james test

Don't tell the Office of Film and Literature Classification, but it turns out we've been publishing all this time without a rating! Thank goodness Sarah and Mellie so kindly stepped in to bestow us with an E for Excellent. It's particularly gratifying to receive this from a couple of cool cookin' Melbourne gals who've been blogging a while longer than Michael and I - I've been reading their edible exploits since we first moved to the food capital of Australia. In turn, I want to pass on the blog love to Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit and Hezbollah Tofu . These folks are rebellious and funny, proof for all the interwebs that veganism is one part compassion, six parts delicious swashbuckling adventure and zero parts self denial. If you've got even more blog-browsing time at your disposal, take a stroll through all the Melbourne-based food blogs I've linked in the sidebar. They are brimming with enthusiasm for everything edible this city has to of...

Edit 25/04/2017: Enlightened Cuisine is now rebranded as  Vegie Kitchen . Not strictly Friday, and not pre-theatre. Instead, we wandered across to Enlightenment Cuisine in South Melbourne early on a Saturday evening following a matinée showing of Holding the Man at The Malthouse. Cindy had one of her semi-regular faux-meat cravings, and our previous trip to the incongruously located (across the street from Crown) Enlightenment Cuisine had been relatively successful. It all added up to good excuse to make our theatre-related dinner a slightly more expensive experience (although it turns out they're now offering a series of $9 'food on the run' meal combos straight from the lunch menu, so it needn't have been quite so expensive). Cindy, bafflingly, is rarely able to expand her faux-meat enthusiasms from the sickly sweet Chinese treats she remembers from her childhood: usually honey chicken, sweet and sour pork or lemon chicken. This week it was lemon chicken - I alw...

I've visited Ying Thai 2 on several occasions, yet this is the first time it has appeared on this blog. The meals I've had there have been spontaneous outings with friends but not a camera, or on lazy nights with Michael when even photographing the food feels like too much work. This occasion was instead a lazy Saturday lunch with a camera. I picked Ying Thai because I like their reduced-portion, reduced-cost lunch specials. Although there are noodles and soups and stir-fries available, it's all about the curry really. Michael had the vegetable Kao Gang Dang (red curry, $8.90), with rice. He lapped it up as happily as he does most curries, remarking on the generous supply of tofu. I ordered the vegetable Kao Gang Panang ($9.90), copping the extra $1 in cost for the luxury of roti instead of rice. I love dipping it in the spicy coconut milk broth, though it does get a bit oily and it's difficult to get through all the sauce in this way. It's best undertaken wh...

This cute little fellow was a gift from my workmate Andy. (Refer to the accompanying biro in the photo to confirm his small stature.) I enjoy Andy's jokes and chuckles across the office wall so she doesn't need to buy my affection with vegetable offerings, but I was pleased to accept him all the same. I was keen to stuff and bake the little pumpkin, but once I gently cut the top off I realised there wasn't actually much room for stuffing! Instead we just baked the segments, skin on, with olive oil, salt and pepper. It was deliciously soft and sweet. On the side we had baby spinach leaves and emergency from-the-freezer square I-can't-believe-it's-not-meat pies topped with Chinese style barbeque sauce .

Cindy and I had some serious camping gear shopping to sort out, on the last day of Kathmandu's Easter sale, and needed to find somewhere vaguely nearby to fill up on breakfast - you can't buy a tent on an empty stomach after all. We've not mastered the weekend breakfast in the city - a lot of the good places are set up to cater to the Monday to Friday office workers and take a well-earned break on the weekend. The Cheap Eats didn't offer us many new ideas, so we settled for a third trip to Mr Tulk. The trendy and welcoming interior has somehow tricked me into thinking that Tulk has a breakfast bounty to rival some of our local favourites . For some reason, however, it the menu didn't quite do it for me - none of the egg dishes caught my eye, so I settled for a simple avocado on toast. The avo was fresh and generously slathered on some plain toast - a small sliver of lime and a dash of salt and pepper completed the dish. It was excellent, and reasonably good v...

It's been a while since our last visit to Houndstooth , and in the meantime the 3 course meal seems to have increased from an insanely cheap $15 to a still-reasonable $20. It's evident that most of Fitzroy is indeed happy to absorb the price hike, with a healthy crowd making it a little difficult to hear the words of Mike, Marty and Alana across the table. Dim mood lighting prevented this group of maths geeks from resorting to communicating via hand-drawn diagrams. I started with the white nectarine, ricotta, almond biscotti and watercress salad. All the individual elements were of excellent quality and if you had removed the watercress this would have made a delicious little dessert. I was a little weirded out by the salad version, however. Michael instead had figs with gorgonzola and maybe balsamic vinegar - he can't remember and I didn't write it down. Whatever it was, he happily demolished it in a matter of seconds. The vegetarian main of the evening was capsic...

On Thursday night we met up with Mike, Jo-Lyn, Tracy and Lee to check out the weeknight showing of the game on exhibition at ACMI . But first we needed food, fast! I coerced the group into trying Green Pepper - I wanted to compare it to its sister Red , while everyone else was just happy to eat curry. Green Pepper has been fitted out with noticeably more care and expense, with coloured walls, tasteful decorations and wooden furniture sparkling with varnish. However the counter service, menu and prices appear identical to those at Red Pepper. For the sake of comparison, I ordered the same malai kofta with two naans ($9). It appeared without the raw onion and salty lassi sides (and I didn't miss them). These kofta certainly didn't come out of the same kitchen - although I liked these dumplings more, the gravy was oilier and less impressive. Michael's mystery paneer curry (they were all out of greens so he didn't get the palak paneer he initially ordered) was simi...