Monthly Archives: December 2010

Tacos Panchos

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Point Cook Town Centre Food Court. Phone: 9395 5746

A big thanks to Deb at Bear Head Soup for the great tip on this one!

Point Cook is, of course, very much part of our greater west neighbourhood – but until now it has been mostly somewhere through which we passed, or bypassed, on our way to somewhere else.

There’s no reason why such should be the case, but I am a little surprised by the size and bustle of Point Cook Town Centre when I emerge from the underground car park. Yes, it’s mall territory, but it’s laid out like a real live village, with streets and cars and stuff.

Besides, I reckon the days of dismissing malls, shopping centres and the like of being of no consequence or interest when hunting for places that trade in cool, funky, cheap and tasty food are fading fast, especially here in the spreading west, with its enthusiastic tribes of food nuts, each eager to make their own tastes and flavours available.

In any case, it’s quite a thrill to see such a colourful food outlet in an otherwise standard, mid-sized food court, although the two Asian places look of more than passing interest, as does the burger joint just past them.

Tacos Pancho is festooned with stencilled drawings of fabled Mexican wrestlers and other icons, and fronted with your authentic Mexican tiles, while the serving counter top is facsimile of the streets in which this food is sold in Mexico and Latin America.

I leave the tacos and burritos for another day, and instead order a couple of quesadillas – two kinds of filling wrapped in soft flour tortillas for $8.90.


While awaiting my food, I peruse a copy of Around Point Cook, a cracking little rag that seems like a paragon of the downhome, old-style community newspaper. (You can check out Around Point Cook here.)

My meal, when it arrives, looks a tad skimpy, but turns out to be a surprisingly filling lunch.

The chorizo and bean quesadilla is salty, cheesy and tasty, with about six slices of chorizo. The beans could’ve done with some more heat.

I’ve never been a fan of pineapple in otherwise savoury food, and indeed the fruit in the pork quesadilla does somewhat overpower the crunchy and moreish meat. The quesadilla is finished with finely diced onion and fresh coriander. I like it.

Just around the corner, I spy a keenly priced Indian place and a Vietnamese establishment that looks pretty flash ($12.90 pho, anyone?), and spot another cheap Indi place and a kebab outfit on the run home, so this is a neighbourhood worth some in-depth exploration

I meander home on the back roads, driving through industrial estates and even past the odd paddock.

It’s interesting to drive beside, over, under and around the freeway that is so often my route of commute.

Tex-Mex on the sound system, of course – specifically the contents of a parcel from Arhoolie that arrived the week before.

As I know La Morenita in Sunshine is going to be closed for a week or so, I drop in for a bunch of empanadas I ordered the previous day. Into the freezer for them!

Nothing much else to add … ‘cept Viva The Western Suburbs, Baby!

Tacos Panchos on Urbanspoon


Big Fields Fresh Market

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Sunshine Plaza, Sunshine. Phone: 9312 4767

Sunshine Plaza is a bit of an odd space.

It has an Aldi’s and a Reject Shop, complete with an adjoining discount place that does grocery lines.

There’s the usual beauty salons and Kung Fu Massage and a Woolworths.

There’s quite a few empty spaces, or at least premises “in transition”.

Currently, the food court is made up of just two outlets of no great distinction.

There’s even a bookshop, Plato’s, that has heaps of used and/or remaindered hardbacks that seem to be of American origins, some of them refugees from libraries. I can’t say I’ve ever read a ripper I’ve bought there, but it’s so different from all my other bookshop haunts that I can never resist having a peek anyway.

But Sunshine Plaza’s star, for us, is Big Fields.

Our visits here have become more frequent.

The reason is simple – it’s  a supercharged grocer/fruiterer/butcher, along the same lines as Fresh On Young or the combined heft of the many shops at The Circle in Altona.

Testament to the appeal and worthiness of Big Fields is the dazzling array of races, cultures and pigmentation represented by its collective customer base.


I haven’t explored every nook and cranny of the joint – yet – so I can’t vouch for the all-round pricing structure.

But my recent $30 “gap shop” included some fine bargains – 250g Lavazza coffee for $4.68, for instance, or bananas for 87c a kilogram.

Big Fields has a halal butcher on the right as you enter, and – over on the left – a continental deli, wherein you buy all sort of pig bits.

In between is a modestly sized fish monger.

The fruit and veg range is beaut, while the place is pretty good on dry goods, too, with rows of nuts, pasta, condiments and the like. The stock seems to display a Mediterranean bias, but there’s a goodly number of Asian lines as well.

As I meandered around, happily mixing shopping with plain old nosiness and picture-snapping, the owner approached me to check out my intentions.

Totally honourable, I informed him.

“Hanging out in a place like this is, for me, like being in an art gallery or a museum – better!” I enthused.

Thus reassured, he shook my hand, took my card and wished me a happy new year.


Western suburbs food and Melbourne’s mainstream media

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In Anthea Cannon’s lovely spread in the Maryrbinong Leader on Consider The Sauce and Footscray Food Blog, I was quoted as saying: “The Good Food Guide used to be my bible but not one Footscray place is in there.”

Truth is, it’s been more than a decade since I bought a copy – we may as well live a on different planets.

Of course, there’s a very good reason The Age Good Food Guide ignores Footscray completely and more or less ignores the rest of the west, too – the food styles (and prices!) it covers simply don’t exist in meaningful numbers in our part of the world.

Some years ago, the Age coverage of cheap eats was sloughed off to … Cheap Eats, which I presume has a fair number of Footscray eateries and heaps more from the greater west.

I’m ignorant on that matter, too, as it’s likewise been years since I looked at a copy. It’s worthy and no doubt valuable to those who buy it. But when you’re on the ground and regularly out on the food hunt, as we are, I’d find it very surprising if it could enlighten us on a westie food place of which we’d never before heard. Even if that does sound smug!

But these issues got me thinking about mainstream media coverage of food culture, people and places in Melbourne’s greater western suburbs in general.

The heavyweight formal reviewers for both Melbourne’s daily newspapers, Stephen Downes and Larissa Dubecki, have little or no reason to set foot in the west. Sometimes they surprise, but mostly their interests lie elsewhere – geographically, philosophically and financially.

Nina Rousseau recently covered the marvellous Los Latinos in Epicure’s Unexplored Territory column.

But even though I loathe MasterChef, I reckon The Cravat did a better job of injecting diversity and variety into that space.

Rousseau mostly seem to gravitate towards just-so cafes and the like.

More recently, Lauren/Ms Baklover has got a few good western shots into the small Under $10 section that appears on the same page each week. And good for her, too!

That leaves the weekend papers.

The Herald Sun on Saturday carries, as part of its food spread, a section in which hot-shot places are chosen to represent various parts of the city – including the west.

The Age Extra regularly carries “list” features – “Where to get the best canoli”, for instance, or “Melbourne’s best places for lizard turnovers”. The west gets a run quite often there, too.

And between them and the Sunday papers, there are various nooks and crannies, celebrity profiles and so on that provide scope for our region to get some of the limelight.

I can’t help but feel, though, that often where Melbourne’s west does rate a mention, the coverage is only for form’s sake.

And that the authors/compilers perhaps haven’t even set foot in the western places they dutifully include.

This is surprising for several reasons.

One is the rampant growth of the city’s western regions.

Another, especially in the case of the Herald Sun, is the area’s solid blue-collar credentials. You’d think the “people’s paper” would endeavour to get out and about a bit more in the west, no?

Interestingly, but perhaps not all that relevantly, the Herald Sun’s journos remain based at Southgate, but the paper is printed in the shadows of the Westgate Bridge. The Age scribes are based at Docklands and the paper is printed at Tullamarine.

In any case, I have compiled the following list of eateries that between them seem to have constituted a large slab of coverage accorded western suburbs food coverage in recent years.

Many of them are very fine indeed; one and perhaps more, though, I believe to be over-rated.

Moreover, a handful are obvious choices for the likes of Downes and Dubecki, in that they deliver fine dining – or aspire to it – and prices to match.

But I also sense a close-to-deadline “Quick, quick – I need a western suburbs place! I know – Cafe Fidama!” about it.

But the bottom line is they have all received coverage, sometimes a LOT of coverage, while rest of the west goes unnoticed, unseen and mostly unloved.

And not just in the papers, either, but also online.

Have I missed anyplace obvious?

Thien An

Hung Vuong

Touks

Delizia Cucina

Station Hotel

Café Fidama

Corner Store

Caravallo’s

Café Lalibela

Laksa King

Philhellene

Dinh Son Quan

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1/17 Nicholson St Footscray. Phone: 9689 3066

Knowing I’ll be flying solo on Christmas Day, with my partner cavorting with cousins in Queensland, I’ve loaded the fridge and shelves with all sorts of tasty stuff.

But by noon, a great urge to be out and about is upon me – despite being 150 pages into a 900-page tome by the remarkable Clive Barker and a bunch of freshly arrived packages containing cool sounds of the cajun, Tex-Mex, jug band and Yiddish pop flavours.

So out I head, although not with any great optimism about what I’ll find.

As I enter Footscray’s Vietnamese quarter, I realise how wrong I am.

There’s people everywhere, food everywhere.

With joy, I realise that not only am I going to be fed, but I also have a wide variety of choice – in fact, almost as many as on a regular weekend day.

So it is that I finally get around to tackling the bain marie goodies at Dinh Son Quan.

This is one of a handful of eateries that adjoin Little Saigon Market.

We’ve been in here heaps of times previously, but always for the non-pho soup noodles or a very excellent diced garlic beef with tomato rice. I’ve also had the banh xeo – a coconut/rice flour crêpe filled with prawns, pork and vegies – that went down well with Ms Baklover at Footscray Food Blog. I found it a bit dull and squishy.

No matter – I’m here today to sample the fascinating array of mostly braised dishes that fill the bain marie section.

There’s stuffed bitter melon, a couple of funky looking pork numbers and several fish dishes – that seems a grand way to go, with notorious fish-hater Bennie out of the state.

Doing Dinh Son Quan this way costs $8 for a choice of two dishes with steamed rice.

I pick a dusky cutlet of mackerel with a black pepper sauce and a simple stir fry of baby octopus, zucchini, celery, capsicum, tomato and coriander.

When my food is at table I am also presented with a bowl of clear chicken soup – always a good sign! In this case, though, the soup is too sweet for me.

The fish is nice enough, but fails to really excite and lacks much by way of pepper quotient. Likewise, the stirfry is lacking zing or, really, any kind of flavour punch at all.

I’ll try the Dinh Son Quan bain marie again – there’s plenty on which to experiment.

And I’m happy to accept my meal selections may be to blame for a disappointing lunch in this lovely place that always rolls out a warm welcome.

Besides, just being among the throng has put a skip in my step.

I even discover that Cavallaro’s, too, is open, so snag a single ricotta-jammed canoli for an afternoon coffee-time snack.

Dinh Son Quan on Urbanspoon

Huy Huy’s head-turning window display.

Cavallaro’s was open for Christmas, too, doing a roaring trade in canoli. I only bought one!

Tandoori Flames

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1/76 Yarra St, Geelong. Phone: 5298 2147

Not more than 24 hours after writing a snotty putdown of a yahoo email that imagined I’m the kind of food blog bloke who hustles free meals, there I was – accepting a free meal.

My Geelong lunches had long been reduced to routine and even tedium, the same takeaways eaten at my desk and, more and more often, packed lunches making the train trip with me.

So the previous week, I’d been delighted to find a new Indian joint just around the corner.

Tandoori Flames operates, particularly at night, as a more formal a la carte restaurant with all the usuals and mains ranging from $10 to $15.

But taking advantage of central location in Geelong’s CBD, they’re also wooing the lunchtime crowd with a shorter and cheaper menu, towards which I was drawn by my natural instincts .

On it are such items as pakoras, samosas, onion bhaji, tandoori chook, as well as a variety of salads and wraps.

The previous week I’d tried the chicken biryani, taken away and eaten at my desk. Not bad, either.

And the previous day, conscious of a tiny lunch-time window yet weary of the desk routine, I’d phoned ahead using one of the mobile numbers given me for just that purpose, wishing to ensure my meal as ready when I arrived.

About 20 minutes later I bowled up and … there was no one home. Literally.

Disappointed, I was forced to utilise the less attractive option of the Viet-Sino place next door.

Turns out that after taking my order, Jimmy had onpassed it – again by phone – to their chef, who in the meantime had had some sort of misadventure on the highway. No appearance, you worship!

Later in the afternoon, Jimmy phoned me in the office, gushing with apologies and promising me my next lunch “on the house”.


So there you go – a freebie meal, yes, but offered to and accepted by a regular customer, not a food blogger.

My “on the house” lunch order was the dish that had escaped me the previous day – chooley pathuray, Tandoori Flames’ version of the Kitchen Samrat dish earlier praised hereabouts.

And gosh it was good, the chick peas dancing with a deep red, tomatoey gravy of only mild spiciness, some raw chopped onion adding crunch.

The breads, two of them, were heavenly.

Deep fried and studded with black cardamom seeds that offer exquisite little grenades of flavour, they were so moreish as to put most routine flat breads, Indian or otherwise, in the shade.

The perfect lunch!

Another staff member, Jas, explained to me the difference between puris and pathuray – the former a lighter bread made with refined flour and commonly eaten as part of breakfast, the latter quite a bit heftier and made using plain flour.

Or as she put it: “With puris, I’ll eat four; with pathuray only two.”

It’s surprising it took me so long to work out that there’s a western suburbs angle to all this – the Geelong eatery is a branch of the familiar Tandoori Flames is South Kngsville and on the same street as Food By Motorino that made a good impression of Ms Baklover at Footcray Food Blog.

We’ve driven by heaps of times, but never stopped – maybe because they don’t do lunch.

Given the exceptional and caring service I’ve received at their new Geelong enterprise, the Kingsville Flames is on our hit list for a soon-come dinner.

The Melbourne branch of Tandoori Flames is at 15 Vernon St, South Kingsville (phone 9078 2726) and their website is here.

tandoori Flames on Urbanspoon

Food Blogger Spam No.2

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Hi Kenny.

I am Ashley from FoOooOoD. pampering yourself. I have been following your blog for a long time. I must say that I love your blog! I am writing to discuss about the potential collaboration in spreading the word about your blog to more food lovers!

FoOooOoD. pampering yourself connects restaurants, cafes and bars with food bloggers and twitterers, and also food lovers in general. We identified the trend that people like taking photos of great food, and blog, tweet and facebook (share photos on facebook) about them. You as a great blogger are the best example!

You have fantastic food-hunting experience and been doing great reviews for restaurants (free marketing). Although you do it because of passion, we strongly believe that the restaurants should acknowledge your effort and other food lovers’, for example by giving free meals and great deals. That’s what we do. I have been talking to some Top100 Food Bloggers and Twitterers. Besides that, we created a facebook page recently. In less than a week, we have got 119 “like”s and our target is to hit 400 by the end of December! Apart from that, we are also gathering content for our website.

This is the exciting part – our main website concept is to display photos taken by food bloggers. Say we post the photo of your favourite Churrasco at La Morenita. Food lovers are then attracted by the photo, so they click on it. This will direct them to the page on your blog. In other words, we direct traffic to your blog and provide a platform for food lovers to find out more about great food bloggers. The Masterchef Callum has agreed to share his, we would love to have yours too! Could you please share your favourite blog articles with us, so that we could post them on our website to be viewed by our food lovers?

Would really appreciate it if you could consider this. Look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks. Have a great day!

—

Ashley

FoOooOoD

Mobile | +61 433 011 239

Email | food.pamperingyourself@gmail.com

Facebook | FoOooOoD.pamperingyourself

Twitter | FoOooOoDpamp

********

KENNY’S REPLY:

Hello there … Thanks for the kind words about our blog.

However, I have a few points …

1. No one has been following our blog for a long time – it’s only been going since August.

2. Great reviews of restaurants are not the same as free marketing. To say so is twisting the situation to serve your aims. Which is not to say restaurants don’t use reviews for marketing purposes …

3. Your statement “You as a great blogger are the best example!” – is ridiculous. Sending such a comment, the SAME COMMENT, to me and Gods knows how many others is disrespectful.

4. We pay for all our meals; we will continue to do so. If we are offered privileges, we may well accept, depending on the situation. But we do not expect freebies or the like. Nor is that reason we are blogging.

5. Masterchef is not about food – it’s about TV.

6. Supposing for a moment your scheming is sincere and/or your schemes have merit … bombarding bloggers with such a slapdash, informal email is no way, IMHO, to go about winning friends. You sound like a bunch of frat boys chasing a free lunch.

7. Regarding your statement: “We strongly believe that the restaurants should acknowledge your effort and other food lovers’, for example by giving free meals and great deals” – we strongly disagree. Restaurants and food industry folk owe bloggers absolutely zero.

Cheers, Kenny

***

ASHLEY’S REPLY:

Hey Kenny.

Thanks for your reply and thoughts. I apologise if my email offended you.

It’s not solely about marketing. It’s about connecting food lovers, bloggers and restaurants, and creating a mutual situation for all parties. Food lovers love great food, but at the same time they also want to meet “like-tummy” people. We encourage restaurants to express gratitude for the effort of bloggers, not for giving good, bias review, but for visiting the restaurants to try the food.

I appreciate the support from other food bloggers who have agreed to contribute their posts to our website, as they see it as a channel to interact with their blog followers.

I am still following your blog, simply because I love reading restaurant reviews. And, I know that every blogger puts in a lot of effort into blogging!

Merry Xmas!

Thanks, Ashley

***

KENNY’S REPLY

No worries, mate.

I likewise apologise for my snotty reply.

Still, I don’t reckon it’s a good idea to try flattering people with a form letter in which you merely change restaurant X and meal Y.

I’m a bunny, but still know of two people who received the same epistle.

Cheers, Kenny

Victoria’s Best Kebab House

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8 East Esplanade, St Albans. Phone: 9364 4433

Ambling into the Vietnamese hub of St Albans, I have a persistent mantra pounding in my head: “Lunch, noodles, pho, lunch, noodles, pho …”

Then I am waylaid by a sign.

Given our undying love for Footscray Best Kebab House, the sign is something of a cross between an invitation and a challenge. Irresistible, in either case.

I saunter up the laneway, and enter through the rear of the kebab house.

I order a standard $12 plate of lamb of the spit.

I may have done better to order one of the grilled-to-order meats – shish, say – for the lamb is edible but average, lacking sparkle.

With the meat I get cacick (cuke/yogurt) and eggplant dips, and both are good – again, without making the senses sing. I also ask for an extra dollop of the chilli dip. This is weird – totally lacking any kind of spice kick, it is nevertheless tasty in a smoky way that recalls Mexican or Latin American food. It’s a winner with the meat and the highlight of my lunch.

The accompanying salad – a finely diced mix of red and green capsicum, carrot and cabbage – nice touch, that – is good.

Victoria’s Best Kebab House? I don’t think so … but if it was just around the corner, it’d probably be my second home.

Victoria's Best Kebab House on Urbanspoon

Classic Curry Restaurant

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Shop 3, Clarke St, Sunshine. Phone: 9312 6766

More recent Classic Curry reviewcan be read here.

After being a long-time if irregular customer of the original Classic Curry in Elizabeth St, near Vic Market, I decided it was high time I checked out the newer sister joint in Sunshine.

The premises were just the first of several pleasant surprises I was to embrace in the course of my Saturday lunch.

The room is big, airy, bright and welcoming.

It’s more like a restaurant proper, as opposed to the rather dim, dowdy backpacker vibe of the city place.

The prices at both, however, are significantly lower than your more formal, starched Indian places – on quite a long menu, the only items over $10 are two prawn dishes, a whole tandoori chook and the “Meat Lover Thali”. All the vego mains are $8 and the meat mains $9.

In the interests of variety for review purposes, I ordered the vegetarian thali.

I did so with some trepidation.

My standard order over the years, when I’ve hit the Elizabeth St branch, has become half a tandoori chook (three pieces, with salad trimmings) and one of the stuffed breads.

The thalis I’ve had from there have invariably ranged from passable to awful, the latter featuring tired, overcooked servings.

My fear in Sunshine proved completely unfounded – and then some.

The food had freshness and zing that I don’t normally associate with budget Indian eateries – be they serving food a la carte, on a thali or from a bain marie.

It was all delicious and I wiped every last drop with the nann that arrived as part of the $9 deal.


I’ve long had an aversion to main meals of any genre/ethnicity that have truck with:

1. Sweetness.

2. Cashews.

3. Cheese.

The portion shahi paneer in my thali has put paid to that habit. It was awesome, the tomato gravy given a depth and richness from the chashews, the cheese nice and chewy – kinda like fried tofu.

The dal was made from several pulses – aduki and red beans included. It was the spiciest serving I had, the mildish chilli hit matching the smoothness and flavour of the gravy-like stew.

The aloo gobi was fine, too, its dryness offering a nice contrast to its two colleagues and the cauliflower and spuds retaining  nice level of bite.

This was one of the best thalis I’ve had for quite a while.

And given the clever matching of textures, flavours and seasoning across the three dishes, I couldn’t see me ordering either of the two non-vegetarian thalis … knowing they’d almost certainly include OK-but-dull lamb/chicken curry, or even the over-rated and to-be-avoided butter chicken.

This is a cool place and well worth the drive to Sunshine. It could even become our Indian default setting.

Check out the Classic Curry website here.

Classic Curry on Urbanspoon

Western/NW suburbs food blogger dinner

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Abesha Ethiopian Restaurant & Bar, 327 Barkly St, Footscray.

Phone: 9687 0564

Roll call:

Lauren of Footscray Food Blog

Billy of Half-Eaten

Penny of Jeroxie

(plus  Penny’s mum, Lynn, and partner Henry)

Deb of Bear Head Soup

Bryan of Let’s Get Fat Together

and … Kenny.

And a good time was had by all.

How could it be otherwise, when the conversations ranged through the whole gamut of the world’s most fascinating interests and topics – um, restaurants, cafes, coffee, cooking, recipes, noodles, naff food habits of nearests and dearests, groceries, supermarkets, markets, dirt-infested eateries (not Abesha!)  and much more.

The food was Ethiopian and pretty good, even if on this social occasion less attention to detail was paid than might otherwise be the case.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the lamb tibs – first time I can recall having this dish with rosemary seasoning. Maybe an Australian influence?

The ful, too, was particularly toothsome – a coarse mash of beans attended by sliced hard-boiled egg and green stuffed olives.

Thanks for the company!



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Fusion Cafe & Mo:Mo Bar

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Metro West Building, 27 Albert St, Footscray. Phone: 0401 328 334

THIS RESTAURANT HAS NOW CLOSED.

Words – more precisely, combinations of words – can have enormous power.

Poetry and song, of course, can awaken a profound sense of wonder at the world’s charms ranging from the majestic to the mundane, and often both at the same time.

But so, too, can a divinely inspired turn of phrase or even a menu description invoke a sense of awe at the infinite potentialities of the universe.

Check out, for instance, this from the menu of Fusion Cafe & Mo:Mo Bar:

“Tass: Boneless marinated pan fried diced goat meat served with rice bubbles, side seasonal veggies, tomato relish & salad $11.”

Goat? Rice bubbles?

I kid you not!

Fusion is tucked away in a corner of the ground floor of the Metro West building, rubbing shoulders with a bulk-billing medical centre, a hairdresser and travel agent of the Asian persuasion, Centrelink and – upstairs – a swag of employment services and the like.

The eatery’s premises used to be home to an African outfit of some description, but every time we dropped by the elderly gent who ran things never had the lunch dishes up and running, so we never got a taste.

When, earlier this year, it took on a Nepalese hue, we had a dish of dumplings – the momo of the name – and another dish that was sufficiently unmemorable to have escaped my memory.

Neither of us had returned until I dropped in for a mid-week lunch at 1pm, only to find the lunch options limited.

So I settled for a chicken burger with chips and salad, which was not only fine but a snip at $4.95.

As I munched, I enjoyed a long and engaging conversation with one of two Nepalese sisters who appear to be the proprietors.


I was informed that their aim was to serve genuine Nepalese food, and not the Indian-derived dishes familiarly provided by Melbourne restaurants labelling themselves as Nepalese.

I learnt that in occupying a premises with a lack of potential walk-by customers, they had nevertheless forged a handy trade in momo with many hungry Nepalese students, who start dropping by about 5pm.

And I learnt their aim and ambition was to serve the very best momo going around in Melbourne.

(Fusion is open until about 8pm on week days, and until about 2pm on Saturdays.)

I promised to return on the Saturday for lunch, hellbent on trying the rice bubbles/goat combo and with my son/colleague in tow.

I ordered the tass. Of course!

Knowing Bennie to be a dumpling freak, I didn’t even think about suggesting he order anything but the momo, which are available steamed or fried, and in pork, vegetable, chicken, and chicken and cheese flavours.

His 10 fried pork dumplings ($10) were sublime – each a little parcel of beautifully tanned and crunchy pastry housing a flavoursome pork mince filling. Bowls of not-too-spicy yet nicely tangy chilli sauce and soy sauce attended.

My tass was really, really good.

The goat meat was nicely flavoured with, I was informed, coriander, cumin, garlic and ginger. It was tender but also splendidly chewy. (I neither expected nor desired fall-apart tender meat – had it been so, I suspect it wouldn’t have been Nepalese …)

No appearance by the tomato relish, but the vegetables amounted to a delicious mound of what could be described as a mix of potato salad, spud curry and achar, without the vinegar. Indeed, I subsequently discovered the same mix is sold here as an extra under the same name as the Malaysian side dish.


I was a bit worried about the lack of any kind of sauce, but the vegetables and serviceable salad between them did the job.

The rice bubbles? They were actually puffed rice, and not the tanned item of breakfast cereal fame.

The mix of the meat, accompanying bits and pieces and puffed rice was a really fine combination of flavours and textures.

A winner!

Other items on the menu include chicken “chowmin” ($9), a handful of chicken dishes (one of which is accompanied by delightfully crunchy “beaten” rice) and a mixed grill of sausages,  chicken wings, chicken skewers, chicken kofta, roasted potatoes, rice, relish and salad ($13). Then there’s a chicken curry with rice and minted yogurt for $7.95, while puris can be had for three for $3.

Joining the hamburger on the Western side of the menu are a BLT for $3.95 and fish and chips ($7.95).

We reckon Fusion Cafe & Mo:Mo Bar is beaut, and may get even better.

We’re early dinner diners, so I suspect it’ll become a bit of a standby for us, and we look forward to ticking off the menu choices two by two.

In the meantime, now that I’ve had goat with rice bubbles, my life feels just that bit more complete, enriched and well-rounded.

HAVE YOUR SAY: The best food in the West – Local News – News – Maribyrnong Leader

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Maribyrnong Leader spread on Footscray Food Blog and Consider The Sauce … in letterboxes some time this week.

HAVE YOUR SAY: The best food in the West – Local News – News – Maribyrnong Leader.

Cedar Grill

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422 Melbourne Rd, Newport. Phone: 9391 0563

Mediterranean tucker may not be the first thing that springs to mind when thinking of western suburbs food, but we are nevertheless blessed with some gems of that persuasion.

Specifically, there is a magnificent Turkish joint right in the heart of Footscray, and another almost as good in Flemington.

There’s Greek places as far apart as Williamstown and Moonee Ponds we have yet to explore.

And there’s the Lebanese hub of The Circle in Altona, including a great bakery sure to be the subject of its own CTS write-up before too long.

For all we know, there could be dozens of old-school Italian doings going on behind the facades of pizza shops all over the place.

Still, Mediterranean food – and that of the Middle Eastern kind, in particular – is thin enough on the ground that any possibility is worth exploring.

So it was that we concluded Cedar Grill was worth checking out, an earlier visit by Kenny dating back to the very early days of our decade-long western adventure.

Cedar Grill is like Footscray Best Kebab House, in that its public face as a kebab joint disguises some much more tasty and righteous food proceedings.

In this case, the disguise is even more profound, as Cedar Grill also sells burgers and your typical Aussie pizzas.


Being the reprobate he is, Bennie waves away the far more alluring, tempting, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, nutritious and flavoursome Middle Eastern fare and opts for the $9 combo of burger, chips and a can of soft drink.

Oh well – I guess there’s a degree of hipness in being able to do BOTH. Although he ruined even that silver lining by choosing creaming soda …

He pronounced the burger – with onion, tomato, cheese, bacon – as fine and more than sufficiently filling.

We both thought the chips were very good. Freshly made and crisp, they were salted just right and tasted very fine dipped in the kebab-style garlic and chilli sauces that accompanied my meat/salad/dip platter.

I liked my $11 platter a lot.

The lamb was off the spit, and suitably crunchy and salty.

The pickled turnip – turshi – was earthy, crunchy and redolent of the beetroot used in its production. It was far cry from the recently purchased jar of  turshii – a dull, sad pink, and mushy on the fang – that recently found its way into our home and thence into the garbage bin. Fresh turshi only seems like a rule for life.

For my dip, I wish I’d chosen the humus or something with a little more substance than the yogurt/cucumber number, which tasted fine but was too runny to eat easily with the bread.


I opted for the pita bread over the Turkish option, hoping for the very flat, very dry Lebanese-style pita. Instead, I got the more doughy pita routinely used in making kebabs. Which means it was OK, but either of the other options would have been preferable.

The tabouli was sensational and just the way I like it – moist to the point of wetness, a jolly mix of finely chopped tomato, cucumber, bulgur, parsley and lemon.

I reckon Cedar Grill is worth cultivating. On an earlier visit, I’d seen the vegies for the salads being patiently chopped by hand – as I suspect just about everything here is.

And as we leave, the waitress hinted very strongly that with a bit of luck and an expression of interest, the boss might even come through with some kibbeh and foul.

From Chinese and Greek citizens selling fish and chips in earlier decades through to the present day – just because a shop or cafe or takeaway outlet is selling one kind of food, doesn’t mean the folk concerned are not fully capable of producing something altogether more interesting or funky.

Nor does it mean that they’d not leap at the chance to do so.

Maybe sometimes all it takes is some interest.

For that reason alone, we’ll be returning to Cedar Grill.

That the commercial radio, aircon and traffic whizzing by outside make a racket that makes the experience about as far from fine dining as is possible matters not a bit.

Bennie gets a photography lesson in Newport.

Um, yeah, right: Truth in advertising spotted by Bennie at 7/ll in Newport.

Vanakkam India

2 Comments

198 Nicholson St, Footscray. Phone: 9687 2233

We warmly recommend Vanakkam India.

However, we also recommend judicious parsing of the menu and consulting the staff.

Vanakkam India is a low-key Indian cafe, neat and tidy and smartly priced, along the same lines as Kitchen Samrat and Indi Hots.

The biryanis – including quite a often a goat number – are popular with the joint’s Indian customers.

But we find them a bit too spicy for us.

Likewise, some of the many curries we’ve tried – mostly just below or just over $10  – have been too highly spiced for us.

We’ve tried a couple of the Indo-Chinese dishes – chicken noodles and chicken fried rice – but found them dull. Maybe the Indo-Chinese appetisers – such as chilli gobi, ginger gobi or chilli baby corn – are where it’s at with that aspect of the menu.

What we do love is the onion baji ($4.95).

To describe this dish as deep-fried onion rings simply does it a grave disservice.

Onion rings are dipped in a besan flour batter, fried, lightly seasoned with finely ground pepper and served with a lemon wedge.

They are pure magic, light and surprisingly grease-free.

Next time, I suspect, when Bennie and I hit this place together, two serves of onion baji will avoid unseemly haste and arguments over the last fragments and crumbs.

This is food to inhale with gusto!

Having come a cropper on some other dishes at Vanakkam India, this place has become our preferred dosa destination.

Usually we opt for the masala dosa ($7.95), or sometimes the chicken tika masala dosa ($8.95), which is the same potato-stuffed pancake laced with chopped pieces of tandoori chook.

The dosas and the side dishes are as good as any in the area, and the service and ambience better than some who do the dosa boogie. So we love Vanakkam India for that alone.

For this Saturday lunch, though, and flying solo, I get a bit more adventurous.

I order the nimmak’aya pappu, which is described as “Spicy tangy lentil finished with lemon juice”.

Besides consisting of yellow split peas, it’s beaut and does have a lemony tang, but the serve seems a little on the modest side for the $8.95 price tag.

I also order the roti masala ($4.95) – “Roti stuffed with curry mashed potato”.

This is a disappointment – mainly because the bread itself is of the same variety as the ones we get from our local IGA, and is thus a bit lifeless and greasy. Maybe at these prices, it’s a bit, ahem, rich to expect everything to made in-house. And, indeed, I have no philosophical objection to the use of store-bought or pre-made products being served in the kinds of eateries we frequent.

But if I’d known, I’d have stuck with out dosa routine!

The potato stuffing is the same mix that does the honours in the dosas – turmeric, curry leaves, mustard seeds, perfect.

So, yes, Vanakkam India has been a bit hit-and-miss for us.

But the menu is long and there’s more to explore – such as the Indian pizzas, which include yara uthappam (“uthappam spread with cooked prawns and special spice mix”) and kaju uthappam (“uthappam topped with special spice mix an cashew nuts”), both $11.95. Or egg masala (“whole boiled eggs combined with rich onion”) for $7.95.

In the meantime the dosas – there are 28 varieties on the menu – are consistently the go.

And the onion baji is among our most very cherished western suburbs dishes.

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