Mixtape

Gingerboy. Go there. They have a big neon sign. It says, "Gingerboy".

In the early 16th century, the great Christian humanist Erasmus railed against printers, those anarcho-informationalists of his day, that worked to

“fill the world with pamphlets and books that are foolish, ignorant, malignant, libelous, mad, impious and subversive; and such is the flood that even things that might have done some good lose all their goodness"

I read those words and immediately thought of those who prattle and rant about food as though it was a religious experience while blogging about the most trivial of matters and expect a readership to be impressed by their delicate sensibilities and refined tastes.

Not that I'm talking about anyone I know. *blushes*.

Anyway, the last month has seen some mixed dining experiences, from the sublime to the, well, not sublime, and rather than spend 500 words per piece filling the world with words that were foolish, ignorant, malignant etc, I thought I'd cram a few into a single mix tape that you can play in the car or give to someone special as a taster of what "Eat our Way" is all about. Think of this as a touring melange of tastes and ideas.

Gills Diner

The night I went to Gills Diner I had my professional hat on, and was having dinner with a man considered to be a world authority on car parking. No, he doesn't park cars; he's studied the impact of car parking on cities - the financial, environmental and opportunity costs of car parking in our cities. Disclaimer - I was a guest of the extravagantly named 'Institute of Sensible Transport".

Our local professor on the left. Car parking professor not in shot.

Anyway, sensibility aside, Gills Diner is tucked away in one of Melbourne's hipster alleys and is appropriately hard to find. It's got a cool, ex-industrial feel and warm staff and the food is good bistro nosh. On a rainy Melbourne night I had pork belly with pan-fried apples on a bed of humorous little lentils and a couple of 3 Ravens. The food was simple but perfect for the evening, while the conversation was focussed on the complexity of car parking and urban form. Note to self: two professors per meal is probably my limit.

Thanh Thanh

Meh

If it wasn't already obvious, I'm a bit of a fan of the old pho and other noodle soups. So in the ever continuing quest for the perfect pho, I dropped in to Thanh Thanh on Victoria Street in Richmond. I'd love to say they were great, but they weren't.

The magic of pho is in the stock and the stock here wasn't up to much. It lacked depth, spice and most of all, magic. In summary, "meh".

Gingerboy

Gingerboy, like Gills Diner, is Cool, and although the alley it's tucked away in is larger and easier to find than that of Gills Diner, that just means Gingerboy focusses on being just a gem rather than a hidden gem.

Gingerboy does wonderful, up-market versions of SE Asian street food without the humidity and with a greater range of cocktails. Dishes come in a potentially confusing (but well explained) mix of small and medium dishes, all of which had a complexity and a depth that comes with a blend of high-note herbs and the basso profondo of belachlan.

Silken tofu - the (almost vegetarian) bee's knees

We started with Chinese cabbage and chicken dumplings, which had a beautiful, essential filling, although the wrappers were a little chewy. Small, salt and pepper spiced chicken ribs in a crisp, light batter were served with a blistering and wonderful sauce - the Kentucky chicken of the gods. The last of the small dishes was soft-shelled crab with a green papaya salad - wonderful, with a papery shell and a tart salad.

Two large dishes finished the meal - a wonderful and rich salad of wagyu beef and soba noodles and some gentle kim chi (at least by kim chi standards!) and some beautiful silken tofu with mushrooms and XO sauce. This was the surprising and wonderful dish in its balance and complexity; almost the dish that could convert me to vegetarianism (except for the shrimp paste in the sauce).

Soft-shelled crab and papaya salad. Let's do this again!

Gingerboy is the standout of this bunch - a small but perfectly formed restaurant with attentive staff and a intimate (yet busy) room and truly wonderful food. A keeper.

Gold Leaf

There's something fantastic about Gold Leaf in Preston and I mean fantastic in the true sense of the word. From the street, Gold Leaf is just a staircase at the end of a pretty grungy walkway that connects High Street with a car park, but once you step over the empty boxes, newspapers and freshly delivered bean shoots and climb those stairs, POW!

Like walking through a wardrobe and discovering a winter wonderland, you step inside out of the gloom. Gold Leaf, however, is no monochrome land of restraint ruled by a White Witch; the decor in the foyer is straight out of Tom Wolfe's Electric Cool Aid Acid Test. As if the Merry Pranksters have driven their bus through Hong Kong on their way to Las Vegas, bold lighting, bright colours and revolving chandeliers mix with lobsters in tanks and an overall sense of chaos. At this point if the maitre d' turns out to be an octopus in a gold lame jacket you'd probably take it in your stride.

Obey the dumplings

Once you're past the entrance, the other surprise is Gold Leaf's sheer size - it's huge and there are far more people scarfing dumplings gathered together in one room than you would expect from the street. And while it's noisy and there are hard surfaces everywhere, it's not too loud.

Although Gold Leaf does yum cha/dim sum every day of the week, Sunday for me is The One True Yum Cha Day.

Dumpling-on-Dumpling Action!!

Tea comes quickly (and is refilled often, as it Was Meant To Be) and within moments you're fighting off the trolleys. There's plenty of the normal fare done really, really well - steamed dumplings; seafood in all sorts of guises; gai lan; prawn wrapped in bean curd wrappers; scallops on tofu; little fried wantons and other crunchy parcels; and sheets of unctuous, pearly-white rice noodles with more seafood.

More please!

For me the perfect yum cha experience has a mix of the new and the familiar, and "new" this time was slices of eel, cut like tiny fish steaks and cooked in a dark sauce. This was luscious and fatty with a sweetness to balance the fish.

I can haz eel?

In the "familiar" category, apart from dumplings upon dumplings, I have a soft spot for turnip cake. There's something wintry and comforting about these fried slices of bland daikon, studded with Chinese sausage, ham and spring onions, even if they looked like slices of congealed dishwater that have been shallow fried. Balanced with light, prawn dumplings and scallops on ethereal soft tofu, they make up the important stodge course.

Turnip cake. Mmmmmm....

And that's what yum cha (or dim sum) is all about - balance. It's the balance of chaos and comfort; the familiar and the unfamiliar; the steamed and the fried; the subtle and the spicy; the light and the filling. Of course, yum cha also requires that there are children running around tables, the noise is rambunctious and there's a four-trolley pile up threatening to cover you in steamed dumplings and gai lan. And, perhaps strangely, in the middle of this chaos on a Sunday morning I find a kind of peace and some time to contemplate my lot. There's a joy about yum cha that reminds me of how good life and family can be.

Emily and the octopus

Alex dumples

Shanghai City Restaurant

Shanghai City is a small, cheap, noisy Northern Chinese restaurant in the Preston end of High Street that specialises in dumplings and hotpot. Half the walls in the restaurant are given over to bain-marie filled with all sorts of meats, fishes, vegetables, noodles and other stuff and the idea is to help yourself and cook what you will in a simmering pot of soup on the table. I'm not usually a fan of restaurant DIY, particularly when I have no idea of the etiquette, but the staff cheerfully explained the procedure and so we happily gave it a go.

Shanghai City Restaurant

We were given the choice between chicken soup, chili soup or a half-and-half pot that meant we could try both, and this we did.

The chicken soup was flavoured with some floating dried herbs, flowers and seed pods I couldn't identify, but it was comforting and perfect, given the wet, cold wind outside. The chili soup on the other hand was a rich red colour, with more chopped chili in every scoop than I would normally eat in a week. It wasn't as hot as it looked, but it was still very, very hot.

Soup to the left of me and soup to the right; here I am fishing around for some lamb

We cooked fishballs, beancurd, pork, cooked lamb, cabbage, dried mushrooms, bean shoots and glass noodles in the soups and tried a few of the dipping sauces. There's a wide selection, although the waitress wasn't sure what some of them were called in English so I can't tell you what they were. The chili sauce (more chili!) was roughly cut and hot, and I think it might have been the same stuff that went into the soup. There was a peanut sauce, possibly a garlic sauce and other mystery sauces, including a dark green one that Emily described as "salty and fishy and a bit ummmm".

The hotpot also came with some excellent spring onion pancakes which were flaky and crisp and a very generous plate of dumplings. These were glutinous with crisp, brown bottoms and filled with a juicy and rich pork mixture. The filling was unctuous - definitely cold weather food. They also have a range of other cooked dishes that don't require hotpotting and these looked pretty good for stuff in a bain-marie.

Spring Onion Pancakes. Crispy....

Now I'm no slouch when it comes to the old hot stuff, but I have never before eaten so much chopped chili. By the time we finished my bowl was almost half full of the chopped chili I hadn't eaten, and I suspect I ate at least the same amount.

Al cooks it

Shanghai City is a fun place to have a comfortable, if slightly messy, DIY hotpot. The staff are cheerful and helpful and the food is great (hey, it's not like I can fault the cooking...) and generous. It was about half-full of people when we arrived and although it only got busier, it was never too loud, even with the Chinese soap opera playing on the telly. And best of all, it's quite a lot of fun.

A Lunchtime Walk through the Preston end of High Street

Today saw a short jaunt to High Street in Preston to drop off F's sewing machine at the sewing machine shop for its annual lube job and a new set of piston rings.

While there we collected menus for a number of enticing restaurants, predominately Chinese and Vietnamese and visited the most extraordinarily crappy $2 shop. We also dropped into the oddly-named "Bread Top". Bread Top is a franchise that specialises in asian-style buns - the sort that always look beautifully presented and taste, well, unexpected and usually sweet. Having seen Bread Top pop up around Melbourne's CBD, and often having wondered about the food, we did a test run.

Clockwise from top left - sausage inna bun, strawberry cream bun, bamboo charcoal bun, raisin brioche, custard tart and chicken puff

It was pretty much what I expected. Unnervingly sweet, they all look perfect and beautiful, although in a slightly unsettling way. Oh well, we live and learn. On the other hand, I got a good price on both a Jesus and a Ganesh.

Jesus and Ganesh; window buddies

Reminiscing - Bamboo House

Another episode in this increasingly inaccurately named blog. Once again this post is not about High Street, but it is set in the same city (broadly).

A few years ago we saw Lano and Woodley on their farewell tour, which was funny, poignant and touching, but I hadn't realised what made them such a great act. Both of their characters are wonderfully naive and childish, but while Frank is innocent and wide-eyed, Colin was the nasty and vindictive child... I'm resisting the temptation to make an easy comparison to John Lennon and Paul McCarthy, except that I just have, so I won't develop it any further.

So this Friday night, Good Friday, we saw Frank Woodley at his show (Bewilderbeest) at the Forum in this year's Comedy Festival.

By himself, Frank was very funny but perhaps a little narrow. He told a wonderful story about using a rare opportunity to tell a joke about an ocelot; a joke that which I remember from the joke page on one of the few Playboy magazines* (no, really) I've seen. The joke goes:

Q: How do you titillate an ocelot?

A: You oscillate its tit a lot

I won't spoil the story, but it does involve his increasingly frustrating attempts to tell this joke to a zookeeper.

Before the show, though, we had dinner at Bamboo House in Little Bourke Street.

Hmmm.... Glossy....

Bamboo House does a mix of Northern and Szechuan dishes (up front, at the proud part of the menu) and Cantonese dishes (at the back of the bus). Here I must confess that one of the reasons to go to Bamboo House was that my favoutite Szechuan restaurant in Little Bourke Street, Post Deng, hadn't answered their phone in the afternoon, and I assumed they were closed, what with it being Good Friday. Bamboo House, on the other hand, had a telephone that worked.

Pork Hock, Drunken Chicken - cold, but perfect for winter

We ordered some cold Szechuan entrees - sliced pork hock and Drunken Chicken. Both were sliced beautifully - the pork thin and softly spiced, while the chicken was firm and moist with red tinges at the bone but lush with fat. Fat was important to both without being the dominant flavour.

I'm removing a chicken bone, not my teeth

As it was Good Friday, Felicity eschewed meat and had Ginger Scallops as an entree. These looked beautiful and were described as fresh and fabulous.

Ginger scallops

Being respectful of Felicity's attitude towards food on Good Friday (and a day without meat never hurt anyone, or so it is alleged), we ordered a seafood bird's nest and a whole steamed barramundi. The bird's nest was excellent - the seafood was generous and cooked perfectly, but the barramundi was the hero of the hour. It was amazingly moist and still firm, and the soy and ginger sauce was strong enough to add something to the fish without threatening it. Some stir fried gai lan to go with it and it was fantastic.

Barramundi is good. That's all I have to say

The only restaurants I was taken to as a teenager (at least, that I can remember) were Cantonese. The Panda in Hawthorn and the Fairy Stork in Acland Street in St Kilda were the ultimate destinations (the latter having the benefit of glorious cake shops as neighbours) in the early 1980's. Indeed, while I was at university in the late '80's, I worked as a cocktail barman and the two best tips I got were (a) from Andre the Giant (another story altogether); and (b) from some blokes I'd recommended the Panda to.

Cantonese food is not particularly fashionable at present, which means the stalwarts like Bamboo House have to work a bit harder to keep up with the pack, and they do. The service is great and the food is wonderful. The room... well, it's not particularly fashionable and it's a bit bright, but it wasn't too noisy for a Friday.

Southern Chinese food is not on my shortlist of favourites, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it and have a place for it. Great Cantonese food always looks beautiful and the contrast of textures is something I have grown to love. Familiarity will never breed contempt, but perhaps it has created a smidgen of indifference. It's something I'd hate to see relegated to just a memory.

*I must me one of the few men of my age who remembers the jokes in Playboy, because the only other thing from the Playboys I saw as a lad and remember was a limerick:

"Whilst Titian was mixing Rose Madder

His model was perched on a ladder

Her position to Titian

Suggested fruition

So he went up the ladder and 'ad 'er."

Brilliant, eh?

The Physics of Dumplings

The research team

Up until recently, high energy dumpling research in this country has languished, the victim of budget cuts and a research community focussed on turning tricks for the private sector. However, with the recent opening of the Hu Tong Dumpling Research Facility in Market Lane, primary dumpling research has started the long march into the 21st century. With the failure of the Large Hadron Collider, allegedly as a result of being sabotaged by a future God in order to save the world, the Hu Tong facility may be mankind's last greatest hope of understanding the dumpling, and the fundamental particles that theory suggests it consists of: the dumpleton and the souptrino.

Evidence of Garlic Field Theory

Professor Helen, Director of the Transport Dumpling Institute, leads the multinational research team at the Hu Tong facility, and she is joined by researchers Miranda, Kathryn, Stephen, Nicola, Dominica and, of course, Dr Phil and his research assistant. Today, the team was focussed on one of the major questions left in the field of dumpling research: the mystery of the Shao-long Bao dumpling. If the team could explain this strange phenomena, they would then have the basis for a truly Grand Unified Theory of Lunch.

Testing begins

Ever since Schrodinger put a cat in a box (maybe), scientists have longed to understand the drive to put things into other things, and never is this more manifest than the study of food. If cheese can be put into a sausage; if a sausage can be put into a pancake; then putting soup into a dumpling must be possible. And that is the grand claim of the Shao-long Bao dumpling - that these Schrodinger's dumplings exist in a state of quantum indeterminacy, where probability wavicles collapse into a flood of glorious soup once bitten.

The sauce substrate

So this was the purpose of today's experiment - to understand what was in the core of these four-dimensional quantum dumplings, and whether the dream of soup-within-a-dumpling is just a dream and nothing more. Previous attempts, involving the acceleration of souptrinos to near light-speed, had ended tragically with a dry cleaning bill of almost $16.

This time, however, the experiment started well. First a pork dumpling, flavoured with ginger and spicy with chili oil was used to fine tune the equipment. Lacking soup, or even the theory of soup, made it the perfect control subject.

Control dumplings. Perfect, and free from soup

Once the testing apparatus had been confirmed, two further rounds of dumplings, one a plain pork, the other vegetarian, and some braised leafy vegetables were assayed. The greens displayed high levels of garlic, which was consistent with predictions made using Dirac's little known Garlic Field Equation.

The test subjects

It was time. The Shao-long Bao dumplings were brought into the laboratory as a hush descended over the table. Was there actually soup inside these dumplings, or was current dumpling theory wrong?

The first result was disappointing. I lifted a dumpling too quickly from the bamboo petrie dish and tore the skin. While there was visual evidence of soup, none was tasted. On the second and all subsequent tests, however, evidence of soup was clearly identified. Celebration! Success! The soup/dumpling relationship, previously only theorized, was true! We arranged a hasty media conference and announce our results to the world. The rest, of course, is history. And lunch.

Pausing to celebrate

Taxiboat

Westgarth used to be called Northcote South, which you'd think would just be reduced to "Cote". But it's not, so applying the logic of the existing name, I live in Northcote North; Clifton Hill is, in fact, South Northcote South; and my former little house in Collingwood is in East South Northcote West. If Westgarth insists on being called Westgarth, where the hell is Garth?

Nice sign

Taxiboat, ideally, should be visited in a taxi, which would be a Taxiboat Taxi. In the perfect world you would get the taxi from the Princess Pier, having got off a boat, which would be a Taxiboat Taxi Boat. Anyway, I could be recursive (recursive all day) all day, so I'll stop.

Taxiboat, as you may have guessed already, is in Westgarth, directly opposite the cinema in a groovy room with polished concrete and an enormous bar. As iSaluti does for its pizza oven, Taxiboat does for its bar, making it a major feature of a small room and giving it a remarkable amount of floor space. It's also a fairly loud space, even when seasonally adjusted for my hearing, and despite that there were only two tables and a scant dozen people.

We were joined by the Catman Malcolm, as well as Suzanne and John, having only recently discovered that not only did we work for the same organisation and share a love of BitTorrent for English panel shows, we also posted words about food. As Steven Wright says, it's a small world but I wouldn't want to paint it.

I'm not sure how Taxiboat describes itself, but I'd describe it as a mix of Chinese and south east Asian dishes, brought out to share (as God intended, or would have if he'd bothered to show up for work).

Suzanne, John and Malcolm

We were attended to quickly and the service was enthusiastic and good natured. We spent a bit of time futzing over the menu (which was always going to happen), ordered, and the food arrived fairly promptly.

Spring rolls, as has been noted, are an easy choice and pretty much set the tone for the night. They were crisp, light and... well... didn't have a lot of flavour. Compared to the spring rolls from Thy Thy 1, these were more cigars than cigarettes and weren't dense with filling in the same way the Victoria Street ones were.

OK, but suffered by comparison to these from two days earlier

San Choi Bow is not something I've ever been a big fan of, and by reports there was no reason to make an exception for this. F described it as unremarkable. And that was all she could muster up.

Making rice paper rolls is like using a parachute. It's a little bit tricky, and unless you get it *just* right, people will be left somewhat disappointed. By all accounts these were adequate. Do you see a theme emerging here?

Meh...

The one thing I had heard about Taxiboat was that their dumplings were good, and they certainly have pride of place right up at the pointy end of the menu. Once again, however, the demon Bland visited the table, spread his cable-knit cardigan wings and exuded an uninspiring beige mist. I expected the ginger and seafood dumplings to have at least two flavours (don't make me explain which ones...) but we ended up with seafood and... And???....

Sigh. I thought about performing the Rite of AshkEnte to banish the demon Bland but couldn't remember which version it was that didn't cause instant death. That turned out to be my loss.

Bland turned up again for the main courses. A dish of Singapore Noodles looked lovely, but both of the prawns in the dish were sitting on top and although the noodles were cooked beautifully and their texture was perfect, they lacked any sort of real flavour.

A dish described as Chicken Teriyaki was softly sweet and apparently braised. The wagyu beef in sesame was similarly uninspiring. It was cut into small cubes, and although there was nothing wrong with the texture, there was no suggestion of browning or of the wonderful caramels of quickly cooked meat. Malcolm described it as wooden, but I think he was referring to flavour rather than texture. The dread demon Bland had done his job and had done it well.

The salt and pepper squid was certainly salty and surprisingly soft and had been cooked beautifully, but lack pepperiness. A plate of stir-fried pak choy and (I think) bok choy was recommended to us, and it was pretty good too.

The conversation was more interesting than the food

The highlight of the night was the Thai Red Duck Curry. Now, I have to say I've made this myself a few times and I'm not bad at it. A chopped up Chinese roast duck and lychees goes into a Thai red curry with the usual herbal extravaganza, giving a dish that's sweet, rich and complicated with the flavour of the roast duck and balanced with herbs. And this was good - it was sweet and rich and the flavour was lovely with an emphasis on the aniseed of Thai basil (although F felt that it lacked the requisite unctuousness). But the duck was thin slices of duck breast cut off the bone.

I often do the mental trade-off about the value of keeping the bone in when I cook a lot of things. Bone so often means moist and more flavour, but sometimes I want to be lazy when I'm eating rather than cooking. I've had beautiful pan-fried duck breasts (and if you want duck rare, it's the only way I trust myself to cook it that way), but my favourite duck dishes have all been on the bone (like this one).

Taxiboat was a bit disappointing, to be honest. The food certainly wasn't bad, but despite this writing, it wasn't (*irony spoiler*) worth writing home about. I'm trying to avoid damning with faint praise but that's about all I can do. The restaurant itself has a smart modern look yet is low on the wank factor, yet the clatter was a bit much and there wasn't much elbow room. The waiting staff were good-natured, but sometimes needed a reminder or correction (which is better in my book than the other way around); and all the food had lovely textures but tasted, well, bland. And in spite of the wonderful quirkiness of having a bath and shower in the lavatory, any bonus points were immediately lost by having nothing with which to dry your hands.

W was so disappointed he tried to hide

We didn't stay for dessert, instead walking up the hill to Coco Loco, which we will post about at some other time.