Uninspiring pub grub at O'Connells

One thing I miss about living in London is the pubs.  London pubs have a great sense of history and often you can get a really good meal at them.  Most Melbourne pubs have the emphasis firmly on the booze rather than the food but one pub which has consistently set itself apart as a "gastro pub" is O'Connell's in South Melbourne.

O'Connells looks pretty fancy these days

O'Connell's has just been renovated and the menu revamped so my sister's birthday was the perfect excuse to revisit it for a family lunch.  Wood panelled walls painted dark grey give a sense of theatre to the pub and crisp linens and shining glassware signal that you are not in any ordinary watering hole.  The prices of the drinks are also a bit of a giveaway, order anything other than a Carlton Draught ($4.50) and you will find yourself paying a whopping $8.50 for something like an Asahi.  That's an expensive beer!  

There's a parma hiding there somewhere behind the undercooked chips at O'Connell's

There are now two menus - one for the restaurant proper and a more simple bar menu.  We ate outside because it was a sunny day and so were limited to the bar menu.  The bar menu mainly sticks to classic pub grub like burgers, pies and steaks, all reasonably priced.  Unfortunately these classics were not perfectly executed.  The main problem was the accompanying fat chips which came with each meal.  They hadn't been cooked enough and were a pale yellow instead of bronzed, crisp and fluffy inside. 

Inside O'Connell's

The chicken schnitzel ($24) was dry and slightly rubbery and the steak ($28), while perfectly cooked to medium rare with a smoky char from the wood fired grill, was pretty tiny weighing in at 200 grams.

The pie at O'Connell's - sadly let down by the accompanying chips

The best dish on the bar menu was the pie of the day ($20) which was beef, slow cooked until it fell apart at the fork.  Topped with a hat of burnished puff pastry it delivered where the other dishes did not.  While O'Connell's now certainly looks like a serious gastro pub the food at the bar menu doesn't live up to its reputation.  

Essentials

Details: O'Connell's, Cnr Coventry and Montague Streets, South Melbourne (Ph 03 9699 9600) 

Damage:  Reasonable. 

5/10

Cumulus Up

I had a classic Melbourne night out last night with Meat-and-Three-Veg.  We went along to a Comedy Festival show (David O'Doherty) for some belly laughs and then wandered up Flinders lane to Cumulus Inc.  But instead of heading to the iconic basement restaurant we went up the stairs to the right to the newly opened Cumulus Up.

Upstairs at Cumulus Up - it feels like it has always been there

Happy Palace

Chinese food was very exotic when I was growing up in the 1980's.  It was all about the prawn crackers, lemon chicken and beef with black bean sauce.  So I felt a touch nostalgic wandering up the stairs to Happy Palace on Bourke street for the restaurant's launch.  Serial restauranter Jerome Borazio has taken over this old school Chinese restaurant with its chintzy red and gold wall hangings.  He's added a bar, a balcony and some live scorpions (yes really) but otherwise left the decor pretty much in a 1980's time warp.

The drug mules death row at Happy Palace

Pawn and Co

Everything has a price.  The owners of newly opened bar Pawn and Co have taken that theory to the extreme by putting everything in the bar up for sale.  Pawn and Co overlooks Chapel street and straddles the divide between the hipster-fied Windsor end and the flashy South Yarra end.  I was invited to the launch party last week and while the bar was filled with the beautiful people that dwell in this area it also had a little bit of a grungy feel to it reminiscent of the old Chapel Street pawn shops in Windsor thanks to the piles of old suitcases, lamps and even a morgue table which all come complete with price tag so you can buy them.

Fish and flaxseed ball at Pawn and Co

Captain Melville

Bushrangers are back! Captain Melville is the newest place in the city housed in Melbourne's oldest pub.  The old bluestone building was most recently called Mac's hotel but has been reinvented as Captain Melville, named after one of Victoria's most notorious bushrangers.

Slow cooked lamb in brik pastry at Captain Melville

Senoritas

Get your ghoul on as today is Day of the Dead.  This Mexican holiday is the perfect excuse to check out one of Melbourne's current rash of restaurants and bars serving tacos and tequila.  A whole festival has been set up for "Dia de Muertos" with events running culminating in a fiesta at Senoritas on Sunday 4 November.

The setting at Senoritas is pretty spot on for Day of the Dead

Brooks of Melbourne

Ignoring the increasingly casual dining scene in Melbourne and the city's penchant for no bookings Nicholas Poelaert has opened a proper, old school restaurant complete with white linen tablecloths.  Brooks is located in the heart of the city in the glamorous basement restaurant which once housed Greg Malouf's MoMo and Jamie Oliver's Fifteen.  

Chicken parfait at Brooks

Virginia Plain

It's funny how your experience paying the bill can make such a difference at a restaurant. I've been to Virginia Plains, the latest restaurant to open in Melbourne's Flinders Lane dining hot spot, twice now.  I came away with a bit of a different take on the place both times mainly because on my first visit to celebrate the launch of the new website and TV show Love To Share, the kind people at Love To Share shouted the bill (check out the show on Saturdays if you haven't already), while on my second visit with a group of my girlfriends I paid for myself.

Scallops and black pudding at Virginia Plain

Meatball and Wine Bar

Do one thing and do it well is the philosophy behind the newly opened Meatball and Wine Bar in Flinders Lane.  I was invited to check the place out with a heap of other bloggers and journalists which is interesting in light of yesterdays Twitter storm about restaurant freebies.  If you missed it there was a raging debate about the potential conflict of bloggers who work for restaurant groups and also bloggers accepting freebies (like this dinner at Meatball and Wine Bar).  Have a look at the Twitter feeds of @Tomatom, @PaulMathisMelb and @Sharking4ChipDrink if you want to catch up.

Window gazing at the Meatball and Wine Bar

Middle Park Hotel

The Middle Park Hotel has really transformed itself from the days when I used to live just around the corner and it was a fairly standard pub with parmas on the menu.  These days the place has a polished wooden bar, sports memorabilia on the walls and a modern British menu from chef Paul Wilson.  There's also a strong focus on wine at the Middle Park Hotel with a proudly all Victorian wine list and the pub hosts a regular series of wine dinners, one of which I was invited along to.

Our first wines for the night at the Middle Park Hotel

Shed 5

Shed 5 doesn’t sound like a very Greek name but then Shed 5 is a modern take on a Greek restaurant.  Chef Vas Donoudis has a background in Italian cuisine, with a stint at Church Street Enoteca, and initially envisaged Shed 5 in Melbourne’s new South Wharf area as a Mediterranean influenced restaurant.  In the end though Vas’ Greek background won out along with an ambition to provide something different to the traditional tavernas that dominate Melbourne’s Greek restaurant scene.

Fava to start at Shed 5

Mamasita

I've got a hot tip for you.  It's how to get a table at impossibly hard to get into restaurant of the moment, Mamasita.  You may have wandered past Melbourne's most popular Mexican restaurant and seen the queues snaking down the stairs and out the door on most nights of the week but don't be deterred.  The trick is to (a) eat there at lunch or (b) secure eight to ten of your nearest and dearest friends and book the banquet table.

The famous Mamasita corn - is this Melbourne's best Mexican? 

The Humble Tumbler: Wine Course

For the last four weeks I have been getting the best sort of education - an education in wine.  Clare Burder is a young and unpretentious wine maker who has just started running short courses in wine appreciation through her business known as The Humble Tumbler.  She invited me to come along to one of the courses (which ran on Tuesday nights during July) and I jumped at the opportunity as while I know what I like to drink I don't know why I like it, let alone have any ability to articulate that.

Clare Burder - photo from the Humble Tumbler

Izakaya Den

It's a little embarassing to admit that it took me ages to find Izakaya Den. Hey, I was overseas when it opened and I missed all the hype (and directions).  I knew generally where it was but MTV and I kept on walking past the discreet door which leads down a set of stairs to the basement restaurant. Of course once I made it down there I discovered the place was packed with hordes of people and there was a queue for a table, clearly everyone else had managed to find their way there pretty easily.

Pork belly 

Casa Ciuccio

My friend Anna visiting from Sydney for the weekend gave me the perfect excuse to book into Casa Ciuccio in Fitzroy for dinner.  She used to live in Melbourne so I wanted to show her what she is missing out on.  Admittedly, I had been wanting to check out the latest venture from Chef Matt McConnell and the team behind Bar Lourinha since it opened in April.  I reasoned that a pre dinner drink at Gertrude Street Enoteca then a post dinner drink at Southpaw bar made it a pretty perfect Melbourne night.

Char grilled octopus 

Huxtable

Guess where Heston Blumenthal ate when he was in Melbourne last week?  Huxtable, I wasn't there then but the staff proudly tweeted a picture of themselves with the chef.  Named in honour of the all time classic Cosby Show Huxtable's menu has American influences alongside dashes of Korean, European and Australian.

My favourite dish at Huxtable - the lamb filo rolls

Albert St Food and Wine

Philippa Sibley is known as the dessert queen.  It was a reputation established with Sibley's famous take on a Snickers bar which lead to Masterchef appearances and even a dessert cookbook PS Desserts.  However it seems like Sibley is trying to distance herself from her dessert queen title and media reports around the opening of her new restaurant, Albert St Food and Wine, have emphasised Sibley's desire to show she can do more than desserts.

Cocktail time at Albert Street Food and Wine

The 10 Best Bars in Melbourne to Pick Up At

Don't worry I haven't abandoned MTV.  I consulted widely and did some extensive research to write this guide for Time Out on the best bars in Melbourne to pick up at.  After all in Melbourne it's not about who you know, but where you go...

The excellent Ponyfish Island bar gets a mention in the list - on an island underneath a bridge on the Yarra

Skip on over to Time Out to read the article.  

The Aylesbury

I'm not anti share plates.  I like getting to try other peoples food and I feel the pain of sacrificing some of the food off my own plate to my dining companions is compensated for by avoiding a case of food envy.  However, a lunch at The Aylesbury showcased the problems with Melbourne's love affair with share plates.

Pig and fig at The Aylesbury

San Telmo

Sometimes a girl just needs a steak and a glass of red wine.  I do tend to bang on about how I am trying to eat more vegetarian meals but every now and again a red meat craving comes that just cannot be ignored.  At times like these there is now a new place to go in Melbourne: San Telmo.

Mmmm steak - San Telmo's rib eye on the bone - check out the gorgeous knife as well

San Telmo is an Argentinian steak house where the meat is grilled over a charcoal grill, known as a parrilla, to impart a smoky fiery flavour.  Located in Meyers Place laneway just off little Collins street the restaurant has a rough hewn warmth with wood lined walls and a black and white tiled floor alongside the bar.  The owners have fitted out the restaurant with lots of bric a brac brought back from Argentina like an antique cash register and old soda siphons.  Even the front door was salvaged from a Buenos Aries mansion.

Empanadas

San Telmo is named after the oldest barrio (neighbourhood) in Buenos Aires and the menu is faithful to the restaurant's Argentinian name.   It boasts shiny golden empanadas ($6 each), perfectly formed, mixing textbook short pastry with a robust beef, currant and almond filling.  Ceviche ($16) is strictly Peruvian rather than Argentine, but I'm happy for them to slip it in as the combination of kingfish doused in lemon and lime juice and dressed with slithers of chilli, sweet potato and ginger is refreshing and summery.

The drinks list features solely Argentine wines and beers which is a brave move but even if it had covered the whole world I think we would still have ended up ordering a bottle of Malbec.  We chose the cheapest bottle of the eight different Malbec's offered (that's a lot of Malbec), the Jed Malbec 2010 ($45) which was dark and full bodied.

Slow cooked lamb - sadly cooked for a little too long

However, with the parrilla firing away, at San Telmo it is really all about the meat, and the steak did not disappoint.  The 400g strip loin ($47) served on the bone and criss-crossed with marks from the grill was expertly aged, flavourful and exquisitely prepared.  There's no sides at this price apart from the chimichurri made in house to spice up the steak with the heat of chilli, acidity of vinegar and fresh zing of parsley.  The menu also offers a whopping 1kg rib steak for $95 which my friend Rachel and I are still talking about, along the lines of "We could have taken it, I'm sure we could have".

It wasn't all perfect, and the slow cooked lamb ($39) proved to be a disappointment.  The menu boasted that it had been cooked for eight hours but in this case it was probably two hours too long as the meat was dry and was lacking any tender pinkness.

My favourite dish - sticky sweet baby carrots with goats cheese

There is a good selection of side dishes including grilled zucchini and eggplant ($10).  Strangely enough in a meat lovers paradise my favourite dish of the night was probably the zanahorias ($12), baby carrots cooked on the grill until they are sticky sweet and dripping with thyme flavoured goats cheese.

A dulce de leche filled alfajore

Desserts continued on in the Argentine vein and I could not go past the fantastic caramel flavour of dulce de leche.  A national passion in Argentina dulce de leche is a sweet light brown caramelised milk and sugar sauce sometimes known as "milk jam" (check out this great recipe for dulce de leche ice-cream). The dulce de leche is served two ways at San Telmo, firstly as a biscuit filling in the form of a slightly dry alfajore coated in coconut ($5) and secondly, in a fabulous, wobbling flan ($14) topped with addictive caramel salted peanuts.

The service at San Telmo is young and savvy with the staff all decked out in leather aprons but fell down slightly at the end of the night when it came time to pay our bill and everyone disappeared.

Perfection in the form of dulce de leche flan

I think Melbourne has been crying out for a restaurant like this for a long while.  A decent steak joint in the city is a no brainer really and I am sure the place would succeed even if it was only halfway good.   But San Telmo is more than good with its classic Argentine menu and attention to detail that goes all the way from toilets wallpapered with the faces of famous Argentines to cow hide covered menus.   As they say to the best grill men in Argentina "Bien jugado".  Well played.

Location

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Essentials
Details: San Telmo, 14 Meyers Place, Melbourne 3000 (Ph: 61 (3) 9650 5525).  Open: Mon-Fri 7am-late, Sat midday-late.
Damage: Pricey.  Our bill came to $286 for four with two bottles of wine.
8/10