Gluttony Fair @gluttonyfair - Tumblr Blog

What cookbooks to buy for Christmas.

Over the years, I started asking myself how many dishes do I see myself cooking when I hold a cookbook in a book store and if I can’t answer more than three I put the book on the shelf. By doing that I’d managed to curb my cookbook purchasing enthusiasm. Last week I’d surprised myself by buying two books in a row. The second one I pre-ordered without demo-ing (and it would later prove to be a bad move.)

Since Christmas is around the corner I thought I’d write a post to prove this blog useful by recommending a couple for your food-loving friends: The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

J. Kenji Lopez is influencing modern cafe food just like how Yotam Ottolenghi did 5 years ago. Don’t believe me? Go to any new cafes and I bet you will find a ‘smashed burger’ on their menu. If not a special waffle or a fried chicken dish. He is the mythbusters of cooking, experimenting with different recipes and showing his results on his personal website - seriouseats.com Here’s a guy who does all the research on thermometers, kettles, the best way to cook eggs, a fool-proof salad vinaigrette, all with tight experiments and plain explanations to back up his conclusions. If he’s your friend, you will take advantage of him yet feel sorry for his lack of life at the same time. (Don’t worry he has a wife and probably is rolling in Google ad money.)

Thing is, he is an average Joe version of Heston Blumenthal and should be getting his own tv show by now. But I’m guessing he is too hands on, too ‘rogue’ for mainstream media. (Recently he started gopro-ing his cooking process.) His book is a really good time stamp of his philosophy. It is HUGE, probably the second biggest cook book I have and it reads like a textbook. He goes through the basics of cooking, and the tools, and ALL his approaches in a very down-to-earth tone. He questions, challenges and debunks a lot of conventional way of cooking and I have to say it works for me because I am anti-loving, anti-Nigella, and anti-intuition when it comes to cooking.

The good (and bad) thing about the book is that it only cover the basic like eggs, meat, pasta, salad etc which is too American for me. At times I also feel ‘tired’ of all the science behind cooking. Like, dude, just relax and burn your eggs once in a while. Take it easy. Buy this book for your anal retentive cook friends.

All Under Heaven

So I’m not sure if you know that Chinese food can be categorised into eight regions - Anhui, Cantonese, Fujian, Hunan, Jiangsu, Shandong, Sichuan and Zhejiang. So context: The McSweeneys published this book, written by a non-Chinese (Carolyn Philips, has a blog titled Madame Huang’s Kitchen, married into a Chinese family), attempting to explain all eight regional food, covering over 300 recipes. This is the book I ordered without previewing at the local Readings. And of course, when I opened the book I would be greeted with no pictures; just illustrations. That is so McSweeneys I’m not even mad. Can you imagine photographing 300 Chinese dishes? I scratched my head a bit with this book as I’m not sure who is the target market. It is too intimidating to serves as an introduction to Chinese food for beginners (read the last paragraph: no photo), yet as a Chinese, I roll my eyes a bit with recipes like green onion pancakes and zhajiangmian. I guess it’s hard to explain, but imagine an Asian writing a book about the history of pies in the UK. As a Brit you’d probably appreciate someone going through all that trouble, taking interest in your historical culture yet at the same time amused to see ‘ fish and chips ‘ in a serif font, like a bible. Flipping through the book, I got hit by a huge wave of nostalgia. Carolyn, bless her soul, must have gone through so much trouble categorising each dish to match the region / country with the proper analogy. It is like my memory of Chinese food, materialised into an index. I haven’t tried the recipes yet but you know, Chinese food is always Shaoxing wine, black vinegar and soy. Truth is I don’t trust any Chinese recipe because my uncle’s neighbour’s auntie will always have a better recipe. The best recipe online will always be the blog still using geocities.com My point is, buy this book for your friends who are trying to feel smarter than they are (or marry into a Chinese family), which I guess is the core audience of the McSweeneys publications. Treat this book like a story book before cooking is a good start.

Bonus: NIgel Slater If all this technical drilling and no-picture Chinese history nonsense make you feel claustrophobic, just grab anything by NIgel Slater. He looks out of his window, reaches into his drawer, grab some ingredients, writes a haiku with his fountain pen, and voila, a baked dish inspired by his memories from autumn leaves with a beautiful photograph. If all else still fails, buy the new Anthony Bourdain one.

#booksforcooks

YDAGWYW.

I was watching a Japanese TV drama with Chika months ago about the first Japanese chef who worked for Escoffier in the 1900′s and later cooked for the Emperor. There’s this scene which his French colleagues put a bowl of food on the floor and said to him: monkeys eat on the floor. It made Chika’s blood boiled and she said time must be tough 100 years ago. 100 years? That just happened to me 5 years ago! It wasn’t really in the kitchen per se, but once I was the last to enter a meeting and the chairs were all taken. The owner of the agency casually said: just sit on the floor, your people like it, don’t you?

Looking back I really should’ve been angrier and maybe filed for discrimination but then what? He’s the owner of the agency. All of this memory came back while scrolling through the post-election feed. You can have a boss hiring you but secretly despise you. You can have a president that runs your country but openly bashes your gender, sexual orientation, race and religion. Perhaps that’s why Trump behaved the way he did. He knew as much as he berated the immigrants, they needed to stay and work. Have you seen how Australian farmers treat workers with a working holiday visa? In exchange to stay on for 9 more months, you do hard labour for 3 months in an Australian farm, living in containers. Because Australia is worth it. It may shock the young American democrats, but growing up in Malaysia (or Melbourne even), being made fun by your boss is Monday WIP.

I think it’s time for the other half of America learn to work in an unfavourable position. Just put your head down, and work hard. Learn to be hungry and ready to retaliate when the time comes again. Instead of whinging, and rage quitting, and blaming others, perhaps come to term with this: You don’t always get what you want. But that doesn’t meat you shouldn’t keep trying.

#election

Avocado wars.

I disappeared for a while to have a baby, and the next thing I see on my feed is about Melbourne getting worked up by smashed avocados.

So a summary: a rich white middle-aged man made fun of the hipster culture on mainstream media and millennials got hurt and retaliated with social media. Here's the original article. He is writing to a bunch of middle aged readers about how they are not welcomed at hipster cafes. I can only describe his writing style as borderline tongue in cheek with a hint of ‘haha kidding no not really’. What I took out from the 'avocado' paragraph, the only paragraph that’s been cited over and over again, is what my father has always said to me: don’t complain so much when you don’t know how to not spend money on things you shouldn’t be spending money on. Who is Bernard Salt? I don’t know. All I know is his opening paragraph was taken directly from one of my favourite long copy ad. Is he relevant to the millenial’s world? I don’t think so. How many Broadsheet readers you think also read the weekend Australian? He never said it's going to be enough. He never said the reason you can't afford a house is because of your brunch. He simply said the money saved could 'go towards' one. Like how our $3000 MacBook pros could ‘go towards’ launching our 'professional blogging' career. In fact the article is never about real estate. Seriously read it again. He was making fun of hipster cafes like how hipsters from Bondi make fun of investment bankers. But of course young kids retaliated like they always have: DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT I’M GOING THROUGH. The responses on the internet - people calculating how many actual smashed avocados you have to ‘not eat’ to afford an actual deposit, the real price of smashed avocado on toasts ($12 not $22!), the analysis on why avocados are being used as a symbol in this property bubble debate, just shows that millenials cannot take a joke anymore. Imagine arguing about whose turn it is to take the rubbish out, and your partner came out with an excel spreadsheet with data from the past 10 years to support why it should be you. That's not the point; and your partner is an asshole. Simply put: when you start throwing figures in a fight, you kinda lost. Overreacting to a passing remark about avocados is also kind of like that. It just showed that as much as they pretend that they don't care about owning a home; they care an awful lot. (To the extent where a bank is taking advantage of this insecurity.) What's the millennial word for this again? Oh yes, butthurt.

#smashedavocado

If cooking were a Nike ad.

“ The agency came up with new ad after finding out that British consumers aren't cooking as much but are consuming more food media than ever. Why do the work when you can just order food and watch someone else do it, living vicariously through them? “

Once I was at a food blogging even (only once) and everyone addressed each other by their ‘handles’. Halfway through the meal the topic of ‘how often do you cook’ came up, and 100% of the top food bloggers in this country DO. NOT. COOK.

Phominism.

A chef giving advice about pho sounds pretty harmless. A white chef giving advice about pho though, apparently not so much. Here’s the full story. Read it. Let’s make something clear: the editor fucked up. In fact, the magazine fucked up. This should be a textbook example to all publications how harmless content - nice food shots, cooking shots, chef with attitude and personal story, pro-tip, can be edited into such a hot mess of context. I don’t think the chef ever pitched the story about ‘the proper way to eat pho’ to the magazine. The magazine most likely approached him, on a Monday morning, asking if they could film and interview him about pho that very same day. You know, free exposure. You know, it’s a rush job. It’s going to be spontaneous and fabulous. Because we don’t do fake shit. He’s probably tired, but happy to contribute to his business. His only mistake was to sound too proud NOT to master the chopsticks (despite being a noodle shop owner) and maybe wearing an Apple watch while he cooked. The phrases like ‘pho is the new ramen’, ‘ask for extra limes!’ ‘pro-tip: wait for noodles to cool before adding bean sprouts’ etc, is obviously written by a digital content specialist (intern) in post who’s trying to claim some sense of authority or edginess on the story. They probably never showed the chef the video before it went live. To add sriracha to fire, the magazine did a non-apology. We took down the video not because we’re wrong, but because YOU are ruining the party and our reputation so we are shutting it down! Here’s a statement to say how not-wrong we are. I’m quite torn about this. I actually saw the video when it broke, and I kind of shrugged it off. I mean, the chopstick part was ridiculous, but surely the food community had accepted this Saigon-Sally Hannoi-Hannah Tokyo-Tina phenomenon. I thought we have accepted that white people like the concept of Asian food; just not Asians. So there’s a group of gourmet evangelists that’s introducing Asian food the the white people. You know, like Marco Polo. Little did I know the backlash would be so huge, the Vietnamese so angry. It kind of made me wonder if I should’ve been angrier the first place. Am I being white washed to accept this injustice? I don’t think anyone meant any harm. But maybe that’s the worst part. Asians are angry because of the ignorance. How dare you walk in, steal our noodles, and dare teach us HOW to eat our own noodles?

Is this about originality? Because, I’m pretty sure Vietnam being a very poor country up to 100 years ago, did not have whole chickens to make stock. It sounded like something the French would do, you know, when they occupied the country. I don’t see the French trying to claim pho. Is this about recognition? Yes white man you can make money from our noodles but ACKNOWLEDGE the source! Do we want a pho-tax? Why aren’t the Japanese as angry when white people make money off sushi? Sushi! The national dish, with avocado and mayonnaise! They even called it California rolls! How did the Chinese allow Dim Sims to happen in Australia? Maybe we didn’t have a voice then. Now we do.

As I type this I’m realising I’m slowly threading along the path of feministic argument. Are Vietnamese angry because they want their own local Vietnamese shops to be featured on Bon Apetit as well (equality), or are they simply refusing to accept white people making money from Asian cuisine (punishment)? Will they be happy if white people give us consent to bastardise croissant with pandan and green tea - wait, they’re doing that to themselves. Like I said, I’m pretty torn about this. On the one hand, business is whatever the market allows, and I’m sure no one cares. At the same time, yea, why aren’t you doing your research? Why aren’t the Asians in Melbourne as angry as the American Vietnamese? Why are you showing off your Apple watch?? It is ironic, I think the general consensus is ‘ yea you can make a video about pho, but show some respect.’ Which made me think ‘ yea you can be angry and kick a fuss about news you don’t like on the internet, but show some respect too.’

At the end of the day, seriously, we’re sitting on our assess reading texts on a screen. The only victim, is really the chef who woke up one morning, and thought he was going to get some exposure over an interview. He probably cooked the chicken stock from scratch for the crew. The magazine should issue an apology to the chef. But they just flooded their website with 20 new stories to cover it up. Like I said in the beginning, this is not a story about how not to eat pho; it’s a story about how not to create content as an online publisher. Last note: can I also claim a little credit of claiming pho as the new ramen like 9 months ago? Should I be angry?

#publication pho

Good news, everyone.

Small foods; not so small history.

Grand Taipei Bakery looks exactly the same as I last dined here 10 years ago.

This is the Asian bakery world before Bread Top. People come all the way to Box Hill to buy their sweet rolls, pork floss buns, their durian pancakes, home made soy milk. The other long standing establishment comes to mind is Maxim’s in Chinatown.

Grand Taipei’s point of difference, is that they also serve classic Taiwanese hot food. You just have to squeeze in towards the back, and maybe share a table with strangers. This is the love child of Bread Top and Mr. Kitchen, if that love child could travel back in time.

The menu is nothing but staple nostalgia for the Taiwanese: Lu Rou Fan, beef noodles, oyster pancake, xiao long bao, shredded pork and mushroom soup, spring onion pancake... Only thing missing, is the stinky tofu.

We ordered a hot soy milk, a side of dan bing you tiao, and a chicken maryland on rice to share. We were surprised to see the rice dish came with a sunny side up and pickled vegetables. Taiwanese food is undoubtedly influenced by the elegance of Japanese and the ‘I don’t care’ of Chinese: Nah, take this piece of fried chicken, with our side of Kyoto-style pickles for $12. I can’t really think of another old school Taiwanese diner in Melbourne. Taiwan Cafe along Swanston or Food Republik feels too slick, too expensive. Maybe only Zhu Ma Ma in Sydney’s Chinatown can match its grittiness. Like the Hong Kong style cafe joints, they are slowly getting squeezed out by the Sze Chuan hotpots, the Beijing dumplings, the colourful Yunnans. I’m writing about Grand Taipei now, because they are going to build a skyscraper in the middle of Box Hill. Who knows what will happen in another 10 years time? I envied the crying kids around me today because they have this place to cherish in their memories. And they’re oblivious to it.

#grand taipei bakery #Taiwanese Food Melbourne

On slow trend.

I think as of 2016, we can all agree, a 10 year-old can accurately predict the menu, furniture, coffee beans, even the system to run a cafe in Melbourne.

The look and feel to reassure us of good food nowadays, or the ‘hipster aesthetic’ as The Guardian calls it, reminds me of the reassurance my parents receive when they see a colourful 6-seater booth with cushions and giant neon signboards on a restaurant.

What I’m trying to say is, the modern brunch model is like the fast food model of 1995. We think it’s cool now, but our children will laugh at us. We think it’s different, but it is every bit as cash grabbing as that fake giant clown sitting on a bench. There’s a positive side to this. Places further away, like Tasmania, like Mornington Peninsula, maybe even Geelong, they are desperately trying to copy this new ‘movement', to adapt and attract the sophisticated crowd. And you can tell the owners are mostly inexperienced, probably in their late 20s, too cutting edge for the local, older, community. I can imagine them making their pilgrimage to Melbourne, being mind-blown, and try to absorb and apply everything they experienced. And because they’re copying, they’re slightly behind the curve, always one step behind. While Melbourne is soaring with experimental brunch dishes like soft shell crab burrito or poached snapper with spring onion infused papadums, the small guys are actually making brunch like it used to be 5 years ago. It’s not ‘bacon and eggs’ old, but not’ Japanese word salad’ new either. They roast real vegetables (broccolinis!), tomatoes, avocados, button mushrooms, on giant, thick slices of buttered toasts. Even the sides of hash browns came out exactly like I imagined. What the small guys don’t know, is that cool cafes in Melbourne are using the heavy-flavoured, hard-to-read, ethnic ingredients and jargons because they’re running out of fresh ideas and ingredients. They are going through Asian grocery stores for strong flavours to mask cheaper ingredients because food cost are going up.

Fresh ingredients are expensive. The same fresh ingredients Tasmania and Mornington Peninsula have in abundance. This whole post started from our brunch in Picknics Cafe in Rye. I was feeling guilty of adhering to the hipster aesthetics (we really wanted to try a different place, but the timber walls and coffee machines were really as reassuring as McDonald’s golden arches), but also totally surprised by how ordinary the menu was. It was brunch like we used to have. No deconstruction, no tongue twisters, no fancy fonts, no history of the coffee beans, no bearded man with a dragon tattoo (yet). It’s like that feeling you get when you go out of town, and realise all the girls are prettier. And you wonder if they’re pretty because they don’t use make-up, or because they don’t have to use make-up, they’re pretty? It is naive, but also ernest and endearing. And you wish they stay away from the modern menus as long as possible.

MICHELIN STAR!

Look at that photo above. Despite what you think about Tim Ho Wan’s food, you have to admit the menu’s got fantastic user interface. Because you know, MICHELIN STAR! I was once photographing a Malaysian restaurant, and the owner told me he wasn't happy with his menu because the customers only order the items with photos. So he was selling a lot of roti’s and chicken rices despite having five variations of laksas. And this is why I think THW's menu looks like a printed mobile website. The target market of THW is not the Chinese; it is the Australians. The Aussies who refuse to admit they still don’t know squat about yum cha. If you’d been to Japan, you know menu with images are for, come on, say it with me - tourists. But we’re not tourists here, we’re cool. Because you know, MICHELIN STAR! They’d gone all ‘Apple’ with this global domination: cleanse the menu into twenty-something, low-risk dishes, glorify the ‘four heavenly kings’, with the original grand master chef (in Hong Kong) as their poster boy, hugging his MICHELIN STAR close to his heart. Make it simple, make it stupid, and we can simply hover our finger on top of the dish that we like, and write down that number into a ticket. Oh, also, they have that new system, the one we ring the bell so they can cut costs on waiters and push all responsibilities to ourselves. It’s so hot right now. Because you know, MICHELIN STAR! I don’t need to check the Zomato reviews to know that people will complain about the food. People who queued up just to exert dominance and confirm that it’s not up to their standard. Fortunately the two times I’d eaten at THW, I did not have to queue, and both times the old school Asian in me always felt sad. Where’s the old teapot? Where’s the cart? Where’s the dirty soy sauce? The capitalism Asian in me though, is so impressed and proud of this well-oiled machine. Because you know. MICHELIN STAR! It’s difficult selling an image, a memory. How do you translate that feeling in Hong Kong, that hole-in-a-wall, dirty, humid excitement with xiumais at the end of the 1-hour rainbow queue into this foreign, anti-septic city? Look at Ippudo, look at Ding Tai Fung, you can’t. So you milk the shit out of it. Broadsheet approached me to write about THW prior, but they decided to go with a white person’s perspective in the end (you can probably guess why) and I felt relived. I didn’t have the heart to tell them this is the wrong spectrum for their target market. But you know. MICHELIN STAR!

#tim ho wan

Just because you can...

This commercial ran on national Japanese TV. The first time I watched it I had no idea what it was about, just that they were apologising, and the mood was very sombre. Chika heard the song, and said it’s because they are increasing the price of the Gari Gari Kun Ice Cream from 60 to 70 yen. So the company made an ad to apologise to the public for a 10 yen increase. The first ever in 25 years. That’s 0.15 cents Australian dollar. I yelled ‘SERIOUSLY?’ to Chika’s face.

It was a brilliant strategy because we seldom see companies apologising on national TV. I really really want to be in the meeting when the client briefed the agency about how they should deal with the price increase and the creative team came back ‘ how about every single person in your factory, including the CEO come out and give a 90 degree apology? ‘ On the other hand, maybe the consumption of this product is so great that a 10 yen increase could make a mean profit? But 10 yen in 25 years? I really doubt so. The Japanese just needs to learn from the west regarding secretly reducing the size of the product, or blame the rising cost or cheap foreign labours that is flooding the market. Just picture Tim Cook leading the whole FoxConn factory apologising over the $1000 increase over the straps of Apple Watch? It is almost as absurd as the Japanese apologising for $0.15 increase over ice creams.

#gari gari kun

House of Laksa.

This is how I define a good place: You want to tell people about it, so that the restaurant can prosper. Yet you don’t want to tell people about it, because the better business would ruin it. The queue, the cost cutting, the jealousy. Eventually something will give. Minamishima comes to mind. Chika has lost interest in the sushi establishment because she’s sure by now they have adjust the operation to fit an Australian palate. Laksa House at the other end of the spectrum, surprisingly, is also such a place. I said ‘surprisingly’ as I thought it was going to be another money-grabbing Malaysian restaurant. Because previously the space was occupied by a different money-grabbing Malaysian restaurant. In fact, the menu seemed eerily similar. It has been renovated recently and shy of one month new. Laksa House taught me that the crowd has a profound impact on the first impression of a restaurant. Last Sunday as we entered, it was empty. We almost wanted to bail. But after giving it a go, the food impressed us. This will sound like the boy who cried wolf, but this is really one of the best laksas in Melbourne in 2016, considering the flavours, toppings, serving size and price. Maybe it’s the MSG talking, but it reminded me of the laksa in my old school canteen, on steroids. I’m pretty sure they will realised they copied the wrong menu off a restaurant from 2005 because $9.80 for a bowl of laksa, with a mussel and prawn on top, is insane. By the time we left, the house was packed.

Since then I’d return with other friends trying out the nasi lemak and roast chicken rice. The second time, we walked in packed. The third, we had to wait for a table. How long will this last? Time will tell. But for now, it is surprisingly consistent.

#laksa house #malaysian food melbourne

Melboudon.

I hinted in a post last year that after ramen, udon might be the next movement to hit Australia. Udon was going through a boom in Japan for the last five years.

Currently in Japan, Marugame-Seimen is killing it. They perfected the cafeteria system, where you form a line and order your udon dish as a base. On your way to the cash register, you pick and choose your extra toppings: prawn tempura, fish tempura, vegetable tempura, beef curry etc. Compared to the conventional way (which the kitchen prepares the dishes as you order, you have to wait before you eat, you have to wait before you pay), it is an easier and most importantly, a more cost effective system. You never pay more than 500 yen for your udon. Also, technically udon is easier to handle than ramen. There is no 12-hour pork broth to supervise; you just need to focus on making the noodles and the bonito broth the hero. The rest are (mostly) deep fried side dishes. That’s why you see mostly old ladies working at Japanese udon shops. Now that I’d provided some context, let’s cut to last year, when I saw Udon Yasan in Bourke Street. It was a harsh reality check that a good idea really needs an equally good execution to work. On the surface, they copied the Marugame system perfectly. Choose the size of your noodles, pick the toppings, pay at the end, it is perhaps the cheapest udon in town, with $5 to start. But I don’t know, something just felt off. Maybe it’s the tables and chairs, or the (too) open kitchen, or simply, that there is no door at the entrance. It wasn’t eye catching enough for pedestrians to realise it was a udon shop, as if it’s still going through a construction. Even the name itself (Udon Yasan means ‘Udon Shop’) lack consideration. Never the less, I was mildly excited and intrigued that hey, udon had arrived in Melbourne with the self-sanuki system. Maybe many will follow suit if it’s successful. We walked out feeling a bit underwhelmed. The whole purpose of the system is to reduce wastage, so that everyone can focus on one thing: making the noodles, deep frying the side dishes, cooking the beef curry and so on. It is to perfect every single element. Udon Yasan felt like it was reducing wastage, simply to cut cost. So when that happens, noodles get too soft, tempura becomes cold, the unlimited toppings of spring onions and grated radishes were stale, and quite sad to look at. It felt like the unpopular corner of a buffet restaurant. I need to flip to the other side here to say we were judging the restaurant with high expectations because back then, we just came back from Japan. Also, the balls to be the first to implement this in the middle of Bourke Street, are mighty huge. And this is still the only place in the city to get specifically an udon dish, instead of going into a posh Japanese restaurant and pay $17 for it. You truly can get away with a $5 dish at Udon Yasan. The main lesson here: Always adjust your expectation of ‘ethnic’ food in Australia. Just like how we should ALL adjust our coffee expectations when we’re outside of Australia. Be it udon from Japan, nasi lemak from Malaysia, gozleme from Turkey, it is ridiculous to expect ‘authenticity’ in Australia. And it is not that the restaurant owners didn’t know enough. It’s just that the price to match your childhood dishes to memory is simply too high, that it won’t be a business by the end it; simply suicide by masturbation. The main question is also whether the locals could identify a good udon from a bad one. I’m not sure if the udon movement will catch on anymore, mainly because even the ramen restaurants are drawing to a halt for the last 6 months. But if you’re looking at opening a noodle shop, I’d still bet on udon. There’s much space for healthy competition.

#udon #melbourne udon

NL is not Neville Longbottom.

Nasi Lemak House has a history in Carlton.

15 years ago (perhaps even longer than that), its target market was blatantly obvious - the Malaysian international students from Unimelb.

It was the first place that I saw a Yeo’s packet drink being sold 50 times the actual cost. If anything it was a valuable lesson that nostalgia and homesickness commands a lot of money.

In fact, it was popular because it was one of the few Halal Malaysian restaurants in Melbourne.

8 years ago, it was sold an renovated.

Gone were the really dubious bain-marie underneath the creaky staircase and a giant cafetaria style menu, hello new logo (NL House) and timber cafe interior fixtures! Old fashion plates and cutlery were scrapped; bio degradable boxes and plastic sporks was the new trend. Tables were gone; NL House is now takeaway and outdoor friendly. Suddenly we have young girls who speak perfect English greeting us at the door; not the Malaysian auntie who kinda yelled at you for holding up the line.

The target market has shifted from dirty Malaysian students to cool kids living around Carlton. If anything it’s barely a reflection of the times. There’s even a blog on their website now. (Although it’s probably not advisable to let the public know that the owners are just visiting Malaysia for the first time in 2016.)

To be honest, Nasi Lemak House looked, sounded and tasted like a business from day one, with or without the renovation.

It’s not fancy, the product - $11 Nasi Lemak, IS part of the business name.

Reading the general reviews (portion is small, sambal is small, menu is small, laksa and kuey teow not good etc) feels like everyone is bullying the little guy who didn’t want any attention to start with.

If you’re brave enough to order anything BUT Nasi Lemak at a restaurant call Nasi Lemak House, you should absorb the consequences of high risk gamble.

The Kerabu sambal with pickled onions still makes me sweat.

It scratches my itch from time to time, plus it’s literally 5 minute walk from home. I can’t complain.

My most recent visit, they’d gone back to plates and old fashion cutlery again. Perhaps it is under new ownership for the 3rd time. Maybe investing in a dish washer is cheaper than environmental friendly paper boxes?

But who cares?

NL House sells decent Nasi Lemak with a consistent taste profile.

That’s the important part.

#nasi lemak #nasi lemak house

Beatrix 2016.

To me, Beatrix is as close as it gets to a Japanese restaurant. Not the ingredient or the food perse, but simply the spirit. The spirit of maintaining a certain way of operation to make products that the owner believes in. It’s one of those shops that makes you angry when you have to wait and cram around the three-table cafe. (Why? Why don’t they simply expand? There’s obviously demand for it.) But secretly, for the locals, I think they like it that way.

Nat had plenty of chance to move / combine with next door over the years, but she never did it. Just because it’s easy and lucrative doesn’t mean she has to do it. I don’t bother with a photo on the post because they don’t need it. Beatrix is Japanese because of its consistency. And because you know Nat is always at the back keeping an eye out. When I went in today, she was out apologising for missing an order. It is what your mum would do, what you would do for your kids, but she is doing it for the residents in North Melbourne. You’re here for the cakes, or the ciabatta specials of the day. There’re BLT and Shakushuka in a roll that’re constantly on the menu. ( Mushroom melt or Beggbie during winter.) And coffee from Allpress. Beatrix is also a real life case study for NOT having website; it relies on their (very effective) daily menu / cake posts on Facebook and Instagram feed. Honestly, I had my worries that maybe Beatrix would be too predictable, too simple for Melbourne’s pace. It has been 6 years since they started. Today I saw ham and cheese croquette in a roll, which was something new. I saw bananamington ( lamington but with banana). I think Nat knows about the conundrum of a successful restaurant: people are so picky yet forgetful at the same time. If you try to change according to everyone’s palette, you may lose your very own DNA to start with. So you keep experimenting, keep tweaking. I am always skeptical of Zomato’s rating. But this 4.9 is solid. The day Nat decides to move Beatrix, it will affect the value of surrounding neighbourhoods.

#beatrix

Don’t write restaurant reviews without this basic knowledge.

#brigadesystem #escoffier

My most memorable meal in Japan 2016.

I was grumpy that I had to wait. Even though I was next in line with mobile data to kill time. Still, it’s not like this is a shit hot ramen restaurant. My plan to see sakura for the first time was ruined by the rain. So I googled ‘unagi ya’ and surprisingly there’s one ten minutes away from my Shin Osaka hotel with the exact same name. One thing we definitely can’t get in Melbourne, is unagi. Eventually an old man signalled me to enter, and I noticed the three salarymen who were in front of me had not gotten their meal. There’s a little sign in front of me with a long paragraph of explanation which I deduced to ‘no photo’. Ha. Over the counter I saw a pipe with water running into a big black plastic tank. Next to the tank, a big chopping board, and a bigger charcoal grill. On the wall hung a small sign: Today’s eels are from Tokushima. Sitting around me, all salarymen. They were slow to take my order, and I later realised why. After I pointed to ‘Una-ju’, the chef reached into the tank without warning and grabbed an eel, completely alive, from the tank, and pushed a 3-inch golden nail through its eyes onto the big chopping board. Now that he's established a support point, he ran the knife through the eel in one motion from head to tail like how I slice my zucchinis in half. Bones out in one piece, in the bowl. The blood and guts gets brushed off the now dark red wooden board, in the bowl. My brain was yelling close to the pitch of boiling point. I wanted unagi, but I did not expect this. Service was slow because they kill, debone and cook an eel for every customer on the spot. Next thing I know the eel’s been poke through eight skewers, transferred to the grill. The other younger man came to me. My tamagoyaki entree was served. With a tiny tomato and shiso leaf. Cut back to the older man seasoning the sticks, he flipped them over once. I finished my entree, and saw him transferring the stick to another sink filled with tare. He dragged a full ladle of the sauce on the stick. He chopped the unagi into pieces, plated them on top of the rice, already pressed in a box, with a cover nice enough to store jewellery. Why bother? Unlike Brad Pitt, I know exactly what was in the box. The unagi was charred to brown perfection. The meat melts and then I tasted the skin, crispy with the soy marinade. I had a chopstick of rice, and I took a bite of my pickle. I drank my soup with mitsuba herb, directly from the bowl. More salarymen came in. ’The usual, half the rice’, one said. I looked down at my own box, trying to ignore the three eels turning from 'beings’ to ‘cuisine’ in the next 10 minutes. My chopstick holder was also an unagi. Two men fillet, cook, serve and wash in this space. Rice were also prepared fresh on premise, the dashi is boiling away on the stove. They were dancing with the skill and confidence of what we call ‘only in Japan.’ I made sure I finished everything on my plate in respect for mister unagi. And with bittersweetness I realised everything I eat, whether in plain view or hidden behind a factory, goes through the same process. To naively say ‘no, no, just show me the dish’ is hypocritical. I drank my tea, saw him flip the eels one last time, and got up to pay. I remember Chika and I once had an argument in Ueno because I refused to pay 7000 yen for unagi. Today's lunch was 3300 yen. And I’m sure it’s much better than the ones in Ueno. I told the man in exact words: “ This unagi, me first time.” He said thank you. I asked if I could take a photo, he gave me a shrug. It made me feel not so guilty by sneaking a shot with my phone before this. I took a proper photo of the shop. As I was leaving the shop I saw a giant black car with a driver waiting outside. Must be waiting for his bosses inside. I have to tell Chika about this right now, I thought to myself.

#unagi #michelin #unagiya

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