Farmer's Daughters

Farmer's Daughters is one of the new restaurants in the 80 Collins Precinct that opened earlier this year. Kate, Sally and I have had a couple attempts trying to eat here that were thwarted due to lockdowns, but tonight we finally got into The Restaurant for our Gippsland Getaway set menu dinner for $110 per person.

 

All the dishes in each course were part of a seasonal farm-to-table journey through the Gippsland region of Victoria. Even my cocktail, the Farmer's Collins, contained Gippsland Vermouth, pink grapefruit and elderflower (it's fantastic). The set menu can be tailored to meet different dietary needs, which happened for us having a vegetarian and pescatarian at the table.

The first course was the Lakes Entrance crudo with preserved tomato, Cafresco Organics vegetables and chargrilled O'Connor rip cap on a metal skewer.

Next was my absolute favorite course of the night with the house baked soda bread and cultured cream, and baked Baw Baw Alpine trout with mountain pepper cream and trout caviar. The dark soda bread was so good that we ordered more to eat and then had them chop up a loaf three ways that we could take home. The cream sauce and the trout were also excellent - I would eat that dish any day of the week.

The next two courses were the Sugarloaf cabbage with clam butter and Snowy River Station seagrass, and the Campfire Corner Inlet fish, with Japnut pumpkin and marjoram.

 

Our final main dish was the Terramirra Park venison with baked quince and pine mushrooms, which tasted great.

For dessert we had a little Carob and mandarin pavlova, which was a light dish to finish the menu with. Overall we really enjoyed all the courses of the meal along with the excellent service from the staff as they explained the origins of each dish when they brought it out to us.

Farmer's Daughters is located at 95 Exhibition Street, Melbourne. The Deli on the ground floor is open Tuesdays - Saturdays for lunch and dinner, with The Restaurant on level 1 open for dinner on those days.

Bar Texaco

Bar Texaco is a relatively new pop-up restaurant on Sydney Road in Brunswick that serves a combination of Texas-style barbecue and Tex-Mex dishes on its menu. My friend Kate and I have been a couple of times for lunch to sample dishes from the different parts of the menu. 

 

On the barbecue side I had the Brisket Bun, which includes smoked brisket slices, pickles and secret BBQ sauce on a toasted bun. For sides we shared the fries, classic mac n cheese, and chargrilled pumpkin with puffed wild rice, pepitas, fajita seasoning and vegan yoghurt avocado dressing. The smoked brisket was amazing, as was the chargilled pumpkin the first time we had it. The fries are what you would expect, and even though we shared the mac n cheese it was quite filling.

 

 

On the Tex-Mex side of the menu, we had the corn chips and guacamole and got the combo of any three tacos for $18. I had the pork and pineapple taco (juicy pork, pineapple and Mexican salsa), beef taco (pulled brisket, refried white beans, Mexican salsa and chilli oil) and Baja fish taco (battered fish, pickled cabbage and chipotle mayo). Once again it was those barbecue flavors in the meats that really stood out.

 

Bar Texaco is located at 644 Sydney Road, Brunswick and is open for dinner Wednesday - Saturday and for lunch on Sundays.

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmastime!

It's been a couple of years since I last celebrated Christmas in Australia. Both Sean and I don't have any family here in Melbourne so we decided to have Christmas dinner together at my place. We started off the afternoon with hors d'oeuvres of zucchini chips, salsa and tortilla chips, and a cumin pinto bean dip and rice crackers. Sean also made a French 75 cocktail, but used cognac instead of gin.

For dinner we had a mixed green salad and roast pork with pumpkin and potatoes. Despite the warm weather is was nice to have a roast dish since I am used to a cold Christmas. While digesting all the food we had eaten we indulged in a marathon of Season 1 of RuPaul's Drag Race UK. After a while we finally had room for some dessert, which consisted of snowball cookies and a rosewater and pistachio cake that I had baked (all gluten free). It was a lovely afternoon/evening and a nice way to celebrate the holidays when you do not have family around.

Sensory Underground: An Immersive Dining Experience Featuring Tokyo Tina

Tonight Mary and I got to attend Sensory Underground, which was billed as an immersive dining experience featuring the food of the restaurant Tokyo Tina. We entered the dining space under Fed Square through a door on Platform 13 of Flinders Street Station. On arrival we were given a little cocktail in a glass jar before being shown to our seats on one of the long communal dining tables.

As this was a multisensory dining experience set in the future, we were treated to different performances during the evening, including lighting installations by Kit Webster, an electronic soundtrack by Rival Consoles, and a robots den curated by Paul Findlay as we left the building.

The dinner by Tokyo Tina was four courses and themed around environmental sustainability. The entree was about finding new sources of food and included a bag with some very tasty crickets.

The first course of tinned fish and sashimi was themed around not wasting anything. It had a tin can that contained diced salmon belly, crispy fish skin, and salmon roe on a bed of salmon liver mousse with kombu crackers. There was also kingfish and salmon sashimi with yuzukosho dressing. All of it was yummy.

The main course was themed around being plant-based and wasting nothing through having it served on a sesame cracker plate. The two dishes were miso roasted cauliflower, walnut and tofu cream, and crispy Jerusalem artichoke, and a pork terrine under a blanket of pickled persimmon.

The final course was dessert, which was themed around future food. It had a 3D printed piece of chocolate along with a yuzu curd doughnut, which was very light and fluffy.

Overall it was a fun experience over the 90 minutes of the dinner, although it felt a bit rushed as we were the first seating for the evening. I'm not sure if the whole immersive experience was as fully realised as it could have been, especially considering the $129 cost (which didn't include drinks).

Mork Chocolate Brew House

Mork hot chocolates are well known in Melbourne, and today I went to the Mork Chocolate Brew House in North Melbourne to try some of their signature drink creations. The Brew House is located in a converted 1950s-era bakery and has items for sale along with a cafe where you can sit down for a hot chocolate or something more inventive.

One of the signature drinks we ordered was the Campfire, which is made of 70% dark hot chocolate served with maple smoke, charcoal salt and a toasted house-made marshmallow. To drink it you turn over the glass with the maple smoke, pour in the hot chocolate, add some of the charcoal salt and then stir it together with the marshmallow. Like the name suggests, it tastes like a campfire.

The other signature drink we ordered was the Forager, which is inspired by Australia. It contains macadamia hot chocolate, macadamia and wattle seed ice cream, eucalyptus honey, bush scents and foraged flora. After spraying the bush scent, you pour half the hot chocolate into the bowl, eat the ice cream, and then pour in the rest of the hot chocolate to drink. This one had a menthol taste due to the eucalyptus, but was still good.

The Mork Chocolate Brew House is located at 150 Errol Street, North Melbourne and open from 9am-5pm on Tuesday through Sunday.

Shop The City: National Marshmallow Day

Today was Australia's first National Marshmallow Day, which was all part of this year's Shop The City event at the big shopping complexes in the Melbourne CBD. Mary and I started our evening of sweet treats at QV to make our own s'mores in their little winter village set up. It was a bit difficult to get the marshmallows toasty enough to melt the chocolate, and there weren't any graham crackers, but they still turned out ok. If you feel like making your own s'mores, the village is open on Thursday to Sunday from 4-7pm until 10 June.

Next we headed to Melbourne Central for their Ultra Violet Party (the Pantone color of the year) featuring different pop-ups on various levels. They had a Naked Negroni bar, an Ultra Violet Room for the ultimate selfie, marshmallows dipped in a chocolate fondue fountain, and some violet fairy floss. It was a yummy sugar rush.

After some dinner at Din Tai Fung we ventured to The Strand for their mini wagon wheels, and then to the Wonderland Bar at Emporium, which had Alice in Wonderland themed shortbread cookies and cute little potion bottles with a "Paint the Roses Red" drink made of Archie Rose gin infused with T2 chocberry tea (it was quite tasty).

Stefano's Restaurant Mildura

This afternoon a group of us flew up to Mildura, located in the north western part of Victoria along the border with New South Wales, for a work meeting we are having tomorrow. Since today is my director Sean's birthday we decided to celebrate by having dinner at Stefano's Restaurant in the cellar of the Mildura Grand Hotel. Owned and run by chef Stefano de Pieri, he cooks Italian food using seasonal and fresh produce.

We had the five course Italian style set menu for $99 per person. This degustation started with fried calamari with a light rocket salad. Next we had a beautiful spinach souffle with pesto and truffle oil. It was full of flavor and my favorite dish of the night. The third course was a simple pork ravioli with a cream sauce.

Our fourth and main dish was a perfectly cooked rump steak with green beans, very flavorful roasted potatoes and an almond puree. Even after these four courses I didn't feel too full as the serving sizes were just right and they spaced out each dish so you could enjoy it. For dessert we had a really lovely vanilla custard in a cinnamon flavored small filo pastry bowl with a fresh piece of mango on top. As a bonus they brought us out some handmade chocolates to finish off the night.

Overall it was a really tasty meal with excellent service in the unique surrounds of the historic cellar restaurant. If you are ever in Mildura I would recommend eating there or at any of the other venues Stefano runs in town.

Museum Of Ice Cream San Francisco

The Museum of Ice Cream is a pop-up interactive museum located in different major cities across the United States. The San Francisco museum is housed in an old bank building at 1 Grant Avenue. Tickets to get in are hard to come by, so I was very excited when my cousin Lei informed me a couple months ago that she would be taking me along with her sister Mei and daughter Fiorella.

We had tickets for 6pm, and when we arrived they put us into a small group with other attendees to explain the philosophy and rules for the venue. The decor is a sensory explosion of color (mainly pink) and kitsch design as you enter each themed room. Our first stop was Marye's Diner, which was themed like a 1950s diner and served up some local peach flavored ice cream. Fiorella had fun dancing to the tunes, and the records on the wall had their artists and song titles changed to be more ice cream themed.

The Make A Statement room was where you could spell out a message on the wall with pink magnetised letters. They also served My/Mo Mochi Ice Cream, which is ice cream wrapped in mochi dough. I had the cookies and cream and it was really good.

Next up was the Cherry on Top room, where we got cherry flavored cotton candy sprayed with glitter to eat. The room is a social media dream with its giant cherries and clouds hanging from the ceiling.

The Gummy Garden room is like walking into a life-size Candy Land game with its giant gummy bears, lollipops, candies and macarons.

The Ice Cream Truck Pick room takes its inspiration from the different types popsicles you can buy from an ice cream truck (although normally they wouldn't be protruding from a wall).

The Rainbow room is a tribute to San Francisco's history and includes a unicorn! They even served little cones of unicorn milk ice cream. The room next to it was inspired by Pop Rocks with an entire giant geometric pop rock wall.

The most popular room at every Museum of Ice Cream is the Sprinkle Pool, which as you can guess was a giant pool filled with plastic sprinkles. When you step into the pool you immediately sink down into them. We only got to spend a short time in there, but it was Fiorella's favorite spot (and she was upset when we had to get out).

After shaking and blowing off the sprinkles hiding in our clothes we headed out to a row of themed spaces with swings before ending up at the gift shop. The Museum of Ice Cream is a lot of fun, and really built for kids and those young at heart. The San Francisco museum has been extended until February 2018, so if you get the chance to go take advantage of it.

Melbourne Night Noodle Markets 2017

The Melbourne Night Noodle Markets are on again from 9-26 November at Birrarung Marr. Sally and I headed down there after work to try out a few different savoury and sweet stalls. Thankfully it was a decent evening weather wise and there were quite a few places to choose from across the three terrace areas.

For starters we checked out Dum & Dumpling with its booth in an old school bus. We shared the vegetable and shitake mushroom dumplings, which were in translucent wrappers and tasted great.

Next we went to one of my favorite lunch spots, Wonderbao. We got the 3 gua baos for $20 which contained the Roast Pork with pickled cucumber, spring onion and hoisin sauce; Korean Chicken with sweet 'n' spicy sauce, pickled daikon and roasted sesame; and Panko Eggplant with kimchi, lettuce, spring onion and chili lime mayo. Each of them tasted amazing.

After digesting a bit we headed to the Gelato Messina stand for a bit of dessert. They always do special creations each year just for the Night Noodle Markets. First we had the O-No-Giri which contained green tea gelato and pistachio mousse dipped in rice bubbles and white chocolate. Next we ate I Think I'm Turning Sesame which was made up of black sesame gelato, condensed milk coffee jelly, miso crunch, banana miso bread, and vanilla cream and coffee powder. Both of them were really good and had lots of different textures.

Finally we tried the Dancing Dragon dish from Waffleland, which was a fresh baked waffle drizzled with melted chocolate and dusted with icing sugar, along with some ice cream and strawberries. The waffle on the stick was a bit thin, which was disappointing.

Overall we did pretty well with the dishes we chose to eat. This year's Night Noodle Markets are cashless, so be sure you have your bank card with you so you can buy food.

Knafeh Bakery Melbourne

This afternoon I met up with Ebony at Zaatar on Sydney Road, Coburg to check out the bearded bakers of Knafeh Melbourne. They were there as part of Zaatar's Good Friday Appeal carnival to raise money for the Royal Children's Hospital. Housed in a refurbished shipping container with some beautiful street art portraits, the bearded bakers have an assembly line going to make the sweet cheese dessert knafeh (like a Middle Eastern creme brulee).

The bearded bakers are also known for their singing and dancing while they are baking, which makes for a very entertaining wait while your knafeh is being made. Not only do they occasionally dance on the tables along the front of the container, but a few of the guys also popped out to dance to the singer and band performing at the carnival. It was a very enjoyable and fun afternoon with some tasty food.

Sydney Harbour

No trip to Sydney is complete without a cruise on the Harbour, and thankfully there are an assortment of ferries from Circular Quay to take you to wherever you'd like to go. As I had a mid-afternoon flight back to Melbourne today, Onagh and I did a quick return trip to Darling Harbour to see the sights and landmarks of the city on what turned out to be a gorgeous and warm day.

On the way back to Circular Quay we stopped off at McMahons Point so Onagh could show me around one of the old neighborhoods where she grew up (back then it was more working class than it is today). It was a bit of a hike up to the main street of the village, but we passed by some beautiful jacaranda trees which were still in bloom. After popping into a couple of shops we stopped at Olivo on Blue for a quick bite to eat for lunch. While Onagh had the Sydney rock oysters I ordered the bruschetta with tomato, buffalo mozzarella, basil and aged balsamic on ciabatta. We also both had a refreshing Aperol Spritz to drink.

After eating it was a quick downhill walk back to the ferry, where I bid farewell to Onagh (who had a later flight) and then headed back to Circular Quay to catch the train to the airport. It was a fantastic four days in Sydney and a great long weekend away.

LuxBite Hello Kitty Pop-up Patisserie

I was a big Hello Kitty fan as a child, so it was exciting to see one of my favorite Melbourne patisseries LuxBite team up with Hello Kitty for a special limited edition collection of desserts. I hit up their current pop-up store located on the level 2 link bridge of Melbourne Central during lunch to try out some of these sweet treats.

First off I sampled two of the small cakes. The Pink cake contains strawberry mousse, raspberry coconut, desiccated coconut mousse and white chocolate sponge. The Blue cake has a calpis and mascarpone mousse, blueberry jelly, blueberry cream and white chocolate sponge. Both cakes were very light and tasty.

Next I had the Macarons Box Set which contained three different flavors: blueberry marshmallow, salted caramel, and raspberry and white chocolate. The salted caramel one was amazing.

There are also some chocolates available too with their chocolate lollypops and three different Japanese inspired chocolate bars. Be sure to check out the LuxBite Hello Kitty collection at the pop-up location or LuxBite stores in South Yarra and Melbourne CBD. You won't be disappointed.

Fancy Nance High Tea

To celebrate Mary's birthday yesterday she gathered together a group of friends to attend high tea at Adriano Zumbo's Fancy Nance salon in South Yarra. High tea is available in the venue from Friday through Sunday with three different menu options and price points:
- Sconti: $15
- Pretty Flamingo: $45
- I'm So Fancy: $65

Mary and I both chose the three course I'm So Fancy menu to get the full experience. A Zumbo high tea is a bit different to others as it is more of a degustation menu than sweets tower, and they start with the sweet items and finish with savory.

The first course featured a spiced pear strudel verrine, malted milkshake macaron, rhubarb crumble with custard, strawberry tart, and a mandarin, white chocolate and macadamia cake. My favorites from this course were the verrine and rhubarb crumble due to their strong flavors.

The second course was a mix of sweet and savory with Grandma's treasure tin containing a white chocolate chip cookie and croissant, a scone with sweet and savory jams and creams, and a chickpea cracker with basil hummus and tomato dust. The cookie was really good, and the chickpea cracker was very light and tasty.

Our final course was all savory dishes with a carrot, orange and ginger soup with roasted pumpkin seeds, mac & cheese croquette with bacon schmear, and smoky pulled pork shoulder on a scone base topped with pickled onions. From this course the soup was a clear standout with its full and robust flavors.

Overall the high tea was good but not mind blowing. There were a few standout dishes, but overall I would have preferred more sweet options to choose from.