The Alphabet Dinners: I is for I Carusi

In The Alphabet Dinners series, I review the cheap restaurants of Melbourne... In alphabetical order.

It's been a while since I reviewed a cheap Melbourne restaurant taken from the Age Cheap Eats guide. That's partly because I was up to the letter I, and there weren't many choices.

Last night, however, I was on my way to sample the wares of the Taco Truck which pops up around suburban Melbourne - yesterday it was parked in North Carlton. But as I boarded the number 1 tram, the rain started falling, and I stayed on past my intended stop to find myself at I Carusi in East Brunswick.

According to the guide, this place has been doing pizzas with "all class but no frills" for over a decade. That said, I'm not surprised I haven't come across it before - its located within an old shopfront on Holmes St, just after the tram does a quick dogleg from the top end of Lygon St. It's a quiet stretch at night, and the lit-up restaurant stood out like a beacon on an overcast evening.

It looked like there were no free tables and I'd be out of luck, but then I was summoned through to the back room, to a little table by the rear door. Not a bad spot really, and the back room was buzzing with a big group at one long table and some smaller groups at others.

It was a pretty simple menu - a long list of pizzas in big and small sizes, with salads and desserts on a blackboard.

First to arrive was my glass of Cavallino Syrah Sicilia, the house red, served in a straightforward glass:

Next, the pizza arrived, breathtakingly quickly given how busy the restaurant was. The menu was replete with arty pizza variants including ones involving broccoli and gorgonzola, but I went for a classic - a small capricciosa with tomato, fiore di latte cheese, ham, mushrooms, olives and anchovies.

It was excellent, a beautiful balance of flavours and textures - a light crisp base, flavoursome tomato, fresh tasty toppings. Apologies for the blurry photo by the way, I'm still getting the hang of the camera on the new iPhone and didn't want to bother fellow diners by using the flash too much:

Alongside the pizza was this salad, with fiore di latte, basil and tomato. Excellent, though it did mean a very cheesy meal (my fault):

All up, the service was friendly and efficient, and the food was excellent. In fact I couldn't help thinking how much better the experience was compared to that at my 'B' restaurant Bande à Part, which isn't far away geographically and offers similar food.

The Bill: $29.50
The Restaurant: 46a Holmes St, East Brunswick; Ph: 03 9386 5522

The Alphabet Dinners: H is for Hotel Lincoln

In The Alphabet Dinners series, I review the cheap restaurants of Melbourne... In alphabetical order.

I was supposed to be meeting some people I didn't know for dinner tonight (long story), but the arrangement fell through.

Finding myself at a loose end, I thought I'd resume my series of reasonably priced restaurant reviews, with subjects taken from The Age Cheap Eats guide.

So this week, H is for Hotel Lincoln, the handiest 'H' listing in the guide on my route back to the city.

Judging from the Web, the Lincoln has been around since the 1850s, which must make it one of Melbourne's oldest pubs still operating in the same location.

Though it's obviously had some remodelling over the years, with an art deco vibe currently about the place. You can get a glimpse of it here:

And here's a shot of the interior - a little dark, but there's a suggestion of deco lines:

There's a fancy gastropub dining room in the back (where the windows bear an image of Abraham Lincoln), but I decided to eat at a table by the window in the atmospheric front bar.

Always alert for interesting beer possibilities, I ordered a pint of something new: Full Steam Pale Lager. The barman said it resembled Corona, and by crikey he was right.

A good refreshing beer, and I later found out it's quite new, brewed by Melbourne's own Thunder Road Brewing Company.

And so to my meal, which was none other than a beef burger served in an upmarket style.

The chips had that fancy venue flaw of being able to be quickly counted on sight (for the record there were 11, though they were chunky and rather good).

There was no skimping with the burger however - tasty, filling, with quality ingredients. There was even a slice of beetroot in there. How Aussie was that?

The Bill: $30.00
The Restaurant: Hotel Lincoln, 91 Cardigan St, Carlton; Ph: 03 9347 4666

The Alphabet Dinners: G is for Gas

In The Alphabet Dinners series, I review the cheap restaurants of Melbourne... In alphabetical order.

What with reviewing Comedy Festival shows and preparing for my forthcoming Lonely Planet assignment in Poland, I haven't reviewed a restaurant from The Age Cheap Eats for a couple of weeks; and this laxity just won't do.

So I downloaded the 2011 edition of the Cheap Eats iPhone app, and since the only spare time I had this week was in the afternoon, I chose somewhere from it to eat. So this was an Alphabet Lunch, from necessity.

Gas appeared to be a new entry in the guide, located not far from the South Melbourne Market. I found it in one of the old Victorian shopfronts of Coventry Street, with the interior paint stripped back to reveal a rough collection of old red bricks with sagging mortar lines.

The fit-out was in that modern sexy industrial look (which I quite like) - bare floorboards, long workbench-like tables, completely open kitchen.

After sitting inside for a while I surmised that this was one of those benighted order-at-the-counter places that make diners queue up for service.

However, this did mean I could see all the food on offer in the glass case at the counter. One thing you have to admit about Melbourne is that we're spoiled when it comes to informal dining: all the items on offer here looked fantastic, and were affordably priced.

Choices had to be made. You know I like to show you a selection of items, but there were no clear starters/mains divisions here. So, for argument's sake, let's call the Moroccan sausage roll my starter:

Hard to say what was particularly Moroccan about it, as it just tasted like a good deli-style homemade sausage roll. Solid and filling, and it came with a side serve of exotic chutney.

Next up, my "main": a chicken sausage and halloumi flatbread, filled with a visually attractive combo of the named ingredients plus pieces of boiled egg and other tasty elements along the lines of relish and leafy greens. Toasted, it tasted just as good as it looked:

And finally, a glass of Winbirra 2008 pinot gris from the Mornington Peninsula. Plenty of body and flavor, and just right for the cafe food and the warm autumnal weather.

 

The Bill: $27.50
The Restaurant: Gas, 253 Coventry St, South Melbourne; Ph: 03 9690 0217.

The Alphabet Dinners: F is for Fish Tank

In The Alphabet Dinners series, I review the cheap restaurants of Melbourne... in alphabetical order.

It's been a few weeks since I produced a review of an eatery selected from the Age Cheap Eats guide, as reviewing shows in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival has been taking up all my time.

But here I was, back at the old stand again, and for "F" I chose Fish Tank, an upmarket fish and chippery in Melbourne's well-heeled bayside suburb Brighton.

It was a good night to be eating comfort food, for we were just getting our first foretaste of winter weather this year.

Though there's something darkly attractive about Melbourne in wintry weather - the sheen of fallen rain, the chill air that snaps you awake as you walk from Middle Brighton Station along Church Street toward the fish.

Fish Tank is an interesting joint - the front is a fish shop and there's a modest amount of seating both out front and in the rear of the shop, squeezed in next to the big white wall concealing the kitchen.

The menu was interesting - basically following the same lineaments of an old-fashioned fish and chip shop, but classier. I went for the Health Attack pack, which included the grilled fish of the day (John Dory), chips and salad.

To be honest, I don't think eateries should include the word "health" in menu items - it makes the customer feel too self-conscious and goody-goody. It's hard enough to order anything healthy in a fish and chip shop after all, without pointing it out. They should probably call it the "Biodynamic Sex Appeal" pack or something similar.

Anyway, I kinda spoiled the health aspect by adding a homemade dim sim and a potato cake to the order. Here's the resulting plate of fine food:

Hard to make this sort of food look sexy, isn't it? Anyway, it was very tasty.

And to accompany it, a Corona beer - you won't find that at your average fish 'n' chippery.

The place had no desserts as far as I could see, so I walked a few doors down to the Dendy Deli. This cafe-restaurant is a strangely retro place beneath a retro cinema; decorated with numerous booths, mirrored walks and neon signage.

For dessert I ordered the homemade apple crumble and a decaf coffee. The crumble was good, but as you might notice, huge; the waiter insisted it was "half a kilo". Impossible to finish!

The Bill: $22.60

The Restaurant: Fish Tank, 20 Church St, Brighton; Ph: 03 9592 0697.

The Bill: $12.90
The Restaurant: Dendy Deli, 34 Church St, Brighton; Ph: 03 9592 6233.

The Alphabet Dinners: E is for Everest

In The Alphabet Dinners series, I review the cheap restaurants of Melbourne... in alphabetical order.

In this trawl through the Age Cheap Eats book, it's inevitable that I'd be eating Indian food at some point.

So this evening my friend Julia and I alighted from the train at Fairfield Station, walked past the giant wooden statue of a dog that once electronically barked at trains, and headed to Everest.

The interior was nice enough: a suburban ethnic eatery but more spacious than some and with aspirations to grandeur in its ornate wooden furniture and decorations.

The menu was an exposition of all the usual Indian favourites, so we ordered a selection and they showed up pretty quickly.

This is the chicken tikka masala (front) and the excellent baigan bharta, a kind of thick and spicy paste made from eggplant:

The other two dishes were the yoghurt-and-cucumber dish raita, and an exceptionally hot but tasty beef vindaloo. These two were a match made in heaven, with their respective cooling and heating qualities:

Gotta say I'm more of a naan person than a rice person:

And a Royal Challenge beer from India to complete the ensemble. Never heard of it before but it was just as bland but drinkable as the more famous Kingfisher:

The food was good, not big serves but well prepared and tastefully presented.

The only problem I had in the end was the price - $80 for two people seemed a bit steep for the amount of food and the perfunctory service.

It's as if Everest was trying hard to be flash to justify its prices but not quite making it; eg there were crisp white tablecloths, but also endorsements from cricketers on the walls and in the menus.

This style confusion made the restaurant seem adrift somewhere between local Indian eatery and smart restaurant, and a little overpriced as a result.

Still, it was good food and I'm glad I had the sense to order raita to ease that very good vindaloo.

The Bill: $80.50 for two.
The Restaurant: Everest, 85 Station St, Fairfield; ph 03 9482 2583.

The Alphabet Dinners: D is for Don Tojo

In The Alphabet Dinners series, I review the cheap restaurants of Melbourne... in alphabetical order.

I had a slight problem in browsing the D section of the Age Cheap Eats for this week's review: once I'd removed all the bars, cafes and places not open on a Tuesday evening, there wasn't much left.

So by near default I was meeting my friends Craig and Julia at Don Tojo, a cheap Japanese place in Carlton. Not on the famous Lygon Street, however, but a block away on Cardigan Street where presumably the rents are cheaper.

It's easy enough for Carlton's many students to find, of course, and has an attractively simple and cheap menu.

The interior is interesting too - a big industrial-type space with art splashed across the walls.

To start, a Kirin beer. Not, frankly, Japan's greatest gift to the world - Kirin is like the Japanese equivalent of Fosters, mainstream and fairly tasteless. However, it's palatable enough.

Then the teriyaki chicken don. Didn't look that spectacular but was very good - subtle teriyaki flavour, nicely cooked chicken and sticky rice, zapped up a bit by the spicy orange sprinkly stuff in a bowl on the counter.

And then the weird stuff. I ordered the soba noodle salad as an intended side dish, and it was very curious indeed. Contained noodles, tofu, tomatoes, cucumber, mushrooms, rockmelon, lettuce and kiwifruit. Interesting. You had to give it points for variety. Also looked quite healthy, all things considered.

A good restaurant for a cheap post-work meal, all in all. Its kitchens closed at 8.30pm so we slipped around the corner to the Carlton Yacht Club bar for a strengthening cocktail. Which cost as much as the whole meal at Don Tojo.

The Bill: $18
The Restaurant: Don Tojo, 164 Cardigan St, Carlton.

The Alphabet Dinners: C is for Cherry Tree Hotel

In The Alphabet Dinners series, I review the cheap restaurants of Melbourne... in alphabetical order.

Pub food is always good for a satisfying informal meal out; as long as the pub is a good one, of course. The Cherry Tree Hotel is a thoroughly gentrified pub in the formerly industrial part of Richmond that lies to the west of the old Bryant & May match factory on Church Street.

In fact, I think this bit of Richmond west of the railway line which heads to South Yarra is called Cremorne. In early colonial times, before the factories, there was a train station here which people used to access a riverside circus, or so I remember reading.

By coincidence, a branch of my gym is actually inside the old Bryant & May complex, which is now a business park, so I was able to do a workout before strolling here for dinner through the rain.

It's hard to say how old the pub is. At a guess I'd say 1930s, but for all I know it's been remodelled a dozen times from an older building. The front bar is now decked out in a faintly retro manner, with lots of timber tabletops and low lounges.

What to choose from the big menu chalked on the wall? I like to show you at least a starter and a main in these reviews, but the menu here was basically divided into snacks and mains.

So first up I ordered the sausage rolls as a starter, not quite knowing what to expect. What I got was pretty simple, as you can see below - five little sausage roll segments and tomato sauce. They were pretty good for sausage rolls, but nothing to blow one's mind.

The main, however, added some much needed excitement. It was a Thai beef salad, and a damn good one. Nice tender slices of medium rare beef, fresh capsicum and lettuce, slightly crunchy noodles, lots of peanuts, lemon juice (I think),  and a nice chilli bite. Fresh, tasty, fantastic.

And to drink? A crisply bitter India Pale Ale from my old haunt, the Holgate Brewery in Woodend. Just the right match for the chilli.

The Bill: $37.
The Restaurant: Cherry Tree Hotel, 53 Balmain St, Richmond; ph 03 9428 5743.

The Alphabet Dinners: B is for Bande à Part

OK, so if you cast your mind back to last week, you'll remember my new Tuesday evening pastime... picking a cheap eatery from The Age Cheap Eats guide each week in alphabetical order, then eating and blogging.

All up to speed? Good. So this week... B is for Bande à Part.

Named after a 1964 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard (or so Wikipedia suggests), this is one of those 21st century pizzerias that makes pizzas with a fascinating array of fresh ingredients. Away, tinned pineapple!

I'll get to the food in a moment. Unfortunately this so-cool eatery in a deep Carlton North shopfront suffered from some of the standard problems found in so-cool eateries and bars. To wit:

• The door was open on a cold evening, so we were pretty cold. I'm always whinging about Melbourne cafes leaving doors open in cold weather, so rest assured this place is not alone re this particular sin (BTW my Mum was with me, visiting from Perth. Having Tuesday dinner with your Mum isn't exactly inner-city cutting-edge and cool, but what the hell.)
• The waiters were coolly efficient rather than friendly.
• The music was too loud for easy conversation.
• The light was too dark to read the menu easily.
• The menu was displayed in a tiny serif-packed font that was difficult to read in the prevailing light conditions.

Having said all that, the food was good; though you're going to have to excuse the quality of my iPhone photography this week, as the iPhone 3GS camera is pretty poor in low light.

First up was a "salad" of fried haloumi cheese served with flatbread, slices of fresh beetroot and fresh mint. I forgot to take a picture of it on its original plate, so here's half of it on my own plate. Very tasty, all ingredients making their presence felt.

A glass of the house red arrived, some species of sangiovese which was rather good.

Then the main, a large Ring of Fire pizza. Great name, though one was initially suspicious it might be one of those insanely hot dishes that young blokes eat to prove their manhood. But no, it was a nicely judged mix of tomato, buffalo mozzarella, char-grilled peppers, spanish onion, oregano and chilli oil; spicy but not crazily so. Also aesthetically pleasing, dominated by different shades and textures of red.

And here's a bonus: Mum's Mushroom pizza with tomato, stracchino cheese, mushrooms, garlic and parsley.

The generous scattering of fresh parsley made it look visually pleasing, though Mum did comment that it wasn't as flavoursome as she expected after the haloumi. That's a common drawback with gourmet pizzas, I find - they have high quality, subtly flavoured fresh ingredients, but that subtlety means they rarely pack the flavour punch of your classic capricciosa.

Overall though, a good meal and well made.

The Bill: $54 for two.
The Restaurant: Bande à Part, 749 Nicholson St, Carlton North; ph 03 9388 8950.

The Alphabet Dinners: A is for Arda

Two lady novelists are responsible for this new twist in my blogging.

The first is Narrelle Harris, my other half and author of the fabulous vampire novel The Opposite of Life (ask for it at all good bookshops). Because Narrelle takes herself off each Tuesday night to a writing lair elsewhere in the city, I'm at a loose end after spending all day working at home.

The other is Agatha Christie. The earliest work of hers I read was The ABC Murders, a chilling account of a serial killer who selected his victims purely by the alphabetical order of their names.

I liked this arbitrary device. So I've decided that, on Tuesday evenings when I'm in Melbourne, I'll select a restaurant from The Age Cheap Eats guide, eat there and blog about it. And I'll select each eatery - follow me closely here - in alphabetical order.

So... this week A is for Arda, a Turkish restaurant in Caulfield, reached by a train to Elsternwick then a number 67 tram. While I was waiting for the delayed 67, a strange apparition appeared - an old wooden W-Class Tram, marked as a number 78 and clearly very lost. I dared not step aboard, lest it prove the Flying Dutchman of trams, doomed forever to trundle through the city's southeast backwaters.

 

The restaurant was your standard suburban ethnic eatery, with fairly plain tables in a narrow shopfront, but also with a lengthy menu of kebab and 'Turkish pizza' variants.

First up, a side of tabouli (above). The parsley was cut a bit coarser than usual, but I liked it like that - gave it a hint of homemade authenticity. A little too salty, but lots of crunchy texture.

Then the main, iskender kebab. I'd had this before at our local Turkish when we lived in Richmond years ago. It consists of strips of lamb, sliced from the rotisserie I assume, layered with yoghurt and a piquant tomato sauce, all on top of chunks of soft Turkish bread. Very tasty.

A dash of this chilli sauce added just a bit more bite, and contrasted nicely with the soothing yoghurt.

And for dessert, Turkish delight and Turkish coffee. Breaking my (poorly enforced) moratorium on caffeine after midday, but what the hell.

The Bill: $30.50
The Restaurant: Arda, 619 Glenhuntly Rd, Caulfield; ph 03 9530 0193.