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?