Oishi Kitchen

286 Chapel St, Prahran

Japanese/Korean

I happened to be wandering past this place while on my lunch break and thought I’d give it a go.  They were advertising lunch specials on bentos and dons.  Inside there was quite an industrial aesthetic.  Tables were separated by steel and reinforced glass partitions and warehouse style lampshades hung over the tables.  Bare plywood sheets adorned one wall above some bench seating, above which was a long back-lit shelf which contained a number of Asian beverages and drinking vessels.  The weathered timber wall which hid the kitchen was painted in various pastel colours adding some pizzaz to the decor.

The place was reasonably busy and the clientele was mostly Asian which I consider a good sign for any place selling Asian food.  The menu was quite extensive and I’d like to come back here for a full meal but I chose the sukiyaki beef don.  Sukiyaki is a hot pot dish made with meat, fresh vegetables and noodles simmered in a sweet soy based soup.  Once the ingredients are fully cooked, you dip them into a raw beaten egg and eat.  Don is short for donburi, a type of Japanese dish where a selection of toppings are laid over a bowl of rice.  Sukiyaki don is a combo where a whole sukiyaki dish is piled over the rice, to make the ultimate one person hot pot / rice bowl meal.

The meal arrived with a bowl of miso, which always flummoxes me a little as I’m never sure whether you’re supposed to use the spoon or drink from the bowl so I do a little of both.  The meal was a hearty serving and had a side of salad.  Showing my chopstick prowess I initially tried to eat it with the wrong ends of the chopsticks but once I cleared that minor hurdle I enjoyed the dish.  The beef and egg are a surprising good combo and for $9.50, it’s a meal that’ll definitely see you through to dinner time without seeking out an afternoon snack.  I’ll definitely be back to sample more of the Japanese/Korean menu.

Saigon Rose

206 Chapel St, Prahran

Vietnamese

http://saigonroseprahran.com.au/

Saigon Rose is a long-standing member of the Chapel St Asian restaurant fraternity and seems to stay reasonably busy.  A couple of friends and I managed to get a table on Monday night once the reserved sign was whisked away.  The restaurant is sparsely decorated with only the beer selection adorning the walls and a single large black and white photo depicting scenes from Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City as it is now).  It seems it’s not the sort of restaurant you come for the ambiance.

We started with some drinks, and a friend and I decided to try the Vietnamese beer Huda.  Apparently it wasn’t the first time the waitress had heard the “Two large Hudas” joke before.  Either way, we moved onto Asahi after that as Huda wasn’t really a winner.  For entrée we ordered pork and prawn rice paper rolls, banana chicken, and salmon and asparagus spring rolls.  The surprise winner was the banana chicken.  Pockets of chicken breast stuffed with banana, deep-fried, and served with a plum sauce.  The salmon and asparagus spring rolls with a fish sauce were a close and delicious second.  The rice paper rolls were fairly bland and seemed to be missing the prawn but were almost saved by a nice hoisin sauce.

For mains we ordered roast duck with plum sauce, king prawns wrapped in scallops, and from the specials board, a pumpkin pot of king prawns in a mild yellow curry sauce.  The duck arrived first.  I’m not sure it was the first time the waitress had seen somebody dive under the table when it was presented and she said “Duck”.  It looked beautifully crispy and smelled great although other than the sauce there were no other accompaniments.  Next to arrive was the pumpkin pot.  It was presented in a hollowed out 1/2 pumpkin and was overflowing with prawn curry and vegetables.  The prawns and scallops were last to arrive.  I had wondered how they were going to wrap a scallop around a prawn.  As it turns out they didn’t, the prawn was wrapped around the scallop.  They were served on a bed of steamed broccoli and lettuce and doused in an oyster sauce.

All of the mains were delicious.  The prawn curry had just a nice amount of kick to it and it was a substantial meal that left me feeling very full at the end of it.  I couldn’t fault the duck, and if I did it’d just be like water off a ducks back anyway.  The prawn and scallops were plump and juicy and full of flavour.  While the restaurant may not have a lot of atmosphere, the staff were very professional, and the food is what keeps people coming back.

Union Hotel

90 Chapel St, Windsor VIC 3181

Pub food

http://www.unionhotelwindsor.com.au/

Given the day was 40 degrees, to be honest I was just going in for a cold pint during happy hour.  However Thursday is pasta day at the Union with pastas $12 across the board so I took the opportunity to grab some dinner as well.

The Union is a proper pub.  The sort of pub that Sam Newman could film an amusing Street Talk segment, but still caters to family groups and bearded hipsters.  For winters there are a couple of open fires, for summer, the large glass bi-fold doors open up two sides of the pub to the open air tables on the street, and for all year round there are TVs showing sport and live music on the weekends.  To accompany my $6 pint of Carlton I ordered the pork shoulder Pappardelle from the selection of four pasta specials.

I sat down at an outdoor table directly in the sun as there were no shaded tables free.  There was an audible squelch as I sat.  It was definitely a sweaty day.  First things first, I checked in using The Unions iPhone app.  There’s another 5 points towards a free bottle of wine, 4 points to go!  The service was friendly and snappy and I was barely into my pint and a chat with an old acquaintance regarding her tumultuous relationship when my meal turned up.   Timing!

The meal looked very hearty and certainly wasn’t light on with the pork.   It was topped with shredded Parmesan and a slice of garlic bread.  It tasted fantastic, although it was a trick to eat it without slurping it everywhere and at the same time keep from dripping brow sweat into the dish.

It was too hot to hang about in the sun so I didn’t stay for another pint but if you’re looking for a hearty cheap meal on a Thursday night – you can’t go past the pasta deals at The Union.

Sauced

148 Chapel St, Windsor.

Pasta Bar

http://saucedpastabar.com/

I wasn’t sure whether to include tonight’s dinner in my blog.  Sauced straddles the line between fast food outlet and restaurant like a penguin riding a donkey.   You order at the counter like a fast food joint and you have an eat-in or takeaway option, but since it’s cooked to order, it’ll take around 15 to 20 minutes to arrive.

Sauced is nestled between the Mexican Fonda and the Spanish San Churro like an international ménage a trois.  The décor inside is industrial minimalist.  White painted brick walls adorned with a large stencil of a pasta maker, concrete floors, and a marble-topped bench which has an interesting end feature designed to make it look like the end of a  stack of 4x2s at a timber yard.  The bench is lit with the now ubiquitous Edison style antique light bulbs, behind which is the open kitchen so you can watch the chefs at work.

The menu is a bit of a paint by numbers affair.  You pick your meal size, your pasta type, and then the sauce from either the traditional or the gourmet range.  I chose the regular sized shell pasta with Polo e Fungi sauce from the gourmet range.  I also got some of the Sauced signature Parmesan chips.

When my name was called I went and collected my meal which is presented on a wooden serving board.  The pasta and chips were served in biodegradable dishes made of recycled paper, with metal cutlery and a slice of bread wrapped in brown paper stamped with the Sauced logo.  Both the chips and the pasta had a generous helping of Parmesan cheese applied.

Since I was by myself, I sat at the bar style table in the window that opened onto Chapel St so I could watch the world go by as I ate.  The pasta was piping hot and was a very generous helping.  The chips were a deep golden brown, crispy out the outside and fluffy in the middle, just how they should be.  The pasta appeared to have plenty of mushrooms in it, but was a bit lacking in the chook department.  The main issue however was the sauce.  It was a bit insipid.  Not viscous enough and not particularly flavourful.   I ended up not finishing my meal which is a definite rarity for me.  The helpings were big, but I also got bored with the flavour before I got the bottom of the bowl.

On a previous occasion here I’d had “The 4 P’s” sauce which consists of pumpkin puree, pine nuts, Persian feta and basil pesto and it was delicious and highly recommended.  I think the concept of fresh cooked-to-order product is generally going to be a winner, but the Polo e Fungi sauce was a miss on this occasion.

For me the highlight was probably watching three middle-aged women with comically sized fake tits and some of the biggest lips ever seen on a human head try to squeeze around one of the small outdoor tables with their guinea pig sized dog.  I’d have preferred the highlight was the sauce.

Buddha’s Belly

75A Chapel St, Windsor

Cafe/Restaurant

http://www.buddhasbelly.com.au/ (broken)

I must have walked past this place a thousand times before I finally sat down there recently.  It was a Sunday night, the DJ was playing some satisfactory tunage out of the window DJ booth, and all the tables on the street were swiveled so that it became one long bench.  The bench was frequented by people from all over the globe and by the end of the night, which was pretty late, everybody knew each other, was best mates with the resident dog, and weren’t at all surprised that the fox stole one girl was wearing was drinking beer and smoking, while another guy was trying to nibble his own ear he was gurning so much.

It was on this night that I spotted that they did cheap meals deals every weekday.  Some deals were better than others.  The “All day” $10 parma seems great at first glance but the 12pm-5pm fine print somewhat negates the “All day” adjective.  Anyway, taking advantage of a somewhat summery evening, which have been very rare this summer so far, I invited a recently expatriated English friend to sample the delights of Melbourne pub cuisine.  Thursday’s at Buddha’s Belly is Parma-Rama night.  As the chalkboard outside explains – there are 7 different types of parma on offer for $12 with chips and salad.  Which is slightly different from the 6 different types offered on the menu, but who’s quibbling.

It was also happy hour from 4-7pm so with that in mind, we rocked up and got the last free table out on the street at about 6:55pm.  I was pleased to notice that the stench of raw sewage that permeated the outdoor tables on my last visit forcing us inside was no longer present.  The other diners were an eclectic mix of people who look like they travel to work on a skateboard, and those that don’t work at all.  The waiter was pretty snappy to attend to us, although I was a little disappointed we didn’t get the heavily tattooed waitress dressed as a glitter ball.  But our waiter was friendly enough and would refer to me as “champ” or “boss” or some such pseudonym designed to make me feel slightly superior – and it sort of worked.  We ordered two cocktails each to take advantage of the 2 for 1 deal as the minutes counted down towards 7pm.  I ordered a Tequila Tickler and the slightly more masculine sounding Tequila Tornado.  What can I say… I like tequila and I like a bargain.

Given my English friend hadn’t tried a traditional parma before I suggested she go with the Buddha’s Bird which is in the traditional style.  I went for the Mon Amour in which the twist is avocado and brie cheese.  Now there was once a time where I wouldn’t have gone near this as avocado is chicks food, along with rice crackers and celery, but I thought the manliness of the chicken parma counteracted it slightly.  Also my cocktail had passionfruit in it and sometimes you’re so far down a path it’s dangerous to look back.

Other options were the Quattro Formaggio, The Stallion (Bolognese),  El Toro (Hot Chorizo) and Eggplant (pfft!)

Now the service here is pretty laid back, in fact so laid back, I hoped they had a defibrillator on standby.  Our first cocktail took around 20 minutes to arrive which seemed like an age but when I saw the bar girl raise those two cocktail shakers above her head and shake…. well time lost all meaning for a few moments.  When my Tequila Tornado arrived it looked very spiffy.  Jose Cuervo, Cointreau, passionfruit and guava over ice, topped of with a slice of lime and a sprig of coriander.  It was very tasty although passionfruit pips are the natural enemy of the drinking straw.  My friend’s Lychee Martini looked, well it looks like an eyeball staring up at you from a pool of bloody water but it was served in a nice glass and it was quite alcoholic so.. you know.

To add a bit of rivalry to the night they run a cocktail photograph competition.  Drawn fortnightly, the best cocktail photo posted on Facebook wins a $50 bar tab.  So my friend grabs her fancy new Nexus 5 phone camera… and I grab a napkin and a pen and start drawing.  I think I have a winner but I’ll let you know in a fortnight.

The parmas arrived not too long after the first cocktails.  They looked like parmas, smelled like parmas, and tasted like parmas.  They were a decent size and nicely crumbed.   The cheese wasn’t burnt and there was ample sauce.  That’s the basics of a decent parma covered.  For $12, I was very satisfied.  Not the very best parma I’ve had, but a long way from the worst.  I think the avocado and brie definitely add to it, although maybe the “Mon Amour” moniker is a stretch.  It was served with a sparse lettuce leaf salad which was fine, and chips.  Now the chips… I’m pretty particular about my chips and these didn’t really squeeze my sauce bottle.  They were crinkle cut, which for me is a bad start, and they were borderline soggy.  Don’t get my wrong, I still ate them all and half of my friends – but they weren’t the mouthfuls of crispy yet fluffy goodness that I desired.  They were also served with a garlic mayo rather than tomato sauce.  Did I miss the news?  Have the Belgians invaded?

After a brief time bending moment as the bar girl shook our cocktails, our next round was delivered.  Given my previous cocktail was the one with the manlier name and it turned out to be pretty girly I was a bit worried, but as it turns out the Tequila Tickler was at worst only equally as girly.  The tumbler rather than cocktail glass helped.  Maybe I could have got away with ordering Nice Melons after all.  The Tickler was a refreshing combo of Jose Curveo, lime, mint, apple juice and cranberry juice.  It was a pretty pink colour but the lack of floral flourish on top led me to believe it would be okay to drink it in mixed company.  My friend also enjoyed her La Dolce Vita consisting of vanilla vodka, apricot, Cointreau, lime and sparkling wine.

Once our second round was downed we headed inside to pay the bill.  Four cocktails and two chicken parmas for under $60.  We came for a Thursday night bargain and that’s what we got.

My Little Gogo

56 Chapel Street, Windsor

Japanese Tapas Bar

mylittlegogo.com

Located at the dodgy end of the dodgy end of Chapel St this place seems to have hit the spot décor wise. A large graffiti mural on one wall depicts skulls, eagles, and some amply breasted girls who might look a little Japanese if either you or they squinted their eyes. They almost gave the recently refurbished chest of my dinner companion a run for its money. Hanging from the roof are some large model WWI era planes. Sopwith Camels if I’m not mistaken. The other wall was decorated with magazine images of manga style large breasted dangerous looking women and a vertical garden.

We got a seat at the bar in the large open window facing the street which turned out to be an ideal viewing spot to watch some tool in his T Bucket do burnouts up the street. Ah Chaps, gotta love it. Possibly the most un-Japanese looking waitress ever delivered some menus and some wasabi peas. It consisted of Japanese tapas, main meals, and rice burgers. Craft beers and wine were also on offer. A guy who I’m going to call the owner, since that’s my best guess, suggested at least one of us should try the Happy Ending beer since it was his and he was pretty chuffed with his efforts. Two Happy Endings thanks! Cue a night of hilariously unfunny hand shandy innuendo every time a new beer was ordered.

The un-Japanese looking waitress with a fetish for refilling water glasses took our order. I’m going to guess she was Scandinavian judging by the accent and the hotness, but I’ve been wrong before… it was a balmy spring night in 1988 but we don’t talk about that any more. We ordered some fresh kingfish and tuna sashimi mini tacos to share, my friend ordered a seafood bento box and I ordered a Japanese style pork belly curry. I almost couldn’t due to the criminal levels of apostrophe abuse and random capitalisation on the menu but I battled through. What a trouper. The waitress also seemed to battle with remembering the order and repeated it back a number of times but what the hell, I could listen to that accent all night.

Let’s start with the Happy Ending. Actually a very nice draught beer brewed in Geelong. Another Happy Ending thanks! The bottle has an image of a sumo wrestler, or possibly a very chubby Japanese kid wrestling (or quite possibly fucking) a large fish in some sort of Yin Yang battle. My money was on the fish. The ‘owner’ regaled us with a story about how the image had come from the back tattoo of a patron in a Yakuza sauna in Japan that he quite possibly shouldn’t have been in.

The mini tacos were certainly that. In fact, the tacos were quite possibly Sakata crackers, but the fish was delicious, particularly the tuna. The kingfish could have done without the sprouts on it… but then again I think that’s a rule for life, not just for uncooked Piscean morsels on crackers. Fish tacos with a Happy Ending was a good combo.

Our Scandinavian waitress then delivered the miso soup to my friend and then seemed to have a mild panic attack about how to put the plate on the table. She was able to calm her nerves though by refilling our water glasses. It seemed to be quite cathartic for her so I had a sip of water every now and again just to keep her from heading for her meds. The miso soup was heartier than your average brew as it was filled with what, after some initial incorrect guesses, turned out to be slices of lotus root and daikon. The ‘owner’ brought out some lotus root fried slices which were delicious too. Lotus root and a Happy Ending… also a good combo.

The bento box arrived consisting of some crumbed oysters topped with tomato and cucumber presented in the shell, a couple of gyoza, rice and some other nibbles which I couldn’t guess what they were. It all looked very nice and it tasted how it looked.

Curiously, my pork belly curry arrived in a dish shaped like a fish. Well actually it came in two dishes. The pork belly, rice and salad were served in the fish, and the curry sauce was delivered in a separate bowl. I’m pretty sure I saw one of the waitresses eyes start to twitch as she tried to work out how to place the bowls on the table and who needed a spoon, but in the end it went off without a hitch.

Despite the unusual treatment of adding the curry to the dish as a sauce post serving, which for all I know is the Japanese style, it was very tasty. The pork belly was succulent and the curry sauce was very nice despite the somewhat cold gravy consistency.

We finished the meal with another Happy Ending and the last of the dangerously inconsistent wasabi peas. Happy ending indeed. Instead of struggling to grab a staff members attention to get the bill I simply took a sip of water knowing that our Aquarian super waitress would be onto it quick smart.

I might well be back to try their unique breadless rice burgers and more of that 60s, 70s and 80s rock soundtrack.