james test

March 20, 2016 Our semi-regular Ottolenghi cooking crew took advantage of one of the last glorious summer evenings of the season to head to Princes Park for a picnic potluck. I decided to avoid the big sharable salad-style dishes I usually fall back on and went scoping for snackier options, settling on two dip-based dishes that looked relatively easy to throw together. First up: polenta crisps an avocado and yoghurt dip. This was not as easy as I originally assumed - the dip was super simple, but the polenta crisp making required a lot of challenging shallow-frying. It all worked out okay in the end, but this is a recipe that you need to devote a bit of time and effort to. The pay-off is worth it in the end - my polenta chips turned out like mini schnitzels, and were an excellent vessel for gulping down big dollops of tangy avocado and lime sauce. The second recipe actually was an easy one (I won't reproduce it here - see the 2nd recipe on this page ) - a simple combination of y...

March 20, 2016 With a day of Ottolenghi-related cooking ahead of us (blog posts to come soon!), we needed somewhere local for a quick and delicious brekkie. Having overdoses on the Wide Open Road menu recently, it was time for a return trip to Lucy Lockett. There's a steady buzz at Lucy Lockett these days - the outside tables were full when we arrived, and the inside tables gradually filled up while we ate. The menu has changed a bit since our last visit, but there's still an impressive selection, with heaps of vegan and gluten-free options. We both wound up ordering vegan dishes - with the breakfast salad of felafel, sauteed greens, cashew butter, beetroot and pickled carrot ($16) for me. This is a pretty lunchy breakfast - some crispy felafel balls on top of a lovely mix of leafy greens, broccolini and asparagus plus a couple of whole mini carrots and some slivers of beetroot and radish. The cashew butter lumped on top was a bit thick and stodgy - I don't really know why ...

March 19, 2016 The vegans of facebook have alerted me to yet another unexpectedly veg-friendly eatery! Maccaroni Osteria Italiana is a family-run Italian restaurant located in that funny little wedge of Queen's Parade bordering Fitzroy North and Clifton Hill. With a marble bar, high ceiling and elaborate light fixture at its centre, the restaurant has a sense of occasion. The regular menu is dominated by pasta and risotti, meat and fish (including calamari and chips!). But there are also vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free labels across the board and an entire separate vegan menu, warmly inviting customers to "ask any question to the staff in order your food for religious reasons, environmental concerns, animal welfare concerns". Our group numbered more than a dozen, and the kitchen were kind enough to devise a $40pp vegan banquet that allowed us to sample numerous dishes across the menu. The first deliveries to our table were huge platters of misto fritto (mixed fried foo...

March 17, 2016 We've enjoyed a couple of visits to Mukka even in the face of stiff veg*n restaurant competition on Brunswick St. Most recently we met up with our mates Natalie and Ben, all of us agreed that we should trial the $30pp vegan "Just Feed Me..." menu. We also needed drinks. I circled back on the rose & cinnamon cooler ($7) of my first visit - it's so pretty and refreshing! The staff treated Natalie to a ginger beer souped up with pomegranate juice and seeds and a wedge of lime. This was a riff on their current jug-sized cocktail, which was just too much for Natalie to take on solo. The banquet proved particularly generous in its entree selection.  First up there were neat little samosas, dusted with black salt and served with mint and tamarind chutneys. More novel to us was the bhel puri, aptly described on the menu as "cold and crunchy, light and lovely"; a medley of puffed rice, Bombay Mix , nylon sev , pomegranate seeds, tomato, onion, lime...

March 9 & 10, 2016 I barely pay attention to Broadsheet these days, drowning under the weight of newly opened bars and cafes that we'll eventually visit some time in 2018. Somehow though, my eye caught on the words 'Lebanese Diner' and 'Code Black Coffee' in a write-up of Tahini, a new place just around the corner for my office. We've had pretty good experiences at both Code Blacks and I've been craving a good lunchtime felafel for a while, so this shot straight to the top of my list for days when our packed-lunch game was weak. I wound up visiting back-to-back quite soon after they opened, giving me a chance to have a proper shot at their menu. On my first visit I got a bit confused by the system - it turns out you only go up to the counter if you're getting takeaway, not if you want to eat in. I panicked a haloumi wrap ($10) without really taking in my full range of options.  They really are designed as a speedy takeaway lunch - a better option...

March 6, 2016 Before we embarked on a day All About Women , we shared breakfast with Another Outspoken Female and her Significant Eater. AOF recommended Barmuda for its veg options. Barmuda is tucked away on Australia St near Newtown's landmark intersection. It looks less slick than its neighbours Black Star Pastry and Oscillate Wildly , but we found a comfortable spot with sturdy wooden furniture and lots of sunlight upstairs. Though they're not explicitly marked, we did indeed find plenty of veg options to choose from (gluten-free dishes are helpfully labelled). Granola, sour cherry loaf, vanilla rice, French toast and ricotta hotcakes were a promising start, extending to a breakie wrap, eggs, mushrooms, beans, and a big plate called The Local. The all-day lunch menu of toasties, falafel and hefty salads looks more vegan-friendly. Michael took on the gluten-free potato stack ($16.50). The potato cake was particularly memorable, two squares of finely layered potato rounds, f...

March 5, 2016 We had one goal for the second night of our Sydney visit: nab a table at Gigi. We wandered past on Friday night and saw a long queue on the street, so we turned up as they opened on Saturday to ensure we wouldn't be disappointed. Gigi is a fascinating restaurant - it's a classic Neapolitan pizzeria that's been massively popular in Newtown since the mid-2000s. Last year, seemingly out of the blue, they announced a menu makeover - everything they serve now is 100% vegan . It's a pretty dramatic transition for a restaurant that's relied so heavily on cheese, but one that's seemingly driven ethical and sustainability issues. Based on the steady stream of customers queuing up to visit the vegan shift has attracted at least as many customers as it has repelled - it's incredibly heartening. They don't make a big fuss of their newly vegan approach in their signage or on their menu and it's easy to imagine that some of the people who've wand...

March 4, 2016 All About Women drew us to Sydney for a weekend. We made time to hang out with ex-Melbourne food blogger Another Outspoken Female and her Significant Eater, and share some inner west meals. After scoping the queue at Gigi, we fell back on @jesshodder 's recommendation of Golden Lotus. This vegan Vietnamese restaurant opened less than a year ago, serving myriad mock-meat and mock-free dishes that will suit the solo diner and banquetting table alike. In fact, we briefly debated ordering one of the two available set meals ($26 or $28pp) before agreeing to patch together our own. We made the most of their non-alcoholic drinks list with young coconut juices ($4.80 ea) and lemon ice teas ($4.80 ea). It just wasn't the right time of day for a Saigon ice coffee ($4.80 ea), unfortunately. To start, we shared satay skewers (2 for $6.80) and the intriguing crispy vegetable buns (4 for ~$10). The dipping sauces stood out for their complex flavours and the buns were almost l...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on February 27, 2016 We're still working our way through our Cheap Eats 2006 project , revisiting places from the first copy of The Cheap Eats Guide that we bought way back when we moved to Melbourne. On the last Saturday of summer, we headed back to Albert Park for an early dinner in the sunshine at Andrew's Hamburgers. They pre-date the American-driven burger craze that's swept through Melbourne in the past five years or so by about 60 years, first opening in 1939 and coming up with the current burger recipe in 1957 . They've put some tables on the footpath outside, but otherwise not much have changed: the menu's the same, the burgers are the same and the steady stream of customers is the same. Prices have crept up alongside inflation - from $7 for a veggie burger in 2007 to $10 in 2016 - pretty reasonable really. Andrew's aren't in a hurry to change a formula that works for them. We grabbed one of their veggie burgers (with a hom...