T’relek

Being known as “the foodie” in amongst all your friends and acquaintances can sometimes become a bit of a chore. Most of the time it’s great fun, I love taking people to places that I enjoy and seeing how they react to them, but often times people will be expecting you to, one, always be the person to come up with suggestions for places to eat, and two, have intimate knowledge about every single restaurant, cafe and hole-in-the-wall across the city (I have a hard enough time remembering my own birthday let alone knowledge of that scope!). So it comes as a great relief to be invited out to venues that other people have chosen, and it’s an added bonus when it’s a place I know nothing about.

T’relek came as a suggestion from Lucy, who Amelia, Nik and I were taking out for a celebratory birthday dinner. It’s one of hundreds of Vietnamese places lining Victoria Street, and appears a little more upmarket and shinier than some of the others that I’ve frequented: the surfaces are all glossy and sleek, the light fittings bright and modish, and the entire windowed front of the restaurant can open out into the street, so even in hot weather it’s comfortable.

If you’re eating Vietnamese, you simply have to start with a serving of Vietnamese-style spring rolls, it is the law. I love how thin and long Vietnamese spring rolls are, and how you eat them by balancing them on a leaf of lettuce, loading it up with beanshoots and Vietnamese mint, rolling it up and then immersing it in dipping sauce. It is one of the most happily meditative food experiences that I know of.

After a bungle by the trainee waitress, who thought that we’d wanted to order rice paper rolls, we were presented with two plates of spring rolls, one vegetarian, one prawn. They were crispy and hot, with a minimally flavoured centre, although that doesn’t really matter when we were wrapping each roll up with fresh mint, beanshoots and carrot curls and then dunking them in chilli-flecked sauce. But there were a few hiccups. We did have to ask for more lettuce (we were originally only given two leaves, which for four people… yeah, not enough), and I am pretty much 99% certain that the dipping sauce contained fish sauce, which is a big fat screaming vegie no-no. I really should have asked for clarification before ordering, but I have become spoiled because this town is generally so good with vegie dishes. And really, if you list a dish as vegetarian, the ‘vege’ extends to the condiments! As for the prawn specimens, the overall verdict appeared positive, although Amelia opined that she’d had better spring rolls on Victoria Street (Amelia appears to have eaten at pretty much every restaurant of note along Victoria Street, so I’d heed her word).

For the main, I ordered the rice noodles with vegetables. The noodles were flat rice noodles (the kind used in char kway teow), with the vegetables consisting of snowpeas, carrots, beanshoots, two varieties of mushrooms, some dense yet tasty slabs of tofu and one single lonely green bean. It was an enjoyable enough dish, albeit simple, the rice noodles retaining that fabulous smoky taste from being wok fried, and the vegies were well-cooked and tasty. The one negative was that it was quite oily, which got a little unpleasant towards the very end.

As for the carnivores, they shared three dishes between them, a chicken and vegetable dish that looked slightly curry-ish, a beef and vegetables dish, and the salt and pepper squid. Amelia raved about the squid, and Nik rated both the squid and the beef as his favourite dishes. Lucy was a fan of the chicken, so all three dishes ended up striking someone’s fancy, which is a pretty boss strike-rate.

T’relek is a friendly place that seems to be doing it’s hardest to attract a more discerning clientele. It is sparkling clean and modish, and the service is very attentive; after our waitress’s initial bungle, the head waiter kept a close eye on us, made sure that everything was okay whenever something new was brought out, and was overall jovial. At the end of our meal we were given a free plate of orange slices to finish with, which is always a gesture I can’t help but feel is charming. Yet I can’t wholeheartedly recommend T’relek for the veggie folk, as I don’t feel at all confident that they are as terribly vigilant about keeping their vegetarian options as meat-free as they could be. Perhaps if you plan on visiting, prepare to be more interrogative about what’s in dishes than I was.

T’relek

166 Victoria Street, Richmond

Ph: 9427 1777

Lowlands

Attending Women of Letters is fast becoming a very good excuse for exploring the culinary options around Thornbury. And the merest attempts at research uncovers the fact that there are many interesting-looking places to choose from up around there! So with Muffin, my mother and Muffin’s sister Bec in tow, we made our way up to the farthermost reaches of High Street to have a gander at Lowlands.

It was an utterly stinking hot mess of a day, and as a result when we arrived all of the indoor seating was taken up with people inching as close as they could to the one industrial-sized electric fan. But we were blessed with fortune, as Lowlands has an outdoor seating area out the back in their picturesque kitchen garden that is under cover.

On such a hot day, it seemed only sensible to order a glass of rose lemonade. It was beautifully presented, a cheery light green fizz of bubbles with a sprinkling of red rose petals on top. Ridiculously refreshing, and it reached an agreeable balance between the tart lemon and the sweet rose syrup. Mum ended up having two glasses!

Once I’d been distracted from all the kitchen garden plants which seemed to be in full summer bloom (so many rambling nasturtiums!), I turned my attention to the food options. If I see a cooking term that I’m unfamiliar with on a menu, odds are I have to order that item in order to sate my curiosity and ignorance. So I had to make sure that I experienced the shirred eggs once I saw them. What could shirring mean?

My mother (who is a far better culinary expert than I am) explained that shirring involves cracking eggs into little, generally ceramic, containers, then putting those containers in a pan filled with water and then baking them in the oven, using basically the same method you would use with a steamed pudding. Exciting cooking revelations!

The vegetarian shirred eggs were served with two slices of bread sitting on a pool of cherry tomato relish (agreeably sweet, I’m not normally one for relish but this one I scooped up as much as I could), with three big, fat, juicy pieces of haloumi skewered with rosemary sprigs. The shirred eggs themselves had a consistency just a touch stiffer than poached eggs, but the yolks were still runny enough that I could spread them all over the bread. But of course the real winner was the haloumi skewers, because haloumi is ALWAYS the winner, these are the facts.

Muffin had other variety of shirred eggs on offer, with pea and broad bean mash, fat pieces of chorizo, and an array of greens that we hazarded could possibly have been kale. It was a good and hearty plate that was by all accounts a riot of exciting flavours; Muffin made particular comment on the pea and broad bean mash being quite delicious.

Bec had the eggplant couscous salad, which had the advantage of looking both delicious and full of health. I was particularly jealous of the big round of roti it was served with.

Mum, after much hmm-ing and haw-ing (well, we all did a bit of haw-ing, everything on the menu sounded all types of good), ended up going with the avocado toast that the menu promised it came “with 100% toast coverage.” And the menu was not lying! It did indeed come with masses of bright green avocado speckled with cracked pepper and salt crystals. I always think it’s a good sign when a cafe or restaurant does a simple dish really well, and if you can make something as simple as avocado on toast something to rave about, well, colour me impressed, Lowlands, colour me so.

The garden was still pleasant, but by this point the heat had become overwhelmingly oppressive, so we moved inside to some now-free tables to have a post-food beverage. Mum wanted to try a single-origin coffee, but sadly they’d sold out, so instead went for the ‘Candyman’ blend. Served as a short black, it had a good, thick crema on top. “Well, that’ll keep me going all afternoon,” she said once she’d knocked it back, eyes instantly dilating.

I went with a Chai latte for this second round. I was not as heavily spiced as some other chais I’ve had, but it was nice and smooth, with admirably abundant froth. Would make a very nice before bed beverage, as Bec observed.

Muffin and Bec went with an iced tea each, with a base of green tea, served with mint and stonefruit. Muffin was particularly pleased with it as it wasn’t as sickeningly sweet as some iced teas have a tendency towards, and instead the over-riding flavour was that of the green tea. Another good beverage for a hot day.

Lowlands was an all-round highly pleasant experience, and considering we visited on a extreme-weather day that had the potential to make us all terribly crotchety, the fact that we all left relaxed, cheerful and raving to each other about the food and friendly ambiance should only embolden our recommendation. The staff were lovely and approachable, the surrounds simple yet cute, and I really want to go back and have a rose lemonade in that ace garden, perhaps on a not-so hot day so I can enjoy the flowers properly. Head up to the end of High Street and go enjoy yourselves, you deserve it.

Lowlands

923 High Street, Thornbury

Ph: 9480 1635

http://lowlandsespresso.blogspot.com/

The Woods of Windsor

There are some days when trying to distill an amazing experience down into words is the hardest thing one can try to do. It’s not the same as detailing a negative experience, that is a practice that is all too easy as there are many, many delicious negative words that are far too fun to fling around in a tornado of pique. It is far, far harder, in my estimation, to really nail a positive, amazing experience down into concrete words that ends up satisfying you as a writer. Which is going to make this following post about The Woods of Windsor a very difficult writing task for me indeed.

I had taken note of the space where The Woods of Windsor was to take up residence as it was being constructed, as someone had told me that it was going to be run by the same outfit as Yellow Bird. That caught my interest, and once this glowing recommendation hit Broadsheet, I was in a tizzy. I messaged my work husband Nik (also known as Doctor Ethnic*) with alarming alacrity. “Faux husband and wife date, here, NOW NOW NOW.”

The space is long and dark, a cosy shadowy cavern, with many cute, slightly hipstery touches in terms of design especially focused on rabbit iconography (although if you have phobias involving taxidermy animals, yeah, you might have an episode). There’s seated dining towards the back of the room, but since we strolled in without a reservation (we are shamelessly lax diners), we were seated at the bar area up the front, at a long bench table abutting the windows which open out onto the street.

We started with cocktails, which is of course the correct way to go about things. Nik had a Dark and Stormy, which was a generous serving of rum with ginger ale and mint, cool, direct and refreshing. I like a cocktail that slaps you hard on the back and makes you gasp, and thus went with the Whisky Bang. It achieved that first essential gasp, and gently mellowed out as time wore on and the ice started melting. Very appreciative of the fact that the cocktails are served in tall glasses, it’s nice to have a sinfully alcoholic beverage that lasts throughout the meal.

Anyway, enough of libations, what of food? I had previously read about the zucchini flowers dish, and was so keen I didn’t even really look at the rest of the menu. This anticipation, however, didn’t quite prepare me for what was on the plate. Three neat zucchini flowers placed next each other alternating top to tail, loosely encrusted in a light, delicately thin coating of batter. Each flower was stuffed with a sweet, creamy goats cheese, and underneath each flower head rested an ever so thin slice of beetroot, about the width of a crisp. Sprinkled atop the flowers were some pan-roasted pine nuts, and little green crescents of what I think were pimento olives, as well as a garnish of sprouts. The presentation was so gorgeous to the eye that I hesitated slightly in starting to eat it, as it seemed such a shame to dismantle a piece of art.

But eat I did, and good golly, it was DIVINE. A perfect balance of all those diverse yet complimentary flavours. I must of had a very interesting expression on my face while eating it, because at one point two middle-aged ladies who were walking past caught sight of me and the zucchini flowers, and actually spoke to me through the open window to ask “Is that as good as it looks?” I garbled back “It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten!” with a mouth full of flowers and then kept hoeing in.

Nik ordered the duck dish that was simply described on the menu as “spiced duck breast: quinoa, seeds.” It was quite a lot more than that simple description belies. About four fat medallions of duck breast had been placed on the plate; little brown piles of quinoa were alternated by pools of a bright yellow sauce, probably a hollondaise. “Now, here’s where it gets theatrical,” said the waitress, as she poured a thin jus out of a tiny jug with a flourish over the duck pieces. In the end Nik felt that perhaps the jus wasn’t quite needed, but was otherwise just as enthusiastic over it as I was about the zucchini flowers.

“If I could have got away with licking the plate, I would have,” I told the waiter ruefully when he came to collect our heartily scraped dishes. “Oh, we TOTALLY encourage plate-licking!” he said cheerfully.

We weren’t quite full, so our gazes collectively turned towards a shared dessert. The summer mille feuille was a sweet tower constructed out of discs of crisp, crunchy almond brittle, held together by white chocolate mousse, and layered with raspberries, halved blueberries and cubes of watermelon and cantaloupe, topped with a few violet pansies for an edible, decorative touch. It’s very right to describe this as a summer dessert, it was so light and fresh and felt really cleansing after the amazing, zinging “Oh my there’s tastes everywhere!” excitement of the zucchini flowers.

With middle to high food prices, it’s certainly not the sort of place that you are going to be able to afford eating at every night of the week (though the pricing of the many beverage selections are more than fair). But for a special occasion evening or for those times when you feel the need to indulgently treat yourself to something more gastronomically elegant that your usual fare, The Woods of Windsor has you sorted. And I am going to be trying to find excuses to be indulgent here as often as I can!

The Woods of Windsor

108 Chapel Street, Windsor

Ph: 9512 1900

*He’s not a real doctor, he just plays one on TV.

Ernest V

I love menus that cause me to go into a severe state of indecision, although waiters probably don’t feel the same, banished away constantly with my pleas of “just a few more minutes!” This was the challenge that faced Aimee and I as we poured over the pages of Ernest V’s menu on a very hot Sunday morning.

Ernest V appears like an oasis on the hazy Glenhuntly Road strip in Elsternwick. It’s a cool, relaxing cavern that provided instant relief from the oppressive heat outside, although there is a courtyard out the back if you’re a sun lover. It’s a space that’s clearly inspired by Middle Eastern aesthetics and design, with entire walls covered in beautiful Egyptian tiles, and this Middle Eastern influence permeates the menu as well.

I was so very close to ordering the ful, an Egyptian breakfast dish consisting of fava beans, vegies and hummus, because where else are you going to come across it? But after ages of humming and hahing I ended up being seduced over to the dukkah-encrusted eggs with salad (rocket, radishes, cherry tomatoes, yellow pickled vegetables that may possibly have begun life as capsicums) on a slice of thin, crusty and seedy bread.

The egg yolks were a beautiful rich orange, they would of had to have been free-range eggs, there’s no other way you can get that strength of colour. Perfectly gooey inside. The salad was lovely and crisp – there should be more radishes in things, bring on the radish renaissance! – although I found the pickles to be quite bitter and unpleasant and left most of them untouched (probably not entirely the pickles’ fault, I’m a little funny with pickled foods and am rarely into them). The bread was thinly cut, but still proved a sturdy base for the eggs, and was packed full of seeds, which is the only way to make crusty bread even more delicious! And just how good is dukkah? SO GOOD. Nutty, spicy, crunchy goodness. There were no regrets in this choice all up, it was the most satisfying brekkie I’ve had out in quite a while.

As for beverage, I fell back on my standard choice of earl grey tea, provided at Ernest V from Larsen & Thompson. These guys have started to turn up on tea menus all over town lately, and I hope it continues, they grow and mix good tea! The earl grey has a good solid body to it, and didn’t have any weird aftertastes that a lot of earl greys have a tendency towards. A very satisfying cup, so much that I ordered two pots of it.

Aimee ended up ordering off of the pizza page of the menu and went with the pumpkin and feta pizza. It was “the bomb”, and she was particularly pleased by the taste and texture of the base which was undoubtedly made from scratch.

The staff were unfailing friendly and sweet during our visit (it helps that our waiter had a completely charming smile to boot), and the enduring vibe overall was one of laid back pleasantness. Ernest V is pretty special and I am achingly jealous of Aimee being an Elsternwick local. Having such a place in your backyard is a very fortunate thing indeed.

Ernest V

432 Glenhuntly Road, Elsternwick

Ph: 9523 4322

Axil Coffee Roasters

I do like the excuse to go food exploring in suburbs that I normally rarely visit. So the decision of our brunching group to move our focus from cafes around Melbourne Uni to cafes around Swinburne (wise move, since most of us don’t even go to Melbourne anymore!) was very much welcomed by me, as Hawthorn is a bit of a dark shadow on the map of my foodie knowledge.

Axil Coffee Roasters sits solidly on busy Burwood Road. It is a big, deep space, surfaces all decked out in a palette of dark greens and blacks, with splashes of exposed wood and vertical racks filled with pot plants (some of whom seemed to be struggling in the hot weather). The clientele is eclectic, with the requisite number of students, business folk and even some of Hawthorn’s genteel older guard. Axil clearly ticks a lot of bases for people.

The main base is, obviously, coffee. There’s a crazy amount of bean choices, drip coffee, filter thingies, and probably a whole heap of other crazy coffee options that are completely wasted on me. Overwhelmed by all this coffee new-fanglery, I retreated to the tea menu to see of there was anything to spark my interest. There’s a small selection of teas by Victorian tea company Larsen and Thompson, and I decided to go with the most interesting and unusual option, the white peony tea. While it didn’t have the light orange colouring promised by the menu notes, it had been properly brewed before reaching my table, meaning there were no tea leaves left to stew in the pot and sour the second cup. It was a subtle blend, starting off very quiet yet building up flavour with each sip. It wasn’t quite as floral as I’d expected (though floral notes are definitely present, beware floral loathers), but all in all a very satisfying brew worth trying.

Food-wise, it was a bit hard to single myself down to one dish, but I ended up going with the savoury French toast with spinach, sauteed wild mushrooms and truffled pecorino cheese, plus I added a side of haloumi that came with a lemon wedge. This was a good solid meal, everything was cooked well, the bread of the toast wasn’t soggy and was liberally coated in egg, and I was pleased to see that wild mushrooms meant a variety of mushrooms. I couldn’t help feeling though that, without the inclusion of the haloumi, it was all a touch bland. My suspicions were confirmed by Alison, who had ordered the same without haloumi, and opined that the dish as a whole lacked something. Perhaps next time I’ll order the corn fritters instead, Jess and Kim both had these and they looked colourfully fabulous.

It’s sometimes interesting to see how staff in a place react when things go wrong, rather than experiencing service where everything goes right. Towards the end of our eating, and just when some of us were getting a second beverage, a harried waiter came up to us and apologetically requested whether we would mind moving to a table outside. None of us were quite sure at this stage exactly why we were being asked to move, but we are nothing if not amiable folks and all pottered out to go sit in the sun. Once we were settled the harried waiter returned and explained that someone had taken a booking and not informed the other staff. He was very sorry that we’d had to move (we weren’t! We were in the sunshine!), and insisted on striking the price for all the drinks we’d had. We protested, but he won out, and in the end he not only didn’t charge for drinks but rounded down our bill as well. Crisis well averted, young man, and very happy customers you made in us!

Axil was for the most part an enjoyable place to spend a afternoon eating and chatting happily with friends. I might need to try a few more items on the menu to be entirely sold on the food options, but the beverages are good, the service more than obliging, and it’s just a nice spot to hang out.

Axil Coffee Roasters

322 Burwood Road, Hawthorn

Ph: 9819 0091

http://www.axilcoffee.com.au/

Ladro Greville Street

Shameful confession time: I had never been to EITHER of the Ladros before I received an invitation from Joe to join him at the Prahran location for his birthday dinner. Me, who has such a love for thin-crust pizza. Heavens! This was an oversight I was terribly keen to rectify.

Now, I am going to tackle this particular review a little differently to my normal meandering method. While I loved Ladro’s food with a mad passion, there were several aspects of service that I found problematic. So I’m going to get all my grumps out of the way first before plunging into the delight of the food.

First of all, the waitstaff that we encountered were quite cold in demeanor. The gent in charge of our table was taciturn, unsmiling, and attempted to rush through our ordering in an unpleasantly brusque manner. Other staff were not quite so bad, but there was virtually zero interaction apart from “Your pizza is now in front of you, now WHOOSH! off I go into the night.”

Then there was the wait for food. Now, I am a deeply impatient person, I do not like to wait for anything (reason why you will never see reviews here of any of those places that don’t take reservations and you have to wait for hours to get in. “Two hour wait for tables?! FUCK OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOFF!”). But often waits for food can be alleviated by the quality of your company, and in the case of this Ladro visit I was in extremely good company, so I was happily distracted for a good while. But then that silence descended upon the table – you know exactly what kind – where everyone simultaneously realised that we’d been waiting a very long time for food. In all, we waited 45 minutes before any food reached the table. The space had not even been half-full when we ordered, and we received no word from waiters on whether our orders would be reaching us soon, even when it became obvious that we were all getting restless and muttering, making me think that perhaps this kind of wait is the standard. Disappointing.

Now, here’s the final doozy. Let me detail how you really tick Hayley off in a pizza restaurant: give her a pizza she has to cut up herself. Seriously, can this insistence on giving customers whole, uncut pizzas just die in the arse already? Or at least can we be provided with cutlery that can actually manage the job without causing extreme discomfort? The pointer finger on my fork hand nearly bent over backwards with the pressure of trying to cut through the crust, and I wasn’t the only one in our party nursing very sore hands afterward. Nor was I the only one muttering darkly that the cutlery was exactly the same as what’s provided at Lucky Coq, and at the very least their uncut pizzas are only $4!

Right, I promise that is the last gripe out of the way, now here’s the delicious goodness!

The pizza bases at Ladro are thin. Ever so thin. They crisp at the edges and bubble with air pockets that shatter into slightly charred triangles of crunchy delight. They not only manage to be crispy, but they are also chewy, the kind of satisfying chew that massages your molars. These bases are so damn good that when I was starting to get full I seriously considered scraping off the topping and just hoeing down on the carbs.

But that is not to suggest that the topping was bad, oh no! My boscaiola – flor di latte, porcini, field mushrooms and thyme – was a gorgeously rich spread, with abundant mushrooms and melty, stretchy, pungent cheese.

Indeed, every pizza that reached our table was a beautiful thing to look at. Clare’s potato pizza was all overlapping potato slices with the occasional dot of green in the form of rosemary and basil. Catherine’s salami delivered on it’s promise and was covered in equally-spaced rounds of red salami swimming agreeably in tomato and mozzarella, like an edible polka-dot pillow cover. Schaefer’s puttanesca was undoubtably the prettiest, all full cherry tomatoes and whole black olives perched on top, although Jojo’s gamberi e piselli came close, with big fat prawns surrounded by a fringe of green peas and basil.

Joe and Muffin had the best idea though, in that they shared a boscaiola and a Scout’s pizza (tomato, taleggio, caramelised onion, dressed rocket and parmigiano) between them. It was the best idea because even though these are great tasting pizzas, they are BIG pizzas, and having a single one to yourself does get a little arduous. Both Muffin and Joe expressed their satisfaction in having a bit of variety. So I will definitely be following their example next time.

So even with all my service gripes, I’m keen for there to be a next time? Yep! Ladro provided pizzas that were just as delicious and well-crafted as I had hoped to imagine, and there are plenty of vegetarian options that I am keen to explore (starting with the Scout’s pizza. Food envy!). Although I must admit that I’ll probably try out the Gertrude Street original before heading back to the Prahran location, in the hope that perhaps the level of service northside is a bit more polished.

Ladro

162 Greville Street, Prahran

Ph: 9510 2233

http://www.ladro.com.au/

Fonda

I was a little bit sad to discover that Fonda isn’t named after Henry Fonda. Can you imagine a Henry Fonda cafe? I can, and it’s GLORIOUS. There’s going to be a lot of design features based on 12 Angry Men. People with capital, hook me up, I can make all your Golden Hollywood-themed restaurant ventures come true.

But we are not here to talk of actorly Fondas, we are here to talk about Mexican Fondas. Specifically new Richmond eatery Fonda, which has taken the current Melbourne-wide craze for Mexican food by the horns and is pumping out simple tacos and burritos for rampaging hoards of foodies, all of whom seem to be repeating the phrase “Authentic Mexican!” with scary fervor (anyone else starting to develop a twitch whenever the word ‘authentic’ is used in food criticism? I sure am. Apart from the problematic nature concerning the subjectiveness of a word like ‘authentic’, I’m mostly annoyed that it seems to have become a stand-in for the word ‘good’. Authentic and good aren’t synonyms! And if you use authentic in place of good you sound like a ginormous snob and cause me to want to go eat a cornucopia of homogenized processed crap just to spite you. Because I’m horrible like that).

Anyway, bygones, let us sail onward! Aimee, Lucy, Amelia and I spent a sunny lunch at Fonda sitting at one of their outside tables. We were quite lucky to get a table at all, as the place seems to be constantly packed. Interaction with staff is kept to a minimum, there is no table service and you have to order at the inside counter (meaning that you have to make sure one of your party is camped on your table at all times, lest a desperate group of hipsters snatch it away from you while you’re looking for a menu).

Lucy and I got the vegetarian tacos, all green with cubes of zucchini and squash, scads of peas and a drizzly sauce of unknown herby provenance with a very slight presence of jalapeno, dusted with a delicate frizz of grated ricotta. We were fascinated by the texture of the soft corn taco shells, all cross-hatched and rough in our hands. They were clearly comprised of fresh produce, and came very quickly out of the kitchen, which is always heartening. I would think that anyone expecting ZING! from their tacos may find these examples a touch boring. But Lucy and I both found them to be incredibly tasty!

Amelia went with a fish taco, which had little crumbed strips of battered fish in them, which was a bit of an impressive sight. Like Lucy and myself, she thought everything was fresh and tasty, but baulked at the small size, especially in consideration of the price ($5 for veggie, $6 for fish). They certainly weren’t comparable in size to, say, Mamasita’s tacos, which are larger at around the same price, although I’m of the opinion that, taste-wise, Fonda dishes up the better taco (THAT’S RIGHT, I’M JUST FULL OF UNPOPULAR OPINIONS TODAY).

Indeed, the twin issues of portion size and price were collectively our biggest quibbles with Fonda. We’re not denying the quality of what is being served up, it just seems like everything should be a touch cheaper based on the size of portions. The tacos are quite titchy in particular, and even the more expensive and, one would assume, more filling burritos have small stage presence. Aimee’s chicken burrito (around $12.50-$14 from vague memory) had clearly high quality ingredients, yet seemed dwarfed by the plate it came on. Even the chips we ordered, covered in a thick and delightfully spice-laden chipotle sauce (seriously, that sauce is a winner, Lord of the Fries should poach it), were deemed to be of too small portions by Aimee and Amelia, considering their $5 price tag.

The only thing I personally felt to be a steal price-wise was the $3.50 charred corn or, as it should be called, corn-onna-stick. I LOVE CORN-ONNA-STICK. Half a cob of corn lightly basted in a slightly chilli-ish sauce, grilled and then sprinkled in more of the fluffy shaved ricotta. I probably could have eaten about ten of these quite happily. MORE FOOD ON STICKS PLEASE.

I wandered back to Fonda for a second visit last night with Rob to experience what their take-away service is like. While the food was much slower this time to make it out of the kitchen (I think we waited around 20-25 minutes, though we were told that there was to be a 15 minute wait initially), the staff seemed measurably more cheery and personable than on my first visit, and my veggie tacos were just as good the second time round. Rob was so pleased he could get a burrito without cheese (Rob has cheese problems. I know, it’s a sad affliction) that I think he was pretty happy on that score alone. Wait aside, I think take-away is probably the best way to experience Fonda if you find the space a little too bustling.

So, in conclusion, Fonda’s portions are on the small side and you’d probably be quite right to question the price of things, and it’s too frantic a place to truly relax in, but the food is fresh, competent and, sometimes, fast. Most importantly, it tastes pretty damn fine! And I’ll forgive a hell of a lot of sins if in the end the food is delicious. It’s definitely worth trying out at least once if you’re curious, and if you end up not being too keen, well, they’ve got half of Melbourne trying to get through the doors, they’re not going to notice if you slink sheepishly away.

Fonda

248 Swan Street, Richmond

Ph: 9429 0085

The Pint of Milk

Zooming over the Westgate Bridge in Jess’s Mini Cooper, I was in a state of complete over-excitement and was prattling away, as I am wont to do. “Look at all the ships! I wonder where they’re going…”

“I think you have a disturbing fascination with modes of transportation,” opined Jess.

“You like airports far too much, for instance,” Kim added in support.

This is all far too true, I have a great interest in planes, trains and automobiles. Clearly I like things that can be used to go exploring. I was particularly excited on this day that we were going to be exploring the surrounds of Williamstown (where I had never been before! How remiss), on the behest of our friend Claire, who totally rocks that hood. Central to our explorations was to be a lunch at The Pint of Milk in Newport.

Situated in a building that clearly used to be an old milk bar, The Pint of Milk is pleasingly designed. There’s a lot of distressed wood beam surfaces and walls, tasteful and sparing floral arrangements, and well-spaced tables. The staff are all smiles and the menu is intriguingly tantalising. However, as soon as my eyes lighted on the word ‘bagel’, and the waitress cheerily told me that of course I could have it without bacon, I knew what I was having. The bagel indeed turned out to be so popular that everyone on the table bar Claire ended up ordering it.

The bagel: buttery sauteed baby spinach with two poached eggs, covered in a fat pool of hollandaise sauce and a sprinkling of sprouts on a white bagel. You might have noticed that this contains some of my very favourite things! The spinach was perfectly done, the hollandaise good and buttery yellow, the poached eggs all properly gooey. The only negative was that the eggs themselves had been poached in vinegar and left a slightly unpleasant taste of vinegar on the eggs. Most long time readers will know that this is a super Hayley no-no, because I always feel that vinegary eggs off-balances the hollandaise. But really the acidic taste was only slight, so you’re only getting a tiny finger shaking admonishment, Pint of Milk!

Beverage-wise I went with a chai tea, served black in a silver tea pot, and they give you a squeezy bottle of honey as a sweetener. I have never had non-milky chai before, and I have to say I was quite pleased with it. The spices come through a lot more clearly, and it is a very serious, contemplative beverage… until you drown it in honey like I did because squeezy bottles of condiments get me childishly overexcited.

Sadly I was too full to get stuck into what looked like a very promising selection of cakes (icing two inches thick! That’s how it’s done!) but this simply gives me impetus to return. If Williamstown and its surrounds contain more cafes and eateries the caliber of The Pint of Milk, I am going to have to don my explorer’s cap and head over the bridge more often. Keep the pioneering spirit alive!

The Pint of Milk

19 North Road, Newport

Ph: 9391 6641

Northern Soul

I am a total sucker for owls. Most birds in general send me into paroxysms of delight (quick bird-nerd squee: there were spotted pardalotes in my garden this spring! They are normally so hard to see! Yet there they were, hopping around our maples like tiny wee brown and orange lights, peeping away. So cute! End bird squee). But owls are my favourite. So seeing a cheery brown owl emblazoned on Northern Soul’s front window as Muffin and I strolled through the door immediately raised my hopes that this little place would deliver something special.

It is a small yet very neatly designed place, with gorgeous wallpaper and cheery staff. The menu is nice and varied, with so many veggie options that my head was quite comprehensibly spun.

You don’t win friends with salad, so the adage goes, but I would counter that you would totally win friends with Northern Soul’s udon salad. Udon noodles and an array of fresh crunchy greens and seeds (pine, pumpkin and a few others I failed to identify) are complimented with wasabi mayo. The ratio of solid ingredients to mayo was a tops one, nothing was too overly drenched, although if you’re expecting a hefty wasabi kick you will be dissatisfied, this is quite mild, which was okay with me. Deliciously pleasing!

Muffin had the vegan baked beans on pumpkin bread, with a side of cute tiny sauteed button mushrooms. She felt that the bread wasn’t as pumpkiny as she’d expected, but found nothing to fault in the beans, which were both hearty and tasty. The little mushrooms were bite-sized morsels of goodness, as one would expect from vegetables happily united together in butter.

The tea is provided by Leaf Herbal Tea; apparently Northern Soul is the only cafe in Melbourne that stocks this particular tea brand. I was certainly pretty impressed by my earl grey, which featured American bergamot (which, plant-nerd time, isn’t actually botanically related to regular bergamot, but is so strongly reminiscent of the flavour and scent of bergamot that settlers gave it the same name). I also had a lovely pot of chai tea which was popping with spices. I really want to explore this tea menu, it’s so heartening when places do tea properly!

We kept peering at the desserts cabinet that was just across from us, and could not help but be tempted by all the attractive little cakes. Muffin had a ‘daisy cake’, a little vanilla cupcake with slight coffee-ish flavoured icing with marshmallows on top.  I had been eying off the impressive-looking passionfruit meringue cupcakes since I arrived. Topped with a swirl of meringue, the cupcake itself was a bright rich yellow, strongly passionfruit flavoured and hid a golden treasure inside with a centre of passionfruit curd.  It’s always a treat when food tastes as good as it looks!

Northern Soul is pleasingly fabulous, and we weren’t the only ones discovering it; the little place filled up very quickly while we were eating (apparently it’s quite the drawcard for lunch before Women of Letters!). I’m certainly very keen to go back. Everything is nice and cheap, most dishes are under $10, so you can have yourself a good filling lunch without fuss. Although make sure you bring lots of cash as there aren’t any card facilities.

Northern Soul

843 High Street, Thornbury

Ph: 9480 2333

http://www.northernsoulcafe.com/

L’atelier de Monsieur Truffe

Having been thwarted on our first attempted visit to L’atelier de Monsieur Truffe, Jess, Kim and I were determined not to let it slip out of our grasp. We returned the week after our abortive effort, this time ensuring we went on a day it was actually open!

L’atelier de Monsieur Truffe is quite nondescript from the outside; the only indication that there may be something interesting inside the warehouse exterior is the bright red front door. But through the red door is an enormous, airy room that is all industrial clean lines and high ceilings, dotted with well-spaced tables. One side of the space has been partitioned, and behind it you can see some serious baking machinery, giving you hope that these people clearly mean business about their sweets.

I definitely mean business about sweets, which meant that even though there were some intriguing savoury options on offer, I went straight for what would make my dentist cry. The raisin bread with coffee mascarpone was two slices of decadent bliss, with the pleasingly spiced hot bread providing a nice thick support for the mascarpone, which was very obliging in melting slightly, creating a sweet coffee, cheesy goo.

The best part about flipping through the Monsieur Truffe menu was discovering that there is a whole page devoted to tea. A WHOLE PAGE! So many options, my little tea-loving heart nearly gave out right there and then, but I pulled myself together and decided on the Russian caravan blend. Served in a very cute stackable teapot and cup set, it had that strong dank smell that I love (but tends to put most other people in mind of being drowned in a peat bog forever). Definitely an acquired taste, but I was so happy to see it and so many other more niche tea varieties available.

My companions were more sensible than me and started off savoury. Jess had the pea and mint omelette, which looked and tasted like spring on a plate. Kim had an Italian-style bread salad, with chunks of crusty bread which had been soaked in olive oil and tomato juice, slices of what looked like proper slabs of artisan bacon, dark green fronds of basil and a fat poached egg that oozed all over everything.

The sweet parade continued when we collectively shared two croissants with homemade, dribbly raspberry jam and the house chocolate sauce, which was like the version of Nutella you might taste in your dreams. We particularly wanted to try a chocolate croissant, but as I was talking to the staff up at the counter to find out about all the desserts in the cabinet, the last one was whisked away from under my nose!

Jess was particularly aggrieved by this loss, she had her heart set on a chocolate croissant, and secretly took her rage out on the gentleman sitting with his friend on the benches across from us who had ordered it. “Look at that bastard. Eating MY chocolate croissant.” Much glaring ensued. But while I grieved the loss of chocolate, I was really enormously pleased with our plain croissants, all flaky and crispy like all perfect pastries should be.

Continued sweets required more hot beverages. The 70% cocoa hot chocolate that I had with the croissant was probably, and I know you’re all used to my hyperbole but I’m saying this with the utmost sincerity, one of the best hot chocolates I’ve ever had. If you love the bitter tang of really good dark chocolate this should be your drink of choice, it manages to be both bitter and creamy, and most importantly doesn’t leave you with a sickly over-chocolated tummy ache.

The staff are SUPER CHARMING, as you would expect staff with such delightful French accents to be. The best moment was when we had finished our croissants and were happily picking at the buttery flakes left on our plates, and the waiter said to us, “Ah yes, I will not take your plates just yet, because that is the true pleasure of the croissant, to eat all the tiny flakes.” TRUE FACTS.

Most impressively of all, my entire meal (so toast, croissant, tea and hot chocolate) came to just under $20! That is an obscene steal for the quality of produce! So go through the red door, so many sweet delights await you in the beyond.

L’atelier de Monsieur Truffe

351 Lygon Street, Brunswick East

Ph: 9380 4915

http://monsieurtruffe.wordpress.com/