts were a tad more burnished than desired. I was curious about this dish. I’ve only tended to eat/use chestnut as a sweet thing (eg as a sweetened puree atop of a meringue or in a crepe), it’s rare for me to come across chestnut as a savoury thing. Similar to the coconut crumble dessert (see below), I give it points for using less popular ingredients (the sprouts and chestnuts), but there wasn’t anything particular I liked/didn’t like about this dish.

Chocolate pannacotta, strawberry cream and strawberry sorbet

Snooze: I'm a great fan of pannacotta and this didn't disappoint. It was smooth and cream and my only regret is I was rather full by this stage and had little room left to enjoy the desserts.

Doughnuts with chocolate sauce

Bureaucrat: I love doughnuts as a dessert. These were good but they’re not the best I’ve had. The texture was a tad mushy – my guess is that the batter was too thin or they were cooked too quickly.

Quince, pear, custard, coconut crumble with coconut ice cream

Bureaucrat: When I saw this in the menu, I thought ‘yum!’. I love quince, I love pear, I love custard and I love crumbles – that’s despite the fact that it had coconut in it (I like fresh coconut, but I’m not a fan of dried coconut). When it came out I was kinda disappointed ... it was a big bowl of coconut crumble (which to me, tasted like a bland coconut macaroon). There was a faint flavour coming from the quince/pear custard, but it was lost in a mountain of dried coconut.
I kept eating it (naturally) and I was trying to figure out the dish. It eventually dawned on me that it wasn't a typical crumble (say, like apple crumble served with lots of velvety vanilla seed speckled custard). This was breakfast. It tasted and looked like a big bowl of muesli, with the crunchy, dried texture and a restrained amount of custard/milk to go with it. Points for trying more unusual flavour combinations and textures, but I’m afraid it didn’t work for me.

Snooze: This was an interesting take on an old favourite. The crumble part, especially, intrigued me. It wasn't a traditional crumble but I really liked the way the coconut clumped together. But the dish itself didn't work for me on two counts: the pear and quince were overcooked for me (I prefer some texture in my fruit) nor could I taste the fruit; it was all about the coconut crumble.

Passionfruit cheesecake, passionfruit mousse, jelly, granita with yoghurt sorbet

Snooze: This was pretty amazing, the best dessert of the night. It was all about the passiontfruit flavour and the different textures until I wasn't sure whether the passionfruit I was eating was cheesecake or mouse or something else. Definitely something I'd recommend people try.

Overall
You couldn’t fault the generosity of HatF. We never imagined it’d be so much hard work to try so many dishes!

In forming our review, what we'd like to say is:
a) this isn't the type of place that either of us would normally pick to try. However, given the experience on the night, we would recommend this place for family and friends to try.
b) although we were invited to HatF, our rating for the price reflects what we thought had we had to pay for our meal.
c) similarly, the rating for service is assuming they provide the same high level of service all the time.

Our overall impression is that HatF would be a great place for a leisurely breakfast while perusing the weekend papers, or a work day lunch if you want somewhere a bit more special, or Friday night drinks with friends that metamorphisizes (I know that’s not a word, but you get my meaning) into dinner – it definitely has the warm feeling of being invited to a friend’s (very) nice kitchen ... there’s a very homely feel to the place, which I love. If this restaurant was located in the suburbs (in the ilk of South Yarra, St Kilda, etc), I can imagine it being very popular.

The struggle for HatF is to make itself known to city dwellers and shoppers to know to head towards the end of Lt Collins for this oasis. As a suggestion, while I was driving around trying to locate HatF, I pulled over at a hotel at the top end of Lt Collins. The concierge and bell boy hadn’t heard of the place. I say it’d be worthwhile for HatF to spruik the restaurant to all the nearby hotels.

The service was excellent. Friendly and knowledgeable staff. Of course, a cynic would say that this is because HafT was on their best behaviour. But regardless, it at least showed their commitment to being a success.

For us, HafT excelled with their seafood and vegetable side dishes. Going by the menu composition, I get the feeling that HafT offers a pan-European menu with a tapas-y approach, but puts its own interpretation when it comes to the ingredients, textures and presentation. There seemed to be an effort for each dish to have interesting textures, flavour combinations and visual appearance. We noticed it has a nice list of pizzas which would be interesting to try (together with more of the delectable seared scallops, cured kingfish and bugs tails!).

Verdict
Food –
Service –
Ambience –
Price –

Address
Henry and the Fox
525 Little Collins St
Melbourne 3000
Telephone: 03 9614 3277

Mocha Jo's, Glen Waverley by Bureaucrat

One morning, I had a rendezvous with Ms W at our stomping ground. When we met up, it was too early for lunch but too late for breakfast. Mocha Jo's is one of the more popular cafes in Glen Waverley. On the weekends, it’s popular from morning til night. Inside it’s decorated in warm, chocolately brown colours, with French windows that looks out onto busy Kingsway. 

We settled on sharing a snackrafice with a pot of tea for me and a hot choc for Ms W at Mocha Jo’s.


The snackrafice was a serve of pancakes. The pancakes came out a wee faster than I had expected – it was obvious that the kitchen had reheated the pancakes on the grill. Despite the reheating, the pancakes were okay. I have a hunch that had they made the pancakes from scratch they’d probably still tasted the same. Fairly fluffy pancakes served with double cream, strawbs and maple syrup on the side. But I have to say, while eating the pancakes I kept thinking back to that fantastic stack of ricotta pancakes at Replete in Hawthorn (refer my post back in Oct 2011) which were fabulously light and fluffy and was served with a delicious lemony streusal topping, lemon curd and strawbs....god, mental note: go back to Replete for pancakes.


Ms W's hot chocolate





Overall
Based on this limited assessment, MJ is a nice cafe for unhurried coffee or snack. Foodwise, it was okay, middle-of-the-road. The service was prompt and friendly. I wonder whether this assessment would still be true during the weekend, when the place is packed.

Verdict
Food – 6.5
Service – 7
Ambiance – 8
Price - 7

Address
Mocha Jo's
87 Kingsway
Glen Waverley 3150
Telephone: 9560 8444

Brim CC, Melbourne CBD by Big Fil

Brim CC is a small café located in a non-descript section of Little Collins Street. Dispensing organic versions of some typical Japanese dishes, it offers cheap, quick and tasty selections in a section of town not generally regarded for its lunchtime options.



It’s also very popular for its small size. With its half dozen or so inside tables all being in use by just after 12 I ended up experiencing the dubious pleasures of al fresco dining in the middle a Melbourne winter without a nearby heater. Fortunately the sun was out and the wind wasn’t so it wasn’t too uncomfortable, but poorer weather would definitely make takeaway a good idea.

The most popular options seemed to be the soups and curries, with a large chunk of the front counter given over to several large pots for quick dispensing. Staff were polite and efficient, and despite the low tech ordering system (matching paper numbers) everything runs very smoothly.



First dish tried was the yakitori don, grilled chicken served with baby spinach on rice and with sesame seeds sprinkled over the top. A decent sized serving as a lunch option, it highlights one of the major reasons for eating at an organic café. Unlike your normal battery farmed hen it actually has flavour.



The Tokyo bento comes with three different rice balls, two of which are vegetarian and one meat, a beef and onion rissole with a sweet sauce, tofu and eggplant with a miso sauce and lightly pickled carrot with sesame seeds. Plus a potato salad. Served on a tray rather than in a box, the potato salad was tender and slightly creamy, the rissole tender and moist and the eggplant and tofu tender and slightly sweet. Contrast is provided by the rice balls, firm and with flavours added to the rice through the use of sesame seeds. Kind of like a Japanese version of meat with three veg (and a bit of rice), the flavours were earthy and almost home-cooked in style.



Overall
If you’re down this part of town Brim CC is well worth checking out. What I liked most about it was that from the food to the service it felt like it was definitely more substance than style. And with most lunchtime dishes around the $10 mark, somewhere that could be a regular lunchtime stop when you don’t feel like bringing something home and want something more substantial than a sandwich.

Verdict
Food – 8
Service – 7.5
Ambience – 6
Price – 7.5

Address
601 Little Collins Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Tel (03) 9614 5316

Milkwood, Brunswick East by Big Fil

There’s a big difference between saying somewhere's the best place you’ve been and saying somewhere's your favourite. Saying somewhere is the best implies some sort of objective standard against which all meals must be measured. On the other hand saying somewhere is your favourite means that based on your own subjective preferences you liked somewhere more than anywhere else. While we all try to be objective when blogging about the places we visit it’s obviously impossible to come up with a definitive standard that everyone will agree with. It’s probably for the best too – imagine trying to get a table if there was one single place that everyone wants to eat at. Taking that in mind I’m willing to make the call, that Milkwood isn’t the best café I’ve been to this year but it is my favourite.


Why you ask? Because I liked everything about it except it’s so far from home for me. I liked the way it’s so surprisingly nice inside compared to what you’d expect from the outside. It’s a bit of a theme for Melbourne cafes, daggy exteriors mean that it’s a nice surprise when you open the door.


Well sort of anyway, if you can call something you were expecting to be nice a surprise. White walls and furniture broken up by a few decorations and greenery, it’s much more country living or good housekeeping magazine that the industrial or grungy look common in the northern suburbs.


Early on a Saturday morning it was still fairly quiet, with well spaced tables and not overly loud background music and fellow diners who were happy just sitting there drinking coffee or waiting for their choice from a fairly short and simple breakfast menu.


Given outside it was a chilly minus several hundred degrees I decided to go with a warming porridge. Topped with baked orange blossom rhubarb and toasted macadamia and brown sugar crumble, what made it even better was serving the milk in a small jug on the side. I much prefer it when the milk is served separately so you can decide how wet you want your porridge (I’m kind of a dryer porridge guy). It’s similar to maple syrup on pancakes, everyone likes different amounts so why not let us add it to our own taste? The macadamia and sugar crumble gave the dish great texture, and the slight tartness of the rhubarb balanced the overall sweetness very well. It’s just basically yummy warming comfort food.


Snooze went with with the poached eggs on sourdough with an optional extra of avocado with lemon oil. It was a simple dish with good clear distinct flavours, the highlight of which was the avocado and lemon oil. Because it was such a simple dish all the elements need to be spot on, and while I wouldn’t describe the poached eggs as overcooked, a little less cooking would've improved them. One unusual thing which Snooze mentioned was there was a small amount of coarse salt sprinkled over the eggs, something different which she commented on favourably.


Given we had gone with such healthy choices, breakfast desserts were obviously in order. Honestly, given how good they looked it was hard to decide which way to go. They all had that home baked look to them, were generous in size and very, very tempting. Between us we decided on the caramel slice and the Monte Carlo, a cream and jam filled biscuit. The pick of the two was the Monte Carlo although I thought the rich sweet caramel of the slice ran a close second. One thing unusual about them both, at first bite I thought they were each ok, good but nothing special. However the more I ate the better they got and the more I wanted.



Overall
I thought it was the nicest place to sit and eat I’ve seen in a café for a long time, with very good food and efficient, polite staff. Combine that with prices at or below similar cafes closer to town and you have a place I’d be more than happy to visit again and again. Now if only they’d open a sister café down in the southeast …

Verdict
Food – 8
Ambience – 8.5
Service – 8
Price – 7.5

Address
120 Nicolson Street
Brunswick East VIC 3057
Tel: (03) 9380 4062

Bigger Than My Belly, Elsternwick by Big Fil

I’ve been a bit slack recently. There have been a whole stack of new cafes open within walking distance of me over the last few months and so far I have tried out exactly none of them. Too busy paying attention to places I wanted to try on the other side of town at the risk of missing great options under my nose, it’s something I plan to address over the next few weeks. First place on the list due to a great name and one particularly decadent sounding item I wanted to try, Bigger than my Belly.



Just entering the door you know you are in a Melbourne café. The coffee machine in a prominent position, a wooden slightly rustic counter and quirky features such as the saying from which the café name comes spelt out in scrabble letters on the wall. A polite greeting from the friendly staff completes a positive first impression.





Food wise the first thing which strikes you is the cake and cup-cake display which is impressive for a suburban café. It isn’t that the cakes are particularly novel or fancy looking, more that they look like the sort of stuff you wished you could bake at home. Lemon and caramel slices, brownies and friands, from a glance anyway they all look like they wouldn’t be out of place at a Country Woman’s Association winners table.



The menu would be familiar in style to anyone who regularly frequents inner Melbourne cafes. I always think the aim is to be interesting without being challenging, at least if you are aiming for a fairly general demographic. Trying to at least give a nod towards healthy eating, my porridge came with banana, maple and pecans. While it was a milkier than I would have preferred, it was sweet, tasty and filling.



The savoury ricotta pikelets with smoked salmon and spinach leaves was also good, a well sized serve for breakfast. It was generous with the salmon, with the spinach cutting through the potentially heavy salmon and ricotta and nicely complemented by the light pikelets.



The main menu item I was looking forward to through was the extremely decadent sounding brioche and Belgium chocolate toastie. Buttery bread with warm melted chocolate and perfectly toasted, golden deliciousness on a plate! While its tastes so good that it just can’t be good for you, even if it means an extra hour at the gym it just has to be worth it.



Funnily enough, the only item that was a bit of a letdown was one of the scrummy looking lemon slices. Not that there was anything wrong with the flavours, combining a sweet sugary top with a slightly tart cake. The issue was that the crust was too hard when compared with the fork so that I ended up having to use a fair bit of strength to break it up, resulting in a bit of a mess.



Overall
Small, homely, friendly and comparatively cheap, just want you want your local café to be like. Long a comparative disappointment in the good café stakes, the inner south-east has recently picked up its socks a bit and Bigger than my Belly is certainly playing its part.

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

Address
474 Glenhuntly Road
Elsternwick VIC 3185
Tel: (03) 9523 9101

Ha Long Bay, Richmond by Bureaucrat

Ha Long Bay was one of the places I missed while I was living in the gulag that is London. I missed the tasty food and the low, low prices.


HLB is my favourite 'cheap eats' place. The only negative in my book is that I live relatively far from it. For those (many) work nights when I can't be bothered to cook, I yearn for its spring rolls, rice paper rolls, pho, grilled pork vermicelli, salt and pepper calamari all washed down with a custard apple mocktail. After yearning, I then regret not living closer to Richmond. Sometimes this self pity is doubled when I can't even go to my second best place,Danny's Kopitiam, which is closer to me but not open all days, for my quick and tasty nosh.


Over the years of eating at HLB, we haven’t really tried much of the many items on the menu. This is basically because we have our favourite dishes and when you’ve found a good thing, you stick to it. Each time I do wonder if I should go crazy and order something new, but that would mean I wouldn’t be able to order my favourites...such decisions are hard. The following dishes here are most of our favourites.


Pork and prawn spring rolls. Tightly wrapped spring rolls with a minced pork and prawn filling. Always served perfectly crunchy and golden, with crisp lettuce, Thai basil and nuoc cham.


Prawn rice paper rolls. For the days when I need to go gluten-free and/or it’s a really hot day, I order the rice paper rolls. A reasonable amount of prawns in each roll, which are served with the chunky peanut sauce.


You can get this chicken salad as an entree (shown above) or as a main dish. It’s a wonderful, zingy and refreshing salad made with poached chicken, carrot, red onion, cucumber, coriander and mint.


Beef pho. Wonderful on colder days. Rich broth with lots of thinly sliced beef and onions and the slippery noodles.


This is the prawn and pork rice noodle. I’ve never actually had it before. It’s Bubba Chuck’s favourite – she can pretty much eat most of this in one sitting. From what I’ve seen, there’s sliced pork, prawns, garlic chives and a quail egg (although Bubba Chuck is a VIP here and sometimes gets a few extra eggs).


Now this is my favourite – grilled pork with vermicelli. It’s a warm noodle dish. In the bowl is a big mound of vermicelli, which is then topped with lots of aromatic and tender grilled pork, shredded lettuce, beanshoots, toasted peanuts, holy basil and mint. You mix it all up with as much or as little nuoc cham. This great on a hot day – it’s light, refreshing but satisfying at the same time.


Tender diced beef which has been stir fried with lots of garlic. It’s served with this white pepper and salt powder on the side.


Beef hor fun. We just can’t resist hor fun in my family. But as I can get a pretty tasty hor fun at Danny’s Kopitiam, I tend not to order this myself. I far prefer the pho and the other noodle dishes at HLB.


Regardless of whether how hot or cold the weather is, I always order a custard apple mocktail. I love it. It’s like a thick Slurpee but made with custard apples. I’ve always tried to look for tinned custard apple, because I’m fairly sure that that’s the way they make this drink. But I still haven’t been able to find them in the Asian shops. The other drink is a three colour drink that Mr Strong and the Lawyer tends to order.

Overall
We’ve been eating at HLB for many, many years for lunch and dinner. The food is cheap, tasty and the quality and service is always good. You may also want to have a gander at Big Fil’s review of HLB back in August 2010.

The only slight negative is that the drinks always take really long to get served. It’s not unusual for you to receive your drinks after you’ve eaten the entrees and you’re already getting stuck into your main dish.

Verdict
Food – 9.5
Price – 10
Ambience – 7.5
Service – 7.5

Address
Ha Long Bay
82 Victoria St
Richmond 3121
Telephone: 9429 3268