Union Dining, Richmond

Ready, set, eat! Give your tastebuds a workout in Melbourne’s newest restaurants.
“DOES
she like it?” asks celebrity chef and restaurateur George Calombaris as
he hovers at our table with hands clasped, face concerned.

The
food critic puckers her lips and spits the spoon out, clean. Yes,
George. The 10-month-old baby does like your strained pumpkin. The baby
is happy. And George is happy, too.

“My mama is Greek. My baba is
Italian. This is my food,” reads a large banner in MamaBaba, the newest
addition to the Calombaris empire, which includes The Press Club, St
Katherine’s and the gorgeous Hellenic Republic. This night, MamaBaba is a
sea of South Yarra blondes and more than one instance of leopard print
but all eyes are on the TV star chef, who orchestrates my tortellini
filled with a prawn mousse with prawn saganaki, tomato and feta: a
bargain at $26, considering a $45,000 pasta machine had a hand in its
creation.

Calombaris’s restaurant, opened in January, is one of a battalion of
new eating houses to hit Melbourne in the past few months. Last year was
a blockbuster for restaurant openings in the southern city, from big,
brassy numbers (The Atlantic, Crown complex) to the oh-so-Melbourne
phenomenon of a glitzy cocktail bar up the back of what looks like a
trashed laneway (EDV, off Malthouse Lane).

And if all these
newcomers weren’t enough for the hungry hordes, the city is in the midst
of its 20-day food orgy, the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, where
chefs and winemakers from the world’s top restaurants indulge us: think
great Dane Rene Redzepi from Copenhagen’s NOMA, currently the world’s
top restaurant, or Spanish indigenous wine varietals champion Telmo
Rodriguez.

Eating there
Bistro Gitan, mains from $29, 52 Toorak Rd West, South Yarra, (03) 9867 5853, bistrogitan.com.au
Chin Chin, mains $17-$33, 125 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, (03) 8663 2000, chinchinrestaurant.com.au
MamaBaba, mains $19-$33, 21 Daly St, South Yarra, (03) 9207 7421, mamababa.com.au
Middle Fish, breakfast from $13.50, 122-128 Berkeley St, Carlton, (03) 9348 1704
Union Dining, Sunday lunch $55pp plus wine, 270 Swan St, Richmond, (03) 9428 2988, uniondining.com.au

“Ah, remember the days when those older Russian ladies would do tits’n’schnitz at the Newmarket hotel?”

The barfly was seriously asking if I remembered. No mate, not me.

“It was a bit o’ fun. Just a bit o’ fun. And now the Newmarket‘s gone all gentrified,” he added with a sad sneer. “Some guy called Jules, Jules, has taken it over, and it’s yet another place doing Mexican.”

He was a remarkably well-informed barfly. Yes, Jules does own it and it is doing Mexican (like half of Melbourne), but what Mexican!

You know, I’m not a corn girl. Too many cans of sticky-sweet-smelling corn in too many bad salads cured me of liking corn. But this being Mexican, it’s all about corn, and I’m not running screaming. In fact, it was the most exciting menu I’ve seen for a while.

‘Exciting’ does mean a lot of ‘what the hell is…’ moments when reading the menu, but the Word Bin at the bottom was a glossary of such unfamiliar (to me) terms such as cantipalo (Portuguese salami), jicama (sweet root Vetetable) and that delicious new word in my vocab, huitlacoche (a corn fungus/Mexican truffle).

We started with the Latin street food: a soft taco with prawns, fragrant herbs and jicama slaw ($16) and a soft shell crab taco with guacamole, shaved fennel, spicy corn and tomatillo salsa ($17). See, that word bin comes in handy, don’t you think?

For mains, we went off-menu and took the roast of the day, a dreamy organic goat from Gippsland. Succulent little beast, the sliced meat was served with a salad that would be quicker to describe what’s not in it, rather than what is. Here’s what the menu describes it as: chopped Mexican salad: iceberg (who ever boasted about serving iceberg?), radishes, jicama, sweet tomatoes, cactus and queso fresco (fresh Spanish cheese). Did it mention it also had corn in it, like most other dishes? It was fabulous: fresh, cool and the ideal foil to the rich goat’s meat.

There were hipsters sinking pitches of Ashaninka (pisco, rum, lemon juice, jasmine tea, blueberry puree and lemonade), tables of sequins and t-shirts doing a swift run on the wine from the barrel and the Favela No. 34, a concoction of Brazilian rum, plum pisco, strawberries, lime juice and basil, hit the spot on a sultry eve.

The facade is its same old brick face, but after a few feet, it turns into an extravaganza of glass, steel and rustic brick and cement walls, still with the tradies’ scribbled measurements to add a bit of glam-crustiness. This is St Kilda, after all, and it’s down the end where heroin chic reigns.

Let me tell you, if those skinny inner-city types ate here too often, they wouldn’t be able to pull that look off for long.

Newmarket Hotel, 34 Inkerman St, St Kilda

We love a long lunch, yes we do! And we love it even more when it’s long (three hours) and a long table (half-kilometer long table that seated 1200 guests.

The Long Lunch marks the beginning of Melbourne’s Food & Wine festival, from 2-21 March, and there were 30 lunches going on all across Victoria to mark the occasion.

After days of wild winds and rain, the weather gods took pity on us and turned on a day of warm, autumnal sunshine, and the white-clothed tables lined the banks of the Yarra River.

The logistics of the event are frightening – but it ran like clockwork, the waiters were students from the William Angliss catering college.

Three hours does seem a tad excessive for a Friday lunch in these post-GFC days, but I’ve always been a big-80s-shoulder-pads chardonnay fan and the long lunch is another 80s iconic event that I’d like to see come back.

I pushed through to finish dessert, and what a dessert: thank you, Annie Smithers, for your heart-attack-in-a-glass – a sensational cream and rhubarb confection that had me vowing to take up some sport that requires lots of sweating. 

More food and wine in the pipeline. Oh, come on, then.

Entree: Salad of Harrietville smoked trout and autumn fruits by Patrizia Simone, Simone’s, Bright (NE Victoria)
2010 Yering Station Village Chardonnay – sensational.

Main: Free range turkey thighs, tomatoes and tomatillos from George’s garden (which must be a bloody big garden, to produce for 1200 people), and Mexican flavours (natch) with a salad of avocado and succulents (love a good succulent) by George Biron, Sunnybrae-Birregurra, Bellarine Peninsula
2010 Yering Station Village Pinot Noir

Dessert: Rhubarb vacherin (pictured, a meringue-based recipe, though Annie seems to have replaced meringues with cream, a LOT of cream), Annie Smithers, Annie Smithers Bistrot, Kyneton.

Spanner crab and chicken salad. I would have photographed the fab kingfish sashimi for you, but I ate it too quickly.

Is Melbourne under the influence of a new Thai fascination? We’re all talking about the Mexican Wave, with the impossible-to-get-a-seat Mamasita, Newmarket hotel, Fonda, the Taco Truck and Senoritas (opening end Feb). Exclude My Mexican Cousin, which, confusingly, actually serves Creole food.

But after a few days’ solid eating in the city, it was Thai that took the prize: there’s Easy Tiger, and gorgeous little Middle Fish and Chin Chin, which, despite being open for some seven months or so (so old!), is still hip to the eyeballs.

I like to think it’s their policy of treating us mean, to keep us keen. Like so many CBD restaurants, they have a ‘walk-in’ policy. Which means no bookings and plenty of incredulous looks when one wanders up at 7pm, table hunting. I understand the idea of seating equity, I just don’t like it so much.

However, my stars were aligned when I headed over last Friday night at 6.15pm. Every seat was being warmed, but I slipped into a banquette seat within minutes, after we’d wrangled over a few minor details (“We have no high chairs.” “She’ll sit on my lap.” “We have no room for your pram.” “It folds into the size of a pocket handkerchief. See?”)

“Thai food with attitude? Sounds like home,” sniffed my Sydney mate, Paco. But once I got past the door witches and into the domain of the smiling, heavily tattooed waiting staff, we were home and hosed.

It is beautiful. The kingfish sashimi with its shredded lime leaves is just beautiful. Don’t think boring potato-loaded massaman and cheap-ass green curries. It was vibrant, cute and saucy – perhaps a little too saucy, with my spanner crab and chicken salad sliding into the dressing by the end. Still, at the beginning, the salad was just perfect. And let’s face it, with all those wannabe diners pressing their noses to the window, you won’t be leaving food hanging around.

Chin Chin 125 Flinders La, Melbourne, (03) 8663 2000, chinchinrestaurant.com.au

“Does she like it?” celebrity chef and restauranteur George Calombaris is hovering at our table, hands clasped, face concerned.
The food critic puckers her lips and spits the spoon out, clean. Yes, George. My 10-month-old baby does like your strained pumpkin. Forget about the journalist, the baby is happy. And George is happy.
“I brought some baby food, in keeping with the theme,” I tell George. “It’s lamb with polenta, but it’s not  so great. Would you like to try it?”
“Um, no thanks,” he declines politely.

The fab prawn tortellini, $26

“There is no restaurant down this lane,” my taxi driver declared confidently on our way to MamaBaba.
But after opening in South Yarra on 20 January, at 7pm tonight, it’s
three-quarters full. At 8pm it’s packed and roaring, as bronzed Toorak
blondes pick over the menu which features a range of Italian pastas and risotto married with Greek favourites such as stifado and kritharaki.
“My mama is Greek. My baba is Italian. This is my food,” reads a large banner in the newest addition to the Calombaris empire which includes the Press Club, St Katherine’s and the gorgeous Hellenic Republic.
George’s website tells me he’s been voted one of the top 40 most influential chefs in the world, and in the top 100 most influential Australians. The man knows his onions, and, more importantly, he knows what onions we like.

So it should come as no surprise during Australia’s current baby boom that I find that the tv judge’s new menu includes three types of baby food ($3.50), served in little glass jars with a label that reads ‘Just like my mama used to make’.
There were some timing issues (why did the complementary taste, a baby chicken parma topped with an Italian flag, come out at the same time as my main?)  but for the record, my prawn tortellini, soft pasta dumplings filled with prawn mousse and prawn meat saganaki with cherry tomatoes and feta, is divine. The service is slick and the international wine list exciting. We’ll be back.

MamaBaba, 21 Daly St South Yarra