Monthly Archives: April 2011

Wok Noodle revisted

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Shop 1/92 Charles St, Seddon. Phone: 9689 9475

Wok Noodle, the newish Malaysian arrival in our very own neighbourhood, appears to be prosperping.

Certainly, it’s fed a lot of people since our first visit there.

Our second visit confirms our view that this is an asset for the area.

If you’re after funky, adventurous Malaysian fare, you’ll likely be disappointed. There’s little by way of rough edges or edginess to be found here.

Our two second-time-round meals do have a bit of a middle-of-the-road feel about them, but that’s just right sometimes, too.

My standard curry laksa ($10.50) has all the essential bits and pieces, including three medium prawn tails, sliced chicken and a couple of slices of eggplant. Along with the rest, they swim happily in a rich, somewhat syrupy gravy of only mild spiciness.

Bennie loves his Hainan chicken rice ($11.50).

The chook is boned, the rice OK and there are three accompanying condiments – a sticky soy sauce, a very mild chilli sauce and another of the sambal variety. He’s a growing 10-year-old whose appetite is also growing and who has played his first ever game of rugby union that very morning – so he scarfs the lot, no problem.

We are used to having a bowl of clear broth served as part of his dish. One is provided when we make inquiries – it’s very good – and we are not charged for it. Whether others can swing such treatment we know not, as that fare appears on the menu as an entree.

Check out Deb’s review of Wok Noodle, and comments, at Bear Head Soup.

Bennie’s team – the mighty Footscray under-10s – won; he perpetrated some fearsome tackles and was instrumental in one of his team’s tries.

Given his parental national heritage, if he fails to make the All Blacks he can always play for the Wallabies.

All India Curry Company

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9/73 Point Cook Rd, Point Cook. Phone: 8360 9229

Pulling into a parking spot of the small and rather nondescript shopping precinct, I take my bearings.

It’s a mixed bag.

Bottle shop, convenience store, Indian grocery and so on.

A fish and chip shop that sells kebabs.

A kebab shop that does pizzas.

I’m headed, though, for All India Curry Company, a sister place to the one in Maribyrnong Rd, Ascot Vale.

It’s a very sleepy Friday lunch hours and I’m the only customer.

The place comes across as your basic, tidy suburban eatery.

I resist the temptations offered by a sign in the window advertising chole bhature for $7, going instead for onion bhaji (spelt bhujia here) and a vego thali.

The onions are smaller, less crunchy and more chewy than I’ve been enjoying lately, but I really like them anyway. They go down beaut with the tangy tamarind water and creamy raita that accompany, and are a cool bargain at $3.50.

There’s more than enough raita left over to double as a support act for my thali ($11).


This appears, at first blush, to be a rather dull affair, but happily it tastes better than it looks.

The loser, for me, is the pumpkin masala. Formative years spent gagging on pumpkin various ways is a significant hurdle to enjoying any dish made with that vegetable, even if the sweetish mash served here is not unpleasant.

The aloo palak is a handy mix of spud in a creamy spinach gravy; it has a nice smoky flavour.

The dal is a little dry for my tastes, but goes down a treat anyway.

The single chapati is fresh and pliable and likewise disappears with relish.

The regular dish prices at All India appear to be very reasonable – vegetable mains at about $8, meat mains a tick under $10, half a tandoori chook for $8.50.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, from 5pm, the star is a $12.50 all-you-can-eat buffet, that comprises six mains, rice, naan or roti, pickle and raita.

Seems like a pretty good deal!

If this place was closer to home, we’d be regulars.

The All India Curry Company website is here.

All India Curry Company on Urbanspoon

Cafe Advieh

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71B Gamon St, Seddon. Phone: 0432 241 276

A LATER REVIEW APPEARS HERE.

What seems like a long time ago, Gamon St coffees, brekkies and even lunches were a central ingredient for us.

Lifetsyle changes mean we hardly ever do the brekkie thing these days, though coffee – hot chocolate for him – is still a big deal.

Truth is, cafes of the order found in Gamon St simply aren’t part of our routine – we find our coffee well enough at food places that more match our current yearnings for spice and aroma and exotica of various kinds.

Gamon St, mind you, gets travelled by us so frequently – at least once a day – that it is as familiar as any other aspect of our westie habits.

So much so that we hardly notice it.

It is only thanks to a visit to the street’s barber shop that we learn of a Significant Event in our very own neighbourhood.

As my locks are shorn and Bennie and I are discussing our Saturday lunch options, the barber says: “Why don’t you try the Moroccan place that’s opened next door?”

As my head shave winds up, Bennie returns from a scouting mission: “It looks good – they’ve got Lebanese pies!”

Moroccan? Lebanese pies?

Turns out Advieh is more your all-purpose purveyor of a wide range of Mediterranean-style goodies, with a strong Middle eastern element.


The restaurant inhabits a building that for most locals will be known as the former premises of the pet shop that these days lives further down the road, next to the wedding place.

The staff tell us the building had barely been touched for about 100 years when they took over, so a major update was required.

It looks grand – polished wooden floors, funky old chairs and tables of the wooden variety, colourful tiles.

When we visit, Advieh – I’m told it’s a Persian word for “spice” or “spice mix” – has been open for four days.

I reckon it’s already a smash hit.

There’s a breakfast menu that has some non-Mediterranean staples, along with the likes of scrambled eggs with Turkish bread, roasted tomatoes, halloumi, olives and cucumber.

Despite the fact the non-breakfast menu is split into sections such as antipasto, wraps, pastry, focaccia, salads and “meals”, it seems many of these are variations deftly put together from the contents of the great-looking display cabinet.

We order the mixed grill plate ($17), having been assured by the staff that it’s just about right for two moderately hungry chaps.

They are right – the photo doesn’t really convey the depth and quality of our wonderful repast, which is a riot of colours and tastes.

On our plate are …

Salads: A fine tabouli; a fantastic Mediterranean mix of spinach and beautifully cut capsicum, green onion, cucumber, tomato; a couscous studded with chick peas.

Meats: A single skewer of tasty grilled chicken and two superb rissoles that burst with cumin-infused flavour.

Dips: Tzataziki, crunchy with finely diced cucumber cubes and perfumed with dill; a funky, earthy beetroot dip requested as an extra by us and served as a side dish.

The flat bread accompanying is quite different from routine, commercial pita bread – it’s quite a bit thicker without being the least bit doughy. Not that it matters – for, like everything else about our lunch, it’s tremendous.

The only surprise, given the nature and heritage of the food, is that there isn’t a more pronounced zing from lemon and garlic. But given the quality and refined flavours before us, that is not a complaint.

Conservatively ordering a single dish to share allows wriggle room in our lunch budget to indulge in a sweetie treat.

Along with good latte and hot chocolate ($3.20 each) comes a slice of baklava ($3.50).

It’s rustic, moist, heavily spiced and easy on the fork.

Halfway through our respective halves, I lean across the table and whisper to Bennie: “Mate, this the best baklava I’ve ever had!”

Our lunch clocks in at a few cents over $27, which we consider to be a super dooper bargain.

Cafe Advieh on Urbanspoon

Jolly Rogers redux

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 306-308 Melbourne Rd, Newport. Phone: 9399 5499

UPDATE 26/1/12: This restaurant has closed down. Becoming, according to a post on Urbanspoon, a Subway! Booo!

It doesn’t take much venturing into the world of Australian food blogging to discover passions, threads, posts, discussions, debates and controversies.

Some of the topics such hot air revolves around include blog adverts, paid posts (in which a blogger writes a post about a product or service for payment) and freebie meals.

For the time being at least, we like the clean, uncluttered look of our site so it will remain advert-free.

As well, we are somewhat horrified at the sense of entitlement some bloggers display.

As hopelessly naive as it may seem, we continue to consider ourselves customers, food fans and amateur sleuths who have more in common with anoraks of the train-spotting variety than with any sort of professional restaurant reviewers.

Yet when an American friend asked, “Are you a restaurant reviewer?”, well I had to concede that, yes, we write restaurant reviews, so …

Still, we try to do our thing as discreetly as possible when enjoying our outings.

Truth is, many places simply ignore – or couldn’t care less about – the surreptitious note-taking and photography going on.

Plenty more, though, pick up on it straight away, which can sometimes lead to comical standoffs over our determination to pay for our meals.

It’s a fine line we’re trying to tread, but some situations seem to require a degree of graciousness, ones in which continual refusal could be considered plain rudeness.

This is especially so when we’ve returned to an establishment after posting a piece full of enthusiastic praise.

So, yes, we have accepted complementary coffees along the way – not to mention a single, superb gulab jamun and other sample treats. We hope like hell we have not become hopelessly compromised in the process!

Such a situation arose on a dark and stormy Thursday night on which I was very happy to take Bennie to Jolly Rogers as a follow-up to my own recent solo foray there.

On that visit, co-owner Anthony Scarlata had raved about his char-grilled calamari.

Sure enough, after we had placed our order for a burger ‘n’ chips meal, out came a sample plate of said calamari courtesy of the chef.

What were we meant to do? Send it back to the kitchen?

In any case, Anthony is right to be proud of this dish.

My calamari-loving son thought it was merely good; his dad thought it was sensational.

Resting on a bed of lovely brown rice, were about a dozen strands of ultra-tender and tasty calamari that had been grilled for about five minutes and then dressed with olive oil infused with lemon zest.

The char-grilled calamari comes in $9.95 and $13.95 sizes.


That “little bit extra” and our hearty appetites meant we over-ordered somewhat:

Bennie dug the onion rings ($4.95), which were done in the American style. Dad, being so enamoured these days with the lighter style of Indian onion bhaji, was not so impressed.

Large chips ($4.95) were, as on the previous visit, OK.


Our burgers – Jolly’s ($7.50) for dad, Lot ($8.95) for Bennie – were perplexing.

Burgers are routinely described as being a variety of sandwich – but these really WERE sandwiches.

Instead of being served in buns, our burgers were encased in some sort of flat bread that had been toasted and, seemingly, flattened in the process.

Look, we like to think of ourselves as adventurous and open-minded foodies.

But in this case, the product so defied a lifetime of conditioning about what burgers should look and taste like that we were left bemused.

The fillings seemed fine, though the flat-bread approach left dad coping with bits slipping and sliding beyond his two-fisted grasp.

Bennie did better with his one with the lot, which held together well and was so packed with goodies that he was stonkered about two-third of the way through.

Whatever – we like Jolly Rogers a lot and will be returning.

Certainly for more of the char-grilled calamari, maybe for the fish and chips enjoyed first time round.

Bennie opined as we left that next time he’d like to try one of the kebabs.

The Jolly Rogers website is here.

Jolly Rogers with a twist on Urbanspoon

Bikanos Sweet And Curry Cafe

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 Shop 3/70 Watton St, Werribee. Phone: 8742 6450

Well within my lifetime Werribee will be folded quietly into metropolitan Melbourne.

On a sunny Friday afternoon, though, it has the feel of a bustling country town.

Except for the traffic congestion – that’s of big-smoke class already.

And the eateries – there’s far more cheap eats destinations than you’ll find in a similar-sized burg up-country, up-state.

It’s apparent Werribee hosts  significant Indian population. There’s groceries and eat shops, and a few restaurants that seem to be of the flash variety.

Happily, I snag a park right opposite my destination – Bikanos.

This is my first visit, but I’ve already set my mind on ordering a vegetarian thali, should there be one.

There is.

It costs $15,

What? I’ve seen thali prices of that order and more before, but only in the swankiest of operations. The $15 is about $4-5 more than I’m currently paying in and around Footscray.

A quick Plan B is required. Having noticed a number of photo display non-menu dishes in the front window, I inquire about the pricing of the chole bhature.

It’s $7.50, I am informed.

That’s more like it.

For variety’s sake, I also order a serve of onion bhaji ($5).

These aren’t quite as good as those we inhale at Vanakkam India, but get real close.

It’s a big serve; the batter is mostly ungreasy; and the onions are cooked through but maintain a nice degree of crunch beneath the batter. A gooey tamarind syrup accompanies.

Whatever wariness I harbour about the price of the thali is banished by the brilliance of my chick peas and fried bread.

This is the best, most awesome example I’ve had in these parts of this tremendous snack/breakfast dish.

It makes me very, very happy.

The creamy yogurt is spiced with flavours that I can’t identify but that are nevertheless tantalisingly familiar.

Bikanos boss man Ashok Bal subsequently tells me it’s a mix of garam masala, black salt and roast cumin. Yum!

My two bhatoora – a slightly heavier version of puris – are so fresh they are filled with air and look like tanned bladders. They are light and delicious.

The chick peas, too, are perfect – nicely al dente and residing in a gravy that is slightly salty and with a mild chilli kick.

Ashok tells me the seasoning is a matter of cinnamon, cloves, black cardamom, cumin, bay leaf, garlic ginger.

So fine is the magic of these three components that I completely ignore the raw onions shards and pickle. Maybe next time.

As I’ve enjoyed my late lunch, a succession of Indian locals have come and gone – this a popular haunt.

The shop has a display of fine and fancy looking Indian sweets. Appealing, but I inevitably find them too rich for mine.

I do wish I’d grabbed, before departing for Geelong, a small bag of the spiced cashews arrayed with other savoury snacks.

Maybe next time.

Bikanos on Urbanspoon

Baraka Restaurant

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121 Nicholson St, Footscray. Phone: 0432 492 299

UPDATE 10/11/11: This restaurant appears to have closed its doors.

Menus? Who needs them!

That’s one of several profound lesson I have learnt since starting Consider The Sauce.

Where once I was timid and always veering towards fuss-free and non-confrontational dining out, I have become bolder, more curious and more adventurous.

In fact, the absence of a menu – let alone one handily pinned in an establishment’s window – is becoming a positive spur to perseverance.

Of course, a lack of menus at eating places doesn’t guarantee you’ll get great food just by asking.

But, as I have found to grand enrichment, sometimes you will.

Even better, the required inquisitiveness leads to face-to-face engagement with the people behind the restaurants that goes way beyond mere stabbing a digit at a menu, ordering and eating.

There’s nothing like inquiring along the lines of “Are you open for lunch, what have you got, how much is it, I’m hungry?” for raising smiles all round.

At Baraka, for instance, I get to meet young Mahamud Farah and enjoy the glowing pride he is taking in running the family business and his excitement about serving the tucker of his Somalian ancestry.

He promises that the next time I visit he’ll run the place’s lamb soup/broth by me, and based on luscious experiences at Safari, Yemeni Restaurant and Khartoum Centre, that’s something to be anticipated with relish.

In the meantime, I am well pleased with my mid-week lunch.

It’s no surprise that in talking with Mahamud I discover my options fall broadly into the meat-and-rice or pasta categories.

A young family is tucking into a communal bowl of spaghetti nearby, but the African/pasta connection is one I have yet to get my head around. Perhaps it’s because we eat so much pasta at home. It’s something to work on, though, as so many African eateries do pasta and ignoring the colonial Italian influence on north African food is a form of denial.

In the meantime, meat-and-rice it is.

Despite the lack of a menu, I have – by now – a good idea of what is coming my way.

The rice is bare bones but wonderful. No vegetable quotient, not even onion; just perfect rice cooked in stock and seasoned with a little pepper. The lamb stew that sits atop the rice is mild almost to the point of blandness, but is fixed right smartly with liberal usage of the little pot of chilli sauce that accompanies.

Another plate has pan-fried lamb that is much more tasty, with fat that is easily trimmed. Alongside is a salad of lettuce, spring onions, onion and capsicum that is just right.

My $13 lunch come with a glass of an OK mango/lemon drink, while a bottle of chilled water is placed on my table well before the food arrives.

This is simple, plain food with a kick. I am coming to think of this sort of north African fare as the Footscray equivalent of American soul food. I love it lots.

Thanks to the big telly right opposite my table, I am privileged to share my lunch with that noted ethnic tucker zealot Bill O’Reilly.

The sound is turned down as that rascal does his thing on his Fox News TV show, but I just know he’s raving about cheap eats rather than banging on about what an evil comminist the prez is. On ya, Bill!

Baraka has been open a month.

The premises it inhabits formerly housed a relatively formal Indian place that was short-lived. I never got to try it out as it was never open when I passed by. Before that it was a cheapo Indian place of no great distinguishment.

The place’s Indian history is still plain to see via the art work that continues to adorn the walls.

As time goes by, I hope Mahamud makes the place his own and finds himself with a winner on his hands.

Pandu’s

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UPDATE (July 29, 2012): Review of new Pandu’s is HERE.

172 Buckley St, Footscray. Phone: 8307 0789

Having driven to and from Geelong during the day, and knowing I will be doing so many times in the coming week, I know I should be hunkering down on the sofa with books and music.

But a wanderlust is upon me, so a cruising I go.

It’s a bleak Wednesday night and I know not where I am headed.

As Ann Peebles sings like a viperish angel about tearing some unlucky soul’s playhouse down, I throw a left from Victoria St on to Buckley.

This is a dreary stretch of road that for anyone except those who live there means “the bit that heads to either Williamstown Rd or Sunshine Rd”.

For as long as I’ve lived in the west, situated halfway along has been a former neighbourhood shop that has never been anything but unused or moribund.

Or so I presume – wrongly.

As I pass I see lights, an old-style neon “Open” sign and people – well, two of them anyway.

Joy bubbles up at the realisation that where there was once a vacuum there is now life.

In I go.

I am gobsmacked to discover that Pandu’s has been open for a year and a half. Pay attention, Kenny!

The decor and ambiance are straight-up inner-city low-rent ethnic tucker, which fact makes me feel right at home right away.

This is a place purveying Indo-Chinese food, about which I am a rank beginner. I wish I had Ms Baklover of Footscray Food Blog with me, as she’s a fan of this food genre and doubtless much more hip than me on how and what to order.

I suspect my meal is far from the heart of Indo-Chinese food. What can I say? I adore soups and noodles.

I quiz the staff whether their hot and sour soup resembles either Thai or Chinese concoctions, and receive little clarification, order it anyway.

My soup ($4.95) certainly looks like the Chinese dish of the same, but slurping it reveals profound differences. This is much less viscous than most Sino versions I have tried. It’s laden in a swell way with ginger. There’s also egg, carrot, peas and other stuff I am unable to identify. It’s delicious and of what I would describe as mild-to-hot spiciness.

My hakka noodles ($7.95) resemble the Nepalese chow min served by Fusion Cafe & Mo:Mo Bar, only this is less seasoned and drier. You can order these with egg or chicken. I go for the egg, which rubs shoulders with fine slices of onion, green chilli, carrot, capsicum.

Extra seasoning is done at table thanks to three little bowls – one apiece of chilli-infused vinegar, soy sauce and tomato sauce. It’s bags of fun mixing varying amounts of each for different flavours.

It’s a big serve, but I scarf the lot.

By the time I am done, there are four other tables taken by what seem to be regulars and a nice vibe has evolved into being

I am excited about returning with Bennie and exploring the menu (see below), which even has a section of haloumi cheese. There’s also sections on salads, spring rolls, rice, noodles, cauilflower and mushrooms (which seem to be staples of Indo-Chinese food), chicken, fish, prawns. I am already hankering to try the American chopsey and a rice dish called  7 jewels of Pandu’s.

Even better, Pandu’s is open seven days a week.

Cafe Perri

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599 Elizabeth St, Melbourne. Phone: 9329 2599

When it comes to Italian eatery styles in Melbourne, I reckon there are roughly three.

There’s the flash and the cutting edge – top ingredients, zealous efforts at authenticity, high-end prices.

I’d eat this food more if I could afford to.

Think Florentino, Bottega, Sarti, Il Bacaro.

Then there’s your bog standard suburban pizza/pasta joints – perhaps not so much Italian as mostly Aussie, though I know they have a place in the hearts of many.

Can’t say I’m with them – I don’t like pineapple and processed ham.

Then there’s a third style of Italian dining in Melbourne, one of which I’m very fond and find immensely comforting.

I think of it as “old school”.

It usually has a touch of the ’60s or ’70s about it and mostly seems a product of early waves of post-war immigration.

Pelligrini’s is the most famous of its kind, but there’s quite a few others – the Italian Waiters Club, Sila in Brunswick St, Gelo Bar in upper Lygon St.

You generally won’t find food to make high-falutin’ critics swoon at these places. You will often get a good feed at a good price, almost certainly enjoy brilliant coffee and – perhaps most importantly – feel really, really welcome.

Cafe Perri, just up Elizabeth St from Vic Market, has that sort of vibe about it, even though it’s only been going three years.

I know about the place because I’d placed it on my mental “to do” list while making one my frequent visits to Classic Curry, which is right next door.

Frequent visits, that is, until we discovered the other Classic Curry in Sunshine.

Cafe Perri feels just right for my Saturday lunch. I don’t want spicy. I don’t want exotica. I want comfort food – and that’s what I get.

With only cursory examination of the menu, but after conversing with proprietor Eugenie Perri, I settle on penne bolognese ($9).

Eugenie, who hails from Calabria, hustles off to the kitchen and about 15 minutes later I have my lunch in front of me.

It’s lovely.

The sauce seems rather pale and little on the watery side at first. But it tastes grand, and has bits of fresh tomato and carrot in it. Best of all, it coats the dried pasta really well. I make liberal use of the grated parmesan dispenser to give the dish a boost and soon it is no more.

I ignore the two slices of white bread the come with my pasta – though in some ways I think they’re a hoot.

The Cafe Perri menu has a motto at the top: “Menu from $3 up to $19.”

It covers a range of typical breakfast options, or you can have risotto, various chicken dishes, pork sausages with salad and bread for $17 or housemade canoli for $4.

There are pizza slices to be had for $3.50.

There’s calzone of salami, bacon, cheese, olives and ricotta for $9, $12 or $14.

What’ll lure me back, with Bennie in tow, is the opportunity to sample the homemade gelatis.

I order a coffee as I take pictures of the interior and exterior.

Eugenie starts asking me about Consider The Sauce. He calls it up on his laptop, then insists on taking my photograph as I hook into a second coffee.

I wallow in the delicious feeling of reading newspapers for which I haven’t paid.

I delight in the fact the music – cool jazz, heaps of Van Morrison – is clearly, enjoyably audible, and fully part of my lunchtime pleasure, yet not in any way intrusive. That’s a neat trick that eludes many, many people in the restaurant business.

The boss and I discuss the hospitality industry, families, parenting, fatherhood – he has four kinds aged 9 to 21.

I like him.

I like his restaurant.

I don’t want to leave.

It’s that kind of place.

There are more pictures of Cafe Perri and an online menu here.


La Manna Direct

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10 English St, Essendon Fields. Phone: 9026 9209

Essendon Fields is a bit like a cross between a shopping centre and an industrial estate – with an airport attached.

Having pre-planned my journey to avoid tolls – up Mt Alexander Rd and Keilor Rd, along Matthews Ave, turn right on to English St – I enjoy the drive, rubber-necking at many shopping strips. This can be a bit of trap, of course! Eyes on the road, Kenny!

I’d been hipped to La Manna by Consider The Sauce visitor Marine when she commented on one of our early posts – Fresh On Young in Moonee Ponds.

Having done some online sleuthing, I’m aware that I’ll be able to enjoy a lunch and a shopping foray at La Manna. I am bearing a fairly long, for us, shopping list. Our cupboards are bare!

My first stop is the La Manna cafe.

Considering the pronounced Italian and/or Mediterranean flavour of the whole enterprise, and the slogan “For the love of food” emblazoned outside, I expect more of the cafe. Maybe some soup and good bread, or some pasta.

Instead, I find an eating place with a few salads, some good-looking stuffed baguettes, pies and the like.

I’m hungry and not too fussy. I settle on a Bocastle Cornish pastie ($4) and a slab of frittata ($5).

The pastie filling consists of little more than potato strands and a very meaty-flavoured mince. It’s peppery and good.

The frittata is better. So packed with vegetables – leek, mushroom, carrot, tomato, capscum and even red beans – that it’s not even very eggy, it’s a satisfying and affordable lunch.

Then it’s out in the cavernous space of La Manna proper, one hand pushing a shopping trolley, the other grasping camera, shopping list nearby.

I start at the end that hosts the cheeses, cold cuts, antipasto items, meat and seafood, adjacent the cafe.

The glaring lights make taking photos a challenge.

Unsurprisingly, the range of products is amazing.

But I’ve already discovered my enthusiasm is dented by the amount of plastic used on all the meats, cold cuts and seafood. I’m no purist – we accept plastic shopping bags and re-use them at home – but this seems excessive.

And all that packaging means there’s no deli counter – and not much else by way of face-to-face inter-action with the staff.

This makes me realise that our food outings are about much more than a mere exchange of a credit card for goods. I miss the banter and questions and answers and humanity that are part of every transaction at our favourite shops, markets and stores.

As well, knowing I’ll be making a Greek salad for dinner, with no deli counter I am unable to buy a piece of fetta just right for the job, forced to settle for more than I want at a steeper price than I’d envisaged. Nor can I buy a handful of fresh kalamata olives. Worse, the packaged fetta, when I make my salad, manages to be both rubbery and tough.

There is, though, a lovely lady cooking up Hahns ‘Merican-style hot dogs and offering samples to customers.

And, yes, there are staff members everywhere, all of whom would no doubt be happy to help me.

But the stock seems presented in such a done-and-dusted way as to discourage individuality.

Moving on, I scoop up 500g bags of dried apricots ($5), roasted almonds ($8) and sultanas ($4) for muesli – not super dooper bargains, but not bad either. Likewise three sacks of Lowan rolled oats at $3.36 each.

The fruit and vegetables seem priced pretty much at Coles/Woolworths levels. And our local Sims in West Footscray is selling Fuji apples for under $5, a whole bunch less than La Manna.


Moving along once more, I start to find real fine buys:

It’s time to make a new batch of pasta sauce, so I grab up an armful of La Gina chopped tomatoes tins at 80 cents each.

A couple of packs of Reggia spaghettini cost $1 each.

Lavvaza Crema e Gusto coffee sets me back $4.

Best of all, I snap up a 500ml bottle of Olive Valley EVOO for $4. This product comes from Nar Nar Goon in Victoria and the price is amazing.

Serious shopping just about done, I toss in a parcel of mixed almond biscotti ($6.95). I have three of them at work that night. They are brilliant – moist, fresh and even better than I’ve had from the likes of Brunetti’s or Cavallaro’s.

Apart from the daily delivered “specialty breads”, it seems all the cakes, biscotti and so on are made on the premises.

If I find the La Manna experience a tad sterile, it says more about my preferences than anything else.

If I had a larger family to feed and La Manna was closer to home, it’d become a regular stop for sure.

I receive a nice surprise at the checkout counter – I’m eligible for that week’s 10% discount on my bill total, taking $71.08 down to $64.77.

Timing visits to coincide with such offers would seem to make a lot of sense.

In any case, I’ve applied for a customer loyalty card at the La Manna website, which can be found here.

La Manna Direct Cafe on Urbanspoon


Meals On Wheels!

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How cool is this?

Every few months a knock on our door heralds not, thankfully, someone trying to convince us to buy something, give something or switch our electricity or phone/internet providers.

Nope.

This lovely old bloke is selling food … in the form of fresh vegetables from his own garden.

Mostly it’s a matter of potatos, pumpkins and chillies of the large, long and green variety.

He tells me hails, originally, from Macedonia, and lives and works these days in Daylesford.

He also tells me he does his door-knocking in Yarraville and Footscray for the very sound reason that it is here that he has “many customers”.

Come again soon, my friend!

Wild Rice

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Shop 18/11-19 Ferguson St, Williamstown. Phone: 9397 5484

On leaving Wild Rice after a really fine lunch, we troop up Ferguson St for a coffee at what turns out to be a hidey-hole of the Italian variety that we resolve to explore in further depth at the earliest possible opportunity.

As well, well-known Italian chef Rosa Mitchell is busy injecting Sicilian zest into the Hobson’s Bay Hotel, just opposite Wild Rice, though the prices we scan in the display menu outside put that joint into the “special occasion” bracket for us.

So maybe we’re being a touch harsh in our long-running disdain for Willy as a dining destination.

Still, it remains odd to us that a suburb so stuffed with eateries should have found so little place in our hearts, compared to, say, nearby Altona and Newport.

We’ve liked Wild Rice for a while, though, and are always pleased to return.

After visiting Snowballs Ice-Cream, we’d headed for Altona for a Viet/Sino place that turned out to be closed for Saturday lunch.

Further rambling was rejected in the interest of a safe bet in Willy.


Wild Rice is a swell Thai place with an elegant cafe-style vibe quite a way removed from that of many low-price places we frequent.

The service, we’ve found, is always swift and smiling.

The night-time a la carte list would stretch our budget – salads around the $15 mark, curries and stir fries from about $16 to $20 and up depending on your choice of protein.

So naturally, we head for the “lunch specials” list, which is available from noon to 5pm.

This features pad thai, tom yum and red curry noodle soups, and fried noodles for around $13-15.

But again, and happily for our wallets, we are drawn to the cheaper dishes.

Bennie will never say “no” to satay of any kind, so says yes here to the chicken stay and rice ($11.50)

The meat on his four skewers is a little hard to remove from the wood, but he loves it anyway. The satay sauce is a on the skimpy side, but tastes grand – it has a really distinctive flavour that speaks, we presume, of some real care and lack of shot cuts in the kitchen.

The rice and salad bits are good.


My “savoury pancakes” ($11.50) are actually a single rice flour pancake of the kind familiar to us from its counterpart in Vietnamese restaurants.

This one is a blast and half. It’s bloody good, with Bennie casting envious glances as his dad barely suppresses moans of pleasure. The stuffing is a just-right mix beans sprouts and minced pork. The salad quotient, provided by lettuce, carrot strands, mint and fresh coriander, is likewise near perfect. The whole dish is set off by being dressed with a beaut housemade sweet chilli sauce.

We really like the way both our meals treat the herbs as more than just a matter of garnish – the coriander and mint are sufficiently copious to make them full team members.

A couple of commentators at the Wild Rice entry on Urbanspoon opine that the restaurant is the “worst Thai food in the West” and “Thai food for people that don’t want the authenticity”.

The first comment is, I feel, on pretty shaky ground.

The second quip? I simply don’t know enough about Thai food to offer an authoritative judgment. But based on the non-bottle flavour of Bennie’s satay sauce and the simple, profound pleasures of my pancake, I suspect Wild Rice may actually be among the most authentic Thai places going around.

Wild Rice on Urbanspoon

Snowballs Ice-Cream And Lollies

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320 Melbourne Rd, Newport. Phone: 9391 0711

We make a solemn and sober vow – we will restrict ourselves to three items.

Such a display of overt determination may seem a little extreme.

But we are, after all, entering a cathedral dedicated to all things sweet and sugary.

Worse – we are doing so on empty stomachs and just before lunch!

There’s plenty of lollie shops scattered across Melbourne – until quite recently there even used to be one in Anderson St, Yarraville.

But Snowballs is a doozie – a sort of superstore for those of a sweet tooth persuasion.

There’s a mind-boggling array of goodies stuffed into quite a small space.

There’s rows and rows of simply packaged lollies and liquorice, many of them quite traditional.

There’s much that is gimmicky and gives us many chuckles – metres of bubblegum, candy necklaces and much, much, much more.

The staff tell us that the American candy – Milk Duds, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Hershey’s lines and so on – is very popular.

Likewise, the New Zealand products are popular.

My Dunedin childhood was packed with Whittaker’s Peanut Slabs, Buzz Bars and Chocolate Fish – but in my mind they were bigger and far more alluring than those on display here. And back in those days – yes, so very, very last century! – they were sold by milk bars and corner stores WITHOUT WRAPPERS.

Just being in this place, goofing around, discovering new, ingenious and weird excesses in tooth-rot marketing gives us something akin to a sugar high – with not a thing passing our lips.

The staff tell us this is quite common.

We settle on:

A box of Petit Ecolier dark chocolate bikkies – we’ve had them before, but not for a very excellent $2.

A small bar of Cavalier dark chocolate from Belgium ($3,80).

A Wonka Fabulicious Sour With Nerds for $1.80 … whatever that is (Bennie’s choice!).

And, from England, a Tunnock’s Milk Chocolate Coated Caramel Wafer Biscuit for $1.10.

I’m happy to report that while we love our sweeties, they by no means rule our lives or diets. That little lot will last at least a week with the exercise of little or no willpower. Honest! Besides, as we like our chocolate frozen, the biscuits and Belgian product will get bunged in the freezer. And it’s quite easy to forget there’s sweet stuff in there rubbing shoulders with the chicken stock and pasta sauce.