Sunday in London

Our weekend in Paris had been planned around sightseeing on the Saturday and relaxed shopping on the Sunday. I suppose “planned” isn’t the most apt descriptive for it, as it was more of a hastily agreed-upon schedule whilst en route mid-air rather than a well thought-out itinerary. We came somewhat unstuck when we hit the streets of Paris on the Sunday morning only to discover that nothing – nothing! – was open. At least eateries in Munich do business on Sundays, but in Paris not even that.

So London, as well as being about the food we didn’t eat in Paris, also became about the shopping we didn’t get to do in Paris. We stayed in a hotel off Oxford Street so were well-positioned for retail action, but not before a room service breakfast to get us going. Some fluffy waffles, rich hot chocolate and eggs Benedict with curiously browned Hollandaise sauce later, and we made our way to Selfridges.

Hong Kong Series: Street eats & snacks

It is simultaneously difficult and easy to explain my strong feelings towards Hong Kong. In one of the most touristy cities in the world, known for its food, shopping and night life... of food and more shopping, I don't actually play the tourist. I have family here and, having lived here between the ages of 10 and 14, trips to Hong Kong always feel more like a return trip home rather than a holiday to explore somewhere. I didn't grow up in Hong Kong, but I grew into myself there. Each trip is laden with nostalgia and memories of people, places and, of course, food.

Trolley street vendor

Oliver Brown, Chatswood

Chatswood has long lacked late night dining and dessert options. When Mamak opened a year ago there were high hopes that it would keep similar hours to its Chinatown original, but sadly that has still yet to become reality.

Bar Angolo

Diagonally opposite Kazbah at Top Ryde is an unassuming pizzeria with some of the best pizza I've ever had in Sydney. A big call, I know.

The evening starts off with a 'Rossini' of strawberry purée and prosecco as well as a tangy housemade lemonade blended with ice which, when consumed too quickly, offers an instant brain-freeze. An antipasto platter laden with salame, mozarella balls, prosciutto, bresaola, white anchovies, semi-dried tomato and Sicilian olives is shared between three – the only thing lacking being some bread to go with it.

Let’s do brunch 2011: Hyde Park Barracks Café

Situated on gravelly grounds and bound by a sandstone barrier wall is the Hyde Park Barracks Café, its facade almost completely cloaked in climbing ivy. If you score a table inside like we did, with windows and the aforementioned barrier wall obscuring most of the city skyline, you could fool yourself into thinking that you are actually someplace else rather than right in the middle of Sydney city. No wonder people choose to have weddings here.

Food bloggers’ dinner at Garfish Manly, 14 March 2011

The weather had taken a cool turn during the day and the wind was picking up. The sky was greying and I started to suspect this was some cruel conspiracy of nature, as my last visit to Garfish Manly had been met with similar weather conditions. All we needed now was some rain.

photo supplied by The Digital Marketing Agency

Luckily the rain held out and the skies stayed clear enough for us to admire the relaxing ocean views from Garfish Manly’s private dining room, where a group of Sydney food bloggers are gathered for a tasting of Garfish’s autumn menu. Glasses of ‘Geppetto’ brut help to warm us up as well as break the ice for those who don’t know each other.

Canapé-sized versions of entrée dishes are served to showcase greater variety alongside the Three Ponds semillon, a variety of wine for which I’m gaining an increased interest in recent years. Cubes of ‘Treacle cured yellowfin tuna’ are a deep maroon hue and are dusted on either side with bonito powder, negating any slippery textures when placed in the mouth. Mistress, my date for the evening, hits the nail on the head when she describes its complex flavours being akin to Chinese master stock. The ‘Atlantic salmon tartare’ contrasts the tuna with its bright shades of orange and coral. Delicate diced salmon is served on ceramic soup spoons, concealing Persian fetta which offers creaminess, with fennel confit, citrus dressing, an orange segment and salmon roe providing refreshing crunch. ‘Crisp fried zucchini flowers’, served with a sumac dipping sauce, hold centres of smoked hiramasa kingfish which are pleasantly meaty and a change from the usual soft, mousse-y fillings. I do miss the crunch of the mini-zucchini stems which are normally attached to the flowers however.

Conversation halts when our entrées of ‘Seared Hervey Bay scallops with fennel remoulade, orange reduction and bacon crumbs’ are presented and paired with ‘The Zeppelin’, a fruity Riesling from South Australia. We are told the fennel remoulade is dressed with lemon juice which seems to temper its aniseed undertones. Its crunchiness contrasts well with the plump and smooth scallops.

Wafts of shellfish aroma fill the dining room and we are completely silent as we tuck into ‘Prawn and scallop cannelloni with white beans, grilled cherry tomatoes, Avruga caviar and shellfish bisque’. The prawn and lobster bisque is fragrant and light, unlike most which are thicker and creamier, lending itself well to the steamed – not braised, nor baked – cannelloni with housemade pasta. This is also where the sourdough on our table becomes a handy tool for mopping up the beautiful bisque.

Our assiette of desserts consist of a slow-baked hazelnut pavlova which is wonderfully chewy in the centre, a smooth nougat and honey semifreddo with passionfruit coulis, and a baby version of Garfish’s signature Belgian waffles served with caramelised banana and rum & raisin ice-cream. Paired with the not-too-sticky dessert wine, Cookoothama botrytis semillon, it is a sweet end to an enjoyable evening.

Earth Hour 2011

This Saturday, apart from the New South Wales state election (don’t forget to vote!), it is also Earth Hour. As per last year, all Garfish restaurants will be participating by offering a dine-by-candlelight experience which adds a romantic touch to the underlying environmental cause.

Mademoiselle Délicieuse and Mistress dined as guests of Garfish Manly and The Digital Marketing Agency. Thank you to the lovely waitstaff and to executive chef Stewart Wallace for taking the time to introduce each of the dishes to us.

Garfish Manly

1/39 East Esplanade (cnr Wentworth St), Manly NSW

Tel: (02) 9977 0707

Opening Hours:  Mon-Sat  12pm-3pm (lunch)

  5:30pm-10pm (dinner)

                        Sun  12pm-3pm (lunch)

                                5:30pm-9pm (dinner)

happy eating!

The beginnings: Garfish Kirribilli

The afternoons are sunny, the evenings are balmy and the shadows are long. You don’t feel like cooking and a great way of celebrating the Australian summer is by enjoying a meal of well-cooked seafood. Of course, it’s even better when you can eschew the cooking process and have the food presented to you, quite literally, on a platter.

Some months ago when the weather was similarly warm, we enjoyed dinner with Weirdo and Ms Sourdough at Garfish Kirribilli. They had heard good things about it from a friend, while Monsieur Poisson and I had already had a pleasant experience at Garfish Crows Nest. Garfish Kirribilli is where the trio of restaurants started and, with Ms Sourdough in tow, how could we not but start the meal with her namesake.

Served with extra virgin olive oil and za'atar for dipping, the bread is chewy and crusty and great to share whilst chatting. Monsieur Poisson and I are rather full from a late lunch that day and choose to share an entrée and main dish between us for the evening. We start with ‘Scallops with spinach, lime butter and matchstick potatoes’. Plump and golden seared scallops lay alongside wilted spinach in a pool of creamy lime butter adorned with crunchy straws of potato which remind me of pre-packaged foil packs of French fries.

This is followed by ‘Crumbed red spot whiting with chips and tartare’ which Weirdo has also ordered. I’ve always preferred fish being crumbed over battered as it always seems less greasy (or perhaps I could just be fooling myself here) and reminds me of childhood frozen fish fingers. With whiting fillets being quite small and narrow in shape, this is a dish of fish fingers of a more refined kind served with a tangy tartare.

Ms Sourdough has the ‘Barramundi with beurre fondue, kipfler potatoes, iceberg lettuce, lardons and chives’. The mention of beurre fondue and lardons has me completely sold but the lettuce is the surprising star, along with the crispy skinned fish of course, being only slightly wilted while still retaining plenty of crunch.

Dessert sees the ordering of several Belgian waffles, a permanent fixture on Garfish’s menu – with hokey pokey ice-cream, caramel and almonds; a special with strawberries and white chocolate ice-cream; and with chocolate ice-cream, mocha sauce and peanut brittle. Monsieur Poisson, however, has the ‘Pear tarte tartin [sic] with cinnamon ice-cream’ which is not quite as flaky as we’d like.

The waffles are thick and doughy and generously sprinkled with various toppings for textural interest, with the peanut brittle being particularly good. They make for an aptly sweet ending to a meal which, perhaps due to being seafood, leaves us full and satisfied but not clutching our bellies in discomfort.

Garfish Kirribilli

2/21 Broughton St (entrance around corner on Burton St), Kirribilli NSW

Tel: (02) 9922 4322

Opening Hours:  Mon-Sat  7:30am-11am (breakfast)

  12pm-3pm (lunch)

  6pm-9:30pm (dinner)

                        Sun  9am-11am (breakfast)

                                12pm-3pm (lunch)

                                6pm-8:30pm (dinner)

happy eating!

Garfish Crows Nest, 27 March 2010

Never before have lighting and shadows mattered so much when taking photos of food whilst dining out. Sure, there are plenty of restaurants with ‘romantic’ lighting about the place but this was Earth Hour 2010 we’re talking about when participants are encouraged to turn off their lights for one hour. Sydney is where it all started and Garfish were doing a dine-by-candlelight evening in honour of it.

I needn’t have worried about the lighting as we were fortuitously seated at a table directly in front of the open kitchen and bar which was not operating under candlelight, we assumed, due to workplace safety reasons. I first read about Garfish on tangerine eats (albeit the one at Kirribilli – there are three locations) before driving past the one at Crows Nest a month later after a particularly late evening at work. Coincidence would have it that I had a friend visiting from overseas last weekend, and we needed somewhere for dinner, when Garfish announced on Twitter that they would be conducting a candlelight evening as part of Earth Hour.

This concept appealed to our inner romantics and so dinner at Garfish it was. In a way it is quite fortunate that Garfish does not take table reservations for after 6:30pm, instead adopting a phone-ahead system for tables, as our dinner party suddenly expanded from four people to seven in the hour leading up to our intended dinner time. At least this meant I didn’t need to make an embarrassing phone call to the restaurant requesting to have a prior reservation changed to a table almost double the size.

The Crows Nest restaurant has open frontage with a few tables on the footpath. The décor is clean and simple, although admittedly I didn’t get a very good feel for the interior due to the reduced lighting. The menus are printed on large sheets of brown paper which, when folded up, double as napkin-holders resting on plates at each table setting.

We order some ‘Grilled Ciabatta’ to munch on while we consider the menu and go with a slightly larger serve than normal so that there’s enough for all seven of us at the table. The grilled ciabatta comes topped with either garlic butter or sun-dried tomato pesto and we opt for half-and-half for variety.

My friend who’s visiting particularly likes oysters so we order the ‘Oyster Plate’ containing a dozen oysters available either natural, crisp fried, as an oyster shot or the dozen can be a combination of any of the three styles. The oyster shot which the menu describes as being served in a spiced tomato juice and vodka doesn’t appeal to us so it’s six of the natural which come with a side of mignonette dressing and six of the crisp fried served with a soy, mirin and ginger dressing. The oysters are small but plump and sweet, and not overly creamy which pleases my palate. My preference is for the crisp fried oysters, but that’s only because I have a bias towards the natural variety being slimy.

When it comes to mains, four people at our table order the kingfish with three of them choosing the same accompaniment. Garfish’s daily blackboard menu is distributed to diners on little strips of paper outlining which types of fish are available, their suggested cooking methods, their prices and a selection of sides which can be mixed and matched amongst the fish varieties. Monsieur Poisson, along with two others, has the roasted kingfish with zucchini, spiced pearl barley and pine nuts. The generous serve of fish arrives moist and succulent with a crisp layer of skin on top. The zucchini ribbons are sweet and crunchy whilst the pearl barley is chewy and nutty with the spices evoking mild Moroccan flavours. The pine nuts taste freshly toasted and I surprisingly enjoy the combination of these flavours with the plump sultanas as I often dislike their squishy, bursting texture.

I go for the ‘Fish & Chips’ although I don’t know what fish is being used, but there are three fillets which come in an aged beer batter. I normally prefer crumbed fish (which is how the garfish on the menu is served) over battered but this is a light batter with minimal oiliness and a satisfying crunch when you cut into the fish. The chips are thick-cut and lightly salted with plenty of creamy tartare on the side.

After enjoying our meals while sharing a crisp bottle of sauvignon blanc from Marlborogh, New Zealand (unpictured), we move onto one of the reasons this restaurant was chosen for dinner apart from their reputation for fresh seafood – Belgian waffles! Garfish offers several Belgian waffle combinations separate to its dessert menu and, with dinner being devoid of the usual heaviness from meat and rich sauces, we are happy to consider options from both. Waffles are the hands-down winner for me so Monsieur Poisson and I decide to share one with hokey pokey ice-cream, caramel and almonds.

The waffle is small, perhaps 10cm in diameter, but this allows for a wonderfully high ice-cream to waffle ratio with its deep divots. And the ice-cream! The crunchy hokey-pokey ice-cream with caramel sauce and toasted almond flakes is just enough to satisfy without pushing you over that over-sugared ledge. Monsieur Poisson also orders a caffe latte as he often does with dessert.

A wonderful evening was had by all with the food being honest, simple and well-prepared. I was entertained by the clank, sizzle and aromas emanating from the open kitchen but mention must be given to our most attentive waitress that evening who kept coming round to check on us unobtrusively and who, without us ever having to request, kept our water glasses filled throughout the meal. Nothing like great service to enhance the experience of great food.

Garfish Crows Nest

6/29 Holtermann St (near cnr Alexander St), Crows Nest NSW

Tel: (02) 9966 0445

Opening Hours:  Mon-Sat  8am-11am (breakfast)

  12pm-3pm (lunch)

  6pm-10pm (dinner)

                        Sun  9am-11am (breakfast)

                                12pm-3pm (lunch)

                                6pm-9:30pm (dinner)

happy eating!

ice+slice, 28 Nov 2009

I can’t remember how Monsieur Poisson and I ended up on our second visit to ice+slice but I do have photographic evidence that shows we had dinner with friends earlier that evening. Why we didn’t all end up having dessert together is too fuzzy for me to recall, but ice+slice did make a good enough an impression on us the first time around for us to return.

We sit in roughly the same area of the store as previous, as there is a themed party taking place in the back section. During our stay we see Fred and Wilma Flinstone walk past as well as Elvis amidst sporadic wafts of dry ice vapours. This and the loud 80s/early 90s party music is not enough to distract us from our desserts though! I can’t go past having a waffle after enjoying it so much last time but pair it with a scoop of cinnamon gelato on this occasion instead. There is a mound of soft whipped cream sitting atop the gelato once again which I need to excuse to the side, but I’m enamoured with the golden lake of maple syrup in which the waffle is sitting.

Monsieur Poisson has his favourite ‘Banana Split!’ which is served on the same sort of frosted glass plate as my waffle. Between the two halves of banana lie generous scoops of chocolate and vanilla bean ice-creams with dollops of fresh whipped cream in between. The whole lot is squiggled with chocolate and caramel sauces before being given a sprinkling of toasted slivered almonds.

I’m not as keen as my husband on banana desserts but this one is pretty good, especially when a not-too-ripe banana is used. One of the highlights for me, however, are the crunchy toasted nuts!

ice+slice gelateria e pizzeria

135 King St, Newtown NSW

Tel: (02) 9516 4595

Opening Hours:  Mon-Fri  11am-late

                        Sat & Sun  9am-late (breakfast menu until 4pm)

happy eating!

Five days in Brisbane: Grill’d & Mövenpick, 21 Oct 2009

How we ended up having dinner at Brisbane’s South Bank is a bit of a funny story. We had taken a walk across the Brisbane River on our first afternoon after arriving when we happened to come across a Mövenpick ice-cream parlour. Cue lots of excited bouncing on the spot and wide-eyed hyperventilating on my part. And how stupid did I feel when I discovered that there were two of these babies back home in Sydney at both Bondi Beach and Manly! But because we could not find room in our stomachs to accommodate ice-cream at the time, we made a point of going back across to have dinner one evening so that we could have dessert at Mövenpick afterwards. So the main point was dessert, not dinner, which is absolutely, entirely and completely logical.

We wander the streets of South Bank which are littered with eateries and spend ages browsing menus to consider what sounds good as well as what we feel like. We settle on a burger place called Grill’d which has reasonable prices and cute wall illustrations up the back.

Monsieur Poisson’s attention is immediately captured by the ‘Summer Sunset’ beef burger on the menu as it contains avocado, bacon, salad, relish (unspecified), herbed mayonnaise and the all-important pineapple. My husband loves pineapple on almost anything, and especially pizza. The burgers don’t come with sides so we order a serve of chips with herbed mayonnaise for dipping.

The beef burger has been ordered on a traditional burger bun which is covered in sesame seeds, crisp but not crusty on the outside, and soft on the inside. The meat patty is juicy and the chips are crunchy without being oily. The thick cut chips have fluffy potato centres and are lightly tossed in herbs and salt which are only made herbier by the accompanying herbed mayo.

My choice is the ‘Grill’d Bird & Brie’ which we order on a Panini roll and comes with grilled chicken breast, brie, thick cranberry sauce, salad and more of their herbed mayo. The roll is lightly dusted in flour and doughy, holding a smoky fillet of chicken with very obvious grill marks.

What strikes us is the neatness of these burgers and how evenly placed the components are placed within the buns. We glance across at the open kitchen where there are a group of teenagers each devoted to a different task in assembling orders. We notice the girl who is in charge of spreading on the sauces is doing so in an almost OCD-esque manner, ensuring it is flatly spread all the way to the edges.

We’re quite full of food so we go for a walk around Streets Beach, the man-made swimming beach located just within the banks of Brisbane River. It’s free entry with several large ‘pools’ of differing depths interconnected, flanked by sand and lined with palm trees.

We eventually make our way over to Mövenpick where Monsieur Poisson gets an iced chocolate fix and I have a Belgain waffle. The waffle is made to order and not a reheated one like we expect. As a result, it’s more doughy rather than crusted with crunchy sugary bits but it is incredibly fresh.

Choosing ice-creams to go with the waffle is agonising as there are so many flavours that we want to try! We settle for a scoop of Swiss chocolate and one of hazelnut. In a way I don’t think the flavours matter too much, but rather it's the texture that shines, as they’re both incredibly smooth and creamy. Monsieur Poisson is more than happy with his iced chocolate, standing elegantly in its tall glass with plenty of chocolate chips floating on top.

It actually takes us a while to work through the dessert and drink, and we leisurely do so whilst browsing some in-house magazines. In the meantime, people come and go before we realise it’s high time we should be heading back to the hotel for the night.

Grill’d

167 Grey St (cnr Ernest St), South Bank QLD

Tel: (07) 3844 4700

Opening Hours:  Sun-Thurs  11:30am-10pm

Fri & Sat  11:30am-11pm

Mövenpick

Little Stanley St, South Bank QLD

Tel: (07) 3846 2065

Opening Hours: 7 days  11am-11pm

happy eating!

Hikaru & ice+slice, 3 Sept 2009

I didn’t have anything planned for Monsieur Poisson’s birthday because he needed to attend a suit-fitting for a friend's wedding in the early evening. Following this we were stuck for dinner ideas so we headed to nearby Newtown for some inspiration as King Street is littered with a broad spectrum of cuisines. Over the years I have walked past Hikaru numerous times but have never happened to dine there. So with Monsieur Poisson’s love of Japanese food, we wandered in to give it a try.

The entrance to Hikaru is a little hidden as the doorway is not on King Street, although the restaurant itself is. On the wall opposite the entrance is a massive hanging feature bearing the massive kanji character for ‘hikaru’.

After spending quite a bit of time perusing the menu, we start with the gyu tataki. The beef is sliced a little thicker than what we’re used to but the dressing is quite nice. There is way too much white onion accompanying the beef and I am intrigued by the adornment of carrot threads and alfalfa sprouts. We also have the agedashi mix of tofu and eggplant where the tofu is coated in a thin, light batter but the eggplant is a bit on the oily side. And like the agedashi tofu at Ju Ju, this also lacks the usual bonito flakes.

Next, we have a serve of takoyaki that do come decorated with bonito flakes. The deep-fried balls of potato and octopus have a crispy crust enclosing pillowy potato softness within. The deep-fried soft-shell crab is nicely crisp as well and comes interestingly decorated with lots and lots of tobiko. So much so that we’re left trying to rescue rogue bits of tiny tobiko with the comparatively cumbersome chopsticks long after the crab has disappeared from the plate.

For something more substantial than the range of snacks we’ve enjoyed, we also get a ‘Deluxe Bento’ to share. It comes with the usual miso soup and rice, as well as a small serve of edamame which is less common. For us, the highlights of this bento are the seaweed salad, which is flavoursome and plentiful, and the teriyaki chicken, which is sweet and sticky but not overly salty. The tempura selection is not bad apart from the batter being a little too thick, but unfortunately the tuna sashimi is a letdown with it being rather tasteless and possessing a grainy texture. However the biggest disappointment is the sushi rice – such an important element of Japanese cuisine – which has been overly compressed and takes on this dense, chewy, stodgy texture.

I settle the bill and feel guilty that I suggested a place that didn’t meet our expectations, especially seeing as it is Monsieur Poisson’s birthday. So we try to make up for it by going across the road for dessert at ice+slice. This is another place, with a massive ice-cream cone shaped bin outside the doorway, that I have passed by for years but never tried. There is a small amount of seating at the front of the store near the ice-cream counter, but through a short hallway is a large room at the back with plenty of cosy seating.

We settle down at the front of the store and order a cinnamon waffle with vanilla gelato. The waffle is crisp and crusted with sugary bits and has deep divots to catch any melting ice-cream. The vanilla gelato is pleasingly smooth and flecked with vanilla seeds. And the billowy white swirls that are on top of the gelato in the picture above are not soft-serve ice-cream – it is in fact whipped cream of a size which equals the scoop of gelato itself!

I’m not a fan of cream so I politely excuse it to one side before sharing the dessert with Monsieur Poisson. He has a caffe latte to accompany proceedings and we chat about returning in future to try the pizzas.

Hikaru

134 King St, Newtown (entrance at dead end of Bucknell St), Newtown NSW

Tel: (02) 9516 5959

Opening Hours:  7days  11:30am-10:30pm

ice+slice gelateria e pizzeria

135 King St, Newtown NSW

Tel: (02) 9516 4595

Opening Hours:  Mon-Fri  11am-late

                        Sat & Sun  9am-late (breakfast menu until 4pm)

happy eating!

A week in Melbourne: La Luna & Waffle On, 11 July 2009

Armed with a list of places I wanted to try in Melbourne, plus a few recommendations from friends that flowed in, meant that I was never going to make it to all of them. But as Monsieur Poisson’s training course was finally completed we were at least not restricted to only having dinner together. We decided to enjoy a late and relaxing brunch at a place of Wifey’s choosing: La Luna.

I had never heard of La Luna prior to Masterchef but the name Adrian Richardson sounded familiar to me possibly through my reading of food magazines. However he must be a man with a sense of humour as La Luna’s business cards feature a cheeky pig's bottom on the back! Or it could have something to do with his passion for meat – from where it is sourced, how it is butchered, how it is treated and how it is cooked and presented. His bistro displays copies of his book, but also a chalkboard butcher’s drawing of a pig with dotted lines demarcating the different cuts right above the table where we are sitting.

We are here on an overcast and windy day, having had to backtrack after missing the tram stop. The bistro interior is simple and light-filled with interesting light fixtures. We order a caffe latte and a flat white which is served with irregularly cubed sugar – a favourite of Wifey’s, and I wish she was with me to share this dining experience.

We order a ‘La Luna Breakfast’ which consists of many components neatly piled on a dish. There is a thick pork and fennel sausage (really juicy with whole fennel seeds), bacon, poached eggs topped with a blanket of Hollandaise, organic sourdough, half a roasted Roma tomato, onion which has been cooked soft, Kipfler potatoes and herby mushrooms. I love how the sausage and rasher of bacon both have bar marks.

Our other order is the ‘BLT’ which has neat fingers of rasher bacon arranged on goats cheese, tomato and lettuce sitting on toasted brioche. Almost half an avocado is expertly sliced and fanned out on top of the bacon before being decorated by zig-zags of mayonnaise. Another slice of brioche rests to one side and both have been toasted evenly with vertical bar marks. The goats cheese and avocado are great squished on the only slightly sweet, soft brioche. The salty bacon is balanced by the side of sweet, tomato jam and I am amazed at how neat and measured the overall appearance is of this brunch dish.

We pay our bill and stop by the drinks bar to collect our coats before leaving. From there we can see straight into the kitchen where Monsieur Poisson spots chef Adrian Richardson busy at work, and encourages me to take a picture for Wifey. A lady staff member spies me doing so and asks what the photos are for. I explain that I like a memento of my food travels and she says, ‘Oh if it’s for a blog then that’s ok. We just worry about what people use our photos for sometimes.’ Cool!

This is in stark contrast to when I was at Koko Black at the Royal Arcade earlier in the week. I was waiting in line to purchase some chocolates when I decided to take a photo of their different sized and different coloured giftboxes. A staff member en route from the kitchen stuck his hand in front of my camera lens, making me jump and said, ‘No photos’ without offering any further explanation. As this was the first time this had happened to me, I quickly apologised and obediently tucked my camera away. On further thought, I remembered I had been to Koko Black in Canberra about a year beforehand and had photoed the whole chocolate display cabinet without attracting any protest.

Sorry, but I digress.

Monsieur Poisson and I tram it back to the city and wander around for a while before I take him to a place that I passed by during the week. His friend who had previously lived in Melbourne told us there was a great waffle place but couldn’t remember the name or where it was. I was hoping Waffle On was the one, after having spotted several people crossing Flinders Street with takeaway waffles in their hands.

We purchase a waffle with chocolate sauce which comes dusted with icing sugar in a wedge-shaped cardboard holder. The waffle is freshly made, so it is warm, doughy and crusty. We walk back to the hotel eating this waffle whilst fighting puffs of icing sugar hitting our faces being carried by the wind.

La Luna

320 Rathdowne St (cnr Lee St), Carlton North VIC

Tel: (03) 9349 4888

Opening Hours:  Mon  CLOSED

Tue-Sat  12pm-3pm (lunch)

 6pm-10pm (dinner)

                        Sun  11am-3pm (brunch)

                                6pm-10pm (dinner)

Waffle On

Shop 9, Degraves St, Melbourne VIC

Tel: 0401 408 168

Opening Hours:  Sorry, various sources state this place is open Mon-Fri only but I got my takeaway waffle on a Saturday… so, I guess, try your luck?

happy eating!