Demi-Tasse

Demi-Tasse

550 Lonsdale St

Melbourne 3000

Telephone: 03 9642 3571

Opening Hours: Mon-Fri Breakfast and Lunch

My favourite South Australian is in town and confined to the legal district for the duration of her stay. Lawyer jokes aside, this is actually a pretty terrific outcome on the feeding front. As the number of eager eagles on Masterchef would suggest (most in fact originating from this very block of bricks in Melbourne), the legal community takes its eating very seriously.

The edible (and other) delights of King St are just a block away. But it’s easy to get distracted with closer café heavyweights like Earl Canteen (luxe, lush sandwiches that have been blogged about extensively – go for the Otway pork belly), SMXL (try a ‘moave’ with your excellent cuppa), and Le Traiteur (a long lunch experience, start with the tomato consommé). If you prefer to go down the road less taken, however, you can’t go past Demi-Tasse. Which is funny, because it is very, very easy to go past Demi-Tasse. This dame’s not much to look at from the outside.

But she’s a Hepburn beauty within, with similar style. Dark wooden panellings with matching furniture, bottled beauties up top, a literally angelic mural, and lush red leather booths.

Though I question whether Hepburn could have maintained her slim physique if she’d frequented a place like this very often. The food here is hearty, homemade, and addictive. And the service is just as warm and lovely.

We make with the meatballs.

A very traditional mix of pork and veal served with tomato sugo and crusty bread ($10.50). I couldn’t think of a better dish for a cold Melbourne day, and even though it’s spring, it’s clear we won’t be in shortage of those anytime soon. The meatballs had great bite, they came apart in juicy chunks and we mopped them up with the bread and sugo.

And I never say no to a house-made pie.

Beef Bourguignon with tomato relish and green salad ($7.50)

It’s always a pleasant surprise to receive a ‘gourmet’ pie in a city café that isn’t manufactured by Boscastle. This was very sizeable, and a bargain for the price. The pastry was delicately layered, and I especially enjoyed the tomato relish, which had a very unusual sweetness and tang reminiscent of chutney. The filling itself was more than decent, though a little dry. If you like your meat meaty, i.e. not indiscernibly minced, it’s definitely the pie for you. Other pie options include vegetable or a very interesting-sounding chicken fricassée.

Or pick something else from its extensive and extensively tempting menu.

Demi-Tasse: petite with plenty of pizzazz. And particularly important if you work in this area: its coffee packs a punch as well.

Merchant (Revisited)

Merchant

Rialto 495 Collins St

Melbourne 3000

Telephone: 03 9614 7688

A great first date with a restaurant is a tricky beast to handle. Arrange a second and risk dissipating the heady magic of that maiden moment. Stoically preserve the past and always wonder if it might have been matched, if you’d only had the mojo.

Or, like me, wait until you’re sent an innocuous article referencing one damning detail of the affair (an enticing recipe for drunken pasta swimming with clams), and against your better judgment find yourself calling at nine in the morning on a Wednesday with all the breathless desire of a Mills & Boons heroine, wailing for vongole with breakfast.

The attraction appears less mutual. I’m told dispassionately to turn up at a more appropriate noontime hour and try for a walk-in table (in a compromise with current trends, half the restaurant cannot be reserved). Ever the willing wench, I concede, and a second date with the Merchant is made.

I rope in an accomplice to provide objectivity to my assessment. He orders the gnocchi and proves suitably less convinced.

Gnocchi, ragu’ de cinghiale ($20)

A real looker but the gnocchi is a mush-mash of textures, soft but not supple. More than a little disappointing, considering we’re at a Grossi. The accompanying spiced wild boar ragu is exceptional, however, as fulsomely rich and tempestuous as its name suggests.

Meanwhile, I'm finding it difficult to empathise; my cravings are being convincingly corrupted by a genuinely charming dish of spaghetti with clams.

Spaghetti ca le caparele ($23)

It’s as generous as I remember, the clams taste fresh and clean, and the lithe, light sauce of garlic and white wine sensuously clings to every strand. My only jibe was that it was slightly under-seasoned, but this was readily remedied by a sprinkling of salt from the table.

To prolong my Merchant encounter, the dessert menu is requested, but I pick a beguiling slice of chocolate tart from the display instead.

Chocolate tart ($8.50)

The tart is neither the sleek nor shiny production I’ve come to expect from Italian pastries: coarser in texture, laced with orange, and requires forking with pressure. I ask for some accompanying vanilla ice cream and a very intense version is brought to the table, which I irresponsibly finish with a hefty chunk of tart to spare. I'm addicted, and a second scoop is speedily decimated.

Later, I’m told I can write in for a list of the ice cream ingredients if I’d like to recreate my poison at home. I suppose it’s as close as I’ll get to a night in with Merchant!

First impressions are great, but Merchant and I are in it for the long haul. And I reckon that matters more.

Recipe: Practical Praline

Candy you can do.

Here are two tips to navigating queues in supermarkets:

1. The number of people in line is not the gauge for waiting time. Some couples and peer groups will stand together simply to purchase one or two items. Unfathomably, they don’t split up and join different queues to hedge their chances of getting through the system quicker. Capitalise on such follies.
   
   
2. A line may look short, but avoid loiterers:

• Example 1: Children sneaking confectionery from the counter. When their carers finally notice (usually while unloading 20 Kit Kat bars onto the belt in disbelief), screaming ensues. Meanwhile you’re the chump watching from behind as six Joe Bloggs pass through the next counter without fuss.
  
• Example 2: Anyone resembling my mother and her friends, unless you’re particularly partial to finding out how old the cashier is, how long before the roast chicken goes on special, why the oranges aren’t oranger, and other such small talk inanities.

Or if it’s a sweet hit you’re after, avoid the shops altogether because this will take you less time than locating your keys and putting your shoes on:

1. Dump a half cup of sugar in a pot with a few drops of water (just enough to dampen). Use low heat. To dissolve lumps, shake don’t stir.
   
   
2. While waiting for the colour of the sugar to turn, scatter anything crunchy on a tray: nuts are the most likely choice, here I’ve used pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and sunflower seeds too. Even crushed cereal might work. Once the caramel forms, pour (very!) quickly onto tray.
   
   
3. Cool. Crack. Eat.

And that is how praline gets miraculously made in the last ten seconds of a Masterchef dessert challenge.

A heart for breaking.

How do you deal with a sugar craving?

Cupcake Showdown: Bleeding Red Velvet (Part 2) - Cupcake Central

Cupcake Central

Level 2, Dining Hall

Melbourne Central (City)

(Also in Hawthorn)

Opening Hours (City): Mon - Thurs 10am - 7pm; Fri 10am - 9pm; Sat & Sun 10am - 6pm

The ‘Red Velvet’ showdown continues.

I ‘found’ Cupcake Central via a Christopher Columbus moment:

1. I had no idea what I was looking at;

2. I definitely had no idea it had already been ‘found’ (many, many times); and

3. I foolishly felt self-important in ‘my’ discovery.

It happened some months ago as I was having a Grill’d burger with long-suffering friend MS.

Peering out the window, I announced “I see cupcakes.”

Burger mid-way to mouth, MS lowered it slowly. Unfortunately, the row of cupcakes I had spotted on the floor below was not visible from where he sat. As far as he could tell, I was staring at a deserted Hoyts and some very bored teenagers. “What?”

“I definitely see cupcakes. Strange!” At the time I was sure there was no direct competition for that awful The Cupcake Bakery in Melbourne Central.

“Are they...talking to you, these cupcakes?”

It took some heated discussion and fervent Googling to establish that

(a) Cupcake Central had indeed put up sticks in the shopping centre; and

(b) I was not having schizophrenic visions of confectionary.

Please. I would so much more likely take instructions from some dancing rare steaks.

But I’ll admit these cupcakes might have world domination in their sights yet.

Tastings are scored according to an appropriate Thank-Cake-It’s-Almost-Friday! structure: T for texture, C for Cost, I for Icing, A for Appearance and F for Flavour.

Texture: So moist it’s almost as fudgy as a brownie, but with a pleasing smooth crumb.

Cost: $4 per regular cupcake; $2 per babycake (vegan and gluten-free available).

Icing: Like great date dialogue: lightly (cream) cheesy, and lighter still on the sweet.

Appearance: Simple as pie.

Flavour: Full of it. And I liked it that way.

Overall Score: 9/10: out of this world.

Due to absence of forethought, there is no allocated category for wonderment of flavours available. If there were, Cupcake Central would certainly take the cake:

Peanut Butter & Jelly

Jam Donut

Choc Malt Milkshake

Vanilla Vanilla

And of course I couldn’t begrudge the new reigning ‘Red Velvet’ queen a chance to prove herself in some other ways:

Note: A takeaway box will set you back an additional 50 cents!

Bonus for hauling it home: no forks or plates if you're eating in.

Two bad boys for the road: Devils Food Chocolate & Salted Caramel

As we leave Little Cupcakes bleeding in our wake, any suggestions on where I should take this battleground next?

I have discovered...

...social networking!

My second greatest accomplishment this weekend after that behemoth Taste of Melbourne post below (90+ pictures...edited from 267)!

While my wrist recovers from all the clicking, I invite you to exercise yours by following the link to the 'like' on the right!

Taste of Melbourne 2011

Taste of Melbourne

Royal Exhibition Building

9 Nicholson St

Carlton Gardens, Carlton

When it rolls around, Taste of Melbourne is an event similar to the Melbourne Cup, Boxing Day sales, and an AFL final featuring Collingwood: a city-wide obsession requiring our attendance in masses.

This year I fulfilled my civic duty at the generosity of Adrian from Food Rehab.

The purpose of Taste events is very literal: a sampling (i.e. taste) of what the host city has to offer. It’s an excellent marketing strategy particularly targeted towards out-of-towners.

If you were only going to be in Melbourne for a weekend, it makes both financial and physical economic sense because even the least skinny of foodies couldn’t manage more than six to eight significant eats in two days. At Taste, you make an initial investment of $25-$30 on entry and over the following 4-5 hours, heavy-hitter restaurants proffer sized-down versions of their dishes of the year/month/week at a corresponding sized-down price ranging from $8 to $12 in ‘crowns’ (Taste currency). Add to the mix some 100+ (personal guesstimate) food and drink exhibitors, offering free samples galore, and it’s an entrepreneurial dream.

For navigational sanity, I've split this post into 'Restaurants' and 'Exhibitors' (all others).

Restaurants

My personal pick for 'dish of the day' was spawned by the relatively low-profile The Millswyn:

10 hr braised beef cheek with beetroot, spinach & field mushroom

Utterly unctuous (an adjective I use so sparingly you can be assured it fits!). I missed the presence of some form of starch to offset the richness of the braise (a simple mash perhaps?) but the petite beetroot cubes provided adequate counterbalance. I also really enjoyed the addition of the mushroom (with genuine fungal flavour), and wished they came in pairs.

Their other savoury dish was a cured Regal King Salmon with pickled daikon, lime and vanilla cucumber:

The Millswyn also featured a bar with 5 Rum Ginger Mai Tai, Spicy Vanilla Margarita, and Watermelon & Rose Jam Punch:

I'd say the crowd pick was St. Katherine:

KFC (St Katherine's fried Lilydale chicken with BBQ sauce (plus, oddly, Japanese mayonnaise)

Slightly spicy, very moreish, served hot to go and moist to mouth. A simple but great filler-upper, which made it good value for both punters and the restaurant. But don't take my word for it, check out the number of empty containers within a 10-metre radius just 20 minutes in:

And true to the Made Establishment (formerly The Press Club) Group's business acumen, right next door they were marketing George Calombaris' new cookbook for kids, Georgie Porgie, namesake of the nursery rhyme I've sadly always associated with child molestation.

Another great crowd pleaser was Mezzo.

Sher wagyu meatballs, Sicilian cous cous & salted ricotta

A very respectable and respectably-sized dish of meatballs. The cous cous was cooked perfectly, neither mushy nor grainy, and ricotta in a savoury dish is a rare treat. Masterchef contestant Alvin Quah absolutely raved about it during his cooking demonstration, which was very effective advertising: the restaurant's stand was swamped right after.

In case you are suffering from Masterchef withdrawal, Alvin will be doing another three demonstrations today, and Darren Purchese (not Stephane Le Grande as advertised) one.

We also visited Sarti.

Slow cooked suckling lamb, pearl barley salad & truffled pecorino.

Intense lamb flavour and the pearl barley salad was delicious. Unfortunately, it was the most underwhelming savoury dish because it had such a small portion size for the price (especially in comparison to other offerings around). Also, the piece of meat I received had a disproportionately large lump of inedible fat attached.

I remember Sarti's 'pistachio panna cotta' with caramel salted popcorn being a real hit at last year's Taste, so they must have been hoping to repeat its success this time around:

Unable to resist the call of anything labelled 'chocolate fondant', however, I obtained my dessert from Esposito:

Fondant de chocolate with Earl Grey jelly

I've always thought chocolate and Earl Grey make for an excellent partnership, and most recently had a lovely macaron of this flavour from La Belle Miette. Unfortunately, although the chocolate was of exceptional quality, there was only a tiny tinge of Earl Grey in my jelly. Texturally, the 'fondant' was more like a very smooth fudge.

On the savoury side of things, they had on offer a carpaccio of farmed Barramundi with peas, mint & wasabi sorbet:

Other restaurants not tried:

The European

Left to right: Regal King Salmon fishcake, Kinkawooka paella, Western Plains pork parcels

The Botanical

The Kitchen Cat

Longrain Bar

Stokehouse

Exhibitors

The recent explosion onto the Melbourne macaron scene, Luxbite, was present in full force.

Macarons

Saucy sauceboat cakes and tarts

Impressive macaron tower

I purchased salted caramel and kaffir lime (!) macarons.

These were fabulous, bigger than the ones from La Belle Miette, and bolder in flavour and texture.

Pinch me

One of the reasons I go to Taste of Melbourne at all is for Dello Mano brownies. These are not the kind of 'regular' brownies I'd feed to kids because they are (a) a pricey $5 a pop; and (b) mine, all mine.

These used to be sold at Prahran market every Saturday, and I would buy two of them weekly (Espresso Walnut and Honey Caramelised Macadamia) after a strangely ineffective weekend gym session.

,

I never realised how integral they were to my weekends until they stopped selling them at the market; I stopped gymming in the vicinity altogether. I felt particularly resentful last night when I discovered that they've since started making Peanut Butter ones as well, but these were sold out completely by last night's session. The humanity!

Another long-time love: Mini Melts.

These are not fancy, they do not have intense (or even particularly authentic) flavour, and they are as juvenile a snack as you can imagine.

But they are also tiny pebbled pops of ice cream that you can pick at with your fingers (but do it quickly) and then they crunch and melt in your mouth. That is magical.

Having grown up in Asia, I'm more than familiar with fast-talking schmoozers waving gadgets and hands and 'as seen on TV' miracle products:

So I'm not sure how this man sliced and diced his way into my wallet. I do know, however, that I am now $50 poorer and in possession of a see-it-to-believe-it Bellini chopper and dicer and peeler and mandolin with two tupperware containers thrown in for free! Whatta deal. And I'm sure this person's experience is simply an anomaly.

With other yet uneaten spoils of war, including a Burrowes Park aioli...

...sold to me by its very lovely maker Bettina Berry (price perhaps a tad steep at $10.50)

Nespresso had a huge presence at Taste this year.

It had massive stands at the centre of both floors.

Salmon samples were also in vogue, with both Huon and Tassel occupying some very prime real estate:

Huon selection

Tassal salmon skewers

Other savoury, spicy, and saucy exhibitors:

Spice Bazaar Cooking School and Spice Supplier

Roza's Gourmet Sauces

Dunav Butcher & Smallgoods

Nando's

Yarra Valley Smokehouse

Wasabi Salad: a cross between rocket leaves and wasabi

The pure cheesy:

e

La Latteria, Carlton

Jindi Cheese, with voluptuously large sample

Yarra Valley Dairy's goat cheese

Ice cream:

Gundowring

Movenpick

Cold Rock

Other sweet treats:

Raynor's Jam

Heart of Chocolate

Shocolate

Desserts of the cakey and fudgey persuasion:

Three Sweeties

180 Degree Cupcakes

Enni

Fudge

Charlie's Cookies

Sweet by Nature

Some refreshing retailers:

Rochester Ginger

Local Mineral Water

Tuaca

Free Instant Eyelift

This year's Taste was much less carnivorous: I missed the blood offerings I so enjoyed last year by non-attendees The Palace by Luke Mangan, Maze, Enviromeat and Bultarra Lamb. Some 2010 superstars like Embrasse and Ben and Jerry's were also no-shows. Generally, I noticed a swing in marketing strategy: there were less restaurants and many more retail exhibitors. Perhaps this is representative of the current trend in dining habits: poncy dining is now passé and plating up at home all the rage (please, not another macaron on my Facebook news feed).

Final note: I'm terribly honoured to have been featured as one of this year's Taste Likes. This had no bearing on any views expressed on this blog post, however, given I only noticed this after completing my review (researched journalism at its best, clearly).

Would I attend Taste again? Certainly - it's my patriotic duty! But what did you think of this year's Taste of Melbourne?