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What’s happening at the moment – recipes, ideas, books, thoughts.

April 2024 It’s autumn, and in the garden the basil is still green, but the figs have reached the end of a remarkably prolific season, and the two silverbeet plants are producing so many big leaves I’m glad I didn’t plant six of them. New in the garden is hyssop, a plant mentioned in the Bible, and in many middle eastern cookbooks. The latest find was Moshe Basson’s Eucalyptus, named for his restaurant in Jerusalem. The restaurant has been there for decades, and I remember interviewing him many years ago when he came to Melbourne for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. The book, which is not yet readily available, is wonderful. Just as good cooking is more than a recipe, so a good cookbook is more than recipes. The attitudes to food and cooking are values I share - that cooking is for pleasure as well as nutrition, and that family meals are of great importance. There are some lovely anecdotes, too, about what running is restaurant is like. Some of the recipes include hyssop, though he suggests oregano as a substitute.

For a couple of reasons, I’m cooking at home much more again. My favourite dishes to cook are still spinach and ricotta gnocchi, and pumpkin soup, though I have added sorrel and lettuce soup to my favourite soups. They are fall-back dishes: what do I want to eat?

January 2024 Happy new year to all - and we will soon be in the Year of the Dragon, which is usually promising. What’s new? I think we’re looking at revised pricing in restaurants, costs that make much more sense to restaurateurs, but maybe less so for diners. I’m noticing main courses in good restaurants that range up to $60, and I’m noticing more places charging for bread. That’s a charge I find difficult in French and Italian restaurants, where bread is always part of the meal. I’ve yet to go to a restaurant in France where there is a charge for bread. In Italy, it’s different - there always used to be a coperto, a cover charge that included bread and linen. I’ve never liked the habit here of serving bread as if it were a first course. For me, it’s part of a meal, and if it’s presented and eaten as a first course, I think it’s a bad practice. For the restaurant, too - since if you eat lots of bread to start, you’re less likely to want an entree or dessert.

The new place near me is Puttanesca, at the Clifton Hotel in Kew, at Kew Junction. Guy Grossi has been the consultant there, and it’s been a brilliant transformation of what had been a very seedy and then deserted pub. It’s certainly a pub still, with a big noisy bar and a restaurant (and a rather fine private room). I’ve been there three times, which I think is about right if you want to make judgments of any place. The restaurant menu is a bit in the Italian style, with spuntini (snacks) as well as antipasti, a few main courses, and a range of pizza. A good wine list, and a nice range of cocktails. All very much up-to-date. The mood is relaxed; it’s a very clever cross between a pub and a trattoria. We always order antipasti to share - I love the caponata, and the vitello tonnato in particular. Italian cotoletta is actually the standard pub chicken parma, though better tasting than most, and it comes with excellent cabbage salad. Beware, or perhaps be pleased: it’s pub-sized. I usually share it. Puttanesca has been busy since it opened late last year. Not surprising at all, because it’s hit the right note for the market. Good food but not too fancy, a well considered range of dishes, generous serves, reasonable prices, and very nice things to drink. www.cliftonhotel.com.au

Vale Richard Frank The hospitality industry had lost one of its giants, I have lost a friend. Richard Frank, who died earlier in January at the age of 94, was a pioneer of the restaurant industry. He started when he was a teenager, not really old enough to be a partner in those days, in a tea room (tea rooms then, not cafes) in Little Collins Street, when there was still post-war rationing. He opened his first restaurant in Queen Street in the 1950s, and pioneered BYO, after the next door wine merchant realised there was a loophole in the legislation. At that stage, you couldn’t buy liquor in an unlicenced restaurant (and licences were rare and expensive) but you could drink. So if the waiter went to buy a bottle and brought it back to your table, you were fine. Many years later, Richard’s restaurant Quarter Sessions was the first restaurant to have a general licence under the legislation that came in in the late 1980s. There were many others in between, including Melbourne’s first rooftop restaurant, and a few later. He was president of the Restaurant and Catering Association, and an active and articulate spokesman for the industry who was able to bring together restaurants and hotels to work together. He was a wonderful host.

He came to Australia from Shanghai, having escaped from Poland at the start of the second world war. His father had got to Lithuania and sent for his mother, who had the awful job of choosing one of three children to go with her. At the time, it was thought the rest of the family would follow a fortnight later - but they never got the chance. His siblings and grandparents were killed early in the war. From Lithuania, thanks to the Japanese consul who issued transit papers, the family was able to cross Russia to get to Japan, and then to Shanghai, which was a free port, open to all. Wartime Shanghai was a difficult place, to say the least…. When he came to Australia, his father told him they had finally stopped running. He lived his life with such enthusiasm! His wife Lillian Frank (known for her fund-raising for charity, her skills as a hairdresser, and a social presence) died in August 2022.

September 2023 New restaurants are usually interesting, but it’s time to praise those long established ones. Recently I went back to Punch Lane, at 43 Little Bourke Street, for a quick meal before a show, and was struck by how comfortable it was and how cleverly designed was the menu. I went back a few weeks later for dinner. Almost everyone offers small and large dishes, but this adds medium dishes, and then some. This is one of the most flexible places in town. A cocktail? Easy. A glass of wine and some salt cod croquettes? Sure. A full dinner. Of course. A drink after the show? Some wine and cheese? Not a problem. The constants over the years have been the distinctive (and very comfortable) red leather chairs, and the big blackboard that lists cheeses and wines by the glass. And the other constant, which is why it has been so successful for so long, is its professionalism - which is to say that sense that everyone in the place knows exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it happily.

And while I’m praising long established restaurants, let me put in a word for Centonove, at 109 Cotham Road, Kew, with its sibling Bar Alba across the road. There are always lots of regulars - that seems to be the thing for suburban restaurants, and why they tend to be long-running. I think of Mercer’s in Eltham, loved by those who go there often not because of habit, but because of the quality of the place. It is so nice to have a good restaurant near where you live! Good restaurants are worth travelling to, but we don’t always want to travel - to take a taxi, or an Uber, or our own car. To find somewhere close where the food is imaginatively good, where the wine list is extensive but not overpriced, where the owner and waiters are welcoming. Of course we become regulars.

Same, same but different at Florentino Grill. I took Californian friends there recently who were in Melbourne for a couple of nights, and they were delighted by it. As I was. What so impressed me - seeing it through their eyes - was a rock-solid sense of hospitality, the feeling that guests and their comfort are paramount. They were amazed by the way the waiters read our body language, knowing when to bring a menu, when we needed something. There were no intrusive questions, no “Do you want a top up?” “Is everything all right?” “Are you enjoying your meal?” Excellent food - we ate a range of dishes, including the swordfish carpaccio, the chestnut pappardelle with mushrooms, the paccheri with sausage and cavolo nero, the scaloppine with lemon and silverbeet, and the roast duck with polenta and turnip. I chose a soave and a pinot noir (Moorooduc Estate) from the list. It’s a very big list, so be prepared to take your time choosing, or ask a waiter for guidance. An extra benefit of the Grill are the opening hours - lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday, which makes it one of the few city restaurants available for lunch on Satuday.

Grossi Florentino is one of my favourite places. I’m a bit sad I don’t get to my favourites more often.

Mid- 2023 and it’s time to mention a few restaurants I have recently tried. Enoteca Boccaccio is part of that great supermarket in Burke Rd, Balwyn, near the corner of Belmore Rd. The supermarket’s cheese section is unparalleled, and the deli section is remarkable too. The Enoteca is a small restaurant/modern trattoria up the stairs near the liquor store. There are tables, and seats at the bar. It’s not big, but it’s got something of the intimacy of a local place in Italy that’s been refurbished. There’s nothing cute or homely about the decor, but it is friendly, usually noisy, and very professionally run. The selection of cured meats draws on what is available downstairs in the deli section, and there is a short well- chosen selection of cheeses. I shared an antipasto plate, and then had potato gnocchi with browned butter - and a shaving of truffle. Main courses the day I was there included a fiorentina, that giant cut of steak, best suited to sharing, and a fish of the dish (I didn’t ask). The wine list features Hoddles Creek wines, of course (the family owns the vineyard and winery as well as the supermarket).

In listing favourite places at the end of last year, I should have mentioned Philippe philipperestaurant.com.au, just off Collins Street in the city. Some years ago I worked with Philippe Mouchel on the book More than French. The downstairs restaurant is my favourite French restaurant - especially for lunch, and also for dinner. And it’s great to sit at the bar before a show to eat freshly shucked oysters and drink a glass of chablis or champagne. Or share a plate of charcuterie. Highly recommended: the terrines, the rotisserie chicken (truffled in season, order in advance) and fabulous roast duck (order in advance for the duck press version).

At the end of 2022, everyone was writing about the best of the year in restaurants. Another tricky year, as it turned out. There were clearly dishes of the year: cured kingfish as entree, brined duck for main course, and tiramisu a continuing dessert. My favourite restaurants of the year: hard to know where to start. Many of them are favourites, a few are new. Starting at the top: Grossi Florentino - www.florentino.com.au/florentino The cellar bar always, because it’s one of the best meeting places in Melbourne. But particularly Upstairs. I was there recently with two guests - the amazing US food writer Joan Nathan, and vice-chair of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Irene Pletka. (My honour to dine with them. Joan had been guest of honour at the first Jewish Food Festival in Melbourne; Irene had been involved in the Festival, too.)

Dinner Upstairs is always a treat, even more so seen through the eyes of international guests who were hugely impressed. I don’t like to give mouthful-by-mouthful accounts of a meal. Let me say that what struck me was the generosity and kindness that animates the place. Yes, it is expensive, but not more so than other top-end restaurants, and there are so many gestures and treats that give the place its air of luxurious friendliness. Standout dishes? The battuto di tonno, a tuna tartare, prepared table-side in a giant marble mortar. And the lobster risotto.

Other favourites: Scopri www.scopri.com.au, another Italian restaurant, always busy, always welcoming, with an excellent wine list (and the possibility of BYO), and much of the produce grown in their own large gardens. Don’t miss the silverbeet! The menu is rather static, but always supplemented by specials on the blackboard. Standout dishes? The carpaccio of raw fish (usually kingfish, often with citrus and capers), and the tagliatelle with duck ragu. Note that there are usually two sittings for dinner, early and late.

Smith Street Bistrot www.smithstreetbistrot.com.au is French in style, as you might have guessed from the spelling of bistrot. It’s one of the Scott Pickett restaurants, all of which I love. What I particularly like about Smith Street - well, lots of things. The look and feel of it - the ambience, you might say, with the energy and aesthetic I always hope to find in France and rarely do. The menu has lots of classics, revisited, like the appetiser of eggs mayonnaise with some caviar, and the wonderfully smooth green pea soup, and the steak au poivre. You get the idea. There are seats at the bar as well as tables, and tables upstairs too. Excellent wine list. Of course. Other Pickett restaurants? Matilda in Domain Rd, South Yarra, Estelle in High St, Northcote, Audrey’s in Sorrento at the Continental Hotel.

And, in no particular order: Caterina’s Cucina e Bar, in Queen St, near the corner of Lonsdale for a great Italian lunch. Navi in Yarraville for brilliant contemporary cooking. Tulum in Balaclava for Turkish food translated to contemporary Australia. Flower Drum, always, for exceptional Chinese food and brilliant service. And don’t forget Donovan’s, in Jacka Boulevard, St Kilda, for contemporary food and that wonderful view of the bay.

There will be more to come as I visit places.