Monthly Archives: May 2011

Cake Art Yarraville

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Please note this premises now house a business known as Boutique Cake Art

Here is the message I received yesterday:

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Hi there,

Christina here from Boutique Cake Art formerly Cake Art Yarraville. Just touching base as within the year I have currently taken over Cake Art and there have been a lot of changes in terms of services we now provide. Was just wondering whether you could update the piece you have done on this business or take the old profile down. Let me know what information I need to provide if an update is possible.

Thanks in advance

Regards, Christina Blaby Cake Art Yarraville 9314 6776

Monday – closed Tuesday – 10am-6pm Wednesday – 10am-6pm Thursday – 10am -6pm Friday – 10am- 6pm Saturday – 9am- 3pm Sunday – Cake Courses (9am-5pm- By Appointment)

http://www.madbatter.com.au – for cake course information and bookings

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I will do a story in due course!

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79 Anderson St, Yarraville. Phone: 9314 6776

Kristen Alston has been baking cakes professionally for 20 years and running her cake shop, Baked, in Carlisle St, Balaclava, for six years.

Living locally, though, she is making sure some of her work life lives here, too.

What she calls her “cake studio” has been open on Anderson St for about three weeks.

While there are some of your more prosaic take-home-and-eat cakes on hand, it’s clear the spectacular display cakes that are arrayed around the Anderson St showroom are what will capture the attention and inspire the delight of children and also adults of all ages.

Is it food or is it art? Is it both? Does it matter?

Kristen tells me that her customers by and large do eat their cakes, but some do attempt to let them hang around for as long as possible.

That is about six or seven months.

The outer, colourful shells will last a lot longer, even if they do become inedible, but the bases – mudcake – eventually start shrinking and collapsing.

Despite the advent of TV programs such as Ace Of Cakes, Kristen remains happily unaware of and unconcerned about awards or other competitive or glamourous aspects of her art that may be out there.

“I live in  a bit of a bubble,” she says.

Your typical substantial three-dimensional cake clocks in at about $300 and will feed 30 people.

The weirdest order she’s ever taken was from, ahem, members of a fetish club and involved intertwined penises.

I reckon it’s very hard to go past the Spongebob number.

This is the cake discussed in comments below:

Brunswick Market and related fun

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661 Sydney Road, Brunswick

Many, many years ago – about 25, I think – yours truly aboded near the juncture of Albion and upper Lygon streets in Brunswick for a couple of years, so was then quite familiar with the stretch of Sydney Rd inhabited by Brunswick Market.

In those days, it was a lively place that could hold its own with Melbourne’s many other revered markets.

It’s a bit of a faded beauty these days.

It never gets spoken of in the same breath as the very famous A1 Bakery just a few doors down.

Nor will you hear it mentioned along with markets Footscray, Vic, Saigon, South Melbourne or Prahran.

But in recent years we have been returning to take in not just the market but also a few pizzas at Tabet’s and the general lively ambience of Sydney Rd, so different from our regular westie haunts yet also so familiar.

I start my Friday adventure at Central Kebab House, right at the entrance to the market.

I opt for the eggplant plate ($7.50), as the halved eggplants topped with lamb mince have caught my eye. I ask for a couple falafels and some pickled veggies to be added, for which I am not charged.

Bennie I have had some swell feeds here before, but this is a bit lacklustre. The cucumber/yogurt dip has no zing, the felafels are a bit rubbery and the eggplant/mince combo, too, is just OK.

Next time, I’ll make a point of trying some of the fine-looking gozleme and pides:

From there I venture into the market proper.

What was once, a few years back, a low-key outdoor/indoor eatery that served up darn good dips ‘n’ bread ‘n’ salads has become a sweetie place that dispenses cake/biscuits of both continental and Middle Eastern genres.

Around it are arrayed a deli and clothing/trinket outlets of mostly Turkish flavour.

.

The market has three butchers – a regular continental style, and one each of the halal variety for poultry and red meat.

At the continental joint, Ottorenny, I become very interested in some good-looking sausages.

I suspect some of them at least are Maltese or something equally exotic. But I’m told that, no, they’re all of Italian heritage.

The darkest of the lot are pork and pork liver. I’ve yet to be tempted by the pork liver dishes I’ve come across in my mostly unhappy experiences with Filipino food, but I figure that as part of a highly seasoned and prepared sausage with regular pork meat, it may make for a winner.

So I buy four of them, just to see. I’ll be telling Bennie of the nature of ingredients after we’ve eaten them.

At Ali’s Halal Meat Supply, I likewise buy a sample deal of four hot dogs – if they taste good, we’re on to a winner, as they’re an incredible $6.50 a kilo. My four cost 50 cents each.

Right at the end of the market is a large fruit and vegetable outlet.

I have no pressing need to stock up on such items, but note that the range and prices are impressive.

Part of the fun of visiting this part of Melbourne is the maze of back streets between Sydney Rd and the railway line – a jumble of gloriously ungentrified light industry, oddball food service outlets, funky housing and much kool stuff.

It is via these back streets that I am headed for the Book Grocer – love the name! – at 453 Sydney Rd.

Using, I am told, some of the same suppliers as Dirt Cheap Books, the Book Grocer is a very different enterprise indeed.

The range here is much more high-toned, with a wide range of stock that seems particularly strong on history, biographies and other non-fiction goodies.

Almost seems like a regular high-quality bookshop!

Further up Sydney Rd, I stop to gander at the yummy pies and pizzas at Al-Waha Bakery, at 819 Sydney Rd.

We’re currently well-provisioned with such as these in the freezer at home, so I make do with a single ricotta and spinach pie just for assessment’s sake.

The busy and bustling stretch of Sydney Rd leading up to Bell St and Pentridge Prison surprises me – I must have been hereabouts many times before, but I have no recollection of it whatsoever.

Nor of Coburg Market.

There’s pokie little arcades, a zillion kebab and cake shops, Oriental massage places.

Wandering up one side of the road and down the other, my sense of dislocation and newness is such that it feels like when I arrived from (mostly whitebread) New Zealand so many years ago and inner-city Australia seemed so intoxicatingly exotic.

I even find, looking out over a packed parking lot, an intensely interesting place with a super-long menu of dumplings and noodles that is sure to be the subject of a future adventure.

Casa Italica

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88 Ferguson St, Williamstown. Phone:  9397 5777

We stumbled upon Casa Italica while looking for a post-lunch coffee after a visit to Wild Rice, also in Ferguson St.

I’d returned once seeking soup, only to find none available.

This morning, while going about my business, I have been developing a lust for minestrone.

I’m in luck – there’s two soups on, and one of them is the one that has been on my mind.

The vegetables are chopped much more finely than I am familiar with in this soup, either made at home or out and about. But they’re all present and accounted for, cooked through but far from mushy.

My soup bowl requires a little at-table seasoning and I use all the little bowl of grated parmesan provided as my meal progresses. But together with two excellent slices of crusty buttered bread, it gets better with every mouthful until all is gone.

It’s deceptively filling and worth every cent of the $10.95 I pay for it.

Casa Italica is a temple to all things Italian situated in a lovely old building. Stacked and shelved in every nook and cranny are condiments of all sorts, tomatoes every which way and a pasta selection that appears to rival that of Mediterranean Wholesalers in Sydney Rd.

At first blush I take many of the meals listed on the blackboard menu to be little more than lightweight cafe fare.

But the plates I see around me – which include arancini and fab-looking pies – appear very fine indeed, the salad quotient looking hearty and handsome, and containing greenery and beans at the very least.

No soup for me next time.

I linger over a good coffee ($3) and a deliciously moist piece of pistachio biscotti ($2.50).

As I am taking photographs of the exterior, one of the establishment’s coffee customers, on noticing my Grateful Dead hoodie, ventures out for a bit of chat about the local music and food scenes.

Larry tells me Casa Italica is one of his regular caffeine haunts, but he seems to share our bewilderment about the food scene hereabouts.

Ferguson St, Nelson Parade, Douglas Parade – so many cafes and eateries, so few highlights.

“Nelson Parade is like the Gold Coast,” Larry quips. “We mostly go to Footscray to eat.”

The Australian Coffee Festival & Cafe Biz 2011

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 Melbourne Show Grounds, May  21 & 22

This here coffee bash seems to present the same unknowns as the recent National Vegetable Expo.

Will it offer enough to entertain and enlighten?

I love my java, but get by with bargain-priced vacuum-packed product at home and generally have two cafe lattes while out and about during the day – quite different from the six-plus cups of a decade ago.

Certainly I’m not a paid-up member of the coffee cult and have little interest in the likes of single-estate beans and so on.

Pondering these unknowns, I realise that one of the links I have for the exhibition lists Sunday as being “trade only”. A quick phone call to one of the organisers fixes that up – yes, I am quite welcome.

I figure it’s a good thing, too, that I am destined for a night shift starting at 4pm. Caffeinated is the way to go!

As with the vegetable show, many of the exhibitors are concerned with packaging and other paraphernalia.

The lovely crew from hookTURN are having a swell time talking up their gorgeous silicon and reusable coffee containers:

Several stallholders are spruiking far out custom-made coffee tampers:

Greg Pullman from Pullman Espresso Accessories tells me tampers are crucial, with the feel and weight of the tampers in the hand, and their fit, all important.

My first coffee is made for me by Danny Zamprogno of Boema coffee machines and accessories. He tells me the event is definitely good for business.

I also indulge in a Turkish coffee – very different from my usual intake – with a piece of Turkish delight on the side.

There are, of course, plenty of other sweet treats to be had:

The lads from Big Harvest are pitching their ready-made salads and other goodies, which they tell me are ideal for the ubiquitous hole-in-the-wall joints that lack the facilities for largescale food preparation.

The crew from Bonsoy admit, somewhat ruefully, that talking up their products in the midst of so many caffeine crazies is an uphill task … but they’re having a fine time giving it a crack.

Some exhibitors take a strictly scientific, molecular approach to coffee:

There’s even a stall for a job agency specifically focussed on the coffee industry:

As if folks aren’t wired up enough, the sound system is pumping out the likes of Eye Of The Tiger, Street Fighting Man and Whip It.

The coffee lover and sports fan in me combine as I become engrossed in a barista showdown between teams from South Australia and Western Australia.

It’s very intense.

Teams must produce 30 brews of widely varying kinds in 20 minutes.

The judges base their assessments on temperature, taste and latte art, using poker chips to denote their ratings.


My thanks to Victorian team captain Erin Sampson, who works for Veneziano Coffee, for explaining the competition to me. She is Australia’s most awarded female barista.

Thanks, too, for the ace “Vic State Of Origin Barista” T-shirt. I’ll wear it with pride.

End result after two hours? Some fine coffee and encounters with some very interesting and passionate people.

On departing, it seems weird and not a little wonderful to be strolling back to my car amid deserted territory that I am so used to traipsing amid show hordes.

Green Tea

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320 Racecourse Rd, Flemington. Phone: 9372 6369

What do you do on Judgment Day?

We go to Racecourse Rd for lunch.

We first check one of our fave Turkish kebab meats ‘n’ dips places, but hastily retreat when we realise the plate-size lunches have escalated in price to $15 and more.

Plan B is definitely Green Tea.

While a whole bunch of folks are having a fine old time comparing the relative merits of the next-door-neighbours Laksa King and Chef Lagenda, around the corner in Pin Oak Crescent, something appeals to us about checking out the premises vacated by Laksa King in the process of moving to its swish abode.

So it is that we amble up the arcade known to generations of Melbourne cheap eaters.

The space that was formerly Laksa King has undergone a transformation from those dog-eared and dingy days. It looks swell and swish, with much dark wood.

On the signage outside, Green Tea announces itself as purveying “Vietnamese & Chinese Cuisine”, but there are also Thai and Malaysian-derived dishes on the menu.

There’s pho, laksas, nasi goreng, green curry, pork belly hot pot and chicken teriyaki.

Will this be capable multi-tradition, perhaps even sensational? Or just a clumsy melange?

First up is a complementary plate of prawn crackers.

Then dad learns a lesson about letting Bennie have the run of the drinks cabinet unsupervised – to the tune of $3.80 and a bottle of Cascade sarsaparilla.

Bennie, meanwhile, learns that sarsaparilla tastes like not particularly nice medicine and smells like footy changerooms.

Two plain dimmies are stodgy, hot and delicious, but pretty steep at $4.90.

Having already pronounced a hankering for fried noodles of some sort, Bennie orders the mee goreng ($10.80).

It’s a good one without reaching any great heights. Some more seasoning zing may’ve been a good idea. This dish is routinely served with a lemon wedge on the side. We ask for one and it is provided.

That the lad fails to finish his food, though, says more about its quantity than quality.


I order the beef laksa.

I get the vegetable laksa ($8.80).

I’m not one for sending perfectly good food back to the kitchen – not today anyway – and proceed to enjoy what is an impressive array of non-meat goodies.

In my bowl are bok choy and other leafy vegetables, cauliflower, broccoli, onion, carrot, green beans, tofu, baby corn, two kinds of mushroom and quite possibly some items that escaped notice.

The noodles are egg only; no rice noodles here. Nor is the usual pile of bean sprouts resting under all.

The soup is thin, uncreamy and not particularly flavoursome. As well, I’m pretty sure I detect a whiff of tom yum about it all.

The whole experience is a bit odd.

Paying for our $31.10 meal with a $50 note, I receive a handful of shrapnel in return.

Dang! I really wanted to be knocked out by this place.

Green Tea on Urbanspoon

Burger Edge

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21 Anderson St, Yarraville. Phone: 9689 3099

THIS RESTAURANT HAS CLOSED DOWN.

Heading for a Geelong night subediting shift without packing a meal of some sort is something of a disaster.

This is especially so on Sunday nights, when the handful of Asian eateries that turn out acceptable and acceptably affordable meals the rest of the week, lunch and dinner, are closed. Shut. Tumbleweeds down the main drag.

Thus it was that recently, without home-packed food of my own, I resorted to the easy, lazy option of hitting the McDonald’s outlet right across the road from the offices of the Geelong Advertiser.

Eating McDonalds is something I do maybe every couple of years or so – just long enough, it seems, to have forgotten how awful it was the last time.

I had one of their much-advertised Angus burgers.

Little bit fancy? Ha! How about a real big load of … unfood stuffed in an unbun.

Horrible chips, barely lukewarm. I’m tempted to say they were tasteless, but in fact they did have a taste – a bad one.

Blah soft drink.

Just terrible!

Why do folks put up with such crap? Or, more to the point, why do so many of them positively revere it?

One of life’s mysteries.

We dig our burgers and know there’s ways of going about it with much better results than delivered by the McDonalds option.

Or Hungry Jacks, which I find preferrable, though we’re talking very small degrees there.

We love Grill’d, as experienced during Bennie’s 10th birthday shebang.

For a contrast in taste and style, we also like our local old-school burger place.

As well, we’ve been somewhat regular visitors to one of the breed of burger places that has been resident in Anderson St, Yarraville, for a few years now.

According to the Burger Edge website, there are a dozen or so outlets in Melbourne, three others elsewhere in the country and four more in the planning stages.

This sounds pretty good to me – if franchising must be part of our food culture, the smaller the better I reckon.

So it is that I rock up on a chilly mid-week night to see how our Burger Edge scrubs up these days.

There’s nothing flash about the place – utilitarian but perfectly fine.

Best of all, though, the Anderson St shop has a tidy upstairs dining space – cosy on a cold night!

I order a the BBQ Bacon Burger, going combo-style with chips and a can of Pepsi for $4 and 70 cents more for a small tub of “aioli” for a meal-total of $14.60.

The chips are better than good but short of great. There’s plenty of them as part of my combo deal and they’re good and crunchy, but they could be a tad hotter.

The peach-coloured tub of dressing is fine for chip-dipping but calling it “aioli” is a stretch.

The burger, likewise, is better than good but short of great. The bacon adds flavour, but I discern little or no BBQ sauce tang. The salad bits – lettuce, red onion, tomato – are fine, but the beef patty simply isn’t, well, as “beefy” as those found at Grill’d.

In fact, where Grill’d scores 8 or even 9 with us when we visit, Burger Edge is more your 6 0r 7.

Not a fail by any means – I enjoyed my meal – but just lacking, well, an edge that would make a difference.

Burger Edge has a loyalty program that is different.

Instead of having to purchase X number of burgers to qualify for a freebie, they present customers with a plastic card that once ratified on the company website delivers a 10 per cent discount on every meal.

The Burger Edge website is here.

Burger Edge on Urbanspoon

Aldi

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Central West Shopping Plaza, West Footscray.

Recollections of my only visit to an Aldi outlet – soon after the company set up shop in Australia – are all negative.

They are of a cheapness far beyond the admirably low prices, produce on palates, produce strewn on the floor and rock-hard dried fruit in the muesli.

Haven’t been back since.

But so many friends continue to frequent their local Aldi that I figure it’s time for another look.

Perhaps my memory is playing a few tricks on me, for the Central West Aldi is spick, span and ultra neat.

What I find a little disturbing, though, is the utter quietness, so conditioned am I to hearing piped music in supermarkets and shopping malls.

This place is bright, silent and a little creepy.

I feel like an extra in The Stepford Wives.

My shopping needs are modest, so much so that I don’t even wield a list as I set off with my $2 shopping trolley.

I am disappointed to find no simple rolled oats, but grab a 99-cent bag of the crushed variety.

Grandessa raspberry jam is beaut at $1.39. The label says “made in Australia” and carries Aldi details, so I guess it’s the house brand.

I figure just about the entire the stock range is likewise.

The Carloni diced, tinned tomatoes, for instance, at 69 cents – the labels says they’re from Argentina! I buy two just to check ’em out.

Also with Aldi markings on the packaging is the made-in-Italy Remano pasta at 79 cents a 500 gram bag.

Ocean Rise 185-gram tuna in “springwater” is another Aldi product, this time listed as being from Thailand. I buy two for $1.99 each. Thai springwater?

A 125-gram bar of German Mosser Roth chocolate costs $2.49, a litre bottle of Unamat dishwashing detergent 99 cents and a 250-gram bag of Fair Trade coffee $4.99.

As on my long-ago previous visit, the fresh produce situation is skimpy. No herbs to be seen at all, but they do have bananas for just under the $10 mark – cheaper than anywhere else I’ve seen recently. I grab a kilo bag of mandarins for $2.25.

The Deli Originals kilo bottle of giardinera mix looks good for $2.99 – bizarrely, this is a product of India!

My dijon mustard (190 grams for $1.39) and The Olive Tree EVOO (500ml for $5.49) are both marked as being Australian products.


I go up and down each aisle at least twice looking for rice. And fail.

Some of the prices, for various nuts for example, seem little or no cheaper than in the competition.

And $12.99 for poor-quality cushions seems pretty steep.

Look, if our domestic situation involved more people, and if our household budget was subject to greater demands, Aldi would no doubt be a viable proposition for us.

But a big mark against it for us is the lack of a deli counter. There’s no way, in other words, of ordering a half-dozen slices of green olive mortadella or a piece of fetta just the right size for that night’s salad or a handful of olives.

Aldi remains for us not only cheap in price but just plain cheap.

Even something as potentially humdrum as household shopping deserves a richer experience than Aldi delivers.

It’s the pokies pub of supermarkets.

I believe it’s a simple matter to shop as cheaply as can be done at Aldi AND enjoy an enriching experience in doing so. 

Mileage of others obviously varies.

On the way home, I stop by Sims in Barkly St for the items I failed to find in Aldi – and share a chuckle with a young mum who only moments before had been one of my fellow shoppers at Aldi.

For the record, our regular shopping haunts are – depending on our needs, time of day, day of the week and so on – the aforementioned Sims, IGA in Yarraville, various shops at The Circle in Altona. Less frequently we make it to Sunshine Plaza and its Big Fields Fresh Market and even Mediterranean Wholesalers in Sydney Rd.

More specialised, focussed adventures are regularly had at Footscray Market, Saigon Market and Vic Market.

Yummie Hong Kong Dim Sum

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189-193 Barkly St, Footscray. Phone: 9078 8778

Bennie’s mate, Rakha, is spending a large chunk of Sunday with us – and a fine thing this is.

We dig his company a bunch, of course, but his arrival also opens up unexpected vistas in terms of luncheon possibilities.

Bennie has been bugging his dad for months for a return visit to Yummie, but dad has concluded that yum cha is unviable unless we have at least one buddy along for the ride.

Even better, Rakha was an enthusiastic participant in our most recent yum cha outing, several months previously in the CBD.

So off we go!

I’ve never seen lads so eagerly relinquish a PlayStation.

Yummie has a strictly functional ambiance and is unheated. It occupies premises that once housed a cheap, good and short-lived Indian place and, before that, a Polish deli.

As is our general experience with yum cha, there is a certain amount of low-key anarchy and chaos.

Sometimes there are longish waits for food – any food.

Other times it’s a case of too much on offer.

Our previous visits had been of the mid-week evening variety, when we ordered from the list.

Personally, I prefer this to the mobile cart tradition – you get exactly what you want, or at least ordered, and with a higher probability of fresh-out-of-the-steamer.

For this Sunday lunch, though, there are trolleys, so we’re a bit confused. Some of the occupied tables also seem to be ordering  a la carte.

We enjoy a pretty good lunch doing a bit of both.

We start with trolley-derived deep-fried won tons ($4.80).

These are barely OK – and barely luke warm.

Also from the trolley service come prawn dumplings ($5.80) and chive dumplings ($5.80).

This is more like it!

They’re all hot and fresh, with lovely casings of typical stickiness and with prawn fillings of sublime semi-crunch texture.

Next up is our order of chicken feet ($3.80).

They have close to zero of the black bean and chilli zing we’re expecting, but they’re so hot and tender that they are greeted with all-round acclaim.

Also a la carte is a rice roll with deep-fried flour ($6.80), ordered on the basis of my inquiry to a neigbouring table: “What is that?”

This, frankly, is a little weird.

The soft rice covering surrounds fried dough of some sort and also spinach or some similar leafy vegetable. It all disappears, though, and is tasty dipped in the accompanying bowl of oyster sauce.

Perhaps the prawn, beef or BBQ pork versions might be the go next time.

For our last hurrah, we tackle two more trolley items – BBQ pork pastry ($3.80) and deep-fried prawn roll ($4.80).


The pork items are for the boys – just as well, as there’s only two of them.

They like them, but both concede they prefer the steamed bun variety.

The prawn roll is, with the chicken feet, a highlight.

For each us of there’s a flat and crispy fried tofu casing wrapped around fine prawn filling. They’re very good.

There are more highly regarded yum cha places in our extended westie neighbourhood, but choice is limited close to home.

As well, it’s not that much of priority for us.

In that context, Yummie does just fine when the mood strikes us.

It’s reassuring, too, to note that for Sunday lunch – peak traffic time for yum cha the world over – Yummie is busy without being frantic.

Ms Baklover’s review of Yummie at Footscray Food Blog is here.

Yummie Hong Kong Dim Sum on Urbanspoon



Hao Phong

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136 Hopkins St, Footscray. Phone: 9689 8373

We’ve already been wet and cold and bedraggled at the morning rugby match, so venturing out for our Saturday lunch seems folly, especially as we are aimless in terms of our destination.

I have visions of someplace warm – of course! – and stews and soups of some sort.

Bennie brings focus to proceedings by announcing: “I’d like Vietnamese – not pho …”

Seated and perusing the Hao Phong menu, he narrows it down even more: “I’d like pork!”

Pork it is!

He gets the crispy fried egg noodles with roast pork.

As far as I can recall, this is the first time Bennie has had this style of noodles – crispy, browned from heat at the edges, going delectably soggy as they mix with the gravy/sauce.

He really likes his lunch. There’s a heap of big slices of nicely chewy pork. He inhales the bok choy, snow peas, baby corn and carrot. Turns his nose up, though at the zucchini and tiny Chinese mushies. Same as with eggplant – I’m working on it.

Hao Phong has been perpetually busy since it opened. Initially, I suspected that had something to do with the fact that its furnishings and vibe had just that little bit more of a swish feel than many of its neighbours.

These days, it’s starting to look like many other lived-in Vietnamese eateries hereabouts. It’s still busy, though, so we’re glad to have snagged a table so quickly on such a chiller of a day. Glad, too, that it’s warm and cosy inside.

I have a dish we’ve had here before, one that I’ve not seen elsewhere – Hainan chicken rice in a claypot.

There’s no soup/broth. And sadly, my lunch is lacking the crunchy brown and tasty bottom of rice that requires scraping from the claypot, which that has been a highlight of previous visits.

But gladly the stock-cooked rice is very good anyhow, especially with addition of the accompanying chilli and ginger sauces. And, thanks to the claypot, the whole dish stays hot-tending-towards-warm until finished – that’s pretty cool on a cold day and concerning a dish that is often warm or even cold to begin with.

The OK chicken is on the bone, but separates reasonably easily, though I am careful to munch with more delicacy than normal. In my experience, stray chicken bones = dental bills.

Instead of the snow peas of previous visits, my dish is completed with a handful of broccoli florets, which have nice element of bite about them.

This may sound and look like a modest meal. But for fans of Hainan chicken rice, it’s a very handy alternative – especially given it’s quite hard to find a killer version in our neck of the woods.

We stroll down to Cavallaro’s, grab some ricotta canoli and crostoni, and then head for home.

Passing the V-shaped Ha Long on the way to the car kicks off a discussion about places that were once regular haunts for us yet no longer are, so we stop at another – Touk’s on Charles St – for a coffee on the way home.

We’re in for the night – Playstation, a zillion games of various football codes on the telly, reading, blogging, lollies

Hao Phong on Urbanspoon


Addis Abeba

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220 Nicholson St, Footscray. Phone: 9041 2994

Our normal early-in-the-week routine is all business – work, school homework, commuting and homecooked meals.

This week we break out for a Tuesday night foray.

It’s the bitingly cold start of a nasty cold snap, so the whole exercise could be deemed silly, but happily our first port of call is open.

Addis Abeba is a relatively new kid on the block in Footrscray’s collection of Ethiopian eateries, situated on a stretch of Nicholson St known for the presence of a venerable old stager of an Indian restaurant, the Taj.

The restaurant is done out nicely in a tranquil sort of green, the walls adorned with art work, photos and posters.

We’re the only customers and naturally gravitate to the table nearest to the glowing heater.

Dad’s happy to go vego, but the boy wants meat.

It seems the days of us ordering only a salad and tibs at Ethiopian places are gone – the staff advise us that, no, that won’t be enough. I shouldn’t be surprised – Bennie’s a 10-year-old rugby player whose appetite is expanding.

We order salad ($6), beef tibs ($12) and lamb key wet (wot, also $12).

At first blush, the tibs look a little pale and pallid – there’s little by way of seasoning or gravy. But Bennie loves  ’em, especially the onion strands.

The key wot is the hit of the night – nice lamb pieces swimming in an incredibly rich and oily/buttery dark red-brown gravy with that distinctive flavour of berbere spice mix prominent. The chilli hit seems to become greater as the meal goes on, but presents no problems for us

The salad is the usual jumble of leaves, capsicum, onion, green chilli and tomato. It’s very wet with a lemony dressing, but we like it a lot.

We eat almost all that is before us, including the injera on the serving platter and the extras on the side.

On an earlier visit on my ownsome, I’d had kikil – described as “lamb stew with special sauce sauted with onion and garlic”, it was actually a typically flavoursome broth, in which was submerged a meaty lamb bone. It was delicious, though $12 seemed a little pricey for a bowl of soup. It was beaut, however, to use injera with soup – the sponge-like texture, unsurprisingly, was just right for the job.

Based on our experiences to this point, Addis Abeba presents a fairly typical Ethiopian fare very capably, if without really knocking us out. Yet.

I’m keen to return to try the non-meat combo of pulses two ways and various vegetable dishes. It’s priced at $12, $15 with salad, $26 for two and $40 for three, which seems fair and sensible.

For breakfast there are the likes of foul ($8) and scrambled eggs ($7).

All other things being equal, Addis Abeba is likely to find long-term favour with us for being slightly removed from Footscray’s African hub, hopefully easing the car-park situation.

Addis Abeba on Urbanspoon

National Vegetable Expo

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Dairy Rd, off 639 Sneydes Rd, Werribee

Approaching the venue for the 2011 National Vegetable Expo, a number of questions are bouncing around my brain.

Will it be a case of food, food everywhere but not a bite to eat?

Will I even be welcome?

After all, the Vegetables Victoria website announces: “The National Vegetable Expo Organizing Committee extend a warm invitation all Vegetable Growers, Nursery Operators and Industry Suppliers, to gather for this years event.”

No mention there, eh, of “members of the public”, “shoppers” or “consumers”? Let alone “nosy bloggers” …

And even if I am made welcome, will the event offer enough to hold my interest? Or will it be a dry thing of tedious technical stuff and agribusiness? Will there be personality and character, be it vegetable, human or otherwise?

Pulling off Sneydes Rd, a sign eases at least one of those concerns:

After paying my $10 entry fee and parking my car, I enter the expo proper and immediately secure a magnificent cafe latte, noticing as I do that next to the coffee stand is a hot spud outlet and, next to that, a tent in which lovely ladies are busily putting together burgers and steak sangas and the like:

When lunchtime rolls around, I will be fed.

From there, I venture around the many exhibitors.

Circled around the central marquee and food outlets are, indeed, many exhibitors of the vegetable business variety – tractors and other machinery, many different kinds of packaging, picking, irrigating and so on. There are, too, exhibits by WorkHealth and Worksafe Victoria, as well as seed and nursery outfits. There are even a few businesses spruiking an organic approach.


The main seed producer action, though, circles an adjacent paddock that holds a glorious display of row after row of magnificent vegetables.

According to the expo program, the rainy weather has resulted in a very different look to this year’s live vegie display, as opposed to the drought-affected previous event in 2009.

Just looking at the field makes my mouth water. I want to make like a rabbit.

I’m not looking too hard, but see fennel and cabbages and much, much more.

The cauliflowers are particularly alluring:

But dominating the entire spread are lettuces and other leafy vegetables – in a stupendous array of colours, shapes and sizes:

As I wander past the surrounding tent exhibits, I score a complementary serve of parmesan and broccoli soup at the Seminis stand, as provided by Ricky Holt Catering. The same folk provide me with a you-beaut black apron with a bright green photo of a broccoli floret right in the middle.

The fine soup seems only to sharpen my appetite. Maybe I’m hungry because I’ve been hanging out with about an acre and a half of salad-and-soup on the hoof, so to speak.

It’s rush hour at the burger stand by the time I get there. My burger with the lot and a can of that Coca Cola stuff set me back $10.50. The burger is typical fairground stuff – packed in a paper bag, egg, bacon, grilled onions and so on. It looks average and tastes great.

Back in the vegie patch, I strike up a conversation with Shawn Hicks, who is the SA, WA and NT manager of Fairbanks Seeds, which – according to the company’s website – was  established in 1926 and “is the most experienced commercial vegetable seed company in Australia”.

While I admire his coriander, parsley and lettuce varieties, Shawn tells me the expo is an affordable and effective tool for his company.

He started preparations and planting for the expo as long ago as Christmas, yet that very afternoon – as the expo winds down – all the plants will be either harvested to be taken home or discarded.

He gets to speak with a broad range of farmers and producers in a single location in just a couple of days – sure beats individual farm visits.

From them he gets feedback about Fairbanks’ products, including the test strains. The crops with names, he explains, are already in the catalogue, while the numbered plants are on trial.

He enjoys, too, the social side of the event, including the expo dinner he’d attended the previous night.

“It’s good to get off the farm,” he says. “A lot of farmers don’t.”

He also likes the idea of more folks such as myself attending the expo.

“After all, you’re the consumer,” he says.

With a sub-editing night shift starting about an hour, it’s time to go.

I leave wishing I’d allowed more time to hang with these friendly people and find out more about how they do what they do.

May be next time – which will be in 2013.

The Vegetables Victoria website is here.


St Albans Catering & Classic Cakes

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 216a Main Road East, St Albans. Phone: 9366 6566

Why are there no Maltese restaurants in Melbourne?

Even the most cursory online sleuthing reveals a super cuisine tradition, one that is of the Mediterranean yet quite different from that of its many neighbours – colourful, rich, varied and no doubt delicious.

I once put that question to a Maltese staff member at Stephz Gourmet Deli.

Her reply went something along the lines of the Maltese community is not prone to getting behind and supporting such enterprises, unlike many other expatriate communities.

Charles Sciberras reckons there may be something in that.

With his brother Ron, Charles runs the family business in St Albans.

It was started, at premises in Sunshine, in 1964 by their parents Emanuel and Maryanne.

The brothers became full-time staffers in 1974, and in 1979 the business moved to its present premises in St Albans.

From the mid-’80s to about 1990, a restaurant next door was indeed part of the business.

East End Bistro morphed into East End Reception, and Charles is happy to concede that catering is where the heart of the enterprise continues to lie.

“I can do 400 set menus almost in my sleep,” he quips. “Doing 100 al la carte meals …”

Left profoundly unsaid are the extra stress levels.


Charles was born in Australia, but tells he is more fluent in Maltese than most members of his generation of Maltese descendants because of his ongoing relationship with so many Maltese customers.

While there are only minor Maltese components on the catering menus the company creates for its customers, Charles is nevertheless proud of its product, saying the paramount thing is that the food be “flavoursome”.

“There is nothing bland about our food,” he says.

These days the business is about 80 per cent catering and 20 per cent cakes and pastries.

While the Maltese influence may not be in-your-face in their homely shop, a little snooping around reveals gems that Charles is happy to explain.

They sell quite a wide range of frozen pastizzi, which are sourced elsewhere.

They likewise sell ravioli and qssatat, which look like large versions of crimp-topped yum cha dumplings, are prepared in the oven and contain ricotta, or peas and onions, or – at Lent – anchovies, peas and onions.

Honey ring (top) and mqaret (bottom).

Very yummy are the honey rings, which cost $4.50 and contain a crumbly spiced mixed that involves dates, almonds, citrus peels and spices, all encased in a thin pastry tube.

Even more yummy are the mqaret (date slices), which cost $4.50 for a bag of six. The filling is just about all date and the pastry is very similar to the pimpled, flaky, crunchy variety found in canoli. Yep, they’re deep-fried!

They’re like the date-filled biscuits familiar to many Australians, ‘cept a whole lot better. Charles tells me it’s common for them to be served warm after a spell in the oven. I reckon they’d be great with good vanilla ice cream or yogurt!

Small galletti.

Also very Maltese are the galletti, which come in two sizes. They’re very dry, crunchy cracker-like affairs that Charles tells me are commonly eaten with Maltese cheese and wine.

The St Albans Catering & Classic Cakes website is here.