Eating Melbourne

Your Thai My Thai

YourThai Rice & Noodle Bar
255 Swanston Street
Melbourne
Phone: 9663 8010

“Get over it, Dad!” That was my advice to the big S as we walked out the door of this great new restaurant. He said it looked suspiciously like a chain store. He’s got this thing about chains. “Who cares?” I said, “Chain or no chain, it's good!”

Yourthai is new, one of a growing number of Asian eateries at the mid to top end of Swanston Street, slap bang in the heart of the city. Its bright green doorway, sparkly surfaces and fresh smells gives it a modern and clean feel as soon as you walk through the door. It’s been filled with people—mostly young Asian students—every time we’ve walked past, just as it was tonight, so we decided to give it a try. After some arm twisting that is.

As soon as you walk in the door there’s this huge menu board full of coloured pictures of delicious food to make you mouth water, along with equally enticing pictures of the drinks you can order with your meal. This sold the place to me. They have over 18 different blended drinks, from the traditional mango smoothie to more unusual ones like avocado, coconut and jack fruit smoothies … hmmm, I think I’ll stick with the mango!

Besides these wacky and wonderful drinks, there is a lot to choose from in the food department. Being the wonderfully adventurous person that I am ... wink, wink ... I had Chicken Rice Paper Rolls. They were much better then I expected, but not the best I’ve had. Dad had Thai Prawn Fried Rice. It looked interesting but just a bit boring to me, but then that’s my Dad! Mum had the Green Curry Chicken Rice while little brother had Crispy Chicken Sticky Rice. All that with two smoothies and everyone was happy for a grand total of $38.

So, if you’re ever out and about on Swanston… this is a cheap and delicious option for dinner! Even if it does look a bit like McDonalds with chopsticks!

Not a bad burger!

81 Ormond Road, Elwood
Tuesday - Wednesday: 5pm - 9pm
Thursday - Sunday: 12pm - 9pm

Call it serendipity! After discovering the celebrated beachside fish-and-chippery was no longer (no thanks to you, you, or you for the hint!), we scooped up the beach towels and went in search of an alternative. A few wrong turns and we scored an empty car space outside Burgerepublic, a great little find in the Elwood village.

A small, well designed space with bright, clean colours, a big communal table at the centre, a long bar with stools looking out over the sidewalk and a handful of tables on the pavement. Cool music, friendly staff. Nice. So was the menu—simple and straightforward (Ali calls it ‘sexy’): a range of burgers in three categories—beef, chicken and vegetarian—and chips. No distractions!

After placing our order, we played table hopscotch. Starting outside on the pavement, A was too cold. Moving inside to the bar stools, S was squinting. We wound up at the communal table where we read magazines about celebrities. Turns out they’re all in rehab!

Anyway, back to the burgers. Nicely done. We both had the chilli burger: a good serve of grilled and juicy beef topped with salady stuff, mayo, chilli aioli and pickled jalapenos and served on a fresh, lightly toasted sourdough bun (sounds like an ad for maccas) ... excellent! Little brother had the ‘special’, an African adventure minus the avocado, while B had the lentil burger (the only downer: the coriander hadn’t been washed properly). There were others too: the bluecheese and bacon; the wasabi; the camembert and cranberry; the spicy moroccan. All sounded good. As for the bowl of thick chips we shared, they were some of the best we’ve had for a long time. Fresh, thick and crisp—nearing chip perfection we reckon. And all served on large white plates. A nice touch.

It turns out this Elwood burger joint is one of three—a micro-chain! But one that outdoes the big boys in spades. If you’re into burgers, this is a place worth visiting. If you’re not, well … maybe it’s still worth a try. You just might change your mind!

Baptist Pikelets

Certain foods come loaded with associations. For me, it's those little buttered pancakes we used to call pikelets. The minute I see them I’m back in the Baptist church hall that was my second home through childhood. From memory, there was an endless stream of church luncheons and teas that run into one. I remember the high A-frame ceiling, the dusty window ledges and the noisy wooden floor. There were always two long lines of trestle tables covered in light green sear-sucker tablecloths. As everyone arrived, the tables filled with the most eclectic yet predictable array of goodies, all plated and ready to share.

There were the endless platters of sandwiches of varying size and shape, countless dishes of tuna casserole and pasta bake, and if we were lucky, a solitary dish of the most exotic little meatballs in a thick sauce of French onion soup and pineapple pieces. Even more memorable (and voluminous) were the sweets: the tea cakes and cream sponges, the buttered nut loaf and fruit sones, chocolate, lemon and caramel slices, rum-less rum balls (we were Baptists!), and every now and then a lone pavlova smothered in whipped cream and a grated peppermint crisp bar; it never lasted long.

But the thing I remember most warmly is the pikelets. Why? Not really sure. They were certainly not the tastiest thing on offer, but they were reliable … comforting … always sufficiently sweet but understated. And they looked good. Flat and smooth little discs of varnish brown surrounded by a ring of creamy white. I liked them.

Ali had a friend for a sleepover last night so we decided to make them for dessert. Not quite as I remember … better … fresh from the skillet, smothered in roasted strawberries, thick cream and drizzled with a warm chocolate sauce. Ok, so not quite the church luncheon variety, but as I flipped each batch onto the plate and watched them mount up, I decided here’s one Baptist tradition worth keeping.

Want to try?

Ingredients:

Juice of half a lemon
400ml of milk
300g of plain flour
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of cream of tartar
pinch of salt
80g of caster sugar
2 eggs

Method:

• Combine the lemon juice and milk and set aside
• Sift the flour, soda, cream of tartar and salt into a mixing bowl.
• Whisk the eggs lightly and add to the flour.
• Gradually add the milk mixture, whisking together by hand and ensuring all the lumps are whisked out as you go. When complete, the mixture should resemble the thickness of a heavy double cream.
• Set the mixture aside for 30 minutes or so—not necessary, but it’ll help to make the pikelets lighter.
• Heat a non-stick frypan and drop in large spoonfuls of batter. In a few moments the pikelets will set with small bubbles forming on the surface. At this stage, flip each one over with a spatula and cook the other side for a few minutes. Tip them out onto a platter and continue with the next batch. Best to cover the cooked ones with a clean tea towel to keep them warm as you go.
• They can be served with butter, jam, or lemon and sugar. But if you want to go the whole hog, whip some cream and roast some strawberries to serve with them. Simply quarter a punnet of strawberries and spread them in an oven tray, sprinkle with castor sugar and bake in a pre-heated moderate oven for 10 to 15 minutes. Remove them and let them cool a little.

Provide some plates, serviettes and some hot fudge sauce to drizzle over the top and let the family at ‘em. They wont last long, I promise.

Ali’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Actually, the recipe isn’t mine. But Dad and I have made these cookies so many times I think I have the right to rename them! I have to take some cookies to school camp soon, and these ones are definitely going. I love them and so will you.

Here’s what you need:

125g of softened butter
1 cup of brown sugar
A few drops of vanilla
1 egg
1 cup of plain flour
1 cup of self-raising flour
1 cup of desiccated coconut
300g of chocolate chips (I recommend a mixture of both dark and white chocolate chips)

And here’s how you make them:

• Combine the butter, vanilla and sugar in a mixer and cream together for around 10 minutes.
• Add the egg and continue creaming until well blended.
• Add the flours, coconut and chocolate and stir through gently until well combined.
• Roll small handfuls into balls, place evenly spaced on a baking tray and flatten slightly with the back end of a fork.
• Bake in an oven pre-heated to 190C for around 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove the cookies from oven and let them cool on the tray.

Serving these cookies while they’re still warm is the best, along with a glass of milk or, even better, a hot chocolate. The recipe only makes 20 cookies so you might have to double the ingredients 'cause they are so yummy!

The Battle of the Chocolates!

I love hot chocolate! So does Dad. So we decided to try out what are supposed to be two of the best places in Melbourne for hot chocolates. Here’s what I thought.

Koko Black
Shop 4, Royal Arcade
331 Bourke St. Melbourne
9639 8911
http://www.kokoblack.com

Very good! Though there’s only one version to choose from--the Belgian Hot Chocolate--I loved the rich texture, the chocolate pattern drawn into the creamy part at the top, and most especially the fact that you could drink all of it without feeling sick!

I loved the atmosphere of the place too. We sat upstairs where we could overlook the beautiful arcade below through these large arched windows. And there are these great big chocolate brown chesterfield chairs to sit in too. It wasn’t too busy and the service was great--fast and friendly. The only thing I didn’t like was that the choices on the menu were quite limited. Overall, though, I think it is a great place to stop, enjoy a delicious hot chocolate and maybe choose a few Belgian chocolates on the way up (please Dad!?).

There are two Koko Blacks in Melbourne now. They call them salons! We went to the one in the Royal Arcade. The other one is on Lygon Street in Carlton. And there’s another one coming out at Chadstone.

My rating: 8 / 10

Max Brenner
Menzies Alley,
Melbourne Central Shopping Centre
Latrobe St., Melbourne
9662 4442
http://www.maxbrenner.com.au

Max Brenner is much more of a chain. They seem to be all over the place now. Dad says they started in Israel. Apparently there’s about ten of them in Sydney and now there’s four here in Melbourne. I love the atmosphere. Just walking in makes you feel like you are in a chocolate heaven! It’s always very busy though, which takes a lot of the atmosphere away. It always feels too crowded to me, and most of the time it takes a long time to get served. For example, my friend Bridget and I had to wait 45 minutes for our order!

That said, I love the choice of what you can have at MB’s. Although I’ve discovered some of it isn’t very good quality, the hot chocolate that I had was presented beautifully. I had the Italian Hot Chocolate. It was in what they call a ‘hug mug’ which is very cute. It started off wonderfully but, I have to confess, after a few sips it got very sickly!

Overall, I think that Max Brenner is a great place to for some really delicious desserts and maybe a hot chocolate to go with it. But you may not be feeling great on the way out!

My rating: 6 / 10

As you can see, Koko Black gets my vote. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t give Max a try as well. And tell us what you think! Have you had a great hot chocolate somewhere that we should know about? I'm ready for some more taste testing!!

Baumkuchen

Ok, so our German is hopeless, but our cake making skills are not half bad. At least we think so. We dug up a slightly yellowed old recipe this past week. Simon got it years ago from a German pastry cook, a grumpy but endearing old woman who taught him most of what he knows about cakes.

A baumkuchen is, in more familiar language, a tree cake, supposedly one of the most treasured creations in the German bakery. It’s created in layers with a pastry brush, each layer cooked under the salamander or grill. The end result looks wonderful and doesn’t taste half bad either.

Give it a try!

Ingredients:

300 grams good quality butter
300 grams of sugar
finely grated rind of one lemon
6 eggs
A dash of rum
100 grams of finely crushed nuts
150 grams of cornflour
150 grams of plain flour

Method:

Cream together the butter, sugar and lemon rind for a good 15 minutes, adding eggs slowly and one at a time.

Add remaining ingredients and mix for a further 5 minutes.

Grease a medium sized cake tin. With a pastry brush, brush a small amount of mixture into the base of the tin (similar to a crepe) and place under the salamander of grill until nicely cooked. Continue doing so, cooking each layer, one on top of the other until the mixture is used up.

Let the finished cake cool then tip out of the tin. Leaving upside down, coat the cake (top and sides) with a thin layer of copha-based chocolate icing. To make the icing, add around 30 grams of melted copha to 150 grams of sifted icing sugar mixed with 30 grams of cocoa.

Let the cake sit for at least an hour or so, preferably a day, before slicing it through and serving with a good coffee or a hot chocolate.

Enjoy!

Chicken soup for the soul

Here’s our tried and true family recipe for Chicken Noodle Soup, one of our favourites. This past Sunday night, when it was cold and wet outside, this brew—served with some crusty, chewy bread—hit the spot. It’s one of those stand-your-fork-up-in-it types, probably more stew than soup, but when it’s cold on the outside, this stuff is good for the soul.

It must be said, we do have a rather troubling difference of opinion on ingredients. Ali would prefer the purist version: chicken, noodles and soup (read chicken stock). No green or orange additives allowed! Simon, on the other hand, reckons it’s just not right without some good ol’ fashioned vegies thrown in, just like Grandma used to make. So, delete or add at will. Either way, enjoy!

This is how you do it.

Season and roast a good size whole chicken in the oven, then let it stand on the top of the stove to cool and rest.

Grab a boiler or large saucepan and melt in it a good tablespoon of butter (give the margarine a miss).

Throw in a couple of roughly diced onions, some crushed garlic, and a rasher of bacon cut into small pieces. No need to cook it too much, just enjoy the aroma until the onions sweat.

If you dare (and the kids aren’t looking), add in two or three carrots, a leek or two, and a couple of sticks of celery, all roughly diced as small as you like them.

Pour in enough chicken stock (homemade or the ready-made cartons from the supermarket .. but don’t go near that powdered stuff) to cover it all well, bring to a gentle boil and simmer away for 15 minutes or so.

Throw in a handful of uncooked pasta (spaghetti works well, as long as you break it down in shorter stands) and a diced potato if it sounds good. Simmer for another ten minutes or until the pasta is done.

Pull your chicken apart, set the skin aside, strip the meat from the bones and break it up into pieces. Good size chunks work best. Don’t do the small-dice thing. There’s nothing better than looking into your bowl of steaming soup to see great mouthfuls of tender chicken just begging to be eaten.

Season to taste and serve with good dose of fresh coriander (or parsley if your prefer) and some bread that’s worth eating.

This really has to be served in front of the telly, all on the one couch, blankets provided, while you watch the footy replay or the latest Funniest Home Videos.

You can’t do better!

Stairway to dinner

Supper Inn
15 Celestial Avenue (off Little Bourke Street), Melbourne
Open 7 days, 5.30pm – 2.30am
9663 4759 (reservations recommended)
Licensed, BYO, corkage $2 per person
Entrees: $4 – $8
Mains: $10 – $15
All cards welcome

Ok, so this is not the fanciest eating house in Chinatown: a seedy laneway, a dingy staircase, a small cramped dining room filled with laminex tables, faux wood paneling on the walls with pink vertical blinds on the windows. But this place is a Melbourne institution, so we had to give it a try. Around since the mid 70s, the Supper Inn is renowned for providing some of the most consistently good, reasonably priced and authentic Cantonese fare available in Melbourne, and often when all the other places have shut down for the night. We were early diners and lucky to get a table as soon as we walked in. We watched as numerous punters were turned away at the door or, as we experienced on the way back down, cued on the rickety staircase waiting to get in.

Forks were not provided and little brother got to perfect his chopsticks technique. He said it felt like we were back in China. We eyed the prehistoric looking lobsters in the murky fish tanks and decided against seafood! Instead, we had the roasted duck rice noodle soup, the sliced beef Szechuan style (loaded with cashews) and an overflowing plate of fried rice with bean shoots. Oh, and we started off with a little bamboo steamer full of the most delicious dim sims. Between the four of us, this was more than enough food and made every tummy happy. Not the best Cantonese we’ve ever had, but good honest fare all the same. We stumbled back down the stairs $40 poorer but glad to have experienced the Supper Inn for ourselves. You gotta give it a try!

Small is good!

AIX Café and Creperie Salon
24 Centre Place, Melbourne
9662 2667
Monday to Friday: 6.00am to 5.00pm
Saturday: 8.00am to 4.00pm
Mains $4 - $7
Unlicensed
No bookings

The sign sounds French, the owners are Greek, and the reviews say it’s very ‘Melbourne’ … whatever it is, it sure is small!

AIX Café and Creperie Salon is an intimate, elbow-to-elbow little place. It’s one of the many holes-in-the-wall that line Centre Place, a shadowy, narrow, graffiti covered laneway--filled with as much atmosphere as people--that runs between Flinders Lane and Collins Street. It’s a great place to go after a leisurely stop at the wonderful City Library in Flinders Lane.

AIX has made it in to the Age Cheap Eats guide two years in a row now, and for good reason. It's just what you'd imagine finding in a hidden laneway in Paris. Though it is small, there’s a family-sized table tucked away in the back, and the wait staff always make you feel at home, especially the kids. Their genuine welcome says stay as long as you like! And the red walls and soft red lights make it a cosy place do just that.

The lunch menu is a mixture of crusty baguettes and foccacias stuffed full with fresh ingredients, and an impressive lists of teas! But the draw card, especially for the kids, is the list of delicious sweet and savory crepes. All $4 to $7, they’re filled with mouth watering combinations like:

hot salami, goats cheese, capsicum and olive tapenade;
Peking duck, cucumber, iceburg lettuce and plum sauce;
field mushrooms and tallegio cheese.

Or for the sweet tooth:

chocolate hazelnut and double cream;
lemon and sugar;
banana, ricotta and honey;
mixed berries and rosewater yoghurt.

The ambience is relaxed, the music is great, the coffee is good (Grinders) and the price is right. Go ahead … squeeze in!

York Surprise

York Café
338 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
9642 2882
Open lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday
Mains $6 - $8
Take Away available
BYO with $1 corkage per person
Bookings and credit cards accepted

The proliferation of small Asian cafes in the CBD is boggling; wonderful but boggling. Where do you begin? How do you begin? Well, our approach is simple: start where you are, wander no further than you have to, and be open to surprises in unexpected places.

York Café is about at local as it gets for us. It’s a comfortable but unassuming little place, lots of contemporary dark wood furniture and stark white walls with the occasional Chinese pop-out paper art blessing you with good luck. It can feel a bit sterile to begin with, but the attentiveness and welcome of the service staff make up for it. Most importantly, kids are always treated well. It’s an out-of-the-way place, hardly ever crowded but there’s always a steady stream of customers, many of them regulars; it’s obvious from the way they’re greeted and make themselves at home.

York is in its second year now. The folks that run this place are originally from Hong Kong. While the specials board always includes good old Aussie-Chinese stalwarts like sweet and sour pork, this place is far from your typical suburban Chinese. The menu includes a great selection of noodle soups, rice dishes and some great vegetarian options. We especially liked the Hokkien fried noodles, the delicious boneless chicken curries, and the stir fried beef with chilli and garlic sauce. The vegies and other ingredients are fresh, the serving sizes are large and our family of four does well with two to three mains between us. Around $30 does the trick. This is not top-flight stuff, but the people at York care about what they do and it shows. We’ll be back.