Well, it started and ended with this picture... the chocolate eclair that looked like it had been licked.

I've walked past the Lindt Cafe -Melbourne CBD - a few times and marveled each time at the queue of people waiting to get in. Personally I'd rather give my money to passionate, artisan pastry chefs, than multinational companies but I guess I am in the minority.

As a professional food browser (self declared, to PDCs frustration) I took it upon myself to try and work out what all the fuss was about.
On my first visit, I noticed that of the few products that were actually on display, cakes were mostly at restaurant prices ($12-$15) without the extra love and attention you would see a pastry chef put into a plated dessert
ie you get a slice of a cake made in a large commercial slab, for the same price as an individually crafted resraurant dessert.
There was chocolates that had mostly been made in your standard moulds and some interesting sounding ice creams that seemed well priced. Macarons or as they describe them 'Delice' were missing from the display.

I tweeted at the time suggesting that the long queue was reflective of a Max Brenner style frenzy.

A month passes and again I am window shopping at the Lindt Cafe, yet this time there are quite a selection of products on display. The catch is that many of them look not quite right, in my honest opinion.
There's the licked eclair, broken and very poorly filled macarons, cakes with finger prints in the ganache and dried cracked cream. In short the offer was unacceptably poor and yet again, people are queuing like sheep to get into the place.
I don't get it.

I again tweet my findings and am humbled by the many stunned reactions to the products. It's not just a personal food nerd fussiness that's saying that it's not good enough, many people are surprised at the lack of quality. So it's with this fire in my boutique-sweets-loving belly, I email Lindt customer service in Sydney to see if they have anything to say about my identifed 'quality control issues', and as I was expecting there is no attention to detail on the customer service department either as nobody has returned my email.

Oh well, I guess I already knew were I stood with Lindt Cafe, I knew it wasn't for me but I thought they might like our feedback. I guess they are too busy serving crappy products to silly people who are willing to queue for them because they think it's the hot place.
More fool them for paying $6 for the eclair that everyone said "Eww" to.

Any self respecting food blogger knows all about the ones that 'come good'; the bloggers that go on to write about their love of food and actually get paid for the passion.


I've have books by Clotilde, David, Adam and Pim (and Steve, though not strictly a food blogger), I read the mainstream media articles written by local bloggers and cheer on our community's victorious moments at regular get togethers.

So it's with the same interest that I keenly accepted an invitation to the latest instalment of these victories; a food bloggers story being made into a book, that then gets made into a movie...

No doubt, I am the marketing trifecta when it comes to the Julie and Julia movie.
Chick - check.
Foodie - check.
Blogger - check.

So I guess I was destined to love it and I did... well actually I loved it more when I, as a good blogger, (not one of those naughty, unresearching ones that all the boring people talk about) did my due diligence looking at examples of both Julie and Julia's work. Initially, watching Meryl Streep play Julia Child all I could see was a frumpy version of the Devil not wearing Prada, and then that thought morphed into an annoying drunk drag queen that likes to grunt. I was disappointed by her strange acting...UNTIL I watched this and this and this. Now I think Meryl is a genius, close to the god like status Dan Aykroyd has in his interpretation but you'll need to see the film for that clip!

I was fortunate enough to watch the film in the luxury of a big fat lazyboy style arm chair while eating Julia Childs recipe for boeuf bourguignon with creamy mash and sipping Red Claw Shiraz. You can to with a special deal at Victoria Village Gold Class, check it out here.

If you are even half as keen as me when it comes to foodie things, I know you will enjoy it immensely. I think I need to see it again just to pull out all my favourite quotes and scenes... who doesn't remember with excitement their first comment?

Labels: blogs, food nerd, Julie and Julia movie, meat, Review

I'm still sorting through various holiday photos and found this doozy from my last visit to New Zealand.

Labels: May, New Zealand, vegetables

I've been jet setting about a bit lately and have finally taken the time to go through the huge amount of photos I have on both my camera and iPhone - as I suspected 80% of them are of food!

This was complimented with what is a more Chinese inspired dish of fresh shiitake mushrooms with choi sum and lots of garlic.

Labels: Dining, Holiday, seafood, Thailand

Hey, have I told you about the tours I have been doing at Prahran Market?

This variety are my absolute, hands down favourite. Firm texture, even when very ripe and small enough that they are not a meal in themselves as some of those ginormous cavendish bananas can be.

What I loved so much about these hands in particular was the bunch on the right, they were particularly tiny, just minuscule as you can see next to the 20 cent piece.

I asked at the counter as I paid for them, "so, do you have any smaller?" The woman looked at me with the strangest frown and then just absolutely cracked up.
"No, they are the smallest".

I totally believed her.

Labels: fruit, Prahran market, Spring

Once upon a time*, back when I got married many months ago, we took a short trip to New Zealand to celebrate with the kiwi contingent that couldn't join us in Melbourne for the official party.
A highlight of the trip apart from PDC's mammoth half marathon PB time, was the most lovely cocktail party that was thrown for us, one of the food highlights of this evening was some very special Kaikoura crayfish.

I've been through Kaikoura a couple of times, it's a small town on the north-east coast of New Zealands south island. The thing I remember most clearly is the fur seal colony that lives along the coast there and the linked foodie thing about seeing these seals that explains my keen interest in this town, seals love crayfish and so do I.
Luckily for both of us Kaikoura translates from Maori as 'Meal of Crayfish' - needless to say there is crayfish to be had for both the Aussie tourist and the seals.

The crayfish canapes you can see in this image I made from two crayfish that my mother-in law bartered for from a licensed Kaikoura diver. Apparently only licensed divers can catch the crays and this guy had more than he needed. (...great to see that smart old fashioned barter is still alive and well)

The crays nearly fell victim to a mornay sauce *phew* before PDC and I decided to take charge and made these ooh-la-la canapes.
The baguette we baked for the croutons was already on hand and we whipped up some mayo quicker than getting in the car to go to the supermarket (if you doubt that, look at my recipe here) the garnish was the tricky part.

An avocado slice and dill was a logical classic combination but never being just satisfied with the easy option I decided to add another flavour combo to the other half.
Persimmons were in season and perfect at the time and I had one waiting for my breakfast the next morning. Thinking about the flavours I decided (with testing on myself, of course!) that the vanilla characters of the persimmon reminded me of a frenchy vanilla sauce sometimes served with fish and the crunch well that went without saying, the decision was made.
So a smear of mayonnaise, a medallion of crayfish (that we had cooked earlier that morning) and then some match sticks of persimmon.

They were gone in a flash. Lucky that cray diver was quicker than a flash

*I opened my blog account and found this as a draft post from what seems like it was from so long ago it was a fairy tale, hence I just had to start with 'once upon a time'.

Labels: May, New Zealand, Recipe, seafood

We spent the last four days at Railay in coastal Thailand. After 2 days of patchy rain and one hell of a storm (as we should expect, as it is rainy season in the region) the sun came out and I had the opportunity to tan my Melbourne-winter pale legs.

Altering between the beach, our beautiful pool and the bar we managed to find what I thought was the perfect beach goer lunch.


A spicy som tam salad (green papaya bashed with dried prawns, fish sauce, chilli, lime, garlic, peanuts, snake beans and tomato... no doubt more and more as well), served on the same plate with some marinated and fried chicken thigh and some of my favourite sticky rice. Lengths of more snake beans and cucumber where the textural garnish.

Pretty healthy, really speedy and bloody amazing flavours. No doubt I will be recreating this at home in Melbourne come summer.

Labels: Holiday, July, salad, Thailand