It's a warm, humid Thursday night and we're walking down to the nearest pizza place on High Street to home. And the nearest pizza place happens to be Pizza Farro. Pizza Farro prides itself on making pizza bases from spelt. Well, you might ask; "what the %$# is spelt and why should I care? Is it some sort of hippie rubbish from the mountains of Tibet, only eaten by goatherds and unlucky goats?"Alternatively, in a more polite universe, you might have wondered more discreetly... " What is this thing, this spelt? What does it spell? ...
Archives for “food”
According to their website, the Peacock Inn;"was built in 1854 by Horace and Edwin Bastings. The following year they sold it to the 21-year-old George Plant. Plant was to become synonymous with the Peacock, holding the license until his death in 1895. His widow, Catherine then took over the hotel license until 1910."Welcome to Northcote. Trains, trams and maybe a bus.Cool. But Northcote has changed since then.My mother tells the story of discussing Jane Austen in an English Literature tutorial at university. A young male student opined that Austen was clearly bourgeois rubbish, and believed he could smite ...
I know, I know... It's a been a bloody long time since the last post. This week, however, we've got two kidlets in new schools and time to burn. Ecce homo, ergo elk, it's lots of time for cooking and for eating. Let's start with quail.... Mmmmmmmmm......
I’ve been wanting to go to Pearl Oyster since Steph blogged about it, so was happy to visit for breakfast today with Cindy, Michael, Toby and Kristy. I’ve ridden through that odd little pocket of Thornbury loads of times before, heading to High Street Thornbury or further on to Preston, and have noticed it gentrifying over the years. Funnily enough I’ve always thought that area was actually Coburg East, it’s that close to mine (10 minutes by bike, crossing Merri Creek). Pearl Oyster is a really cute and welcoming place, especially for vegans, as the menu caters to them really ...
On a recent visit to Northcote for lunch with a friend we looked in the window of The Estelle, but decided on lunch at Palomino across the road. A few days later, I found myself entertaining another friend in the same area, and this time I could not resist trying somewhere new. Dinner has already been admirably reviewed by Vetti live in Northcote, and breakfast by Juliette’s food spot, but I hope I have done the first lunch review! The striking tiled walls use a pink / white / grey / black colour scheme familiar to me from art deco era ...
Tart’n'Round has been open for a few months now, and the local veg blogging mafia has visited, eaten and reviewed – see what Cindy and Michael, Kristy, Carla, Miss T, Johanna and Steph thought about the Thornbury cafe. I’ve heard very mixed reviews. I think it’s pretty universally agreed that their sweet treats are amazing (I salivate at the thought of their cherry bomb balls), but their meals and savouries don’t seem to be hitting the mark just yet. I went to Tart’N'Round back when it first opened, and had a fairly bland soup of the day (cauliflower, from memory). My ...
Enni cafe on High St Thornbury is famous for its cakes, but I’ve previously only had breakfast there (which was excellent). I was recently able to overcome this oversight and drooled in anticipation of consuming this passionfruit meringue tart, while my friend loved her cheesecake. Everything is made on premises, and the coffee is good too. Fitzroyalty - hyperlocal news and reviews about Melbourne's first suburb: Fitzroy 3065 by Brian Ward is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
A few weeks back Pip tipped me off about a new vegetarian cafe in Thonbury, and today I went to investigate. I had no idea what to expect, and was pleasantly surprised to find a really cute and laid-back place. First up, the coffee is exceptional. That’s important. And it’s priced fairly – $3 for black, $3.50 for white, and no surcharge for soy. Latte of joy... There is also a range of yummy sounding teas, served in a cute mismatching op-shopped teapots. The menu is really small and when I asked about vegan options the guy in the (teeny) ...
We are happy to welcome another food stall to Northside Makers. Reading through Nice Biscuits' creations, I am looking forward to sharing her baking with my gluten free friends!Tell us about what you sell ...Cakes, biscuits, cereal, muffins, loaves, pies, etc. My focus is on fresh organic and local ingredients and I am fascinated by interesting combinations like chocolate and zucchini or chocolate and curry (and others that don't necessarily involve chocolate). I also venture into dietary accessibility, so I'm doing a lot of vegan and gluten-free goods. I have very recently discovered that milling my own ...
We haven't eaten out in quite a few weeks. We've talked about it, but middle child has a whooping kind of cough, and although vaccinated against just such a situation, our GP tells us not to be surprised. "It's OK", he says. "It just a mild variation from the standard", implying it's the medical equivalent of one of the more dull Bach cantatas. Oh.. that's alright then. She's only got one of the four diseases she's not supposed to be able to get, but I'll accept that this might be ok....So, as I'm not keen ...
After a fun afternoon at the recent blogger meetup, where I met Northcote local Vetti, we decided to get together again to further discuss our interest in all things local. Vetti recommended a great bar called Joe’s Shoe Store on High St that I had not been to before, and it was a relaxing place to spend time drinking the excellent Melbourne made 2 Brothers beer on tap and eating pizza from Pizza Meine Liebe (reviewed by many including Melbourne Gastronome and Where’s the Beef?) next door.
Well, it's been a long time between drinks, not to mention High Street food, and in the last couple of months we've had the long distance runaround between Melbourne, Adelaide, Coober Pedy, Alice Springs, Darwin, Rockhampton, Fraser Island, Sydney etc... Now we're home again and the High Street odyssey is underway some more.Tonight we start at Otsumami, an elegant minimalist Japanese restaurant on the leeward side (OK, the west side) of High Street, high on Ruckers Hill. Minimalist in decor, but this being Northcote on a Friday night there was an encouraging buzz without being too noisy. ...
So yesterday I twittered and facebooked that Kimba was eating a vegetarian pig’s ear and it got a big response. The response mostly being, WTF?! For those who don’t have dogs, smoked pig’s ears are a chewy, tasty canine treat. They look like, well, a pig’s ear – replete with hair. Gross, though not as gross as pig’s snouts, take it from me. You can see a picture at Love my pet and Dogs bones. (And if you feed your dog pig’s ears, you should be aware that they have a really high fat content and are really, really bad ...
‘We all knew MasterChef was big. But this morning, the television industry is coming to terms with just how big. The final episode of the reality TV cooking competition set a new record with a staggering 3.7 million Australians tuned in to see Julie Goodwin defeat Poh Ling Yeow in the grand final. That puts it in [...]
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
On the evening of Friday 19 June I was out and about with thousands of others exploring the galleries and shops along High St in Northcote for the Northern Exposure art festival (a tip for the web designers – test your site in different browsers. It looks shite in Firefox). I quickly realised that I was not really in the mood for art, or maybe it was not to my taste. I was more interested in people watching and mooching around. The best piece I saw was in the window of Punch (above). The most amusing was the audience generated wine ...
At last, we're back on High Street proper. We're not somewhere else, we're not having take away, drinking beer or shopping at the market. We're doing what we set out to do, which is to enjoy and record the restaurants of Northcote and Thornbury.Arriving at I Saluti also means we are getting ever closer to the glorious summit of Rucker's Hill, and will soon have to cross the street, descend and start heading north.I Saluti celebrates its wood-fired pizza oven by literally raising it on a pedestal. A cheerful space with perky, good-humoured staff, it's a ...
To begin, a roast chicken, with a lemon and garlic up its arse, and nearby in the oven some roast pumpkin and several roast heads of garlic. Then in a pot the carcass with onion carrot and garlic for stock, and by and by, after sitting at the misty steamy poolside while she climbed in and [...]
I recently had a lovely dinner with a friend at the dark and cosy Wesley Anne on High St Northcote. I’ve been there before for drinks but not to eat, and the meal was excellent. I had fettuccine in a mushroom and cream sauce and my friend had the soup. I also had a glass of the Geoff Merrill merlot. Drinking this wine is like having your earlobes licked (if you like that kind of thing). Splendid. It was quiet inside early in the evening. We were moving on to the new Willow Tales storytelling evening a few doors up at ...
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,
Yup, another posting that's got faff all to do with High Street, except that I made it at home and, ergo elk*, it was made within a five minutes walk from High Street.Chicken, pumpkin, green beans, yellow curry paste, lime leaves, chili paste (the soya oil kind), fish sauce, palm sugar, coconut milk etc...* "What is the difference? What indeed is the point? The point is frozen, the beast is late out of Paddington. The point is taken. If La Fontaine's elk would spurn Tom Jones the engine must be our head, the dining car our oesophagus, the guard's ...
Let's start with a couple of confessions. First, F and I went to Cafe Bedda some years ago and I had forgotten all about it. So this isn't a first time, but other than "it was good", I have no real memory of the place. Second, we forgot to take a camera, so the photos are taken with phones and correspondingly look like they we taken by the food stylist from Alcatraz. Nevertheless....The magical blackboard. Not at all grumpyCafe Bedda is high on Rucker's Hill and has quite a few tables crammed into its ...
I find it ridiculous in the age of radical transparency being brought forth by the ubiquity of online information that data paid for and owned by citizens is kept from citizens by out of touch governments. I believe that taxpayer funded data must be freely available to the public. A good example is the information gathered by local governments during their food hygiene inspections of restaurants. We the ratepayers pay for this work to be undertaken to ensure food business prepare and serve food safely and hygienically. We want to know the results of the inspections and prosecutions so we can ...
In "Eat the Rich", PJ O'Rourke provides one of the few explanations of Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage that doesn't involve matrices. "You ... and society as a whole ... will profit more if you each do what you do best." And that's what Bekers is about: a restaurant doing what it does best and nothing else. No lengthy menus, just a clear and single-minded focus on one thing, and that focus is on mixing heat with meat. Not just any heat or meat, mind you: serious heat and serious meat.I've seen Bekers from the tram ...
