Category Archives: Places we like to shop at

Minh Hy Takeaway

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5 Northumberland Rd, Sunshine. Phone: 9352 8711

The not unpleasant demands of routine mean that in recent years the neighbourhood on the other side of Ballarat Rd in Sunshine has become profoundly familiar to us.

The other side that is from that of the shops and market-like activity and good food places such as Classic Curry, Maurya and Pho Hien Saigon.

This familiarity has enriched us with one of our favourites – La Morenita, the expanded eat-in menu of which is to be the subject of a forthcoming Consider The Sauce review.

But sadly, the neighbourhood has delivered very little by way of eating thrills, despite it being well endowed with the sort of the small local shopping strips we routinely treat as rich seams for food mining.

Which means we are thrilled to welcome Minh Hy.

And all kudos to Bennie Weir, and his blooming foodie sophistication and enjoyment, for proudly leading his father right to this fine little joint for a Sunday lunch.

It’s a small place, with only three in-house tables, one of them a two-seat affair, although there are several tables outside for your alfresco alternative.

The inside seating is all taken when we arrive, but thankfully after only a short wait we have a table to call our own.

There’s no menu, but the walls are festooned with the familiar hand-written signs in Vietnamese, the understanding of which we are very much still in prep stage.

Kudos then, too, to the ultra-friendly staff who are happy to take the time to talk us through many of the varied options.

Minh Hy has a buffet-type operation similar to that of Dinh Son Quan at Saigon Market in Footscray.

It is from here that Bennie chooses three serves with rice for $9, with a tasty chicken wing thrown in for good measure.

The lad fancies himself as a fan of all things squid and octopus, but in this case finds the squid involved in a stir fry with vegetables a little too chewy and rubbery for his liking.

The agreeably greasy serve of small-diced pork works fine for him, but the hit is the thin omelette with bitter melon.

His dad orders the seafood soup noodles (mi do bien), also at a cost of $9.

In truth, the lump of thin egg noodles in this is a tad uninspiring, but the three plump prawns are good mixed in with a handful of calamari pieces.

But the star is the broth, which smells and tastes like it’s based on a stock made with prawn heads and the like. Its bisque-like colouring backs up this theory.

We’re having so much fun that we indulge in a serve of one of the two rich-looking deserts on display in bowls.

Che ba ba – $3 for a bowl – has sweet potato, cassava, tapioca and more swimming in coconut cream.

After it’s heated up for us, Bennie loves its all-round squishiness; his dad is not so enamoured.

But the boy is not done yet. Despite just having slurped up desert, he also tucks into a steamed roast pork bun ($2.20) with relish.

All up, our meal – including two cans of soft drink – costs us a supremely cheap $26.

If our meals were of the journeyman variety rather than truly noteworthy, we reckon return visits – and a greater familiarity with the place – will assuredly provide more sublime highs in an establishment that packs in a surprising amount of variety into a very small space.

As we depart, Bennie opines that he fancies the spicy beef noodle soup. His father really desires a big serve of the lusciuous-looking chicken curry with a crusty bread roll on the side.

We are assured that Minh Hy is open from 7.30pm, which opens up all sorts of interesting brekky possibilities.

In the meantime, it’s been a pleasure to chow down at a friendly neighbourhood Viet joint that stands alone and far from the bustling strips of Footscray, Sunshine or St Albans.

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:

****

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

****

I will do a story in due course!

****

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:

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.

La Manna Direct

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10 English St, Essendon Fields. Phone: 9026 9209

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

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

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

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

My first stop is the La Manna cafe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The glaring lights make taking photos a challenge.

Unsurprisingly, the range of products is amazing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Lavvaza Crema e Gusto coffee sets me back $4.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

La Manna Direct Cafe on Urbanspoon


Meals On Wheels!

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How cool is this?

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

Nope.

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

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

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

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

Come again soon, my friend!

Snowballs Ice-Cream And Lollies

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320 Melbourne Rd, Newport. Phone: 9391 0711

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Likewise, the New Zealand products are popular.

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

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

The staff tell us this is quite common.

We settle on:

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

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

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

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

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

John’s Nuts & Deli

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Shop 30, Metro West Shopping Centre, cnr Paisley and Albert Sts, Footscray. Phone 0419 138 992.

For some reason I’ve always had Johns Nuts & Deli pegged as just another continental deli, the kind found in various other Footscray venues, in Sunshine, Carlton, Brunswick – and even in Chapel St.

The kind of delis that were a signpost of an earlier wave of migration to Australia, from Italy, Greece and continental Europe.

Well, in this case I simply hadn’t been looking hard enough. Or rather, my eyes didn’t see what wasn’t there.

Yes, there are many, many staples of your standard Melbourne-style deli – tinned tomatoes, jars of many different kinds of pickled vegetables, jams, wafer biscuits, a big range of dried fruit and nuts, stacks of sacked rice and beans and other pulses and much more.

What there is not, however, is meat in general and the many byproducts of pork in particular.

Owner George Sallama tells me his parents come from Jordan and Lebanon and that the family has run this business for 16 years.

And that Middle Eastern heritage no doubt explains a change I have been noticing at Johns – in a way that reflects the immediate changing community, the clientele is taking on a pronounced African slant.

For George, this is just simply doing smart business.

He tells me his African customers know where to head in his store for products and ingredients specific to their cooking and other needs.

These include the likes of sorghum and white cornflour for making injera.


But this new wave of customers also buys the same rice and beans and more as his other customers; they just use them differently, as we all know to our grand benefit!

Another speciality African item George stocks are what he calls mafraka.

These look like rudimentary walking sticks for persons of diminutive stature.

Wrong!

They’re actually a form hand-held beater used to help the cooking process of molokhia, the spinach-like dish found at many nearby African eateries.

George demonstrates by placing a mafraka between his hands, with the beater end downwards, and then briskly rubbing his hands together.

So simple!

My needs at Johns on this outing are simple – roasted almonds, dried apricots and white sultanas.

I include a couple of pieces of juicy baklava as an afterthought.

John’s Nuts & Deli is a living, breathing mirror to the changing face of Footscray.

Sourdough Kitchen

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172 Victoria St, Seddon. Phone: 9687 5662

Heading out for breakfast used to be a major part of our routine a few years back.

Mind you, we’re talking coffee and toast mostly – not the egg-heavy chow-down fry-up favoured by so many.

But our morning habits have evolved and changed.

We make our own muesli, and we know that’s very good for our insides, allowing us to be a little bit naughty during the rest of the day.

Besides, for cereal/muesli most cafes charge double the price listed for toast/jam.

Isn’t this exactly the wrong way around?

I mean, toast is grain made into something – bread.

Jam is fruit that’s been made into something.

Butter is milk that’s been churned.

Muesli is just grain, plus a few bits and pieces, yet in many places it goes for $10 or more.

We’d go the bacon/eggs/spinach/hashbrowns/snags/mushies/avocado/tomatos/kitchen sink route less than once a year.

And in terms of eating out, isn’t lunch or dinner so much more alive with potential for miracles and greatness?


But it is the near-complete absence of out-and-about brekkies from our lives that makes a Friday morning visit to Sourdough Kitchen charged with novelty value and a sense of refreshing change.

We’d not noticed preparations for the bakery before it opened, so were surprised when Deb trumpeted its debut at Bear Head Soup.

Since then we’ve visited several times – for coffee (very good) and takeaway scrolls (fruity, heavy, delicious).

We’ve also enjoyed several slices of primal pizza, including a fragrant chewy number topped with  zucchini, eggplant, some capsicum, olives, fresh rosemary, olive oil. The slices are scrumptious, cost $5.50 and have already become a lunchbox option for us.

Just like that (sound of fingers snapping) Sourdough Kitchen has become a splendid part of the local scenery. As I read my newspaper and enjoy my breakfast, a steady stream of customers come and go. Takeaway coffee, bread, rolls. Another couple of tables host locals deep into their caffeine hits and conversation.

My toast and jam costs $5.50 and is fine. I get three slices of good sourdough and more than enough butter. The strawberry jam, though, is a bit on the runny side and is almost all syrup and very little fruit.

As I’m going about my business I imbibe two outstanding lattes.

The brekkie tab is just a tad over $11.

The bakery is restricting its options to fairly light fare for both breakfast and lunch – see menu below – for what I have been told are reasons connected to power supply issues. For lunch, in addition to the pizza slices, there are some fine-looking filled rolls.

Sourdough Kitchen already feels like it’s been around for a lot longer than a mere month or so – and I mean that as a compliment!

Sourdough Kitchen on Urbanspoon

Kabayan Filipino Restaurant And Asian Groceries

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Cairnlea Town Centre, 100 Furlong Rd, Cairnlea. Phone 8390 1346

In its relatively short life, Consider The Sauce has written about just two Filipino eateries – Kabayan and Kowloon House.

Yet because of the nifty, superb blogging platform provided by wordpress.com, and some additional data from StatCounter, I know for a fact that the entries on both those Filipino western suburbs joints, along with Filipino food and restaurants in general, generates more interest and search engine terms than just about anything else.

The interest comes from all over the world, but mostly from the Philippines – of course! – and Melbourne.

And each time we’ve been to Kabayan, one or more of the Filipino customers has made inquiries:

“Do you like Filipino food?”

“Are you enjoying your meal?”

That interest and intrigue mirrors my own as I set off to check out the newly revamped and reopened Kabayan.

It’s been moved around the corner to larger premises that allow the incorporation of a modest grocery section.

Other than that, much seems the same as on our previous visit.

This time, though, I give the grilled-to-order meals a miss and try my luck with the pot food arrayed in the bain marie.


And this time, thanks to a young Filipino man who talks me through the dishes available, I have a good idea of what I’m eating.

Here’s the deal – two dishes with rice for $9.50.

I settle on afritada and paksiw.

The chicken afritada is a braise/stew affair, with chook pieces on the bone and vegetables in a reddish sauce/gravy. It’s a sweet dish with a dash of the piquant about it – thus making it a little like your old-school  Cantonese sweet-and-sour concoction, but much wetter.

It’s OK, but the chicken pieces are of negligible flavour.

The paksiw is something else entirely.

From what I’ve since learnt, paksiw is apparently a vinegar-based stew, in my case of pork. The various recipes and info I find online make it sound interesting.

I wish what’s on my plate was half so appealing.

The dish has some tasty gravy that nevertheless seems bereft of vinegar zing, some fine and tender pork – but, oh my, there’s soooooo much fat.

In at least a couple of different contexts – traditional roast pork crackling and Chinese roast meats – I am usually easily swayed into enjoying such decadence.

But in this dish, there is nothing at all crackly or crunchy or alluring about the fat and skin – it’s all flabby, revolting, and mixed in with the sauce/gravy

Gross!

After eating what meat there is, I leave more than half the dish on my plate.


And so I depart Kabayan once more feeling that I am missing something, that I am simply not “getting it”.

Ah well, maybe that’s the way it’s meant to be – still, I find it surprising.

I am far from the most courageous diner around, but I like or love a wide range of cooking that ranges from the Mediterranean and the Middle East to the farthest reaches of East and South Asia.

Given that, I’ve been thinking Filipino food should be a natural fit.

But based on my very limited experience, the textures and flavours – not to mention the fat content! – are just too rich and unappealing for my palate.

Kabayan does fine grilled-to-order meals, of course, but at $12+ even those seem a stretch, given I can easily grab some Viet dishes that are similar, have more vegie contrasts and trimmings, and are cheaper and tastier.

And maybe that’s the rub right there …

Perhaps not so incoincidentally, as I am writing this Ms Baklover – reviewing First Taste at Footscray Food Blog – has opined:

My palate is heavily skewed towards fresh, light Vietnamese, Malaysian and South Indian flavours.

Very eloquent!

And, I suspect, the very reason I am struggling with Filipino food.

Kabayan Filipino Restaurant on Urbanspoon



Aksaray Turkish Kebab House/Stephz Gourmet Deli

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Aksaray Turkish Kebab House

74 Glengala Rd, Sunshine. Phone: 9310 1377

Stephz Gourmet Deli

64 Glengala Rd, Sunshine. Phone: 9364 7488

Having scoped this west Sunshine place out, unhungry, a few nights previously, I hold no great expectations on entering Aksaray for lunch – maybe a nice Turkish kebab plate: meat, salad, rice, dip, bread.

That changes as soon as I walk through the door and am immediately served a sample of a freshly made soup – as is every customer who follows me –  free of charge.

It’s a fantastic vegetable concoction – just carrot, onion, celery and seasonings of pepper, salt, oregano. It’s blended just right – well short of being a creamy soup, leaving some grainy texture that gives it substance. Marvellous!

Turns out this is the start of a major overhaul of the offerings available at Aksaray – an overhaul I suspect will make it far more interesting than just another kebab/dips joint.

In a few weeks time they’ll be unveiling a revolving lineup of soups, casseroles, stews and more home-style Turkish food – and I reckon that’s exciting.

For all that we love the normal restaurant fare of our various Mediterranean eateries, we all know it’s just one aspect of the various cuisines involved – eatery food and home food is different.

Bring it on – I’ll be there with my bib on!

My adana kebab lunch platter doesn’t reach the same heights as the soup, but does the job.

Chewy lamb adana is overshadowed by the strips of doner kebab provided usasked for; nice rice, tabouli that is of my preferred wetness, OK bread, slightly fried.

The star is the cacik – a creamy yogurt dip zingy with garlic and chunky with cucumber.

As I’m enjoying my lunch a steady parade of regulars comes and goes, many leaving with kebab sandwiches to go, many with lovely looking boreks of chicken or lamb, all having sampled the super soup.

The chicken borek ($3) I take home for the night’s dinner is brilliant, the shredded chook stuffing subtlety flavoured with parsley and pepper and the mouthfuls of pleasure enlivened by finely diced  onion, cooked but still a little on the crunchy side..

From there I amble up the road apiece to Stephz Gourmet Deli.

This is classic western suburbs.

Sited in what once was a servo, it’s a mix of continental grocery, Greek bakery and coffee bar – all with a Maltese waitress!


I have a crash-hot $3 latte and a 50c piece of what looks like biscotti, but which is emphatically non-Italian. It’s plain, almost savoury, topped with sesame seeds, is called – as near as Athena, another waitress, can translate – pazematia. Subsequent research reveals that a more precise term may be paximathakia – in any case it goes great with my coffee.

Being too full from lunch to countenance richer sweet goodies, I nevertheless ogle the cake/cookie displays. All the goodies are baked on the premises, with a range of rum balls looking particularly evil and desirable. I settle for a slice of very fine baklava to take home with me.

Aksaray Turkish Kebab House on Urbanspoon




Lemat Injera Bakery

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157 Nicholson St, Footscray. Phone: 9689 006

There is much more to Ethiopian food – and the broader north African food culture that has become such integral part of western suburbs life – than injera.

But in many ways, injera is emblematic of colours, flavours and aromas that are so alluring.

So I am thrilled beyond words to be invited to witness injera being made at Lemat Bakery, in the heart of Footscray’s lovely African hub of Nicholson St.

The establishment is managed – and the injera made – by Sesen Assefa. Her genial and voluble husband prefers to stay in the background, but is happy to provide me all the information I need.

The couple met in the very early ’90s, in Sudan, and like so many endured many long years in exile and of menial jobs before opening their bakery in 2006 – just as the influx of north African diaspora into Melbourne’s west began in earnest.

In Ethiopia, injera is made with teff.

As it will soon be in Australia, restrictions on its importation apparently having been lifted or soon to be.

Given that teff is a grain of mightily ancient heritage, I reckon this can only be a good thing in a world in which the shrinking gene pool and diversity of seed stores is under threat.


In the meantime, like the Vietnamese community and others before them, the folks at Lemat have been doing just fine with what’s at hand, modifying recipes with locally available ingredients for the best, most authentic results.

That means the injera we have all been enjoying is made with a mixture of flours – maize, self-raising and wholemeal wheat, sorghum and barley.

The batter is fermented for 24 hours – no yeast or other agents are used – before being deftly poured on to hot, round platters.

In a minute or so, the injera – smooth side down, spongy side up – is ready to be equally skillfully slipped on to straw mats and placed on long tables with the rest of the day’s order.

As well the bakery produces “sweet”, unfermented injera for its Sudanese customers.

The Lemat output is split between restaurants, groceries and families.

The aroma is like that of any other bakery – but in many ways so very different. And quite intoxicating!


Out front, I delight in a half-hour conversation with Mr Lemat – a virtual crash course for me that ranges from injera and Ethiopian food in general through to Coptic Christianity, the dynamics of “facebook revolution” and the role they are playing in north Africa (including Algeria that very morning), the equally fascinating nuances and subtleties that accompany inter-actions between the various African communities in Footscray (and Melbourne in general), contemporary Ethiopia, the Sundanese separation referendum and much more.

As we are talking, the manager of Awash comes and goes with her daily order of injera, but it is no less likely that the staff of Khartoum – just a few doors up the street, and nominally a Sudanese restaurant – will drop in for injera to go with the Ethiopian dishes on their menu.

My humble thanks to the people of Lemat Injera Bakery for sharing with me their stories and their baking skills.


The Circle revisited

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Lebanese Bakery, 41 The Circle, Altona North. Phone 9391 7991
International Foods, 37-39 The Circle, Alton North. Phone: 9399 3434
Al Amena, 29 The Circle, Altona North. Phone: 9399 2526

Doing the Consider The Sauce has wrought various changes in our habits and lives.

For one thing, it’s made it tougher to regularly visit our favourite haunts. Though the eateries the made the top five we provided to Leader newspapers have certainly all been revisited since the story was published.

On a brighter note, we are looking at our vast and intriguing neighbourhood with new eyes.

We are taking more interest in the shopping strips and precincts we pass as we cruise around. This is a good thing!

More prosaically, blogging has altered our more mundane and earthy shopping habits.

To that end, The Circle in Altona has become our favourite. It’s a bit of drive from our Yarraville pad, but worth it for the breadth, cost and pleasure of the enterprise.

We’ve finally twigged that the hub has an IGA, at which we can pick up staples such as Black & Gold rolled oats to make muesli.

We get the dried fruit and nuts for the muesli at The Circle Fruit Fiesta, along with all the fruit and vegetables we need, and sometimes pasta and tinned tomatoes.

But before we get around to that sort of stocking up, we now routinely stop at The Circle’s Lebanese bakery for lunch, so’s to make sure we aren’t indulging in the folly of shopping on empty stomachs.

This place doesn’t seem to have a name as such – various searches revealed that out there in listings land it’s still annotated as “The Circle Fish and Chips”, even though it’s these days a spartan Lebanese pizza-and-pie joint that enjoys considerable business.


Eating in, we love the $2 oregano pizza topped with our choice of very fresh cucumber, green capsicum, tomato, black olives and onion at 50c per item. Rolled up and presented in a form that looks just like a takeaway kebab, these could technically be called salad rolls – but the deserve far better than to be compared with the insipid salad rolls dispensed by your average sandwich shop.

For taking home, bunging in the freezer or for school/work lunches, we favour the spinach and cheese pies and the fabulous chicken and tomato pies. The latter are stuffed with chopped chicken and juicy fresh tomatoes, and liberally seasoned with oregano. Careful, though – when heated the high fluid content can lead to scorching heat of the food napalm kind!

Next door is International Foods, which has a large grocery/dry goods section we are only starting to explore and a good range of fruit/vegetables that is nevertheless more modest than that of Fiesta next door.


But what we do like, a lot, at International Foods are the individually wrapped pieces of nougat, which come in a range of eye-snagging colours and flavours – several with pistachios, one covered in dried rose petals and one, we found recently, that tastes like cough medicine past its use-by date. No matter – these are another hit for lunchbox inclusion.

Also at International Foods are a range of wrapped Lebanese cakes for $2 a pop from Balha’s Pastry in Brunswick. Again, these are big on pistachios – dates, too. More fine lunchbox fodder.


A few doors further on is Al Amena, a small and typical halal butcher.

In due course we will surely be buying some of their affordable chicken and lamb, but in the meantime we are totally hot on their hot dogs. My ears pricked up when told by the staff that their hot dogs were made for them by a South African sausage maker, it being well-known that that nation knows a thing or two about snag manufacturing.

We love our hot dogs, and always have some in the freezer.

We especially love the heavily smoked porky varieties sold by the likes of Andrew’s Choice in Yarraville. Good as they are though, they’re sold by Andrew’s at exactly the same price as their ritzy snags – that is, nudging towards $20 a kilogram.

That works out at about $2 a single hot dog.

The hot dogs at Al Amena, by contrast, are an incredibly cheap $8 a kilo.

No pork, of course, and not smoked, but they have their own alluring beefy flavour – and at that price, we’re sold.


Big Fields Fresh Market

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Sunshine Plaza, Sunshine. Phone: 9312 4767

Sunshine Plaza is a bit of an odd space.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our visits here have become more frequent.

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

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


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

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

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

In between is a modestly sized fish monger.

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

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

Totally honourable, I informed him.

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

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


Heather Dell

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Heather Dell, 7 Anderson St, Yarraville. Phone: 9687 1721

Heather Dell makes one realise how over-used and mis-used the phrase “old school” has become.

Instead of being used to bring credibility to lame pop culture manifestations, it really should be restricted for use when describing joints such as this fabulous Yarraville pie and cake shop.

Heather Dell is the very essence of old-school.

It starts with the signage, frontage and funky old-time wooden screen door.

It continues with the interior – racks of, yes, “old-school” cakes, slices and pies – and the welcome.

It goes on with the vintage mixers and other equipment – none of your new-fangled metrics here!

The vibe continues with a product line that includes neenish tarts, mince pies and much more.

“Old school”, too, are the production methods – Heather Dell’s goodies are made by hand and with a whole lot of love.

*****

Oh, sweetie! Clockwise from top left: Apple turnover, hedgehog, boozy Christmas mince pie, neenish tart, coconut tart, sprinkle biscuit, swiss blueberry tart, swiss lemon tart,  regular mince pie. Centre: Jam slice.

TASTE TEST

Apple turnover: OK, but could’ve done with some more spices.

Hedgehog: Pretty good, but only a little classier than your average hog.

Boozy Christmas mince pie: Fantastically yummy!

Neenish tart: Stuffed with butter cream, this was too rich for Kenny, but Bennie loved it.

Coconut tart: Head of the class! Moist, coconutty and not too sweet. Kenny’s fave.

Sprinkle biscuit: Despite an aversion to hundreds & thousands and the like, Kenny liked this. Two crunchy wafers, plain but good.

Swiss blueberry and lemon tarts: See neenish tart (above).

Regular mince pie: OK, but not a patch on the boozy pie (above).

Jame slice: OK, but a little anonymous in such company.

*****

Then there are the prices – you pay for quality, but the most expensive sweet item at Heather Dell is the vanilla slice ($2.60). Prices for the likes of swiss pineapple and swiss blueberry tarts (both $2.20) and jam slices ($1.90) are significantly below those demanded at more trendy and high-falutin’ bakehouses.

When I bowl up to witness the daily pie-making session, the first thing proprietor Keith says to me is: “We’re old school!”

Indeed.

Heather Dell has been in Keith’s family ever since his maternal grandparents and grand-aunt bought an existing business in 1951.

He says they inherited many of the recipes, which have been somewhat modified over the years. The biggest change is in the use of vegetable shortening. In 1951 and thereabouts it was animal dripping all the way!

Heather Dell produces about 100 of their meaty, hearty pies ($3.80) a day, along with a handful of family pies ($8.90). Mind you, Bennie and I can scarf a family pie in about five minutes flat, so we presume they’re working on a rather narrow definition of “family”.

The meat is brought in from Keith’s butcher and cooked fresh each day. He sniffs dismissively when mentioning those who use “pre-mix meat” in their pies.

Many thanks to Keith, Carol, Millie and Ines for letting me watch them at work. It was a hoot!

Below: Heather Dell’s Pie-Filling Fella Performs His Daily Ritual

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.

Olivessence

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Shop 2/277-285 Barkly St, Footscray, Phone: 9687 5202

Each of my visits to Olivessence at its previous incarnation in Victoria St, Seddon, had coincided with the recent purchase of olive oil elsewhere.

For my first to its new digs in the Barkly Theatre apartment building, olive oil is short at home and definitely on the agenda.

First, though, another of life’s essentials – coffee.

And very good it is, too.

Olivessence’s range of olive oil may not seem that grand – but the accent is very much on homegrown quality rather than quantity, with a tasting table set up beside the VOO racks.

The store also stocks a fairly handy range of goodies such as condiments, pastas and so on.


The big change from Victoria St is the addition of a coffee machine, something the in-built apartment-dwelling customers no doubt appreciate to the hilt. In a broader sense, and like Pound Cafe up the road a bit, Olivessence should benefit from a dearth of coffee options in the immediate surrounding neighbourhood.

Food-wise, Olivessence runs to breakfast of the toast and muffins variety.

Lunch comes via a modest list of platters that range from $6 to $20 for two that include a revolving range of olive oils, oilves, cheeses, Turkish bread, dukkah and so on.

The sweets highlight is the presence of  Cavallaro canoli.

And out I go, Glenora Grove VOO firmly clutched under arm and happy in the knowledge of another friendly drop-in coffee spot.

Visit the Olivessence website here.

The Circle Fruit Fiesta

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45-49 The Circle, Altona East. Phone: 9399 1026

We are relatively well serviced in the heart of Yarraville, but gosh I’d love to have an establishment like this right in our back yard.

Like Fresh On Young in Moonee Ponds is a supercharged green grocer and much more of a one-stop shop than your normal fruit and veg joint.

Unlike Fresh On Young, they don’t do meat, but have many other bases covered.

There’s a heap of dry goods – nuts and fruit and pulses and so on.

The pasta section alone looks like it could well challenge the famous aisle of pasta at Mediterranean Wholesalers in Sydney Rd.

The range of fruit and vegetables is fine, the herb section looking specially spiffy.

I bought fat, juicy white raisins and roasted almonds for our porridge/muesli, several packs of Opera Prima pasta for $1.30 each and makings for a big pot of pasta sauce.

The Circle rocks with Lebanese personality.

I also nabbed some fantastic Lebanese pies from the bakery a few doors up – spinach, spinach and cheese, and a particularly toothsome chicken and tomato.

In the other direction, the Lebanese butcher had a variety of snags, with the dark red Lebanese numbers certain to be the target of future exploration.

Far as I could see, though, there’s only one ATM – and it’s a $2.50 job!

On the way in from Blackshaws Rd, I passed Victoria Sweets and wondered, not for the first time, when the place’ll be open when I pass.

Thanks to Ms Baklover at Footscray Food Blog for reminding me about this very cool precinct!

Crumbs Organic Bakehouse

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170 Union Rd, Ascot Vale. Phone: 9375 4777

Knowing a birthday feast at Ebi beckons in the early evening, the familiar Middle Eastern/African meat ‘n’ rice options on Union Rd seem inadvisable.

I spy some scrumptious looking pizza slices in the window of Crumbs – they are calling to me!

The wholemeal base wages war with my knife and fork, but teeths and hands make easy work of it. The caramelised onion, mushhie and olive topping is sensational – sweet and salty and just right. My pizza is even more delicious than it looks.

And at $4, it’s a contender for the Cheap Lunch Hall Of Fame.

Crumbs is a beaut little bakery, done out in comfy style with formica tables and even lace table cloths. They’re not big on hearty or lunches – other than the ever revolving range of pizzas.

But they do a pretty good range of breads.

We like the sourdough and – especially – the fruit loaf.

Unlike some fruit loaves we know, this one is bread with some fruit in it – rather than the other way ’round.

But we like it.

Besides, it pays to have something on hand for breakfast when Bennie gets rolling eyes tired of porridge!

The range of sweeties is grand, ranging from a variety of cookies to brownies and so on. Mind you, a couple of the slices, packed with seeds and nuts, look more like health food than food … if you follow me.

A fine coffee, a peanut butter and chocolate cookie, fruit loaf to go and I’m out the door for $15.50.

Bargain!

Crumbs Organic Bakehouse on Urbanspoon

Fresh On Young

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34 Young St, Moonee Ponds. Phone 9375 3114


Young St is parallel to Puckle St, while Fresh On Young faces out on to the carpark adjacent Safeway.

This ain’t no supermarket – it may stock the likes of loo paper and laundry powder and so on, but not so that I’ve noticed.

On the other hand, nor is it a humble suburban fruit and vegie outfit. Nope, it’s more like a super-charged greengrocery.

In fact, the depth, breadth, colour and vitality of this outfit delivers much of the vibe of a visit to, say, Footscray market with very little of the jostling and hassles.

It’s a long building with a narrow street frontage, but it’s surprising how much they cram in there without ever engendering a cluttered or claustrophobic feel.

They have all the fresh fruit and vegies well covered, from staples to the more exotic, with specials to the front or outside.

The meats are all shrink-wrapped, but they cover a lot of bases there, too. We regularly pick up a six-pack of Italian pork sausages, which are as good as any we use for pasta sauces and seem more competitively priced than more specialist places. They even had goat when I dropped in a few weeks back.

The deli section down the end appears at first glance to be rather modest, but a look closer reveals they have all aspects of that covered, too.

There’s all the pasta, oils and vinegars and so you could want. I usually pick up some of the Motta or Lavazza coffee that’s on special, while down the front there’s also a pretty good selection of breads on hand – ranging from pide to sourdough.

There’s two checkout counters, one on either side at the front, and between them they can handle four shoppers at a time. I’ve always found the service quick and hassle-free.

Sadly, Fresh On Young is too far away from our Yarraville pad to be our regular one-stop grocery store. I wish!