Libertine French Dining Room

500 Victoria St
North Melbourne VIC 3051


Have you ever been to France? Have you ever eaten at paper covered French tables, candlelight and rich saucy foods? Degustation, verily? So too, you will find gourmet dining in the old tradition at the Libertine, with flock gold wallpaper upstairs under black chandeliers and a simple bar style atmosphere downstairs, it's a hard statement to beat. But be warned; degustation is the next door neighbour of disgustation... from too much food! I've read that death rates rise during boom times from access to excess, and after this visit I can believe it!!

Our visit to the Libertine was certainly a splendid affair. Jane and I were catching up with friends for a birthday (hello Fiona!) and I was pleasantly surprised to be going to a fancy place I'd never heard of yet again. Our wires got a little crossed, and we arrived half an hour before everyone else but the staff plied us liberally with the complimentary bubbles (not brut, qu'elle damage) so by the time the rest of the party arrived we were brimming over. Fantastic.

The menu was set (with four or so choices a course, by four courses) and the champers ran as long as the hors d'oeuvres lasted: duck liver pate, a single tortellini with a crab (?) filling in a purree de bonne femme, a savoury puff pastry with creme fraiche, maybe more?

Roll on the entree. It's a set price four courser, so I guess we'd best gird our loins and lay on. From onion soups with baked tops, rustic terrines to artistic piles of fish and ornamental works, lovely. White wine anyone?

Who's going with me on the game bird for two? She would be a game bird taking on Lachy and I, but I'm always up for a threesome. Oh my, it is rich! A partridge you say? And where is the pear accompaniement? Just the rich sauce, baked beetroot, et al? How's the steak? More red wine???


Oh, my godfather, that's done it. No more. What? There's dessert, fixed price? What did I order. The fruit. Phew... ah, baked apple pastries with cream and pastry. Coffee? No, I urp...

Oh, it's the birthday girl's night of nights, and there's follow up birthday cake! I...I can't eat another mouthful.
Oh, go on monsieur, it is only wafer thin!
Fuck off. I've had enough. Jeez, I'm going to have to take a stroll around the traffic lights. It's cold out here - freezing - but at least I'm upright and gravity is pulling the food down.

Take my advice. Order food as you need it if you get the rather impressive pleasure of dining at the Libertine. "Viva le France! Pass the Mylanta!!" I rate it six and a half tentacles out of eight.. no seven! Check them out at:

http://www.libertinedining.com.au/main.html



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Gingerboy Restaurant

27-29 Crossley Street
Melbourne 3000

Down the alleyway beside Pelligrini's - right next door to Becco (my favourite restaurant) -stands the Asian black laquered disco that is the restaurant Gingerboy.

I'd heard so much about it. "It's a smash, it's a tidal wave, it's the biggest thing on Broadway!" (or was that in the Producers?). Whatever, like Max Bialystock I found myself (inwardly) shouting at home after the meal "You lousy fruit, you've ruined me!".

My review may also be jaded by having gone immediately beforehand to the best bar I've been to in about two years (see Seamstress Review this blog). Still, Gingerboy was groovy (especially their font use, and web site) and specialises in "hawker style food" - South East Asian food with a twist.

The decor is based very much on the busy trattoria style. We were are crammed in together with the other customers (a full restaurant, alweays a good sign) and there was a definite buzz in the room. The walls and roof are decorated with black bamboo intersperesed with fairy ights and the decor is, as suggested above, an oppulent Asian disco. Meanwhile, the staff are trendy and friendly; the two "y" words you'd prefer in waiting staff (as opposed to filthy, bitchy or stuffy).

The food is delivered as a shared dish experience, and we started with a few entries and moved on to only a couple of mains. I made a point of ordering the much vaunted "Son In Law eggs" a whole egg cooked in coconut milk (or something), and served with chili jam. I understand it's their signature dish and we were encouraged to pop the whole eggs into our mouths to enjoy "the taste explosion". But, quel horreur! Our female companions baulked at this, and when the waiting staff saw that the yolks weren't runny, they ran (unsolicited) and fetched us complementary replacements and removed the charge from the bill. But still, after eating two hard boiled eggs in one meal, I was slightly over egged by the finish and could taste them at 3 o'clock in the morning.

The oysters were nice, but I wouldn't bother with double orders on them, and the salt and pepper chicken spare ribs were a definite winner. For mains we enjoyed the red duck curry and caramelised ox cheeks, attended by more of the chili jam.

An honest and groovy affair, we escaped drinking two bottles of wine and dinner for four for under $100 per head. Still, it left me little jaded and certainly groaning with food and rich food indigestion. I rate it six tentacles out of eight!

I'd highly recommend that you check out their website. It won last year's Age Good Food Guide restaurant website of the year, which was plainly created by the same studio that knocked up ezards website (I suspect the people behind Gingerboy are the same as those who are responsible for ezards as well, but this has a new theme). Anyway, the address is:

www.gingerboy.com.au


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Seamstress Bar and Restaurant

113 Lonsdale Street
Melbourne

On going out for dinner the other night with friends, they suggested we meet at a bar beforehand. Little did I realise that the experience would overshadow the main restaurant we were to later attend. Hip, upstairs, great decor and music and an extremely expensive/impressive cocktail bar, Seamstress is the perfect place to pop in for a vodka martini or two before dancing the night away.

I'm guessing that the building is an old sweatshop. There's a bar downstairs with that name (Sweatshop) and then the flights of stairs lead up past cotton reels/spools hanging from the walls. The ceiling of the upstairs cocktail lounge is decorated with hanging lengths of fabrics and those little Asian pyjama jackets hanging from coat hangers. The bar has a distinctly 1930's / art deco look. Suited bartenders taste the cocktails they mix from straw samplers one of whom had a convincing English accent.

I enjoyed a three olive martini (not on the cocktail menu) which I was disappointed to see was stirred with a glass rod (did he think it was gin?) - but was made with Russian grain based vodka and was simply delicious ($18). This I followed up with suggestions from their cocktail menu:

Quicksilver fizz ($15)
A gin, absinthe, lemon, passionfruit syrup and egg white number - a simple twist on the silver fizz

Followed by something the bar staff recommended made with rum and a foam egg white head featuring raspberry dots on top ($17).

Snacks included peanuts heated through with spices (delicious) and prawn crackers.

The music also left me mightily impressed. A mix of acid jazz, lounge, soul and funk. I even heard James Brown while there.

An alcoholics delight, I rate it seven wobbly tentacles out of eight!!

Visit them online at:
www.seamstress.com.au/


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Pearl Restaurant

631–633 Church Street
Richmond Victoria 3121

Like going to any block buster movie you've heard great reviews of, you're inevitably disappointed when you finally get to see it.

"But what about the exploding fire truck?"
"Eh, I saw it coming."
"The swinging midgets hanging from the helicopter?"
"Boring."
"Come on, how about the latex love scene?"
"Ho-hum."

So too Pearl, though it was certainly one slick affair to remember.

We recently visited Pearl as a study in design, marketing, public relations, etc. on our corporate development day. It won best new young chef and also won the best service awards in the Age Good Food Guide, so we arrived with high expectations.

The decor was light and airy, the front door opened magically as we approached and I might add that the food was delicious. The bill was impressively top end - but I don't know, I left feeling slightly deflated. Could it have been the waiting staff? Fast and compliant, they seemed to lack a bit of the bon homie I've come to expect in truly great dining experiences. Austerity went out with snooty French waiters looking down their noses at people using the incorrect cutlery. And trust me, we used the right cutlery. Still, I can understand their being a little reserved, some of the clientele there were scary; at those prices I imagine it's only the "let's cut the balls off the competition" type people who can afford to eat there regularly.

The pearl meat entree and modern takes on sashimi were simply delicious. My advice would be to probably focus on the pescatorian side of the coin; a restaurant called Pearl has obviously chosen a fish themed name for a reason. That said, the red duck curry is a specialty de maison, but only eat it if you avoided entree. They're also famous for their desserts a la Turkish Delight, fairy floss and coconut ice (refer to Geraldine of Camberwell's recipe in the original Disco Volante... or was it edition 2?).

The wine list was excellent and the somnalier outdid himself with his selections of wines to match what was a quite diverse dining experience. Rich food, pleasant surroundings, scared stiff staff - it took my intestinal tract 24 hours to recover.

I give it 7 tentacles out of 8 (it really was good).

To find out more visit:

www.pearlrestaurant.com.au
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Il Solito Posto

Basement, 113 Collins St (*entry George Parade)
Melbourne VIC 3000

Il Solito Posto - "the usual place". Located down an alleyway between Collins St and Flinders Lane beside 101 Collins St, it's directly across from Italy I and Jamie Oliver's concept restaurant Fifteen. On one of my many visits there, we managed to get in through the barriers of the G8 summit by telling them we were popping in for something to eat. Great security!

Little has changed since the very first time I stumbled in out of the rain, alone and hungry (a different occassion to the G8 Summit). They gave me a table next to a book shelf where I took down a ripped version of 'Vintage Stuff' by Tom Sharpe. I'd never read Sharpe before (also the author of 'Wilt') and before I knew it I was enjoying myself immensly - wine, pasta and great reading entertainment. Il Solito Posto has since become one of my favourite places to eat alone, which I did quite recently and realised it was about time I gave it a mention in my blog.

Checking out their website, I see they now describe themselves as "ENOTECA, CAFFETERIA, TRATTORIA" - which would really get up some of my friends' noses as being overly pretentious. It's trendy to throw around Italian words in gastronomic marketing these days, but the place does have a genuinely Italian feel.

Forget about a date or dinner for a large group. The place is a crowded narrow room which faces a bar teaming with convivial staff who will, none the less, see all of your romantic dinner disaters or fail to juggle enough to all of your party. Take a seat alone at the bar however, and talk to cheery staff who all have a nose for a good drop and don't mind entertaining.

The wine list is impressive. The food menu fits on two pages, the wine runs to around a dozen. A wide range of varieities and nationalities, you camn get lost in it. Take the easy way and ask what they'd recommend. There's always something that's a hit at the time.

It's strange. The place should look as threadbare as an old couch with the amount of use it gets and the length of time it's been there - and how little it's changed - but I guess someone must give it a lick of paint every few months.

Wine, pasta and the joy of solo dining. I give it six tentacles out of eight!

To find out more, visit:

http://www.ilsolitoposto.com.au


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Oysters

Some love them, some hate them. Instant death or aphrodisiac, oysters remain the enigma of the dining world. And now, in the heart of Melbourne's winter, is the best time to eat them. "How can you stand them?" Ive been asked by bug eyed weirdos who stare google eyed as I let another slip gracefully into my mouth. It's not a huge leap and possibly one of the most delicious morsels that can be consumed (not to mention a fantastic source of zinc which is very good for male "downstairs" health). Follow a few basic steps and you're guaranteed of a delicious dining experience that won't threaten your life.

Step 1. Never eat them in a month with an "R"

I got this useful piece of advice from Noel, publican at the Builders Arms Hotel in Fitzroy, one afternoon as we sat on the street eating oysters and drinking white wine (I think it was a Sav Blanc).

"Never eat them in a month with an R? Qu'est que si que ca?" I asked, impersonating Harry Hill (Actually, it's Finsbury Park: "Do they mean me? They surely do!")

It transpires that oysters spawn in warmer weather, as the water temperature heats up and this makes oysters taste a little "cloudy". Add to this the thought that you're decimating numbers while they breed and that in warmer weather the protein rich oysters are ideal breeding grounds for bugs, then it's kind of obvious that this is the wrong time of year to eat oysters.

Apparently this is the obverse rule for the northern hemisphere, who rule that you cannot eat oysters in a month without an R. But then, they get extra months of oyster eating, so if autumn hasn't been to fierce I think you can relax the rule to include late May and extend the season into September. Christmas oysters are, I'm afraid, black banned.

Step 2. Ensure they are freshly shucked

Shucking is the opening and preparation of the oyster. The process goes something like this. Whole oysters live on rocks, farmers come and break them off and pop the whole oyster (both top and bottom lid intact) into a wet hessian bag for transporting. The little live oysters sit huddled in the sack, much like kidnapees of the Hobyar man, where they can live for up to two weeks while waiting to be eaten.

At the fish mongers, someone (maybe you) comes along with a short flat knife. You insert it into the hinge of the oyster (because if you try and pry an oyster open where the lips close, the shell smashes). Insert the knife near the tendon and prise it open. One half should flip off. The next trick is to cut the connecting tendon of the oyster off the lid of the shell. And there you have it, one ready to eat "shucked" oyster.

The problem? Once an oyster is open, it dies. It lies in the open shell and exposes it's lovely self to the air and all passing germs, bugs, sneezes and other nasty airborne apocrypha. And now, with centralised warehousing at major supermarket chains, oysters can be opened days in advance, shipped hundereds of kilometers and then sit there waiting to be bought, all the time open and exposed to the air. I absolutely refuse to buy oysters from Safeway Wonthaggi, and that's the only place in town you can buy them. Go to a market!

Step 3. Keep them cold

Do not eat an oyster that's been sitting around warm. This is a good way to get food poisoning. Take a small esky if possible with you to the fishmongers and keep them on ice on your trip home (or down the coast).


Step 4. Sniff test

If they smell pongy, taste slightly fizzy or in any way leave you with a question mark, DO NOT EAT.


Step 5. Au natural or shooters, please

A personal bug bear of mine is the oyster kilpatrick. This recipe is possibly the best way to sully one of God's greatest achievements. I'm guessing the recipe was developed as a way to disguise slightly off osyters. The absolutely best way to eat an oyster is icy cold, with some lemon juice (the acid in the lemon cooks the fish) accompanied by white bread, butter and a really, really, cold Crown Lager.

I have to make a notable concession to oyster shooters, however, as a close second to au natural. I've been delightfully surprised by bloody mary shooters and an interesting twist they do at E-zards using Mirin and wasabi.

For more information on oysters, visit:

the walrus and the carpenter

or to find out about Ezards oyster shooters, visit:

the restaurant

or

read the epicure review...


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The White Lady

Cocktails Au Go Go 101.

While reading the Captain's Table by Richard Gordon (famous author of the Doctor in the House series), a mention of the White Lady cocktail came up at regular intervals. "What is it, how do I make one and why haven't I heard of this drink before?" I found myself asking me - quite pertinently I thought.

Well may I have asked myself. The recipe given: "Two jiggers of gin, one jigger of Cointreau and a jigger of lemon juice." Oranges and lemon with gin! Now there's an idea. My interest was further piqued by Cointreau's packaging as I gathered together the vital ingredients. "At the four corners of the globe. Used in the world's most famous cocktails including the white lady, the side car and cosmopolitan."

As usual with my experiments into ancient libations, the entire process was educative as well as mildly damaging to my soft tissue physiology. I found through experimentation that it's good to be heavy handed on the triple sec and back off a little on the lemon juice to get the balance. And that all important ingredient that demonstrates you're a cocktail genius? Internet reveals egg white! (Blurgh - can it be true? What about selmonella?)

Either way, here's a recipe and some interesting background information from Great Cocktails UK. For a video presentation on how to make all these variations, follow the video link at the bottom of the page! Salut!

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The White Lady cocktail was first recorded in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, although Harry MacElhone, famed cocktail creator of Harry's New York Bar in Paris, also lays claim to having invented it in the 1920s.

It's a clean-tasting drink that needs to be drunk very cold.

You need:

2 parts gin
1 part Cointreau
1 part lemon juice
Shake the ingredients together well with ice. Strain into a frosted cocktail glass and serve.
Some recipes include an egg white, which adds a smoothness to the drink.
For a Pink Lady, add a dash or two of grenadine.
Replace the Cointreau with blue Curacao for a Blue Lady.
And for the Perfect Lady, use crème de peche instead of the orange liqueur.

Video how to link here!
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