Mocan & Green Grout

This was my second visit to Mocan & Green Grout, and my first time eating there for lunch. My friend and I popped in on the way to a meeting, and so had just under an hour to chow down. We started with drinks – I ordered a soy hot chocolate and was excited that I could actually taste the chocolate and not just the soy! We both ordered the duck sandwich for lunch, but sadly our order was misplaced. With 20 minutes until our meeting, the waitress realised what had happened and we were brought our very freshly prepared meal (without charge and with apologies). The sandwich is fairly small, but we both felt that the brioche bun was a clever way to make it filling, my friend wishing it was a bao instead. I liked the brioche’s softness and sweetness, which contrasted well with the tang of the pickled cucumber and corriander. There was plenty of duck inside, which was tender and very tasty, well-matched with the hoisin mayonnaise. I particularly liked the contrasting textures of each of the ingredients, and despite the delay I felt it was definitely worth the wait.

Mocan & Green Grout, 1/19 Marcus Clarke Street, New Acton, ACT mocanandgreengrout.com/

Pearl Cafe

Pearl Cafe was recommended as a good breakfast spot by a friend – sadly on my weekday visit the lovely interior was booked out for a function, but the staff happily set me up on an al fresco table outside. The menu has some delicious-sounding options, but I only wanted something light given the humidity. I started with a glass of fresh orange juice and ordered the eggs and soldiers with caviar. Yes, you read that right. Pearl Cafe’s menu has some serious class, and this stylish twist on a classic was the proof in the pudding (or the eggs, as the case may be). The toast was a gorgeous rye with that amost sweet nutiness that really dark bread has. Each finger was dense and filling, and both eggs were perfectly soft-boiled with runny yolks. But the highlight was the pop of saltiness with a hint of the ocean from the caviar – I know it sounds like an odd combination, but every bite with it was divine. The only shame was that there wasn’t more to mix in for the bottom half of each egg. A highly recommended local favourite with friendly staff and style to boot.

Pearl Cafe, 28 Logan Road, Woolloongabba, QLD

Oriental Teahouse

When my friend mentioned that she’d found a place I’d love in Melbourne, I was expecting some kind of dessert mecca. Instead, she took me to the Oriental Teahouse, a place that combines two of my favourite things – tea and dumplings. It was a quiet Friday afternoon and we were the only ones in the store. We both started out with the sparkling iced tea special – raspberry and vanilla. It came out in a jar with a handle and was refreshing, sweet and fizzy with a couple of raspberries inside. On to the dumplings. I started with the prawn dumplings and then had the xiao long bao, both of which were served piping hot with three pieces each. The soup inside the xiao long bao wasn’t as flavoursome as the one at Lotus, but the skin was a bit thicker and there was a nice amount of filling inside. Prawn dumplings are my favourite, and these were pretty high up on the list of delicious ones with plenty of prawn inside. We finished with the chocolate dessert dumplings, which were deep-fried and coated in sesame – yum! Check it out for great tea and nice dumplings.

Oriental Teahouse, 378 Little Collins Street, Melbourne VIC                          http://orientalteahouse.com.au/

Eightysix

Part one of this review is here. My dish of the night would have to be the next plate – if you’re going over the next couple of days, please be brave and try the sichuan wallaby tartare! The meat was out-of-this-world good, tender and coated in a complex dressing that was elevated to a whole new level with the crisp garlic flakes. The garlic actually created a creamy coating in the inside of your mouth, which made each mouthful of meat just that bit better. Our last savoury plate was the sweet & sour lamb, which we ordered because we kept getting wafts of as it was plated in front of us! The flavour packed into the masterstock was really something else. I told Christine how much we were enjoying it and she summed it up perfectly with a knowing smile -“finger licking good!”. The lamb was amazingly tender and the perfect note to finish on. Well, until dessert! We picked the ‘sugar daddy’ – a chocolate praline mousse and candied cumquats. The mousse was inside a chocolate pastry tart shell, and overall the chocolate part of the dessert wasn’t as sweet as I expected, but that was ideal as the cumquats, both syrup and freeze-dried versions, added a great tart-sweetness. It was a real privelige not only to enjoy such a diverse yet complementary meal, but also to watch a real master at work in the kitchen. I stick by our comment in the guest book – “make her stay!!!”.

eightysix, 11 Elouera Street, Braddon ACT                                       http://eightysix.com.au/

Eightysix

#icecreamthurs will resume next week; eightysix will be a double post today. You may have heard the buzz – Christine Manfield is in town, taking over the kitchen at eightysix. My friend and I booked bar seats with a kitchen view on her first night and here’s what happened. We started out with cocktails whilst scouring the rather long pop up menu full of Asian-inspired dishes. I picked the ‘Jessica Rabbit’, a lovely concoction of gin, strawberry, pickled ginger and prosecco that started out sweet on the front palate and grew into a warm gin flavour at the back. Our first dish was the prawn toast. This take was sophisticated and plentiful – the toast was deep fried but remained fluffy, and there was plenty of crispy prawn meat on top along with a delightful mayonnaise and sesame seeds. I am now wrecked for packet prawn toast! Our next dish was the enticingly named ‘strange flavour chicken noodles’ – this was an exciting mix of spice and flavour, definitely not for the faint-hearted. The chicken was delightfully tender and the somen noodles were cooked to perfection. The best mouthfuls were the ones with the micro corriander – absolutely perfect. Next up was the bulgogi beef steamed bun with kimchi pickle – we shared one, and found the bao to be light and springy and the beef to be nicely balanced with the kimchi. Part two to follow.

eightysix, 11 Elouera Street, Braddon ACT                                       http://eightysix.com.au/

Cafe Comme Ca

Food blogging is a tough business – sometimes you have to make great sacrifices for the sake of a good post. After exploring Loft, one of my favourite stores in Shibuya, I spotted a Cafe Comme Ca and had to stop in to try their special promotional tart – yep, true sacrifice, especially because the tart was shaped like the adorable cartoon character Rascal the Raccoon (oh no, if I HAVE to). For 1000 yen I got a slice of this decadent…slice, a cup of black tea and a commemorative coaster. The tart had a milk chocolate paw and tail (could it be any cuter?!), and was jam-packed with cream. The tart base was dark chocolate flavoured and there was a sinfully rich dark chocolate ganache layered inside. The ribbons of mango woven throughout to cut through the rich creaminess of the rest of the slice were a highlight, but there was also a lightly-flavoured coffee cream in between the ribbons which complemented the mango nicely. The whole dish was very, very sweet though, so maybe not the best pre-lunch snack, but definitely the tastiest slice I’ve munched on for the sake of this blog!

Cafe Comme Ca Shibuya, within Loft, 21-1 Udagawa-cho, Shibuya, Tokyo Japan   http://www.cafe-commeca.co.jp/ (Japanese only)

Grease Monkey

Patience is not a strength of mine, so when I saw that Grease Monkey, whose black garage shutter had been teasing all of Braddon for months, had opened, I couldn’t wait to go – so I didn’t. I grabbed my book, joined the (fairly long) queue to order, then took a perch at the stool along the front window to await my burger experience. I chose the ‘Greasy’ – their basic burger, with a beef patty, lettuce, cheese, onion, pickles and Greasy’s sauce plus tomato sauce and mustard. All the burgers come with chips, and whilst I did wait quite a while for my food (they were very busy), the portion was great value for $15. The burger itself was on a soft bun (oh the joy! This is what burger buns should be!), although I was surprised at how thin the patty was – the burger crumpled down a lot for ease of eating. But the flavour – oh yum. I am a huge fan of pickles and there were plenty, and whatever is in that Greasy’s sauce, it was gold. The chips were nice and crispy with a flavoured salt (chicken? peri peri?) on top. I really appreciated the uncomplicated menu and will be back to try the other burgers for sure.

Grease Monkey, 19 Lonsdale Street, Braddon ACT                              http://www.greasys.com.au/