barry

I've been meaning to come to the legendary Barry in Northcote for some time. My colleague purports to know the owners. It's like that.

You know those mornings when you just feel like eating real food, good ingredients, call yourself a hippie / foodie but not be a wanker? Barry is that kind of place. Not too fancy, big light and airy (so important when you finally get a few hours to enjoy a brunch) with good food on the menu and without obnoxious loud music. The menu feels fresh and has the stripped back confidence of people who know what they're doing.

There was a wait for a table of two but the lovely waitress let us wait outside on the chair facing the sun and called us in after like five minutes. Win. 1405 and I got some super healthy drinks to make up for the fact that between the two of us, we sit for more than 100 hours a week in front of computers which definitely do not love us back.

Blended drink #1 banana, dates, cinnamon, mesquite, almond milk, ice. YUM.

Blended drink #2 apple, kale, cucumber, spinach, parsley, mint, ginger, lime, ice. NOT SO YUM. But goddam healthy.

I was dying to try crunchy peanut butter, heirloom tomatoes, salt and pepper peanuts on toast but was too hungry and in an old-school / basic bitch kind of mood. So I got this:

Scrambled eggs on toast with a side of trout.

It was good. I am so grateful when I go to hyper-up cafes like this and I can still eat simple food without the frou frou and it tastes honestly good.


Barry
85 High Street,
Northcote
9481 7623

 

hercules morse

Hercules Morse is a modern Australian restaurant that everyone in South Melbourne is talking about.

The owner let me know that they opened up in February 2012 but I swear I have never seen it til this year, maybe because it feels so out of place between a Commonwealth Bank on the corner and an unoccupied mystery white building, like Zooey Duchanel at a careers fair for lawyers. 

Despite its unassuming face, HM has a beautiful fit out. Clean lines of wood and painted steel with lightbulbs that remind me of the ones at my yoga studio all combine to provide a trendy but warm ambience. There are wooden slats for bar tables against the side of the wall facing the open kitchen and my friends and I always sit here. Also, this is the best place to ogle the food that come out of the kitchen. 

Cauliflower and cheese balls with lemon rosemary salt and a dijon dipping mayo.

Steak carpaccio with apple, herbs and dusted with parmesan granita. 

Roasted beet salad, dehydrated feta, maple walnuts and roquette pesto.

Hercules Morse
283 Clarendon Street
South Melbourne
9690 9402

meatball & wine

Melbourne has gone crazy over Meatball & Wine. I don't know what it is - the novelty of spherical food, the fact that there's wine involved, or that we love sexual innuendo?

There is almost always a line out the front of this eatery on Flinders Lane, it is of the tribe of those places that don't take bookings. Melbournians have a codependent relationship with these glamazon restaurants. At the same time as we roll our eyes and bitch about it, we line up, teeth chattering in the cold, for a coveted table. Then tell our friends about it the next day as if retelling a victory and enabling the process.

The get up is glamorous industrial with exposed brick and too-loud music, the patrons are all young professionals mulling over which job to jump into next and the fact that this food is paleo-friendly.

The concept is pretty simple. You choose from meat or vegetarian balls and "something to rest your balls on" (love it).  I didn't go for the vegetarian option but have been told by many people that the pumpkin one is really very good. The flavours are great and make this formerly humble staple cool in an ironic kind of way.

Pork balls with sage, fennel and orange on Italian beans.

Fish balls with dill and lemon on "something veg".

They have sliders too, consisting of balls in a small bun. V cute.

Beef sliders - mini brioche buns with balls and sauce.

Even the dessert is ball shaped. Chocolate and vanilla ice cream sandwiched between macaron shells. By this stage we soporifically stuffed so I really have to get back to you on how enjoyable they were, but as a concept they were perfect. 

MB&W is a place where diners don't just go for the food but the Melbourne experience of it all - the waiting, the wine, the feeling of good company and a vague reminder of New York.

Meatball & Wine
135 Flinders Lane
Melbourne
9654 7545

hanoi hannah

"Sex, drugs and rice paper rolls" announces the awning above the hippest Vietnamese restaurant in this neck of the woods.

The lights are dim and pink, the music is right now and the food is fusion but tasty.

I met a friend J here for dinner on a weeknight when our working lives point blank looked like scenes from the director's cut of Horrible Bosses. After a lively exchange of ways to make the problem "permanently go away" J and I drank from big white fleshy coconuts and ordered away with reckless abandon.

Due to the fact that J is very cool and I didn't want to embarrass her with my intrusive food photo-taking, the photos below are terrible. But I filched a good one from Food with Frank.

Chilli prawn with papaya salad. Photo from Food with Frank - http://www.foodwithfrank.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_1599.jpg

Papaya was thinly shredded and the sour/spicy sauce had soaked all the way through the crunchy slivers. The prawn were a little limp but boiled prawns (as these were) are kind of hard to glamourise.

Soft shell crab with wasabi mayonnaise and lime, basking in all  its pink neon glory. Even from this angle the crab looks damn sexy.

J and I have a devotion to soft shell crab. It combines love of seafood with complete laziness - Hey! Just eat the whole damn thing - and this one was definitely the best order of the night. The crab was like the size of my palm! Complete with scrummy lime and an exotic take on mayo (wasabi).

Mixed mushroom pho and Vermicelli with lemongrass beef

I have never ever had a vegetarian pho before, so seeing "mixed mushroom" on the menu was delightful to my 70% vegetarian sensibilities. However, quickly after the pho arrived I realised why. The reason I love pho is 70% attributable to MSG and high-blood-pressure inducing levels of sodium and there was neither in this very very healthy but unfortunately bland bowl. The soup was bountiful with mushrooms though and mushrooms are always welcome.

Vermicelli with lemongrass beef or bun (pronounced "boon") was yum. Fish sauce, well cooked beef, ricey vermicelli noodles, what is there to complain about? Heaps of condiments to add spicy to your life and the prices here aren't too bad either.

Hanoi Hannah
180 High Street
Prahran
9939 5181