A News Bite from Open House 15/11/2012

Malouf quits Petersham Nurseries Café

Australian chef Greg Malouf has returned home from the UK after leaving his role as head chef at the renowned Petersham Nurseries Café in London, less than a year at its helm and only weeks after retaining the restaurant’s Michelin star. Malouf joined the Richmond-based restaurant as the replacement for fellow Australian Skye Gyngell, who left for health reasons. The restaurant’s owners said that Malouf was only a consultant chef and were very happy with his work. A replacement has not been announced yet.

Windows on the Bay (Mordialloc) 11/2012

 
If the beautiful sunny day, the pleasing atmosphere of the place and the very good food were not enough one remark I overheard made me glad to have come here. A lady, having difficulty making herself heard, said, with notable honesty, "Nothing I say is of any importance"!
This is a delightful venue right on the foreshore at Mordialloc, in the Peter Scullin Reserve. 
 Well spaced white clothed tables seat about 150 diners. 
This does put a strain on the kitchen which can take quite a long time to serve food. We waited almost an hour but it was worth the wait. The menu is largely sea food based and the best deal on the menu is their sea food tasting platter ($48). It had on it Barilla bay oysters, salt and pepper squid, excellent large delicate tasting Canadian scallops, a sort of tempura prawns in filo pastry,
  
beer battered King George whiting and a fillet of crisp skin baked salmon accompanied by a small serve of hand cut chips, a small garden salad, a salmon mousse and a small bowl of tartare sauce. Not only a substantial serve but also every thing on the plate tasted good, or better than that. The whiting and the scallops were exceptional.
 
Service was amiable and there was no pressure to have alcoholic beverages.
The only disappointing thing was the dessert. A vanilla brulee with brittle shortbread was too sweet and the wrong texture and consistency but a very positive memory of the meal lingers. 
Definitely worth a visit and, if you have it, the Entertainment Book gives you up to $45 of your meal!
Score: 14 /20

Senor BBQ (Balaclava) 11/2012

*Click on pic's to enlarge them.

What is the opposite of refined? Rough, perhaps coarse or simply unrefined. What ever you like it is epitomized at Senor BBQ. This small shop front venue has two large tables for customers to 
share and a huge BBQ dominating the ground floor. 
A dark and scungy staircase leads to a quite pleasant room upstairs set up with a couple of tables.  
 The menu,
 
 eat in or take away is very small, 11 items on a scrap of yellow paper, with full grill specials only available on the weekend. We tried everything. Empanadas, meat or potato, ($5 for two), were in
a taste free zone desperately needing seasoning. 
Salads were also quite bland. We had  them all ($6 each), Russian, potato carrot and peas with a home made mayonnaise, Mixta, lettuce tomato and onion, a beetroot salad and Cous Cous which was the best of them.

 A side serve of soft indifferent chips ($4.50) had little to recommend it.
 
The BBQ chicken wings (three for $10) beef ribs ($12 or $16) and the chorizo were presented on a metal device containing hot coals and served with a green salad
 
and there was a jar of chimicherri on the table. Chimichurri is an Argentinean condiment for grilled meats. It is a mixture containing olives, parsley, garlic, oregano, red vinegar and sweet paprika occasionally including other ingredients such as thyme and cumin.  It has no chili in it and is quite mild. 
The ribs were substantial hunks of bone covered in a thick layer of very tough fatty meat which was surprisingly tasty. The very large chicken wings came from very mature chooks. Size was predominant feature here. Chorizo, unlike the other grills, was very spicy with plenty of chili for devotees. We did not stay for desserts.
Prices are very low, which is appropriate. At present they have no liquor licence and transactions are cash only. The waiters are Spanish speakers, young and enthusiastic. 
I don't see a great future for this place without substantial improvements.
Score 12/20

Chatter 46 A Restaurant’s Menu Tells You More Than Just What’s For Dinner

This article was contributed by Imogen Tyler. The menu pictured is from Eugenius.

Restaurant menus come in all shapes and sizes, but nowadays they offer more information than just what’s cooking in the kitchen. When you sit down to dine, your menu could speak volumes about the establishment you’re sitting in, providing details about everything from the history of the building to setting the tone of the eatery.

More than ever before, a menu represents the level of service customers can expect – so it ideally needs to reflect a brand’s inherent values in its design, tone of voice and materials. Menus can also be useful persuasive tools, which influence diners in their mealtime choices.

What makes a menu?

Tone of voice

Every restaurant has a unique character, so its personality should be reflected in the language used within the menu. For example, the menu for Buffalo Bill’s restaurant in Disneyland Resort Paris includes descriptive words to paint a picture in the theme of the Wild West. Simple re-naming of the foods to “Texan skillet”, “Cattleman’s chilli” and “Old-style potato wedges” flavours the food cowboy-style, before you’ve even picked up a fork.

This is a rather extreme example, but it is implemented throughout the restaurant industry to dictate everything from exclusivity in high-end establishments to cool, teen talk in burger joints.

At the other end of the spectrum, Gordon Ramsey’s Menu Prestige says it all in the title. The “Menu Prestige” offers a sense of high-end decorum from the amuse bouche to the mango parfait coconut dacquoise. This use of language fuels the fire that this is a high-brow establishment.

Imagery

Gone are the days when a menu consisted of a single printed sheet of white paper; these days image is everything. Loud, bright colours and cartoon characters shout about a place that serves up fun with every bite. They also point towards food that is saturated fat-heavy and full of calories.

 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Greenwich_Menu.jpg

This menu shows imagery in which the main ingredient appears to be is cheese – so avoid venues with menus like these if you are trying to eat healthily. Unhealthy male and female diets are often encouraged by these types of advert, which promote binge eating with their eye-catching graphics, bright colours and descriptions like “overloaded” and “feast”. If you are dieting, it is a good idea to walk past diners like this with your eyes averted.

Many fast food outlets are trying to reinvent themselves at the moment, by promoting an image that’s less garish and offers a “healthier” option. Many McDonald’s restaurants have toned down their bright imagery, instead offering more muted pictures of wraps and salads to entice the healthy eating crowd.

Materials

Today you can create a menu out of anything – cut out an exotic shape in laminated card, print on recycled parchment, or bind your menu books in wood. Every choice a restaurant makes speaks volumes about the character of the place.

A vegan restaurant might choose to use only recycled materials, and obviously not bind their menus in leather. This furthers the notion that the restaurant is a sustainable, eco-conscious establishment, which truly believes in the idea that animal produce should not be used. If a restaurant has gone to the extent of sourcing all its food sustainably, there is no reason why it shouldn’t offer the same care and attention to all its peripheral materials. Re-usable chalk boards might be a good substitute here.

Menus with additional information

As a restaurateur, you may wish to provide extra information within your menu, which speaks of history, heritage, your business’ roots or your granny’s influence on the home-made meatloaf. The menu is the ideal location in which to do this, as it offers diners the opportunity to become invested in your brand values.

By offering these extra touches, you promote a restaurant with personality and flair – rather than a run-of-the-mill establishment – which allows people to “buy into” your idea. How many people would rather spend their money in a friendly, family run diner, as opposed to a faceless chain? But even faceless chains can stamp their own personality on the diner – Portuguese chicken chain Nandos, for example, provides lots of facts and jokes about Portugal and poultry on its menus. It can make for quite an interesting read.

So wherever you eat next, take a look at the menu – what does it say about the restaurant you’re eating in?

Maxy's (Elsternwick) 10/2012

This place has been an icon of Melbourne dining, they tell you so on their web page, since 1995.  They also tell you that they are well known for their Middle Eastern salads and dips and are famous for their "ribs and schnitzels, cooked to perfection in tasty marinades and sauces. Without pretension or attitude, our signature is quality and quantity.

It's half true in our view, the quantity bit is, that's for sure. They do have a wide ranging menu and they are cheap for what you get.

 

 Family friendly it's great for kids too but not if you're a foodie . It's a big venue, simply furnished with an attractive bar.

 

They have bare tables, paper napkins and indifferent cutlery. The walls are decorated with pic's of famous pic's of film stars, mostly dead now, who have never been here. There is a large TV with captions and volume turned down for the bored or the lonely. 

Food is served on big metal platters, suitable for sharing, with side plates. Knowing the size of the serves we skipped entrees and started with a chicken schnitzel, two actually, each of which covered a normal size plate. They were thick, heavily crumbed and rather dull. This was presented with a mass of coleslaw, red cabbage and a tomato and capsicum salad all extremely coarsely chopped, a bit of lemon and a choice of sauces.  

The fish, a New Zealand flounder would not fit on a plate and came with the same salads. It was surprisingly coarse and free of taste.

 

 Desserts were also distinguished by size. An apple strudel with cream and ice cream  

 

and an old fashioned Sunday finished off our meal and just about finished me off too. I could eat nothing for the next 24 hours.
Elias and his staff seemed very happy and well satisfied with everything.

   

 Fast all day, take the kids but don't expect a culinary experience. Score: 12.75/20

The Drunken Admiral (Hobart) 0/2012

The walls and ceiling of this restaurant are intended to create a nautical atmosphere. They are crowded with paraphernalia reminiscent of the back shed of a retired sailor or a small town maritime museum.

Waiters are almost hyper-kinetic and the chefs keep up with them so a meal can be over before you could get a main course at many other places, not that they aren't pleasant enough and very obliging. Tables are small and close together with little space for the volume of crockery that they have to accommodate. There is a free, simple, cold salad bar with main courses and the serves are handsome. I'm not sure when a soup becomes so thick that it is no longer meets the definition. The seafood bisque could have been eaten with a knife and fork but it had plenty of very good flavour which was not diminished when we added half a glass of wine and a dash of  water.
 
Bread, with garlic butter, was an extra few $'s as is the custom in Hobart.  
My mussels in a spicy tomato sauce came under a canopy of pita bread. 
Despite the size of their shells the mussels were quite small, perhaps thoroughly over cooked
 and the sauce mundane. There was plenty of both. 
Spaghetti marinara was also a large serve with a coarse pasta. Texturally unsatisfying it nothing special to recommend it.
   
Fish and chips was really good. The battered trevalla delicate and the chips irresistible.  We ate some of this before I got to taking this picture.      
Finally a killer chocolate dessert left us stuffed with enough calories for a week.
Score: 13/20 

Ball and Chain (Hobart) 10/2010

This no frills restaurant has an air of American efficiency about it.

A member of staff with a clip board takes your name and puts you on his list to await a table. There are no reservations for small parties. It not for want of tables, there are stacks of them on two levels and up stairs as well. It’s that the chefs can not cope! Décor is simple and unobtrusive. One painting was particularly appropriate.
 
Jarrah, who happened to be my nephews son, provided us with exceptional service and took this snap of us.

 The main feature of the menu is the grill. They offer porterhouse, scotch fillet rump and eye fillet in three sizes 180, 300 or 500 gm which translates as large, very large and gigantic. These are cooked as you wish from genuinely warm blue, rare, medium rare and so on and come with roast potato, a range of sauces e.g. pepper, garlic, Hollandaise and more and a free salad bar.
There are plenty of other choices on the menu including whole ocean trout, trevalla, chicken and other meats.

We started with the Ball and Chain tasting plate for an entrée. This handsome serve contained a good variety of Tasmanian produce including prosciutto, liver paté, a beetroot and nut paté, marinated octopus tentacles, marinated fish, sun dried tomato, olives, capers, a very good choice.
It would be unfair to go to a grill bar that specializes in steak and eat fish or fowl so we had no hesitation in ordering a couple of medium steaks. My fillet was excellent, cooked as requested, with roast potato
while Sandra had a porterhouse blue and it really was, with a Hollandaise sauce and chips as a special request.
 
We ended the meal with an extremely rich chocolate pudding.

 Score: 13.75/20

Potsticker (Caulfield) 10/2012

Congratulations to Potsticker on reaching there first anniversary at tyhis site which has proved the undoing of many previous restaurants. They have maintained a decent menu of good food and the venue remains as attractive as ever. Neat white clothed tables, 
the elevated indoor decorative pool and good space have not changed. I drank an fairly ordinary hot saki which was set on the tasble in a caraffe which sat in a bowl of water over a candle to keep it hot. A won ton soup was disappointing as the dumplings were hard. We enjoyed a seafood san chao bau which was delicately flavoured with just a dash of sweet sauce 

 
followed by a sweet and sour plate of prawns in batter. The sauce was well balanced without being either too sweet nor too acidic and was of a good consistency. The prawns were fresh and firm fleshed.
 
An attractively presented Cantonese beef was pleasing without special distinction. The meat was quite tender and very tasty.
  
A mango mousse with an apricot tortellini was delicious. 
Score: 13.75/20/20