Dimsumbar (Kowloon) 11/2011

Hong Kong is packed with hordes of people who all need to eat and there are restaurants of every variety to look after them. We tried this very modern efficient place across the road from The Prince Hotel at Shop G103 G/F, Gateway Arcade, Harbour City, on the recommendation of our Concierge. He thought it a little different from the standard yum cha restaurant and it was. There was a short queue when we arrived . We were given a numbered slip of paper When our turn came the queue was just as long as when we arrived. The small bare tables were closely set out with colourful paper place mats depicting some of their dishes. The place looks clean, almost new and quite contemporary with minimal decoration, mostly provided by a couple of large TV's depicting a slide show of their dishes. There is a menu with clearly numbered attractive colour photo's of their dishes and a small printed menu on which patrons mark the dishes they want. Service is sensible and efficient, dishes being presented two at a time. We started with the first thing on the menu 101 Prawn Dumpling, (HK$26). Sounds mundane but they were remarkable for the delicacy of the thin layer of pastry skin wrapping them. Two women were making sheets of this stuff. A ladle of pastry mix was poured onto a wet cloth that sat over a perforated tray over boiling water. After a couple of minutes the cloth is carefully lifted and turned over onto a slab. The cloth is then delicately separated from the pastry skin which may be rolled for future use or have ingredients put on it to be sealed into dumplings before being further steamed and served. Our next course was steamed cheong fun rolled with fresh chicken and shredded abalone served with a Chinese vinegar, sweetened by mirin with a nice soy sauce added, (HK$38). Unusual and pleasant this was less out standing than other dishes.This sauce, with fine strips of ginger, was also provided for a a plate of traditional nanxiang style steamed xiao long bao dumplings (6 for HK $54) in the shape of Shanghai dumpling. These were very moist with a superb flavour of some soup, though not as much as in a Shanghai dumpling. Steamed rice with spare ribs and chicken feet was matched with soy sauce. Another beaut dish, unusual in being very slightly sweet. Crispy sesame egg rolls were the most crisp we have ever had. They were almost empty but had small amount of some strong cheese like content. They were a bit too fatty for my taste.Steamed minced beef balls with bean curd sheets, (3 for HK$24) balls looked much as they always do but these were exceptionally light. If meat balls had pedigrees these would be in the top class! A lobster bisque was not as intense as we would have liked with a fairly bland king's dumpling was the last course before a very moorish dessert in the form of a baked almond cream buns (2 for HK$20) filled with almond paste.The bill at the end of all this came to less than A$45.
Score 15/20

Cina (Malvern) 11/2011

This is a very quiet spot at lunch time.On High St there is free roof top parking, something of a necessity around here. It has a quiet air about it. Gentle 60's music, calm decor, white table cloths and napkins, not paper covered, nothing jarring although there are a few pieces of colourful modern Chinese art work towards the back of this long narrow restaurant. Impressed with their take away food we stopped by for a meal. It was a pleasure. Tea was served in a small attractive pot in little round glasses Very crisp pastry covered prawn spring rolls were nicely cooked though I found the artificial flower on the plate jarring. Mongolian tenderloin was delicious, slightly sweet and remarkably tasty and tender. The accompanying lightly cooked broccoli was very coarsely presented.Sweet sour sauce accompanying prawns in batter was an excellent slightly acidic, slightly sweet and light, an achievement rarely matched except in the very best restaurants. Roast duck was also a very fine dish. With little fat and a crisp skin the duck itself was very tender with good flavour. Once again that dreadful flower appeared.
Score: 14.75/20
Service was very friendly and the bill quite reasonable.

Chatter 43 Eating

An opinion piece, reproduced here with the authors permission, published in a medical newsletter called Australian Doctor set me off on this track.
Before long I'm going to write a sort of meditation on the subject of eating, cooking and dining which has spawned a small revolution in our lives. It's an endless subject filling our TV screens and newspapers, creating celebrities, turning housewives into authors, making would be thin children fat and demonstrating the wonders of globalization. That, how ever, is for another time.
This is what he said

Spots on the apples 23-Sep-2011

Dr Jon Fogarty

I have given up buying fruit and veg from supermarkets. I’m not convinced they really are the fresh food people.

I have a growing feeling that as the oranges become spot free, and the tomatoes redder, and the strawberries bigger, they all simultaneously become more tasteless.

In fact, I wonder if I did a blind test taste on supermarket fruit if I could pick a pear from an apricot.

I’m happy to buy toothpaste and baked beans and margarine from the big two, or three, or four, but I now buy my fruit and veg from the small organic shop.

Admittedly I can afford to do this. I don’t have three kids in tow with a need to do hit-and-run shopping. If organic food costs an extra few dollars I don’t care. Others don’t have this luxury.

I now buy meat from a small butcher’s shop where the butcher can tell me which farm the meat came from. He sells chutney made by a local. His wife makes casseroles ready to go.

The organic shop is a bit of a 60’s hippie affair. Joni Mitchell would have approved… there are plenty of “spots on the apples”. The shop keeper tells me that the oranges come from the last commercial orchard in this area.

Maybe I’m deluding myself but I think they taste great and they smell great. There are fair dinkum free range eggs from a farm, complete with the occasional remnant of hen poo on the shell. These are not fake “free range eggs” where free range means two square feet per hen.

In the organic fruit shop I can shop and get a coffee (organic), sit in a comfy chair and read the Saturday papers. The owners are not too purist. They provide a plastic bag without looking snooty.

I like it. I prefer the food; I prefer the taste; I prefer the smell. I like the conversation with the butcher and the organic hippie bloke and I don’t care a fig if it costs a dollar or two more.

I’m not sure if it’s healthier, but I think it might just be that too.

What do you reckon?

Sunnybrae (Birregurra) 10/2011

At some places you eat and at some you dine but, call it what you like, partaking of a meal at Sunnybrae is an event. About an hour and a half out of Melbourne, past Geelong, this is a cottage restaurant set in spacious gardens which include extensive vegetable patches, an olive grove and acres of spelt wheat. It's a restaurant on Saturdays and Sundays and a cooking school on Monday where Chef proprietor George Biron cooks and teaches. George is very traditional in his cooking. He, as is everyone these days, is driven by the concepts of organic, fresh, sustainable and local. And it certainly is all of that with the evidence right outside the door. He is unimpressed with all the 'modern' developments in cooking most of which he says have been around for ages and don't add anything new. He is very modern in one way at least. He has a blog in which he talks about all sorts of things that interest him, mostly about food. This is his site http://sunnybraerestaurantandcookingschool.blogspot.com
Housed in a country cottage with unpretentious tables and chairs, simple furnishing reminiscent of its origins, solid wood display cabinets and bookshelves filled with plenty of food related stuff to browse through, it's a comfortable homely place.
The menu arrives as A2 sheets written in a large attractive script. It is a degustation meal with plenty of variation and flexibility for those suffering from food fads or the those sensitive or allergic to whatever or for people simply not wishing to partake of a meal containing some particular animal part or other ingredient.
The bread is deadly. Spelt Kohrasan made in their wood oven, served with new season Arbequinna e.v.olive oil from their plantation, it should be eaten with discretion for their is a large meal to come. One of our party felt that bread and champagne were all that she needed for a most pleasing meal! Home grown large, tender asparagus were served with Aioli, Dukha and Sauce Maltaise. Whilst the dukha added some extra texture to this dish it was very strong and overwhelmed the asparagus. Several more entrees followed. Sea urchin with sugar cured mackerel, samphire, cucumber, grapefruit and dill. Sea urchin has a very strong taste of the sea which I think many would dislike. I found it jarring in this otherwise fine dish. Home made garlic and herb cheese with a radish vinaigrette and young carrots was excellent,
as was the avocado, aptenia and celery salad with coriander and chilli. The succulents were just out of the garden. You can't get more local than that! Nothing dominated this dish, the chili was inoffensive and did not spoil our palate for the wine. Before the main course there was a Vitello Tonato, Parmesan tart and Provencale paste with a house made Capocollo and potato salad which I particularly liked. It is rare to get a really good vitello tonato. This was super with an outstanding mayonnaise based sauce. The capocollo was especially fineMain course was young goat, lightly smoked in the wood oven with artichoke minted peppronata and a garden salad with broccoli, parsnip, anchovy and garlic dressing. Somehow the anchovy got lost in the salad but the goat was very good. More tender than I expected it had light flavour, not at all gamey, and, though not cooked sous vide it had retained plenty of moisture.

For variety I ordered a rabbit dish which was not on the menu. It came as a terrine with blood oranges and pickled beetroot. Very colourful and the blood oranges were sweet and citrus but they added little to this dish which I found disappointing. There was an excellent cheese platter followed by a choice of six deserts. I would have preferred the rhubarb and apricot soufflé with caramelised pineapple and orange sorbet but had saffron poached pears with honey, Elderflower liqueur and almond Frangipane and halva ice cream. This pears were too sweet and had little body.Altogether a lot of good food in a lovely environment. As George remarked, in a short conversation, dining is not about foam or spherification, it's about enjoying food in congenial company. We met each other's expectations. It was a great way to spend the afternoon.
We also drank - perhaps too much!We have to thank Neil; and Dorothy for getting us here, we might never have made it without them.
Score: 15/20