#throwbackthursday review: Swan Street Social, Richmond

Let's get it out of the way: both M and I are big fans of Noir and Swan St Social. In my opinion, along with perhaps Movida, they do the best beef tartares in Melbourne. Their are super flavoursome and the meat is fresh but has a well developed flavour. I also love the little Their waldorf salad is also really delicious. I must admit, the first time I had this at Noir was actually the first time in my life I'd ever tried a waldorf. It's sort of one of those dishes which was enormously popular back in the day but you really don't see much of anymore. However, if other waldorfs are as good as the one at Noir/Swan St Social, then I'm definitely a convert.


The last time we went to SSS, the tartare and waldorf were served as one dish, and they certainly make for an excellent starter. We also got some jamon iberico to start, which was delicious (when is iberico ever not?) but not hand cut. It was however, noticeably better than the more expensive supposedly 36 month old iberico we had at Portello Rosso only a few nights before. M had a fish dish in a spicy tomato based sauce with potatos and some plump mussels. While his dish was tasty, I much preferred mine of a fat piece of pork belly on a celeriac remoulade and some grated apple. Delicious. The pork was really well flavoured and rendered and the balance of flavours was just right. The side dish we got, cauliflower au gratin was really nice but nothing terribly special.


However, overall the food was really great at a very very reasonable price. Unfortunately, though, I don't believe SSS serve full meals any longer but only 'bar snacks'. However, if you want a really great dinner/lunch head downstairs to the sister restaurant Noir (review to come).

#throwbackthursday review: A hideously disappointing dinner @ Attica, Melbourne

Ahh so this is apparently Australia's #1 restaurant and #32 (at the time we went it was actually ranked something like #21) in the world? Our dining experience here would definitely suggest otherwise.

We eat out a lot and we've dined at our fair share of 'high end', Michelin starred/hatted/Restaurant magazine 50 Best restaurants so we like to think we know a good restaurant experience when we see one, and this was definitely not one of them. Even if it wasn't $200 a head excluding drinks, it still wouldn't have been a pleasant experience.

As with all these degustation menus, we started off with a few amuses-bouches. The first of these was a Wallaby blood plum jam blini-like thing which was perfectly adequate—not disgusting but certainly not very interesting or mind-blowing. We also had some battered fried mussels with a sea succulent, definitely not samphire but possibly seablite? These little morcels were pretty tasty and I particularly enjoyed the addition of a sea succulent, something I think we should definitely eating more of. Finally we had 'rotten corn' to dip these baby leaves/stems in. These were delicious and I would love to know what those leaves were, I definitely don't recall our waiter telling us.

The next course I was incredibly excited for: snow crab with sour leaves. As heavily hinted by the blog name, I am a huge fan of WA snow crab (also called crystal crab), miles ahead of the Alaskan variety and even better when you have them in WA (they lose some of its plumpness in transit to the other side of this continent even though they're kept alive) so imagine my disappointment at eating this bland and frankly not very tasty dish. M and I rather hilarious overheard a guy sitting next to us at Movida Aqui describing this dish at Attica as snow crab which has been dessicated. He was obviously getting confused with dessicated coconut which is usually grated and dried, sorta resembling this crab. Obviously this crab hadn't been dessicated (meaning dried: if you're reading this, man at Movida Aqui), but it might as well have been for all the flavour and excitement it brought to the table. Great snow crab is super sweet and flavoursome, it is something I insist on ordering whenever it is on the menu, usually at a good Chinese restaurant. However, Ben Shewry's version was frankly, in my opinion, wasting an amazing ingredient. The sour sorrel and verjuice/grapeseed oil were frankly just not good accompaniments to the crab and did nothing to bring out the delicious natural flavour of the main ingredient. The little buckwheat things also nearly broke my teeth and got stuck there.

The next dish, also WA seafood, was better.  This was marron served with ground greens and served in a sauce made with pork fat. The sauce was deliciously rich and a good accompaniment to the meaty marron. The greens on this dish were also the only time this evening that the kitchen got greens right. These were flavoursome and added something to the dish, something that can't be said for the rest of the dishes. However, one thing that bothered me about this dish was that it was very salty. The marron was salty, as was the sauce as were the greens. The compounding of similar flavours/tastes was definitely a theme throughout the courses here. You'll see what I mean later on.

Now we come to probably the closest thing to Attica's 'signature' dish: potato cooked in the earth in which it was grown. Having heard a lot about this dish, we were really looking forward to trying. One taste, however, and we were deflated. Again, not that this dish was particularly bad, it just wasn't not very tasty. The potato, while well cooked, was bland and was actually rather unpleasantly sour whereas I expected it to be beautifully savoury and smokey. Being as you may know a hater of goats curd/cheese, the sauce accompanying it also didn't appeal to me at all.

This vegetable dish of cucumbers, sauce of burner and dried trout was better. I believe the cucumber was cooked and it actually tasted very good that way. Most importantly, though, the dish was flavoursome and balanced and the ingredients used all added something to the dish.

I was also excited for the next seafood dish, King George Whiting in paper bark, a twist on cooking fish en papillote. KGW is another of my favourite seafoods; my dad used to catch them in Perth and they are an excellent eating fish. This dish, however, was pretty disappointing. Frankly, I don't think whiting is a good fish to be cooking skin on en papillote. The reason is the skin of whiting itself, I personally think that whiting skin needs to either be crispy or not eaten at all. This is due to whiting skin developing a rather unpleasant texture when steamed like it does when cooked en papillote. Naturally, the skin on this particular whiting really took away from the dish—a dish which wasn't spectacular in the first place. The oyster butter with lemon myrtle just really just OK.

By this stage I was hoping the dinner wouldn't get any worse, but alas, the final three courses ended up being the worst of the night. This dish was kangarro with quandongs accompanied by a selection of bitter greens from the Attica garden. Bitter is definitely the key world here. I am a lover of vegetables of all kinds, including bitter leaves when they are served the right way. This bitter, random pile of leaves from the garden was not the right way to serve anything. I detected very little if any dressing and the result was just bitter leaf after bitter leaf. I think it's great that Attica serves the freshest ingredients grown from their own garden but they also have to be served in a way that tastes good; I get that you are a different kind of restaurant but you are still a restaurant—you still need to serve food that tastes good.

The kangaroo, while well cooked was bland and under-seasoned and I didn't enjoy the quandongs at all, the tartness of which was not a good accompaniment to the kangaroo.

After this course we were taken outside for a tour of their garden. This I was very excited about and I thought it added a very nice touch to the evening. Upon our arrival we were served raspberry licorice sorbet dipped in chocolate. M quite liked this but it was pleasing to my palette at all so I gave mine to him. The garden itself was very cute. The guy let us try a few of their various basils. We both also got excited at seeing alpine strawberries, something we had tried at Tickets. Our waiter's excitement certainly didn't match ours when we explained that we had had them before; he seemed almost disappointed that he wasn't introducing us to a cool new ingredient.

We were hoping for some sweet relief from our desserts but even in this, we were left wanting. This dish was blueberries with vinegar and fresh cheese. I don't mind berries steeped in vinegar, something like strawberries with a bit of balsamic and vanilla can be very tasty and can enhance the flavour of the berry. This is probably what Shewry was going for here but it was wasn't executed well...at all. Blueberries are of course very sour fruits and the addition of vinegar and fresh cheese just made the dish sour on sour on sour. While the creaminess of the cheese should help balance, it didn't go far enough and the tartness of the cheese itself just compounded the sourness. The whole dish just screamed for some sugar. This is legit something I never say about desserts because I really dislike super sweet foods and I find many desserts too sweet for me. This however, was on the opposite end of the spectrum.

We had a similar problem with the last course of the night: raw strawberry jam. This dessert was at the time replacing Attica's famous plight of the bees. While this dessert was better than the last one, it still wasn't to my taste. The cooking technique of this jam was such that it allowed the chefs to make a jam texture without really cooking the berries, thereby retaining the natural flavour of the fruit. The issue here was that the natural flavour of berries they started with for the jam as well as the fresh berries at the bottom of the dish, wasn't very good. They needed to use a more naturally sweet berry—something like an English strawberry (the which are very pale and almost look under-ripe), difficult but possible to acquire in Australia. As it was with these berries, though, more sugar was needed. The meringue accompaniment helped with the sweetness but the addition of the sour cream again compounded the sourness. Normal fresh cream or something like a creme anglaise would have, in my opinion, been a much better accompaniment.

We finished our meal with some chocolate Pukeko's eggs. I personally found these too sweet but M loved them. At the end of the meal I couldn't help but compare this experience to that which we had at The Ledbury. Both restaurants take a similar approach to their food, liking to use seasonal, local, native and somewhat left of centre ingredients and preparing them in a way which is still retaining the natural beauty of the produce. It's an approach I applaud but the problem for Attica is that they do it nowhere as well as somewhere like The Ledbury. Even the service here was lacklustre compared to that of the Ledbury. While it was perfectly polite and professional, it had none of the charm and warmth of the service at the Ledbury. All in all, it's safe to say we won't be back. More for the rest of the world, I suppose.

ETA: one thing I forgot to mention was that they charged us $20 for a MOCKTAIL, the same price as their cocktails by the way. Apparently in the land of Attica the cost of fruit juice is somehow as expensive as alcohol.

#throwbackthursday review: Tickets by Ferran and Albert Adria, Barcelona

This is a semi-repost from my tumblr.

M and I were really looking forward to our dinner at Tickets as we had always wanted to eat at an Adria restaurant and of course, since El Bulli is long closed, Tickets and its sister restaurant 41° were the next best thing (at the time; they've since opened more restaurants/bars). We had to be very organised and book well in advance (I think it was 60 days?) to get our table, because a booking here really is the hottest ticket in town (*badum chh*). We have friends who have gone to barça and missed out. 

Tickets is a tapas restaurant with a box office theme, which was actually really cool. A person dressed as an usher welcomes you at the door and the whole restaurant is decked out to make you feel like you're sitting in a theatre. The ambiance was super stylish but like any true tapas restaurant, relaxed. It was an open kitchen so we could see the chefs at work. The head chef was an amusing combination of sexy and stern. We had the following dishes: 

Jamon iberico gran reserva: To say that M and I love jamon iberico is a gross understatement, we often half seriously discussed buying a leg from Spain and lugging it home to Australia (although there was the small issue of customs). This was the best we’ve ever had and trumped the one we had at the Mercado in Madrid by a mile. We had it served with tomato bread, which as our waitress Laura told us, is traditional in Catalonia.

Charity olives: these were one of the signature dishes of restaurant and they were typical Adria. These little gel pillows of pure olive deliciousness which burst in the mouth. I’m a bit iffy with olives as I find some of them too bitter but these were exactly what I like in them: tangy, salty and oily. The first one I had, I wasn't prepared for the violent burst and half of it ended up on my trousers but I got the hang of them after that.

 Artichokes: I can’t find the actual name of this dish as I can’t find it on Tickets’ online menu but it was artichoke hearts with cheese (I think it was manchego?) and a white sauce of some kind. Tasty but didn’t blow our socks off.

Ceviche san choi bow: Again I can’t find the actual name of this but this was a white fish (possibly kingfish?) ceviche in little lettuce cups, like Chinese san choi bow. This was super delicious and I kinda wish we got more of them.

Razor clams escabeche: This was the dish that M and I had planned getting like months in advance (we clearly have nothing better to do) because I love razor clams and I love escabeche and M had never had razor clams before. These clams were different from the ones I’d had before (apparently the varieties in Europe are different from the ones we get in China), they had a really pleasant al dente texture which I really enjoyed and of course, the flavours were amazing. Definitely one of the highlights of the meal.

Codfish canchaina with its biscuit: This was nice but ridiculously umami, even too much for my liking. M and I both agreed that this was our least favourite dish of the night.

Grilled marinated Bresse quail: They gave us wet towels with these and it was a good thing because these were literally finger lickin’ good (I don’t think KFC uses this slogan anymore so I’m stealing it). I love quail at the worst of times but these had flavour all throughout the meat and it managed to both be charry and juicy. The accompanying potatoes were also delicious.

Mugaritz torrija with orange zest ice cream: Based on the name, I’m guessing the dish/recipe was from the famous Mugaritz restaurant in San Sebastian (where M and I are planning to dine in the not too distant future). We had to ask Laura what this was and she very cutely explained that it was a traditional dessert which they “impregnated” bread/cake with milk and then fry it. We were so glad we ordered it because it was seriously delicious, imagine a cross between the most delicious bread & butter pudding and creme brulée you’ve ever had.

Cotton Candy tree: We weren’t sure what this was gonna be like when we ordered but since I love cotton candy (or what we call “fairy floss” in Australia), I had to have it. We were wowed when it arrived and it was literally this gigantic tree with fairy floss splayed all over it and little berries (including alpine strawberries) hidden inside like little treasures.

What made the meal extra cool was that towards the end of the meal none other than Ferran himself walked in, quietly sat by a window and had a beer. Nobody bothered him and we didn’t either, but I did squee a little inside being in the presence of a legend.

The service from our lovely waitress Laura was super attentive and friendly, and added to the overall experience. As a side note, it was very reasonably priced; I think it came to a little over 100 euros or so, which is basically what we’d pay for a nice dinner in Melbourne. All in all it was an amazing, thoroughly enjoyable experience and we would love to go back again the next time we're in Barcelona.

111 Spring Street at the Hotel Windsor, Melbourne

The chicken main: elegant plating at its finest

I decided to treat my father to a nice dinner as a Christmas present and made the mistake of letting him choose the venue. Of all things he picked 111 Spring Street (the in house restaurant at the Windsor Hotel – the home away from home for Victoria’s pollies). After an utterly disappointing and horrendously expensive meal, it has become my pick for the best way to waste $200 in Melbourne.

This place would have been R’s worst nightmare and was probably the worst nice meal I have had in my life.

Entrée

For entrée I ordered the Miso Cured Salmon with kolrabi, puffed rice and a buttermilk sauce. It tasted of… absolutely nothing. Like, seriously, there was perhaps the slightest hint of umami and bitterness from the kolrabi, but it was like they had taken the time and effort to expunge every ounce of flavour from the dish. The texture of the fish was fine and indeed all the ingredients were of the highest quality, its just that the chefs seemed to apply all their expertise to making sure it was bland bland bland.

My dad got the Flinders Island Wallaby (complete with chlorophyll! Mmmm!) and said that it was ‘lovely’ but he is absolutely the target audience – very old, very white. For my thoughts on the mouthful I tried, see the Miso Cured Salmon above.

Mains

Chicken, one of my favourite meats. Even when it’s bad, its normally reasonably tasty. Thank you 111 Spring Street for being an exception to this rule! For my main I got the Roasted Organic Chicken with Avruga Caviar, Macadamia Crème, Crispy Kale and Kelp Liqueur. That is the dish pictured above and it just… well look at it really. That leafy mass all clumped together, that was fried sage. Just there. Like a vegetable (Pro tip, 111: sage is not a vegetable!). The caviar was nice, like really actually quite nice, flavourful stuff, but muddled in with 3 competing flavours in this wet, runny, macadamia excretion. It didn’t work at all. Also the chicken was bland. Nicely cooked, and good meat, but again WHERE IS THE FLAVOUR, 111?

Dad got the Slow Cooked Lamb Saddle with a range of marginally identifiable things as sides. It was OK, just barely OK. It was also 38 dollars. The same price as the frankly fantastic lamb dish I had at Cutler & Co the week before. Groan.

Dessert

I shouldn’t have gotten dessert. It wasn’t like we were on a set menu, and we were already having such a fantastic meal by that point. But Dad wanted the third course, and hey, it was Christmas!

I had the White Chocolate Mousse with Lemongrass Curd, Macadamia Polovrone and Lemon Balm. The sweet bits were barely flavoured. The sour bits were overwhelmingly bitter. The Polovrone was, like eating mouthfuls of macadamia flavoured talcum powder. Seriously, I think the pastry chef personally hated me or something.

Dad had this plum and chocolate thing – I tasted it and can confirm that it technically met the definition of a dessert.

Service

The service was OK, the wait staff were friendly and we got exactly what we ordered (even though none of it was nice). The 1.5% card surcharge was quite frankly ridiculous though, and I didn't even use a credit card! It left nearly as bad a taste in my mouth as the dishes.

Conclusion
GG 111 Spring Street, you have finally beaten Attica for the title of ‘M’s least favourite restaurant’.

Even with all the vitriol above I cant begin to describe how… sad the whole experience made me feel. You would have more fun eating in a palliative care ward.

Seriously, this place is like, the dining equivalent of a reasonably well made fake watch or handbag. It approximates something good, people clearly tried hard in its creation, but it isn’t – and will never be – anything even marginally desirable.

Avoid like the plague.

Post-graduation dinner @ Cutler & Co, Melbourne

The reason I had come back to Melbourne earlier than originally planned was to make my graduation ceremony. After spending 3 hours of my day sitting down and listening to (amongst other things) academics wax lyrical about the Rothschild Prayer Book, I got my certificate, smiled for the cameras and eventually made my way to nearby Cutler & Co for dinner. The fit out of the place very much reminded me of places like Cumulus Inc (owned by the same people who own Cutler) and Saint Crispin (another favourite of ours)—unassuming shopfront, minimalist and bare but nonetheless chic. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be 'trendy'.

Soon after being seated, we were offered the choice of still, sparkling or tap water. While this may seem like a stock standard question in many restaurants, it's one that raises my ire. I had noticed a recent trend in restaurants (both up- and down-market ones) away from trying to sell you wasteful bottled still water. Instead, more and more places simply offer their diners (free) tap water as you take your seat. While I don't expect every restaurant to offer me free house-made sparkling and still filtered water like Pizarro in London (review to come) does, I can't help but sideeye a bit when a restaurant tries to push bottled water onto you.

However, this little hiccup aside, the rest of the evening went well. The food, particularly two of the seafood dishes we got, was pretty spectacular.

Appetisers: anchovy pastries; and pork scratchings with kimchi
We weren't entirely sure what the anchovy pastries were going to be but I know I had anticipated something like boquerones en vinaigre made with fresh anchovies. Instead what arrived were narrow cigars of a deep fried canoli-like pastry encasing preserved anchovies with salsa verde. They weren't terrible but they were quite salty and altogether pretty uninspiring. We however enjoyed the pork scratchings immensely: glorious puffed up sheets of pork skin which fizzed and crackled as we doused them with the kimchi mayo. Delicious.

Entrées:  Hervey Bay scallop, abalone, soy milk custard & oyster broth; and smoked duck breast, salsify, prune & radicchio
Even though it sounded amazing, I opted out of getting the scallop entree as I was already choosing a seafood main. However, as soon as M's entree arrived at the table, the green-eyed monster emerged. His dish looked and tasted amazing, raw thinly sliced scallops and abalone, baby king oyster mushrooms, wakame and soy milk custard (like an eggy tofu) swimming in the most flavoursome and enticing broth you could imagine. For me this was the highlight of the meal.

When I managed to tear myself away from M's bowl I also enjoyed my duck entree. The smoked duck, although the skin was lacking crispiness, had a super smokey flavour which was right up my alley and as I've already mentioned on this blog, salsify is definitely up there with my favourite vegetables and I wish more Australian restaurants would serve it. The radicchio wasn't at all bitter and the prune provided a nice contrast to the saltiness of the duck. Overall though, I still think the dish veered a little too far towards the land of salt.

Mains: Dry aged lamb saddle, confit belly & garlic sauce; and John Dory, seaweed, grilled octopus, shiitake & eggplant
People who know me reasonably well will know that I'm not a lamb person (except when it's slow cooked) as I find the flavour far too musky. The lamb/mutton in China isn't at all like that but for some reason (some people have suggested that it's the feed the animals are given, others have said it's because the animal isn't bled properly upon slaughter) Australian lamb (unless it's slow cooked) has that overwhelming animalic, faecal note to its flavour. Anyway one bite of M's lamb was enough for me but he really enjoyed the dish and offered that it was some of the nicest lamb he'd ever had.

As much as M likes lamb, I like octopus 100x more. In fact, this dish was the reason I chose to come here instead of Ezard and why I chose to go à la carte instead of with the tasting menu (lest I wouldn't get a big enough portion of this dish). The verdict? Pretty fucking yum, as my friend T would say. The eggplant puree was smoky and smooth, the fish was sweet and nicely cooked while the octopus was tender and flavoursome. Admittedly it wasn't quite as good as the scallop entrée but still pretty amazing.

After all of that (plus the potatoes we had as a side) we were suitably stuffed and so had no room for dessert.

As good as the food here was, I can't overlook the most disappointing element of our dinner, the service. While the other service staff here seemed perfectly content and competent at their jobs, our waitress for the evening seemed intent on projecting her misery onto us. Perhaps she was just having a bad day or perhaps she really was that vexed at my daring to ask to swap out grapefruit (my mortal enemy) from a mocktail in favour of elderflower and soda (the answer was 'no'). All in all though, it wasn't enough to ruin an enjoyable evening.

#throwbackthursday review: The Ledbury, London

The Ledbury’s reputation preceded it and we were prepared to be disappointed, but it truly lived up to its hype and then some. Looking back on it, it's definitely one of the greatest dining experiences we've had to date.

We had the tasting menu which at about £100 a head, was actually really good value. Yes, that is expensive but many restaurants of its calibre charge significantly more, and the food and the service justified it. This is simply not the case with a lot of these 'modern', Michelin starred, hatted, top 100 list-esque restaurants. Yes there are many great ones, but there are also many that don't justify the prices they charge and don't deserve the accolades. The Ledbury sits firmly in the 'great' camp.

The experience was truly memorable. Everything was just so creative and utterly delicious. We started with (three?) amuse-bouches and the house made bread which was generously dished out throughout the evening. My favourite  proper course of the night was the mackerel while the simple pre-dessert of a clementine granita with meringue is up there with the Torija at Tickets (review to come) as the best dessert I've ever had.

But while the food deserves the abounding superlatives thrown at it, it's the Ledbury's service, ambiance and overall 'experience' which truly sets it apart. In contrast to that at Pollen Street Social, the service here, while unmistakably refined, was not at all stuffy and pretentious. The service was just genuinely friendly, warm and not at all in your face. The sommelier who served us was sympathetic to the mild stomach complaint I brought with me that evening and diligently got me a ginger ale to calm my belly. M still talks about the amazing Americano coffee he was served here and the way they poured it right at the table. It was definitely the perfect antidote to what was mostly very mediocre coffee throughout the continent. What also contributed to the overall experience was the low-key glamour of the restaurant's fit out and how perfectly the place absorbed sound; sitting there in a packed restaurant, you could have honestly heard a pin drop—even though most of the clientele were having animated conversations. But what really completed the evening for me (not so much M who has a rather perplexing aversion to fruit) was the addition of fresh clementines (so fresh that I suspect they were straight off the tree) with our petit fours. I am a huge fruit lover and being given two fresh and perfect little fruits to complete my meal just completely won me over.

We left the restaurant completely satisfied and gushing madly, plotting how soon we would be back.