Category Archives: Places we like to eat at

Just Good Food

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Please note: These premises now house a restaurant called Phi Phi.

28 Alfrieda St, St Albans. Phone: 9310 9881

St Albans is such an unknown quantity that picking a place to eat is a bit of a lottery, but we resolve to not stress at all about where we’re going to eat or what we’re going to eat there.

As it is, a few seconds after ambling on to Alfrieda St, our choice is more or less made for us as we spy an emporium whose splendid name we had noted with approval on a previous visit.

Just Good Food?

Sounds good to us!

In we go to a bright and cheerful room, to be greeted by efficient but friendly staff – table, menu, order are all organised with cheerful briskness.

For this Saturday lunch shift, a couple of tables of folk are already chowing down.

Just Good Food is a hardcore Chinese place on a street dominated by a Viet vibe.

I reckon they probably turn on some splash-up and pricey seafood for dinners, and the few steamers we see about the place suggest there is yum cha to be had, too.

But for lunch, the usual range of rice and noodles seems to be the go, so we go with that flow by both ordering two-roast combos at $9.

“I want to try duck,” says Bennie – so duck he gets, accompanied by barbecued roast pork on rice.


Of the many unexpected joys that doing Consider The Sauce has conferred upon us, that it has become such a delicious father-and-son project is paramount.

Moreover, Bennie insists on reading each story just after it is posted, playing a vital proof reader and sub-editor role by pointing out mistakes, keeping his eyes peeled for likely looking fang venues and – in this case – taking some of the photos.

I order the barbecued roast pork, too, with soya sauce chicken in egg noodle soup.

As more food exotica enters our neighbourhood, Chinese roast meats can almost be seen as old-school in the same vein as steak and black bean sauce, but sometimes they simply hit the spot perfectly.

This is one of those times.

Our meats are very good indeed.

The pork is a deep pink and as lean as any I’ve seen. The soya sauce chicken is moist and juicy, even the meatier segments which can sometime be on the dry side, although as ever care is vital for any one of a certain age with a multi-thousand dollar dental investment to protect. Beware of them bones, folks!

Bennie likes his duck, especially once he works his way past the more bony bits – mind you, for a lad who digs chicken feet, a bit of skin and gristle is hardly hard labour either.

He makes appreciative noises about how the meat juices have soaked into his rice, while my soup is hot, a little peppery and light on the grease. Along with the meat, we both gobble up our bok choy pieces, making us feel all virtuous.

And then we’re done. What a beaut lunch – and just what we were looking for.


Just Good Food is one of those places that has multilingual signs festooned around the wall. From them we learn that they have live barramundi for $23.80 and oysters for $1.50 a pop. As well, there is a list of about 20 basic yum cha items costing between $4 and $5, though whether they are housemade or not we know not.

So it seems that Just Good Food may be quite a find.

While our meats were very good indeed, I’m not about to confer on them “best ever” status or anything like that.

But the service and warmth of welcome does put Just Good Food a cut above, especially from a certain Footscray place that boasts a similar lineup but from where he have long since stopped supping due to a frequently belligerent attitude.

As we approach the front counter to pay, we are spared the common routine of explaining where we had sat and what we had eaten,  a cheerful “$20.50 please!” greeting us instead.

In such places and at such times, it is a mistake to confuse a welcome briskness with a rude brusqueness.

The staff are completely at ease with our photographic efforts and even allow us a peek of the giant ovens out back from whence the meats emanate.

As we stroll back to the car, we are blessed and awed by witnessing what we subsequently discover is an amazing sun dog (photo below).

Yummy – some kind of Saturday lunch, eh?

Just Good Food on Urbanspoon

UPDATE: 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.

Since our earlier story about Fusion Cafe & Mo:Mo Bar, we’ve been back a couple of times, so this here is by way of a diary as we pleasurably go about eating our way through their menu.

We got a lot of good feedback about that first review, and things seem to be going well for this joint that in its own way is as singular as Yemeni Restaurant.

But the best thing we can do this time around is emphasise the telephone number – 0401 328 334.

You see, the other interior clients of the Metro West building – Centre Link and the like – are not open at night, so hungry potential customers are strongly advised to give the girls a call if access presents a problem. They’ll happily swing open the back door in Albert St for you.

Now ain’t that SO very Melbourne?

On a visit a few weeks back, Bennie had more of the mo mo (chicken and cheese, steamed), while our buddy Kurt opted for the chowmin.

I had the kukura ko masu ra bhat for $9.95 – a wonderful plate of mild chicken stew/curry with rice, a bowl of beaut black dal and trimmings.


For our most recent foray here, Bennie, too, opted for the chowmin ($9) – he gobbled up every shred of this cheerful stir-fried jumble of egg noodles, vegetables and chicken.

I had the chicken choilla with chura and aloo ka achar – “smoked chicken marinated with Nepalese spices and beaten rice”.

The chicken was served cold, the smokiness matched with the spicing to create a distinctive flavour, with chilli content about as high as I am comfortable with. The beaten rice? Sorry, I found this a little weird – crunchy and not unpleasant, but I didn’t feel it worked that well as a complement to the rest. The potato achar was terrific, however, being a sort of cold curried potato salad.

On both our recent visits our main meals have been preceded by a complementary bowl of clear chicken soup, in the way so familiar to us from the local Vietnamese eateries. We always love this! Our Friday night soups were heavy on the salt, but we slurped up every drop anyhow.

Hey – a few more visits and we’ll have more or less been through the menu!

In the meantime, we’re led to believe there are new additions being pondered and planned.

We’ll keep you posted.

Fusion Cafe & Mo:Mo on Urbanspoon

Kebabbque

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Waterfront City, Docklands.

Melbourne’s Docklands has copped some pretty strident criticism over the years, but on a nice summer’s day it can seem like a fine place to be – and maybe even a cool place to live.

Certainly, it appeals as somewhere between the CBD living that one of us still misses and the westie wonders that have become such a big part of our lives.

But food? That’s a different curry of fish completely.

Before we depart for the two-wheeled jaunt down Footscray Rd, I check out some of the places likely to provide tasty fare at Docklands. The prices scare me.

Bhoj, Mecca Bah,Yum Cha Dragon, Man Mo and more – we’d love to love you, but you’ll have to wait for a special occasion.

Wending our way towards the non-circulating Big Wheel – what a debacle! – we come face to face with the drab, mediocre side of the area.

Away from the undeniably attractive waterfront and its swish multi-million yots are dozens and dozens of clothing stores of no allure whatsoever.

And so we end up – again – in the food court area  surrounding the non-operative wheel.

I’ve read stories about how the traders here have been devastated by the wheel farce, so have some sympathy. But I have sympathy, too, for the many young families seeking something tasty and affordable as the heat increases.

There’s franchises and chains like RFC and a bunch more, an interesting looking burger bar and even a Chilli Paddi outlet. But mediocrity seems as prevalent as it does in the retail therapy sector.

Last time we were here the meal we, ahem, “enjoyed” was so bad I prefer not to reveal its ethnicity.


This time we settle on the Turkish of Kebabbque. I try to rustle up some enthusiasm for the vegetarian platter for a touch over $15, but Bennie’s adamant – donner kebab with chilli sauce it will be. Going with the flow, I order the falafel equivalent, with a 600ml Pepsi putting our meal at $21.30.

Our wraps come in a surprising form – the meat/falafel, their salady buddies and sauce are wrapped in the flat bread, which is then sealed and heated. The result looks and handles something like a burrito. On the downside, the salad quotient can’t help but be a bit wilted; on the plus side, it makes for tidy and unmessy eating. Pretty cool!

Bennie’s lamb meal – fully packed with that traditional, unmistakeable flavour of a million kebab joints – is clearly superior to my forgettable chick pea patties.

Our meal is OK, but I suspect we’d have been better off with the $12 noodles or laksa at Chilli Paddi – if a few dollars lighter.

There may be various reasons for visiting Docklands – Lord knows we feel some kind of weird attraction ourselves – but great cheap eats is definitely not among them. If you’re up for some card-bashing, well fine …

Despite sitting under a transparent awning, we gain little or no protection from the sun while eating our lunch, so we are done well by its completion.

It’s a pleasure to head up the river where the greenery and water lends a coolness to the day. For the first time ever, we take Dynon Rd home. Despite the cars, barbed wire and industrial scenery, it turns out to be a surprisingly shady, leafy bicycle thoroughfare.

We stop at Happy River Cafe at the Footscray Community Arts Centre for an excellent $3.30 latte and a pricey but fine $5 caramel milkshake. We used to visit the various setups on these premises quite a lot – as we used to frequent cafes in general … in the days before places where English, even when spoken very well, is a second or even third language came to dominate our outings.

But scoping out a neighbouring table’s $19 lamb cutlets with cous cous and $13.50 ploughman’s lunch with envy, we figure a return visit is on the cards.

At Happy River Cafe (above); Bennie checks out some tree limbs (below).

Khartoum Centre Restaurant

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145 Nicholson St, Footscray. Phone: 0452 639 329

Khartoum Centre is a popular place – groups of friends, young families and extended families come and go.

It seems the perfect place for Saturday lunch – especially after I had discovered a sensational new barber in “Little Khartoum Arcade”. So gentle, thorough, professional!

We’d been to Khartoum Centre once – for a nice falafel plate.

One young family near us is having fish with rice and salad, but most of the larger tables around us are tucking into big communal bowls of ful.

But we know that we’re going to be taking our pulses that night in the form of  homemade dal, so we head off in a different direction.

There’s certainly a lot from which to choose. There seem to be no written menus – the food range is displayed in photos and lists at the end of the room, where customers place their orders adjacent to the kitchen. Unfortunately, the many intriguing photos have no captions, so it’s hard to place a dish’s name with its pic.

There’s Sudanese dishes, of course, but also an Ethiopian section, dips, salads, soups – and even a kids menu. A lot of the dishes seem to be close kin to those served by the likes of the Iraqi joint across the road and other Middle Eastern places.

Since our initial visit, we’d walked in and walked out several times, finding no one much interested in explaining the menu to us or taking our order. There seems to be an expectation that customers already know what they desire.

Today we soldier on – with an order of meat soup and mixed grill.


As expected, the meat soup, thoughtfully served to us in two small bowls, is a sibling to those found at our Ascot Vale friends Yemeni Restaurant and Safari Restaurant – meat soups in which nary a strand dead sheep is to be found but which are explosively, deeply meatly flavoured. But where those efforts are clear, tangy and spicy, the meat soup at Khartoum Centre is cloudy – but the depth of flavour is no less impressive.

The mixed grill is a delight.

Bennie declares the boneless pieces of fish – fluffly, light, mellow of flavour and with a soft (eggy?) batter – the best he’s ever had.

They share the plate with a handful of garlicky, pan-fried lamb cubes, some equally garlicky and charred pieces of chicken thigh and three similarly charred and tasty lamb chops.

Attending the lot are a small serve of finely chopped salad of tomato, cucumber and more, rice of no great distinction and good dollops of humus and cucumber/yogurt dip

(BTW, the Khartoum mixed grill was adjudged one Ms Baklover’s top five dishes when she was covered, with us, by Leader newspapers.)

The Khartoum mixed grill is a fine dish to share. Unless you’re a shearer taking your lunch break!

Satisfied, we arise to pay our bill. And discover that instead of the $3 listed for the soup, we are being charged $5. And instead of $16 for the mixed grill, we are charged $18. We don’t make a big deal of it, as at $25 including two cans of soda it’s still a fine cheap eat.

There’s so much food to explore at Khartoum Centre, but we’d feel happier about repeated return visits if we didn’t feel like we are somehow out the eatery’s loop. Maybe the fault is ours – maybe we need to be a little more assertive in such circumstances.

On the way back to the car, we meet the most friendly and beautiful tabby kitten. Gorgeous!

Tan Huu Thanh

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100 Hopkins St, Footscray. Phone: 9689 1887

There are few – if any – restaurants we have visited more than Tan Huu Thanh during our decade in the west.

For a while there it seemed like a weekly, or at least fortnightly, event.

Recently, for various reasons – including the pleasurable yet mandatory restless wandering that goes with doing a food blog – visits have been scarce.

So it is with some glee that we enter for a celebratory dinner – hey, we made it through to hump day, OK? – on this Wednesday.

The kids are a bit older, one not yet born we started hitting this joint is a happy little chappie and the smiles of welcome are like old friends.

This is a non-pho place in the heart of Footscray’s Viet precinct.

There are intriguing nooks and crannies on the menu we have yet to explore, but we do have our favourites, after all.

We love the entree size wonton soup for $5. With a handful of plump dumplings reclining in a clear and peppery chicken broth, it usually comes with a few slices of roast pork as a bonus and is a pretty cool light meal all on its ownsome.

We adore the diced cube steak and rice (com bo luc lac) and its crispy chicken sibling for $9.50 – for us, state of the art for these dishes hereabouts.

But tonight, just for kicks and because it’s been so long since we dropped by, we are lashing out with an order for sizzling steak (bo nuong vi).

Available in $30 and $40 sizes, this is tasty, (mostly) healthy Vietnamese food – and also bags of hands-on fun.

Brought to our table, along with a gas-fired cooker, are plates …

Of cucumber sticks, shredded carrot and pineapple.

Of rice vermicelli.

Of herbs, bean sprouts and lettuce.

Of rice paper.

Then comes a platter – the glorious centrepoint of the whole performance – of finely sliced beef, pretty as a picture, sprinkled with lemongrass and obviously prepared by a deft hand using an extremely sharp knife on, I have been told, meat that is partially frozen.

Finally, there’s a bowl of a dipping concoction made of fish sauce, vinegar, salt, pepper and a little chilli; and another of a butter and oil mixed and laced with some more lemongrass.


Once the cooker is fired up, we slop on some of butter/oil combo and wait for the grill plate to get hot.

Then on the meat goes – and the intense entertainment really starts.

It’s a preposterous fun balancing the nack of getting the meat nicely charred but not overcooked while simultaneously soaking the rice paper in the hot water provided.

When the meat is placed on the now soft rice paper, we add some of the herbs, vegies, vermicelli and attempt to roll – using our inexpert hands – our custom-made masterpieces into neat and tidy taste parcels.

We fail! But we get by – and it all tastes fantastic.

Before we know it, the lot is gone – consumed, down the hatch, devoured with zeal.

At $30, it has to be said this is not a large meal in an eatery and neighbourhood where the same sum will usually buy more food than two people can eat.

But it suffices.

And it may be that it is traditionally meant as entree to be shared among a whole table of folk. I’ll ask about that next time.

And there’s an added, not insignificant and long lingering bonus – as with the non-cutlery eating of Ethiopian food with injera, bo nuong vi leaves the perfume of a great food experience on one’s hands for many hours after the eating is done.

Tan Huu Thanh offers a similar dish – lau bo nhun dam – on the part of its menu devoted to  large soups for sharing and steamboats, in which the beef is cooked in vinegar water.

But the one time we tried it, we found the vinegar flavour scarce and water method rendered the rolling of parcels – difficult enough with out clumsy digits – into an unsatisfactory and mushy experience.

As we leave, we resolve to check out some of the more intriguing dishes on the menu on future visits – or, at the very least, order the $40 bo nuong vi on a visit when we’re both ravenous and feeling well-heeled.

Tan Huu Thanh on Urbanspoon

Ashley Hotel

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226 Ballarat Rd, Braybrook. Phone: 9317 9257

Like La Morenita, the Ashley Hotel is part of our daily school routine  – so much so that it seems like a case of the more we see it, the more invisible it becomes.

It was on our “to do”, list, however, with the lure of $15 roasts holding appeal.

As we set off on our bikes – Bennie giving his brand new three-quarter machine its first workout – it is the last thing on our minds, with a loose target of Sunday lunch in Sunshine lodged in our minds.

But by the time we get to the junction of Ballarat Rd and Ashley St, we decide that’s enough serious exertion for the day. It’s sunny, yes, but not too hot; and there’s a nice cool breeze helping out. But, frankly, we just can’t be bothered with the whole trek up to Sunshine from there.

We consider the Sri Lankan place just up the road, but decide the Ashley is the go – the final clincher being the big billboard outside talking up $10 lunches.

After locking up our bikes, we meander inside and check the place out. It’s big and spacious, with the pokies hard to ignore but not particularly overbearing in terms of ambiance.

Already, just a touch past noon, there are a number of tables in lunch mode, including some taking advantage of the seniors special offers.

We order – fish and chips for me, calamari and chips for him. Two pots of that Coca Cola stuff ramp the price up to $27 and beyond cheap eats boundaries.

I do the right thing, asking if it’s OK to take photos. “No”, comes the firm reply. I try some halfhearted arguments, but give in graciously – I seriously want to enjoy my lunch. The thought of surreptitiously snapping off a few pics crosses my mind, but I can do without the aggro – or even the potential aggro.

As we wait for our meals, we adjourn to the adjacent Sportsbar, which looks like a pretty cool place to take in a big game, with its comfy couches and bank of telly screens – even if about half of them are showing nothing more than various odds concerning that afternoon’s cricket match at the MCG.

The Sportsbar menu is a little pricier, with likes of chicken parma, burger and rump steak clocking in at $12.

The main menu is far more extensive, with salads at around $15, mains $17 to $24, pan-cooked fish about $22 and grills from $26 up to $32.50.

The usual suspects are available on the kids menu for $8.50.

Our meals arrive and a look of befuddlement accosts our faces.

I wander over to once more take in the large poster, with prominent photographs, that describes the $10 meal line-up. Sure enough, the photos representing our respective meals contain salad offerings.

Our meals are thoroughly minus greenery of any kind, but still OK. However, they look like bare-bones takeaway feeds, which makes the $27 price tag a little galling

Chips, very good.

Fish, modestly proportioned but with a nice crispy batter.

Calamari, a nice sized serve with crunchy crumbed coating, but lacking flavour.

Tartare sauce, whether house made or not I know not, but tasty and a whole lot better than sachets.

As we leave, Bennie points at the poster and says: “Dad, look!” He’s pointing at a narrow strip of relatively small type that runs along the poster’s bottom.

It says, with no equivocation, served with “chips only”.

I have no doubt that the colour scheme –  orange type on a red background – is deliberately chosen so that eyes already diverted by the colour photos above will simply slide past the warning without even seeing it. Bluntly, our meals did not match the large photographs, while the written warning that such would be the case was hidden in plain sight.

There may be bargains at the Ashley, but I figure they’ll take some serious pondering to unearth – and certainly there’s no guarantee that bargains, should they indeed exist, are the “bargains” the establishment goes to such trouble to advertise.

As with the plainly-spoken but slyly camouflaged warning about the lean ‘n’ mean nature of the $10 meals, I seriously doubt that anything about the Ashley – pricing, signage, menu wording, the lot – comes about by accident.

The hotel is owned by the AHL Group, which is 75 per cent owned by Woolworths Ltd, with the balance held by the Bruce Mathieson Group.

They’re in it to make money, of course, and I have no problem with that. But it’s hard to feel well disposed toward it when we a feel not so much like guests or even customers … and more like units of potential profit.

We truly love to love the places we eat at, but when pushed we, too, can bring a semblance of scientific calculation to decisions about where we spend our money.

On the way home, we take the opportunity to have a a quick wheel around Ashley Gardens BIG4 Holiday Village. Wow, it’s really spiffy – lots and lots of real nice looking cabins and units, and a cool pool, too.

I ask the staff if they allow non-guests to use the pool – for a suitable fee, of course.

Receiving a negative answer, I yell out to Bennie: “No go, mate – we’ll have to sneak in at night!”

Just kidding, folks!

Closing in on Yarraville, we stop for coffee at Africa Taste Bar. We know well taking photos is fine with the management, but in this case they oblige by taking one of us.

Yemeni Restaurant revisited

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124 Union Rd, Ascot Vale. Phone: 9372 0854

Yemini Restaurant had been one our earliest outings here on Consider The Sauce, but as the “under new management” sign has been up for some months, we deem it time for a return visit.

The main change seems to be a much tighter and more focused menu – this is no cause for alarm; indeed it may be good news.

The handful of dishes now available all clock in at $12.

A few weeks previous, on my ownsome, I’d had burmah – “Bedouin-style tender lamb on the bone slow-cooked with khubz (traditional Yemeni bread) on rice”. It was pretty good, too, the meal coming to my table in a very hot pot, the cooking liquid then poured into a bowl for soup purposes. It was much like the lamb broth at Safari Restaurant up the road, only much more spicy and piquant.

The meat was eaten separately, with flat bread that looked suspiciously like blandola store-bought roti. Wrong! This was the royalty of  flat bread – flaky and rich and impossible to stop eating.

For our Saturday lunch we tell the staff we are two hungry lads – but not THAT hungry. Would it be possible to enlarge, for a suitable fee, one of the main plates for sharing purposes?

Certainly – and a $5 premium is agreed upon.

As we wait, there arises a certain amount of tension and unease concerning our – OK, my – photographic activities that require quite some minutes of dialogue across and language and cultural barriers.

I succeed, eventually, in assuring them our intentions are only of the highest order, and that, no, we will not be sending them an invoice for a write-up on our website and that, yes, we fully intend to pay for our lunch.

Whew!


I doubt there’s much difference between the standard plate and our deluxe version, but it matters not, for it just right for the pair of us.

Our lamb mandi – “slow-cooked lamb with baharat (mixture of Yemeni spices) served with rice, salad, shitni (green chili sauce) and Khiar bil laban (cucumber dip)” – is similar to meals we’d under the joint’s previous incarnation, with some key differences.

No sign of the green chilli mash – this time the spice hit comes with a much greater kick from red/brown dip that consequently requires much more judicious imbibing.

The rice is minus the sultanas and strands of deep brown fried onion of earlier visits – but it’s even better. In fact, it’s much MUCH better. Rice to inhale, rice to dream about. The mixed jumble of yellow and white grains, obviously cooked in some form of stock, have through them some translucent onion slices and some seasoning that appears to include at the least black peppercorns. It’s very plain but astounding in its effect.

The two pieces of lamb – Bennie is lucky enough to score a four-point rack – are sublimely crusty on the outer and tender on the inner. A piece apiece is more than enough.

After we’d restored goodwill with the staff, we are told that menu changes are afoot, with more and different choices in the offing. We’ll be watching with interest.

Because Yemeni Restaurant, whatever changes have been or are about to be wrought, remains a singular gem  of our western suburbs food scene.

Yemeni Restaurant on Urbanspoon

Shota Muni Sushi & Grill

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Shop 5, 1 Elgar Rd, Derrimut. Phone: 9363 1554

I’VE BEEN TOLD THIS RESTAURANT HAS NOW CLOSED.

Head up Ballarat Rd, turn right at Deer Park, keep on driving and you’re in Derrimut.

This is a trip into the unknown for us, in more ways than one.

It’s an area in transition.

Our destination for the night is part of a shopping precinct – a car wash and a handful of eateries (Subway, Turkish, Chinese/noodles, F&C, Japanese) on one side of Mount Derrimut Rd, a Coles and more cheap eats on the other – that doesn’t appear on Google maps.

Further on up the road we spy Sunshine Golf Club on one side of a large roundabout and a slice of swish-looking suburbia on the other.

Everywhere are the bleak vistas of industrial parks and lack of humanity.

No matter.

We’re here for the food, as they say in the classics.

We’d spied Shota Muni while cruising around after lunch at Kabayan Filipino Restaurant.

Our expectations range from the nastiest of takeaway sushi rolls to the real deal – some good and varied Japanese stuff.


Happily, our Friday night dinner very much fits into the latter category – with a few hiccups.

After placing our order, we are presented with small bowls of complementary bean sprouts. Vinegary, sweet and with just a touch of chilli kick, they are very high on the scale of scrumptiousness.

Our order of gyoza duly arrives. The dumplings look sleek and glistening – and like they’re going to be on the crunchy side. They’re not. Instead, they’re slippery, tender and delicious. Kenny has two. He wants more, but the dumpling nut opposite does the pleading thing and gets four.

Bennie finds the whole idea of bento very appealing – all those little compartments, so much variety. So the staff are nice are enough to rustle one up for the boy when asked nicely – they’re usually only part of the lunch menu.

It’s a winner!

Seemingly a little pricey at $16.80, it has three weirdly elongated prawns tempura (they look like roasted anorexic parsnips), a mound of rice, three more gyoza and a gratifyingly large serve of sweetly grilled salmon, under which lie some salad bits and pieces. This is the only greenery – a little disappointing, as bento deals usually involve some kind of more substantial vegetable or salad quotient.

Still, I am not about to complain. This is the first time – EVER – Bennie has ordered fish. Could this be a breakthrough?

The three generous pieces of fish are just the slightest bit overcooked, but there’s more than enough for dad to have a good taste, too.

My own main course order is the biggest hiccup of the night.

It’s a beef hot pot for $18.80, a variation of shabu shabu.

But it’s not cooked at the table.


Instead, it arrives in a large paper bowl, which is placed on a burner fuelled by some sort of petroleum jelly substance that looks like it belongs in a lava lamp.

There’s no rice provided, no way to sup on the stock in which the meat, vegetables and cellophane noodles are cooking – the whole trip is a little weird.

Our waiter suggests I dip the food in soy sauce, and that works. But soon the food is scaldingly hot, and has to be removed to a plate for further eating.

The mix of sliced beef, bean sprouts, cabbage, carrot and tofu is nice enough. But really, it’s more like what I need rather than what I want. After a long week of commuting, holiday program and so on, something a bit more sexy and seasoned would have been welcome.

And there’s plenty of that going on at Shota Muni.

The menu lists a long range of grills, salads, ramen and udon, donburi, tempura and so on. I’d want to know if the range of fish extends beyond the usual salmon and tuna, however, before embarking on a sushi/sashimi adventure here.

Oddly, we are served a single bowl of excellent miso soup after our mains arrive.

Still, we are satisfied – so much so that the non-arrival of our seaweed salad is of no consequence.

The bill is a tad over $50, including a strawberry Calpico cultured milk soda pop for Bennie.

This is a scandalous tab for the likes of us – but, hey, it’s Friday night.

Back home, I discover online that Shota Muni seems to be a chain of Japanese eateries with Chinese roots and/or connections. Whether the Derrimut version has ties in that direction, I know not.

Top Of The Bay

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1 The Strand, Williamstown. Phone: 9397 7404

Nice summer day, looking out over the bay towards the CBD, enough wind to keep the flies away, chish and fips – what could be better?

Top Of The Bay delivers all that, depending of course on the weather to come up with the full house.

If my most recent lunch there fell a little short of meals we’ve had there previously, it does nothing to diminish it in our eyes.

It’s one of the good ones of Willy, a suburb I can’t help but feel is a bit of an under-achiever.

Ferguson St, Nelson Pde – so many eating places, so much mediocrity.

Gems are hard to find, or such has been our experience of a decade-long fairly thorough exploration of the area.

In any case, Top Of The Bay was doing a roaring trade for this Sunday lunch hour. The service and waiting time were appropriately slick and efficient.

The bill for my fish of the day (bream), chips, three calamari rings and a can of that Coca Cola stuff ran to a more than reasonable $12.70.


The oil from the fish had seeped through to spoil about a quarter of my chips, the rest of them being just on the right side of good.

The calamari was battered, rather than being the more familiar crumbed variety.

Nothing wrong with that in my book – it hardly makes any sense to get squeamish about batter when you’re on a fish and chips mission.

But in this case that batter was voluminous and the calamari rings very thin, so the whole deal was out of whack.

The fish was the star,  the batter crunchy and adhering to the marine matter with admirable stubborness, the flesh tender and tasty. The whole fillet did start to disintegrate as I worked from one end to the other, but I loved every salty, greasy, delicious mouthful.

Maybe the slight flaws could be attributed to the rather frantic trade they were doing while I was there.

Any quibbles were easy to dismiss, as it was something of a miracle that it was sunny but warm rather than broiling, and that there was indeed enough wind to keep the flies at bay without the necessity of keeping one hand on my meal and belongings to stop them being swept into the bay.

At Top Of The Bay, where all eating is done outdoors on the tables provided or across the road and closer to the water, such factors have as much to do with the quality of the experience as anything cooked up in the deep friers inside.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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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Awash

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Shop 2, 46-82 Hopkins St, Footscray. Phone: 9687 1955

We don’t mean to celebrate the frequently wicked ways of the world, but we feel blessed nonetheless to be able to enjoy the diversity and flavours varied African tribes have bestowed on Melbourne’s west.

Only problem is, some of the nicer and more appealing places these days have pricing that marks them – for us – as likely venues for a night out and/or special occasion.

Not that the prices are in any way exorbitant – especially in contrast to “proper” restaurants of the classier category.

Adulis, for instance, is calling to us – particularly after a full-blooded endorsement by Ms Baklover at Footscray Food Blog.

But the prices are such that we’re saving that experience for a windfall day or something similar.

And that’s why we headed right next door, to Awash, for a cheap and cheerful Saturday lunch.

I’d dropped in the previous week and had been mightily impressed with the mixed non-meat sampler ($12).

This time around, though, Bennie as adamant: “I want meat!”


So after discussing the non-meat option with the staff, we ordered the meaty pea stew ($10) and a side salad ($5).

A little while later we were presented with … the non-meat sampler.

Oops! Communication breakdown among the staff!

To their credit, they repeatedly offered to replace our meal with the food we had actually ordered.

However, I was equally adamant that we’d make do with what had arrived. After all, the food had already been placed on the injera, so presumably would go to waste if we sent it back. No way!

And so it went.

Bennie overcame his disappointment at his non-meaty repast, and joined me in devouring the lot with glee.

There were pulses three ways – brown lentils and yellow split peas rather plain, and another lentil brew a rich dark red with just the right kind of chilli kick; all good.

The vegetables consisted of the familiar cabbage/carrot mix and a serve of the likewise familiar silverbeet concoction; all also good.

A bonus of going the non-meat route in an Ethiopian eatery is that the food uses enough oil/butter to get the job done, but falls way short of the very high levels found in many of the meat dishes.


I’m also often impressed with just how good the salads are at a great number of Footscray’s African restaurants. Usually there’s nothing whiz-bang involved – just incredibly fresh vegetables beautifully presented and anointed with a lemony dressing.

The Awash salad was a good one that upheld that tradition.

There was nothing remotely spectacular about our food – it was plain, but also wholesome and tasty. And at $17 for two, truly sharp on the pricing – a bargain, in fact, that required no troubling mental maths or hesitation.

Moreover, such was the warmth of the service – and the upfront and happy manner in which the ordering contretemps was handled – that we are looking forward to returning for the likes of their doro wat or tibs.

I remember the first time I tried injera – and found the rubbery clamminess of it rather unappealing.

All ancient history these days – injera has become just as commonplace, delightful and essential as a bowl of pho!

As we ambled over the road to Footscray Market, Bennie opined: “That was a mistake – but it was a good mistake!”

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Kitchen Samrat

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36 Leeds St, Footscray. Phone: 9689 9776

If you live anywhere near Footscray, you’ll be at the least subliminally aware of Kitchen Samrat, so enthusiastic are they about letterboxing their takeaway and delivery menus.

Must work for them, I guess.

Like a number of Indian eateries in the neighbourhood, it provides cheap and cheerful food, catering to the student set through thalis and snacks while also offering a substantial a la carte menu in a casual cafe-style ambience.

Prices for full curries are a little cheaper than some of the fancier joints hereabouts – chicken tika masala or lamb rogan josh at $9, for instance.

But as ever, I go looking for the unusual and the harder to find.

In that regard, Kitchen Samrat has a couple of aces up its sleeves.

First up is the jal zeera, a little glass of which is presented to each customer as a complementary non-alcoholic aperitif. It translates as “cumin water”; looks likes dirty drain water; is also made with tamarind, sugar, salt, pepper, mint, coriander, puffed chick peas and just a trace of chilli; and tastes bloody great!

The other highlight on the regular Kitchen Samrat menu are a couple of light meal/snack-type dishes that are purebred Indian and somewhat analogous of dosas, yet very different.

I have seen cholle bhatrua at other Melbourne Indian places, but not with any consistency.

On a thali plate, you get a nice serve of chick pea curry, some pickle and raw onion slivers and a couple of deep-fried naans that are like a heavier version of puris ($9).

The Amritsari kulcha ($0) is the same deal, except the breads are baked and stuffed with potato.

I order the latter and chat to the manager while waiting for my Sunday lunch. He tells me students make up a big part of his clientele, that there are always tradeoffs between service levels and prices in such operations and that his Indian customers order quite differently from those of the paleface persuasion. The latter usually order from a small and predictable list of dishes such as butter chicken, while the former like the Punjabi chicken, in which the meat is served on the bone. One for next time!

It’s been a while since I’ve been here, and my Amritsari kulcha is even better than I recall from previous visits.

The hot breads come with a knob of butter atop and already melting; the potato/spice/coriander filling is wonderful without being too heavy.

The chick peas, too, are superior, resting in a rich brown gravy just right for mopping up with the bread.

Between the pulses and the carbs, there’s enough of spice kick for me to leave the mango pickle untouched, although I mix in a few of the onion slices to add crunch as I devour the lot using a mixture of Indian-style hands-only and cutlery methods.

It’s a great lunch and a fine bargain.

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La Morenita Latin Cuisine

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67 Berkshire Rd, Sunshine North. Phone: 9311 2911

Update 19/9/11: Review of La Morentia’s new menu here.

I reckon Bennie and I could have spent many years longer without twigging there was a significant Latin American/South American enclave living in the midst of our extended neighbourhood.

But a switch of schools from Footscray to Sunshine removed the veil.

The first sign came on a school day on which the lunch box was not packed, so we resorted to the sandwich shop on the shopping strip adjacent our school. As we waited for our ham and salad roll to be made, I took great interest in the pie heater in the corner. “Hey, Bennie, I reckon those there are empanadas,” said I.

And so they were. We bought a bunch to take home after school, had them for din dins that night  and they were beaut.

As we settled in to the new school routine, we devised a slightly longer route that avoided the franticness of Ballarat Rd for back roads that at least featured a more measured pace and a few trees, along with hundreds of auto repair shops of various stripes, barbed wire and a junk yard dog.

As we were closing in on school one day, tooling along Berkshire Rd, I spied some interesting signage, and said to my food hound buddy: “I’m betting that’s another South American bakery.”

And so it was.

We dropped in that afternoon after school and have been returning ever since on a very regular basis.

Cheese and prawn empanada.

La Morenita (the signs outside actually say Empanadas Las Penas) caters mostly to the local South American community – orders for cakes and catering, along with wine, chorizos, ribs and a variety of cured meats. It also hosts a modest range of  grocery lines.

But there are several attractions for blow-ins such as us, and the place has been steadily fostering lunch-time trade from the hundreds of close-by workplaces.

The big stars for us are the empanadas – flat pastie-like parcels of deliciousness.

We love the beef ($2.50, each of which comes with a little sliver of black olive and another of hard-boiled egg) and the chicken ($2.80). Both oven-baked, these can be had hot and tasty on the premises.

However, we’ve also found they’re great to takeaway and bung in the freezer.

Even better, they provide a cheap and fine way of breaking up the boring routine of work and school lunch boxes – even if the more traditionally minded patrons, we have been led to believe, are somewhat aghast at the idea of eating empanadas cold! Works for us!

Some of the other empanadas – such as the cheese ($1.80) and the prawn and cheese ($3) – are deep fried, no less delicious, but don’t work when unheated.

Also strictly for eating-in are the sandwiches – so gooey with goodness that taking away is simply unthinkable.

My favourite is the churrasco ($5) – steak sandwich with avocado, tomato and mayonnaise (above). The sliced beef is juicy and tasty, the rolls fresh, the whole thing a delight. And certainly a whole lot more appetising than my photo indicates!

Bennie likes the completo ($5) – a South American-style hot dog with the same trimmings.

Unlike the other two South American bakeries in the area, La Morenita doesn’t specialise in cakes and sweets, though the ones we’ve tried have been good. There’s a lot of crunchy pastry and much use of a sticky caramel cream filling.

And even though it’s not really set up as a cafe, we’ve also had many, many lattes and hot chocolates of a pretty good standard.

We love this place and the welcome we get.

You won’t get anything approaching a proper sit-down meal here – there’s no tacos or the like, as found at the newly famous Los Latinos just down the road apiece.

But the empanadas and the sandwiches are unreal!

Closed on Mondays.