melbourne

>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

Mecca Bah

~ maireaddoyle ~ 1 Comment

>It’s a bit inconvenient going to Mecca Bah on a busy weekend evening, as they don’t take bookings. And Docklands is not the best place to be wandering aimlessly waiting for a phone call from the restaurant after putting your name down.

So we took the opportunity after seeing the matinee show of Billy Crystal’s 700 Sundays, to pop down to Mecca Bah early and put our names down for dinner. We weren’t disappointed, and barely had time to sip a G&T in the achingly hip Fix Jamm Room before we were summoned to our waterfront table.

With three out of four at our table seriously watching our weight, we chose carefully (for the most part). Everything being served to the tables around us looked and smelled divine.

I started with boureks, tiny triangular spicy lamb parcels on a bed of fresh yoghurt. I savoured each mouthful and was careful not to overpower the melt-in-your-mouth lamb with too much yoghurt. Others had bastilla, little chicken pastries stuffed with tender chicken fillet, or a dish of tiny falafels. It was a good start.

For the main course two of us had the spicy lamb meatball tagine, one had harissa spiced Turkish pizza, and one a dish of beautifully cooked calamari.

My tagine was rich, spicy, warm, filling and utterly delicious. It was served with a bowl of feather-light couscous but I only needed a spoonful or two to soak up the last of the sauce. Orlando’s Turkish pizza was oblong-shaped like a little boat. It was filled with spicy shredded lamb, and topped with fresh rocket and a drizzle of yoghurt. The calamari was lightly cooked, spicy, and sensational.

There was plenty to watch out on the water as we dined and watched the light fade: we each chose what leisure cruiser we would buy with that elusive lottery win, and wondered what these people do for a living.

Everything was washed down with a generous glass or two of Mountadam Shiraz from the Barossa region.

Mecca Bah, 55a Newquay Promenade, Docklands

(03) 9642 1300

>Yeah Maan

~ maireaddoyle ~ 2 Comments

>There is only one Caribbean restaurant in Melbourne (well there is a cafe called Babble On Babylon but it is only open in the daytime). It happens to be that our local bus takes us straight there, through the city centre and out the other side, right to the nearest corner. Some friends had warned us that the food was good but the portions were tiny, but we needed to see for ourselves.

And so it was that we took five mates along there one Saturday night to see if it was anything worth talking about.


Yeah Maan is a tiny terraced building, converted from a house, with enough seating for about forty downstairs and another small dining room upstairs. Instead of the expected reggae blasting out, we were delighted to hear some classic soca tunes. We had a reservation but they didn’t seem to know anything about that. We were shown to the upstairs room, and although we had explained that it was a reservation for seven people, we were asked to sit at a smaller table until we insisted we needed more room.

Once everybody had arrived we were pretty desperate for a drink – or at least some glasses for our BYO wine. In the end Orlando obliged by going downstairs himself. We thought that might shake up the waitresses, but we waited quite a long time for anybody to come and see if we were OK. It was the girl’s first night so she didn’t know much, but she was sweet.

Apart from myself and Orlando, we had three people who had only eaten Caribbean food in our house (Mena, Eileen and Kelvin), and two people who had no idea what they were in for (Australian Ida and Italian Viviana). The Trinidadian doubles served up were generous and talked about for days; Mena’s Stamp ‘n’ Go was a huge portion and absolutely divine. Orlando and I both had the Pick Up Salt Fish, which was saltfish mixed with onions, tomato and peppers served on a dumpling. It reminded both of us how much we love saltfish, and I promised to go get some and start cooking it again. Pity we can’t get ackee anywhere though…

The chilly janga roti (chilli prawns) were not too hot and spicy, which was probably just as well for the virgins. You could probably ask for them to be made a bit hotter. Kelvin chose the aloo pies, a huge portion of spicy potato balls which were tasty enough but nothing exciting.

The mains were even better. Eileen was served an enormous portion of jerk chicken and cassava fries, which she struggled manfully to consume, but ended up pleading with everybody to finish for her. She said it was lovely, but not as nice as Orlando’s (well, you can’t get Walkerswood here either).

The curried goat was really lovely, but I forgot to ask for mine to be made hot, so although it was tasty there was no kick to it. Orlando had asked for his hot, but it wasn’t much better than mine. The rice and peas were made with small kidney beans (guess what? No gunga peas in Aus…) but it worked fine. Mena scored again with the ginger tamarind chicken which was beautifully seasoned, a good strong kick. The calypso chicken looked good, but even for the virgins it seemed very mildly-flavoured.

The service didn’t get any better. We helped ourselves to more napkins, water and fresh glasses from behind our personal minibar in the corner, and raided the other tables for new candles for the table. Even when we wanted the bill, it warranted another trip downstairs. Maybe if we had been seated down with everybody else it might have been better.

Nonetheless, we were not in any hurry and the relaxed vibe certainly didn’t ruin the evening. We put the world to rights without fear of annoying other diners with our noise, we finished a few bottles of wine and enjoyed some fine West Indian food. The rumours of small portions were well and truly scotched, and we will definitely come back again for more.

>Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander Winery

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

> A summer’s evening in Healesville brought me to the new Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander pizzeria-bistro-artisan bakery on the outskirts of town. It is a modern new complex where you can tour the winemaking facility, try any of their wines, have lunch on the terrace or dinner in the airy restaurant.

I sat at the bar and tried a glass of their chilled rose. The wines are stored in temperature-controlled fridges and the beer casks are in full sight behind glass, rather than hidden in the cellar.

The staff were incredibly friendly and helpful, and the restaurant was fully booked for their regular Curry Night that evening.

I am looking forward to coming back to try their Harry’s Monster, a huge cabernet/shiraz/merlot/ petit verdot blend retailing at $49 a bottle.