Small Block

130 Lygon St, Brunswick East; 03 9381 2244

Small Block was the first of its kind in Brunswick East, the forerunner of the cafe explosion that is still reverberating in a suburb previously more notable for being 'north of north carlton'. Small Block is still a trendy place, but these days it can be hard to know who's setting and who's following the trends. Amongst their in-vogue offerings are coffee cups stamped with the cafe logo (as at North and Baba, whereas The Press Club stamps their paper overlays), a Thai-style breakfast dish (Tom Phat) and service that can veer to the brusquer side of cool (A Minor Place).

Speaking of trends, as the first weekend of spring managed to maintain a temperature over 15C, some of Brunswick's best fashionistas were out and about: how about a super-short denim dress with socks and school shoes? This blogger pushes no fashion boundaries, but is happy to buck the trend when it comes to menu choice.

The chosen dish fell squarely into the 'I'm never going to cook that at home' category: herb and mascarpone polenta with mushroom ragout and pecorino. Doing its best to impersonate a baked cheesecake in looks, the polenta delivered on texture and flavour. The outsides were crispy - an important texture contrast to the mushrooms. It's a bland grain on its own but the herbs added enough interest it was subtly bulked by the mascarpone (presumably stirred through as one might parmaggiano). The mushrooms took their cue from the polenta and, with their deeply dark hue, impersonated a chocolate-cherry sauce to top the 'cheesecake'. The ragout had cooked down to a thick sauce, so it clung to the polenta, rather than letting rogue mushrooms escape around the plate. The sprinkle of shaved pecorino added some bite; I would argue for the sharper cheese to be mixed into the polenta instead of the mascarpone and to bulk out the ragout, rather than just topping up with rocket.

SG's choice came out looking ready to attack! Sitting alone on a dinner plate, it represented another trend, followed/set by Gingerlee across the road: the ungarnished, unaccompanied steak sarnie. In other dishes (such as the herbed polenta), rocket regularly shows up unbidden and unannounced. Why not throw some next to the sandwich, or at least serve it on a smaller plate so the customer doesn't notice all the empty space? A gristle-free piece of steak was ably accompanied by sweet beetroot and a not-too-powerful aioli. While there was no salad to pick at, the packed sandwich gratifyingly dripped morsels of food and sauce onto the plate to mop up with the ends of the soft ciabatta.

La Paloma

259 Albert Street, Brunswick; 9380 8520

It's tiny. A modest four tables inside and two outside. A few stools offer up-close vantage points to watch the vinyl spin or the milk steam. Mottled blue walls flout various images of the eponymous bird; sharp black and white tiles contrast against raw wood frames. It all adds up to a cosy place to be, especially when sitting back with a damn fine, single-bean coffee.

As for food, La Paloma is happy doing its own thing. During the week the cafe sticks with lunches - filled sandwiches, soups - from noon. In the AM, the role of satisfying the breakfast munchies falls to a tray of irresistibly alluring Spanish doughnuts lying in wait on the counter.Like the very-in churros, these doughnuts are of the long and ridged, rather than round, variety. Instead of dipping them in a chocolate sauce, however, they have been loaded with a squirt of caramel. Like Julio's filled doughnuts, they need to be consumed as soon as possible after they're made, so it's just as well there are no other menu items distracting the punters from downing these fresh, crisp-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside, sweet morsels (and at $2 a pop, don't stop at one).

On weekends, breakfast options include shashuka, a tomatoey, Middle Eastern breakfast stew with onion, capsicum, coriander, egg and toast. Given the cafe's diminutive size, weekend diners would be well advised to have a second choice in mind. In this part of Brunswick, however, picking a second choice (Green, Cafe 3A, Ray, Small Block, Gingerlee) could be as hard as stopping at one doughnut.

Seasons broadened by the bean; Gerald's Bar

386 Rathdowne St, Carlton North

It was fitting perhaps that the year's first sighting of 'fresh' broad beans on sale came from a blogger by the name of Fatty McBeanpole. Certainly more fitting than the availability of a spring speciality in the deep of a Melbourne winter.

The broad bean season is tantalisingly short. For just three good months can devotees take them home, to first break the beans out from their implausibly fluffy cocoons, then squeeze the inner bean free after blanching. The end product - a bright green, fat crescent of legume - teams to great effect with lemon, artichoke, paprika, chicken, white wine or stock and in risottos.

On the first evening in months that lacked the bite of southerly air and instead encouraged hope for warmer gusts from the north, the Bean of Wonder showed up atop a hunk of braised pork with apples at the super-groovy Gerald's Bar.

The bar itself is long, curved and supported by a weave of wooden slats. Tables and chairs sit under lace-curtained windows; a meat-slicer is overseen by a huge David Bailey portrait at the far end. Vinyl remixes spin smoothly and quietly. A shelf running the length of the bar stocks a formidable range of spirits; vodka and gin are kept chilled in an ice bucket for expert handling with mixers and in cocktails. The first sparkling and first three reds and whites ordered for the evening become that day's by the glass, a policy that can be a blessing for patrons feeling short on decision-making power. Gerald's has a superb wine list, with potential by-the-glass prices ranging from around $8-$40. There's an international range of beer as well.

The day's menu is scrawled on butcher's paper then clipped to a ladder on wheels that you might expect to see in a library, so that it can be wheeled to customers' vantage points along the bar. While Gerald's is definitely a drinker's bar, this succinct menu offers perfect accompaniments. Half a dozen small plates come at $10 each: maybe Polish sausage, wagyu prosciutto or a welsh rarebit - an appropriately hunky piece of sourdough, with rich cheese, just a touch of English mustard and a good dose of pepper. The pork main meal, at $15, is superb value. A hefty, thick piece of meat has been braised, retaining tenderness and texture, and served in a sauce of its own juices with an understated apple sauce.

It's an incredibly comfortable place, one where you want to settle in for a couple of wines, switch to cocktails and maybe finish with a brandy, having also worked your way through the menu. Sure Carlton is our own little Italy, but this bar mixes the best of Melbourne and Europe as naturally as the seasons change.

The Press Club

72 Flinders St, Melbourne; 03 9677 9677

Listening to David Sedaris at the Melbourne Writers' Festival recently, I was taken with his statement that sometimes he feels like his life has become a story. At such times he resists the compunction to take out his notebook and notate what's happening, as he doesn't want to do anything to bring the situation to an end before its natural conclusion.

There's a tenuous link between that concept and my recent dining experience at The Press Club. Originally I was going to say that I took my inspiration from a recent post at AOF's Confessions, where she discusses the idea that by constantly thinking as a blogger - analysing and worrying over lighting conditions for photos - we diminish our ability to savour our eating experiences in the moment. I think Sedaris' notion was closer to my reasons for not photographing my food at The Press Club though: troubling myself with that usual aspect of my dining excursions didn't fit in with the way I wanted to experience this rare and treasured treat.

I am, nevertheless, compelled to record it here. I have read much about George Calombaris' skills and the awe in which many hold his treatment of Greek cuisine, and had experienced it in reduced form at The Press Club Bar. I hadn't quite understood what was meant by a lot of the language: Lethlean uses phrases like 'modern, yet reverent' and 'springboard' comes up a lot, but now, having taken on the full dining experience it's quite clear. The ingredients are classic, traditional – lamb, beetroot, honey, cheese, mushrooms – yet their treatment is revolutionary without being unapproachable, without making them unrecognisable.

With the quality on offer the menu is expansive without being so extensive that choice seems impossible. It divides into small and large dishes and while 'kerasma' is available - a chef's choice of dishes, with or without dessert and wine - we decide to control our intake; given our tastes and predilections the four dishes brought to our table almost order themselves.

Seared scallops souvlaki, Santorini caper leaf keftedes (meatballs) and cauliflower vinaigrette arrives skewered on its own sword. A salad of cumin-roasted beetroot, pistachio biscuit, yoghurt cheese and Attiki honey offers so many combinations (there's a picture on the restaurant's homepage): the nuttiness of the cake-like tower of biscuit, soft and spongey when you cut into it; the sour-savoury cheese wrapped in herbs; and the honey, undoubtedly sweet but in such a fundamental way that it doesn't so much taste sweet, as demonstrate sweetness. (You know you're in a good place when the food promotes musing on the metaphysical.)

At Melbourne's best Greek restaurant it would seem requisite to order the lamb: in this case a 'hot off the press' lamb spit with white bean skordalia, lemon potatoes and marouli salad (lettuce dressed with dill and vinaigrette). The lamb, as expected, is superb: tender, moreish, extraordinarily flavoured and textured. It would be hard to imagine a better fine dining experience. Unless, as was my blessed experience, you had ordered the duck.

The duck. Perhaps I should have written the post as just a reflection on this one dish. The menu description reads as: slow-cooked duck in olive oil, mushrooms, garlic, parsley and greek kafe and sokolata soil (a crunchy, crumbly mix of coffee and chocolate). There's a process to its consumption: as the soil is sprinkled onto the duck it begins to melt into it, at the same time breaking down the meat, which was already separating so willingly from the bone, even further. What takes place is so much more than a fusion to produce a new flavour combination. Instead the ingredients alchemise – creating an altogether new entity unlike any flavour made up of the component ingredients.

The Press Club has been hyped, praised and awarded. In this case it's deserved: this is extremely high quality, innovative, thoughtful food. After our experience at The Point, I will say that I find it surprising that restaurants at this level seem to assume diners want to stay the night - both meals lasted 3.5 hours - but the staff at The Press Club were so enthusiastic, genuine and knowledgeable that I almost felt compelled to forgive their interest in re-setting tables rather than bringing us dessert menus.

Alchemy and metaphysics. George Calombaris is an exciting man to have in the kitchen, and the anticipation over Hellenic Republic grows ever greater.

Cafe Bedda

242 High St, Northcote; 03 9482 9420

It's no secret that Melbourne's inner northern suburbs boast higher-than-average densities of restaurants and Italians. Coincidence? I think not. But with pizza and pasta lording it over noodles and cous cous, what does an Italian restaurateur do to make their trattoria top of the list?

Cafe Bedda's first point of difference is to raise the flag of a particular Italian region: the dishes and wines at this High St eatery are distinctly Sicilian. Secondly, its menu reveals neither a pizzeria with some OK pasta dishes, nor an exhaustive examination of Italian pasta and sauces with some mediocre pizzas on the back page. Bedda offers a reasonable selection of both.

On two trips to Bedda, the seasonal specials have impressed. Tonight liver was on the menu as a main, but, tempting as it sounded, when one goes out for pizza there's an imperative to stick with pizza (rather like not ordering orange juice when you 'go out for coffee'). The carciofi entree special, however, was a suitable preamble: a whole artichoke stuffed with breadcrumbs, parmagiano and herbs, eaten rustic-style by plucking out the leaves and scraping off the nutty flesh with your teeth.
Bedda's renowned pizzas are prepared amidships in a modern-looking, double-decker oven emitting a greenish glow from its halogen elements. While the chicory and lemon pizza features in most Bedda reviews, the pizza of choice tonight was the Otto: tomato, pancetta, caramelised onion, cayenne pepper, garlic, olives and parmagiano. Quite a list! Regardless, the toppings were delicate enough for Bedda's super-thin crust to handle. Bedda's style is not to lay on the stringy cheese: the tomato base is far more crucial for holding the ingredients together and the parmagiano adds more tang than tension. Caramelised onion provided a wonderfully sweet offset to the salty pancetta. A rogue pepper seed cropped up on the last bite, turning what had been a pleasant spark of warmth to an unexpected fire. Time for another glass of nero d'avola to quench the heat!

There's a lovely atmosphere to Cafe Bedda: the checked, tiled floor keeps things feeling busy, even when it's not full; while the dark wood furniture minimises the visual assault. It's big enough that large groups can be sat away from quieter couples, but small enough that several tables can watch the pizzaiolo in action. The density of Italian restaurants may be high in this area, but this one is better than average.

North

717 Rathdowne St, Carlton North; 03 9348 1276

The folks at Where's the Beef posted a good review of North a little while back, on the back of which I'd added it to the 'must try' list. Stories of throngs of like-thinkers over weekends meant I took up a Monday mid-morning opportunity to check it out.

As with so many cafes in this area, North offers a small space. White features strongly, both on the furniture and the walls, offset by black stencilled artwork. The cafe features a great window seat, which is at normal height (rather than a bench with stools), providing an extremely comfy place to sink into a bowled chair and swivel between perusing the blackboard menu and the goings-on of Rathdowne St outside.

On offer for the morning meal is their Champions Breakfast, involving boiled eggs and soldiers. Oh yes, that's a trophy eggcup! I was tickled pink by this arrangement. The eggs and toast come with a fine, sweet tomato relish; the mushrooms are my own addition. There were plenty of soldiers to go around, and to be honest I was a little overwhelmed by two eggs; as a home-cooked dish it would never occur to me to make two. The only downer was that Egg #1 seemed stuck in the eggcup, so I couldn't take the shell out and start over with Egg #2. Happily I had been provided with a little spoon to tap the eggs open in the appropriate manner, so sufficed with doing that on the plate. A big plus about this dish over baked eggs is that the yolk stayed runny, so there was still plenty of dipping action even with Egg #2.

For a good precis of some of the other tempting dishes on offer at North, check Breakfast Out.

Beetroot

123 Hardware St, Melbourne; 03 9600 0695

Beetroot have assessed their market and tailored an irresistible lunch option accordingly. During the week, a good range of pre-prepared meals are available for $10 and a tumbler of their house wine for just $1. If that won't get you away from your desk and out of the office, I don't know what you're waiting for!

The pre-preparation is an indicator that your food will not only be cheap but also quick to the table, rather than a suggestion of poor quality. A bowl of chicken pesto pasta is a perfect demonstration: a drizzle of parsley and sundried tomatoes sit atop firm pasta and a sauce that wasn't excessively creamy. The serving size was spot on for lunch, and the addition of a side salad is both commendable for the price and guilt-assuaging after taking the creamy pasta option.

If it's more of a sugar hit you're after to power through the afternoon, indulge in a milk, dark or white hot chocolate with persian candy floss. You could almost consider it a dessert and, at $3.80, it could give you a two-course lunch, with a glass of wine, for less than $15!

Earlier in the year, Mellie over at tummy rumbles set herself the challenge of working through Beetroot's autumn breakfast menu. It makes for great reading!

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!

Pinching quince

Quince and I became friends in Spain. I was staying with a friend in Valldolid, and it was brought out for an evening snack. After experiencing its sweetness and dissolving texture (coupled, of course, with a semi-cured cheese) I could but stumble out 'Que es?'. 'Membrillo' was the answer and for the remainder of my stay any hostly query as to whether there was anything I wanted was answered with 'Más membrillo'.

It was sometime after that before I actually saw an example of the fruit, quince. Inspired by its flavour and texture in every form - jam, butter, paste - I resolved to cook some myself this year. Happily the decision to do so coincided with the recent bloggers' meet, at which plenty of attendees could offer advice. Thanks especially to Cindy at where's the beef, for pointing me to KJ's sumptuous photographs and cooking challenges at A Cracking Good Egg. Caroline Velik had also done a spread on quinces in Epicure a few weeks back.

I'm not a meticulous cook, and cut and pasted a process together from these multiple sources. A modest two quinces were quartered and cored, with the pips and cores added (in a muslin bag - I used a crepe bandage!) for the cooking, along with sugar syrup, lemon and vanilla essence. That went, covered, in a casserole dish into the oven, for five hours. To make quince jelly one uses the liquid left after this process, which I did, but sort of ended up with quince toffee (not complaining). In the absence of a food mill I mushed the cut fruit through a sieve (a food processor would probably do the same job more quickly and noisily), then heated it with half its weight in caster sugar, for about 45 minutes over low heat.

According to KJ and Maggie Beer, at this point one should spread the paste on a tray and leave it to dry. What I had tasted right, although it was a little more pink than red, so it went straight to containers:
Perhaps a more inspiring picture from the weekend is this tagine:
Taken from the perennially pertinent Seasonal Produce Diary, it's a dish to warm the room and the soul. Fry onion till soft, add ginger, ground spices, passata, chicken stock and seasoning. Pour over diced blade steak, in a casserole, and bake for 2-2.5 hours. As accompaniment, sliced parsnips were doused with coriander, paprika and cumin, drizzled with olive oil and laid on a tray with some more chicken stock to cook alongside the tagine. Delish.

Natalia's Greek Cuisine

437 High St, Northcote; 03 9486 3110

Sitting within Natalia's blue-and-white interior feels a little like being underwater; it certainly doesn't sound like it though, as chatter from the predominantly Greek crowd competes with the live bouzouki music.

This is not a restaurant for vegetarians: the menu is divided in entrees (all seafood), appetisers (some of which are meat free), seafood and mains, all of which are meat based. While the $20+ price tag on most of the mains seemed a little high, it was offset somewhat by complimentary additions to the meal and the size of the portions (though surely it's preferable to have the option to be served less and pay less). A banquet is also available for $39 per head.

First to the table were two huge baskets of bread. It smelled wonderful and while it was a little too loafy to be an ideal meal accompaniment it's impressive to know that it's made on site. The bread came with our first appetiser, melinzanosalata (try getting that out correctly first time!), an earthy-green blend of eggplant, capsicum, garlic and olives. Alongside came a triangle of grilled saganaki, wonderfully firm and salty, with the centre just slightly melted.
A main serve of deep-fried calamari was ordered as a joint entree for four. The calamari had been properly cooked, retaining texture without being rubbery, and had just the right amount of batter. For $22, however, one might expect a few more rings, the bonus to the right of the plate notwithstanding - a scallop a la Natalia, served with worcestershire sauce, spring onion and bacon. Where the calamari had been so simply adorned, however, this dressing rather overwhelmed the mollusc.

And so to the meat. For the men, a meat platter for two; for the ladies, two plates of kleftiko: lamb and chicken cooked over charcoals.
Firstly, to the positives. All the types of meat had been cared for: lamb and chicken were decadently oily and as the diced pieces dissolved in the mouth they released loads of flavour. The potatoes that accompanied the meat were superb: laden with herbs, salt and oil and still soft and fluffy; a plate of potatoes plus the calamari would have made for a satisfying repast. The skewered meat on the meat platter was particularly enjoyable and there was certainly an ample quantity.

There were also some negatives, however. Both plates of kleftiko arrived not cold, but tepid at best. These were willingly replaced. The cutlets on the meat platter were a little dry, though with so much carnivorous material to choose from this was not a big issue. A massive bowl of Greek salad, at $6, represented excellent value for quantity. The quality wasn't quite so impressive, however, as it mainly featured lettuce and an acidic dressing, with a smattering of feta and the occasional olive.

Nevertheless, more positive was to come. Once the main dishes had been cleared, after all best efforts had been made to do justice to the portions, an unbidden, but very welcome, dessert arrived. Watermelon was the perfect antidote to all that carb and protein, but the sweet tooth was also sated, with the provision of gooey cigarillos of baklava.

The restaurant offers the welcome mix of being BYO, with no corkage, and licenced (and they stock Mythos beer, very handy for pretending one has escaped to the Mediterranean). The service was more comfortable amongst the Greek speakers, but it was attentive and friendly. Despite a couple of communication issues the staff strove to accommodate our requests (though the plan for a three-stage meal was scuppered with the concurrent arrival of calamari and meat), and while it was peculiar that spit roast meat could arrive at the table less than piping hot, they were sincere in rectifying the problem.

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.

Bar Lourinha

37 Lt Collins St, Melbourne; 03 9663 7890

Bar Lourinha isn't a big space, yet for its narrowness it can squeeze in a lot of lively patrons on a Thursday night. The kitchen takes up almost as space as the dining/drinking area. It's a valid split, since this bar takes its unmistakably Spanish- and Portuguese-influenced food very seriously. What open space there is has been designed and decorated effectivelyto ensure a convivial drinking setting, with low lounges in the front window and bar and bench seating.

The menu here is not tapas - serving sizes go beyond what one would cover the top of a glass with. In fact, both pricing and serving size sit somewhere between snack and main meal. Most dishes are $12-17, (the specials were a little pricier), and while our chosen two looked a little on the small side I left full enough to last through 'Hamlet' without craving a snack.

Octopus stifado takes its inspiration from the other side of the Mediterranean, a Greek cooking method involving slow stweing in a tomato sauce, usually with garlic and cinnamon. The sweet spice in this case, however, was allspice berry: tiny caviar-like spheres. A much stronger flavour came from the thyme that had rested with the tomato and adorned the dish. This wasn't baby octopus , but instead the 'big' variety, as the waitress put it. Despite imagining a serving plate the length of our shared bench table, our allotted portions of the eight-legged creature fitted into a modest bowl. Octopus is a bit challenging: it not only easily turns tough if not handled correctly, but the suckers and head cavity present quite different textures. Here they had managed it quite well - the suckers had that lovely, slightly resistant feel of squid, whereas the head was closer to the texture of a long-stewed meat like rabbit. The stew was well-balanced too between tomato sweetness and inevitable saltiness from the aquatic animal.

The second dish was the housemade chorizo, with red wine and nicola potatoes. As you'll see from the pic, 'potatoes' was a little generous! The chorizo was softer and moister than what one normally picks up from the deli. Underneath its taut skin the meat fell away in little pieces like a meatball might. It had the unmistakable cured flavour of the Spanish sausage, however, and plenty of garlic had stuck through the curing process.

The bread that accompanied the meal came in a smoothly turned wooden bowl, and could only be described as a hunk: a big wodge of sourdough for us to tear and share between us. It served well for mopping up the oily, salty cooking juice that accompanied the chorizo.

Hotel Lincoln II

91 Cardigan St, Carlton; 03 9347 4666

Bernard: 'What did you order?'
Manny: 'Ah, a pint of lager'
Bernard: 'I got you....creme de menthe'

Our evening at Hotel Lincoln didn't feature quite so much imbibing of alcohol as in the average episode of Black Books, but, like Manny in the extract above, we were a little surprised at what was served up.

The Lincoln has two eating options: the bar menu or a high-end restaurant menu. It has two eating locations as well - the bar and a fine-dining room - and in between the two is an extra space that accommodates diners from both. On Monday nights the bar menu is reduced to $12, and by booking you find yourself with table service, good cutlery, bread and imaginative food at a budget price.

Beef involtini - normally $18 and hence one of the better-value dishes on a Monday - comes with a buttery parmesan and polenta mash. The meat is cooked to softness but holds its rolled shape well.
My meal order was for the whole grilled silver whiting, with fennel and avocado (normally $17). When our plates arrived, the involtini was served, then the waitress turned to me, plate in hand, and said 'I'm really sorry, but we were out of the whiting, so the chef has prepared the whitebait for you.'

...

There's a pause there to represent my momentary speechlessness. I still struggle to believe that a chef just decided to whip up a completely different dish (yes, they're both seafood, and indeed even share a similar name, but a whitebait pattie with chilli jam is a long way from a whole whiting). Disappointment was added to my shock, since this was a dish I'd already eaten. I won't write it up again - it was very much the same, but this time stuck a little on the way down as I kept harrumphing with incredulity. The photo did come out rather nicely, however:
I don't discredit the Lincoln's food at all: both bar and restaurant menu offer excellent meals, the latter in particular making great use of seasonal food (how good does chestnut and mascarpone ravioli with sherry mushrooms sound?). Having eaten there twice before I know this was an aberration in service, but one I've never heard of before and still has me shaking my head, asking 'what were they thinking?'

Julio's doughnuts

Julio is a wondrous neighbourhood cafe in North Fitzroy. It's set on a corner, only a couple of hundred metres from St Georges Rd, but infinitely quieter. It features a brief menu of very decent breakfast and lunch dishes, but much of its fame owes to its doughnuts.
(Handy that they make it easy to tell which is the jam and which is the custard!)

In the city the other day I saw a sizeable lorry outside a Krispy Kreme, bearing the name of that particular chain. When I considered the size of a doughnut, I wondered how they could ever require vehicular transporation of that size, unless, as is likely, they are manufactured on such a scale and with such disregard to quality that such a vast number of them could be shipped at the one time.

Julio's doughnuts could not be more contrasting to that concept. These sugary delights are so fresh they need to be eaten the morning of purchase - don't pick some up thinking 'ooh, I'll have that later'! As with any fresh-made doughnut, they are at the prime when consumed as soon as possible after the union between dough and oil. At this time, the outer layer retains a crispness that is ever so slightly teeth-resistant, before you plunge through to soft, soft dough.

Their custard doughnuts are the stars. The filling is just astonishing: you know that someone stood over a stove, stirring the egg and milk and sugar until it was exactly right. The flavours of the thick, creamy yellow filling split apart in your mouth, allowing you to savour vanilla and a distinctive lemony taste, reminiscent of an especially creamy lemon meringue filling.

The jam-filled doughnuts are not to be disregarded: filled with a deep, dark red raspberry jam, they combine the fruit's tartness with all that tongue-tingling dipped sugar.

Now I understand what all the fuss is about.

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.

Markov Place

350 Drummond St, Carlton; 03 9347 7113

A laneway entrance; leather banquette seating interspersed with tall tables and bar stools; giant-size posters spruiking revolutions; Melbourne's funkiest light fittings (large, rectangular shades pasted with newspaper cuttings); and extremely fine food and wine service. Carlton's Markov Place has got it going on.

The bar/restaurant is a cross between a gallery and a cellar: it's only one room, so the whole atmosphere, in part set by the poster'art around the walls, is appreciable in the way of a suburban artspace. The tall ceilings and stone floor, as well as the fact that it's downstairs from the adjoining (recommended) cleanskin shop that faces onto Drummond St, gives its patrons the feeling of being underground.

Amongst all that atmosphere is the chance to sample a succinct, thoughtful menu and a very sophisticated drinks list. The menu extends from sides such as fries and aioli for $8, through to snacks around the $15 mark and mains in the mid-$20s. Late on a Friday, our order, to share, served our post-pub pre-gig hunger well: aforementioned stringy fries with a serviceable aioli; pan-fried scallops with chorizo, lemon thyme and chilli, served on sourdough bread; and autumn mushroom bruschetta with manchego.

The scallop and chorizo dish was every bit as good as its description sounded. The bread - soft and pliant in the extreme, with a knife-challenging crust - could only have been made that morning. It soaked up the oil running from the sliced chorizo and bulked up each bite of scallop, an annoyingly bite-sized type of seafood (in that it tends to disappear all too quickly!)

The mushroom bruschetta was a triumph - a mound of seasonal fungi spilling off yet more sourdough (we'd had two complimentary slices with oil as well), out of which also tumbled some spinach. Slippery jack, shiitake, swiss brown and pine mushrooms had all soaked up a generous amount of oil and butter and the variety lent a wonderful delicacy to the flavour, set off by the creamy Spanish cheese.

Along with the food menu came a list of today's drink specials. Conveniently divided into 'before', 'during' and 'after', they offered an intriguing diversion from the usual. Cocktails are all too often out of reach of the frugal consumer, but many of these drink specials were well under $10. While a mojito with vanilla and aniseed was hard to turn down, a mix of cachaça, ginger, lime and chilli won the day. Each ingredient was immediately distinguishable in every mouthful, yet at the same time it delivered one, united flavour.

Particular notice needs to be made of the service at Markov Place. The waitstaff were knowledgeable, friendly and interested. They were keen to talk about the specials and offer recommendations. Not long after we'd been served a waiter came over to let us know the kitchen was closing in five minutes and ask if we wanted any more food or desserts - it wasn't pushy, only helpful. A curious inquiry as to the range of mushrooms had the waiter, unprecedently, offering of his free will to check the list with the kitchen. They were receptive to feedback and generally looked happy to be there; as were we.

www.markov.com.au

Grace Darling II

114 Smith St, Collingwood; 03 9416 0055

Collingwood's Grace Darling may use a bit of a daggy name for their discount food night - Tightarse Tuesdays - but their meals are all class. Diners hit the jackpot when an establishment offers dishes off their regular menu at a bargain price. At the Grace the same menu services the bar and restaurant, so you can choose your level of ambience and whether you want someone to take your order (including for drinks) or you want to take it to the bar yourself. The dining area at the back of the building is hardly pretentious, and its downstairs 'atrium area', with a glass roof and decorated with ferns and straw partitions, feels more like a beer garden. The main meal prices range from $10-15.

The Grace runs a dedicated steak night on Thursdays, but a red-meat-fix is also available for $14 as part of the Tightarse Tuesday menu. Alternatively, their steak sandwich with fries is also a winner. The chicken burger with avocado, brie and hollandaise sauce is a standout.

Feeling cosy, warm, buoyed by socialising on a Tuesday and liberated by the range of great food at a good price, I went left of my usual field and ordered the corned beef, with mash, cabbage, bacon and mustard sauce. It looked a treat on the plate: several slices of meat, not too thick, positively glowing with pinkness, but looking firm and fresh; no sign of that glossy sheen on cured meat that indicates it's past its best. On reflection I was a little surprised at the inclusion of bacon with the meal: corned beef tends to be a fairly salty serve on its own. Fortunately this sample didn't taste like it had been sitting in brine since the pub's namesake rescued the survivors of a shipwreck in 1883! Each of the meal's components contributed to make a whole that was more than the sum of its parts. The mash was particularly straightforward - not overly creamy nor buttery nor herby, it tasted pretty much like, well, potatoes that had been mashed! - and the mustard sauce was more of a mayonnaise. But piled up in a forkful with with the crunchy cabbage and pliable meat it made for an enjoyable home-style meal.

SG chose the beer-battered fish and chips. How cute is the spoonful of tartare sauce? Rather than one great slab of fish with a puffy batter, the Grace serves up three smaller, firm fillets, each more dusted than dunked in the batter. I've never found fault with their fries, and these steak-cut chips were just as crunchy and irresistible as ever.

If you haven't overdone it on fries and still have room a range of desserts - such as orange bread and butter pudding ($7.50) - is available.

What is most notable about the Grace's Tightarse Tuesday is that it's only the prices that are cut back. There's still a good choice of food - the range extends beyond traditional pub grub to include restuarant-style dishes (such as prawn risotto) - and the serving sizes are generous. There is also ample seating and the service is friendly and attentive.

Click here for an earlier Grace Darling review

Also posted at Very Cheap Eats

The Point

Aquatic Drive, Albert Park Lake; 03 9682 5566

A birthday dinner took us south of the river and north of our normal price limit. The Point is a renowned meat restaurant, with sample cuts of their pasture- and grain-fed, eye fillet and porterhouse cuts at the entrance to the restaurant. On this occasion, stopping to peruse these potential meal choices, or heading to the toilets, left diners a little over-exposed to a business function that was pumping out some truly awful sounds: 80s pop (not all of which is bad, I know, but we're talking Whitney Houston) and, even worse, 30-something corporate types belting out hits from their teenage years after a few too many glasses of sparkling. So much for ambience!

It was quieter in the restaurant, thankfully. Things remained very quiet around our table. We were in one of the three tables against the back wall and for the first half of our rather elongated stay (3.5 hours) received very little attention from any of the waitstaff. This poor service raised two questions: 1) what is it about certain demeanours - and this happens in hospitality and retail - that say to the staff 'I'm fine, just ignore me and carry on serving everyone else'? and 2) just how much do you have to pay for a meal to ensure that the corollary quality of service comes with it?

I could digress at length on the menu, since we were given at least 20 minutes to peruse it, before a waiter remembered us and came over to tell us the specials and belatedly, on request, bring a wine list. I was very tempted by the artichoke baragoule (braised artichokes in white wine and 'aromates') with tomatoes, olives and shallots, but just wasn't convinced it would be a satisfying dinner. The Point Parma - with besan fries, tomato fondue and tarragon jus - was also very tempting. Not to mention the veal blanquette with sauce albufera, which features stock, foie gras, cream, truffle, port Cognac and Madeira!

But had there ever been any real chance of me not ordering wagyu? I didn't get the porterhouse ($55) but instead went for the braised wagyu beef cheek, with poached quince and macaroni gratin. The cheek, not surprisingly, doesn't feature the famed wagyu marble, but it's an incredibly soft, tender cut of meat. Here it was served in a rich, sweet sauce that was almost a syrup. The meat itself had caramelised around the edges. The poached quince had just enough grain and firmness to add an quasi steak-like complement to the melting meat. A pillow of extremely buttery, almost liquid potato mash sat to one side. The combination was delicious when first served but became just a tad too sweet after several mouthfuls. As the meat cooled its texture also became slightly stewy. I did like the balance of colour on the plate: the lone 'macaroni' matching the potatoes and the quince and meat nestling their dark, moon shapes into one another.

The Point's menu reserves a separate page for Beef, with most steak dishes accompanied by The Point Garnish of bone marrow and shallot bouchee and a selection of mustards and sauces. SG chose the 120-day-aged, grain-fed eye fillet. It's a mountainous piece of meat, merrily topped by a whole roasted garlic clove. It was ever so slightly over-seared on the edges, but on the inside, it glowed a rich pink that, in the candlelight, rivalled the glow of red from the wine glass. When one tastes meat handled this reverently, one does wonder why they'd ever touch anything less.

We also ordered three side dishes. The roast pumpkin with feta, pinenuts and sage came very attractively served:The pumpkin was extremely sweet and the contrast against the goaty feta was quite stark. Chat potatoes, rosemary oil and confit garlic, served in a small La Creuset dish, are definitely worth the $8. The honey glazed carrots we ordered arrived as the broccolini side instead, which we sent back, and had to call over the maitre'd after we'd finished eating everything else to tell him not to worry about bringing that extra dish out.

Throwing monetary caution to the wind, we pressed on with a dessert each. A vanilla bean creme brulee was quite custardy, but the accompanying 'minestrone of autumn fruits' was fine and delicate. The pain perdu was superb. A take on French toast, it featured custard-soaked brioche, caramelised banana, glass biscuits and, most wondrously, Pedro Ximenex and bitter chocolate sorbet. Despite its richness, I couldn't waste a drop of that extraordinary sorbet and used every bit of brioche, banana and biscuit to capture it.

Towards the end of the meal our waiter spent some time at the table, apologising about the missing side dish and our long wait for desserts, explaining that early-comers eating slowly and late-comers eating quickly had left the chef in a dither. Particularly with the carrots, I am flabbergasted that a restaurant charging $38 a main, plus sides, could make such a junior-level error, and that the waiter thought we would be appeased by the explanation - if I pay a restaurant that much to cook my meat, the kitchen and floorstaff should be more than adept at getting everything out on time.

More positively, we did have a clear view of The Point's famed view over Albert Park Lake and back to the city. Our wine selections were also thoroughly enjoyable: an Italian and Spanish red respectively with the mains and a McWilliams botrytis and PX Cardenal with dessert.

www.thepointalbertpark.com.au