Chef Lagenda revisted

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16 Pin Oak Crescent, Flemington. Phone: 9376 2668

Since out earlier visits to Chef Lagenda and its cheek-by-jowl neighbour Laksa King, our incessant orbiting has found us looking elsewhere for our jollies.

In the meantime, it’s been a bunch of fun reading myriad comments about both – comparing them, weighing up the various pluses and minuses, sometimes opining that one is superior to the other and even pondering the politics/relationship between the two.

We care nothing for that last point, and if we rate one above the other – and after today’s lunch, we most certainly do – it seems beyond dispute to us that whatever the rivalry between the Flemington neighbours, it is actually good for the business of both in the long-term.

A feature of the Chef Lagenda menu is the Meal Deal.

For $9.50, they offer a choice of two meats (steamed chicken, roast chicken, BBQ pork, soya duck), noodles or rice (flat rice noodles, hokkien noodles, vermicelli, egg noodles, chicken rice) and soup (clear chicken, laksa, tom yum, soya sauce (dry)).

Bennie goes BBQ pork, roast chicken, hokkien and tom yum and loves it, slurping and sipping with gusto.

As far as I’m aware this his first prolonged exposure to tom yum and it’s mild enough to be no problem, though it seems a little on the sweet side to me and he tires of it before the end.

The meats are in biggish chunks and, oddly, taste more like Western roasts than is usual in Asian eateries, and a little on the dry side, too. No matter – there’s plenty of moisture going on, including the bed of yummy wilted bean sprouts on which the meats reside.

The Meal Deal is a good deal, especially I suspect for kids.

I go for the straight-up bog standard curry laksa ($9.20) – and it’s a beauty.

At first glance, it lacks the devastating and lusty oomph of the laksa swooned over this year at Nasi Lemak House.

But it is of broader and deeper appeal.

Rather than usual couple of prawn tails, this rendition features something like half a dozen fat doozies full of flavour. Exceptional! (I’d already scarfed a couple before I realised this laksa’s prawn count was unusual, so cannot be more precise …)

Likewise, the fish cake is more thickly sliced than is the norm.

There’s ample bits of chicken and chewy juicy tofu, and the soup/gravy is good, though on the mild side.

The crowning glory is the largish slice of eggplant sitting atop the lot – it’s slippery, delicious and Bennie gets none of it.  Ha!

We like the quirky crooked-house layout of Chef Lagenda, and the service is just as good as the food.

The Chef Lagenda website is here.

Chef Lagenda on Urbanspoon

Quan Viet

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103 South Rd, Braybrook. Phone: 9312 1009

For many years, every time we drove past the slightly ramshackle yet high-potential shopping strip on South Rd, Braybrook, we would scan the shopfronts eagerly.

Why not? After all, it’s just the sort of precinct that regularly delivers us food gratification.

We have always been disappointed, though.

A locked-up premises going by the splendid name of Extreme Pizza & Kebab, a couple of beauty salons and groceries but little more to inspire us to explore further.

Until a few weeks’ back, when there it was – bingo! – right on the corner: A brand new Vietnamese eatery.

Our mid-week visit is our first, the place is companionably busy but the service is great.

The vibe is nice – about midway between your standard, tiled, formica-laden pho joint and some of the swisher joints in Footscray central.

We are first seated at a tiny table for two, but then invited to move a bigger option near the front window that affords us more room for all the bits and pieces, including Bennie’s lurid drink.

The menu seems to throw up few real surprises or points of difference.

There is pho, the usual rice dishes, spring and paper rolls, although there is also beef stew on rice or egg noodle (hu tieu/mi bo kho, $9) and crab meat fried rice (com chien cua, $11).

Despite that, we manage a combined order that is unusually innovative for us.

On the illustrated menu Bennie stabs a digit at the Quang style rice noodles (mi Quang, $9) and says: “I want that!”

This is very, very fine, though Bennie is put off slightly by the presence of two hard-boiled egg halves.

A popular dish from the provinces of Quang Nam and Da Nang in the south central coast of Vietnam, this is built on a hearty handful of very wide, slippery and delicious rice noodles coloured/flavoured with turmeric. The effect is just like the kind of sexy artisan pasta you might get in a posh Italian joint like Grossi Florentino – and pay about $30 or so for the privilege!

Also on board are a fish-based stock, chicken that seems to be stewed rather than steamed or fried, two fat prawns still in their crunchy shells, peanuts and strips of juicy, fatty pork, the lot topped by a couple of commercial prawn crackers and some mint.

It’s all good and I covet it. It’s a refreshing option to the many other soup/noodle options – a bit like Assam laksa is to its Malaysian soup/noodles colleagues.

Bennie likewise covets my order – Vietnamese pan-fried crepe (banh xeo, $11).

This has less stuffing than I’ve had at the likes of Pho Hien Saigon in Sunshine or Wild Rice in Williamstown. In some ways, this is no bad things as it allows the flavour of turmeric-tinged rice flour pancake to come through.

As Bennie memorably opines: “It’s fried and floppy at the same time!”

The filling of the same pork strips as in Bennie’s soup, fine small/medium shell-on prawn tails and bean sprouts is fine with the pancake, fish sauce/chilli dipping concoction and voluminous plate of leafy wonders and mint.

Halfway through our dinner, Bennie and I do swappsies, though I then discover the lad has slurped all the fangtastic noodles. No fair!

Quan Viet seems likely to prosper and thrive not only based on its fine food, which we’re keen to try again soonish.

Like Minh Hy, just up the road apiece in Sunshine, Quan Viet stands out for being the only outlet of its kind in the surrounding neighbourhood.

Check out a much more in-depth review at Footscray Food Blog here.

Quan Viet on Urbanspoon

KFC Signature Series burgers

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Ready, steady … crook?

Well, actually – no.

Chef Darren Simpson, who we know of only from the odd time we used to watch Ready Steady Cook, has come in for a good deal of sometimes venomous stick for taking the KFC dosh and having his name and image affixed to the chain’s line of supposedly deluxe burgers.

Like just about everyone else, we sniggered.

Good luck to him, though.

Truth is, if I was in the same position as he or fellow foodie celebs such as Maeve O’Meara or Curtis Stone, I’d probably be doing exactly the same. Kids to put through school and hay to be made while the sun shines and all that.

As the barbs flew amid talk that Simpson had comprehensively trashed whatever reputation he had, he was moved to comment: “I’m not sure how many of these critics have actually tried my burgers, but I think they should do that before passing judgment.”

Well, now we have – and our judgment is … nowhere near as bad as we expected.

As we pull into the local Barkly St KFC outlet, Bennie is gobsmacked more than surprised or delighted.

We’ve talked about it for weeks, so he can’t quite believe his dad is really going to do this.

We order one apiece of the two burgers to share – smoked bacon and parmesan, and sweet BBQ and carelmised onion.

My expectations are below zero.

I warn Bennie that if this goes as badly as I expect, we’ll out of there pronto and up the road for a dosa.

I expect this food to be so awful as to be beyond redemption. And certainly I expect it to look nothing like the images conveyed by TV trickery.

The latter is certainly true.

These are diminutive sandwiches.

Nor does the chicken bulge out from under the “warm sourdough buns” as strongly suggested in the advertising. Big surprise, eh?

But the buns ARE superior to the normal unbread served by the major chains.

The other lauded protagonists – parmesan, real carmelised onion, BBQ sauce, chilli sauce, bacon – are in as short supply as is the chicken.

And the bacon is under-cooked.

There are only a few tantalising moments as that trademark KFC chicken flavour merges with the rest to deliver something approaching flavoursome.

Worse, as we drive away we agree that we struggled to tell the difference between the two – something confirmed when we get home and I can’t tell one from the other when I upload the photos.

Still, our burgers are edible in a way that I truly didn’t expect.

Far from memorable in either a good or a bad way – and that, indeed, does exceed my expectations.

And far from the “car crash” described in the only pertinent review I was able to find the previous night.

At $6.95 each, though, we can’t help but compare them very unfavourably with the similarly priced and truly memorable sandwiches we experienced recently at La Morentia.

The Village Store – Yarraville

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6 Anderson St, Yarraville. Phone: 9687 8375

Like its predecessor in these premises, it may still have the FoodWorks name and logo emblazoned on the exterior, but proprietor Marc Heine is adamant his new venture will be known as The Village Store.

The T-shirts worn by the staff agree with him.

Marc and his crew have only been open a week or so.

This is our first official visit, Bennie and I in this case joined once more by Rakha, who first joined us on blog duty for a visit to Yummie Hong Kong Dim Sum.

We are sporting a modest mid-week shopping list and are interested to see how we fare.

The Village Shop in some ways initially seems to be captive to space restrictions, making it on some levels pretty much your typical small suburban supermarket – quite a broad range but not a lot of depth.

The fruit/vegetable and meat sections are both smaller the those of the neighbouring IGA, though the quality is high.

Marc is interested to learn that we did our fresh produce business, as per usual, down the road apiece at Dominic’s because we were specifically after Kiwi Gold kiwifruit and the smaller size of Fuiji apples, among other things.

If, as one poster at the Village Shop Facebook page pointed out, the new place has yet to command a “point of difference”, we are nevertheless appreciative of some of the speciality lines Marc stocks and even more pleased to somewhat unexpectedly find a couple of our utilitarian regulars on the shelves.

My suggestion is that if you have a beef or a suggestion, for sure take it up with the boss – he’s all ears, so to speak.

Just inside the front doors, on the left, is the Hausfrau Coffee Counter, signalling a collaborative effort between the Village Shop and the stalwart coffee joint/bakery around corner. It’s open from 7.30am to 12.30pm, but only for takeaways.

Then follow the bread, fruit/vegetable and meat sections – and even an ATM! We’re unaware as yet whether it’s a $2 or a $2.50 contraption.

The mainstream biscuit/cookie range leaves us underwhelmed so it’s a pleasure to lay eyes on the range of Italian and more speciality styles further back towards to deli counter.

That deli counter is modest in size but seems to cover most of the expected bases.

Best of all, is finding that the Village Shop stocks three essentials of our household – our favourite brand of corn chips and Black & Gold rolled oats and crushed oats.

We don’t tick off every item on our list, but manage to do so for more than I expect.

The wine section will have to wait until next time.

Bennie and Rakha thoroughly fail the mission I had set them – to each find the most crazy, whacky item they could.

We finish our shopping at Dominic’s before adjourning to Barkley Johnson for a well-earned coffee, hot chocolates and light-as-a-feather Greek-style yoyo’s.

Sharma’s Indian Sweet & Curry House

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Sharma’s Indian Sweet & Curry House, 4/350 Taylors Rd, Taylors Lakes. Phone: 9356 4400

Sharma’s has been open for about a year and is situated in a small shopping centre a few blocks from Watergardens Town Centre.

Outside and in it superficially looks like a simple suburban Indian takeaway joint.

It doesn’t take too much of a closer look, though, to discover this is emphatically not the case.

Sharma’s is some serious Indian foodery, let me tell you.

They have so many bases covered, at prices significantly below those of more formal Indian places, that I am excited about the prospects of returning with my co-blogger and various friends in coming months.

I am saddened that Sharma’s is not just around the corner.

I am frustrated that today’s weekend solo outing so restricts my ability to graze the menu.

On the extensive menu they list dosas, Punjabi breakfast fare and chat snacks such as bhel puri.

And instead of a single goat dish as featured at so many Indian places, Sharma’s lists five.

There’s an Indo-Chinese section, meat curries are about the $13 mark, vegetable curries about $10 and the bread listing is long.

At the counter there are fine-looking displays of lusciously rich sweets ($18-24 a kilogram) and salty, crunchy spicy snacks know as namkeen ($16 a kilogram). I buy two $2 bags of the latter to take home – one heavy with puffed rice and peanuts, the other with crunchy noodles.

They even list six soups – and it’s with one of those that I start my lunch. I regret, though, ordering the lentil number ($4) when seeing and tasting how they do mushroom soup may’ve been far more interesting.

Consisting of dals mung, masur and channa, and turmeric, salt and mustard seeds, this is about as straitlaced as Indian food gets. It’s fine in its own plain way, but may be better appreciated as part of a thali or Indian vego feast.

Next up, I simply can’t resist Sharma’s version of the irresistible thali spread of puris, chick pea curry, yogurt and condiments that is here called chana bhatura – despite the nagging feeling that I should be pursuing more variety on behalf of Consider The Sauce and its readers.

Hey, it’s my lunch, OK, and I’ll try to do better next time …

Seriously, though, I don’t think the bar can go much higher on this dish than what I am served here – it’s magnificent in every way:

Puris hot, fresh and no more oily than is acceptable.

Yogurt creamy, lightly perfumed with cumin and a little on the sweet side.

Chick peas very good with a mild chilli kick.

Commercial piquant hot pickle, a little dab of spicy mint chutney and crunchy red onion bits.

And the price – $7.50!

It’s perfect!

Sharma's Indian Sweet & Curry House on Urbanspoon

Sunday morning at Vic Market

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Two weisswursts – one with sinus-blasting hot English, the other with Dijon.

A pricey ($4) but very good cafe latte at a serious coffee joint.

A small bar of organic chocolate to take home.

I dimly remember a time when the Vic market was pretty much moribund on Sundays. A few stalls in the food hall open, and far from all of them open in the wide open acres of general merchandise and clothing.

It’s all go these days – almost everything open, but with a pleasing drop in the sometimes fraught ambiance and crowded scenes that are the market on Saturday mornings.

Sometimes it’s where I like to go – even with a house chockers with food and no special shopping needs pressing.

Outside the food areas, it’s fun to pick out the genuine products and bargains, shining like diamonds amid vast spaces of general all-round tackiness.

Loving Earth chocolate uses agave syrup instead of cane sugar and is described as “essentially uncooked, unprocessed chocolate in its pure rich essential form”.

Market Lane Coffee, adjacent the market food hall, is a Serious Coffee Establishment. I like my cafe latte and I like the passion of their endeavours.

There’s one at Prahran Market, too.

Pace Biscuits

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202 Mt Alexander Rd, Flemington. Phone: 9376-8539

Unless you live, work or study in area, there seems precious little reason to linger – let alone stop for a while – anywhere on the Flemington end of Mt Alexander Rd.

Just a few blocks away, in the neighbourhood between Racecourse Rd and Mt Alexander Rd there are dozens of stunningly beautiful Victorian mansions and homes.

Yet this end of Mt Alexander Rd itself is far from salubrious.

There’s always a ceaseless stream of traffic, all of it busy going somewhere else.

Very, very happily a minor bingle sustained by my car the previous week necessitates a visit to the panelbeating operation just a few doors up the road, so for the first time ever I stop on this stretch of road and take the opportunity to look around.

So it is that I gaze up at the faded splendour of the Pace Biscuits exterior and step through the door …

Where I meet Leo Pace and get the rundown on a charming, fascinating and delicious slice of Melbourne food history.

Leo has been in the baking business for 37 years and at the Mt Alexander Rd premises since 1973.

He is Sicilian-born but was living in Rome when the idea of moving to Australia first took hold in the early ’60s.

His brother, already living down under, told him there was a demand for hairdressers, so maybe that was the way for Leo to go.

Leo started training for same in Italy and continued once in Melbourne.

He regales me with a very funny story of the robust encounter between his then rudimentary English and the 50-question exam he eventually had to confront.

Even funnier is his retelling of the excruciating experience of his hands-on test working with a living, breathing model with very, extremely straight hair. He was required to put in place curls using an iron – as one did in those days.

Becoming flustered and nervous, Leo pleaded illness and permission to return the next day to complete his curling examination.

Off he went – never to return!

He followed his brother’s lead and took up the baking game and has been at it ever since.

His brother, by the way, these days runs one of the famous Lygon St geletarias.

Pace Biscuits make all sorts of Italian cookies and cakes and a few other things besides, according to the company website.

While the name doesn’t strike a chord with me, I discover on the site that the company makes the yummy almond cake that we occasionally buy from the likes of Sims. The brand recognition may not be that high, but I reckon it’s a safe bet that just about everyone in Melbourne has bought one of Leo’s products at one time or another.

As with many other such operations, the shopfront sales constitute just a small part of Leo’s turnover, with most of his trade going to independent distributors, who in turn make sure the goodies get into supermarkets, continental delis and the like all over the city and country.  He is happy to keep what he calls the “the big operators” at arm’s length.

That said, the in-house prices are terrific – $3 for a 300g bag of Vanilla Choc Coated Cookies, for instance.

I leave with a bag of them, along with a package apiece of Almond Crumble and Tutti Frutti biscotti, the latter $1.50 for 250g!

As I gleefully discover when I return home, they’re all great – with the Almond Crumble turning out to be what most of us would call a chocolate-covered macaron, in this case with a very coconutty falvour and texture.

After a quick tour of the operation, I shake Leo’s flour-dusted hand and depart in the sure knowledge that Pace Biscuits is certain to become a regular stop for us.

La Morenita Latin Cuisine: New menu

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67 Berkshire Rd, Sunshine North. Phone: 9311 2911

If La Morenita has fallen off our radar a little in terms of eating in since we first discovered the place, it remains a reliable regular for the odd coffee and sweetie and – even more so – take-out empanadas for the freezer and school/work lunch boxes.

We love those empanadas!

It was on a recent empanada run that we happily noticed that La Morenita’s in-house menu had grown with several new additions.

It’s time to check them out!

They include chorizo con huevos for a keenly priced $5, but we figure we’ll leave those for breakfast some time.

The rest of the new stuff is mostly South American sandwiches, but being robust of appetite we choose three of them to share.

We do a sort of reverse-Goldilocks, starting with the littlest, moving on to a bigger number and ending with the biggest.

First up is the arolloado ($5) of sliced pork, avocado and mayo.

It comes in a flatter roll than shown in the photo on the blackboard menu. The sliced pork seems to be more like some sort of pressed ham. Whatever the case, this is a tasty winner.

Next up … the chacarero ($5) of steak, cheese, tomato, mayo, greens beans and hot green chilli.

Now this different! As ever here the sliced beef is very tasty and nicely chewy. There’s a cool chilli undertow, but the best aspect is provided by the greens beans. They’re cooked but still have a little bite left in them, which delivers a most unsandwich-like texture. Another winner!

Rolling right along … we complete our increasingly enjoyable lunch with the chivito ($8), which comprises steak, bacon, ham, lettuce, tomato, tasty cheese, boiled egg, roast capsicum, black olives, onion mayo.

Wowee – what is this? A glorified steak sandwich? Well, yes, if you want to look at that way. It also bears comparison in terms of substance and price to the kind of ritzy burgers served up by Grill’d and Burger Edge.

As with the chacarero, though, there is something delectably different about it that makes it a sandwich to cherish.

And with the inclusion of olives, roast capsicum and cured meats, it strikes me as being a second cousin of the muffaletta, that famous sandwich of New Orleans.

I love it. Bennie likes it, too, but fastidiously picks out the egg and olive bits. Bad Bennie!

We love all our La Morenita sandwiches for their striking personalities.

Gooey with mayo, health food this is not; delicious it is.

With a couple of imported soft drinks the total damage is a fine $23.

Our earlier La Morenita post is here.

La Morenita Latin Cuisine on Urbanspoon

Footscray Best Kebab House revisited …

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93 Nicholson St, Footscray. Phone: 9689 0777

When considering the pros and cons of running a food blog, it’s tempting to simply state: “It’s all good!”

And certainly, in terms of both expectations and unexpected delights and surprises, getting Consider The Sauce up and running has been an overwhelmingly enjoyable and satisfying experience.

But if there is one, albeit minor, downside it is this: Revisiting old and muchly favoured regulars, as well as new discoveries and finds that deserve to become so, has become just that little bit more difficult.

The pressure is on for the next blog post!

Through it all, however, we have retained Footscray Best Kebab House as a regular haunt, so highly do we dig the food – and even though it was covered in one of our very early pieces. 

In this case, fronting up is an especially enjoyable proposition as we are being joined by Ms Baklover of Footscray Food Blog fame and her girls, all of for whom this is a debut visit to FBKB.

We are a tad early, so being sans either my usual book or newspaper, it’s supremely pleasurable to just sit for a quiet moment. I contemplate a lazy, relaxing day ahead with my son. I consider the changeless surrounds of Footscray Best Kebab House. Like other institutions around the city – Pellegrini’s is an oft-quoted example – the prices have crept up but all else is just as it ever was.

Or so it seems. It may be a trick of the mind, but it’s one I’m happy to go along with.

As ever, the bread is fresh and warm, with some of the pieces having a nice crustiness to them. It’s a nice pacifier, too, for young children restless with food on their minds.

Bennie and I start with a couple of stuffed vine leaves, cold thanks. In the end, I end up eating both, Bennie being far too distracted by the juicy meats, dips and salads to come. The dolmades are good, but not as memorable as some I recall from previous visits.

We feel like something a little different from our usual instant-gratification trip of chicken and lamb from the spit, so go for the large adana kebab meal to share ($13.50).

It’s all present and accounted for:

Superb rice on to and into which the meat juices and dips seep.

A crunchy, lemony and ultra-fresh salad of finely diced bits and pieces that Ms Baklover suspects is sprinkled with sumac. I’m not sure about that. It’s the same topping we’ve always had here. Maybe it’s the Turkish equivalent?

A small serve, by request, of the reliably oily and delicious potato salad.

Dips in the form of cacik (cucumber and yogurt) and chilli dip. There’s two other kebab joints within a few minutes walk who do their own chilli dips, as does the very good Flemo kebab establishment. But none of them come even slightly close to this masterpiece of crunch and tang.

The only disappointment – and it’s only a slight one – is the adana kebab meat. It’s just as we like our kebab meaty bits – crusty, a little chewy, a little salty, but – in this case – a little too much on the dry side.

We earlier demurred in regards to the large shish kebab meal on the basis of price – it’s up to $17.50 these days.

That turns out to be a mistake. Ms Baklover orders it for her and her kids, and we’re jealous.

It’s just the right size for one big mouth and three little ones. Let me try that another way … It’s just the right size for mum and her three girls.

Ms Baklover seems to share our high esteem for the chilli dip and just loves the big and luxuriously tender chunks of marinated lamb and chicken.

The girls partake of all, sometimes in the face of maternal determination that it be so, but in the end show a marked preference for … the wonderful Turkish bread.

In terms of our eating-out habits, this food seems just below the top-of-the-class leaner, cleaner range of Viet options in terms of nutrition and healthiness. And the damage for Bennie and I – two stuffed vine leaves, two soft drinks, large meat/dips/salad/rice meal – is an excellent $20.

We adjourn for a somewhat chaotic but nevertheless enjoyable coffee and baklava at Babylon just down the road.

Footscray Best Kebab House – long may it reign as one of our very favourite places!

And thanks to the Baklovers for the company!

Footscray Best Kebab House on Urbanspoon

Photograph: BENNIE WEIR

Hien Vuong 1

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37 Leeds St, Footscray. Phone: 9687 1470

Expert assessment of my Saturday shopping list suggests Footscray Market is the best bet for ease and pricing.

I may struggle with the hambone, ham hock or bacon bones for the next day’s red beans and rice, and a visit to the market’s supermarket just for milk is probably unwarranted – but other than that it should be a sweet experience.

So it is I head up the ramps for the extremely cheap market parking, ending up – for the first time ever – on the roof. Great views!

First things first, though – never shop, especially in a cool market, on an empty stomach.

I’ve been a visitor to Hien Vuong 1 a few times previous, though with little or no recollection of taste sensations. Maybe pretty good pho and bo kho (beef casserole).

Nevertheless, after a nerve-jangling week I find the tiled floor, chromed furniture and Viet pop enormously comforting. This, today, right now, is where I belong.

It’s a hardcore pho joint that offers a little more variety than most.

Thus it is that I order the special chicken rice with chicken (com ga hai nam).

This is a gamble, no doubt. As the Vietnamese title denotes, this is a Viet twist on hainanese chicken rice of Malaysian derivation.

My strike rate at ordering this dish at non-Malay places is pretty much zero – ranging from utterly lame to the outright bizarre (the otherwise exemplary Carlton Chinese Noodle Cafe in Rathdowne St, review forthcoming).

I need not have worried, as my lunch is beaut.

There’s no soup, but all the other bells and whistles – so important for this dish – are present.

The chilli/carrot/fish sauce concoction on the side gets into the spirit of the occasion by coming with mashed ginger.

The rice is OK, but has no discernible chicken flavour. It’s studded with egg, slivers of fried onion and little crunchy grenades of crackly pork.

There’s three cucumber slices, two of tomato, a handful of elongated pickled carrot, and more similarly pickled carrot that is shredded and part of jumble with lettuce and mint.

The chicken is well-cooked, tender and – yes! – easily removed from the bone.

Best of all, all these components are in exactly the right proportions, with the last of each of them disappearing with the last mouthful. This is something that rates really highly with me.

Well-satisfied, I head into the market on my grocery mission just as the music situation takes a surreal turn with a cheesy cocktail bar Viet version of House Of  The Rising Sun.

A tip for semi-regular users of Footscray Market, as we are: The market has instituted a pay-station method of paying for parking. There is no pay station on the roof, so I make more use of the market’s lumbering elevators than anticipated.

Ms Baklover at Footscray Food Blog was in a particularly meditative mood when she had pho here.

Hien Vuong 1 on Urbanspoon

New Seddon supermarket …

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It’s open – see a rundown of our first visit here.

Hot on the heels of news concerning a new supermarket in Yarraville comes another Consider The Sauce scoop – a new supermarket in Seddon!

It’s going to be in the premises of what has been for our entire western sojourn a rather unlovely and profoundly unbusy furniture store – two doors along from Sourdough Kitchen and right next door to greenie household goods outfit LoveLuvo.

The lovely lady in LoveLuvo tells me that …

*As far as she’s aware the new business will have no franchise affiliation with any of the supermarket chains.

*It will have a Mediterranean feel with an accent on fresh produce.

*It harbours some ambition to be something like a smaller-scale version of La Manna at Essendon Airport, though presumably with a proper deli counter/section.

The Cornershop

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11 Ballarat St, Yarraville. Phone: 9689 0052

Perhaps our enjoyment of the right-in-our-backyard Yarraville village precinct would be enhanced if we didn’t pigheadedly adhere to the belief that, as we’ve (very) local, it somehow “belongs” to us all of every day of every week.

For, in truth, the busy, food-heavy streets of Anderson and Ballarat have much in common with other well-known Melbourne zones, wherein the locals are basically disenfranchised at the pointy end of the week and weekends.

I’m thinking of the likes of Brunswick St, Fitzroy, and Fitzroy St and Acland St, St Kilda.

For us Yarravillers, things get messy on Friday night, worse on Saturday and worse again on Sunday.

The only options, really, are stay at home, hit-and-run missions for homecooking or adventures further away in, say, St Albans or Flemington.

These mad crush dynamics apply in particular to popular places such as The Cornershop.

Yet twice this week I have enjoyed lovely day-off lunches during which there was ample elbow room and superb food served by unharried, efficient and obliging staff.

Early in the piece it was the Lebanese salad with shanklish cheese and sumac ($14.50). It was tangy and crunchy and studded with pita pieces that retained some semblance of crunch right to the last delicious mouthful.

 

 

Because of the crowd factor, The Cornershop has evolved into mainly a coffee spot for us. Yet despite the crowds, its popularity is not universal – a peculiar ambivalence on the part of significant minority is in evidence in comments about the place at both Urbanspoon and Footscray Food Blog.

Our own experiences have likewise been a little uneven, an early lowlight being told 15 minutes after ordering one of the pide sandwiches that those particular ingredients were no longer in-house; nor were those required for our second choice. Our third choice was lunch elsewhere.

That’s all easy to forget, though, when I chow down – later in the week but still with plenty of space and service – on the spiced, braised meatballs with grilled Turkish bread and parmesan ($15).

This a little ritzy and pricey by my usual lunch standards – almost on a level of fine dining! – but it’s so darn good. And worth every cent.

The half-dozen cheese-dusted meatballs are firm at the outset, tender under forkish ministrations but only very midly spiced.

The superbly fresh rocket leaves work both as salad and as a nicely soggy foil for the tangy tomato sauce.

But the real star is lengthy slice of Turkish bread, which is alive with a mindblowingly tasty aroma and flavour from being grilled. It’s softer than it looks and work just right for wiping out the last remnants of the sauce.

Yarraville? Maybe it’s all in the timing.

 

The Cornershop on Urbanspoon

Bunnings sausage sizzle

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Bunnings, 290-298 Millers Rd, Altona. Phone: 8331 5800

At just about high noon, as I depart the parking lot at the Altona branch of Bunnings, I am liberally adorned with the not unpleasant pong of Aroma de Sausage Sizzle.

This seems a small price to pay for the fun of watching the happy and hard-working crew from Seaholme Primary School going about the serious business of raising funds for their school via a Bunnings sausage sizzle.

Not to mention the scarfing of two delicious snags on bread, hold the onions, judicious dabs of tomato sauce and mustard.

The previous year, they’d raised $1200 and this year they’re looking to do significantly better.

I reckon their chances are looking pretty good.

There’s an ebb and flow to the sausage trade this morning, but it’s pretty intense, and there seems to be a rush hour, well, every 10 minutes or so.

Just about everyone who is done with their chores at Bunnings, and more than a few just starting, seems to stop by for snags for themselves and their families.

Bolstering the air of optimism among Team Seaholme is the fact that the following day is Fathers Day, so Bunnings is likely to be doing a roaring trade.

The school’s sausage sizzle co-ordinator, Suzanne Croft (that’s her in the pic above, with sunnies, third from right) fills me on the preparations required to get the show up and running.

The sausage sizzles are so popular and such an effective method of raising desperately needed money for all sorts of community groups that the waiting lists can often be longer than six months.

Bunnings supplies the cooking facilities and marquee, the community groups supply the rest.

Suzanne sourced the bread and sausages (at $4 a kilogram) from Aussie Farmers Direct. The local franchise holder is a school parent, but Suzanne tells me this sort of community engagement is what the company does anyhow.

She hit up various local supermarkets for vouchers she redeemed for canned soft drinks and condiments.

She estimates the cash outgoings for the school at about $50.

They’re selling snags for $2.50 and drinks for $1.50 – and it’s just about all profit.

These sausage sizzles are undoubtedly a good look and good business for Bunnings, but I reckon they’re pretty much a win-win situation all round – making a lot of people happy and doing good, too.

They’ve certainly become a colourful, notable part of the Australian weekend landscape.

Officeworks do them, too.

And as I head for Sunshine Fresh Food Market, I pass another in the forecourt of Tasman Market Fresh Meats in Brooklyn.

Sure seems to beat the drip-drip-drip and rather passive fundraising method of flogging sad-sack chocolate bears and other candy in workplaces!

***

Post-script:

Hi Kenny,

Just thought I’d drop you a line and let you know that on Saturday we made a profit of $1,553 from the Bunnings BBQ for our school – Seaholme Primary.

 I hope you enjoyed the sausage … we had many comments approving of them. It would be great if you could mention that Aussie Farmers Direct were the suppliers of those sausages.

 Cheers, Suzanne Croft.

Chick N Ranch

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149 Minerva Rd, Geelong West. Phone: 5298 1921

Chicken shop in an old servo?

It drew me like a magnet.

I chat to the main Ranch hand, Tony Kopty, outside while I take photos.

He tells me that while his mob have been running the show for only a couple of years, the once-was-a-servo has served as a chicken shop of one variety or another for 20.

I tell him it’s notable that several posters on the joint’s Facebook page use words such as “great for hangovers” or some such.

“You should see them on Sundays, about midday, rolling up here like zombies,” he says with a laugh.

Fuelled by the appeal of the location and its former use, as well as the outfit’s cool name, I have notions of something a little more funky than your typical Oz chicken shop.

What I get is your typical Oz chicken shop.

For me, two of the benchmarks for a cutting-edge, exemplary chicken shop experience are real cutlery/crockery and coleslaw that’s not drowning in mayo.

I get none of that here. And stupidly, I forget to take a pic or two before getting stuck into my lunch of half a chook, chips, gravy, coleslaw and soft drink. By the time I remember, it’s not in the least bit photogenic.

The chicken is good, the chips a bit tired on it but OK, while the salad has so much mayo I’m half expecting it to flow out the door.

Yes, I’ve had better chick shop feeds … but, by heck, I’ve had plenty a whole lot worse, too.

So it’s a typical Oz chicken shop meal in a typical Oz chicken shop.

Closer to home, another outfit that lives in an old servo can be found at Stephz in Sunshine.

Il Paesano home delivery

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223 Barkly St, Footscray. Phone: 9689 2772

It’s Saturday night and we’re hunkered down on the sofa, waiting for the start of the Tri-Nations rugby union decider between the mighty All Blacks and the Wallabies.

Bennie’s asked about dinner three times in the past half-hour.

There’s all sorts of goodies in the kitchen – including ripe avocados and a tip-top loaf of sourdough bread.

But frankly I’m as sick as a dog and the thought of getting amongst it in the kitchen holds zero appeal.

Earlier in the week, Bennie had stated he’d had enough of Lebanese pizzas and was hankering for a slab of old-school Aussie pizza pie – specifically, of the “meat lovers” variety.

Why not?

A few minutes on the phone and the deal is done.

Il Paesano is certainly one of those ubiquitous old-school Aussie-Italian pizza joints. We pass it virtually every time we head to or from Footscray central.

We’re extremely unlikely ever to set foot in the place, but have found it fuss-free and efficient when the very odd and occasional mood strikes us for home delivery. And that’s despite the fact that there are at least three very similar establishments much closer to home.

I find our pizza – a large meat lovers for $12 – much less greasy and gloopy than I had feared it would be. That processed ham stuff seems to dominate, and I discern no chicken at all. Then again, my sense of taste is shot, so what would I know?

Bennie loves it, granting it a rating of 7.5 out of 10, which he subsequently revises upwards to 8 out of 10.

I manage just two slices, the boy eats all the rest bar one.

Foodie criteria and processed ham be damned – sometimes it’s nice to give somebody precisely what they want, especially your kids.

Pizza for $12, two cans of that Coca Cola stuff for $2 each, $1 for the driver – $20 the lot.

Il Paesano on Urbanspoon

Barkley Johnson

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11 Anderson St, Yarraville. Phone: 9687 6663

Perhaps it’s a sign that we’re putting down significant roots – that we have vivid recall of previous incarnations of premises inhabited by flash new businesses.

Certainly, both Bennie and I spent a goodly amount of time having our heads shorn – and, in my case, face shaved – in the old-school barber shop that previously filled 11 Anderson St.

After a long innings, he closed up shop quite a while ago.

He was part of what is a disappearing breed, often of Mediterranean or European extraction and usually cheap as chips. Well, compared to, ahem, hairdressers anyway.

We love them. We “collect” them. We may even start a blog on them in due course.

Anyway, being the nosy locals we are, we followed with interest the subsequent renovation. We had some idea what to expect, with Keith from Heather Dell telling us early in the piece that a wine bar of some sort was on the way.

And so it is. There’s wine, but not a whole lot of it. There’s deli produce and high-quality pastas, anchovies and other grocery items, but not a whole lot of them, either. There’s wholemeal baguettes for lunch at about the $7-8 mark, but virtually nothing else ‘cept antipasto options. There’s only toast for breakfast, very good coffee and less than a handful of sweeties such as baklava.

So what exactly is Barkley Johnson, and where does it figure to fit in the busy neighbourhood of Anderson and Ballarat streets?

The lovely staff tell me they’ve got to do the best and most they can with the space available.

I ask why I would make an extra stop for their deli items when I could cover them while at IGA across the road – or the new place being fitted out as we converse.

They reply in terms of quality, price and personal service.

I reckon they have a point, especially on the service angle.

As we sit at stools at the front window, with the early spring sunshine streaming in, Bennie and I feel like we’ve found a new favourite place in Yarraville to hang for a while and watch the world go by.

Despite space limitations, Barkley Johnson has nice vibe. There’s a smallish courtyard out back, a few more stools just inside the door to it and the handful of stools we’re hogging up front.

Bennie’s been a bit crook, so can’t even be tempted to have a hot chocolate, making do with a light, fluffy yoyo of, we are informed, Greek derivation – hard choccy top, sponge-like halves and creamy centre. It’s yummo and he digs it.

I have a similarly sized-and excellent coconut macaron with almond slivers.

Both sweeties and thoroughly superb coffee set back $8.

The previous week I’d had one of the filled baguette portions – ham, cheese, pickles. It was good, but the lovely wholemeal bread was of such robust flavour that the other ingredients struggled to make themselves known.

Nevertheless, on the basis of two very fine coffees, some sweeties an a couple of visits, we feel at home here.

Becoming regulars seems to likely to be both pleasurable and profitable.

Barkley Johnson on Urbanspoon

Very appeeling …

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Open-air fruit & veg operation, Little River/Avalon servo, Princes Hwy, Geelong-bound

The bad news is that price of bananas at Sunshine Fresh Food Market have gone up a couple of dollars since our recent discovery of the place.

They’re still, relatively speaking, cheap but still …

The good news is that if you’re prepared to take a jaunt down the Princes Hwy, or happening to be passing through on the way to the coast, you can grab an armful or three of what are surely the cheapest bananas in Victoria – and maybe even Australia.

Despite having gassed up countless times at the Avalon servo, I’ve never slowed long enough to have a gander at the outdoor fruit & veg enterprise, Mainly because I’m always headed for a long day or night of work and don’t want to leave fresh food in the car all day.

But the above sign, on the highway side about a kilometre before the servo exit, certainly turned my head.

And, going by the story written by my Geelong Advertiser colleague Alex Oates, it’s been turning heads all over, with Geelong locals, tourists and bakeries from all over Melbourne snapping them up.

The bananas are on the small side, as they all are these days, but at that price they’re almost affordable enough to once more become a regular grocery item.

Other than the bananas, I was a little surprised by the prices. They’re competitive, but not – as far as I could tell – super dooper cheap. Though a bundle of parsnips for $2 seemed a pretty good deal. Which begs the question: Why are they, too, so damn expensive?

A permanent structure is being erected for the servo greengrocers, and one is going up across the road for those Melbourne-bound as well.

Good move no doubt, but removes some of the charm, I reckon.

New Yarraville supermarket …

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UPDATE 29/9: It’s open – read about our first visit here.

Goodbye sad-sack predecessor; hello swish new joint!

Fit-out now righteously underway, with the new boss taking a profoundly hands-on role – that’s him in the forefront!

He tells me they’ll be opening in about two weeks.

Ooohh, so exciting!

I may have even inveigled my way to an invite to the launch party.

Community Chef

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43-47 Drake Boulevard, Altona. Phone: 9368 5900

I’ve been so looking forward to laying eyes on the Community Chef building.

Especially since reading glowing praise by the The Age’s architecture commentator.

As it turns out, the location near the intersection of Kororoit Creek Rd and the train line to Geelong means I’ve been passing nearby on a weekly basis for a couple of years.

I’m a little underwhelmed. It looks, to my stupendously untutored eye, not much different to the other buildings and enterprises with which it shares its Altona industrial estate.

Which only goes to show, of course, that if I can claim expertise in anything, architecture is NOT one of them.

The welcome I receive, happily, is a whole lot more warm and generous than I perceive the premises to be.

Community Chef customer relations manager Trish Love seems genuinely happy to spend as much time showing me around as required, making me lunch and answering my seemingly endless list of questions, some of which I suspect strike her as a little whacky.

Community Chef is the newish whizz-bang multi-jurisdictional outfit that is taking Melbourne “meals on wheels” into a new century.

It is collectively owned by 20 councils, with its tucker finding grateful customers from the Surf Coast to Dandenong.

Locally, that includes the councils of Hobson’s Bay, Brimbank and Moonee Ponds, but not our own Maribyrnong, which has chosen to use another provider.

Having already emailed an earlier list of questions to Trish and checked out the Community Chef website, I am well prepared to have preconceived notions dispensed with.

Mental images of steaming hot meals issuing forth from the Community Chef kitchens and being dispatched with cheerful haste to customers are way, way off base.

But first, lunch … following the hopeful hunch that I’d be presented with an opportunity to sample the Community Chef fare, I have avoided a noon meal, and Trish is happy to oblige.

After adjourning to the staff canteen, she quickly whips my meal into shape.

Knowing what passes for our usual criteria while out on the fang are of little or no use in this kind of setting, I try to sup with an open mind. As I expect, though, the food is a lot less salty and seasoned than is the Consider The Sauce norm, though Trish tells me there are curry dishes in the line-up with an element of oomph.

The pumpkin and red lentil soup is the big winner. Tasty!

The osso bucco with polenta is none too shabby, either.

The Community Chef statistics are staggering.

It prepares up to 2.2 millions portions annually.

It employs 72 staff in total, with 61 staff in production roles and 11 in administrative roles.

Community Chef offers six menu choices per day – Anglo-Australian, international, Asian, vegetarian, roast or a salad or sandwich.

Within its broader parameters, Community Chef is able to cater with flexibility for a wide variety of nutritional requirements.

For those customers with specific needs such as halal, kosher and gluten-free, Community Chef provides supplier contacts.

“The majority of meals are also offered in four texture modified versions – soft, cut, minced and moist or pureed,” says Trish. “These are particularly important for older adults with swallowing difficulties or who have other medical needs. We also have a special needs kitchen where a specialised meal, able to meet complex medical requirements, can be made for meal recipients.”

Unlike other such providers, Community Chef’s meals are pasteurised, meaning they have a shelf life of up to 30 days.

Community Chef’s two trucks deliver the meals to individual councils, who in turn deliver them to their clients.

More than ever, our experience in bringing Consider The sauce to the world has convinced us that food rituals are about far more than food on plate or in bowl.

I express concern that Community Chef seems forever at arm’s length from the very people who eat its food.

I am vastly reassured when Trish tells me that councils regularly bring their clients through for “the tour”, tastings and feedback sessions. (Feedback – ho ho!)

“Some councils even seem to make a point of bringing their toughest customers,” says Trish with a grin.

As well, in due course, Community Chef hopes to cater to community interest by offering the same sort of tour that I am privileged to be enjoying.

The building and systems – the work of Williams Boag Architects, with French food-processing systems architect Francois Tesniere – put a premium on health safety and environmental concerns.

Ewater is used, the ceiling in the massive food preparation area is low to save energy and interior lighting responds through sensors to outside weather conditions.

Having been warned that for safety and hygiene reasons, access by visitors such as I to the food preparation area is very restricted, I’ve been bracing myself for the merest glimpse.
Happily, the “viewing corridor” provides a good idea of the whole process, from arrival of supplies through to the giant pasteurisers (which also serve as cookers for the vegetables) and crating for delivery to client councils.
However, the contrast with small family-run eateries we love to frequent – and in which the cooking, and its fragrant scents, are routinely a big part of the fun – could not be greater.
****
My warmest thanks to Trish Love for spending so much time satisfying my curiosity and interest!


Sunshine Fresh Food Market

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25-27 Devonshire Rd, Sunshine. Phone: 9311 9897

Sunshine Fresh Food Market has been right there, hidden in plain sight the whole time we’ve been hanging out in Sunshine.

As I enter, the feeling and surroundings are so familiar I wonder just why it is we’ve never checked this place out before.

For this is our kind of establishment – a cross between a supermarket and fresh produce market along the same lines as Fresh On Young and the nearby Big Fields.

But is it any good?

The shopping list I am grasping in one hand, with about a dozen varied items scrawled upon it, should tell at least some of the tale.

Will SFFM be able to fill my basket with cinnamon and cardamoms for that night’s dal AND rolled oats and big, fat, juicy white sultanas (“white maggots”) for the next batch of muesli?

It’s been a while since I was out and about with camera in hand, so am a little nervous to begin with. I soon relax as it becomes apparent that no one – customers or staff – mind much or at all what I’m about.

The human rainbow array of races, genders, skin hues, sizes, shapes, ages and dress styles augurs well for a fun time.

The array of fresh herbs and leafy vegetables is not as swank as that found at Saigon Market in Footscray, but they all look in pretty fine nick. My bunch of good-looking coriander costs 99c.

My spice requirements? No problem …

I’ve not seen the Gold line of packaged spices before, but I like the size and price – they’re all $1.49. We do quite a lot of Indian cooking, but nevertheless I don’t like buying large lots of spices as they go stale and lose their zing. Small and often is generally our motto with all sorts of shopping.

White sultanas? Why certainly, sir, right this way …

I happily scoop about half a kilo into a plastic bag at $8.99 a kilo.

The place seems to be fully halal.

On the other hand, the deli counter does have Polish sausage, salami and mortadella – meaty things all normally brimming with porky bits.

To make sure and satisfy curiosity both, I make inquiries of the two young women behind the deli counter.

They assure me that all the above, and indeed all the cured and prepared meats, are halal and made with beef.

As I amble towards the adjoining seafood display, one of them tells me: “Even the fish are halal …”

What?!

As the realisation quickly dawns that I’ve been suckered, a burst of giggles issues forth from behind the counter.

Sheesh! Good one, ladies!

As I wander about, I begin to realise how good a find this place is – and cheap!

Bargains everywhere, with none of the pressing weekend hordes found at Saigon Market.

The pace is a few significant clicks short of frantic but the staff are friendly and helpful, and the vibe is relaxed.

Parking is plentiful.

I even go “off-list” for a few items – a handful of okra at $4.99 a kilo included.

Blimey, I even buy four bananas! They’re tiny specimens, but the price – $6.99 a kilo – is the cheapest I’ve seen this century. Well, that’s how it seems  …

How good is this – $24.43 for the lot, only falling down on the matter of rolled oats?

I get a whole lot of cool stuff to take home for about the price of a movie-drinks-popcorn combo, take much less time and have a lot more fun.