Author: maireaddoyle

>Cicciolina’s

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

>I’ve wanted to eat at this restaurant almost since we arrived here. Another Melbourne institution, this Italian restaurant doesn’t take bookings so you have to choose your moment to dine here. I have crashed a work dinner of Orlando’s here once, but still didn’t feel that I had experienced the full Cicciolina’s thing. So back we went on a chilly Friday night after a hard day’s work trawling the bookstores of Melbourne.

We arrived before seven-thirty and put our names down for a table for three. We were told there was a two hour wait. Amazingly we quickly procured a booth in the back bar and settled down with two glasses of wine, happy to be sitting comfortably after our marathon day out.

With two hours to wait, we scanned the blackboard and ordered an antipasto platter to keep us entertained. It was a pretty good spread: salami and prosciutto, goat’s cheese, grilled mussels, a couple of dips, marinated mushrooms, black olives, sourdough bread.

In the end, we had barely polished off the last morsels when our waiter came and called us into the main restaurant.

The place was buzzing, the atmosphere helps along by the fact that the tables are very close together. I ordered a raviolo stuffed with ox tail to start. Sitting on a bed of spinach, the single stuffed square of pasta looked simple and small, but it was filling. And divine.

For main course, Orlando ordered a fillet steak and Mena a lamb roast. Both looked and smelled great, and they were happy with their choices. Mena was still talking about hers the next day. I chose pasta again: linguine with a spicy ragu which was much more complex than a matriciana sauce, but I couldn’t tell you what was in it. I savoured every mouthful and washed it down with a few glasses of Pizzini sangiovese.

All in all, the experience was fantastic. Even the wait for a table doesn’t have to be too bad if you are lucky to get a seat in the back bar.

>The European

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

>The European is a bit of a Melbourne institution, and I’ve loved it ever since I lived here for six months way back in 1998. The long, darkly-lit, wooden interior reminds me of all the best Spanish, Italian and French bars I’ve eaten in, and it is a great antithesis to the classic Melbourne eateries we are used to.

So Mena and I found ourselves having breakfast there last Friday morning. It was an auspicious date: twenty-six years to the day since she and Lee left Ireland to travel to Australia, and the spring equinox to boot. We were on a bookstore crawl to celebrate Mena’s birthday the month before.

We sat in the back near the kitchen hatch, and settled in with two glasses of bone-dry champagne to get us in the mood. The staff are supremely professional, but started off a bit cold but perhaps it was just the time of day. They ended up being lovely.

My eggs benedict was divine, accompanied at my request with some grilled portobello mushrooms. Mena chanced the Croque Madame, worried that she might be disappointed, but she was also delighted. The champagne flowed, as did Mena’s long macchiatos and my Earl Grey tea. Our waiter complimented Mena on her “double-beveraging” when she ordered fresh coffee.

Almost two hours and almost a bottle of champagne later, we finally prised ourselves from our table to get on with the bookstore-crawling. We could have stayed there all day, chatting and nibbling. Why can’t we start the day with breakfast at the European every day?

>Cafe Lalibela

~ maireaddoyle ~ 1 Comment

>We promised each other we were going to eat locally. Footscray is full of Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, Indian and now African restaurants and canteens. Almost two years in, we have our favourite Chinese (Ha Long), Vietnamese, (Thien An), Thai (Thai Angels), and Indian (Aangan), but we have not savoured any of the African delights on offer within a few minutes of or house.

So this evening we chose Cafe Lalibela, a small local Ethiopian restaurant beloved of the “new white intelligentsia” as one newspaper called them. The two doyens of restaurant culture, The Age’s Epicure and Mietta’s, herald this little canteen as one of the best in the inner west.

So we presented on a balmy spring Sunday evening, bottle of red wine in hand, ready to be impressed. Most of the tables were taken in the ten-table room, and as far as we could see there was one cook and one server. Unluckily our bottle was a screw-cap, so we waited almost twenty minutes with the wine ready to be poured, but because they hadn’t needed to uncork the bottle we were unhappily without glasses.

We ordered quickly, a special chicken “wat” or stew, and a dry-fried beef dish. Both would be accompanied by plain rice as our server advised us they had run out of injera, the traditional Ethiopian bread used to mop up the wat sauces. No problem, we thought. We like rice. There was no choice of starter.

An hour passed. We sat chatting. They seemed to be cooking each table’s order as it presented, and there were three tables ahead of us. People came, sat at tables, and left without ordering. Some people came in, sat at tables, went into the kitchen (were they friends of the owner?) and left without ordering. The wine bottle’s contents slowly decreased. My hunger increased.

Finally two bowls of plain white rice came out, with two dishes. One was filled with small cubes of the most over-cooked fried beef I have ever seen, garnished with a few strands of blackened fried onion. The other held a very dark brown sauce – this was supposed to be the chicken dish. I rummaged and found a hard-boiled egg and single scrawny chicken drumstick with no more than a mouthful of flesh on it. The rest, as far as my taste buds could tell, was finely chopped onion in a thin gravy.

We ate a few mouthfuls of each, then decided to combine both dishes to extract the best from each. After an hour’s wait we cleared our plates, but it was more out of hunger than enjoyment. Fifteen minutes after the food was presented, we were paying and leaving the restaurant.

My challenge will be to present, “Ready, Steady, Cook”-like, a list of ingredients, to see if anybody can come up with anything more palatable than our Sunday evening meal:

  • one scrawny chicken drumstick
  • a large quantity of onion
  • about 400 grams of stewing beef
  • however much white rice you need
  • whatever spices you want

I reckon anybody could some up with a meal more exciting than what we were served at Cafe Lalibela, even for $26. You have been challenged.

Cafe Lalibela, 91 Irving Street, Footscray

Amo Roma

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

>Nine years ago, in August 1998, I was travelling around Mexico on a Trek America tour with nine or so fellow travellers. One of those fellow travellers was Kaz Kaufman, a Sydneysider, with whom I shared many margaritas under the stars. We remained firm friends, and I was a welcome guest in the home she shared with her partner Phil and dog Renton.

Kaz, incidentally, is allergic to chillies. The merest whiff of one brings her out in blisters. So it was pretty brave of her to travel around Mexico where the words “sin chile” indicate only that the chef should be a little less extravagant with the chillies. It would never dawn on anybody to put NO chilli in anything. Similarly for India and most of the rest of South East Asia, all of which has been extensively traveled by the indomitable Kaz.

So it was this evening that I found myself in in Sydney, meeting Kaz for dinner in Amo Roma, a charming Italian place in the most touristy part of Sydney, the Rocks. You would think it would be a tacky venue, but it was lovely. We sipped salty margaritas in the outdoors dining area on an unusually balmy August (late winter) evening, and put the world to rights.

The staff were simultaneously unobtrusive and attentive, patient with two people more interested in catching up on the gossip than reading the menu. The menu included the standard pasta and pizza fare, plus interesting winter dishes such as slow roasted lamb shanks and chilli-marinated calamari (naturally we didn’t order this one). Kaz chose a simple pizza with mozzarella, anchovies and black olives, while I ordered the lasagne. Both were delicious. The wine list was respectable enough, with a number of Italians wines by the glass. I chose a WA Shiraz.

The gas heaters were switched on just before the chill got too much, so there was no rush. We ordered coffees – incredibly smooth Vittoria espresso – before settling the bill, a respectable $104.

By the time we left the place was almost full. For such a tacky part of town most of the diners seemed like locals meeting up after work. Not bad for the Rocks. I will be back.

>Ballyfermot Resource Centre

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

>The place I grew up in Dublin is a working-class suburb. In my whole time living there, there was never any place you could go to eat out, unless you counted the takeaways or the pubs which sometimes did food at lunchtimes.

In England, even if there are no restaurants you will always find a little cafe where you can pick up breakfast or lunch on the run. Ballyfermot didn’t even have this. Until now.

My brother is associated with the Ballyfermot Resource Centre, a place which provides services for the local community like self-help groups, a counselling service, adult education and childcare. It also has a little cafe which offers breakfasts and lunches to the people in the adult education centre upstairs and anybody else who wanders in. They also cater for the local meals on wheels service.

Whilst being shown around by my brother one morning, Theresa the restaurant manager offered me lunch but I couldn’t stay. So I popped in another morning for a chat and breakfast. Most people in the cafe at that time of the morning were eating a full Irish breakfast which looked and smelt delicious, but I opted for a toasted bacon sandwich. Well done bacon and well done toast, I said cautiously: there is nothing worse than a limp undercooked bacon butty. Theresa sat down with a healthy bowl of muesli for her breakfast, and Angela the centre manager joined us for a chat.

My mug of tea was scalding hot, and the teabag had been added to the mug at the kettle (the little things one takes for granted in Ireland – most tea in Australia is made with not-quite-boiling water and it shows). My bacon sandwich was perfect: excellent quality Irish bacon well cooked on the grill, and perfectly-done toast. I savoured every mouthful.

Angela and Theresa laughed when I promised them that I would post a review of their cafe online, but here it is. I was only sorry I couldn’t stick around for lunch. I shall save that for my next trip.

>Avoca Handweavers

~ maireaddoyle ~ 1 Comment

>The Avoca Handweavers story came into being almost 300 years ago in the tiny Wicklow village of Avoca. In its latest form, owned by Dublin business couple Donald and Hilary Pratt, Avoca has developed into a concept store encompassing homewares, clothing, kitchen shops, gourmet foods, and in-store cooking and baking.

The newest Avoca Handweavers store opened recently in Rathcoole, not far from my mum’s home in Dublin. Having already popped into their stores in Dublin city centre and Wicklow’s Powerscourt Townhouse, we were interested to see what they had created on our doorstep.

This large concept store has almost equal square footage given to retail space and dining space. Upstairs a large airy self-service cafe offers freshly made soups, hot lunches, breads and patisserie to the well-heeled local residents, as well as busy business people taking a break from their travels. next door a more formal table-service restaurant offers similar fare in more refined surroundings.

The salads are divine. The Mediterranean tomato and vegetable soup almost needs a knife and fork to consume it. The cakes and scones are so large that we had to share one scone between us (and we like scones). The jam is homemade, runny, and intensely flavoured.

Downstairs, we bought some brown scones for my sister’s breakfast, and the lady at the check-out gave us a taste of a freshly-baked Bakewell slice. The shelves groaned with gourmet pastas and sauces, marmalades and mustards, nuts and exotic dried fruits. I escaped empty-handed only because of Australia’s heavy restrictions on importing food.

I have a feeling that our local Avoca Handweavers will become a fixture in our family outings from now on.