The Auction Rooms

03-107 Errol Street, North Melbourne VIC 3051 (03) 9326 7749
www.auctionroomscafe.com.au

Remember how I was saying, I enjoy going out for breakfast and finding something slightly out of the norm? Well, the Auction Rooms in North Melbourne have done it, with my favourite breakfast in quite a while!

What I had here was basically a Panzanella Salad with delicious Sardine fillets. There were large chunks of toasted torn bread to soak up juices, capers, tomato and basil.


You could argue that this is more of a lunch dish, but hey, who doesn't love sardines on toast for breakfast?! That's basically what this is, with a few cheeky additions.

Oh, and how cool are The Auction Rooms? They have a great little menu, great setup and have lots of keen followers, so make sure you get in early!

Hellenic Republic

434 Lygon St Brunswick VIC 3055 - (03) 9381 1222
www.hellenicrepublic.com.au

I've eaten breakfasts all over the country, from Darwin, to Byron Bay, down to Sydney, to Melbourne, all the way down to Hobart. So, I like to think I know what makes a good breakfast. To me it's something a little out of the norm, something that is done different to the rest of the cafes around town. Living in Melbourne, every place thinks they do Melbourne's best breakfast, when infact all they are serving up is some average eggs and overcooked bacon.

This is why I was happy to see Masterchef Australia's very own judge serving up Spanikopita with poached eggs! Never seen that on a menu before and never thought that I would order it, but I'll try anything once. Apparently, however Mr George Calombares, isn't a fan of us food bloggers. Well, that's what he was telling the crowds at the Melbourne Food and Wine festival. Well George, just like you have opinions about what people cook on Masterchef, we have opinions about what you cook in your restaurants. That's only fair, isn't it?



Now, whilst I'm a huge advocate of George's other restaurant - The Press Club I'm not loving the breakfasts at his new joint - Hellenic Republic. Sure the Spanikopita with eggs is different, so too are the over cooked poached eggs that go with it. One of the poached eggs was almost over cooked and the other was WAY over cooked. The spanikopita, however, was delicious! Salty, soft inside, crunchy outside, a little slippery on the tongue from the spinach or silverbeet.



My mate had Ouzo cured Salmon with scrambled eggs - which from my side of the table, didn't appear to be over cooked and he said were fantastic!


Ok, so mistakes happen, it's an over-cooked egg - not the end of the world, so a few weeks later, I return to try something new.

On my next visit i try the smoked lamb sandwich with greek cheese and a fried egg. Yaay! Something a little different again! ...or not. My egg was cooked solid AGAIN! In this photo you can see a shiny yellow yolk, but below that - it was hard, pale and over cooked. As Darren Hinch would say - SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!!



Is the first thing you learn at chef's school, not how to cook an egg? Shouldn't you already know that before you go to chef's school? I can cook a fried egg and a poached egg with my eyes closed.

I have heard from a few people though, that the lunches and dinners at Hellenic Republic are far better than their breakfasts. Do I dare visit there again and hope for third time lucky?

So George, I guess I haven't helped you and your dislike for us food bloggers, but I tell it like I see it, and the photos here prove that I could have played table tennis with those poached eggs.

Brandon Hotel, Carlton North

237 Station St (Cnr Lee St), Carlton North 3054 VIC
http://www.brandonhotel.com.au

I love the idea of pub meals, especially in the depths of winter. However, usually you hear about pub meals in Melbourne which a supposedly fantastic, only to find out they are over priced italian meals or Bangers and Mash. Although, their new chef - Jane Molloy is from The Grand Hotel in Richmond - one of those over priced italian pubs.

So, when some friends of mine invited me to try out the Brandon in Carlton North, I was somewhat skeptical about what would be on offer. However, the Brandon Hotel is within walking distance from my house so I thought it would be worth a shot.

The front bar is your typical local pub, with sticky carpet and old bar stools, nothing fancy here.
However, the dining room appears to have undergone a renovation in the last few years. It's quite large with an open fire place, white table linen and vases of fresh flowers.

The menu here absolutely screams warm me up! When you get out those winter cook books, this is exactly the sort of food you look for to make on a Sunday when it's cold and rainy outside.

I had the Roast duck breast with braised red cabbage & parsnip puree $30. The duck was beautifully cooked and not too fatty. The parsnip puree was deliciously creamy and (juniper berry?) Jus, was perfect over the top.



The Bouillabaisse with char grilled ciabbata $26 looked amazing, however my friend would have probably preferred that the prawn heads were removed before serving. They're great for flavour - but not everyone likes heads on their plate.



Our other guests both had the Navarin of Lamb with glazed root vegetables & mash $28, which was fantastic. The lamb was soft and tasty, with a large serving of mash on the side.


Nothing fancy here, just good, honest pub grub, the sort of stuff Gordon Ramsay tries to get all those hopeless restaurants to make on that TV show. The food here isn't cheap, but for it's quality I would not say it's over priced either. Also, if you don't want to spend $30 each on a mid week meal, you can also eat a good old parma in the front bar and other pub standards for about half that.

We will definately be back to visit the Brandon, but I suspect by the time we get back there, the rest of Melbourne may have discovered Carlton North's little secret.

Rathdowne Street Food Store

617 Rathdowne St, Carlton North VIC

I've been meaning to check out Rathdowne Street Food Store for years, but it seems that you have to make a booking most weekends and apart from very special occasions, I refuse to make a breakfast booking. However, this weekend, my friends were eager to try RSFS, so they made the booking.

It's a small cafe, which is definately busy - we can see why we need to book. However, you would think if you booked in advance, you wouldn't get the table near the door - especially on a chilly winter Melbourne morning. The room is full of people that look like off duty doctors, lawyers, and business people. This seems to be Yuppy Central. The menu is a massive breakfast menu and I'm suprised there's such a big choice.

I decide to go with the special breakfast, which is Scrambled Eggs, with Basil, fetta, Smoked Salmon and tomato. By reading the menu, I probably stupidly assumed that all the ingredients would be served seperately. However, the scrambled eggs were cooked with all these ingredients mixed in. I am not a fan of this at all. Firstly, i don't believe that you can cook the eggs properly when you have mixed through all these ingredients. Secondly, the ingredients always seem to bleed out their liquid when served like this and you end up with that puddle of juice at the bottom of the plate. You can see this in the photo below.


It was indeed a generous serve for breakfast and none of us that ordered the special, managed to finish the plate of food. The eggs were overcooked and every mouthful had too many flavours and was almost sickly. RSFS could probably do with shortening their menu and living by the mantra of 'do a few things and do them well' rather than cook everything and do a less than average job.

I'd heard rave reviews about this place for years, however maybe I missed my chance at visiting, when they were sending out good food. Or maybe we visited on a bad morning. Or maybe their special breakfast, just wasn't that special.

To top a poor breakfast off, we ordered a second round of coffees, which after 20 minutes we had to chase up. Turned out they'd forgotten about them. We told them not to bother and paid our bill and left.

Rathdowne Street Food Store - not worth making a booking.

Masterchef Australia, Audition Dish - Chinese Style Octopus Carpaccio with Chilli and Snowpea Tendrils (served with Green Nam Jim)

This is a little dish is my investion. I came up with for the auditions for Australia's Masterchef. The judges loved the dish... however, it seems that the executive producers didn't love me, which is why I'm not on TV as we speak. Oh well, there is always next year.

This dish in influenced by two of my favourite chefs. Teague Ezard, who often cooks with a masterstock and loves his asian flavours. It's also influenced by an Italian octopus dish, which I had at Fifteen, Melbourne, which was handmade by the one and only Jamie Oliver. This dish is basically a fusion of both.

When you purchase your octopus, see if you can get octopus which has been in the tenderiser for a few hours. It's basically rolled around in a dryer like drum with some weights and beaten until it's tenderised.



1 Large Octopus, tentacles only.

Masterstock:
3 litres (6 pints) water
250 ml (9 fl oz) light soy sauce
500 ml (16 fl oz) Shao Xing wine (Chinese cooking wine)
200 g (7 oz) yellow rock sugar
40 g (11⁄2 oz) fresh ginger
5 cloves garlic
3 cardamom pods
2 cinnamon sticks
10 g (2 teaspoons) dried mandarin peel

Spices for bag
4 whole cloves
4 star anise
1 teaspoon sichuan pepper
1 teaspoon licorice root
1 teaspoon dried chilli
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds

Garnish
Finely chopped chillies
Snow pea tendrils
Finely sliced kaffir lime leaves

Place all of the spices into a piece of muslin cloth and tie into a bag. Put the spice bag along with all of the other ingredients in a large stockpot and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for 10 –15 minutes to allow the spices to infuse.

Once your masterstock is ready, bring it to a simmer and place your whole octopus in the pot. Cook the octopus for 3 hours on a gentle simmer. Cooking for this time will help make the octopus as tender as possible and also help the octopus to release it's gelatine like properties. This is important later.
Allow the octopus to cool in the stock, until it's cool enough to handle. Gently take the octopus out of the stock and lay the tentacles along side each other on top of a long strip of glad wrap.
VERY tightly roll up the tentacles in the glad wrap to make a big long sausage. Once tightly wrapped up, help the octopus sausage stay tight by wrapping some elastic bands around the sausage. This will help the octopus keep it's shape when sliced. Place the sausage in the fridge to allow the octopus to set overnight.
The next day you can remove the octopus from the fridge, also removing the elastic bands and glad wrap. The Octopus should hold it's sausage shape while it's cold, so you need to work very quickly and carefully.
With a extremely sharp knife, thinly slice the octopus and place each slice on a plate. This is where you will see the beautiful pattern that tentacles make.

Serve the Octopus with a Thai Green Nam Jim dipping sauce.

Red Spice Road

27 McKillop Street, Melbourne Ph: 9603 1601

Does anyone really know where in Melbourne, McKillop Street is? I didn't, until I discovered Red Spice Road. Now I believe they should rename the entire street - Red Spice Road. Seriously! The food here is THAT good. I visited here on a recommendation from a friend and have been back many times since. The food here is brilliantly fresh, tasty, vibrant and of course- spicy!


Red Spice Road is like a cross between, Longrain and Gingerboy, but you can leave there with money in your pocket and your tummy is much more satisfied.



You can order, of course, from the a la carte menu, which is good value, but you cannot go past the lunch or dinner banquets, which are UNBELIEVABLE value! At lunchtime you can have an appetiser plus 5 mains for $25 or at dinner you can have 7 courses, plus dessert for $50! My tip is though... don't plan on completely finishing every course, because it's most likely that you're going to end up, very, very full!



The dinner banquet consists of:

• betel leaf with spanner crab, chicken, chilli and kaffir lime
• oyster with cucumber, green chilli, shallot and salmon roe
  
• crispy five spice quail with jicama, shiso, watercress,
  cucumber salad
• shredded chicken, pomelo, coconut, mint salad
• pork belly with chilli caramel, apple slaw and black vinegar
• beef cheeks with spiced star anise sauce, mushrooms &
  viet mint, bean sprout salad
• wild barramundi with mushrooms, coriander, sugar
  peas and spicy coconut broth

• steamed jasmine rice
  
  
• mango brulee with coconut ice cream
  
  
  

The food here I believe is similar to that of Longrain, but I believe is a hell of a lot more tasty. I think that Longrain bases their dishes on heat, lime and more heat. At Red Spice Road, the spices, the fresh herbs, the sweet palm sugar and wonderful textures are in each and every dish.
The stand out dish, is by far the pork belly, which is crispy on the outside and wonderfully soft on the inside, with just the right amount of fat in there. The dressing can be a little too sweet, but the acidity of the shredded green apple helps to cut through the sweetness and the richness of the pork.

My other fave was the beef cheeks, which are so tender, they literally melt in your mouth.



On the day of your visit, just make sure you skip at least 1 or 2 meals, so you can enjoy the huge banquet that is Red Spice Road.

I'm BAAACK!!

Well, I hope at least by me writing that I'm back, I'll start to write up all the posts that I haven't got around to for months!! I've still been eating out and cooking as much as I ever have - I just haven't had a chance to get to all the photos and writing them up.
I've also been concentrating on attempting to start up my photography career and also investigating opening a cafe. Unfortunately, the money situation doesn't allow for a cafe just yet... so it looks like I'm a part time photographer! I even have a few weddings coming up - how excitement!

Stay tuned!!

I want to link to your blog!

Hey everybody.
I haven't updated my blogroll for over a year now and I know there are lots more wonderful Melbourne Food blogs around these days. So, if you would like your Melbourne food blog to be added to my blogroll, please just leave your details and blog address in a comment on this post and I'll add you to my links.

Also, if you're an international blog and have linked to my page, also let me know and I'll add you too!

The Breakfast Club

206 St Georges Road, Northcote, 3070. Phone 0450 581 494

I did see the movie a long time ago, although I wasn't one of those people that fell in love with it. I was more of your Karate Kid, kind of guy. A movie about detention, just didn't appeal to me. What does appeal to me however, is good food and the cafe named after the movie does just this.

The Breakfast Club cafe on busy St George's Rd is small. Very small. There's barely room to stretch out your legs, but there's just enough room for my tummy to expand after eating their yummy food. The music is grungey rock, the coffee machine is making itself heard, the ordering is done at the counter. Although, the place is so small you could just tell the girl behind the counter from your seat what you're after.

No printed menus. I hate this. So annoying. Everyone seems to be doing it these days. Is it an effort to become environmentally concious, cool, or just cutting costs? Lucky me, chose a seat directly under the blackboard, so i almost had to lie horizontally backwards to read it.

The menu is quirky, some other items that looked interesting was the Bananarama - banana, cream cheese, cinnamon and honey on sourdough toast and Nutella if you like. There was also the Ringwald, a brie and quince paste melt with basil on sourdough toast. Yummy

I ordered the Bircher Muesli- Oats, thick yoghurt, grated granny smith, toasted coconut, hazlenuts all drizzled with sweet honey. Just the thing I needed after my morning run.

The English Breakfast tea, comes served in an old fashioned tea pot complete with Nanna's tea cosy. While tea cosy's are cute - it's slightly embarressing for a single guy, flying solo for breakfast, drinks his tea with a lovely tea cosy.

The staff are pleasant, but also seem about as excited to be at work on a Sunday as any of us would be. Still, a smile would be nice. The Breakfast Club is busy and seems to be well liked by the locals... I can see why. I'd go back, just maybe next time, I wouldn't sit so close to the menu and i'd probably order the Bananarama and my tea minus the cosy.

Shire

69 Victoria St, Fitzroy Ph 9417 3788

A frustrated morning of wandering to and from my favourite Fitzroy cafes only to find they're full and there's a wait on a table. I was flying solo that morning and still couldn't find a seat. It was the day after Grand Final day and I had left it too late to go out for breakfast. If you go out, usually before 10am, usually you can avoid the tourists from the 'burbs and get a table. Then I remembered a place a friend recommended to me, just off Brunswick St, in a new trendy apartment block. The cafe is called Shire.

It was the day after Grand Final day and the place was full of hungover trendies, looking a little worse for wear, telling tales of Grand Final night drunkeness. But Shire didn't disappoint. They have chairs and tables in nooks all over the place, so a table for one it was. The room is suprisingly spacious and cosy at the same time.

The breakfast menu is large- spanning two pages. Organic sourdough, free range googies, omlettes and muesli all look attractive. However, I think most of the people already there were ordering the greasiest breakfast they could find.


I went with boring, old eggs benedict (12.90). Only it wasn't boring. Well, it was your standard eggs benedict, but it was delicious! My only problem with it, was that there was a slight taste of vinegar - I'm not sure if this was the eggs - from the poaching liquid (in case you don't know, vinegar helps the whites set nicely), but it could also have been in the sauce. But I'm probably being a bit picky here. It really was tasty. I usually don't order eggs benedict - that much butter in the morning always makes me feel a bit queezy, but not this time! Nicely done! I liked them so much, I ordered them again, the next time I went back.

Service at Shire is nice and friendly and very prompt, no hassles with waiting too long for my food or tea, or anything like that. All in all, a very nice place and one that I'm glad I got a seat at.
Did I mention their floor is made from an old bowling alley? Now all you trendies and hipsters can have an excuse to wear your $300 Campers bowling shoes to breakfast.

Pearl Cafe

599 Church St, Richmond Ph 03 9427 1307 - Website

Wikipedia says that disappointment is the feeling of dissatisfaction that follows the failure of expectations to manifest.

Never have I been as disappointed as when I visited Pearl Cafe.

I had been waiting months for Pearl Cafe to open, as apparently they had lots of problems with opening, so it was delayed for quite some time after the originally announced date of opening.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, Pearl restaurant, it's in my top 3 favourite Melbourne restaurants, so with the news of Pearl Cafe opening and the return of their famous breakfasts, it's fair to say that I was excited!

The first time I visited Pearl Cafe for breakfast, I was instantly hit with disappointment and I hadn't even been served my meal yet. It turns out that they stop serving breakfast at 11am and we arrived right on 11! So at 11am, we had to order from the lunch menu. What is this, McDonalds? What sort of place in inner city Melbourne, especially one as respected as Pearl, doesn't serve all day breakfast - or at least breakfast until 2 or 3? I think the reason behind this, is the fact that as far as I'm aware, most of the food is prepared down the road at the actual Pearl restaurant and just headed onsite at the cafe. I know this because I saw a guy wheeling a tray of coddled eggs down the street as I was leaving.

So, that day I ended up ordering a somewhat dry and very average Macaroni and Cheese for what I guess you would call brunch. If it was my cafe, I wouldn't be putting this on the menu, if it was served everyday like this. Unless, I just got it on a bad day.

A few weeks later I returned (early this time!) for breakfast. At the Pearl restaurant, when they used to serve breakfast, they used to serve this amazing coddled egg on a cube of toasted bread, with Y.V. Salmon Roe. Delicious. So, when I saw coddled eggs on the menu again - I was quick to order. There are a few different options of Coddled Eggs on the menu, I went with the Coddled Eggs with wild and picked mushrooms.


The eggs were delivered tome at my seat at the big communal table in a little ceramic pot used especially for egg coddling. Let me describe the eggs to you. On top, they were still clear and very raw. At the bottom they were very overcooked and solid. Amongst the dry and uncooked egg was a single field mushroom - which could have very well have been handpicked from Coles down the road. There were no wild mushroom in my coddled eggs! The person I was with, couldn't believe I was actually eating what I was served. You know what? Thinking about it now, either can I.

If the food is always this bad coming out of this place - this is going to tarnish Pearl's good name - it has to. If people go there to try the cheaper version before they try the real thing - they're definately not going to try the real thing - i know I wouldn't have.

Oh, another thing - their tea strainers are woven like a little cane basket, they look very nifty, but they don't strain anything!! There are gaps in the weaving and your tea leaves run through. As Rove would say.... What the??

ICI

359 Napier St Fitzroy, VIC 3065 (03) 9417 2274

What do you get when you cross decent food with possibly the slowest and least attentive service I've seen to date in Melbourne? ICI, that's what.
I've lived in Fitzroy for the last 6 years - just around the corner from ICI and somehow I've successfully managed to avoid visiting this place for that whole time. From outside there's nothing inviting about it- a few seats outside and a very small cafe inside, with again very few seats.
There are always people at ICI though, which is apparently a popular haunt for the locals.
Unfortunately for us, my mate wanted to give ICI a go last weekend and offered to pay for my breakfast, so who was I to complain?
No free tables inside or outside. So, we were forced to be those annoying people that stand around watching other people eat, waiting for them to leave. 10 minutes later we got a seat outside. Another 10 minutes later, the waitress decided she was going to finally clean our table of the last people's mess.
Another 10 minutes later a waiter appeared to take our drink orders and advised us, we'd need to go inside to look at the blackboard for the menu. How hard is it to print up some paper menus for people sitting outside? Damn Fitzroy hippies, not wanting to waste paper!
15 minutes after we ordered, one of my friend's Scrambled eggs and toast arrived - this was obviously first, because it was easiest and didn't have any sides like the rest of us.
It wasn't for another 10 minutes at least before the rest of our breakfasts arrived. This is poor form for any cafe or restaurant. Everyone should be served together in my book.
Presentation obviously isn't a factor at ICI, everything is banged on the plate with minimal care and it seems to barely fit on the plate.

Apart from all that - the food is actually half decent. The eggs were nicely poached, the tomato chilli jam had a nice kick and the bacon tasted like bacon.
If you're sitting outside, also watch for the seeds from the trees above blowing into your food. It happened to us, not very cool, but I guess there's not much the cafe can do about it. There's plenty they can do about their service though. Attempting to order more drinks when we finished our food proved hopeless.
If you want to lounge around in the back streets of Fitzroy and act like a local - there are better places to do it than ICI, I'd suggest Minlokal, just around the corner.

Seared Scallops with Spicy Carrot Fritters and Yoghurt Lime Dressing

With the nice weather suddenly coming back to town, I thought it was time for an interesting lighter lunch, full of flavour. i found this recipe on a BBC website from the UK. It's actually a Bill Granger though - the king of lightness and simplicity (I'm talking about his food, of course!)
This is a really simple recipe and you don't need to be an amazing cook to whip this one together in no time. My only tip would be to make sure you only cook the scallops for 1 minute on each side on a hot frypan. Any longer and you will overcook them - making them chewy.

Carrot Fritters:
60g plain flour
125ml soda water
1 egg, lightly beaten
¼ tsp ground cumin
¼ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp turmeric
1 tsp sea salt
1 small red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped
235g grated carrot
8 spring onions, finely sliced
25g chopped coriander
60ml vegetable oil

For Scallops:
12 medium-sized scallops, roe removed
2 tbsp olive oil
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
watercress, to serve

For Yoghurt Dressing:
125g plain yoghurt
1 tbs lime juice
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 tbs olive oil

Method:
1. Place the flour, soda water, egg, cumin, coriander, turmeric and salt in a bowl and mix well. Add the chilli, carrot, spring onion and coriander and stir to combine.
2. Heat frying pan, add oil & heat until hot. Cooking in batches, add two tablespoons of batter per fritter and cook for two minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Cook the remaining fritter batter, adding extra oil if necessary. Place the fritters on an ovenproof plate lined with paper towels and keep warm.
3. Place the scallops in a bowl, add olive oil, season with salt and pepper and stir to combine. Heat a non-stick frying pan over a medium-to-high heat and cook the scallops for no more than one minute on each side.
4. For the yoghurt dressing, place all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk to combine.
5. Place three carrot fritters on each plate, top with the watercress and scallops and drizzle with the yoghurt dressing. Season with pepper and serve.