It’s been a week of eat­ing, and I tell you, I’ve def­i­nite­ly got the meat sweats. I do it for you, gen­tle read­er. Here’s some advice about what you should and should­n’t be eat­ing over the next week.

  1. The burg­er at The Gen­er­al Prac­tic­tion­er
  2. (We already reviewed Par­rot­dog + La Boca Loca. Based on that, go eat their Dine menu or burg­er too)
  3. The Dine menu at Beach Baby­lon
  4. The Dine menu at Fox­glove
  5. (There should be the Dine menu at Le Cor­den Bleu in here, but then there was an earth­quake and it was more impor­tant to go home and see my cats and drink all the wine)
  6. The Dine menu at The Hop Gar­den
  7. The Dine menu at Coco at the Roxy

The Kashbaabaa Burger at the General Practitioner

lamb burger

Hand-ground spiced lamb and date pat­ty with chilli, almond and corian­der pesto, in a Pan­doro bun, with chunky chips

I chose the GP because it was close to work, and because I’d enjoyed their burg­er last year. This time it was decid­ed­ly aver­age and I wish I’d gone for their Dine menu instead.

Dates in the lamb pat­ty itself was an inter­est­ing idea, but did­n’t have much of a taste. The sauce was good, but there was­n’t enough of it, the chips were bland — they should have been served with a side dish of the sauce for dip­ping, and the bun was just noth­ing spe­cial at all. if you paid $12–15 for this burg­er, you’d be hap­py, but giv­en it was $22, I don’t rec­om­mend it. Pete Wat­son, the offi­cial burg­er blog­ger gave it a 7/10, but then again, he was­n’t pay­ing for it. I did­n’t get any feta in my burg­er and it’s not list­ed on the ingre­di­ents either, so I don’t know what he’s talk­ing about there.

Ser­vice was fine, and there were plen­ty of news­pa­pers to read, which is a good thing for solo din­ing, but read­ing back on my review from last year, it seems flac­cid fries and bad buns are a reoc­cur­ing fea­ture so I will not order their burg­ers again.

The Dine menu at Beach Babylon

IMG_2870It was a love­ly sun­ny day on Wednes­day and I hap­pened to have my car with me, so I thought I’d make the most of it. There was park­ing on Ori­en­tal Parade, and I fig­ured it would be fair to give Beach Baby­lon anoth­er go since it’s been three years since this dread­ful expe­ri­ence.

Well. The ser­vice was pret­ty rough, still — I had to ask for the Welling­ton on a Plate menu, my glass of wine was plonked down with­out a word by the wait­staff, I did­n’t get a servi­ette at all, and there was no chance to ask for one because they did­n’t check up on me while I was eat­ing. The food itself was decent, but not exem­plary — that might have been my fault though for choos­ing the veg­e­tar­i­an options in antic­i­pa­tion of much more meat to come at oth­er places.

Starter: Wild Park­vale mush­room and Zany Zeus ricot­ta ravi­o­li with aspara­gus and Oli­vo porci­ni olive oil
Main: Fresh chilli and chive corn­cakes with Zany Zeus cit­rus creme fraiche, water­cress, avo­ca­do and cher­ry toma­toes

The ravi­o­li fill­ing was deli­cious, as was the oil driz­zle over it, but I was pret­ty dis­ap­point­ed to get beans instead of aspara­gus with it. Mean­while the slip­pery light tex­ture of the ravi­o­li makes me sus­pect that they used pre-bought won­ton wrap­pers instead of mak­ing their own pas­ta. (Side­note: I’ve been told that the famous paua ravi­o­li at Logan Brown also does this AND their paua is frozen. Nice work if you can get it, at the price they charge!). The corn cakes were decent enough too, you’d be hap­py enough with them on a break­fast menu (but prob­a­bly want some bacon with them).

It’s great that Beach Baby­lon is able to offer veg­e­tar­i­an options, but it’s a shame their ser­vice is still so lack­ing in finesse. 

The Dine menu at Foxglove

IMG_2877Ahh, this is the busi­ness. Robyn’s loved the WOAP menu at Fox­glove in the past, as have I, and it’s nice and close to my new office (oh earth­quakes), so I assem­bled a pan­el of cowork­ers and made a book­ing.

Main: PrimeS­tar beef cheek, pick­led onion shells, sun­choke puree, Swiss chard and bone mar­row bro­ken veal jus (GF)

Dessert: Choco­late can­nel­loni with iced cof­fee sor­bet, Zany Zeus yoghurt and caramel

Ser­vice at Fox­glove is stiffly for­mal, but also very slow. Even though we were there at lunch time, and we said we were order­ing the Dine menu (which every­one at the table has to have if you want it, unlike any­where else you might go), they left us alone for a good 10 min­utes or so, which seems a bit ridicu­lous when you have a total of two options to choose from. Food took a long time to come out too, even though when we start­ed there were very few peo­ple in the restau­rant. This is not a place you can get in and out of in under an hour. That said, what we got was frick­ing deli­cious.

Bread rolls came out with both olive oil and whipped but­ter sprin­kled with salt. The but­ter tast­ed real­ly but­ter­milk-tangy, which was nice and a bit dif­fer­ent — i had to eat some off the knife just to be sure it was­n’t the sour dough roll. The beef cheek was a quite gen­er­ous por­tion, and it fell apart when it sight­ed the fork, which is always good. The Jerusalem arti­chokes (I don’t know why they call them sun­chokes, that seems more of an Amer­i­can thing which I haven’t seen on oth­er menus) were served roast­ed, not in a puree, but that was fine, and ooooh the sauce, it was deli­cious. I was very glad of the gre­mo­la­ta on top of the meat though to fresh­en up the palate, as it was all exceed­ing­ly rich — and deli­cious.

chocolate cannelloni at foxgloveWhile all four of us had ordered the beef, we split over dessert. When I tweet­ed about it, peo­ple thought I had meant to say can­no­li, but  no no, my friend. It was­n’t pas­ta, but it did look more like it than pas­try. This was also very rich dessert, though the very very cof­fee sor­bet (it was grit­ty, that’s how strong­ly cof­feed it was) sor­bet coun­ter­act­ed all the choco­late a bit. The poached meringues looked great too, float­ing in giant glass­es. In fact, the food was so good I con­tem­plat­ed going back the next day to try the pork and also the meringue, but I decid­ed that I real­ly did­n’t have the time — giv­en how slow they were when the restau­rant was emp­ty, I could­n’t imag­ine how long it would take when it was packed on a sun­ny Fri­day. I do rec­om­mend you go though, if your sched­ule will allow it. When the qual­i­ty of food is this good, and con­sid­er­ing Fox­glove’s nor­mal prices, you’re get­ting excel­lent val­ue for mon­ey.

The Dine menu at Hop Garden

venisonAfter Fri­day’s shakes and quakes, I was­n’t keen to ven­ture too far from home on Sat­ur­day, so lunch with my sis­ters in my neigh­bour­hood sound­ed per­fect, and had hand­i­ly been booked into my spread­sheet in advance as if we knew what was going to hap­pen.

Starter: Wild veni­son carpac­cio with Jerusalem arti­choke chips, Pin­na­cle Grove wal­nuts and orange dress­ing

Main: Slow-braised Here­ford short­rib with truf­fled pota­to, roast­ed shal­lots, and pink pep­per­corn jus

We made it a very easy order for the wait­ress — four venisons, four beefs, four Pinot Noirs. In exchange, the starter was the pret­ti­est dish I’ve eat­en for quite a while. I was sur­prised that the veni­son was still frosty — I mean, obvi­ous­ly they need to freeze it to be able to slice it that thin­ly, but I would have thought serv­ing it at room tem­per­a­ture would have giv­en it more flavour. Also, it is a lit­tle awk­ward eat­ing veni­son when your broth­er-in-law-ish is nick­named Bam­bi. Still, the crunch of the Jerusalem arti­choke chips and can­died wal­nuts was more than enough to keep me hap­py. With the orange dress­ing, this was almost like eat­ing a bowl of the best cere­al in the world, which means it made for a great break­fast. We all cleaned our plates with our fin­gers after­wards, part­ly because the sauce was so deli­cious, and part­ly because o obvi­ous­ly we were poor­ly brought up.

beef short ribs at Hop Garden

Then it was time for the short ribs. Poor Bam­bi got dread­ful­ly short-changed, with his beef being almost entire­ly all fat. The wait­ress did­n’t com­ment on it when she took away his plate with the mound of fat pret­ty much untouched. Not cool. As for mine, well the mash was deli­cious, as was the sauce, but the beef itself could have done with about anoth­er hour of slow cook­ing, as it was tough and still cling­ing to the bones. I liked the pink pep­per­corns in the sauce, and the roast onions, but was unsure what the radish­es were sup­posed to add.

So, all togeth­er, a bit of a mixed bag. The Hop Gar­den’s in my ‘hood, so I will be back at some stage, but they could do bet­ter.

The Dine menu at Coco at the Roxy

Today I thought I’d go eat at La Boca Loca, because Tues­day night was just not enough for me, but when we got there we found they were closed for their fam­i­ly lunch event. Not to wor­ry, because Coco was also on my buck­et list.

Now, to be fair, I know I have com­plained about restau­rants who put their reg­u­lar food items on their Welling­ton on a Plate menus, but Coco’s Penin­su­lar Plat­ter is designed to be a show­case of local food any­way. And while their WOAP burg­er sounds a lot like their reg­u­lar burg­er, it’s three dol­lars CHEAPER, so they real­ly are using the event as a way to offer excep­tion­al val­ue to their cus­tomers. Are your ears burn­ing, Finc?

Peninsular Platter at CocoStarter: The Penin­su­la Plat­ter Sam­pler: a selec­tion from a dai­ly chang­ing show­case of Mira­mar Penin­su­la sup­pli­ers and pro­duc­ers

Main: The CoCo Clas­sic Burg­er — Beef pat­ty with caramelised onion, Har­ring­tons bacon, Kingsmeade Sun­set blue and home­made pick­les in a Pan­do­ra bun, with hand-cut fries and mayo

So out came a trif­fidy frame for our plat­ter, fol­lowed short­ly by plates of chick­en liv­er par­fait (unbe­liev­ably rich and fill­ing), coconut & lime ceviche (real­ly real­ly limey and great), mush­room & parme­san aranci­ni (nice but not mind-blow­ing) chilli caramel pork bel­ly (greasy but great) and deep-fried feta (yum!).

IMG_2888With the rich­ness of the plat­ter, a wise/less greedy per­son might clev­er­ly opt to have the dessert option instead of the burg­er, but not us. My com­pan­ion was a bit miffed at the vast amount of beet­root rel­ish that emerged, espe­cial­ly as it was­n’t on the menu, and I heard anoth­er table remark­ing on it as well, but still, it was a mighty tasty burg­er. The pat­ty was per­fect, and the Har­ring­ton’s Bacon and Kingsmeade Sun­set Blue sauce a gor­geous match (even if the sauce was­n’t quite as vivid a colour as I was expect­ing, based on the cheese).

The bun too was tasty, and the fries nice, though we had to call for salt for them. This was a good burg­er, total­ly worth the $18.50 you’d pay if you ordered it by itself, and def­i­nite­ly val­ue for mon­ey for $35 includ­ing the plat­ter and the glass of wine. Just don’t eat both before a movie or you’ll find your­self need­ing to have a lit­tle snooze dur­ing it.

Phew, that’s last week. Com­ing up this week there will be Ti Kou­ka, oh yes there will, and Pub­lic’s burg­er, and lunch at Shed 5  (some­one else’s pick) and what­ev­er else I can fit in between after shocks. What have you been eat­ing?