Looking through some pics from our recent over seas trip I noticed that there are quite a few places we did not get to writing about. They included a revisit to Le Bec Fin and Stella and an exceptional lunch at Lacroix as well as this popular Regensberg cafe beer house that seats 600!
Yes, that's the daily paper framed up there!
with large glass windows facing an open entrance passageway and the street. They have two sessions for Sunday and we came, as requested, at 11.30 for the first sitting. It took some time before any food became available. It was presented by waiters moving about with trays of the usual things served at Yum Cha. Service was, to put it mildly, erratic. Requests were forgotten, they presented the same thing several times at some tables and missed other. Food was well prepared, the pastry for the steamed sea food dumplings finer than most
but the Shanghai pork dumplings, large portion,
which we had to order and waited over 40 minutes for was thicker and coarser than usual. The dumpling did contain a mouth wateringly flavour full soup encouraging us to eat more than we originally intended. Some of the other dumplings also had a heavy pastry. Another highly recommended dish was their tofu.
This silken loaf, bathed in a dark sauce had a velvety smooth texture delighted any tofu lover.We also tried several other very ordinary dishes. Drunken chicken cooked in rice wine,
battered crispy calamari
and large, very crisp Bankers purses
added nothing special to the lunch.Undeterred we kept trying more dishes. Scallops in a bread batter,
pot stickers
and more steamed food.
Only a foodaholic would order another dish after that dinner so of course we did. Here it is. Can anyone guess what this dish was?
Comments: Everything was done wel, indeed very well,l but there was a lack of inspiration in the food. The variety was limited in that there were no offal dishes at all. No chicken feet or duck web,or duck tongue, no tripe, indeed nothing from inside an animal. A very pleasant venue but rarely rising above the very ordinary.
The Brandon Hotel falls into this category. Whilst the service might be a little amateurish, (To the question "Do you have a dessert menu?" the response was "Yes I will bring it out when the time comes") the place is attractive and the food excellent. It has a slightly old fashioned look with 50's style chairs.
Tables have white linen clothes and napkins and good weight cutlery.
There are a variety of starters including a vegetarian option, oysters, with lime and sherry. or salmon. Mains also include a vegetarian dish, fish or chicken as well as slow cooked lamb neck and steaks. Sides of Heirloom tomatoes, crushed Kipfler potaoes or green beans with fetta are all $8.
We began with a starter of free range pork with Yarra Valley pickled pear and crispy pigs ear ($15) Chef Nigel Cunningham, late of the award winning Healesville Hotel, started here a couple of months ago. He has introduced a lot of very good Yarra Valley products and wines. The thought of pigs ear might be off putting but it was similar to something between crispy bacon and crackling. The pork, a nice size piece of pork belly was superb and the colourful sweet poached pear a very good accompaniment. 
The boneless quail wrapped in prosciutto with white bean puree, roasted hazelnuts and Cafe de Paris butter ($16)
was a tasteful and tasty presentation and the bean puree excellent. For mains I had the special 120 day grain fed beef steak
and Sandra the char grilled 31 day dry aged grass fed Gippsland Black Angus beef with roasted bone marrow, gratin of colcannon potato and parsley with a caper and red onion salad ($36).
Both steaks were cooked as requested and were reasonably tender. There was a distinct difference in the taste of the grass fed meat and the grain fed beef but I could not say I had a taste of fresh mown grass!
There is a small choice of desserts or a cheese platter. We had a Kennedy and Wilson chocolate brownie with Alexandria cherries poached in Pedro Ximenez sherry with a dollop of cream ($16).
This was a great end to the meal for a lover of sweet things, Coffee was served with chockies.
They have a fair range of wines - there are over four dozen on their list, mostly Australian, with half a dozen reds or whites by the glass and half a dozen fortified and dessert wines. The prices are extremely reasonable running from $22 for an 08 Rothbury Estate sav. blanc to $550 for an 01 Penfolds Grange. This turned out to be a very good meal at a reasonable cost.
We are happy to recommend the Brandon.
an ebullient and extremely friendly host who danced among the tables like a reincarnated Zorba. Apologizing for the lack of clientele on that particular night he offered us any free table we liked. The place was simply decorated with with white and blue paper covers over linen cloths. There were a few framed scenes and objects on the walls and over the servery a net with fish and symbols of the sea.
while Sandra settled for a house white sav. blanc, which was pleasant and cheap ($5.50).
as good as we could get, and better than almost any that I've had before, the whitebait 
moist and the vine leaves tender and the dips
delicious.
accompanied by a few salad onions and a wedge of lemon. The barramundi were barbecued with a crisp skin,
Here's a trivial pursuit question for a foodie. What is a Chifa? And the answer is it is a sort of Peruvian cuisine created by a combination of Peruvian creole cooking and Chinese cuisine. It is very common in Peru where the restaurants serving this kind of food have become known as Chifas. This style of cooking has now spread to Ecuador and Philadelphia now has a Chifa, which is its name. The executive chef is the suddenly famous Jose Garces, an Ecuadorian born US chef. He has been winning awards for his innovative and attractive cooking for the last few years and became very well known when he defeated Iron Chef Bobby Flay in his Iron Chef America debut and has been described as "a compelling voice for America's thriving Latin food movement"
including a semi private area 
and an indefinable style ground floor area It has is a wall of pottery as you enter 
and further on a wall of small empty bird cages.
Opposite is a wall of louvred wooden doors 
behind which there is absolutely nothing! None of that matters to much because we came for the food and what food it was.
There was an oyster in it and there was a lemony taste, among others. For me it was peculiar, interesting and, as with most of the dishes here, the tastes were unfamiliar and hard to describe. We followed this with a crispy empanada filled with jumbo lump crab decorated with shaved cucumber and served with a sweet chili reduction.
This was very tasty but rather small serve. We could have done with a couple more.
was described as glazed cod, Tianjin broth, bacon beech mushroom and tofu was delicious, as was the second,
a beef noodle bowl with sesame seeds, cilantro, red chili, Chinese white noodles and beef ribs but, beyond displaying a photo, we were both excited and surprised by the tastes. It is unlike any Chinese food we have eaten before and unfamiliar with Peruvian cuisine there is nothing with which to compare it. The only thing that was really familiar was a side dish of French fries served with a red chili mayo. Another very good tasting side dish was called scallion pancake
which had crispy peanut, ginger and cauliflower filling. We finished the meal with a beaut dessert of coconut sorbet with passion fruit curd, coconut meringue and young coconut.
It was a very strange meal. We couldn't really compare it to other restaurants and found it hard to give it a mark. We both enjoyed it and on another trip to Philadelphia we will certainly go to another of Garces restaurants.
With no prior knowledge anyone walking in here off the street could not have high expectations. A rough sign informs that it it cash only, it's very dim, made lighter by fiddling with the camera's sensitivity.
and the dark wooden furniture 
is heavily scarred. 
I hesitate to think what a bacterial swab off a table might grow. Yet it has a reputation for muffaletos, an invention of a Sicilian resident, in the early 1900's.
which was topped with a cap of melting cheese under which there was a typical soup which was not as sweet as it should have been had the onions been a bit more caramelized. For variety we tried both a hamburger
and a muff.
Both served with masses of chips and a small salad including pickled gherkin. These both were extremely tasty and probably provided enough calories, protein, carbs, fat and vitamins for a good days work! I was pretty surprised at how good they were. The pickles in the muff gave it an unusual taste very different from the usual meat and cheese sandwich. Best eaten in New Orleans! Soft drinks tea/coffee are bottomless which is common in American restaurants. I'd certainly like to see that here.
