Restaurants, recipes, rants.
It was just a flying visit to the Bodalla Dairy Shed, on my way to the airport. We had met owners Robert and Sandra at the Whale Motor Inn on Friday night, and Sandra had been so enthusiastic about their place I had to stop by.
It’s a working dairy and cheese factory as well as being a lovely retro milk bar and cafe. Locals buy a proper glass bottle of fresh, un-homogenised milk with a $2 deposit on the bottle, which they return and swap for a new bottle as they go.
After a leisurely drive from Dublin, we checked into our guest house in Glenbeigh in the late afternoon, had a cup of tea and continued along the coast road to Cahirciveen to make the most of the day. By seven we were back at the guest house, freshened up and ready for dinner. Seafood, naturally.
Shop 6, 206 Bourke St. Melbourne
china-red.com.au
Orlando took me to this place for a Saturday evening casual dinner, having been introduced to the place by friends one lunchtime. China Red is inside the shopping mall full of Japanese boutiques that runs between Bourke Street and Little Bourke, emerging onto Chinatown by Dragon Boat restaurant.
The gimmick here is that you order your food and drinks from a tablet perched on the wall above your table. In this way you don’t have to interact with the wait staff at all; in fact as far as I can make out this is what they prefer. All of my attempts to make eye contact and say thank you when our food was being served were studiously ignored. In two visits I never saw any member of staff smile.
That said, the food we ordered was of very good quality, quickly cooked to order and worth a repeat visit. The shao long bao we ordered were some of the best we have tasted outside Shanghai, and there is plenty of competition in Melbourne. The wontons in spicy sauce were a favourite of Orlando’s, but I found them a little too greasy to the palate. The prawn dumplings were plump and perfect. The chilli sauce on the table was laced with Szechuan pepper, just the way I like it.
The pork ribs in chilli and special sauce are chopped into bite-sized pieces, cooked until they are falling off the bone and taste just like the ones we used to get from Hong in our local takeaway in London “Hello!! Good Taste!! Hello Doy!!” Hong, a cheerful, efficient Chinese takeaway owner by day, and manicured drag queen by night, knew our Friday night order by heart. The special sauce on these ribs is a plentiful dollop of black bean sauce to augment the chopped chilli, and it tastes divine.
There is a dozen or so red wines to choose from, a similar number of whites, and a handful of wines by the glass. You can choose from jasmine, oolong, chrysanthemum or pu er tea.
Most dishes are around the $10 mark except for chef’s specials and our favourite pork ribs which are more like $18. Both of us have a healthy appetite, and three dishes is plenty for us. A bill of around $55 including two glasses of wine is good value in anyone’s language.
Once the novelty of the tablet wears off it’s probably just another modern Chinese place in Chinatown, but I can see this place becoming a favourite of ours just for the shao long bao and pork ribs.
121 Greville Street, Prahran
www.chezolivier.com
Third time’s the charm: after an offer by Chez Olivier’s owner to try the restaurant again, and a $100 voucher as motivation, Robyn and I headed back for a quiet, anonymous dîner à deux.
It was a hot Melbourne evening and the cosy restaurant was all but deserted. We chose a table in the cooler back room near the air conditioner but after a few minutes the draught got uncomfortable, so the waiter happily moved us to a larger table away from the direct blast.
A bottle of 2006 Château Noaillac from the Médoc hit the spot despite the heat of the day. We sensibly ordered first and talked later, otherwise we’d never have gotten to the food. For starters, we shared a pissaladière – an onion, anchovy and olive tart – with a serving of coquilles St. Jacques. The tart was tasty but not as substantial as I would have expected. The coquilles were just divine, and I quietly wished that all three were mine. They would be worth going back for themselves.
For main course Robyn chose the confit duck special and I, predictably, chose steak frites. Robyn’s duck was good but, she said, a little overdone. My steak frites was plentiful, perfectly cooked medium-rare and just what I wanted.
Dessert was out of the question but the waiter chose us a glass each of an alternative red to finish the night. All told, the service was friendly, unobtrusive, helpful and attentive. The food and wine were most agreeable, and most importantly, the company wonderful.
At just over $150 for two (most of which was covered by the $100 voucher) Chez Olivier is not a cheap option, and in my opinion it’s still not the best value in town. However, with money no object my conclusion is not to choose Chez Olivier for a large dinner party, but for a smaller table of two or four. At this size, they acquit themselves pretty well.
Emilio Pizza Pasta
58 Mitchell Street, Darwin
www.pizzapasta.com.au
Takeaway pizza in Darwin: a five-minute survey of colleagues pointed me to Emilio’s, opposite Shennanigan’s pub on the main drag. I was tired and just wanted simple takeaway pizza to eat curled up on my hotel bed, watching Big Bang Theory re-runs.
Emilio’s is just five minutes away so I ordered on the phone. “What size are your pizzas? What size is medium?” A laugh. “Well, it’s hard to describe really. A medium would easily be enough for two people.” OK. I ordered a medium Mexican and wandered down in fifteen minutes.
$21 for a medium pizza is steep, and this didn’t feel like a generous helping as I walked back to my hotel. In the lift I came across a Dad with his young daughter with what looked like the extra-large option. “Seems like we had the same idea”, I remarked. “Hope it’s worth it”, the Dad said. “Thirty bucks is an awful lot for a pizza.”
So: how was it? I asked for well-cooked and I’m not sure I got that. The pepperoni was sparse, the vegetables plentiful and the centre of the pizza limp. Even though I had turned up a little early for my pizza it was already cooling down when I picked it up, so the last slice was pretty cold. It was tasty enough I suppose, but value for money at $21? I think not.
Maybe it would be better eating in, but I would not be sure. I could not give anything more than mediocre for this place.
Another one of Vicki’s wonderful gluten-free creations.
Ingredients
3 cups gluten free plain flour
1½ teaspoons salt
2 tsp white sugar
1 cup hot water
1½ cups milk
14g yeast (often 2 sachets dried yeast required)
Glaze – spray oil
Method
1. Heat oven to 180 celsius.
2. Grease a large loaf pan and line with baking paper (6cm deep, 13x23cm).
3. Sift flour, salt and sugar into a bowl and mix well together. Make a well in the centre.
4. Mix the hot water and milk together and test with a finger to ensure lukewarm. If not, set aside until lukewarm.
5. When lukewarm, sprinkle over the yeast and mix.
6. Pour into the well in the flour and mix well.
7. Spread the batter in the loaf pan and smooth the top.
8. Cover with a tea towel and sit somewhere warm to rise for 30 to 35 minutes.
9. Glaze and bake for 45 to 60 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
10. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes and then cool on a rack.
Notes
fill up on bread 