Tomato

Enter the food blog/website survey and win three Shun Damascus steel knives

2008-07-24T05:56:44Z

There’s been a lot of agro, some uninformed, on the blogger versus “qualified” journalist debate this year. It’s now time to put some facts behind some of the arguments to see just who read and thinks of what and how often they do it through a survey of food and drink blog and website readers.

Enter my survey here of Australian and New Zealand readers between now and the end of August. Please pass it on to your friends as the more people that enter the more valid the results will be. Note: the survey and prize is only open to Australian and New Zealand-based readers.

Also ensure you leave your email to enter the Kitchenware Direct draw for a 3 piece Shun knife each with an amazing Damascus steel blade. And if you have a blog enter your blog address as I’m compiling a definitive list of local food and drink blogs. Individual details will remain confidential and will not be related to the survey answers which are aggregated.

Back in June Leena (who at the time was studying Gastronomy in Adelaide) published the results of her survey of 1,800 people from the US on their food website reading habits:

“A majority of respondents felt food blogs had equally reliable information as print food journalism. They also tended to read food blogs more often than print food journalism. For example, 69% of respondents consulted print food journalism monthly while 37% consulted print food journalism websites weekly. But 79% of respondents consulted U.S. food blogs at least daily, if not multiple times a day, crediting their increased usage to a food blogger’s candid writing style, diverse voice and range of topics, as well as their approachable personalities.”

Leena urged me to launch my own survey, which is a tweaked version of hers to reflecting the local market (while trying to keep it short).

Thanks to my deal with the commercial devil (and I mean devil in a good way) Kitchenware Direct I’m able to offer the prize of a three piece classic set of Shun knives as spruiked by Neil Perry himself. In a normal shop this set - a 8.5cm paring knife, a 15cm utility knife and a 20cm chef’s knife - would set you back $449. Even at Kitchenware Direct they would cost $299.

As part of the deal Kitchenware Direct is also offering free shipping on anything bought during the next 30 days.

Simply enter the coupon code “tomatom” for free shipping.

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Bloggers meet without meat

2008-07-22T04:52:48Z

Just a reminder for this Saturday. We can’t book a table during the day so we’ll have to take pot luck on a table.

Where: Lentil as Anything, Abbotsford Convent. Later: Handsome Steve’s House of Refreshment

When: Saturday 26th July from 12.30pm

Who: Looks like a dozen or so of us. All comers welcome bloggers and/or readers.

Why: Why not?

Bring: Just yourself. Perhaps a camera.

See you there. Text me on 0425 736 993 if you are not sure which group we are.

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Truffle hunters come home victorious

2008-07-21T10:40:58Z

Spice finds a giant Perigord truffle.

The whole of Australia is Perigord truffle crazy right now. In the past few weeks alone I’ve eaten some of the best and most aromatic truffle dishes that I have ever come across. Chefs report they have never seen so many from Australia summer ones imported from France.

Today, one hour out of Melbourne about ten minutes the other side of some McBungalows I was part of a group hunting for truffles led by Spice (aka Mazasuka Star Struck), who is two weeks away from giving birth to pups, and her owner Sue Brimacombe.

We are on Drago and Ivka Javor’s five year old plantation of some 210 saplings which yielded its first truffle last year.

Digging out the truffle with a spoon.

Spice, a two and a half year-old Australian Sheperd, was trained with truffle oil on a piece of cotton wool for a month or so. She snuffles at the base of the tree and will scrape the ground where there may be a truffle.

Ivka Javor sniffs her prized truffle

Ivka then sniffs the ground folowed by a few of the chefs on the Australian Culinary Federation outing.

A couple of Perigord truffles the size of marbles are snuffled out and this giant one, about 140 grams dirty. Drago says that the ideal size is about 70 or 80 grams.

Spice is rewarded and on to the next tree.

The whopper.

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This chair must be stopped

2008-07-15T04:07:32Z

Look around you. There is probably one similar near you right now. This is the New Zealand Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc ( the most popular and ubiqitous white wine in Australia) of cafe chairs.
I keep tripping up over it everywhere. This picture was taken in Hamilton (worth avoiding). I’ve seen it in the Yarra Valley. It’s spread like a rash through my home suburb St Kilda - Mirka at Tolarno, Banff, Spuntino etc.
Are we doomed to sit on generic chairs while we enjoy the sunshine outside our favourite boutique restaurants and cafes?
Does anybody know where it comes from or what it’s background is?
Could it be an alien life form colonising this planet? Or perhaps a communist plot?
Any sightings outside of Victoria or Australia?

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Blog third birthday celebrations, prizes and my favourite pole dancer

2008-07-10T05:28:11Z

Officially it’s this blog’s third birthday on Friday 11th, the start of a week of celebrations with a top prize for readers.

I’m going to map the current food and drink blogscape and conduct and Aussie version of Leena’s survey of blog readers.

Tonight to celebrate I eat and drink at the Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld on my way to catch up with my favourite pole dancer in the Coonawarra.

My first post on 11 July 2005 intended to make this blog on ethical consuming. At the time there were about 30 food bloggers in Australia. My second post on the 13th was of a similar ilk about that year’s G8 summit and a certain whisky brand. And it wasn’t until the 18th of July that I really decided that I would be writing about food after I posted about the awful farty smell that eminated from out of Subway.

Those were the days before I rediscovered photography (2,237 pics of mainly food uploaded to Flickr) which wasn’t really until I bought my Ricoh GR Digital in December of that year (I now have an Olympus Digital SLR too). I had no idea what macro mode was and actually used flash in restaurants. It was thanks to advice from bloggers such as Helen from Grab your Fork, that I honed my technique (although few pics are up to standard for print publication).

During that time I think I’ve managed to encourage a few people to start blogs and I think there are a couple of hundred people regularly blogging about food and drink now in Australia.

Blogging has done a lot for me in making connections with a diverse group of people. It also led to my current column in the Herald Sun Extrafood and reviewing for The Age Good Food Guide. It’s now a part of my life, provides a support network for somebody who freelances at home and I suppose it’s impossible to stop now that it has entangled itself so far into my life.

This is my 679th post and I’d like to thanks all the readers who have visited and contributed to the 3,821 comments.

I promise to try harder. Back very soon.

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First glimpse at Andrew McConnell’s Cumulus Inc in Flinders Lane

2008-07-07T23:53:12Z

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt writing about the opening of restaurants is that it rarely goes to plan. As a writer it is easy to be caught out. Openings can be delayed by months or even years. And so it was that on Thursday the 26th I rocked up to Cumulus Inc (45 Flinders Lane +61 3 9650 1445) for supper to find the chef (Andrew McConnell of Three, One , Two and formerly Circa The Prince) and architect, his wife Pascale Gomes-McNabb, and the smell of drying varnish.

Luckily I had my mate James, my construction consultant, to sniff out the joint. The level of detail impressed him especially the rubber knobs under the chairs and bar stools protecting the wooden floor (which was itself damaged in construction delaying the launch before the last minute delay). There’s the two bars flanking the main space, marble beside the open kitchen and an impressive specially processed steel bar by the, um, bar, which is lit by the large metal warehouse windows.

The next night the Martini Monster found it closed also while I was still crammed into the space the size of a matchbox in a tram. It left us to score two lucky bar seats at Movida (although the MM wasn’t so lucky with the maitre d’ she handed her mobile number to; we’ll never be able to return).
As I write this Cumulus still hasn’t got its liquor license but at least it is open for breakfast and lunch (although not supper) and some pretty good coffee.
I managed to find the joint open for Saturday breakfast on a recent scouting expedition in search of the perfect all-terrain underpants. To appreciate Cumulus Inc you need to appreciate what is known as moderation. I’m fed up with breakfasts in Melbourne because most cafes show no restraint. The portions are huge and I usually leave half of what’s on my plate. I’d pay the same for half the food and my betting is that a few others would two.
What I want is not one huge bowl of gunk but a proper breakfast, which usually means three courses.
This is exactly the sort of breakfast McConnell provides. I start with some fruit, melon and strawberries (okay, I know it’s not the season but they were good).

I then move onto sardines, five trimmed fillets on a square of toast, the seasoning and garnish restrained. Jak has a perfectly cooked eggwith smoked salmon, dill and the interesting addition of sorrel which has a lemony zing.

At this point a work colleague of Jak’s arrives sometime before noon. It turns out Cumulus has a similar breakfast demarkation to McDonald’s and they have to wait until midday to order lunch (quail nicely presented on a skewer and some great looking pork belly) which like everywhere else nowadays is to share.
The food appears to be good value and you’d shouldn’t expect trencherman-sized portions. What you get is food prepared with the kind of attention to detail that you’d expect from the chef.

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Contribute to the open source restaurant

2008-07-02T00:40:51Z

Jeff Jarvis (via NYT) is twittering and blogging about an open source restaurant:

“I twittered that I was having fun writing the chapter in my book about what a restaurant run on Googlethink might look like (besides being decorated in gaudy primary colors)…
…I have lots of ideas about an open and transparent restaurant operation, experience, and community. If you have any ideas you’d like to share, please join in.”

I reckon we’ve had open source and transparent wine lists in Australia for sometime. It’s called BYO. And it is coming back. For example, BYO is available every night at Esposito at Toofey’s and Thursday nights at Libertine for a bargain $10. St Jude’s Cellars is doing something similar with its attached bottle shop where $15 is added to the retail price of the wine drunk at the restaurant.

Wine lists cause a lot of confusion with restaurants charging roughly 2.5 times wholesale price sometimes for the very stuff we drink at home. In Nobu’s case the mark-up is three times.

What about an open source menu? Could that work on a BYO model too? Diners turn up with ingredients, possibly home caught or grown, and leave it to the chef. Diners pool ingredients with other tables.

Perhaps, the restaurant has an iphone app which will identify what all the other diners are bringing to the table at the request of the chef. Each diner simple pays $10 for each course for preparation.

As with the internet the chef has to deal with a lot of crap.

Personally, I’ll turn up with a locally sourced Perigord truffle, some Tuna (but unlike Nobu I can’t source otoro direct from Port Lincoln), eggs from my neighbours hens and beets and salad leaves from my inner city veggie garden.

What will you bring and what do you want your open source restaurant to be like?

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Caravan Cafe serves the best burger in country Victoria

2008-07-01T07:32:00Z

The Caravan Cafe in Seymour doesn’t look like much. And it really used to be a caravan when Stella Salakowski opened it back in 1956 after arriving from Poland a few years earlier.
Salakowski sadly died on Mother’s Day this year, aged 94. Her last visit to the cafe was in March in a wheelchair and she wanted to get up and help. I was going to say “flip” burgers that that would debase her artform, the one she performed under she retired at the age of 90 after a stroke.
The actual recipe for the pattie is so secret that even Salakowski’s priest wasn’t allowed into the room when she mixed it. She passed the recipe to her daughter Barbara Zegir, who at the age of 62 has worked in the cafe since she was ten years old and is now taking one year off.
From today Jenny Dee, who is related by marriage, is keeper of the secret.

This burger is the stuff of legend. I know people who would just drive to Seymour on a Saturday night to eat one or two. The key to this burger is in the balance of the egg, pineapple, cheese and pattie - plus the bun. The bun itself has a crisp slightly caramelised crust (not as much as the excellent Rockpool wagyu burger, the best in Melbourne).
The meat pattie is not to large or small. And that’s a key point. There are a lot of people out there who equate good with size and they are wrong. This burger leaves you wanting more rather than wondering when you will get to the end of it.
At $7 the burger with the lot gives Neil Perry’s $17 wagyu a run for its money. In reality the two burgers are completely different beasts eaten in completely different contexts.
So when you are driving up the Hume Highway go straight past the first service centre you see. Don’t even think of Maccas. Turn off and drive through the main street of Seymour. The cafe is on your left by the pub.
It is a five minute diversion that is worth the effort.
Friday lunchtime we had to queue behind eleven people. Be prepared.

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The Funky Booze Bus challenge on blood splattered Fitzroy St

2008-06-29T01:49:31Z

The Funky Booze Bus challenge on Fitzroy St: see who can get the most drunk

“prominent Melbourne nightclub owner Peter Iwaniuk labelled the meeting “deceptive and biased” and said he was angry that no hospitality industry representatives were asked to speak.

He argued that many of the suggestions were ridiculous and said licensed venues were not to blame for the city’s social problems. He accused the speakers of provoking trouble rather than working productively to address concerns.

“Encouraging a lynch mob mentality in residents who wish to turn entertainment precincts into sleepy hollows is hardly about restoring the balance, the theme of the Government’s new alcohol action plan,” he said.”

From the Saturday Age

11.09 Sunday 29 June. My Sony- Ericcson is buggered and I want to take a picture. There is blood splattered on the street outside Area 61 on Fitzroy Street and down towards the Seven Eleven. Pretty much any Sunday or Monday morning there will be blood splattered on the pavement somewhere on the street.

7.45 Saturday 28th June. Grey Street, corner of Clyde Street. Ten men in dinner suits are pissing against a wall in the street. Their executive bus is stopped on Grey Street.

Peter Iwaniuk you are biased and have no fucking idea what you are talking about.

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First underground restaurants. Now underground biscuits

2008-06-25T23:46:53Z

Perhaps it’s the different rules of society and etiquette in Japan but it is a very strange place when you need an introduction to eat at a restaurant.

I suppose London has a similar thing happening with its traditional Gentlemen’s Clubs. Then there is the more modern Milk and Honey in New York, and now London (and opening the less exclusive Match Bar in QV fairly soon once a few liquor licensing problems are overcome).

Anyway, last week I was talking to Masako Fukui from Kei’s Kitchen (you may have read about their classes on Grab Your Fork) about kaiseki and she was telling me about the culture of restaurants in Japan - and the biscuits too.

“There is a very exclusive biscuit company in Japan called Kaishindo and they even have a website but you can’t buy biscuits from them. You have to have an introduction.”

Masako has eaten some that her mother Kei, a kaiseki chef of over 20 years experience, got through a friend. On her website she says:

“This practice of turning back first timer is known as “ichigensan”, and for example, Kaishindo, a most exquisite handmade biscuit company, will only accept orders from people who have had a personal introduction into the clientele circle. This is the 10th year of my desperate search for an introduction”

Masako says that there are lots of restaurants in Japanese that would not even be considered in Australia as a restaurant. Many may be in dark dingy places that are difficult to find. “They do not have toilets. There are also a lot or restaurants that just won’t allow anybody off the street come in.”

“It’s very exclusive. Somebody who knows the restaurant has to take you there. Sometimes they serve the most exquisite food. But as a food critic or a regular punter they won’t allow in.”

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