Words and Flavours | Melbourne food and book reviews

Italy I: Pasta

2009-09-26T18:37:00.007+10:00

Our Italy trip was no more pasta laden than an average week of eating in Melbourne. Our attention was far more diverted by cured meats and delicacies, both savoury and sweet, from street-side shops. Pasta undoubtedly deserves its own mention, however, particularly since it formed part of some very worthwhile dining experiences.Ristorante Vecchio Falconiere in Padova looked like a great find.

Va Piano

2009-09-26T15:34:00.005+10:00

126C Nicholson St, Brunswick EastI love Brunswick. I love its range of food stores, unpretensiously provisioning cravings for any number of cuisines from around the Mediterranean. I love its capacity to support cafe after cafe. Before long, the ratio of foodstores and cafes to houses in Brunswick will be 1:1. I love the way its locals will drive, ride or walk past any new outlet with faces of

Hardware Societe

2009-09-25T18:14:00.003+10:00

120 Hardware Street, City; (03) 9078 5992 Beetroot's former owners return with a new venture across the road from their old cafe, which itself is recently closed and re-opened as the disturbingly named McSpankys. (I don't know what the chances are of someone googling 'beetroot' and 'spank' in the same search, but I guess they'll be disappointed if they end up here!)Hardware Societe could not be

Budapest III: Take away?

2009-09-16T22:08:00.006+10:00

Here we have schnitzel, Budapest-style. Note that the side-dish of veg was ordered separately; otherwise it's just a schnitzel with it's own postcode on a plate. When we'd conquered as much of our dishes as jetlag and their richness allowed, the waiter asked if we'd like them taken away. We replied in the affirmative and he came back a few minutes later with the schnitzel and remaining vegetables

Budapest II: Stuffed

2009-09-14T14:59:00.006+10:00

Hungarians are quite keen on stuffed meats, often stuffing them with other meats. Pork and beef are probably their more common choices, with chicken appearing less frequently (and normally with the paprikás sauce, i.e. with sour cream added).The delightful-looking dish below is from our first night in Budapest. We arrived in Budapest on a Friday, the day after St Stephens Day (and the Red Bull

Budapest I: The problem with paprika

2009-09-13T22:15:00.012+10:00

It's been all quite on the W&F front for a little while. Recently, that's because I've been in Europe, exploring Budapest; Ravenna and Padova in Italy; and the north-west of Spain.The trip was three weeks rife with culinary, artistic and visual delights, plenty of which will no doubt find their way up here in the weeks to come.Where to start? Well, the beginning's not a bad place, which takes us

Añada

2009-08-12T19:08:00.000+10:00

197 Gertrude St, Fitzroy; 03 9415 6101It's so hot right now. Food reviewers around Melbourne are loving Añada's work. Clearly Melbourne's diners are fond of tapas too, given the struggles many have getting into Movida Next Door (which doesn't take bookings), and Añada (which, thankfully does). Despite its more welcome policy, even on a random Wednesday they had but two seats available: in at 6pm,

'Turner's Paintbox' - Paul Morgan

2009-07-20T12:25:00.005+10:00

Novels based around the life and works of a renowned artist can go one of two ways: either the story unravelling as the reader learns about the influences and motivations of artistic genius; or the reader discovers how much the author knows about their chosen subject, without it doing too much to enhance the story.Richard Flanagan's Wanting achieves the former as it interlaces the late years of

'Revolutionary Road' - Richard Yates

2009-07-11T17:52:00.003+10:00

To read Revolutionary Road is to be reminded that brilliance as a writer does not guarantee longevity. Yates' novel is a splendid one, yet it was out of print before Sam Mendes adapted it, and cast his glowing wife Kate Winslet as the acerbic April Wheeler, a woman who procures a drastic end to her angered marriage to Frank.This is not April's story, however. This is the story of a man trapped

The Breakfast Club

2009-07-05T21:37:00.005+10:00

206 St Georges Road, Northcote; 0418 379 911It's amazing what a cafe can do in a small space to sate suburbanites. Amazing too just how many gorgeous sets of retro crockery are around for said cafes to utilise to good effect.This tiny cafe, tucked away amidst flats, houses and the odd shop on St Georges Rd could one day be as definitive as its namesake film. There may only be three or four tables

Lomond Hotel

2009-07-05T21:13:00.004+10:00

225 Nicholson St, Brunswick East; 03 9380 1752It's amazing what can hide behind the walls of a corner pub. You might wonder on occasion if the Lomond Hotel is still open - it doesn't flaunt itself and neither does the clientele.When you do step inside, however, there's something of a tardis effect. To one side is a linen-and-silver-cutlery restaurant with a high-end menu. Through another door is

'The Slap' - Christos Tsiolkas

2009-06-15T11:28:00.001+10:00

The book everyone's talking about. That's the word on the street about The Slap. For everyone to be talking about it, the book must have an element of controversy, and that is one indisputable feature of Christos Tsiolkas' fourth novel. It's not controversial in that it tackles taboo topics in a radical way. Instead, it's got everyone talking because it's about us: it's about a group of people of

Cafeklatsch III: Fuel, Red Box III, Big Dish

2009-06-07T22:34:00.004+10:00

Fuel: 4 Margaret St, Moonee Ponds; 03) 9375 4499Red Box: 317 Sydney Road, Brunswick; 03 9387 8699Big Dish: 70 Wales St; Ph TBCWho would have thought that Moonee Ponds is only as far from Brunswick East as the city is? Probably anyone who'd taken the time to look further west on a map than Melville Rd! Puckle St, leading from Pascoe Vale Rd down to Moonee Ponds Station is dotted with cafes,

Provincial Hotel: $10 pie and pot

2009-05-31T21:14:00.005+10:00

299 Brunswick St, Fitzroy; 03 9810 0042I love a mid-week deal. We headed to the Provincial Hotel for the inaugural run of their $10 pie and pot. The pie options cater to the red-, white- and non-meaters: there's steak, chicken and mushroom, or pumpkin (and feta?). The pot of choice is Boags Draught (beats Carlton at least).The Provincial is one of those shabby-chic places - all distressed

Koliba Czech and Slovak Restaurant

2009-05-25T17:09:00.005+10:00

11 Johnston St, Collingwood; 03 9417 3797It's the simple things that can make you happy. For me, one of those is when you call to book an ethnic restaurant, and your booking is taken by someone who is clearly from that region.Such was the case when we arranged to go to Koliba one chilly Friday evening. I'd been waiting for the weather to cool sufficiently so that I could make good on Sarah's

'Food Investigators' - SBS TV

2009-05-24T20:17:00.009+10:00

7.30 pm Wednesday, SBSSBS earned themselves an appreciative following with their luscious series Food Safari. Maeve O'Maera has so far presented three series in one of television's most coveted roles, scouring Melbourne and Sydney for the best purveyors of a giddying range of national cuisines.The series spawned its own website and mailing list. The website in particular showed that the producers

'Gould's Book of Fish' - Richard Flanagan

2009-05-16T14:15:00.004+10:00

After an ambivalent response to Flanagan's latest book, Wanting - in which I highly respected the writing, but struggled with some conceptual realisations - I prioritised reading one of his earlier works, choosing the intriguing Gould's Book of Fish.This earlier is as audacious in its execution as Wanting was in its breadth of characters. In modern Hobart, a man finds an antique tome - the Book

De Los Santos

2009-05-11T15:01:00.010+10:00

175 Brunswick St, Fitzroy; 03 9417 1567I could sum up my visit to De Los Santos in the words of a close, food-loving friend: 'I guess everywhere can't be fabulous'. As I was considering how to write the restaurant up, I was struggling to come up with the words that indicated disappointment, but didn't engender a completely negative impression of the place. And 'not fabulous' is an indirect, but

Western Australia

2009-04-22T22:06:00.015+10:00

As we've already discovered in South Australia and Tasmania, making travel plans centred on Australia's great wine regions is a sure way to develop a holiday punctuated by exciting tastes and experiences.Margaret River is a special region, situated so close to some truly stunning coastline features, with crystalline beachs of aqua, turquoise and white, and phenomenal limestone caves with hidden

'Wanting' - Richard Flanagan

2009-04-22T22:05:00.005+10:00

In a magnificent piece of comedy, Stephen Fry postulates that 'there's language, and there's speech. There's chess, and there's a game of chess'. In the case of Richard Flanagan's Wanting, this statement could be revised to say there's an idea, and there's the execution of that idea.In this novel, the former is well formed, and, in an unusual move for a fiction book, quite explicitly explained by

Cafeklatsch II: North II, Gingerlee IV, Cavallero

2009-04-14T18:53:00.000+10:00

North: 717 Rathdowne St, Carlton North; 03 9348 1276Gingerlee: 117 Lygon St, Brunswick East; 03 9380 4430Cavallero: 300 Smith St, Collingwood; 03 9417 1377It's not breaking any ground to say that Melbourne has a surfeit of cafes. It's also established that in certain parts of town, a certain style of cafe has become de rigueur. So what do they all do to differentiate themselves from each another?

Pancakes, pikelets: Auction Rooms, Enni

2009-04-02T10:54:00.006+11:00

Auction Rooms: 103-107 Errol St, North Melbourne; 03 9326 7749Enni: 915 High St, Thornbury; 03 9484 8288The press was abuzz with news of Auction Rooms when it opened in mid-2008. Matt Preston was particularly glowing in Epicure about its interior. Despite its soaring ceilings and double-shopfront width, it is a cosy place to be, and it offers one of the broadest range of seating options Melbourne

Najla

2009-03-29T18:55:00.007+11:00

102 High St Northcote; (03) 9482 1168When I mentioned to a couple of Westgarthians that I'd been to 'that new Turkish place' on High St, their responses seemed strangely understated. That may have been because my description of Najla was a little skewed by the wine I'd been drinking across the road at Bar Nancy (Crittenden Pinot Gris - lovely to see by the glass). Najla has in fact been on High

Pubs not so grubby: Union Hotel and Prince Patrick

2009-03-29T12:59:00.002+11:00

Prince Patrick: 135 Victoria St, Collingwood; 03 9416 1455Union Hotel: 109 Union St, Brunswick; 03 9388 2235Pubs are known for re-inventing themselves. It seems the desire to drink in a particular locality is fairly constant, but our taste for the surroundings in which we drink needs to be regularly updated. As a rule, these re-inventions shift the pub away from the seedy end of the scale and

'The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow' - A J McKinnon

2009-03-16T14:52:00.009+11:00

A J (Sandy) McKinnon presents us with a travel narrative more Thor Heyerdahl than Frances Mayes (as a man who can survive a whole day on one sandwich, it's hardly a food journal!) With a couple of interruptions, McKinnon rowed a Mirror dinghy (christened Jack de Crow) from Shropshire (near the Welsh border) to the Black Sea in Romania. He mostly traversed canals, but it was not all placid sailing