The peoples' democratic blog of Matt Hayward

Since Mamasitas opened on Bourke St and routinely has a queue all the way out the door, Mex food has changed in Melbourne. Gone are the days of Franchised (and terrible) Taco Bill blandoid grub, from a memu that hasn’t changed in decades. Now we have something far worse: boutique Mexican. Hor dourves sized tacos [...]

On the corner of High and Williams Roads, you could very easily overlook this newish restaurant. While Hebron may conjure up images of Palestinian or Isreali food, it’s a very fresh view on Korean cuisine.  While the menu cites biblical inspiration for the name, it also is very quirkily categorises Korean classics under a Hollywood [...]

Based on the advice of a Mr Tony Bourdain, I put aside my passionate hatred for this suburb and checked out Half Moon.
Their 7 course degustation is without doubt the best meal I’ve had in years. Fish was a key feature, with a delightfully rich fish soup and an amazingly flavoursome fried snapper fillet. Oh [...]

As a recent trip to Ezard proved, fine dining is actually pretty easy. Dress all your staff in black, have them breathe hot air down your neck about the Argentinian fine grain, hand groomed, organic alfalfa garnishing your plate and charge several hundred dollars for the privilege. Serving good, consistent cheap food you’d kill your [...]

In short, I’m afraid not. This has been bugging me for ages, and as soon as I can be bothered, I’ll put in some references. Perhaps it intrigues me because supermarket food is so mega bland and I’m always looking at kosher product as premium product. Hey kosher chickens from the Balaclava Safeway are mega [...]

This is one tasty pie. It’s relatively easy to make and it’s getting written down because I tried it and it actually worked out pretty well. Feeds a small army.
Ingredients:

8-10 sausages
10-12 waxy potatoes diced
3-4 good quality tomatos
1 brown onion
3 cloves garlic
sea salt
olive oil
various spices (I used a garam masala mix and Masterfoods Portuguese chicken seasoning, [...]

I thought all was lost when Cafe Zen changed hands on Chapel St. They used to have the best hollandaise sauce (with eggs Atlantic) ever. That place went really down hill service wise any way. But a few doors up down the Windsor end of Chapel St, I found my new thing: 80 Spaces.
Inside the [...]

When you think Asian beer garden, you might think outdoor furniture, random chaos, icy cold beer and great hawker food. Hot and stinky, yet the patrons wouldn’t have it any other way. Not so at Cho Gao. Take all the bad things about a swanky, pretentious inner city bar, mixed with all the bad things [...]

Seldom do cook books truly overwhelm, but I am in awe of this one. The Curry Bible is nothing short of brilliant. Not that it’s hard covered, or 800 pages (it’s probably 150 odd). It doesn’t need to be. If the house was burning down though, this would be the one cook book I’d take [...]

This year it was a big call for what to match to the Christmas turkey. There were a few cherryish pinots from the Yarra Valley which i’ve grown fond of, but they’re nowhere near ready yet. There are big cab savs, but you’d need a really old one that had a bit of grace about [...]