Alfio's

FIDO, courtesy wispfox

Not in High Street perhaps, but a short ride away via traditional northern suburbs transport (Vespa or a fixie), Alfio's Cafe is in Station Street in Fairfield, just up from the glorious FIDO. Alfio's is a Fairfield stalwart and was one of the oldest of the current generation of cafes. It also hasn't changed much in years - it was much the same in 2005 and 2006 (and indeed, the blackboard behind me in 2006 has exactly the same cocktail list).

Alfio's is so much part of my mental landscape of Fairlfield that I wouldn't have bothered writing about it except that I've only just discovered they serve the best mega-breakfast in the northern suburbs. Not the best breakfast all up, but certainly the best mega-breakfast in the FEB-style.

Hail King George

Alfio's call their mega FEB breakfast, "The George". It contained a pile of wilted spinach; a couple of poached eggs (slightly over-done); two slices of pale toasted baguette; some sauteed mushrooms (good but not spectacular); two halves of grilled tomato (good but with extraneous cheese on one half); a pile of crisp bacon (excellent!); a Hungarian-style paprika and garlic partly-cured sausage (brilliant!); and a lamb kofta (not a lot of flavour but cooked perfectly). It also had, buried underneath, a superfluous, freezer-bag hash brown. When I can work up the energy I'll rail against these, but honestly, who cares enough?

Oh, and there were beans. Very good. Home made, not too light and not too stodgy either - Goldilocks beans.

All in all it was, well, huge. Pretty damn good for a late breakfast verging-on-lunch. Oh, and the coffee is, and always has been, fantastic. Go there, but expect to see some of your work colleagues striding past in their Saturday morning finest. Well, that's what I saw, anyway.

Stephen Colbert Scooby Snacks

Martha Stewart explains strangling turkeys to Stephen Colbert.

Stephen Colbert mushes Devon/Berliner/Fritz/Baloney with tomato sauce and serves it on crackers.

Stephen Colbert sucks the lapel of a 69-year old former stockbroker and jailbird.

Watch it here.

China Red

Technology has come a long way since I was a small, innocent child. Tonnes of metal fly through the sky every day (mostly safely); gamma radiation from galactic bubbles abounds; and people cheerfully wear clothes made of magical man-made fibres. At the same time, the intertubes have revolutionized our lives and information swirls endlessly through pipes, blessing us with almost instantaneous satisfaction and answers through tubes. Water, however, still comes in bottles.

I only raise this because I have this great idea that's going to make me rich. I'm going to tell you, discretely, but you have to promise not to keep it to yourself.

You see, it occurred to me that if everyone uses water every day, then surely it would be great if we had instant access to it, just like we have instant access to information. Indeed, what we need is some sort of "water internet". This "waternet" would be, like the internet, a series of tubes, but in this case delivering water, instead of information, directly to our houses! It's a crazy, science-fiction idea (I know!), but perhaps one day it will be more than fantasy. Maybe in the future we'll be able to abandon bottled water for a "waternet", where water is delivered through "pipes". Maybe not in my lifetime perhaps, but hey, we can dream.

The future of dumplings is here already

Of course, not all technology is fantasy. While the "waternet" eludes us, the great dream of a dumpling internet (the legendary "dumplenet") has already arrived. Somewhere in the world, the Tim Berners-Lee of the dumpling world is resting on his laurels and these laurels can be found at China Red.

China Red is a small, tastefully discrete modern restaurant in a mall between Bourke St and Little Bourke, just off Melbourne's China Town and is truly a marvel of modern technology. While one day in the future we will surely be able to access the dumplenet from home, in 2010 we are limited to dumplenet cafes and China Red is at the forefront of this exciting phase of civilization.

Spring onion pancakes. Donuts, but with onions and crisp.

Using the amazing touchscreen dumplenet technology, Miranda, Helen and I (early adopters all) ordered our dumplings "on screen" and without recourse to human interaction!! This felt both staggeringly modern and never too far from being exciting. Screens were touched; virtual buttons were digitally manipulated and food arrived shortly after, albeit delivered by humans rather than the robots I hoped for. You can check what you ordered at any time, with delivered dishes signified with a digital steaming bowl icon, while food you've ordered but is not yet delivered shows as a rather sweet animated chef cooking up a storm.

We ordered spring onion pancakes which were exceedingly crisp and onionesque; green (snake?) beans with minced pork and chili; some chili oil dumplings; and some pot-stickers. The beans were wonderful and smoky, although the pieces of chili they were served with was staggeringly, blisteringly hot, while the chili oil dumplings were somewhere greater than good but less than spectacular. The pot-stickers (I know they had a proper name but I can't remember what it was) were also good, but no more, and came with a chewy and gelatinous wrapper.

Pan-fried dumplings (pot-stickers) and the blistering beans

All up the food was good city lunch time fare. Good dumplings, but not great, with a bit of digital fun watching the little man on the screen. Go, have lunch and pay very little, but most of all marvel at the first fledgling steps of what will become the great and ubiquitous dumplenet.

Christmas in November - Reflections on Panettone

Well, Christmas is only months and months away so the shops are in full Christmas swing. Decorations that look like elves have been dropping LSD; hampers full of the stuff they didn't sell last year; and belt-fed plastic machine guns that fire whistling foam bullets in the toy catalogs (oh to be young again...).

Panettone bread and butter pudding - the true spirit of Christmas on a plate

Luckily, there is one aspect of Christmas that can't come soon enough, and that's panettone season. The smell.... The texture.... The bread and butter pudding..... So in the lead up to the festive season, here are a few thoughts from the gluttons at Eat Our Way regarding this highlight of Saturnalia. These were all purchased from the local big-name supermarket.

• Ital Traditional Panettone - This was not a great way to start the season. This spoils Christmas as much as Scrooge McGrinch and, quite frankly, it can $%$#@ my &^%$. Dry, only a faint smell and not much fruit, it completely lacked that overwhelming moist, boozy, vanilla-toasty smell that shakes you by the neck and says, "IT'S FUCKING CHRISTMAS!!!" Instead all it could offer was, "Christmas? Oh yeah, I bought you a sack of charcoal. By the way, it's your turn to take out the rubbish bins."

• Buinissomo Panettone Classico - My word, this is indeed the shizzle, as Mr S Dogg would surely attest. It looks as if Michelangelo had designed the packaging for Paris Hilton, as it comes in a cardboard Sistene Chapel of glory. Definitely better than the Ital, it offered fruit and a much more traditional panettone smell with an added citrus perfume. If anything, it erred slightly on the side of being a little too moist, so that it compressed in your mouth. All up, very good and made a truly excellent Bread and Butter Pudding.
  

• Bauli il Panettone - The curate's egg of a panettone; it had an excellent moist but open texture and was generous with the fruit, particularly the orange peel. It also had a lovely citrus scent which, although it was very appealing (pun intended), it lacked the overwhelming panettone aroma that the Buinissomo had. A delicious fruit bread but without that merged magic vanilla-toasty-citrus smell that makes panettone what it is.
  

But apart from eating it, toasting it and generally elevating a humble cup of tea to a religious experience, there's one thing you can do with panettone that takes it from a bread-based confection to the food of the gods. This dessert is truly salvation in a baking dish.

Bread and butter pudding

Panettone Bread and Butter Pudding

Take the best part of a panettone and slice it thickly. Toast it lightly if you can be bothered, but it's not necessary. Butter each slice lightly and spread with a favourite preserve - we use either the quince jelly or kumquat marmalade we make.

Lay the slices in a buttered baking dish and cover with a rich custard mix - maybe 10 eggs to a litre of milk, with a few tablespoons of sugar and some vanilla.

Allow it to soak for a few minutes before putting into a slow-medium oven until its almost firm in the centre and golden on top. Serve warm or cool, but not hot.

Cooking with Al

Al is learning to cook, partly through school, but also with us as well as a great big dose of teaching himself and practicing. There are few things more satisfying than watching someone try cooking a dish for the first time, practice the technique, try the result and then comment sagely on possible improvements. If I sound like a very proud parent, I am, but I'm also trying to be restrained in my comment so I don't embarrass him out of the kitchen....

He made Beggar's Chicken, something I've wanted to try since, well, I was probably about his age and saw it in a Women's Weekly cooking book. It looked magical, yet in my teenage mind was wildly profligate (throwing away a kilo of salt?) and required a lot of faith. Al, on the other hand, leaped after the briefest of looks and was well rewarded. In fact, we all were...

The result was worth the palaver. It looked roasted but was floating in juices and was the most incredibly tender chicken I've ever tasted, as though the meat fibers had been individually softened. The flavour was perfect - the smell of a little soy, ginger, spring onions and five spice wafted above the juices. It was truly wonderful.

Vanilla Slice - You'd have to drive a long way to get one this old school

He also made a Vanilla Slice worthy of a country baker and last week made a goat curry (he has no fear). All wonderful, and I am hoping for much more.

Goat curry - rich and heady with fragrance. Everyone loved it (except the goat).

Hanuman

A bit more than a year ago we started "Eat our Way" with the intention of capturing our thoughts about our local restaurants at a point in time before they became too popular, swanky and/or wanky. The deal was simple; I promised to focus on High Street and never use the word "authentic" and you promise not to complain about the humble scope of this blog.

I say this really just to confess, in advance, that this time we're a little out of scope. No, that's not quite true; we're well out of scope. We had a couple of days in Darwin last week and had a lovely evening eating great Nonya food at a place called Hanuman, and this is our humble record of that evening. Think of it as "Eat our Way goes Mad in the Tropics".

Drinkiepoos

Hanuman was just around the corner from our hotel and looked pretty fine from the street, and like everywhere wonderful in Darwin, it's open to the elements.

We don't often start a meal with a cocktail, but then we're not often in a different city without children for a couple of days either. I ordered a Hanuman Martini, which was flavoured with a sweet green tea liqueur, while the seahorse had a Cosmopolitan. The martini erred on the sweet sidewith a clean fragrance, but the Cosmo was a damp and diluted squib - a pale, faded pink shadow of the Platonic Cosmopolitan, like 1980's office decor - pale pink and grey like a galah. Afterwards the seahorse did complain her ears had fallen off, so perhaps it wasn't that diluted....

Oysters in sweet little pots

We ordered two entrees - oysters baked with ginger, soy and chili, and "Money Bags" - plump, fried wontons filled with a ginger-garlic chicken mousse. The oysters were intense and at the very limits of what I'm prepared to see happen to an oyster. They come in a beautiful terracotta dish, individually lidded in a sharp, hot sauce. There was still enough room for the oyster to shine through, but only just. Enjoyable, but not essence of oyster which is what I enjoy most in an oyster.

Moneybags of... chicken

The Money Bags were wrapped in a thin, crisp tofu skin and served with a sweet chili glaze. Plump, lovely and sweet, like... I could get into trouble now so I'll shut up.

Hanuman Prawns

Main courses were a coconut milk prawn curry that was unctuous, mild and warm and pork belly cooked with star anise and cinnamon. Both were fabulous on their own, although in retrospect they were both rich dishes with little spice, and choosing at least one dish with a bit more spark would have been a better idea. We also ordered roti, which was great, and raita which was a little sweet for my tastes.

Pork Belly

Hanuman served up the best meal I've had in the Northern Territory, which to a southerner might sound like a backhanded compliment, but I've had some fantastic south east Asian food in Darwin that had a freshness that would be hard to beat. Green papaya salad and oodles of rice noodles at various markets mean my northern expectations are pretty high and Hanuman met these.

I didn't mention dessert - Black Rice Brulee. It was of the Gods.

Chowhound

I think it's only fair that at this stage in our relationship, dear reader, that I disclose certain editorial and research standards at Eat Our Way. Now, I know those who've been reading this blog for any length of time will find the suggestion that I have standards a little hard to fathom and may even dart off to re-read old posts looking for evidence of such. My general rule is that it takes a certain number of meals to justify an opinion, meaning a single adult journey to a venue generally requires a second validatory expedition before mere words are committed to type.

Because drinking at breakfast is cool yes it is shut up.

In this case, however, I'm going to break that rule, largely because it will be a while before we get a chance to go back, and, albeit based on scant evidence, we will be going back. So, dearest reader, understand the limitations of my opinion but recognize that I'm going to have one regardless of what you think.

I went with the smallest tribe member for a walk to the park (child exercise) followed by some a stroll up Ruckers Hill (adult exercise) to get some late Sunday breakfast. Chowhound is towards the top of the Hill on the western side, a short walk down from the town hall. It's bigger than many of its peers and is a pleasant, relaxed space that's not too high on the Wank Scale (where your lounge room gets a "zero" and sparkle laminex and mixed 1950's vinyl chairs gets an "8").

Beans, eggs, proscuitto

So I ordered the baked eggs with baked beans, proscuitto and toast with a Bloody Mary while Will had Macaroni Cheese from the menu for kidlets.

The beans were not the slow baked, rich, slightly sweetened and well cooked beans that I make at home, but were lighter, with firmer white beans in a fresh tomato sauce. Not what I was looking forward to, but not bad either - they were Kylie Minogue when I was expecting Wagner. The eggs were baked on top of these and were alright, but the yolks were a little harder than perfect and there was a splodge of uncooked white in the center. A quick stir into the beans fixed the white problem but the yolks were well beyond translucent and thus repair. The prosciutto was crisp, salty and thin. A not-at-all bad dish, although potentially improved by breaking the egg yolk into the middle of the dish where it will cook the least.

Macaroni cheese and boy

Will's macaroni cheese was generously cheesed, baconed and onioned. The onions in particular were golden and lusciously sweet, and the whole sticky ensemble was crunchily crumbed.

Everything else was tickety-boo; the staff were helpful, it was quiet and generally relaxing. So in summary, while I can't speak definitively about Chowhound, I can speak positively enough to say we'll go back and try breakfast again.

On the other hand, the name's a bit naff...