richmond oysters

As adults, we all love seafood. Remember when you were a kid and you hated seafood (especially prawns), and suddenly, at the age of 19, it's like a bright beautiful window opened in your palate and you suddenly understood the bright salty-creamy taste of oysters and the subtle lightness of fish?

I love to eat seafood the way that one eats rice - a LOT of it, and all in one go. One of my pet hates is when I order a seafood dish for like $40 and it comes in teeny tiny Brobdingnag portions. What the hell man?! I shop for food now and I KNOW that it's not as expensive as some restaurants make it out to be.

Richmond Oysters, alongside Claypots Seafood Restaurant, is quickly becoming a mecca for seafood lovers in Melbourne. I'm talking about an exclusively seafood restaurant, not one with a fish dish on the menu. After restaurants like Waterfront faced their demise in Melbourne in the last 10 years there has been a gaping hole for good fish spots, especially for the asian seafood-eating (not fish and chips) crowd.

We booked Richmond Oysters on the recommendation of a friend for a special occasion and wish we had discovered this gem earlier. 

Right opposite East Richmond train station, the interior is clean, pleasant but not overdone, a long clean fish tank dividing the dining room from the fish and chip area. The menu abounds in delicious things like scallops, tiger prawns, squid and so many different types of fish. We ordered a seafood platter and a paella. 

The platter had a pot of mussels, prawns, scallops, calamari, 2 different types of fish, baby octopus, soft shell crab, tuna on Melba toast and Moreton Bay bugs. 

A giant seafood paella swimming with fresh seafood!

The most important thing about seafood is that it is fresh - this place had it in spades, with great service too. A really good night with fabulous food.

Richmond Oysters
443 Church Street
Richmond
9428 5121

crabapple kitchen

We freaking LOVE Crabapple Kitchen. We live in the area so we knew it when it was just a humble new cute kid on the block and are so happy that it's catapulted to megastar status now.

The awning looks like something from a 12 year old's scrapbook, pink hues of cheerful. Simple white tables and walls, exposed brick. It looks like one of the many easy stylish and homely houses in Hawthorn. But there is nothing generic about the food. This is haute-cuisine - seriously good food.

Photographs of the places 1405 and I have always wanted to go (... Noma!) adorn the white walls in fit-together frame and pays homage to the chef / owner's travels. There are things like lobster risotto and Italian anchovies on the menu. Really really our kind of place.

We haven't been back for about a month (which is a long time for us) but here is a selection of things we have eaten over the past two years:

Myrtleford buttermilk pancakes with Autumnal pears, almond & pink peppercorn praline, lemon & vanilla mascarpone and pure Canadian maple syrup.

Risotto with lobster.

These pancakes will actually rock your world. So unbelievably fluffy and moreish.  

Farmer's market salad with veal and eggs.

Farmer's market salad with farm produce, blood sausage and crumbed poached eggs.

You know you're doing something right when you are crumbing your poached eggs, sir.

Avocado on olive toast with Meredith Dairy soft feta, chilli, mint, avocado oil & lemon and a poached egg.

Crabapple Kitchen
659 Glenferrie Road
Hawthorn
9078 5942

combi

Combi is a raw / vegan / organic cafe in St Kilda, two streets away from the Elwood beach foreshore. It is part of the wave of nouveau hippie restaurants like Yong Green Food and Supercharger who are making vegan relevant and accessible to the vegetarian-curious.

It looks like a relaxed Hawaiian beach bar / kiosk, moved indoors. There was a very long line (I think many of the online gripes are about the fact that it is very very busy and you get, you know, hangry). On the morning we came the line moved relatively quickly.

I must admit I feel a bit out of my depth describing the food here, given that there are many more extremely passionate people who are converts to this kind of lifestyle 100% of the time. I am just, I guess, a dabbler in raw eating.

I feel like in the past five years veganism has done an about face. Not long ago it used to be the butt of jokes in uni (people miming holding up the limp heads of starving vegans) but now, in our late 20's, in light of all these spontaneous food allergies to everything, I find people being more open to lifestyle changes.

Berry beloved smoothie

The drinks are incredibly involved which is great: this smoothie had raspberry, blueberry, strawberry, acai, lucuma, raw fermented protein powder, coconut flesh, banana, house made nut mylk. They had run out of a lot of things by the time we sat down so I guess that is another source of angst for those hangry online reviewers.

When you think about it, the values of eating raw / organic / vegan blend seamlessly into the yuppies (do we use that word anymore) of the 2010's - fitness, image conscious, health conscious, trendy, environmentally-friendly. We all love health kicks. It's a kind of redemption after being excessive, all the damn time.

The food is beautiful, by the way. Like, literally looks like flower bouquets.

Organic chia party.

You know the ingredients? Parfait of chia seeds, soaked in house nut mylk infused with orange rind, layered with banana, berries crunchy activated chocolate buckinis, zesty incan berries and macadamias. Topped with house made coconut cashew yogurt and strawberry coulis. Phew.

I admit I follow a few Instagram accounts of people who make this themselves at home. I consider myself healthy but I have never bought a packet of acai in my life. This one includes "antioxidant-loaded Acai blended with banana, blueberries, house made nut mylk then layered with crispy coconut flakes, activated caramelised buckinis, banana, maca and cranberries".

Super acai bowl

The soup was delicious. I would love to see more savory dishes on the Combi menu like this.

Daily soup special.

I really enjoyed this place. Not in a "yeah OK I'll take this as an alternative to what I REALLY want" kind of way, I could imagine myself eating this food forever. If only the lines were shorter and the prices were more accessible for every day eating.

Combi
140 Ormond Road
Elwood
(03) 9531 0084

ibuki house

My sister turns 16 this year and to celebrate we picked a place which has been making rounds on WeChat, a mobile app which my mum uses to do her online social networking. This place, in the Chinese community on WeChat, is known as "that place with the old man who makes really yummy Japanese food, it's on Glenferrie Road".

This little shop is sandwiched between ethnic food stores and trams stops on quieter part of Glenferrie Road. Blink and miss. The interiors look like a suburban Japanese restaurant. Black lacquered tabletops, yellow lights, some pieces of art that people in Japan do not put on their own walls. Although it's not fancy or winning any awards in modern interior decorating it is clean and homely. The service is lovely and the non-Japanese waiters try really hard to leave a good impression.

We went for the full omakase experience - basically a degustation and a chance for the chef to show off. This usually begins with the cold experience (sushi, sashimi) and graduates to rice, soups, tempura and meat toward the end.

Here are some photos I managed to snap. With no photograph of the menu on Urbanspoon and no website I am left with wringing for memories of the deliciousness. Did I mention we also had LOTS of sake and celebrated in true Chinese / Japanese style?

Top: beef tataki

Bottom: oysters with caviar.

Seafood chawanmushi.

BOSS sashimi plattor complete with lobster, abalone, and all of the ocean.

Individual seafood soups.

Seafood tempura with vegetables.

8 (? I fell unconscious after the 4th or 5th course) courses later, we all rolled out of here - we, the family who order 6 dishes between 4 people because "it might not be enough". So delicious. Did not regret.

Ibuki House
14 Glenferrie Road
Malvern
0412 318 880

rochford wines

When 1405 and I got married almost two years ago we felt kind of like kids pretending to be grown up's. We were about a year out of uni and the first of our friends to do it. Two years on, our circle of friends are catching up to us in the wedding phase - I know some people hate this kind of thing but we are really genuinely enjoying it, every reception is like a reunion.

We attended our friends J and D's at Rochford Wines and were super impressed by the food, venue and of course our happy friends.

CONGRATULATIONS J+D!

MELT pizza

We have been dormant for a while, been travelling (like Holly Golightly). So imagine our surprise when we were contacted by owner Dan Gold to eat at and review his pizza bar MELT off Chapel in Windsor. We love pizza, how can not eat?!

The area is aplumb with restaurants and trendy cafes, Lucky Coq jostling with Borsch Vodka and Tears for young and beautiful people and Sauce'd is down the road making pasta cool and young again.

But MELT is different. Clean, fresh, authentic in it's earnesty. Charming Dan and his beautiful wife Elise head this joint built on the idea of a healthy pizza. Not in a cardboard kind of way, like the way that your perfect friend who does yoga every day, has an amazing job and cooks all of her own meal would do. In other words, you want it.

The bases are seriously scrummy (chewy, made with no oil, fat or sugar) and you can customize to your heart's content. You can also have gluten-free bases for an extra $4.The ingredients are all local and free range, which makes the prices ($12-17 per pizza) really quite competitive. 

Dan plays old school hip hop and genuinely cares about his customers and his food. Elise brought us bird's eye chillies in olive oil, amazing!

And the PIZZAAAAAA. 

Top: salami, red onion, mozzarella and pesto.
Bottom: Prawn, fresh chilli, garlic, capers, rocket.

If we lived in the area we would come here again and again.

Dan, I look forward to deliveries to Hawthorn and thanks for a great night!

MELT Pizza
171 Chapel Street
Windsor
1300 116 358

san telmo

This month my best friend P took a break from her jet setting expat life in Singapore and hung out for a few weeks in Melbourne.

P is an Instagram star and her life looks like it came straight from the pages of a heavy-paper magazine called "Travel" or "Jet" or "Style".

Anyway after a long walk around the Yarra at sunset catching up over lost months (like a couple of old people) I asked what she wanted to eat and she said immediately, "MEAT." Australian beef is valued highly in Asia, to the point where it becomes an unaffordable extravagance. P buys kilos of meat to take back every time she comes back - thinly sliced, vacuum sealed, frozen. So we called around and booked our table at San Telmo. Yes, a place that takes bookings in Melbourne, take my heart.

Dark and moody interiors are a great setting for the meaty courses to come.

It's not a Spanish meal without chorizo sausage.

Proveleta - fried provolone cheese.

Who knew fried cheese could taste so good? Definitely going to try this at home.

I love vegetables and I love restaurants that love their vegetables too. There is nothing sadder than a $10 bowl of tiny green salad. ST got their vegetables RIGHT.

Zanahorias - burnt carrots with hazelnuts, thyme and garlic goats curd.

Ensalada de farro - farro and coal roasted eggplant with pickled cauliflower, purple kale and almonds.

I could eat these kinds of vegetables all day, son. 

Then, came the beef short ribs which killed us softly. Sooo tender, the meat fell off the bone, full of flavour and moreish without being oily. 

Tira de asado - O'Conner premium pasture fed beef short ribs

I teetotalled tonight but P let me know that the wine list was impressive and the waitstaff were more than happy to let her try a few drinks before settling on one.

I will miss P again when she heads off in a few days but in the meantime, we will always have San Telmo. Also, some kickass photos of the sunset and looking thoughtful with the back of our head.

San Telmo

14 Meyers Place

Melbourne

9650 5525