LA LUNA

The new plan was hatched thanks to a classy and discerning Kris Kringle who gave me a voucher to La Luna bistro on Rathdowne St this Christmas just gone. So we decided running away to Carlton for the evening would suffice. It's no India, but it would suffice. More like Italy.
We heard they did good meat at this place, and when we saw people without bookings turned away on a Thursday night while we were waiting for our mains, we thought it was probably true.

We started with a plate of cold cuts for two - oh, salty-meatyness! - which we each casually tried to eat as much of as possible as quickly as possible without being too obvious to the other person. But we both knew the other person was doing it. And we both knew the other person knew we were doing it. And the waiter probably knew that the chef's cousin knew we knew he knew we were doing it.

We ordered their 'eight-week aged steak' and duck with sour cherry jus, and were not disappointed. I used my Masterchef knowledge to good use at this point - apparently the items in a well put-together dish are designed to compliment each other visually, texturally, and flavour-wise, and so you should put a bit of everything on your fork each time. And it was harmonious.


La Luna is owned and operated by chef Adrian Richardson, who seems to like getting people as involved in his food as possible. For example, you can take cooking classes with him at La Luna where you actually learn to make some of their dishes, and his book, Meat, gives away some of his tips and tricks on how to cook, uh, meat. Obviously.




As we were dining, I noticed a sign on the wall that said:

"Can't get enough of our aged beef? Ask our friendly staff for a peek in our coolroom."


On seeing this sign, the conversation with my husband went something like this

Me: "Look! You can go into the coolroom! Do you want to go in? I want to go in."

Husband: "Sure, yeah, let's go in".

Me: "All you have to do is ask one of the staff..."

Husband: "Alright, go ahead".

Me: "......Well.....they're all really busy... I mean, it's the middle of dinner service. It's probably annoying when people ask in the middle of dinner service...."

Husband: "Well, why would they put it up there if it wasn't ok to ask?"

Me: *smile*

Husband: "..........alRIGHT, fine, I'll ask....

Me: *bigger smile*


We were introduced to one of the cooks who greeted us with a handshake and a friendly smile (at which point I stopped feeling silly, I mean gosh, I've seen a coolroom before) and showed us through. Since I was expecting to see, I don't know, trays of marinating steaks or something unconsidered like that, I was surprised and strangely pleased to be confronted with at least six huge hanging carcasses, as well as cured meats strung up around the room like Christmas decorations. The chef spent a good few minutes in there with us describing some of the processes they use with their meats, which was quite interesting. They buy it whole from Bacchus Marsh and do all the curing and prep themselves.

Price-wise, it's an occasional splurge for folks of our socioeconomic calibre, but the food is good quality, service impeccable, and the portions large. We left feeling absolutely stuffed, but didn't let that deter us from hitting Lygon Street for dessert.

I was thinking some treatsy morsels and a coffee in a quiet, romantic and intimate corner, so we headed to cafe institution Brunetti. I soon realised a cross between Grand Central Station and an American supermarket is neither quiet, nor romantic, and any intimacy would have to be shared with five strangers and a self-serve coffee machine. So we purchased our treatsy morsels and found a small coffee place nearby which was pretty much abandoned, which you've got to expect if you set up your little coffee bar near the Melbourne coffee temple. The worshipers have tithes only for Brunetti.

While I was sitting outside the coffee shop waiting for my husband to come back from the gelati bar across the road, I wondered what my little guy was up to back home, which led me to thinking about how long it would be before I'd be swanning around a gorgeous B&B in the country on our anniversary again, eating decadent food and sleeping in and.....before I could come to a conclusion, I was awoken from my reverie by a loud thud, as some good-looking joker holding a couple of gelati cups pretended to walk into the glass screen next to me.

And I thought that perhaps it really didn't matter after all.