Sometimes you ring a restaurant and are told “No need to book, just come in”. Then you come in and the place is so busy there is not a single table free for another hour and you wished you had insisted that you had booked. Sometimes, if you are lucky, your Plan B ends up being better than your Plan A. This was luckily one of those cases.

I was meeting my darling friend The Second Wife and we exited the place of Plan A when we told that there wouldn’t be a table for the rest of the afternoon. So when we were left without a Plan B The Second Wife, in her infinite wisdom suggested The Norfolk. The magic words? “They have awesome soft tacos”. Now I need to admit one thing, I’m not a pub girl – a pug girl perhaps but not a pub girl. My low tolerance towards alcohol means that nursing three glasses of sparkling mineral water while everyone gets progressively happier isn’t my idea of good fun. However that said, beer or wine can be very happily substituted with good food.

We’re standing at the bar and it is 3:30pm. We’ve only had a lemon tart between the two of us and of course this leads to some crazy ordering.

“Let’s just get each of the tacos!!”

“OMG sliders!”

“Chicken wings! Do you like wings? I looove wings!”

“Ceviche-yum! I looove ceviche. Let’s just get one of everything!”

and in unison

“DEEP FRIED PICKLES!!!”

The menu has bar snacks and mains but even to our hunger crazed eyes the bar snacks look more interesting. The main menu has items like schnitzel, fish and chips, a burger, linguine an smoked trout salad. The bar snacks menu has more Mexican and North American fare. Also, it turns out that just yelling out every item in the menu won’t net you everything so I would suggest ordering in a calm, efficient manner as I realised that we didn’t get the chicken wings…

“This place used to be so dodgy” the Second Wife whispers to me. “We came here drunk with a bottle of wine and we just drank that here and nobody cared” she giggles “this was pre zhushing”. It certainly has changed and we make our way to the sun drenched courtyard where Surry Hills folk frolic and play musical tables and chairs. Zhushing involves Thomas Lim, ex of Tetsuya’s taking control of the pub menu and revamping it.

Ribena $4

I told you I’m a tee totaller didn’t I? Well I am when I’m driving as I’ve got a 0 alcohol limit and I’m too in love with my license to risk it. So Ribena with sparkling mineral water it is for me

Deep fried pickles with ranch dipping sauce $7.50

Now if anyone said to me that deep fried pickles were a) a good idea or b) so damn good you’d forget your diet instantly then I wouldn’t have believed them. But here they are in all of the deep fried glory, a spongy crispy golden batter on the outside and a pickle inside with a ranch dipping sauce. The Second Wife nails the description after just one bite “It’s like a fillet o’ fish but better.”

Fish taco $5.50 each

Tacos can be bought for 4 for $20 and come in five different iterations with pork, fish, chicken, beef and vegetarian. Beef is not available currently though so we settle for two of our favourite: the fish tacos. Having had fish tacos both here and overseas some have contained deep fried fish and some haven’t. These marinated grilled whiting pieces have an anchiote chilli paste, lettuce, pico de gallo and of course the lime wedge that all of them come with. It is packed full of flavour.

Pork taco $5.50

The pork taco has braised pork beck, onions, cabbage, apple, mojo verde sauce and coriander and although nice enough, it didn’t really appeal to me as much as the fish or chicken tacos.

Chicken taco $5.50

The chicken taco is delicious with grilled juicy chicken thigh, red onion, guacamole, lettuce, chipotle mayo (love this stuff!) and cucumber. It is my favourite along with the fish taco as it had a great balance of flavours.

Vegetable taco $5.50

The vegetable taco is tasty with fried mushrooms, braised red cabbage, almond pico de gallo and pickled cucumber which all helped to give the taco a robust flavour.

Salt N Pepa Squid with Jalapeno aioli $14

The salt and pepper squid is a generously portioned dish and the squid is tender and lightly battered but there is an absence of both salt and pepper so we dunk it in the hot sauce and the jalapeno aioli which reminds me of a tartare sauce.

BBQ’d sweet corn with chipotle mayo, queso cheese and lime $5.50

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The Domestic Goddess herself Nigella Lawson

“I am completely ill equipped to give a masterclass” says that familiar voice. The disarmingly modest Nigella Lawson aka the Domestic Goddess enters the room. Everyone is atwitter and there is excitement in the air. Nigella’s Masterclass, a coup for the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival and over a year in the planning comes at the end of a long day on the last weekend of the festival. For many it is the highlight of the 10 days with many travelling from all over Australia, myself included. I’m lucky enough to nab myself a seat in the front row with Nigella only metres away. Forget the haute couture front row, this is much better!

By way of explanation of her first point she explains that “I lurched into food by mistake”. She’s chatty and very funny and starts with an introduction promising “I will start cooking” but of course no one cares. She could recite a shopping list and everyone in the room would be riveted. Wearing a fitting black dress, her signature cropped cardigan in royal blue and  black and white striped kitten heels with bright red toe nails (I had to look, I wanted to see whether she cooked in Choos) she then changes to cook wearing leather thongs. She looks every inch as amazing as she does on television but still remains not excessively made up or overdone.

She starts off explaining that she is a cook, not a chef which is an important distinction and that for this Masterclass she will be cooking recipes from the women that she loves. These women are her friend and “cooking mother” Anna Del Conte, her mother and her grandmother. She illustrates the difference between a home cook and a chef using a quote from Gordon Ramsay where he says that to work in a restaurant kitchen everything has to look the same coming out. She tells us that because of this she could never be a chef because at home things don’t all look the same. Recipes evolve and change all the time and sometimes things get tweaked according to mood or want and she likes cooking that gives you the freedom to fiddle about.

There is a classic Nigella moment when she says “I like a bit of brutality in the kitchen” with that gleam in her eye and she leans onto a raw, whole chicken to flatten it slightly to make it easier to cook. Food is about legacy and passing recipes on and along with recipes traits or style are passed on. She amuses everyone with a story of a woman who made a pot roast and to start she would cut off both ends of the pot roast. When asked why she did this she answered that it was what her own mother had always done so she did it. When they asked her mother why she had done it she said that that was her mother had done. When they asked the grandmother why she had done it she said that the reason whys he did it was because her pot was too small to fit the pot roast!

After browning the chicken she places it in a pot to boil along with celery, carrots which brings us to carrot coins. “I find circles of carrots make me depressed” she says citing school meals with carrot circles as the possible cause “But by all means if carrots don’t make you depressed, use them… If you had to be an expert to cook, the human race wouldn’t exist.”

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Hello my lovelies! guess where I’ve landed today? Well no need to guess as I’ve put it in the title but I’m in Melbourne for the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival! I’m booked in to do some rather exciting things including seeing the very famous Ms Nigella Lawson in a Masterclass as well as indulging in some macarons at the Hearts Macaron High Tea at the Langham and some other goodies which I’ll report to all of you at lightning speed. No waiting around for these stories to pop up!

My brutally early morning wake up call was soothed by some food – what else of course? After we touched down I was picked up by a driver  and shortly after I arrived at my hotel, the Intercontinental Melbourne The Rialto where I dropped my bags, slapped on some makeup to make myself look vaguely human again (I pity anyone that sees me on these early morning flights) and hightailed it in a taxi to the Langham where Japanese pastry chef Hisako Ogita, author of “I Heart Macarons” is overseeing the creation of some macarons and a macaron morning tea. She has even invented a special pink macaron for The Langham in the flavour of pink ginger just for the festival.

I enter The Langham foyer and spot a huge flower arrangement with some macarons among them. The lobby area and the walk up to the Aria Lounge are very Mad Men-I expect Betty Draper to swan past me at any moment. The Langham is famous for their themed afternoon teas and I recall having a lovely Alice in Wonderland one in the Auckland Langham hotel. Coming up soon is a kid’s “animal farm” themed afternoon tea. Today there are three morning teas on offer: Hearts Macaron which come with a plate of macarons as well as a special appearance by Hisako herself, a classic morning tea and a chocolate indulgence morning tea. All have the same sandwiches and scones but only the sweet layer differs.

Can you spot the macarons?

Earl grey tea and sparkling wine

We start with a glass of sparkling wine and tea, Earl Grey for me which comes out in a silver pot with an extra jug of hot water for refilling. My dining companion Liz and I dither over which morning tea to have but settle on having one of the Hearts Macaron teas and one chocolate indulgence tea (both $43 per person). After all that means more to taste. I’m feeling the post flight tension leaving me already.

Chocolate Indulgence stand $43

We take a look at the Hearts Macaron three tier stand first. On the sandwich layer at the bottom are five types of sandwiches, one rolled and four types of finger sandwiches with two in white bread and two in brown. I start with the rolled smoked salmon sandwich on the top. Now if you know the story of afternoon tea you’ll have read that the Duchess of Bedford the VII started the whole afternoon tea trend (bless her!). She has long since passed and we are now up to our 14th Duchess of Bedford and apparently she dined here at the Langham and partook of their afternoon tea. It was her suggestion that they include a rolled sandwich in the sandwich selection!

Even though I love wholemeal and grainy bread the white bread sandwiches are the pick. The chicken sandwich is excellent-so good that when they come around and offer to replenish it with more I eagerly nod yes (which when you see how much we have to eat you’ll agree is a foolhardy gesture). The egg and mayonnaise sandwich is also moreish with the soft, downy bread. The brown bread sandwiches weren’t quite as exciting, in fact we thought that the cream cheese and chive sandwiches could have done with some smoked salmon and the cucumber and cream cheese sandwich would have been much better with the white bread.

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