Melbourne Food Review: Solarino, Little Collins St., CBD

Maya has been raving about Solarino for quite some time. Apparently, she and Mik are quite a fan of the place and practically live there. So one day, after having been turned down due to Journal Canteen’s popularity, we ended up there for dinner.

(bread and butter! yes! BUTTER!)

The first thing I noticed about the place was that it was a lot more spacious than I expected. Sure it was a cafe, but it was warmly decorated and had a nice restaurant feel to it. Its menu was projected onto an empty wall (kinda cool, but I can imagine all the restaurant snobs having issues here). The waiter greeted us like an old friend (I think that’s because Mik is there so damn much, he practically was).

(Mik’s rigatoni, he purposely wouldn’t keep it still)

Josh, Mik and I all opted for pasta while Maya went for some fries and Nina ‘I’m just drinking’. In the spirit of 6pm on a Friday night, they ordered a bottle of Moscato to start. Personally, if I don’t get some food in me before the booze, I spend the next day being thoroughly sick. Weak. I know. We were brought some bread and butter. I’m so stoked at the presence of butter at a pasta cafe. We need to revolt against this neglect of butter!

Asparagus, Rice and Pancetta Soup

I am totally going through an asparagus phase at the moment. Every market I go to, they’re selling beautifully fresh, plump asparagus. Who am I to refuse these little beauties?

This soup was adapted from Skye Gyngell’s My Favourite Ingredients, which is really a beautiful cookbook. She writes cookbooks like she writes poetry. It’s great. As Skye said, this recipe is more like a wet, sloppy risotto rather than a soup. It is substantial for dinner.

Hearty Soup for 2:

1. 8 fat asparagus, tough parts peeled back and chopped into 3 cm pieces
2. 1.5 cups of risotto rice
3. 1 spanish onion, finely chopped
4. 3 slices of mild pancetta (about 80g), chopped
5. 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
6. 3 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked
7. 5 fresh sage leaves, chopped
8. 2 slices of dried porcini or 2 dried shittake mushrooms
9. 750 ml of hot water + 1/2 cube of Massel vegetable stock + 1 tsp of Vegeta Gourmet stock*
10. a pinch of salt and pepper
11. parmesan, shaved to serve

Heat up 1 tbsp of olive oil and slowly fry off the onion, pancetta, sage and thyme for about 10 minutes on low heat until the onion turns clear and translucent. Add salt, rice and garlic and fry until the rice is too hot to touch. Add the stock and dried mushrooms and bring to boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes. Add asparagus and bring back to boil for another 2 minutes. Turn off the heat.

Serve with freshly cracked pepper and shaved parmasan.

* Or use whatever light (vegetable/chicken) stock you have. I rarely do my own stock but I have started a freezer bag of off cut vegetables so once that’s full I might do up a batch of fresh stock.

Melbourne Food Review: Pho 888 Box Hill, Box Hill

(beef pho – with sliced rare beef $7.5 S, $8.5m M $9.5L)

I’m not too sure if I have mentioned this a few times already, but I love pho – the famous Vietnamese staple of rice noodles in beef (or chicken) broth. I can eat it three times a day (in fact I have had three bowls of pho in the past two days). Before I get into the pho philosophy, which I will have to write about one of these days, let’s just stick to the review of Pho 888.

(pho condiment – sliced chilli, lemon, beansprouts and Thai basil)

In short, Pho 888 is my second favourite pho joint in Melbourne. It’s the one we visit most often because it’s a 10 minute drive from our house so we end up there a lot. To me, a good pho has to have a good, well balanced soup, silky fresh rice noodles (using dried rice stick, personally, is a deal breaker), tender pieces of meat. Pho 888 ticks all the boxes.

(three-coloured drink – $3)

Most recently, we ended up there last Saturday when it was almost 30′c and I didn’t feel like cooking. Walking into air-conditioned Pho 888 was a bit of a godsend. I quickly ordered the eternal Vietnamese favourite drink – the three-coloured drink. It was basically boiled kidney beans, mung bean paste, green sweet noodle in syrup and covered in coconut milk. It was sweet and refreshing. I’m sure it’s meant to be a dessert, but hey it was a hot day.

Melbourne Food Review: Red Spice Road, McKillop St., CBD

I have heard, and read, many a good thing about Red Spice Road. The deal was clinched when a few colleagues had gone over for a dinner early one evening and came back absolutely raving about their early bird menu. We were going to see Beatlemania* on the night so we thought we would pop in for an early dinner. They have an early bird dinner special which is three shared main courses and shared entree for $25.

Look, let me get straight to the point before you read on: it was one of the worst dining experiences I have ever had. In my 2.0 words: epic fail. And I will spend the rest of this post telling you why.

(betel leaves with chicken filling)

We got there at around 6pm which was the time we made a booking for. The dining room was nice and spacious and practically empty. We were probably one of the three groups of people dining there at the time. My first thought was oh no communal table. Be aware that all seats are communal (except for the private room). Personally I’m not a fan of communal table unless the main is less than $10. However, that’s not by any stretch of imagination my main gripe.

Believe it or not, all of the empty tables and seats, they seated two of us the first two seats near the entrance. Literally 1 metre away from the cash register and waiters’ bench where cutleries, water jugs and all sorts of things are kept. Because it wasn’t busy, we constantly had about 3-4 waiters congregating right behind our backs chattering away.

(the bar – not very far away)

Worse still, the bar in the next room was going absolute full blast. The noise was so loud and distracting. The music was very fast and just pounding and uncomfortable. That wasn’t the only thing fast. The service was extremely fast. In fact, it was so uncomfortably fast. If you can imagine that. Our entree arrived within 5 minutes of ordering. Our mains no more than 2 minutes later. I didn’t even finish taking photos of the entree before our mains arrived. The second our plate looked half way empty, one of the very efficient waiter wanted to clear it away. I had to keep telling them to leave us (the fuck) alone. Really, by the end of the meal, I was that pissed off. Even Mekong on Swanston St. doesn’t rush you that badly.

(crispy pork belly in sweet sauce with Asian-style coleslaw)

It felt extremely rush, in and out. And oh, because it seemed we had the worst seats in the house and there were about 200 other empty seats on the other side of the dining room? I asked if we could move. The reply was no. They were fully booked. Really? At 6pm? When the after work drink crowd was still going full force next door? And that we were there for the early bird which required us to leave by 7.15 anyway? That’s right. No can do. We would not move you.

Melbourne Food Review: Colour of Earth, Queen Victoria Market

Nicole and I have now more or less gotten into a habit of going to Queen Victoria Market for our fish, I have been going back to Colour of Earth a couple of times instead of the usual hot dog and borek (cos you know you cannot possible eat that every time you go to Queen Vic. Admit it, some of you do).

Colour of Earth has a lot of interesting little pizzas (or as I have been corrected by Liz, the proper plural for pizza is pizze). They have a few different pizza base including gluten free ones made from black rice, maize, etc. So you can actually buy takeaway base and they have psychedelic colour. Very awesome.

(Cosmopolitan – $6.80)

On the day (and I have been back a couple of times since but I haven’t been taking photos) I decided on Cosmopolitan, which was black rice base. It looks kinda funny but it tasted really good. It had ricotti, pesto, mushrooms, mozzarella and sweet chilli sauce. I know sweet chilli sauce on pizza? What the hell? But it was good.