Tag Archives: Melbourne

Shota Muni Sushi & Grill

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

I’VE BEEN TOLD THIS RESTAURANT HAS NOW CLOSED.

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

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

It’s an area in transition.

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

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

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

No matter.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

It’s a winner!

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

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

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

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

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

But it’s not cooked at the table.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top Of The Bay

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1 The Strand, Williamstown. Phone: 9397 7404

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tacos Panchos

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Point Cook Town Centre Food Court. Phone: 9395 5746

A big thanks to Deb at Bear Head Soup for the great tip on this one!

Point Cook is, of course, very much part of our greater west neighbourhood – but until now it has been mostly somewhere through which we passed, or bypassed, on our way to somewhere else.

There’s no reason why such should be the case, but I am a little surprised by the size and bustle of Point Cook Town Centre when I emerge from the underground car park. Yes, it’s mall territory, but it’s laid out like a real live village, with streets and cars and stuff.

Besides, I reckon the days of dismissing malls, shopping centres and the like of being of no consequence or interest when hunting for places that trade in cool, funky, cheap and tasty food are fading fast, especially here in the spreading west, with its enthusiastic tribes of food nuts, each eager to make their own tastes and flavours available.

In any case, it’s quite a thrill to see such a colourful food outlet in an otherwise standard, mid-sized food court, although the two Asian places look of more than passing interest, as does the burger joint just past them.

Tacos Pancho is festooned with stencilled drawings of fabled Mexican wrestlers and other icons, and fronted with your authentic Mexican tiles, while the serving counter top is facsimile of the streets in which this food is sold in Mexico and Latin America.

I leave the tacos and burritos for another day, and instead order a couple of quesadillas – two kinds of filling wrapped in soft flour tortillas for $8.90.


While awaiting my food, I peruse a copy of Around Point Cook, a cracking little rag that seems like a paragon of the downhome, old-style community newspaper. (You can check out Around Point Cook here.)

My meal, when it arrives, looks a tad skimpy, but turns out to be a surprisingly filling lunch.

The chorizo and bean quesadilla is salty, cheesy and tasty, with about six slices of chorizo. The beans could’ve done with some more heat.

I’ve never been a fan of pineapple in otherwise savoury food, and indeed the fruit in the pork quesadilla does somewhat overpower the crunchy and moreish meat. The quesadilla is finished with finely diced onion and fresh coriander. I like it.

Just around the corner, I spy a keenly priced Indian place and a Vietnamese establishment that looks pretty flash ($12.90 pho, anyone?), and spot another cheap Indi place and a kebab outfit on the run home, so this is a neighbourhood worth some in-depth exploration

I meander home on the back roads, driving through industrial estates and even past the odd paddock.

It’s interesting to drive beside, over, under and around the freeway that is so often my route of commute.

Tex-Mex on the sound system, of course – specifically the contents of a parcel from Arhoolie that arrived the week before.

As I know La Morenita in Sunshine is going to be closed for a week or so, I drop in for a bunch of empanadas I ordered the previous day. Into the freezer for them!

Nothing much else to add … ‘cept Viva The Western Suburbs, Baby!

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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.


Western suburbs food and Melbourne’s mainstream media

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In Anthea Cannon’s lovely spread in the Maryrbinong Leader on Consider The Sauce and Footscray Food Blog, I was quoted as saying: “The Good Food Guide used to be my bible but not one Footscray place is in there.”

Truth is, it’s been more than a decade since I bought a copy – we may as well live a on different planets.

Of course, there’s a very good reason The Age Good Food Guide ignores Footscray completely and more or less ignores the rest of the west, too – the food styles (and prices!) it covers simply don’t exist in meaningful numbers in our part of the world.

Some years ago, the Age coverage of cheap eats was sloughed off to … Cheap Eats, which I presume has a fair number of Footscray eateries and heaps more from the greater west.

I’m ignorant on that matter, too, as it’s likewise been years since I looked at a copy. It’s worthy and no doubt valuable to those who buy it. But when you’re on the ground and regularly out on the food hunt, as we are, I’d find it very surprising if it could enlighten us on a westie food place of which we’d never before heard. Even if that does sound smug!

But these issues got me thinking about mainstream media coverage of food culture, people and places in Melbourne’s greater western suburbs in general.

The heavyweight formal reviewers for both Melbourne’s daily newspapers, Stephen Downes and Larissa Dubecki, have little or no reason to set foot in the west. Sometimes they surprise, but mostly their interests lie elsewhere – geographically, philosophically and financially.

Nina Rousseau recently covered the marvellous Los Latinos in Epicure’s Unexplored Territory column.

But even though I loathe MasterChef, I reckon The Cravat did a better job of injecting diversity and variety into that space.

Rousseau mostly seem to gravitate towards just-so cafes and the like.

More recently, Lauren/Ms Baklover has got a few good western shots into the small Under $10 section that appears on the same page each week. And good for her, too!

That leaves the weekend papers.

The Herald Sun on Saturday carries, as part of its food spread, a section in which hot-shot places are chosen to represent various parts of the city – including the west.

The Age Extra regularly carries “list” features – “Where to get the best canoli”, for instance, or “Melbourne’s best places for lizard turnovers”. The west gets a run quite often there, too.

And between them and the Sunday papers, there are various nooks and crannies, celebrity profiles and so on that provide scope for our region to get some of the limelight.

I can’t help but feel, though, that often where Melbourne’s west does rate a mention, the coverage is only for form’s sake.

And that the authors/compilers perhaps haven’t even set foot in the western places they dutifully include.

This is surprising for several reasons.

One is the rampant growth of the city’s western regions.

Another, especially in the case of the Herald Sun, is the area’s solid blue-collar credentials. You’d think the “people’s paper” would endeavour to get out and about a bit more in the west, no?

Interestingly, but perhaps not all that relevantly, the Herald Sun’s journos remain based at Southgate, but the paper is printed in the shadows of the Westgate Bridge. The Age scribes are based at Docklands and the paper is printed at Tullamarine.

In any case, I have compiled the following list of eateries that between them seem to have constituted a large slab of coverage accorded western suburbs food coverage in recent years.

Many of them are very fine indeed; one and perhaps more, though, I believe to be over-rated.

Moreover, a handful are obvious choices for the likes of Downes and Dubecki, in that they deliver fine dining – or aspire to it – and prices to match.

But I also sense a close-to-deadline “Quick, quick – I need a western suburbs place! I know – Cafe Fidama!” about it.

But the bottom line is they have all received coverage, sometimes a LOT of coverage, while rest of the west goes unnoticed, unseen and mostly unloved.

And not just in the papers, either, but also online.

Have I missed anyplace obvious?

Thien An

Hung Vuong

Touks

Delizia Cucina

Station Hotel

Café Fidama

Corner Store

Caravallo’s

Café Lalibela

Laksa King

Philhellene

Dinh Son Quan

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1/17 Nicholson St Footscray. Phone: 9689 3066

Knowing I’ll be flying solo on Christmas Day, with my partner cavorting with cousins in Queensland, I’ve loaded the fridge and shelves with all sorts of tasty stuff.

But by noon, a great urge to be out and about is upon me – despite being 150 pages into a 900-page tome by the remarkable Clive Barker and a bunch of freshly arrived packages containing cool sounds of the cajun, Tex-Mex, jug band and Yiddish pop flavours.

So out I head, although not with any great optimism about what I’ll find.

As I enter Footscray’s Vietnamese quarter, I realise how wrong I am.

There’s people everywhere, food everywhere.

With joy, I realise that not only am I going to be fed, but I also have a wide variety of choice – in fact, almost as many as on a regular weekend day.

So it is that I finally get around to tackling the bain marie goodies at Dinh Son Quan.

This is one of a handful of eateries that adjoin Little Saigon Market.

We’ve been in here heaps of times previously, but always for the non-pho soup noodles or a very excellent diced garlic beef with tomato rice. I’ve also had the banh xeo – a coconut/rice flour crêpe filled with prawns, pork and vegies – that went down well with Ms Baklover at Footscray Food Blog. I found it a bit dull and squishy.

No matter – I’m here today to sample the fascinating array of mostly braised dishes that fill the bain marie section.

There’s stuffed bitter melon, a couple of funky looking pork numbers and several fish dishes – that seems a grand way to go, with notorious fish-hater Bennie out of the state.

Doing Dinh Son Quan this way costs $8 for a choice of two dishes with steamed rice.

I pick a dusky cutlet of mackerel with a black pepper sauce and a simple stir fry of baby octopus, zucchini, celery, capsicum, tomato and coriander.

When my food is at table I am also presented with a bowl of clear chicken soup – always a good sign! In this case, though, the soup is too sweet for me.

The fish is nice enough, but fails to really excite and lacks much by way of pepper quotient. Likewise, the stirfry is lacking zing or, really, any kind of flavour punch at all.

I’ll try the Dinh Son Quan bain marie again – there’s plenty on which to experiment.

And I’m happy to accept my meal selections may be to blame for a disappointing lunch in this lovely place that always rolls out a warm welcome.

Besides, just being among the throng has put a skip in my step.

I even discover that Cavallaro’s, too, is open, so snag a single ricotta-jammed canoli for an afternoon coffee-time snack.

Dinh Son Quan on Urbanspoon

Huy Huy’s head-turning window display.

Cavallaro’s was open for Christmas, too, doing a roaring trade in canoli. I only bought one!

Tandoori Flames

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1/76 Yarra St, Geelong. Phone: 5298 2147

Not more than 24 hours after writing a snotty putdown of a yahoo email that imagined I’m the kind of food blog bloke who hustles free meals, there I was – accepting a free meal.

My Geelong lunches had long been reduced to routine and even tedium, the same takeaways eaten at my desk and, more and more often, packed lunches making the train trip with me.

So the previous week, I’d been delighted to find a new Indian joint just around the corner.

Tandoori Flames operates, particularly at night, as a more formal a la carte restaurant with all the usuals and mains ranging from $10 to $15.

But taking advantage of central location in Geelong’s CBD, they’re also wooing the lunchtime crowd with a shorter and cheaper menu, towards which I was drawn by my natural instincts .

On it are such items as pakoras, samosas, onion bhaji, tandoori chook, as well as a variety of salads and wraps.

The previous week I’d tried the chicken biryani, taken away and eaten at my desk. Not bad, either.

And the previous day, conscious of a tiny lunch-time window yet weary of the desk routine, I’d phoned ahead using one of the mobile numbers given me for just that purpose, wishing to ensure my meal as ready when I arrived.

About 20 minutes later I bowled up and … there was no one home. Literally.

Disappointed, I was forced to utilise the less attractive option of the Viet-Sino place next door.

Turns out that after taking my order, Jimmy had onpassed it – again by phone – to their chef, who in the meantime had had some sort of misadventure on the highway. No appearance, you worship!

Later in the afternoon, Jimmy phoned me in the office, gushing with apologies and promising me my next lunch “on the house”.


So there you go – a freebie meal, yes, but offered to and accepted by a regular customer, not a food blogger.

My “on the house” lunch order was the dish that had escaped me the previous day – chooley pathuray, Tandoori Flames’ version of the Kitchen Samrat dish earlier praised hereabouts.

And gosh it was good, the chick peas dancing with a deep red, tomatoey gravy of only mild spiciness, some raw chopped onion adding crunch.

The breads, two of them, were heavenly.

Deep fried and studded with black cardamom seeds that offer exquisite little grenades of flavour, they were so moreish as to put most routine flat breads, Indian or otherwise, in the shade.

The perfect lunch!

Another staff member, Jas, explained to me the difference between puris and pathuray – the former a lighter bread made with refined flour and commonly eaten as part of breakfast, the latter quite a bit heftier and made using plain flour.

Or as she put it: “With puris, I’ll eat four; with pathuray only two.”

It’s surprising it took me so long to work out that there’s a western suburbs angle to all this – the Geelong eatery is a branch of the familiar Tandoori Flames is South Kngsville and on the same street as Food By Motorino that made a good impression of Ms Baklover at Footcray Food Blog.

We’ve driven by heaps of times, but never stopped – maybe because they don’t do lunch.

Given the exceptional and caring service I’ve received at their new Geelong enterprise, the Kingsville Flames is on our hit list for a soon-come dinner.

The Melbourne branch of Tandoori Flames is at 15 Vernon St, South Kingsville (phone 9078 2726) and their website is here.

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Victoria’s Best Kebab House

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8 East Esplanade, St Albans. Phone: 9364 4433

Ambling into the Vietnamese hub of St Albans, I have a persistent mantra pounding in my head: “Lunch, noodles, pho, lunch, noodles, pho …”

Then I am waylaid by a sign.

Given our undying love for Footscray Best Kebab House, the sign is something of a cross between an invitation and a challenge. Irresistible, in either case.

I saunter up the laneway, and enter through the rear of the kebab house.

I order a standard $12 plate of lamb of the spit.

I may have done better to order one of the grilled-to-order meats – shish, say – for the lamb is edible but average, lacking sparkle.

With the meat I get cacick (cuke/yogurt) and eggplant dips, and both are good – again, without making the senses sing. I also ask for an extra dollop of the chilli dip. This is weird – totally lacking any kind of spice kick, it is nevertheless tasty in a smoky way that recalls Mexican or Latin American food. It’s a winner with the meat and the highlight of my lunch.

The accompanying salad – a finely diced mix of red and green capsicum, carrot and cabbage – nice touch, that – is good.

Victoria’s Best Kebab House? I don’t think so … but if it was just around the corner, it’d probably be my second home.

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Classic Curry Restaurant

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Shop 3, Clarke St, Sunshine. Phone: 9312 6766

More recent Classic Curry reviewcan be read here.

After being a long-time if irregular customer of the original Classic Curry in Elizabeth St, near Vic Market, I decided it was high time I checked out the newer sister joint in Sunshine.

The premises were just the first of several pleasant surprises I was to embrace in the course of my Saturday lunch.

The room is big, airy, bright and welcoming.

It’s more like a restaurant proper, as opposed to the rather dim, dowdy backpacker vibe of the city place.

The prices at both, however, are significantly lower than your more formal, starched Indian places – on quite a long menu, the only items over $10 are two prawn dishes, a whole tandoori chook and the “Meat Lover Thali”. All the vego mains are $8 and the meat mains $9.

In the interests of variety for review purposes, I ordered the vegetarian thali.

I did so with some trepidation.

My standard order over the years, when I’ve hit the Elizabeth St branch, has become half a tandoori chook (three pieces, with salad trimmings) and one of the stuffed breads.

The thalis I’ve had from there have invariably ranged from passable to awful, the latter featuring tired, overcooked servings.

My fear in Sunshine proved completely unfounded – and then some.

The food had freshness and zing that I don’t normally associate with budget Indian eateries – be they serving food a la carte, on a thali or from a bain marie.

It was all delicious and I wiped every last drop with the nann that arrived as part of the $9 deal.


I’ve long had an aversion to main meals of any genre/ethnicity that have truck with:

1. Sweetness.

2. Cashews.

3. Cheese.

The portion shahi paneer in my thali has put paid to that habit. It was awesome, the tomato gravy given a depth and richness from the chashews, the cheese nice and chewy – kinda like fried tofu.

The dal was made from several pulses – aduki and red beans included. It was the spiciest serving I had, the mildish chilli hit matching the smoothness and flavour of the gravy-like stew.

The aloo gobi was fine, too, its dryness offering a nice contrast to its two colleagues and the cauliflower and spuds retaining  nice level of bite.

This was one of the best thalis I’ve had for quite a while.

And given the clever matching of textures, flavours and seasoning across the three dishes, I couldn’t see me ordering either of the two non-vegetarian thalis … knowing they’d almost certainly include OK-but-dull lamb/chicken curry, or even the over-rated and to-be-avoided butter chicken.

This is a cool place and well worth the drive to Sunshine. It could even become our Indian default setting.

Check out the Classic Curry website here.

Classic Curry on Urbanspoon

Fusion Cafe & Mo:Mo Bar

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Metro West Building, 27 Albert St, Footscray. Phone: 0401 328 334

THIS RESTAURANT HAS NOW CLOSED.

Words – more precisely, combinations of words – can have enormous power.

Poetry and song, of course, can awaken a profound sense of wonder at the world’s charms ranging from the majestic to the mundane, and often both at the same time.

But so, too, can a divinely inspired turn of phrase or even a menu description invoke a sense of awe at the infinite potentialities of the universe.

Check out, for instance, this from the menu of Fusion Cafe & Mo:Mo Bar:

“Tass: Boneless marinated pan fried diced goat meat served with rice bubbles, side seasonal veggies, tomato relish & salad $11.”

Goat? Rice bubbles?

I kid you not!

Fusion is tucked away in a corner of the ground floor of the Metro West building, rubbing shoulders with a bulk-billing medical centre, a hairdresser and travel agent of the Asian persuasion, Centrelink and – upstairs – a swag of employment services and the like.

The eatery’s premises used to be home to an African outfit of some description, but every time we dropped by the elderly gent who ran things never had the lunch dishes up and running, so we never got a taste.

When, earlier this year, it took on a Nepalese hue, we had a dish of dumplings – the momo of the name – and another dish that was sufficiently unmemorable to have escaped my memory.

Neither of us had returned until I dropped in for a mid-week lunch at 1pm, only to find the lunch options limited.

So I settled for a chicken burger with chips and salad, which was not only fine but a snip at $4.95.

As I munched, I enjoyed a long and engaging conversation with one of two Nepalese sisters who appear to be the proprietors.


I was informed that their aim was to serve genuine Nepalese food, and not the Indian-derived dishes familiarly provided by Melbourne restaurants labelling themselves as Nepalese.

I learnt that in occupying a premises with a lack of potential walk-by customers, they had nevertheless forged a handy trade in momo with many hungry Nepalese students, who start dropping by about 5pm.

And I learnt their aim and ambition was to serve the very best momo going around in Melbourne.

(Fusion is open until about 8pm on week days, and until about 2pm on Saturdays.)

I promised to return on the Saturday for lunch, hellbent on trying the rice bubbles/goat combo and with my son/colleague in tow.

I ordered the tass. Of course!

Knowing Bennie to be a dumpling freak, I didn’t even think about suggesting he order anything but the momo, which are available steamed or fried, and in pork, vegetable, chicken, and chicken and cheese flavours.

His 10 fried pork dumplings ($10) were sublime – each a little parcel of beautifully tanned and crunchy pastry housing a flavoursome pork mince filling. Bowls of not-too-spicy yet nicely tangy chilli sauce and soy sauce attended.

My tass was really, really good.

The goat meat was nicely flavoured with, I was informed, coriander, cumin, garlic and ginger. It was tender but also splendidly chewy. (I neither expected nor desired fall-apart tender meat – had it been so, I suspect it wouldn’t have been Nepalese …)

No appearance by the tomato relish, but the vegetables amounted to a delicious mound of what could be described as a mix of potato salad, spud curry and achar, without the vinegar. Indeed, I subsequently discovered the same mix is sold here as an extra under the same name as the Malaysian side dish.


I was a bit worried about the lack of any kind of sauce, but the vegetables and serviceable salad between them did the job.

The rice bubbles? They were actually puffed rice, and not the tanned item of breakfast cereal fame.

The mix of the meat, accompanying bits and pieces and puffed rice was a really fine combination of flavours and textures.

A winner!

Other items on the menu include chicken “chowmin” ($9), a handful of chicken dishes (one of which is accompanied by delightfully crunchy “beaten” rice) and a mixed grill of sausages,  chicken wings, chicken skewers, chicken kofta, roasted potatoes, rice, relish and salad ($13). Then there’s a chicken curry with rice and minted yogurt for $7.95, while puris can be had for three for $3.

Joining the hamburger on the Western side of the menu are a BLT for $3.95 and fish and chips ($7.95).

We reckon Fusion Cafe & Mo:Mo Bar is beaut, and may get even better.

We’re early dinner diners, so I suspect it’ll become a bit of a standby for us, and we look forward to ticking off the menu choices two by two.

In the meantime, now that I’ve had goat with rice bubbles, my life feels just that bit more complete, enriched and well-rounded.

Cedar Grill

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422 Melbourne Rd, Newport. Phone: 9391 0563

Mediterranean tucker may not be the first thing that springs to mind when thinking of western suburbs food, but we are nevertheless blessed with some gems of that persuasion.

Specifically, there is a magnificent Turkish joint right in the heart of Footscray, and another almost as good in Flemington.

There’s Greek places as far apart as Williamstown and Moonee Ponds we have yet to explore.

And there’s the Lebanese hub of The Circle in Altona, including a great bakery sure to be the subject of its own CTS write-up before too long.

For all we know, there could be dozens of old-school Italian doings going on behind the facades of pizza shops all over the place.

Still, Mediterranean food – and that of the Middle Eastern kind, in particular – is thin enough on the ground that any possibility is worth exploring.

So it was that we concluded Cedar Grill was worth checking out, an earlier visit by Kenny dating back to the very early days of our decade-long western adventure.

Cedar Grill is like Footscray Best Kebab House, in that its public face as a kebab joint disguises some much more tasty and righteous food proceedings.

In this case, the disguise is even more profound, as Cedar Grill also sells burgers and your typical Aussie pizzas.


Being the reprobate he is, Bennie waves away the far more alluring, tempting, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, nutritious and flavoursome Middle Eastern fare and opts for the $9 combo of burger, chips and a can of soft drink.

Oh well – I guess there’s a degree of hipness in being able to do BOTH. Although he ruined even that silver lining by choosing creaming soda …

He pronounced the burger – with onion, tomato, cheese, bacon – as fine and more than sufficiently filling.

We both thought the chips were very good. Freshly made and crisp, they were salted just right and tasted very fine dipped in the kebab-style garlic and chilli sauces that accompanied my meat/salad/dip platter.

I liked my $11 platter a lot.

The lamb was off the spit, and suitably crunchy and salty.

The pickled turnip – turshi – was earthy, crunchy and redolent of the beetroot used in its production. It was far cry from the recently purchased jar of  turshii – a dull, sad pink, and mushy on the fang – that recently found its way into our home and thence into the garbage bin. Fresh turshi only seems like a rule for life.

For my dip, I wish I’d chosen the humus or something with a little more substance than the yogurt/cucumber number, which tasted fine but was too runny to eat easily with the bread.


I opted for the pita bread over the Turkish option, hoping for the very flat, very dry Lebanese-style pita. Instead, I got the more doughy pita routinely used in making kebabs. Which means it was OK, but either of the other options would have been preferable.

The tabouli was sensational and just the way I like it – moist to the point of wetness, a jolly mix of finely chopped tomato, cucumber, bulgur, parsley and lemon.

I reckon Cedar Grill is worth cultivating. On an earlier visit, I’d seen the vegies for the salads being patiently chopped by hand – as I suspect just about everything here is.

And as we leave, the waitress hinted very strongly that with a bit of luck and an expression of interest, the boss might even come through with some kibbeh and foul.

From Chinese and Greek citizens selling fish and chips in earlier decades through to the present day – just because a shop or cafe or takeaway outlet is selling one kind of food, doesn’t mean the folk concerned are not fully capable of producing something altogether more interesting or funky.

Nor does it mean that they’d not leap at the chance to do so.

Maybe sometimes all it takes is some interest.

For that reason alone, we’ll be returning to Cedar Grill.

That the commercial radio, aircon and traffic whizzing by outside make a racket that makes the experience about as far from fine dining as is possible matters not a bit.

Bennie gets a photography lesson in Newport.

Um, yeah, right: Truth in advertising spotted by Bennie at 7/ll in Newport.

Vanakkam India

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198 Nicholson St, Footscray. Phone: 9687 2233

We warmly recommend Vanakkam India.

However, we also recommend judicious parsing of the menu and consulting the staff.

Vanakkam India is a low-key Indian cafe, neat and tidy and smartly priced, along the same lines as Kitchen Samrat and Indi Hots.

The biryanis – including quite a often a goat number – are popular with the joint’s Indian customers.

But we find them a bit too spicy for us.

Likewise, some of the many curries we’ve tried – mostly just below or just over $10  – have been too highly spiced for us.

We’ve tried a couple of the Indo-Chinese dishes – chicken noodles and chicken fried rice – but found them dull. Maybe the Indo-Chinese appetisers – such as chilli gobi, ginger gobi or chilli baby corn – are where it’s at with that aspect of the menu.

What we do love is the onion baji ($4.95).

To describe this dish as deep-fried onion rings simply does it a grave disservice.

Onion rings are dipped in a besan flour batter, fried, lightly seasoned with finely ground pepper and served with a lemon wedge.

They are pure magic, light and surprisingly grease-free.

Next time, I suspect, when Bennie and I hit this place together, two serves of onion baji will avoid unseemly haste and arguments over the last fragments and crumbs.

This is food to inhale with gusto!

Having come a cropper on some other dishes at Vanakkam India, this place has become our preferred dosa destination.

Usually we opt for the masala dosa ($7.95), or sometimes the chicken tika masala dosa ($8.95), which is the same potato-stuffed pancake laced with chopped pieces of tandoori chook.

The dosas and the side dishes are as good as any in the area, and the service and ambience better than some who do the dosa boogie. So we love Vanakkam India for that alone.

For this Saturday lunch, though, and flying solo, I get a bit more adventurous.

I order the nimmak’aya pappu, which is described as “Spicy tangy lentil finished with lemon juice”.

Besides consisting of yellow split peas, it’s beaut and does have a lemony tang, but the serve seems a little on the modest side for the $8.95 price tag.

I also order the roti masala ($4.95) – “Roti stuffed with curry mashed potato”.

This is a disappointment – mainly because the bread itself is of the same variety as the ones we get from our local IGA, and is thus a bit lifeless and greasy. Maybe at these prices, it’s a bit, ahem, rich to expect everything to made in-house. And, indeed, I have no philosophical objection to the use of store-bought or pre-made products being served in the kinds of eateries we frequent.

But if I’d known, I’d have stuck with out dosa routine!

The potato stuffing is the same mix that does the honours in the dosas – turmeric, curry leaves, mustard seeds, perfect.

So, yes, Vanakkam India has been a bit hit-and-miss for us.

But the menu is long and there’s more to explore – such as the Indian pizzas, which include yara uthappam (“uthappam spread with cooked prawns and special spice mix”) and kaju uthappam (“uthappam topped with special spice mix an cashew nuts”), both $11.95. Or egg masala (“whole boiled eggs combined with rich onion”) for $7.95.

In the meantime the dosas – there are 28 varieties on the menu – are consistently the go.

And the onion baji is among our most very cherished western suburbs dishes.

Vanakkam on Urbanspoon

Awash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Oops! Communication breakdown among the staff!

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

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

And so it went.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Awash on Urbanspoon

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

Kitchen Samrat

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36 Leeds St, Footscray. Phone: 9689 9776

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

Must work for them, I guess.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a great lunch and a fine bargain.

Kitchen Samrat on Urbanspoon

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.

Phu Vinh

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93 Hopkins St, Footscray. Phone: 9689 8719

The week’s work is done and it’s time for the serious stuff – Friday lunch is on the agenda.

Not only lunch, though – I also have plans of spending the afternoon making big pots of 1. chicken stock and 2. lentil soup supercharged with a tablespoon of freshly pan-roasted and ground cumin seeds.

So chicken bones, celery, onions and carrots are ALSO on the agenda.

So I head for the Footscray Market.

Look, I may regularly and merrily refer to it as The Market That Doesn’t Allow Cameras, but I’m not so much a goose that I’m going to go elsewhere when it suits me. Especially when the parking is $1.30 for the first hour – or $6 all day if you’re into that. Bargain!

Before the shopping I head straight for Phu Vinh, one of several Vietnamese eateries the adjoin the market on Hopkins St.

I’ve been a regular for many years, but this is my first visit since it’s been done over, freshened up and revamped with a new look and a new, and very much longer, menu.

I’ve always thought Pho Vinh something of just a face in the crowd of busy Hopkins St, and certainly I’ve never seen many folks of the paleface persuasion in there.

Turns out it does have its keen fans – you can read their thoughts (both pre- and post-upgrade) here and here.

Like me, several are a little apprehensive about what Phu Vinh’s new look will have wrought.


In my case, this has become a “single dish restaurant”, so I am only interested in ascertaining that their banh mi bo kho (stewed beef) is still on the menu – and that it’s as fine as ever.

A young staff member reassures me that, yes, it’s still a feature – as is every dish to be had at Phu Vinh Mark 1.

Banh mi bo kho is a little confusing for the name of my fave Phu Vinh dish. Banh mi is also the name given the name of those delicious, crusty rolls filled with various meats, salads and condiments. Googling tells me that bo kho also means beef stew. As far as I have been able to gather, Vietnamese beef stew is served mostly with those bread rolls – especially, it seems, in the US – hence the name used at Phu Vinh. Although, of course, my research is far from definitive.

The bread/stew combo is less familiar to me and my Melbourne haunts – in fact, Phu Vinh is the only place I’ve come across that has it as a feature.

What I find in ordering Vietnamese stewed beef is that it offers a paradoxically endless variety. It seems to depend on how long stewed each particular batch is. Get it relatively new and the carrot pieces, as vital to success as the beef, have still their sharps edges and a bit of bite. Get your stew a little further along in the process, and the carrots get a little blurry and become more of a texture thing.

I’m an equal opportunity stew man – I like it both ways, and all those in between.

Phu Vinh offers its stew four ways – with a bread roll, with egg noodles, with rice noodles, or with both kinds of noodles.

After ordering my lunch ($9), I sit back and have a good look around. I like it – Phu Vinh Mark 2 is a bright, cheerful space in which to spend some time and it’s doing pretty good business on this Friday.


My lunch arrives and all is well with the world!

The carrots are midway between crisp and mush, the beef is meltingly tender and simply falls from the bone, it’s spicy but just so for my tastes. And this banh mi bo kho is notably less fatty than those in other places that boast it, both in Footscray and Sunshine.

The bean sprouts join the raw onion slices topping the stew in providing crunch and the basil leaves provide colour and flavour. This time out, I’ve ordered my stew with rices noodles, and they mix it up in divine fashion with all the other ingredients.

The chilli salt and chilli slices go usused, while the lemon segment gives the dish a lift as I near its completion.

Phu Vinh’s banh mi bo kho just as good as it ever was? The verdict is in: Yes!

Phu Minh Mark 1 offered only a small range of dishes – my beloved stew, spring and rice paper rolls, a few rice dishes and a few more clear soup noodle efforts.

As the staff member cheerfully informed me, all those remain available, but have been joined by a great deal more. They include soup noodle, rice and stir fry options.

That’s not always a great thing, of course.

But I come away with the very strong sense that, in this particular case, a restaurant makeover and menu enlargement have been embarked on with a firm focus on not sacrificing those dishes and qualities that made the place so appealing in the first place.

So I’ll keep on returning to Phu Vinh, and will doubtless attempt to elevate it beyond “single dish restaurant” status.

Hey, I know the little photos that appear on menus at many of my favourite eateries can be misleading.

But the braised duck with egg noodles ($12) looks luscious and worth a try.

Guess I’ll soon find out eh?

Phu Vinh the noodle shop on Urbanspoon

The view from the Footscray Market car park (aka Kenny discovers a new trick of which he didn’t know his camera was capable).

 

 

 


Hien Vuong Pasteur

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pasteur2

144 Hopkins St, Footscray. Phone: 9687 9698

We love our next door neighbour Dulcie.

She’s got a bent sense of humour, is a seasoned traveller and a jazz fan.

But a few weeks ago we were aghast to discover her rich life was unpardonably devoid of one of life’s great experiences – pho!

What a spectacular honour, then, that it fell to Bennie and Kenny to initiate her.

There was never any question that we would go anywhere other than Hien Vuong Pasteur.

This place has gone from being our default pho joint to very much our preferred pho joint.

We started going there because Hung Vuong, just a few doors down the road, had become so wildly popular that tables were hard to come by and the service frequently got a bit mad and sloppy.

Since then Hien Vuong Pasteur has repaid our loyalty many times over.

I’m not about to suggest it’s the best pho in a phocentric neighbourhood.

But it IS right up there, the staff are lovely and it’s never so busy that getting seated becomes an issue.

With pho, surprises are generally not good and predictability a virtue.

Hien Vuong Pasteur’s pho is consistently excellent.

The broth is perfection, be it beef or chicken. The meat is always good and the bean sprouts and basil leaves always fresh.

The sliced beef is lean and tender, and there’s always a fair bit of it that comes to the table pink and still to be cooked in the broth.

What more could you want?

All the usual meat options are available, except pizzle, but we like ours plain.

Like all classy pho joints, Hien Vuong Pasteur has a handful of other dishes available – but why would you order crispy fried chicken with egg noodle soup, stewed beef or broken rice when you can have pho? I guess we DO vary our orders about once or twice a year.

For our Saturday lunch, Bennie and I ordered our regular small size slice beef and sliced chicken ($7.50). For many years, my standard order was medium size, please, but that seems too big for me these days. And who eats a large serve of pho? You don’t see one ordered that often.

Given she was a pho novice, I suggested Dulcie go for the sliced chicken, its broth being less funky and likely more familiar for her. She liked it a lot, although went without the sprouts and herb leaves.

Dulcie even ordered spring rolls to go to have for her dinner that night.

Bonus: On paying, Hien Vuong Pasteur has a lolly jar for the kids.

For a far more authoritative, enjoyable and insightful rundown on Footscray’s amazing Vietnamese eats scene, some serious reading time at the Footscray Food Blog of Ms Baklover is highly recommended. She knows her stuff!

Hien Vuong (Pasteur) on Urbanspoon

pasteur4

 

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.

Pound Cafe

3 Comments

Whitten Oval, 417 Barkly St, Footscray. Phone: 9680 6300

We may be sports pigs, but AFL is not high on our radar, even if the Western Bulldogs are our nominal team of choice.

We’re more your Melbourne Storm/Melbourne Victory kinda guys.

But we pass the Bulldogs’ headquarters many times each week – sometimes while out on the food hunt, sometimes while hitting the Sims grocery just up the road and sometimes while simply tooling around.

So since a glowing review of Pound Cafe by Ms Baklover at her Footscray Food Blog, it was a matter of sooner rather than later that we’d be visiting the newly revamped HQ.

My, what an asset it is to the neighbourhood – especially in terms of diversity, as for our Monday lunch when the usual round of African/Viet/Indian and the like just simply didn’t appeal.

And with a brand new housing estate rapidly taking shape right next door, you’d think this place will do real well.

At first blush it appears to be a rather cold space wrested from the vestibule of the revamped stand.

But we felt relaxed and welcomed the more time we spent there.

As did a number of customers who came and went as we enjoyed our lunch, all of whom seemed already comfortable with using Pound Cafe as a drop-in, catch-up sort of place. The immediate neighbourhood is light-on for coffee places, so that’s another niche handily filled.

Copies of both Melbourne dailies were available at no cost and – glory be! – there were hand paper towels in the loos.

For our first taste of Pound tucker, we weighed in with two of the three available burgers, Bennie ordering the plain beef ($8) and Kenny the lamb ($9.50). Thankfully, we restricted ourselves to a side order of chips ($1.50) rather than a bowl ($4). There were heaps of them, so the bowl must be huge!

The burgers were pretty good, with Bennie’s beef having the edge thanks to its bacon and tangy sauce. My lamb job was tasty, too, though the advertised Moroccan element seemed elusive and the beetroot chutney lent it a mushy aspect.  In both cases, the bread and trimmings were fine, even if salady bits and pieces not actually in the burgers served only as redundant garnishes.

The chips were crispy and unoily, like we like ’em, but the seasoning – salt and paprika the manager informed me – had a sort of odd baconish flavour. Not bad, but – yes – a little odd.

There were lighter lunch options.

The specials board boasted a $6.50 potato, leek and bacon soup, while the bloke on the table behind us was enjoying what looked like a fine risotto of mushrooms, pesto, spinach and fetta ($11, $15).

Other menu items included a steak sandwich ($10.50) and flathead fillets with beer batter, chips, salad and tartare sauce ($12.50), as well as more snacky items and premade rolls.

A can of that Coca Cola stuff cost $2.70, which seemed pretty steep considering the general tenor of the pricing.

However, whatever our minor quibbles, Pound Cafe is a winner – and who knows? It might make more fervent Bulldogs supporters out of us yet!