melbourne

sassy’s jamaican kitchen

~ maireaddoyle ~ 2 Comments

>376 St Georges Road, Fitzroy North
www.sassyskitchen.com.au

A pre-birthday dinner on a Saturday night, and a (relatively) new Caribbean restaurant to try out. We head out to Sassy’s Jamaican Kitchen in Fitzroy.

The reviews online are consistent and favourable: be prepared to wait, but the food is fantastic. We arrive not long after eight to a less-than-half-full restaurant: maybe eight or nine other diners scattered around a spacious room, sparsely decorated with Jamaica posters and yukka plants, and with a gentle reggae vibe in the background.

Our waiter – the only waiter – offers us chilled water and promises to return with glasses for our bottle of Chandon. In the end, we pour our bubbly into our water glasses. The menu is sparse but enticing. Apart from a few vegetarian starters and mains, there is a choice of fish or chicken, both jerked. Curried goat is on special. In order to try everything, we choose jerk chicken to share as a starter, then one jerk fish and one curried goat.

An hour passes. Happily, I am in good company, and the conversation flows. Most of the other diners leave. Others arrive and leave with takeaway boxes of food, which is fascinating as we have not heard a phone ring once. Sassy himself comes out and starts to clear tables. I wonder why he is not cooking our food, or perhaps whether our order has been lost.

Finally, after almost an hour and a half, our starter arrives. Two pieces of barbecued jerk chicken, a generous dollop of yellow vegetable curry and an upside-down bowl of rice and peas, with a couple of piping-hot sideplates to eat from. To be honest, it is not the best start. The chicken is not heavily seasoned at all, not with chilli, not with anything much. It has either been well over-cooked, or cooked earlier and carelessly re-heated. The vegetable curry is actually quite tasty, and without it the rest of the dish would have been far too dry.

Moments after taking our plates away, the main courses arrive. The same upside-down bowl of rice and peas accompany each dish. The curried goat is not off the bone as confirmed, but it is pretty delicious. Not at all spicy-hot, but very well seasoned and very slowly cooked. Pity there is not more of it. The two smallish pieces of jerk fish are delicious too, one more spicy than the other to my taste. Again, without the vegetable curry this dish would have been far too dry, but overall it was enjoyable.

The rice and peas are a disappointment. The rice is far too dry, and the peas are kidney beans. Would have been good to see proper gunga or pigeon or even azuki peas used. And despite the diners being in single digits all night, we still have to list for our waiter what we’d eaten so he could make up our bill. He tells us this is his third night working here, and it’s the busiest night so far.

Nonetheless, it was a pleasant evening. Not sure that I would hold Sassy’s up as a perfect example of good Caribbean food: it needs a bit more chilli heat and a bit more care in both food preparation and service to get better marks. Maybe even a bottle of pepper sauce on each table so customers can adjust the heat of their food to taste.

That said, I get the best Caribbean food at home all the time so I know I am fortunate.

Will it be a regular haunt? Not sure if we would ever hop in the car and take a twenty-minute drive across town for any of the dishes we ate. But at $46 for two (not including $5 corkage which we think they just forgot) it wasn’t a bad night’s value.

Sassy's Jamaican Kitchen on Urbanspoon

>Seddon Deadly Sins

~ maireaddoyle ~ 1 Comment

>Sunday breakfast, and time to drag ourselves away from our usual haunt, Cafe le Chien in Seddon. Orlando is convinced that equally good but cheaper breakfasts are lurking, so we explore the competition.

Seddon Deadly Sins is tucked away opposite the Greek Orthodox church on Victoria Street in Seddon. It looks pretty small with a few tables outside from which to watch the pre-wedding antics of the people across the road, and a handful of tables inside by the kitchen. But there are tempting little signs on the back door, one to a vine-filled courtyard and one to The Good Room upstairs (no kids allowed).

We sit in by the kitchen and watch the action. Teas come quickly but we have to ask for strainers. The cups and saucers are not pristine: they are freshly washed, but all have tannin stains on them. Yet again, I have to explain to a waitress that providing more hot water does not allow me to control the strength of tea to my liking. Only using less tea leaves will ensure weaker tea. Why is this so hard to understand?

We order something close to our usual. I have scrambled eggs with side orders of mushroom and roasted tomato. Orlando chooses the Spanish eggs – two poached eggs in a skillet, topped with a spicy tomato salsa and chorizo sausage, served with toasted Turkish bread and a side of bacon. The bacon is laid on top of the skillet so the salsa makes it a bit soggy, but it looks good and smells amazing. O is happy enough. My breakfast was perfectly fine, but the scrambled eggs were not as lovely as Le Chien’s (probably because they are not laced with vast quantities of butter). As I am on a health kick, it’s probably just as well.

One serious downside is the music. We like laid-back weekend music with our late breakfasts: a bit of The Jam or The Stranglers, maybe some Corinne Bailey Rae or old soul. What we get is slightly-too-loud unrecognisable rock. It sets me on edge and suddenly I am ready to leave. The bill is $34 – $6 less than Le Chien.

Will we come back? Yes – we’ll give the place one more try. The owner is really friendly and the staff are pretty responsive. Next time we’ll try The Good Room or the courtyard, which might make the dreadful music a little less intrusive. But I can’t see it becoming a firm favourite.

Seddon Deadly Sins on Urbanspoon

fill up on wine

~ maireaddoyle ~ 2 Comments

>

I just spent three weeks in Ireland, enjoying the availability of lots of wine I don’t normally see: Argentinian, Chilean, Spanish, Italian, French. We can of course get non-Australian wines here, but the range in your average off-licence can be limited, a bit like the range of Australian wines you can get in Europe. So back in Ireland I loved quaffing lots of Chilean merlots, French Côtes du Rhônes, and excellent Spanish riojas, tempranillos and valdepeñas.
Back in Dan Murphy’s yesterday, I was re-stocking my woefully empty shelves. This picture was taken of Dan’s fine wines section. The rest of the warehouse is full of cheaper wines, beers and spirits stacked high.
You can see from the signs that the wines are displayed in order of state of origin. Along the walls are foreign wines, mostly French and Italian, fortifieds (both domestic and foreign) and rarer, more expensive bottles.
The wines lying flat on floor display are then stored below on the square shelves for selection. Each of those display bottles is a different wine from a different producer. It took me over two years to venture outside the three or four aisles of local Victorian wines: why would I? There are literally dozens of wineries within an hour’s drive of my house.
I am fortunate to know the owner or chief winemaker of a handful of wineries personally. I am always tempted to return to their familiar wines but I make a concerted effort to try new bottles, especially after the Melbourne Food and Wine Show when we have the chance to try lots of new producers.
This time I chose half a dozen durifs from Rutherglen – three Campbells and three of The Bruiser. I threw in three bottles of my weekday favourite, Tar and Roses, a Heathcote shiraz (well, it’s Mount Macedon next week and their over-the-counter selection isn’t fantastic). Then I went completely mad, ended up in the South Australia aisles and selected three Torbreck Woodcutters shiraz from 2008, which has superstar written all over it. Can’t wait.

>chez olivier

~ maireaddoyle ~ 1 Comment

>121 Greville Street, Prahran
www.chezolivier.com

Winter Solstice is upon us again. Well: officially tomorrow is the shortest day, but my trip to Sydney tomorrow put the kibosh on our usual 21st June celebration of winter. So a Solstice Eve Sunday luncheon was in order.

Eileen suggested Chez Olivier in Prahran, a tiny slice of France in Greville Street surrounded by chi-chi boutiques and jewellery shops. We found Mena sipping a Baileys at a window seat by the bar, surrounded by pastis bottles, fifties French posters, urns full of wine corks, and French waiters wearing black waistcoats with the tricolour on their breasts.

We gathered at an upstairs table, by a huge picture window – great for natural light. We had the whole floor to ourselves. Mena, in her element, ordered escargots for a starter. Each snail came served in a tiny steel jug, drowning in butter and laced with garlic. My warm goat’s cheese salad had a centrepiece of crusty bread smothered in beautiful chevre. Onion soup, a seafood millefeuille, seafood bisque and a caramelised onion, anchovy and olive tart completed the traditional French fare for first course, all washed down with a good pinot chosen by Kelvin (of course).

After a decent interval, the mains arrived, all accompanied by a 2006 bottle of Sanguine Estate’s Heathcote shiraz. Duck ruled, with Mena choosing the magret of the day served on creamy mash and wilted greens, Robyn choosing the “Frozzie duck”, double-roasted and served with lemon and pepper mash, bok choi and pickled ginger, and a few more opting for the cassoulet a la “Jacky”, with duck confit and pulses.

My bouillabaisse was full of fresh salmon, prawns, mussels and scallops, but could have been a lot more tomatoey and a lot more garlickey. Orlando’s baked salmon was served with creamy mash, and looked good but Orlando thought it ordinary. A second bottle of the Heathcote was ordered, but like a lot of the wine list they were out of stock so we upgraded to a 2006 Sanguine Estate d”Orsa shiraz which did very nicely.

Desserts looked and tasted good for the most part. The mousse au chocolat (Orlando’s choice, naturally) was a huge helping served with fresh strawberries. A few chose the “self-saucing, self-indulging chocolate fondant” which lived up to its legend. My tarte tatin was a little disappointing: none of the bite of a good cooking apple in there. And Mena completed her classic French lunch with crepes Suzette complete with flaming Grand Marnier, which she pronounced divine.

Interestingly, from Sunday to Thursday the restaurant charges $11 a head for whatever wine you have chosen, so despite the wine list suggesting a total bill of about $200 for the wine alone, that is all we were charged – $11 a head. This certainly made up for the limited availability of some wines on the list. Total bill for seven came to $598, which was about $85 a head.

By then, we were alone in the restaurant, the wait staff had mostly gone home and those remaining were preparing for the evening’s sitting. The light was fading as we wrapped ourselves in coats and scarves against the chilly evening air. Quite a civilised solstice lunch to mark the passage of time in winter. Tomorrow, the days will get longer by a cock’s stride, and we can look forward to spring.

As for Chez Olivier, despite one or two pedestrian meals, our overall experience was lovely, and fantastic value too. I can imagine this will become a favourite winter haunt.

Chez Olivier - Le Bistro on Urbanspoon

>the noodle house

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

>1 Southbank Boulevard, Southbank
www.thenoodlehouse.com.au

A drunken start to the evening saw Eileen and Kelvin escorting me down Southbank away from the Melbourne Good Food & Wine Show, to fill me up with food before sending me home. The Noodle House is a newish addition to the restaurants along Southbank, near World and Il Primo Posto. It’s a franchise operation, most of its sister restaurants being in the Middle East: Dubai, Muscat, Kuwait and the like.

Wagamama-like benches and tables lined up inside a warm, weloming space; mad diners sat outside in the freezing cold under gas heaters. We used the tick-box order form to get some dumplings and pork buns going. Later, a platter of Peking Duck with pancakes didn’t have enough hoi sin sauce or shredded vegetables to accompany it, but they went down well nonetheless. Out char kway teow didn’t look like the classic recipe, but it was piping hot and tasty as hell.

Service was pretty good until we wanted the bill, then there was nobody to be found. I can’t comment on value for money as my dining companions very nicely picked up the tab.

The Noodle House is definitely worth another look when slightly more compos mentis, and likely to be a good back-up option when stuck for choices on Southbank.

>Good Food Show 2010 – before and after

~ maireaddoyle ~ Leave a comment

>I started blogging about the Melbourne Good Food Show before this blog existed, so I’ve kept those posts with their older sisters on my other blog.

Follow these links to get the before story and the after story!