After weeks of maneuvering catch-ups around nap times and hot cups of coffee around two little inquisitive hands, my bestie and I felt a fabulous, child-free catch-up was in order.
She's vego, so it was decided we'd go to the Moroccan Soup Bar in Fitzroy. Their food is unique - fresh, hearty Middle Eastern - and some of the best vego fare in town, in my opinion. As in, men dine there. Really.
Hot mint tea to start, then an antipasto-style platter of dips and vegetables, served with warm flatbread. Then out come a variety of hot dishes that they change up regularly - we had a chickpea dish with crispy pita and natural yoghurt, a spicy vegetable dish and something lentil-y. To finish; a tiny shot of strong coffee and some little deserts I don't know how to describe. Biscuity nutty bites with pistachios. That'll do. At $20 a head and with food to spare at the end, it's a bit of a bargain.
So sure, I recommend going there, but be warned: it's Trendy. One of those places that has its own culture, a potential minefield of awkwardness if you're not a native inhabitant of these kinds of venues, (in which case, you're probably already a regular). If you're just a standard person like me, and aren't with someone in The Know, here are the don'ts:
Warning #1: Don't ask for a menu. There are no menus. You should Know this. The waitress comes up and says, "What are we having tonight?". Asking for the banquet seems to be the easiest answer.
Warning #2: Don't expect soup. Just because it's called the Moroccan Soup Bar, doesn't mean there's lots of soup, and just because the name has bar in it doesn't mean they serve alcohol. I have never actually seen soup there, let alone eaten it, and they don't serve alcohol at all and so help me if I'm going to inquire about this strange and possibly fashionable discrepancy.
Warning #3: Don't call to book unless you're with a group of six or more, because they don't do it. Because it's the popular kid, it's pretty much always packed, so all you can do if you're in a small group is either arrive prior to 6pm or put down your name, find a coffee shop and come back. Or you could just wait around with the nerds on the footpath outside. Apparently that's acceptable. (The Tin Pot Cafe, just a short walk up to the corner of Scotchmer Street, is a gorgeous little nook. This time we were pouring our water from what looked like a ginormous perfume bottle while sitting on a cane love seat. It would have been quite romantic if... yeah).
Warning #4: Do not dare to pull out plastic to pay. I'd only been once and it was almost two years ago, so this faux pas was all mine. If you present a card, prepare to be told bluntly that it's cash only. If you politely suggest you must have missed the sign at the register that says 'cash only' (there is no sign) you will be promptly told that people who eat here just Know, and if they don't they should ask before they sit down. Oops, thought I was in 21st century Melbourne for a moment there, silly me.
Basically, they have a large, loyal following who know how they work, so they can make up their own rules and let the masses clamour over each other to hand over their money for chickpeas. It's pure genius!
Luckily, they're really good chickpeas.
Moroccan Soup Bar
World Food: Australian
This month, world food took a bit of a novelty turn. One of the gang had heard about a restaurant in Federation Square that served 'native Australian' food. I think we half went out of curiosity because we had no idea what in the world would constitute Australian food. Would there be damper? Witchetty grubs? Mum's spag bol??
No. And no meat pies either. The menu at Tjananbi was much more along the lines of 'char-grilled emu fan fillet and crispy pancetta served medium rare with a vegetable sunset timbale and a sauce of sweet and sour North Queensland plums'. Basically, native Australian animals plus flavours and ingredients you typically associate with Oz, eg. wild rosella, eucalyptus, macadamia, with lots of regional name-dropping.
First the waiter brings out fresh bread rolls which you dip in olive oil and then in a native seed and nut mix. The menu gives you flexible ordering options - taster plates, small plates and main dishes - so you can do a lot of sampling. We ordered a table of small plates to share of calamari, prawns, crocodile rice paper rolls, duck wings, asparagus and pork belly, and one had a main of kangaroo. The food was light, fresh and well-presented, but also light on portion size, and we were ready to prowl Swanston Street for coffee and dessert immediately.
I found the whole thing a tad confusing. The restaurant has an Aboriginal name and preamble, and while I'm sure native Australians ate wallaby and emu and so forth, somehow I doubt they ever served them with a desiree potato saute and Victorian quandong jus.
As we passed the touristy gift shops in the Atrium with their glass sculptures and Australian-themed holiday house decor items, it suddenly clicked that Tjanabi was like the restaurant version of these shops. You can buy something good quality and interesting there, if not a little overpriced, but they're really places contrived for visitors. Which have their place - there aren't many places about town you can enjoy fresh crocodile rice paper rolls.
Tjanjabi @ Fed Square - Australian
The Atrium
Federation Square
Flinders St. Melbourne
Ph. 9662 1225
tjanabi.com.au
$24-$38
Koliba
I have many fond memories of Eastern European hospitality from my growing up years. These memories centre around hearty, soul-warming food served in abundance (ie. quantities unable to be consumed by number of persons present).
One specific Slovakian birthday party comes to mind, where I walked through the columned entranceway to be greeted by a large table overflowing with an eye-popping selection of home-baked savouries. The table was cleared mid-party to make way for an even more eye-popping, decadent selection of desserts. The family must have been eating leftovers for weeks. Marvellous. I marvelled.
Then there were Thursday afternoons in high school where I enjoyed Greek hospitality. Although there was that one afternoon at Yiayia's when I ate a clove cookie, including the clove, biting directly into said clove. The question of whether Greek cookies were meant to be like this did enter my mind as I got the sinus clearing of a lifetime (up until Shou Sumiyaki). Yiayia's tiropitas more than compensated, and are still my favourite finger-food.
The two blessed patrons of these memories now form part of the Fantastical Five devoted to discovering world food. Courtesy of our Slovakian member, the September world food of choice was Czech and Slovak, at Koliba on Johnstone St.
I had high expectations, quantity-wise - nothing less than massive dinner plates filled to capacity with hearty stewed meat and gravy and potatoes - and I was not disappointed.
I didn't have meat myself, because I had a conniption on discovering you could order a main of crumbed, fried Camembert. Cheese as the main? Just cheese?? When they brought it out, it was an entire Camembert round, with a salad, homemade tartare sauce and about as many shoestring fries as I could eat on the side. Sure, it was no King Island Camembert, but it oozed out gloriously from its crumby coating and... it was a main of cheese. Ridiculous.
The restuarant has a warm, country tavern feel inside that makes you half expect the beer to come out in a boot, and while the food is more homestyle than refined, you certainly leave feeling satisfied. Potatoes and cabbage were big players on the menu, and I had to smile when I saw that sides on offer were "cabbage or bowl of chips". So if you're after a bowl of cabbage with your crumbed Camembert, this is a nice little place to get it.
Koliba
Czech and Slovak Restaurant
11 Johnstone St. Collingwood
Ph. 9417 3797
koliba.com.au
Birthday Monster Mash-Up
My boy turned one today, marking a momentous achievement in his short life. For someone to journey from being a human-shaped blob to showing characteristics like curiosity, cheekiness, playfulness, frustration and basically being a tiny but personality-filled individual... is momentous indeed.
It was also a momentous achievement in my short to medium-length life, to have been the primary facilitator of this process. To that end, I felt it was a rite of passage for me to bake a cake.
This I did, with disastrous results.
We decided that the celebrations earlier this week would involve afternoon tea and cake with the family (which there are a large number of), and I decided to make a monster birthday cake to go with the monster-themed serviettes I had bought. Logical.
The day of the party, all was going well with the cake assembly, until I started on the icing. What was needed was a thick, spreadable icing to cover all the joins in the monster's body, but what we got even after the instructed hour in the fridge to set, was a thin mixture that dripped off a spoon. I shoved it in the freezer and started biting my nails. The party was in an hour, I was out of icing sugar and Birthday Boy was asleep so I couldn't duck down to the store for more.
Half an hour before the party I thought the only thing for it was to give it a try. I pulled the icing out of the freezer, held the bowl over the cake, took a deep breath and poured:
Yes, poor Herbert didn't make it to the party. He would have embarrassed me, what with his legs clearly not joined to his body, and the brown puddle he was lying in and all.
After a despondent phone call to my husband who was on the way home from work and very close to the Cheesecake Shop, Birthday Boy ended up with a cake far superior to any monster I could have made, thick, spreadable icing or not:
And look, it didn't match the serviettes, but the end result was the same:
Shou Sumiyaki
When I was about seventeen years old, I was having lunch at a camp, and I'd just started eating a meat pie when a friend sat down by me with a pie also. She got up after about a minute - for seconds.
I stared in disbelief at my barely half-eaten Four 'n' Twenty (or Black and Gold frozen variety, more likely), and I'm no slowbie, but I watched her demolish a second one BEFORE I HAD FINISHED MY FIRST. I have never seen anything like it before or since, and I now have a great amount of respect for this gastronaut and eating powerhouse who also believes that sometimes to gain full enjoyment from a meal one must eat great amounts as fast as possible.
I was pleased then when she organised a girls night last month to Shou Sumiyaki, a Japanese char-grill restaurant, where you order raw meat and vegies and cook them yourself on the char-grill in the middle of the table. As you can imagine, it was quite a novelty.
So when the fourth Friday of August rolled around and World Food dinner of the Fantastical Five hadn't been organised, I dug out the little business card from the back pocket of my dressy jeans, glad that our waiter had been so studious in following their marketing strategy upon our gaggly exit.
I booked us in the mysterious-looking back section, where you take your shoes off and sit at floor level (but not on the floor. Don't try to understand).
The food is fresh and there are numerous cuts to choose from of wagyu beef, chicken and pork, as well as a variety of seafood... but portions are very small (100g), so you really need to order a couple of main dishes, and even then you wouldn't call it a hearty meal.
Being able to cook lamb cutlets yourself to perfection and eat them straight off the grill was excellent, and the ox tongue entree was delicious - but I discovered that wasabi paste, or whatever it was, is not to be used like mustard. The sinus clearing of a lifetime.
I thought it was worth going for the Japanese dining experience and just the pure novelty factor. But after second time round I've gotta say, there's something to be said for paying someone else your hard-earned to do the cooking for you on a Friday night.
Shou Sumiyaki - Sake Bar & Grill
160 Lt Bourke St
Melbourne
9654 3933
$15-$25 main
Mish-Mashed
Mish-Mash Dinner was, in my opinion, nothing short of mashtacular.
After a trip to the Salvos, we emerged as Kung Fu Master, Pregnant Lady, Aussie Cricketer, Neo of the Matrix and 70's Bride. Yeah, I couldn't find any kind of jumpsuit or a puffy-sleeved taffeta hilarity, but I made do with a $5 Seventies number with long sleeves that zip up at the wrists. It actually looked a lot like my mum's wedding dress.
Dinner, being an unknown five-course affair, panned out as follows::
First course: entree - prawns
Second course: dessert - fruit flan
Third course: dessert - triple chocolate semifreddo
Fourth course: dessert - fruit salad and cream
Fifth course: dessert - triple layer chocolate cake
The entree was my contribution because I just knew, KNEW there were going to be at minimum four desserts, and while the idea filled me with glee, it also made me feel ill. I'd been wanting to try out this recipe for ages and it was easy and enjoyed:
Prawns with Chilli and Lime Mayo and Pistachio Dukkah
Serves 4-6 as an entree
1-2kg prawns, tails intact
I cup good quality whole egg mayo
I lime
I small red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
I packet pistachio dukkah (Middle Eastern nut and spice mix. Some Safeways stock it, otherwise you can make your own)
Saute prawns for 5 mins in oil and a little garlic.
Mix mayo with chilli and juice of the lime.
To eat: dip prawn first in mayo then in dukkah.
Now, let me just dwell on my husband's triple chocolate semifreddo for a moment. To get a sense of this dessert, imagine the best, most expensive chocolate ice cream you've ever had, then imagine throwing that ice cream away in disgust after tasting this semifreddo because it's ten times more rich and creamy and mmmm .... Semifreddo Genius.
To top off the meal, the icing on the cake was a delightful cake, with icing. The thoughtful friend who made it chose it because it was sweet, rich and layered, to match my personality. Right? I thought so.
Finally, it was time for the Supergame, which lasted a whole 15 minutes or so before being abandoned for some absurd, vigorous conversation. I clearly couldn't keep up, as I fell into a bloated slumber in my bridal finery and was woken a couple of hours later to say goodbye to my guests. Hey, a wedding day can really take it out of a girl!
Mish-Mash Madness
While I would have loved to begin my annual dress-up party institution this year, I was merrily preoccupied during this, my birth month, with an important wedding of two Very Important People (who bestowed upon me a year's subscription to Donna Hay Magazine. Thanks guys!).
So while the institution will have to wait, I decided a dress-up dinner wouldn't, and the Fantastical Five will be gracing my world with their presence tomorrow night for what may be termed a Mish-Mash Dinner.
The rules of Mish-Mash Dinner are as follows:
1) Before dinner, guests will visit the Salvos together to choose their dinner attire, and may come as anything or anyone. I'm thinking 80's Bride, but if I can find a jumpsuit of any kind I'll go with that for sure.
2) Guests contribute to dinner by choosing a course to bring. Nobody is allowed to discuss what course or what kind of food they are bringing with anyone else.
3) After dinner, guests will participate in a game that incorporates elements of all the games in the games cupboard, in one giant, all-encompassing Supergame!!
The desire for the ludicrous seems to be increasing as I get older. I'm starting to wonder if in 30 years I might just be my mother, who I think has forgotten how to be serious at all. Trust me, next time you think you're having a normal conversation with her, look hard enough and you'll see a twinkle in her eye and you'll realise she's either having a subtle dig at something (probably you), has made a glorious, unnoticed pun, or is possibly getting ideas for a surprise skit at her next formal work function involving a wig, false teeth and a piano accordion.
