Le Petit Bourke, Melbourne CBD by Big Fil

You would expect that a cafe called Le Petit Bourke would be so very French.  

Initial impressions when you enter reinforce the view of a provincial French cafe, both in terms of the baguettes and croissants on offer and the simple country style feel.  What you start to notice after a few minutes though are the Turkish touches, from the guy behind the counter (Manager?), to the cheese and spinach filo pastry (a gozeleme by a different name) and the lamb dumplings.

While the menu is a little limited fortunately both the French and Turkish sides of the menu are well worth trying.  

Both Ruby Grapefruit and myself tried the salmon baguette, a little pricey at around $12 and while the bread itself was pretty typical the salmon was of much better quality than you’d expect in a baguette, capable of holding its own as part of a main meal.

Snooze and Bureaucrat both opted for the lamb dumplings.  These are tiny, much smaller but more numerous than your typical dumpling house serve, and served with sour cream.  Filling and delicious, in some ways I wished I’d ordered these too.

Third main was Ms No Meats Cheese and Spinach pastry.  I am quite a fan of gozleme and liked the slight crispiness to the casing, and the excellent balance between pastry, spinach and cheese.

While the selection of luncheon desserts were limited, we opted to try the raspberry muffin and a rhubarb and fig frangipane tart.  While I liked both the general consensus was that the muffin was just slightly dry, but the tart absolutely delicious.

Overall

Very friendly service, good food and as an added bonus you can sneak a peak at the very interesting Victorian Boarding House now hotel of which it is a part.  A bit of an oasis in a part of Melbourne you just wouldn’t expect.

Verdict

Food – 8

Service – 7.5

Ambience – 8

Price – 7

Address

24 Little Bourke Street

Melbourne VIC 3000

Tel (08) 9663 4484

Koto, Hanoi (Vietnam) by Bureaucrat

While in Hanoi, I was keen to seek out Koto (which stands for 'Know One, Teach One') - a social welfare training facility/restaurant that was set up by an Australian Vietnamese, Jimmy Pham, who wanted to created job opportunities for Vietnamese disadvantaged youth.  

I had known about Koto ever since I met Ms A when we were both in Canberra starting our careers in the public service.  In her past life, Ms A spent several years as a chef at Koto teaching the students there their trade.  

I was surprised to learn how successful Koto is.  Over the years, it has trained over 600 students at its two training facilities/restaurants in Hanoi and Saigon.  Students are taught a wide range of hospitality skills, English and life skills. It also has an online bakery, cooking classes and catering service.  

Koto has extensive links to Australia, with some of its students having the opportunity to study hospitality courses at various tertiary education institutions, including Box Hill Institute of TAFE.  And going by the many photos inside the restaurant, many celebrities, politicians and even some royalty have also visited Koto for a meal.

Forgoing the typical fresh coconut juice, Beaker and I went for an iced green tea drink and a fresh fruit smoothie made with coconut milk to go with our meal.  It was good to note that the ice cubes here are made from bottled water.

For starters, we got the mixed Vietamese sharing plate.  The prawn and papaya salad was crunchy and refreshing and the fresh spring roll was nice but not memorable.  The hands down favourite were the deep fried triangle puffs.  Wafer thin pastry that was very crispy, and inside it had a piping hot, savoury meat and veg filling.

For mains, I got the bun cha - grilled pork balls with rice noodles.  Unlike the other places where I've eaten this, the rice noodles here are freshly made.  This gave the noodles a slightly stickier, yet lighter, texture which I quite liked.

Beaker went healthy on me and got the bun bo nam bo - fresh rice noodles w mixed herbs, peanuts, lime, chilli, garlic, wok fried marinated tofu.  This was a rather large serve.

It came served with a rather big bowl of Maggi seasoning.  Given that this stuff is pretty salty, I can't imagine anyone using more than a tablespoon or two of it with the noodles.

Overall

Another traveler-friendly restaurant.  The menu is a mix of international (cakes, salads, sandwiches) and Vietnamese cuisines - presumably to help ensure the students' skills are more transferable.  However, I was rather hoping that the menu would be entirely Vietnamese.

The service is polite and attentive.  The food is well made and you're helping a great cause.

Address

Koto
59 Pho Van Mieu
Hanoi, Vietnam
Telephone: +84 4 747 0337

La Tortilleria, Kensington by Big Fil

Melbourne seems to be having  bit of a love affair with Mexican food at the moment, or at least Mexican street food.  From generic style franchises such as Mad Mex (reviewed in December 2012) through to the casually upmarket Mamasita (reviewed in May 2010), it’s a long way to the Zocalo but not too far for tacos or quesadilla.  

La Tortilleria has been called the most authentic purveyor of tacos in Melbourne and while I have yet to really catch the Mexican wave that meant it was somewhere that I just had to try.

I have to say when you walk in La Tortilleria really does feel like the biz.  It’s homely but colourful, the welcome warm and friendly, and you can watch your food being prepared as you wait.  

Given that this was likely to take a few minutes, Ms Counting her Calories, Snooze and myself thought we’d start off our lunch with a serve of the guacamole served with their home made corn chips.  This is where the in-house nature of the food first showed through, in both good and bad ways.  The good was the sheer freshness of the dip, no stale avocado here.   On the other hand I would have liked some more citric zing to the flavour.  And we all had mixed feelings about the chips.  Made from fried tortillas, these had great corn flavours but the texture was different to what we were used to, Snooze in particular feeling it was a little ‘cardboardy’.

With three of us we were able to order a fair selection from the menu – chorizo and frijoles quesadillas, the tacos al pastor (the meat cooked on a spit) and carne asada (grilled beef), and the grigas (pork with cheese between two tortillas).  Salsas are laid out in group pots, with smaller pots provided for you to take back to your table as much as desired.

Waiting with much anticipation, after about 10 minutes our lunch was placed in front of us.  So what was it like?  Firstly, the tacos are quite different to other places around town.  The flavour of the corn in the tortilla is considerably stronger, which for me is a major plus.  The texture is also quite different, not your more common hard or soft tortilla but somewhere in between.

Taste wise, I hate to say it but they weren’t all that I’d hoped for.  We all enjoyed the chorizo quesadilla, and Snooze was complementary about the grigas, but there was something about the others that didn’t quite rock my world.  I think it was the combination of the moderately crunchy tortillas and that some of the fillings came across as a little dry and tastless.

Our meal was redeemed though by the glorious flan and accompanying hot chocolate.  A good flan is a gloriously decadent experience and this was a definitely good flan.  Soft, eggy, sweet, cut through by the accompanying sauce.  Combined with the lightly spiced hot chocolate, this I would make the trip out here specially to try.

Overall

Mexican food in Melbourne, I don’t know if it’s you or me but at this stage I just can’t commit.  When we entered everything just felt so right that I was La Tortilleria was going to be the one but at the end of the day I was left feeling a little confused.  Nice casual atmosphere, friendly faces and greetings, an authentic feel all ticked, so why didn’t it do it for me?  Other than it did feel a bit pricey for what we had I am not sure, but then Ms Counting her Calories – a real lover of Mexican street food – has commented that in future she is restricting her hunt for great Mexican food to the US and Mexico.

Verdict

Food – 7

Ambiance – 7.5

Service – 7.5

Price – 6.5

Address

72 Stubbs Street

Kensington VIC 3031

Tel: (03) 9376 5577

Quan An Ngon, Hanoi (Vietnam) by Bureaucrat

Good moooorning, Vietnam!  A few weeks ago, Beaker and I boarded a plane for Vietnam.  We had great expectations of this trip - it'd be a true foodies' trip.  We'd eat street food, we'd discover new dishes and we'd do exactly what Anthony Bourdain or Luke Nguyen would do.  In short, we'd earn our foodie credentials for eating dinky di Vietnamese food that isn't sourced from Richmond, Springvale, Box Hill or Footscray.

Laid back Hanoi.

Long story short, despite spending a small fortune on vaccinations (cholera, Hep A + B, malaria tablets, to name a few) and armed with a backpack full of Hydralyte, Imodium and probiotics, we wimped out.  We could spend seven days exploring Vietnam or we could spend seven days holed up in our hotel and fighting over who gets the last roll of toilet paper.

However, we did want to eat some genuine Vietnamese food.  So based on a recommendation that Beaker had got from a friend who had only recently been to Hanoi we had dinner at Quan An Ngon.  QAN is perhaps one of the handful of places where it has a reputation among Western travelers as a safe place to eat.  

The whole concept of QAN is that they house all these Vietnamese food stalls in the one location.  I'm told that for these stalls to participate they must pass and maintain certain levels of food hygiene practices.    

In terms of prices, the food at QAN is cheaper and/or quite competitively priced with regard to established eateries (ie those that are located in a shop).  Although, it's not as cheap as street food.  

In return, you get to sample a wide range of authentic Vietnamese food without worrying about getting sick or getting ripped off, table service and comfortable seating.  In fact, QAN is fairly popular with the locals too, as we saw many young families and large groups of people having dinner there.

On our first visit, we had to get a fresh coconut juice.  We both got addicted to these, as they were thirst quenching, safe and just plain delicious.  

Onto the food.  I got the bun cha.  Grilled pork balls and pieces of pork, which is served in this slightly vinegary, salty soup.  The soup has slices of carrot and other root veg (turnip, I think).  I wasn't expecting the pork to come in the soup.  It comes with a serve of cooked vermicelli.  

It also came with a side of beanshoots and a tangle of greenery (mint, basil, perilla).  To eat it, you mix the noodles, greenery, pork and soup in the empty bowl that they give to you.  The pork was flavoursome and had a nice meat-to-fat ratio.  I didn't really drink the soup, except to use it to moisten up the noodles, as it was a tad too greasy for my liking.

Beaker got bun xeo (pronounced 'sea-ow') - a massive paper-thin crepe filled with shrimp, shellfish, pork, beanshoots and onion.  It comes with lots of herbs, sheets of uncooked rice paper and nuoc cham.  

We needed some guidance from the staff as to how to eat this - primarily, we were puzzled with the uncooked rice paper sheets (we thought we'd have to reconstitute the rice paper in water).  But it seems that you simply use the uncooked rice paper to wrap up slices of the crepe (which they cut up for you), stuff it with herbs and drizzle with some of the nuoc cham.  

It's definitely messy to eat, but it was delicious!  It's fragrant, the crepe is incredibly flaky and crispy, while the rice paper is oddly crunchy/chewy.  The seafood and pork were like nuggets of meaty yumminess.

On our last night in Hanoi, we went back to QAN for dinner. We got the bun xeo again because we loved it so much.  We did, however, try out a different dish.  I wanted to see how different and/or better the broken rice with pork would be.  I was kinda disappointed with what we got.  

Firstly, I was hoping for a bigger serve.  Secondly, where is the fried egg?  I love a good fried egg, and I felt lost without one here.  Thirdly, where's the pate/meatloaf and pickled veggies?  The grilled pork and shredded pork skin were good but nothing exceptional.

 And finally...

I have no idea what these were, but should've, would've, could've...

Overall

QAN is a definite safe bet for those who have yet to come to terms with eating street food!  It's fun, tasty and good value.  The place gets quite pretty at night when the lanterns are lit up.

Address

Quan An Ngon

18 Phan Ban Chau

Quan Hoan Kiem, Hanoi

Telephone: 04 3942 8162

Two Birds One Stone, South Yarra by Big Fil

The centre for hot new cafes in Melbourne is changing.  Whenever you heard about somewhere fresh and exciting it always seemed to be in the inner Northern suburbs, Collingwood and Fitzroy in particular.  That’s definitely changing though particularly north of the city up through Thornbury and Preston, but also on the south side of the river too.  

Steak standwich

One of the hottest south side places has been Two Birds One Stone, located amongst the forest of new apartment buildings near the South Yarra train station and seemingly already visited by three quarters of Melbourne’s foodie community.  After swearing off trendy new cafes for a while (after all, there’s much more to Melbourne casual dining than that) we have got back into the brunch groove, and Two Birds One Stone was close to top of the list of places we wanted to try.  

Dilmah Marquee at Taste of Melbourne, by invitation, by Big Fil

My apologies to the nice people at Dilmah for the delay in writing this post (curse that thing called work) but Snooze and I were quite excited when we received the invitation to try some of their wares and attend a presentation by the charismatic Peter Kuruvita.

  

Now everyone knows tea as a drink and Dilmah certainly offered a wide variety of teas including a few interesting blended options such as a Ceylon spice chai (my favourite) and a acai berry with pomegranate and vanilla.  What isn’t always as well appreciated is how well tea works with chocolate.  

Au Lac Royal Vegetarian Cuisine, Dickson (ACT) by Bureaucrat

A few weeks ago, I found myself in Canberra again.  This time, I was staying near Dickson - the so-called 'Chinatown' of Canberra.  I have neutral/vaguely fond-ish memories of Dickson, as I had lived near it so many moons ago. Back then, I didn't think much of this Chinatown.  A handful of Asian eateries and shops and a couple of red lanterns does not make a Chinatown... especially since the Asian eateries were easily outnumbered by the surrounding businesses, including a video rental store, pub, Maccas, KFC and a Woolies.  Since then there's been a few changes.  I was surprised to find a Korean BBQ place and even a yoga studio that proclaims itself as having locations in Canberra and London.

One of the stalwarts of the place is Au Lac.  It was well established when I had lived in Canberra but I never tried the food there.  The main reason being that, back then, I wasn't interested in vegetarian food.  However, times have changed.  Like Dickson, I now have yoga in my life, and I also have learnt to appreciate vegetarian cooking.

As it's easy to eat a lot of junk/unhealthy food while travelling, I decided to test out Au Lac for dinner.  I was surprised to see how nice it was inside the place - clean and simple, with a homely vibe, plus a pretty array of statement lights.  Even more surprising (and pleasingly) was that Au Lac is quite popular - not just among vegetarian Asians.  During my mid-week dinner, there were quite a few medium-largish tables of Westerners tucking into the mock meat and veggie dishes.

Having perused the menu, I decided to go for Ca Tim aka 'eggplant in clay pot sensation[!]' for $15.90.  When it arrived, the incredibly hot, steamy and extremely furious bubbling of the sauce made me feel like I was a witch out of Macbeth... double, double, toil and trouble! 

Because I was greedy, I attempted to take a bit out of a large chunk of eggplant... and I promptly burnt my upper palate.  A minute or two later, I finally could eat this properly.  Lovely squidgy, but firm, chunks of fresh eggplant. I could tell that it was fresh as the skin wasn't chewy and leathery, and it had no seeds, nor did it taste bitter.  Along with the eggplants, there was a reasonable-ish amount of shimeji mushrooms, mimicked the texture of the eggplant.  

The soy-based sauce was quite nice.  However, the menu did not indicate that this dish is quite spicy.  It's loaded with lots of dried chilli flakes, coarsely cracked black pepper and onions.  This meant I had to conscientiously pick out all the chilli flakes, as they really packed a punch.

I also got a serve of rice ($2.50) to go with the dish.

Verdict

Food – 8

Ambiance – 7.5

Service – 7

Price – 6.5

Overall

While I really enjoyed my eggplant, I do feel that it's a bit expensive.  During the meal, I couldn't help but speculate on the profit margin they're making since my clay pot was equivalent to less than one big eggplant.

Au Lac is probably one of few vegetarian places in Canberra, and it's possibly the only one that caters for vegetarians that do not eat onions and garlic (for religious reasons).  It has a fairly extensive menu of mock meat and veggie-only based dishes.  The service is polite and prompt, and inside it's fairly spacious.  If you're in the area, I'd recommend you to try it out.  

Address

Au Lac Royal Vegetarian Cuisine

4/35-39 Woolley Street 

Dickson ACT 2602

Telephone: 02 6262 8922

The Road to QV book launch, by invitation, by Bureaucrat

Red Spice Road QV is one of the nicer restaurants in the city.  I've been aware of the restaurant, and I know that colleagues have dined at Red Spice Road at the McKillop Street location (see Big Fil's review back in April 2011), and I've always been intrigued about the high, arched tunnel that leads into the Orchid Room, which is their function room.

Earlier this week, I was invited to attend the book launch for 'The Road to QV', a recipe book of the dishes that are served at the two Red Spice Roads.  Stepping through the shadowy, arched tunnel, with the energetic thump of the music from within, this was an enticing prelude for an exciting evening for the senses.  

Rice Paper, Melbourne CBD by Bureaucrat

In the CBD, trying a Vietnamese eatery is a bit of a gamble.  It can be good, it can be really good.... but most of the time it’s really rather disappointing. 

So when Rice Paper, an eatery that popped up on Swanston Street about a year ago, I wanted to try it out.  On first impression, I liked Rice Paper as it isn’t a chain, like Roll’d or Ms Chu.  I also liked the fact that it had a nice range of enticing rice paper rolls ready-made for those wanting a quick lunch (as an aside, I’m still waiting for the day when rice paper rolls can be bought for $2 - $2.50 per roll to truly compete with the ubiquitous sushi rolls).

The completely indoor-outdoor vibe of the place gives Rice Paper, along with the bare concrete walls, the simple decorations and the flittering of the small birds darting in and out of the place and the parade of harried pedestrians along the street, an authentic vibe.  You could almost believe, for a second, that you’re in Vietnam.

On my first visit with Beaker and Bubba Chuck, we wanted to sample a few of the dishes on offer.  Bubba Chuck got two chicken and prawn rice paper rolls.  Fat, rolls with a reasonable amount of chook, prawn and salad ingredients.  I take it that she thought they were tasty as she refused to share any of it with us.  I’ve also have tried the soft shell crab rice paper roll, and that’s pretty tasty too – for each roll, there’s half of a good-sized crab, which meant chomping around the spindly legs and shell of the crab.... yum.

Feeling the need to be virtuous, I went for the chicken salad.  A fairly big serve – lots of julienned carrots, cukes, red cabbage, tender strips of poached chicken, topped with a good sprinkling of toasted peanuts.  It was refreshing and filling – a great lunch option for warmer days.  There was so much of it that I took the rest of it back in a doggy bag for later.

Beaker got the vermicelli w betel wrapped beef rolls.  It looked really good.  At my next visit, I ordered this and I can tell you that it tastes as good as it looks.  The slight smokiness of the betel leaves and the tender beef on the inside. They’re fairly generous in size – six fat, tightly rolls of beef.  Lots of warm vermicelli and finely shredded veg.  I also liked the spring onion garnish.  This dish is now on my rotation for a quick, healthy lunch option.

We also got some spring rolls to share.  In this case, the prawn spring rolls – we got eight of them.  Long and crispy, and with a nice prawn filling.  I liked how it was nicely golden and piping hot on the inside.

These came with some nicely trimmed and washed lettuce leaves (I like it when places do that) and nuoc cham. 

On another occasion, for lunch with Ms C, I wanted to try something a bit different that what I usually order.  In this case, it was the coriander fish with rice.  This, unfortunately, was disappointing.  When the dish came out, it looked appetising.  Lots of fish and I could see lots of fresh coriander in the light egg batter that coated the fish.  However, the fish was previously frozen and lacked flavour.  There was a hint of coriander but it wasn’t enough to compete with that bland, cardboard-y flavour (and texture) of the fish.

Ms C went for the beef pho.  While Ms C seemed to like the pho enough, as she hails from the Western side of town (and thus, has ample opportunities to sup at the many Vietnamese food in Footscray), I got the impression that she has had better.

Verdict

Food – 7

Ambience – 7

Service – 7

Price – 8

Overall

Apart from the coriander fish, I’ve liked everything that I’ve had here.  The service is quick, the serves are above average and the prices are quite competitive.  I’ve already been back a few times, and will continue to go back there again.  A few of the reviewers on Urbanspoon have given negative reviews, however, I’ve had really great experiences with the food and service each time I’ve been.

Address

Rice Paper

245 Swanston Street

Melbourne 3000

Telephone: 9650 3088