I’m nervous and have popped a Mintie into my mouth to steady my nerves. I had forgotten how enormous Minties are and instead end up chewing on it to try and make it softer, a seemingly impossible task at least for the first few seconds. Chris adjusts my P plate on the front of the car and we are off. And I’m driving a new car, a Yaris for the new Toyota launch and we are headed off to the Yarra Valley to Locale at De Bortoli estate to test it out and I’m a little bit petrified. And the giant lolly isn’t helping.
Chew
Gulp
Swallow
What Barbie might drive
Ahhh thats better! The Yarra Valley is one of those fabulous areas just one hour outside of Melbourne that along with Beechworth, Daylesford and the Queen Victoria markets makes me feel slightly sad that we don’t have. I take the one hour drive and test out the car. It’s quick and there is a soft acceleration which causes me some alarm at first but before you know it I’m driving it and relaxing!
Winemaker Steve Webber
We arrive at De Bortoli estate which sprawls over acres and acres. They are known for their Noble One botrytis dessert wine. The wine maker Steve Webber tells us of how they make wines and the don’t try to be everything to everybody. It is a family run business that started off in 1928 with Vittorio De Bortoli who arrived here and lived under a rainwater tank. He married Giuseppina De Bortoli shortly after, their son Deen in 1951 started expanding the business and now and there are four siblings that run the estate.
Chef Heath Dumesny
Chef Heath Dumesny has been cooking here for two and a half years first as a sous chef stepping up to head chef. Their garden area grows herbs and vegetables to supplement the restaurant. There’s all sorts of herbs, rainbow chard,purple carrots, zucchini, artichokes to name a few and they like to use the garden to help guide the menu. Even if the produce isn’t enough to cater for the whole restaurant, it helps them decide on the menu as what is growing in their garden is what is grown locally.
House made bread
We start on the bread which is a fabulously satisfying and moreish house baked ciabatta which has a layer of salty polenta giving it a nice crunch. There is also a crispy paper thin rosemary carta di musica and a herb cheese that is like a labne yogurt cheese and is spreadable-delicious!
Seasonal antipasto
Our first course is a share plate of seasonal antipasto. There are tender, thin spears of grilled asparagus, calabrese salami, torn pieces of milky buffalo mozzarella, some crumbly, flakey and fabulous cheese biscuits and some salty olives in a range of sizes. My favorites are the mozzarella and the cheese biscuits which I could eat by the handful.
Pan seared snapper fillet with fregola sarda and roast vegetable insalata and salsa verde
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| January 29th, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
I feel like I need some breadcrumbs. In the maze that is the Crown Complex, I’ve managed to accidentally photobomb an Athletes foot convention, walk into another room and get lost. All on the way to find Bistro Guillaume. When I see the vivid green doors I am relieved that I am not going to accost any unsuspecting strangers but also because it looks so Parisian like the cover of the Rose Bakery cookbook come to life. Yes everything relates to cookbooks and bakeries. Bistro Guillaume is the newest baby for chef Guillaume Brahimi and is only a few weeks old on my visit.
Inside it looks like a classic bistro. Wooden chairs, dark tables, white napkins and wine glasses. Large menus sit on every table. There is even a French accented waiter who in a casual way asks another diner “Eeez good?” when walking past her table. “It’s wonderful” she beams back at him charmed. All we need is a French poodle and a man in a beret walking past holding a baguette under one arm!
Bread
I have sort of deliberately starved myself. I know it’s terrible to miss breakfast but having already stalked the menu online I know what I want to order. I meet Melissa there and given that she has eaten here previously I defer to her to order. As long as I get the steak tartare. Oh yes, I do love you steak tartare. The bread is served as two attached leaves and is very, very chewy and crunchy. There’s no elegant way of pulling these apart and pulling them is like pulling Christmas crackers.
Onion soup $16
The onion soup is an item that he brought over from Guillaume at Bennelong and is said to be excellent so an order is placed for a bowl of this. It arrives with three melty cheesy pieces of bread on top of a swathe of soft, fine onion shreds. In fact the soup is more onion than soup but I do love a good serve of the sweet sauteed onions. It’s rich and deep in flavour with a touch of alcohol and I adore the spongey but not soggy croutons.
King prawn with avocado cream, tomato, croutons and cos lettuce $24
I wanted to order a lighter dish just in case readers wanted to eat here a bit lighter. This is a perfectly pretty salad made with cos lettuce leaves, halved baby kumatoes, Spanish onion, buttery croutons, scoops of avocado cream, enormous prawns and parsley. In fact although it is on the small side for the price it is very fresh and clean.
Steak tartare with pommes gaufrettes $24
The steak tartare comes out glistening and packed with onion, baby capers and herbs. It’s well seasoned and I even resist the urge to tamper with it with the bottle of Tabasco sauce that sits on the table. I don’t need it. It comes with potato chips that in parts are slightly soft and a nicely dressed tiny side salad.
Half a roasted chicken with Paris mash and chicken jus $35
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| November 9th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
**Update: I know that subscribers haven’t been receiving their daily emails for today and yesterday. We’re working hard on fixing this as soon as possible. Thank you very much for your patience my lovelies! xxx**
What’s the first thing that you think of when you hear the word Huxtable? The Cosby Show family right? I’m not familiar with anyone else with the name so we have Cosby Show episodes on the mind when we walk into Huxtable on Smith Street in Collingwood after a short pleasant fifteen minute stroll from the Park Hyatt. The space is modern although no, it’s not a replica of the set (although a part of me thinks that that might be fun but perhaps taking the theme a bit too far).
And like Central Casting has placed some extras inside from the couple with the retro glasses-thick rimmed enormous white rims for her and Bill Lumbergh style glasses for him. There are three families in the immediate eye view, all with young children. Apparently naming your place after one of televisions most famous families has families coming in early on a Saturday night. The interior is fitted out using a lot of browns-there are brown vinyl swivel chairs and what looks like dad’s garage tool holder which in this case holds cooking tools. And playing in the background are songs such as Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” and “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher.
Why is it called Huxtable? We ask the waitress. Well it seems that it is called Huxtable as a nod to The Cosby Show. The three guys that head it up are from New Zealand and they thought that it would be a fun name. They are Daniel Wilson in the kitchen (the chef), Dante Ruaime formerly of MoVida (the restaurant manager) and Jeff Wong who owns 19 Squares, a St Kilda cafe (the coffee guy). “And it’s just a coincidence that everyone that works here is from New Zealand” our NZ accented waitress says.
The menu is designed to share. It’s broken up into little bites-and some from bite sized morsels to slightly more substantial entrees, to share plates which are broken up into sea, land and earth.
Huxta bubbles $8
We start with the huxta bubbles which is a sparkling wine made especially for them. We ordered it for the name-who could resist it? Even Mr NQN who doesn’t like sparkling wines quite likes this fizz.
Rice flour crusted oyster po’boy, iceberg, sriracha mayo $6.50
The oyster po’ boy comes a mini crunchy fresh baguette filled with two oysters. The baguette is crunchy, like those Vietnamese baguettes that are earth shatteringly good and give the soft oysters inside an appealing crunch on the outside. There is a shredded iceberg lettuce salad tossed in sriracha mayonnaise, sriracha being that omnipresent Thai hot sauce that you see on tables in large plastic red bottles so there’s a bit of spice along with the creaminess. And I could have eaten lots of these.
Jalapeno & cheddar croquette $3.50 each
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| September 30th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
Giant Steps
On our recent visit to the Yarra Valley we managed to explore a few other restaurants and shops-not that we were in danger of starving mind you, but because we were curious to see what the rest of the food in the Yarra Valley was like. The first stop is one that I was initially apprehensive about purely based on the name: Giant Steps. You see Mr NQN bounds ahead with his long 180 centimetre frame, as for me I’m a mere 155cms and with much shorter legs and high heeled boots. So I was expecting a bit of billy goat-like mountain climbing when I got there. Thankfully I was proved wrong. On a Saturday afternoon we arrived at Healesville just over an hour outside of Melbourne. It is just one hour out of Melbourne suddenly there are no more clusters of buildings but lush greenery.
We enter Giant Steps and there is already gaggles of people sitting down in the open plan restaurant slash cafe. There are wine tastings for the Innocent Bystander winery and a couple choosing some cheeses from the fridge and we pass tempting displays of breads and preserves. We are told that everything is made and baked on the premises and although we are after something light, my eyes linger on the sweets including canelés, Polish donuts and Turkish delight flavoured with their own moscato.
Calabrese pizza $23
We sit in a gigantic booth as the lunch crowd hasn’t quite descended and we settle on a pizza as recommended by our friendly waitress and we let her know that we need to leave quite soon to make our next stop. The Calabrese pizza arrives quickly and it is a lovely thin crust with a simple tomato, spicy salami and mozzarella on top. It was just what we wanted and we both want to claim the last slice.
Truffle fries with parmesan $11
The truffle fries are French fries sprinkled with truffle salt. I’ve seen this done with thicker chips and I think they need the thicker potato chips to sustain the seasoning as it seemed quite salty. Still, it didn’t stop us from plowing through them.
Canelé $3.50
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| September 11th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
There are three things that I forgot to pack on a trip that I made to Melbourne.
1. An umbrella
2. A thick coat
3. Leggings or stockings
I should have known-silly me. I’ve visited Melbourne enough times to be warned about the four seasons in one day!
That morning I had managed a sleep in an sadly bade a farewell to the Park Hyatt, my glamorous home for the weekend. I cabbed it over to see my fabulous sponsors at Sigma Lenses to have lunch with them. We go to nearby Pacific Seafood BBQ house for a meal which was wonderful because it was just what I felt like eating. Don’t you love it when you are in the mood for something and you get to eat it?
Complimentary soup
The soup is particularly welcome in this chilly weather and is given depth from pork bones and vegetables.
Roast duck, pork and suckling pork platter
Now bizarre as it sounds, an as much as I love pork I don’t usually go for the suckling pork at Chinese restaurants. It’s usually too big a piece and too salty. Here it is different and they slice it more judiciously into thin slices and it is very moreish indeed. Also good is the crispy lacquered skinned roast duck an the char siu. Oh how I love a platter!
Lobster with chilli sauce
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| July 31st, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
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