miss Amelie (Woodonga) 01/2019

Woodonga, in Victoria, is a twin city with Albury, separated by the Murray river that forms the border between New South Wales and Victoria. Neither of them are noted foodie eating stops but miss Amelie was recommended. It lives in a former railway station

which has been refurbished into a clean but unexciting restaurant.

had only two dishes - local asparagus coddled hen's egg cheddar custard, black olives, potato chips,

 a riot of colour, taste and texture that I thoroughly enjoyed and spanner crab and bug tail spaghetti, crayfish bisque pangrattato, a fancy name for breadcrumbs,  parsley, chili, garlic

a dish I regard as showing a total disregard for the fine and delicate tasting seafood. The ingredients were excellent but the combination turned this sea food pasta into just a pasta in a sharp sauce.
Score: 13.5/20

Gelateria Pasticceria D'Angelo (Rome) 08/2018

Asian Spice Asian Urban Cuisine (Legian Bali) 11/2018

This, like lots of other areas in Bali is packed with tourists, and restaurants. We were looking for a Rijsttafel, literally 'rice table'. This Dutch word refers to an Indonesian meal made up of a large number of small dishes served with rice. There may be 40 or more but we only got eight plus sauces and rice.
Indian Spice is a barn like restaurant on the main street of Legian. It is simply decorated 

with a long bar overlooked by a mural of five attractive ladies.

There's nothing elaborate here with simple table settings and menus offering photographs of all their dishes.

It's a very friendly place, as most of Bali is.

Our meal started with a peculiar (to us) soup with some small pieces of chicken, some baby pumpkin, which tasted a little like cucumber and something like very small pieces of dumpling. It was mild in taste but I have no idea how to describe it!

Next came the Rijsttafel. We were served BBQ'd prawns, saté chicken, calamari curry, fish cooked in banana leaf, battered fish, sambal, some sort of shallot salad, some tomato, a sweet sauce, a hot sauce and rice.

A meal that went very well with beer rather than wine.

The meal finished with a dessert - banana fritters with ice cream. 

Thick over fried batter did nothing to improve our feeling about this meal. There was nothing elegant  about this meal. Each dish had it's distinct taste and everything was tender but there was no delicacy about anything either. Certainly not a place I would ever consider returning to.
Score: 10/20

Camden Hotel (Caulfield) 11/2018

All this signage might give one the idea that this is a drinking place, which, of course, it is but it's also a place that serves fairly decent food at quite modest prices.

 It's unpretentious with basic table settings

 in a large open room with a central bar.
We'd heard that their large flounder was particularly good so that had to be top of our choices. 
What sort of soup do you have we asked. Surprisingly soup is not available, it's not on the menu but there's enough to chose from.
So, first the flounder. It comes with chips 

or mash and a small salad on top of it.

It was not very big but it was plump moist and very tasty.  

I decided on a porterhouse steak. As usual I requested it be served 'blue' that is seared on the outside and just warm in the centre. 

Not as usual that was exactly how I did get it!! Served with mash and a mushroom sauce it was as good as it gets. 

 We were not sure they could do this well again but we thought it well worth a try. Sandra had the flounder again which was pretty well identical to the first one and I chose a veal cutlet with potato Gratin.

I have a particular aversion to eating charcoal and sent the gratin back to be replaced by chips.The veal was excellent. This time we tried the desserts.

The lava cake 

was overcooked, slightly burned and dry. Very disappointing. 

The apple and rhubarb crumble was a bit sour 

but quite acceptable. 

As the famous Greek philosopher rightly said 'You can't step into the same river twice" and that proved right here.

Will we go there again? Sure we will. 

Score:13.75/20

Origin Nepal (Canberra) 09/2018

In Canberra rather late I wandered around Northbourne Ave and precinct looking for a good place to eat. 
There were stacks of restaurants but the all seemed very mundane so I chose something a bit different. 
Origin Nepal is very much a place serving traditional Nepalese food. There's a brief menu on a black board outside the door.

The restaurant occupies along room 

which, at 9.00 pm, had only four customers left although it could seat about 50 at it's white clothed paper covered tables.

Decor is very simple.
I chose a classic lamb curry with an accompanying soupy dahl and some fresh and cooked vegetables and rice.

 Not too hot it was a substantial meal.
The lamb, in a herb sauce, was tender and tasted good

The vegetables interesting,

The dahl mild and inoffensive

and the fresh vegetables gave relief from the heat of the dish.

For dessert I had mango and ginger kulfi with jaman.

Among the worst desserts I have ever eaten. Mild mango taste, almost no ginger flavour and the kulfi hard and full of icicles.
It detracted badly from what was otherwise a pleasant meal.
Score:13.25 /20

Café Gran Roma (Via Veneto - Rome) 08/2018

This is one of hundreds of Trattoria/Cafés and restaurants that line many of the streets of Rome. Many seem to be much the same with menus outside their doors on sandwich boards and on the walls.

 

 
 

 

 

 






By now you will have a fair idea of what I mean. There are small variations in the menus and in the prices and small variations in the venues and in the food they serve but none of them are particularly elegant or exceptionally attractive so we settled on the first one we came to after leaving the hair dresser next door.

 As with the others there is both inside

 and outside dining.
 
The menu was more or less indistinguishable from their neighbours.

 Tables are set with small live flower arrangements, this one a little the worse for wear.

Tortellini and bacon, peas and cheese, a mere A$15 was a pleasant slightly bland dish

 helped by the grated Mozzarella 

and salt and pepper. My spaghetti with sea food was quite good, plenty to eat, enough sea food and good taste.
 

Three large scoops of creamy ice cream 

ended an inexpensive (A$45) reasonably satisfactory meal

 Score:13.25 /20