Mao's

263 Brunswick St, Fitzroy; 03 9419 1919

The visual impact of this Brunswick Streeter is immediate and effecting. At the same time, however, it seems muted and perfectly suited. That's why architectural firm Six Degrees has the reputation it does for creating memorable and inspired spaces. The restaurant feels undoubtedly Chinese: its namesake adorns the wall in a vivid portrait, tea-sets sit atop partitions between the tables, and the cushioned bench seat is embroidered with Chinese characters - but this is no Chinese takeaway.

The sweet and sour pork and honey lemon chicken familiar to suburban Chinese diners the western world over is Cantonese cuisine. At Mao's, the regional fare on offer is Hunanese. Seafood features strongly on the menu, as do pork and duck. Eggplant seems to be the vegetable of choice for the dishes sans meat.

Our vegetarian selection, however, was limited to spring rolls. The entree consists of two pieces, but they are of a size that makes them worth at least double the smaller variety (compare a recent serve at Thaila Thai). I liked that you could see the pointy end of the (presumably very recently) rolled wrapper. There was no wasted space inside: each roll was dense with Chinese mushrooms, cabbage, sweet potato (noted as 'yam' on the menu) and vegetables, which meant you hit the peppery filling as the flaky pastry dissolved on your tongue. The accompanying soy sauce was gratifyingly thick and clung to the rolls.

Four pieces of spicy calamari arrived atop sliced chillies, onions and mixed lettuce leaves. The calamari meat was wonderfully firm. The batter was quite a thick, crispy one; I prefer calamari in a lighter batter, but on this occasion it filled out the entree very well.

The seafood section of the menu looked very promising, and it supplied my choice of main: claypot king prawns with shallots, garlic, cinnamon and nutmeg. Shallots and garlic are common ingredients in Hunanese cooking, and they were prominent in this dish too: alongside jumbo prawns came quarter and half cloves of garlic. I love the stuff enough to always be happy to be able to see it in a dish! There were at least five king prawns, unshelled and (in at least one instance) unveined; so it was messy-finger time. The menu mentioned 'a touch' of cinnamon and nutmeg, and these sweeter spices certainly didn't imprint on the dish too strongly.

Why go past a dish described on the menu as Chairman Mao's favourite, in a restaurant bearing his name and in which he smiles benificently at diners from the wall? (Dictators were a theme of the night, as I later found myself under Stalin's rather sterner gaze at Bar Open.) Hunan-style pork features a pot of chopped rib pieces with a glistening, thick sauce of dark soy, flavoured with garlic and star anise. Not surprisingly, the pork pieces were quite fatty but the dish fell short of being sickly sweet. There are some vegetables hiding under all that pork, their crispiness a nice counter to the tender meat.

Overall, the flavours were pleasant and present; by which I mean, although my prawns came with spears of spring onion and visible garlic, and the calamari was sitting on big pieces of chopped chilli, none of those accompaniments overpowered anything. Just as the fitout was both familiar and unusual, this outcome was welcome and surprising: I wouldn't have wanted to come out with a numb mouth, carrying too strong a scent of any of the onion family members, but then again one would have expected more flavour bursts from such striking ingredients. That's not a criticism: I thoroughly enjoyed the balance of each dish, perhaps helped by the fact that Hunanese cooking often involves steaming, adding visual colour to dishes; and avoiding the overwhelming, oily glugginess that can make a lesser Chinese takeaway a regrettable choice. No such regrets here!

Thaila Thai II

82 Lygon St, Brunswick East; 03 9387 0659

It's on its way to institution status, this Lygon St restaurant known for the size of its portions (let's just say platter is a better description than plate), value for money and the queues of eager patrons waiting for tables or takeaway. When you can snag a table, you'll find yourself seated at and on plastic and in a hubbub of noise, from echoing conversations to the crash and bang of the open kitchen. Not to mention, more often than not, a haze of steam and smoke, pushed into the eating area from the open front door.

It's worth noting that Thaila Thai has now introduced a minimum charge per person. At $11.50 per head, gone are the days of $16 dinner for two, with entree, main and corkage. They're happy to pack up leftovers though, so order up and relive the flavour for lunch the next day.

Thaila Thai invites patrons to build their own stir fries: choose your meat (or tofu or seafood) and sauce and they'll throw in seasonal vegetables. At a warmer time of year these included crisp asparagus; now that the weather has cooled sweet mushy pumpkin features.
The tom yaam and tom kha soups are extraordinary value at $5. Rather than the teacup-sized portion you might expect from other restaurants for that price, here the tom kha is a brimming bowl filled with rich, coconuty, lemony broth. Massive pieces of vegetable - carrot, capsicum, bok choy - sit in the liquid, too big to float, along with chunky strips of firm tofu. The chilli metre is spot on - enough to reach for your serviette, but not too much so as to overpower the herbed broth.
A serve of vegetable spring rolls, ordered to round up the bill to the minimum charge, were less inspiring. Six small rolls came with a particularly uninspiring, watery sauce. The rolls were better embellished when dipped into the tom kha.

Corkage is fifty cents, and the Quarry bottle shop is just across the road. If that's not a value dinner I don't know what is.

Satay Anika

140 Lygon St, Brunswick East; 03 9380 9702

There are a considerable number of Asian-food restaurants along the Brunswick stretch of Lygon St. Gingerlee, the Alderman and Rumi might be getting all the press, but Thaila Thai and Kake di Hatti are serving up crazily well-priced meals, and on the other side of the road Singhs and My2K, to name but two, go big on dining space and menu choice.

Amongst all of this is Satay Anika, a Malaysian restaurant. In the middle is a fitting place to be: Malay food takes a mix of Indian, Chinese and Singaporean cuisine to create its own strand of spiced dishes and sauces.

The eat-in menu here doesn't extrapolate much on the dishes (the takeaway menu is more informative), but help is at hand from the floor staff (the chef gets out and serves as well so there's plenty of information available). An entree of plump vegetarian spring rolls was increased to four portions from the normal three, so that we could have two each. The rolls were super hot and crispy and came with an acceptable plum sauce.
Although not elaborated on the menu, our effusive waiter informed us that the Anika chicken involved deep fried chicken pieces with a plum sauce. Which it did - certainly no artifice in description but some veg would have been a welcome distraction in addition to the sesame seeds. It delievered more than expected, however. The batter was thick and crunchy and teamed up happily with the sweet, sticky plum sauce.
Char kuey teow, a Malaysian favourite, had a longer ingredients list. Wide rice noodles coiled amongst baby prawns, beef, egg, tofu and bean sprouts, along with a mixture of oyster, mushroom and kecap manis sauces. It was a satisfying meal, but again, some wok-fried capsicum or baby corn - something adding colour to the dish as well as flavour and texture - would have lifted it further.

Serving sizes weren't huge, and with the WYSIWYG approach to assembling the dishes I felt slightly let-down. The high turnover of takeaways on this Friday night and the steady filling of the small dining space, however, demonstrated that straightforward and reliable meals are often just the ticket to bring in the locals. The service is extremely friendly and welcoming and it's a comfortable setting in which to eat. The quality of the food is fine and the prices are more than acceptable: most of the menu standards hover around the $12 mark.

Laksa Me

16 Liverpool St; 03 9639 9885

Laksa Me opened to great acclaim just over a year ago. It's an excellent city lunchtime option. While you can spend more, a lot of their lunch options, including the laksas, are $10 or under. One menu item definitely worth digging around to find some extra change for is their Thai chilli calamari ($14) - strips are 'flame tossed' and served with chillies, roasted peanut, red capsicum, Thai chilli paste and soybean oil, accompanied by rice. It reads as well as it looks and tastes.

The lunch menu offers three laksas - a lemak with fish cake and dumplings, prawns and tofu; the 'skinny' laksa with mushroom, spinach, tofu and eggplant; and the signature My Mum's Laksa, with pho noodles, pork, chicken and prawns. I had the latter on my last visit and I think managed to score their one off-day in the kitchen! That presented a dilemma: ordering the same meal again seemed too narrow, but I was still keen to finally sample such a well-rated dish.

Compromise won the day, by going for a different type of broth dish. The duck broth wonton noodles comes as a steaming bowl of pork and prawn wontons in duck broth with choi sum (chinese cabbage), egg noodles and a side bowl of pickled green chillies.Although broth is water-based, when it's been well done - that is, started with quality ingredients and given time to cook properly - it gives the impression of being more of a soup, thick and rich with flavour. This duck broth had that quality and was not overly salty. The wontons looked like little comets, with 'ruffled' edges and long 'tails'. They were quite hefty and hard to miss (it's always nice to find an extra wonton at the bottom of the bowl!). As the chillies were served on the side the dish itself wasn't too hot, unlike other plates at the table, which came with sweat-inducing chilli levels. That reaction was probably exacerbated by our proximity to a powerful bar heater - concrete floors and plate glass windows do not a warm restaurant make, but no one wants to eat in a sauna.

One of the big talking points about Laksa Me when it opened was that it didn't have a wine list - owner Allen Woo insisted that beer was a better match for the type of food being served. And fair enough too, but from the presence of a wine list on our table it looks like enough diners didn't agree!

If a craving for any combination of chilli, soup or dumplings hits you while you're in the city, Laksa Me is handily placed, slightly south and east of centre, and offers high quality, well-priced 'modern Asian cuisine', filled with fresh ingredients rather than MSG.

www.laksame.com

Shanghai Village

112-4 Little Bourke St, CBD; (03) 9663 1878

The glory of yum cha is the chance to say to the waiter: 'I'll have that, and that, and that, and that...' and so on, giving one a feeling of decadence that lasts until the bill comes, when it is replaced by a feeling of satisfaction for wangling so much for so little. That satisfaction can veer close to smugness if, at Shanghai Village, you've also availed yourself of enough cups of free green tea from the communal urn at the front of the restaurant.

This restaurant suits the lackadaisical approach. The waitstaff are pretty casual - both in dress and attention to service. But that's OK because you know the food will be speedy and filling. While the dining area is hardly gawdy, the colours employed - on the bright pink feature wall or the disturbingly bright orange chopsticks - are certainly not casual.


The first dish to reach us was a chinese pancake.
It fared well with the addition of soy sauce. Looking a bit like a hollow omelet, and consisting of a very straightforward, fried batter, it served as a great raging-hunger-queller before we got into the meatier dishes.

There is no yum cha without pork buns, but this restaurant's offering are not the large sweet-doughed-savoury-filled variety. They're 'mini pork buns' and are more of a dumpling to be honest. The filling is quite respectable, but it's a shame not to have that unique casing, akin to a chewier, more floury meringue texture, to go with it.

Three spring rolls are suitably crisp, but their accompanying sauce - perhaps plum - is quite bland, and without a killer filling it leaves the dish as a bit rudimentary.
More exciting are the steamed beef dumplings. There's just so much meat and dough goodness on the plate! They are utterly impossible to eat with chopsticks: the dough slipping around and the globe of meat inside inevitably escaping to be eaten solo.

Overall the meal was entirely satisfying, particularly as we'd brought voracious appetites to the table. I left with a fairly voracious thirst however, which I doubt was entirely due to my liberal splashings of soy sauce, but rather to some heavy-handed salting in the kitchen.

Sigiri

338 High St, Northcote; 03 9482 6114

The Yak was too full to squeeze in two more momo-hunting dinner goers. Just a few doors up the road is Sigiri, whose vacant tables and relatively calmer atmosphere (in comparison to not just Wild Yak but much of High St that night) lured us in. Part of its calm atmosphere was created by notably muted lighting, much of which seeped through red light shades, conditions that were well beyond standard-issue camera equipment. Since it was Eurovision Weekend, however, I've dotted the post with pictures of some of the acts instead :)

Sigiri have an interesting set-up. Each night they run a buffet for $25 per head ($22 on Thursday). This features two entrees (eg crumbed tuna and potato balls), beef, chicken and vegetable curries, side dishes, at least half a dozen types of bread, including hoppers, and dessert. Customers can also dine a-la-carte, though on this Saturday night it was off a limited selection of the normal menu.

Some menu items, including the stir fries (baduma) would take a while to cook, and I was on my way to a movie ('Pudor', at the Spanish Film Festival) so we went with two very straightforward dishes: harakmas (seasoned beef in curry sauce) and kukulmas (boneless chicken in spicy sauce) and a serve of eddi appa, or 'string hoppers'. These are made from a combination of rice flour, water and salt, which is forced through a mould to create the squiggly, latticed effect.

In some ways a combination of the two choices would have made a great dish. The chicken meat was tender and swimming in sauce, whereas the beef was a little (only a little) tough and the dish could have used some more moisture overall. The texture of both sauces seemed to borrow from a gravy style, in that they were somewhat grainy. The beef curry sauce was loaded with cardamon, and the chicken sauce was strongly spiced without being too hot. Neither, happily, seemed overloaded with oil or ghee so while we were both quite full without finishing our serves, it wasn't an uncomfortably heavy feeling.

Tasmania - Restaurant dining

One thing about living in Melbourne is that you sometimes feel a bit silly heading out for Greek or Italian when you're interstate. We did sample a couple of the Apple Isle's offering of the latter, but on other occasions were left with just what was open in the town that night.

T's Chinese Restaurant, Main Street, Sheffield

Our plan had been to eat at Weindorfers, a restaurant attached to our accommodation, on the first night. It's only open for group bookings, however, but the proprietor was kind enough to recommend a Chinese restaurant in nearby Sheffield. We would have eaten there without the recommendation since I think it was the only place in town serving up, but it was good to know it had had good reports.

It got good reports from me as soon as I stepped into the dining room. The restaurant is in a converted house and the dining area at the back defines 'bright', both in its lighting and decor. The menu kept things pretty simple: there were three meats on offer for mains and they came with something, usually a vegetable or a herb. Our picks were the garlic pork and the beef with sweet corn.

We started with some vegie spring rolls, which came served on a sweet blue dish. The dough managed the happy duality of being both crispy and very oily and the cabbage, onion and carrot filling suitably flavoursome.

The garlic pork preceded the beef dish by some minutes. While the amount of meat was undoubtedly generous, it was ably matched by the quantity of garlic laced through the dish! Not that there's anything wrong with that. From the taste samples I took while awaiting my beef dish I thought the meat had been well-handled, the vegetables were suitably crisp and the sauce was undoubtedly stocky, but worked well with the meat.

I wasn't as convinced of the kitchen's merits by my beef and sweet corn. The sauce here took on more of a gelatinous texture, and there wasn't a lot to distinguish it from what had already been served with the pork. Again, however, the meat serving was sizable. It would want to be, however, since the dishes described plus rice for two (no drinks) came to a $50 meal! Most of the mains were priced at $17 or $18.

La Calibrisella
56 Wellington St, Launceston

We sourced a winning recommendation from our hostel to head to nearby La Calibrisella for dinner. We twinged momentarily at heading out to a good pizza joint while on holidays, since we live in rolling distance of a couple of the better ones in Melbourne, but this restaurant had an ultimately redeeming feature: it was BYO-only, charged no corkage and was across the road from a BWS!

The menu was extensive Italian: a range of pastas as entree or main (with some thought to sauces), pizzas, and more substantial meat dishes (stuffed chicken breast, veal scallopine etc). SG went with the inexplicably named 'surprise' pizza: the listed ham, capsicum and mushroom topping wasn't particularly unexpected, either on the menu or plate. The base smelled wonderful, as only freshly cooked dough can, but it was actually quite bready and a bit too sweet.

I chose the Penne Fontana, which, unlike the pizza, actually did come with some surprises. The menu promised hot salami, chilli and mushrooms. The dish arrived with capers and olives as well, so it was a welcome addition. It was properly hot and more enjoyable for the salty extras.

We shared a tiramisu for dessert, which was really more of an espresso sponge cake with a mascarpone layer than a traditional rendering of the dish, but the caramel sauce was a nice touch.The restaurant was well-patronised by locals, and the service was excellent.

Ristorante Da Angelo
47 Hampden Road, Battery Point, Hobart

The last night should always be a special dining night. I'd spied an intimate-looking Spanish restaurant called Franciscos across from the famous Jackman and Ross bakery, but they'd decided to take Anzac Day off. Almost straight across the road was Da Angelo and when we went in at 8pm to find there were no tables until 9pm, we took it as a good sign.

Clearly a local favourite, Da Angelo's was chocked with both diners and customers waiting to collect takeaway pizzas and pastas. They make all of their pasta on site, daily. This really came across in the moistness of the dough and its ability to absorb the sauce.

What to order?? The menu offered spaghetti, fettucine and macaroni, each with their own half dozen sauces (though you're welcome to mix and match), plus three types each of ravioli, gnocchi and risotto plus veal and chicken dishes. Feeling our hunger enhanced by the Tasmanian beer we'd already consumed, we hastily ordered some garlic bread. It came as grilled squares of fresh bread, actually dribbling with oil and butter and sprinkled with garlic pieces.I could have eaten several bowls of that and gone home happy.

SG mixed his pasta and sauce, going with a heavy option of ravioli di carne with molisana sauce: bacon, onion, olives (first time he's ordered those!), capsicum, tomato and garlic.The ravioli was particularly fine, al dente in the way only freshly made specimens can be. Like me, however, there was no way he was going to do justice to the size of the portion.

I needed assistance and decided to run with the waitress' recommendation of the fettucine matriciana (top tip: order entree size on the pastas!)It was hot! The sauce was well-balanced though, as the bacon contributed salty flavour to balance the sweeter tomato.

I would have liked the red wine I'd ordered to be at hand to complement the sauce and temper the chilli, but our drinks were absent. One enquiry to a waitress elicited that 'they're probably on their way'. Even in a rammed restaurant, when the patrons' food is already at the table that's an insufficient answer. An enquiry to our original waitress revealed that she had in fact forgotten to order them. After tasting my wine I mustered courage to check with the manager as to whether I had actually received the Ninth Island (Tamar Valley) pinot I'd ordered, since the wine had all the aroma and earthiness of what I'd expect from the house cab sav. I was assured it was correct, but after the other issues I remained a little sceptical.

It was a small downer to what was otherwise potentially a near perfect Last Night Out. Suffice to say that on the up side we were very happy (though distressingly over-supplied!) with our food.

Aloi Na

59-61 Hardware Lane, Melbourne; 03 9670 8889

Hardware Lane. It's a bit like the Lygon St tourist strip but for locals. Business workers inevitably wander through there in office hours, and during the day many of them sit down for steak/burger/focaccia and chips and, if their company is that way inclined, a wine or beer. Even when you're using it as a thoroughfare between Lonsdale and Little Bourke St, alone, clearly distracted and not by food, the spruikers endeavour to lure you in.

Having finished Happy Hour at Word Bar, however, Hardware Lane's proximity could not be ignored. We settled on a Thai dinner at Aloi Na, whose menu both comforted and disturbed me. Everything seemed extremely well-priced: a relief since it meant I could order more liberally, but also a concern, since we were in the dead middle of town and I expected to be overcharged.

We started with chicken satay sticks. I was hungry enough that when they arrived they didn't appear quite so sickly as they do in this photo!The satay sauce was acceptable: very creamy, and unctuous. The chicken was far too dry, however. Looking back on what we ordered, chicken was a prolific ingredient and the dryness featured throughout the meal.

Our second starter was tempura vegetables.Lovely presentation, and a nice light tempura batter. The curled eggplant wrapped around carrot and zucchini. The vegetables were a little bland, but the soy dipping sauce lifted the flavour.

I was particularly torn ordering my main. The restaurant offers a red duck curry for just $18.90. It met my craving, but what could I truly expect from such a dish at such a price? I went for the more generic green chicken curry.The clay pot actually came sat over a tea candle - another nice presentation feature. This dish had the best chicken of the night and generous pieces of zucchini, capsicum and carrot. The green curry sauce was, again, sufficient, but had no subtlety of spice to really lift it to a memorable dish.

Aesthetics seem important at this establishment. The chicken and cashew stir fry looks sensational:The chicken was dry and the sauce somewhat salty, however. The vegetables, on the other hand, were crisp and fresh and added a lot to the dish.

Similar reports came from the sweet and sour chicken.Nice colours again, and I like the battered chicken mixed in amongst the vegetables and sauce. The vegetables were the winner out of this dish, as well.

It is good to know that one can eat at a reasonable price amongst the schmaltz of Hardware Lane. The noodle dishes at Aloi Na, for example, are mainly around $13. The quality is about as exciting as the serving staff, however, who looked surprised every time they arrived at our table with a bowl of food. The restaurant also offers a modest, predictable and cheap selection of wines by the glass, as well as Chang beer for $6.

Sala Thai

266 Brunswick St, Fitzroy; 03 9417 4929

It was time to take the penguin out for a night. He doesn't get to socialise enough, his resentment at which was demonstrated this Saturday last by refusing to squeak no matter how kindly I squeezed his beak.


Now you really couldn't lay blame for anything on a creature as cute as my penguin bag, but it was a direct result of taking him out for the evening that there is no pictorial record of our dinner at Sala Thai. He's too wee to hold camera, purse and water bottle; and the ambient candle- and fairylight atmosphere at the restaurant prevented my mobile from stepping into the breach.

So instead, merely a brief commentary on the food. The vegetarian spring rolls had a satisfying crunch, but the pastry seemed to mainly enclose cabbage: not a lot of diversity of flavour. The sizeable portion of pad med mamuang (cashew stir fry) came ladled with a commendable soy and ginger sauce and a colourful array of crisp vegetables (beans, capsicum), as well as a bowl's worth of cashew nuts on top. The pad see ew was disappointing. The soy sauce was quite watery and the beef, which I'd chosen as I rarely stir fry with it at home, was particularly tough: should have stuck with chicken.

Earlier trips to Sala Thai had been more promising. I've enjoyed good tom yum soup and pad thai there. If you're looking for a cheap mid-week dinner in Fitzroy, however, they offer a good value special dish each night, Monday - Thursday. Vegetarian green curry, with rice, for $9 would be a bargain, and you can wash it down with a $4 glass of wine, or just $5.50 for a bottle of Asahi.

Wagamama

Level 2, QV Square (cnr Swanston and Lonsdale Sts); 03 9650 2325

It’s not breaking any new ground to eat at, or indeed review, a Wagamama restaurant. I did find our recent dining experience there interesting, however, for what it demonstrated about the food journey both the restaurant and I have travelled since we first became acquainted.

The first Wagamama I came across was in Covent Garden, London, and from that first encounter something in their cheeky menu and underground, brightly-lit space had big appeal. I ate there several times in London and Guildford. A few years ago Wagamama were ostensibly too mass-consumerist for my taste, with new restaurants popping up with the regularity of big-chain coffee houses. But their food was innovative, fresh and well-priced, commodities that are exceedingly hard to come by in England.

I’ve eaten there a couple of times in Australia and the biggest difference I’d noted was the absence of my favourite dish, the chicken chilli men: soft Hokkein noodles interlaced with diced chicken and crisp vegetables such as snow peas and capsicum, heightened by a good breath of chilli.

Before ordering on our most recent visit, SG did question whether I’d be alright, ‘eating at a franchise’. I assured him I’d be fine: I’d eaten here loads of time, always enjoyed it and had made my way through most of the menu, from ramen to yaki soba to the katsu curry, both vegetarian and meat.

First to the table was a tray of five duck gyoza, with a very thick, sticky soy sauce.
The filling was lovely: lightly steamed meat and some spring onion crunch. The pastry, however, was very poor: more like a biscuit, crunchy and noticeably browned.

SG stuck with his staple, the chicken ramen.
A relatively clear broth, plenty of sliced chicken, stocky noodles and some green for roughage. It's a heartening dish, but...I'll come back to that.

I went with a new dish, the spicy chicken itame, with mint, basil, coriander and garlic.The chicken had wallowed in ginger and the red onion lent a caramelised flavour to the rice. It looked a treat in the bowl, with chunky zucchini and broccoli pieces crowning the rice. (And it was hot, more than could be said for our green tea). The chicken, however, was far too dry. The dish was seriously spicy; probably not too hot for a real chilli lover, but significantly spicier than anything I’d experienced at Wagamamas before. Although the vegetables had looked impressive and abundant, there were serious filling-to-rice ratio issues: the former ran out long before the latter.

While Wagamama may not quite be soul food, they have always preached a vibrant and positive food philosophy. These dishes didn't give me a good food buzz though, nor did the service. After eating I felt uncomfortably full, overly salted and like I’d eaten…well, franchise food. The ramen was perfectly adequate, but I don't necessarily want a dish I haven't tried for a couple of years to taste exactly like it did last time I had it, especially when that last time was in a different country!

I don’t know if it’s just that my tastes have changed and refined, or if in keeping Wagamama afloat they’ve started to cut a lot more corners in the kitchen. Certainly the company had to close down its St Kilda store last year, not that long after opening in Melbourne Central. Their expansion into Australia has never been as rampant as it was in Europe. When you’ve got Don Don across the road doing wok-to-bowl food for $6, and Cookie down the street serving up very credible curry, you need more than cute branding to keep it pumping.

Land of Siam

121 Lygon St, Carlton; 03 9349 1999

It's always nice to go to Lygon St for something other than Italian. Land of Siam provides an authentic Asian taste experience and on this Thursday was buzzing with three separate Christmas party groups as well as a handful of dining duos.

The restaurant fitout draws strongly on stone: the walls are a dark grey, the floor is bare and with a large urn water feature there's almost a cave-like effect. A bigger effect of all those exposed hard surfaces, however, was a problematic noise level. Some wall hangings or other soft furnishings could go a long way to helping facilitate lunchtime conversation.

Lunch is fabulous value at Land of Siam. 15 or so dishes from their more extensive dinner menu are offered at the bargain price of $9.90 including jasmine rice. I was thrilled, as it meant I didn't have to limit myself to a noodle dish. Happily my dining partner opted nonetheless for the Pad Thai: the yardstick of Thai dining and the quickest way to determine restaurant quality.

In this case the verdict was better than average. The dish came liberally sprinkled with nuts and the peanut sauce was not too cloying. Most importantly there was some subtly of flavour - lime, tamarind and onion all came through.

My choice was the Wok Basil Beef, with snake beans, red capsicum, chilli-garlic puree and Thai basil sauce.

It was hot! Luckily I had a Singha beer to quench some of the heat. The chilli didn't overpower the dish, however, as all the ingredients had been well-prepared and made a contribution to the overall effect. There was ample sauce, its dark colour mirroring the aniseed flavour from the basil, the vegies were fresh and al dente and the beef was tender.

An excellent value, satisfying lunchtime meal.

Thaila Thai

82 Lygon St, Brunswick East; 03 9387 0659

Busy, cheap, and very good, that’s Thaila Thai. A table here on a Friday night, even with outdoor seating, is no guarantee. We snagged the one by the kitchen, which meant probably about 400 people checked out our meals as they waited for takeaway or a coveted seat.

Why so popular? If you’re eating in, the Thaila Thai menu reads more like a sandwich deli. All main courses are available with any meat, each at a set price. You then pick the kind of seasoning for a stir fry (eg basil leaves and chilli, or oyster sauce), a type of curry (red, green, yellow, peanut), or noodles. Extras, rather than avocado or mayonnaise, include cashew nuts for 0.50, or prawns for 3.00. And the value spreads to both sides of the menu. Rice is $2.00 a serve, corkage 0.50c a person, and an entree of six satay skewers only $5.50.

We went for the mixed (chicken and beef) skewers. The peanut sauce was creamy, with a breath of heat, which unfortunately was more than could be said for our meat. We’d also waited about 15 minutes, and had to request a couple of times, for our BYO wine to be brought back to the table corked. All forgotten when the mains arrived. The green curry was incredible (as attested to by multiple people in the endless line waiting for tables!) The vegies reflected the colour of the curry - zucchini, green capsicum, bay leaves and, surprisingly, asparagus. The curry sauce hit with coconut creaminess first, with all the spice in your throat. In between was a mix of mint, sweet, and a definite lingering taste of the bay leaves. A lot of flavour for under $11.50, including the rice. In the spirit of make-your-own, SG went for pork with wide ribbon rice noodles with veg and blackbean sauce. The thinly sliced pork was tender, contrasting with crispy vegetables.

Starter, two mains bigger than we could finish off and corkage came to $29. It did take us almost 15 minutes of queuing just to be able to pay, given one person was handling take away orders and diners settling their bill (one per table, cash only). An upside was it gave us ample time to watch what must be one of the hottest kitchens in Melbourne, with every hob on the go boiling rice, flash frying veg and flaming sauces. The food is excellent, the price unbelievable, but go during the week, and hold out for a seat at the back.