Tag Archives: Melton

All’s well at Awel

2 Comments
awel2

 

Awel African Restaurant Bar & Cafe,  2/250 Hight Street, Melton. Phone: 9746 6483

Ahhh – a free-hearted romp up the highway to Melton.

Somewhere along the way, I’d learned that an African restaurant had been established in Melton.

My impromptu journey is aimed at checking it out.

This is a trip I’ve been wary of undertaking even just a few weeks earlier.

Since then, new tyres all round and a long overdue service had been booked and paid for, so I’m a happy chappy heading into the sunrise.

Especially with Millie Jackon, backed by the pride of Muscle Shoals, wailing at length about the woes of her love life.

Once parked in Melton’s High Street, I find Awel no problem.

The restaurant is a breezy, casual affair, with a different and bright tablecloth on each table.

A couple of those tables are occupied as I peruse the menu.

It’s a mix of Ethiopian dishes – there’s wats and tibs and the like – and dishes I suspect have a Sudanese flavour.

 

awel3

 

I go Ethiopian, though, with zilzil alicha ($12.90), which is described as diced lamb and seasoned vegetables slowly cooked in a green pepper sauce and seasoned with ginger and jalapenos.

It’s a typical Ethiopian meat dish, like a wet tibs.

The serve looks modest of size but is more than filling enough.

And best of all, it has a big chilli kick of the kind often promised by East African food but not always delivered.

The simple, crunchy salad, for which I am charged a little extra, is very good.

After my dinner, I chat for a good while with Amiol, who runs the restaurant with his wife, who happen to be in Africa catching up with the rellies.

Like her, Amiol is of Sudanese background.

He tells me Awel has been going for about five months and that the reaction of locals has been favourable.

But he is bemused by the outlook of some in the significant Melton East African community.

“In their heads, when it comes to food, they’re still back in Footscray,” her says. “They like our food but say, ‘Oh, if only you were in Footscray …'”

People can be so nutty!

Come on Meltonites – support this colourful and fine addition to your culinary line-up!

As I cruise on to the Western Highway home, Millie and the Swampers kick in to a funkified version of Feel Like Making Love.

I cackle and pound the steering wheel.

What use doing anything else?

 

awel1

Galli Winery and Restaurant

Leave a comment

1507 Melton Hwy, Plumpton. Phone: 9747 1433

Galli Winery was noted down and placed high on the hit list during the course of a pleasant/pheasant visit to its next door neighbour, Gamekeepers Secret Country Inn.

Never ever, though, did I expect to visiting the winery so soon, let alone with the fabulous company of my oldest and dearest friend, Penny, who is in town for a week from Wellington.

We are so busy doing the catch-up thing that we fly along the Calder Highway and many kilometres past the turn-off to the Melton Highway before we realise we are effectively lost.

My stubborn opposition to ever retracing my steps comes into full play as we negotiate a series of country roads, some of them bumpy, some of them gravel and one of them a dead end, taking in an incredible view of the distant Melbourne CBD along the way..

Nevertheless we have a hoot of a time before eventually getting there, thanks to a reliable sense of direction and lot of finger jabbing at the Melway.

A 1.30pm lunch it is!

The winery dining room is fabulous. Though nothing much more than a glorified barn, it presents as a very pleasing, tranquil and sophisticated space.

Galli Winery has a variety of menus that can be checked out here.

Garlic and chilli fried olives with fetta and bread ($13.50) – frankly this is pretty ordinary, although after our adventures we’re hungry to go.

The olives are warm and good, though too oily and too garlicky; we can see the chillis, but they don’t seem to be embraced by the dish as a whole.

Penny uses the term “supermarket” to describe the fetta cheese – and she’s right.

The herbed cubes are edible and dull.

The best thing about the platter is the crunchy and moreish pitta bread, on which we are still nibbling when we are presented with our main fare.

Penny describes her caesar salad with “cajun spiced chicken” ($13.90) in terms barely approaching lukewarm. She’s certainly had better – she finds it all a bit tired.

The main protagonist of my meatloaf special ($13.90) is fine – tasty, tender, well-seasoned, all with a dark, rich onion gravy.

They’re badly let down by the supporting cast, though.

The potato wedges are sad and the “sour cream dipping sauce” sitting atop them seems nothing more than plain old sour cream. Dreadful is a word that comes to mind.

The breadcrumb-topped tomato is like something from a childhood nightmare and the sprig of broccoli is so close to raw it’s not worth quibbling over.

Our cafe lattes are just a touch north of good.

Galli Winery is a fabulous venue we’ll surely visit again, so pleasurable is it to pursue a western suburbs version of “get out of town” with such ease.

The largely indifferent nature of our food did absolutely nothing to spoil our afternoon, but I wonder if we may have fared better by taking “a horses for courses” approach and ordering a $30+ steak each.

However, reading between the lines of the various menus it seems likely even those would have come with the same vegetables and wedges, so that’s a worry right there.

No arguments, though, with the linen napkins, ice water and $53 price tag.

This warmly recommended destination comes with an “order with care” proviso from us.

Galli Winery and Restaurant on Urbanspoon

Gamekeepers Secret Country Inn

3 Comments

1555 Melton Hwy, Rockbank. Phone: 9747 1000

The Olde English thing has never worked for me.

I’d be hard pressed to tell authentic Olde English from faux Olde English.

In fact, I harbour suspicions that there is no such thing as authentic Olde English, even though I lived there for a few years a very long time ago.

But as I wander around the somewhat vast dining room of Gamekeepers Secret Country Inn, I rapidly warm to the place.

How can I not when its embracing of the gamey theme is done with such brazen, unapologetic and politically incorrect zeal?

There are formerly live things of the furred, feathered and scaled variety hanging from the ceilings and adorning the walls wherever I look. They’re now very much of the dead persuasion.

It was Keith of the venerable Heather Dell bakery in Yarraville from whom we got the tip about this place, but it’s a taken a year for me to find my way here.

With a drive on the Bacchus Marsh-Geelong road beckoning after lunch is done, I am finding the change of routine a tonic. I have an armful of newly-arrived CDs of the Tex-Mex and swamp pop variety, and even Hawaiian guitar recorded in Paris in the ’30s, to keep me very fine company. I love the internet!

Quite oddly the establishment’s food fare seems to be lacking any offerings of a game-based tucker equivalent of the overwhelming theme of the decor.

The food on the main menu and the cheapo lunch list that is the focus of myself, and presumably the handful of other tables in use for this midweek lunch, features a regular lineup of oysters, pasta, salads, ribs, steaks, a seafood platter, roast duck, garlic prawns and so on.

Typical country pub fare, in other words – its own kind of comfort food. This change of routine, too, can sometimes be a tonic and I’m looking forward to my lunch.

Having already perused the option at the inn’s website, I have my heart set on the corned beef from the lunch list, which also includes braised lamb shank, steak sandwich and beer-battered fish and chips – all for $14.50.

How nice and quirky is it to be charged $14.50 for something – as opposed to, say, $13.99 or $14.99?

The vegetable component of my lunch is very good – they’re cooked through but still have a beaut element of crunch.

The mashed spuds aren’t a patch on the coarse skin-on version we rustle up at home with just olive oil, salt, pepper and parsley, but I like it anyway.

The sauce, using a seeded mustard, has sufficient tang to overwhelm my three medium-thick and very mildy-flavoured slices of corned beef.

Remember back a decade or more ago when corned beef became so very trendy around Melbourne? This is like that – I hanker for the heftier, saltier flavour whack that resides in memory of the corned beef served countless time to me during my upbringing by that most superb of cooks, Pauline Ethel Weir. (Hi Mum!)

Maybe it’s another trick of the mind.

In any case, I save my last slice of Gamekeepers corned beef to savour at the end of my meal, at which point the flavours do come through with a strongish whiff of cloves.

It’s all good and I enjoy my lunch. The bill of $14.50 seems pretty fair for this kind of food in this kind of place.

After eating, I embark on another stroll around, taking in more of the dead critters and the music room upstairs. The entertainment fare seems to be very much of the Kenny, Dolly, Big O and Neil variety.

After paying and exiting, I walk across to the neighbouring Galli winery, where I am knocked out by the gorgeous dining room and peruse their menus, which actually traverse very similar territory and price range as those of the inn I have just departed.

Another one for the hit list!

My first ever drive on the road from Bacchus Marsh to Geelong is pleasant but somewhat featureless, though I do see lots of parrot-type birds – of the live variety this time.

The soundtrack is fabulous.

Game Keepers Secret Country Inn on Urbanspoon