Despite all this, thankfully the food lives up to the livery. They have a baby squid dish (my memory’s on the fritz) that is superb.  There’s plenty of seafood and interesting salads. It does get quite a bit hot and spicy but nothing that’s overtly bum burningly hot for the sake of it (apparently my company and I went quite red). All the flavors work and everything has a contemporary touch to make it a bit unique. Heaps of Kim Chi and side dishes are there to spice up the journey as well, though I guess it wouldn’t be Korean without it!

Without question, this is a very original, truly unique cafe cum restaurant casual dining experience. One that definitely is worth the wander down from Chapel St, or at least off the beaten Williams Road track. This place might be a bit too cutesy for the lads, but it’s bona fide A grade date material. And it goes without saying, there will never be another Hebron. I hope this place does really well. They deserve it.

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 and oysters from about 5 or so different places across Australia. Pork lovers would no doubt delight in the twice cooked pork belly and black pudding

Even little things like the butter they give you with bread has Japanese wakame seaweed in it that somehow tastes a hair’s breath different to truffle oil. Worth noting too is that apparently this place is run by the former owner of the Botanical in South Yarra. There are subtle design ques to the Botanical in the layout at Half Moon. But this new restaurant is much bigger and has a less frenetic, noisy ambiance compared to the ‘Tan.

While the mains looked to be fairly large proportioned and to the same standard, there’d be no reason to eat a la carte in this place. Degustations should always be this good.

Rose Garden BBQ – Elizabeth St Melbourne. Past all the motorbike shops and just before the Vic Market, you’ll find the ducks hanging in the window and the hordes of mostly people Asian (a good sign let’s face it) queuing outside to get in. Double happiness must have something to do with their $8 spicy chicken ribs. Sublime doesn’t describe this plate of crunchy fried wings and rice drenched in spicy duck and pork dripping. And it’s quick too. Just get yourself there before the 12.30 rush.

Giraffe cafe – Lt Lonsdale St. This super cute cafe run by suitably super cute staff serves amazingly good coffee. With a minimal kitchen, they always seem to pull out some great specials and great quality food from nowhere. Their chilli con carne tortilla for $8 or so simply blows my mind. At night they do a great trade with deserts such as tiramisu too.

Central Club Hotel. Quite possibly the only $10 pot and parma left in Melbourne it’s the epitome of cheap but blissfully cheerful. Opposite the Vic Markets, the publicans have looked after us for years now and they really know something about running a great pub. This is the pot and parma (the holy grail of Melbourne pub culture if you’re not from around here) you lust for when you’ve been out of the country for a while. Great characters and great times and all are welcome, but definitely not a nouveau riche gastro-pub. I hope to god they keep it that way too.

Town Hall Hotel – Errol St, North Melbourne. Littered with proper rock memorabilia from Iggy Pop to the Stones, with a healthy mix of kitsch, heaven would be something like this bar for me. Despite the surrounds their $18 parma sounds like a big ask. But this is a proper chicken parma made of whole chicken breast with no short cuts taken. Oh and there’s optional pineapple for those who like that kind of thing. Not cheap by any stretch but I’ve paid a lot more for a lot less in other places. Parma, and rock, heaven.

Organic food in much the same light. Both massively expensive, and to some extent, both are approved by the ministry of good intentions and nothing more. As with everything, kosher is way bigger in America. In Melbourne, unless you’re in Caufield, you will struggle to find anything more than bagels, matzoh or pickled gefilte fish. Meh, what can you do.

But our question is, is kosher food actually organic? No. Because religious doctrine written thousands of years ago could predict cheeseburgers being really unhealthy, but not petroleum based pesticides being used in agriculture on a colossal scale. And when the chemicals came, did they revise their doctrine? No chance.

The only thing with vegetables in kosher I could find was that they must be free of bugs. So in theory you could get tomatoes form Chernobyl and they’d be kosher. No wucken furries. Well what about the meat? From my skimpy research (and I welcome any feedback/corrections on the subject. I’m by no means authoritative on the subject). Again you could feed cows McCrap burgers and it could still be potentially kosher. There’s absolutely nothing I could find to say you couldn’t feed animals feed based on chemicals. Only how the beast is killed, the blood is drained and meat treated with salt.

Even more interesting is that in the US, kosher is considered such a high standard, in many states kosher meat packing plants aren’t subject to food standard inspections. Anecdotally, people have said how kosher places have gone out of business because word got out about how filthy their meat preparation facilities were. Thankfully, it would seem that the Jewish community is so small in Australia that a dodgy kosher butcher wouldn’t last long. Whether the same law exemptions apply in Australia, sorry no idea.

Anyways, if there was any motto to this story it’s that buy food based on quality, not dogma. If the kosher product is good and worth the money, good. Same with the organic. But unless you’re fervent in your beliefs, it’s best to mix and match to get the best quality food.

Oh yeah, and if peacenik organic types are so preoccupied with saving the planet one vegetable at a time, why the hell are they always wrapped in so much shitty plastic…

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, sumac and cayenne)
• milk
• semolina (optional)

1. pre heat the oven as hot as it will go
2. lay your sausages out in a big oven baking dish so they cover as much of the surface as possible
3. dice your potatoes into 1cm squares so they boil quick. chuck them in a cold water pot with plenty of salt. Crank the gas until they’re well boiled. We’re gonna mash these puppies hard.
4. dice up your tomato. Leave it raw and scatter over the sausages and set aside
5. cut up your onion nice and fine and coarsely chop your garlic.
6. now grab a wok or a pan and warm up your olive oil for about 2 mins
7. chuck the spices in the oil and let it mix well. Follow it up with the garlic and let that sit for a minute or two to infuse
8. finally throw in the onion and let it all brown nicely and soften up. 2-4 minutes should do it nicely. This is the most important bit
9. now throw the onion and spice mix over the sausages and toms. cover in salt
10. once your potatoes have boiled, mash them and cover it over the sausages like a pie. Pour over milk to soften the mash
11. optionally, sprikle with semolina so get a bit of crunchiness happening.
12. throw in the oven for 30 minutes.

Inside the decor is as arty and minimal as the name suggests. Choose something to eat from the blackboard and park yourself on a bench or table and watch a weekend breakfast slowly morph into a lunchtime beer! Food wise, it’s quick and simple. No big kitchens or even rendered walls to flaw you. Their baked beans are home made and nothing short on sensational. They have a bunch of open toasted sandwiches too. I’ve tried the salmon and dill toasty thing and it was sublime. Coffee is half decent too.

Not completely sure but I don’t think they make fresh juice and they don’t have any wireless internet, which is handy when you get bored of your skull working at home. Minor quibbles in an otherwise awesome place. So if you get bored of Orange and other places, check it out.

You could start with the kitschy Chinese decorations, or the faux rustic brick wall on the boucany. Or even go as far as saying $12 for 3 satay skewers is beyond ridiculous. But it’s the lack of service which is truly exceptional. While there are some Asian staff hidden away from sight in the kitchen, the staff here look about as Asian as the token white guy in a Kung Fu movie. Better still, a ham sandwich.

Now an Asian beer garden should have Asian beer. Well think again. They only had Kirin First Press on tap and I couldn’t see any others bottled (well maybe Chang). No Tsing Tao, Asahi or especially my favourite Japanese micro brews.

I can’t personally vouch for the quality of my $21 chicken curry though. Because it never came. The kitchen must’ve loved it so much they took it to the framers. Those that did eat, got their meals 5 minutes before their rice came. When I finally cancelled the meal, about the time my mates were finishing theirs, there was no apology from the head waiter. He was ran off his feet attending a half full restaurant.

If you like a cultural experience devoid of any culture, service without food, over inflated prices and Asians that look like Ginger Meggs, all washed down with $8 tap beer, Cho Gao is the go. Otherwise a lobotomy might be a less painful experience. There are plenty of great, well established Asian bars in Melbourne: Robot, Double Happiness, you name it. This place just puts the Asian in cauc-asian and looks as if it would probably melt in the sun – no doubt before your meal arrives. Avoid.

Well and truly a must have cookbook. And yes ANYONE can cook a roaring curry from scratch.

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 with me.

Chapman is an English lad (presumably half caste) with a great insight into the methods and traditions of the curry. He lists the top 20 curries of the UK, each with its own story of how it came to be. These stories are worth the price of admission alone. For example, one curry that was invented by irate curry shop owners when pissed, racist Pommies would come in asking for something extra hot.  Kind of like a curry shop owner’s revenge!

Each of the curries has variations too, e.g. restaurant style, or traditional, vegetarian, you name it.  Each recipe is also broken down into its elements and nothing is left out. For example, how to make ghee, garam masala, a good curry ‘gravy’ etc. So after a few recipes you can start making your own variations.

Also handy is the A-Z of spices scattered throughout the book. Again explaining the etymology and how to use them. Chapman has truly left no stone unturned.

You don’t have to be a great cook for this. But the results will make others think that you are. Look at any other curry recipe in isolation and you’ll feel overwhelmed. Chapman has succeeded in making a book that’s both enjoyable readable and simplifies the art of curry making. Brilliant stuff.

Make no mistake this is not a trendy wine. For a start it’s from the Murray Valley region, not some glitzy South Australian region. It’s also worth saying that despite the five gold medals on the label (not like the bottle pictured), it cost less than twenty bucks in a corner store. What it was, from this winery and in this vintage, was a sensation.

This verdot, with five years in the bottle, had been aged properly and had lost its harsh tannins. It had a very luxurious fruit/acid balance, with a subtle tinge of cranberry that suits roasted turkey. Mouth finish was viscous and bang on perfect.

If you’re wondering why you haven’t seen verdot anywhere it’s simple. It’s not cool. It’s been an anonymous blender in Bordeaux blends since Adam was a boy and the vine looks like brambles in full bloom. When most wine makers will only mix about 4% of petit verdot with a Shiraz or something red, you get the idea how hard it is to make 100% of it taste great.

So my advice to you is this. If you see a 2002 Trentham Estates verdot, just buy it and drink it now. Don’t go pass go, don’t collect $200. Just get the corkscrew and a nice looking woman. After the requisite five years it’s sublime. You won’t find one. But if you see a 2004 or 2005, I reckon it would actually be better.

If you drink it before hand, it will be a bit more gruff and in your face. But if you’re patient it will royally award you with something very special at a very bargain basement price.

Istria and Rovinj is absolutely gorgeous, except for the fact that were in an internet cafe listening to Bobby Brown. Music sadly doesn’t have the same life cycle that it does at home. In other words, crap music lives forever in Croatia. Only down side is that the ocean water is nowhere near as clear as it is down south in Hvar and Korčula. Nor do the locals speak as much English. So much so that if you come to Rovinj, its like getting a free stop over in Germany because there are so many German tourists here.

Rovinj would have to be a highlight of the trip so far. Because it has an old city (no city walls though), so much art and charm in abundance. Like down south, there are plenty of ferries to catch to little islands and stuff. But we’ve well and truly had our fill of that. And the weather has been a little more than average sadly for boating expeditions. Oh and truffles are incredibly cheap in restaurants up here. We had spaghetti and truffles for about $17 AUD. Awesome!

Speaking of good food, we’ve just come out of Monte’s, a restaurant not in any of the travel guides. We’ve had an incredibly sumptuous five course meal on par with View Du Monde in Melbourne with wine for approx $200 AUD. In many respects probably better than local fare through the creativity in dishes and quality of produce. If you end up this far north in Croatia, make sure you save your pennies for Monte’s. The food is much better up north and its far more of a Italian/Euro vibe here than in Dubrovnik and Hvar down south.

At this stage its worth noting that northern Croatia would be pretty inaccessible without a car. Its not cheap (petrol is roughly $2 a litre here) but it’s very so worth it. Especially the quaint little village of Vodnjan was worth the rental of the car alone. Its a little inland village that for all intents hasn’t changed in a 100 years. Not a hit of a fast food joint or chain coffee store anywhere. The antithesis of a tourist town! At the very least, it’s a taste of how Croats truly live in ancient little villages.

The real highlight of Vodnjan is the bizarre experience of seeing 6 sainted mummies in a Church in Vodnjan. One of these mummies was about 600 years old but still has elastic skin. Very, very very, freaky to see. They wouldn’t let you take photos. But we had these postcards that looked like they were from the cover of a Bloodduster CD. Easily the most freaky and macarbe experience of the trip.

Equally macabre was seeing the land mine warning signs on the side of the road to Politviće National Park. A grim reminder that war in that national park only really finished circa 1996. Sadly it was raining cats and dogs and we didn’t get to see the park. But it sure was an experience getting there. Should hopefully get back there this week.

Next update will probably be in Zagreb, the Croatian capital. Until then, rock out with yer cock out! I know I will!