Melbourne – another 24 hours…

Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, I actually spent a weekend, but 24 hours sounds sort of better. Besides, this is a foodie post, so fits the breakfast, lunch and dinner format.

Anyways, here’s the pick of where we ate. As an aside, this post comes with a warning about virtual airborne calories…

Brunch

The Grain Store.

Located at the Spencer Street end of Flinders Lane this place is a bit of a favourite. It’s also busy so if you intend eating here on a weekend morning, be prepared to wait.

The space is great and a throwback to when many of the buildings down this end of town were used to store shipments coming in and out of Melbourne via the Yarra River.

Given that we’d had a late night at the award dinner on Saturday night and I was on an early afternoon flight home, we had Sunday brunch rather than breakfast.

I had the portobello mushrooms with spinach, poached eggs, potato bake and a hazelnut hollandaise (I know, right?). That’s it in the pic above.

My friend had pork belly, cheek croquette, cauliflower, toasted couscous, carrot puree and a very yummy chilli caramel. Speaking of which, I really need to have a go at making a chilli caramel.

Lunch

Hellenic Republic, Brunswick.

Located in Lyon Street, Brunswick, the number 1 tram stops right outside this place.

I’ve wanted to eat here for a while now and wasn’t disappointed with our choice for Saturday lunch.

Okay, in full disclosure here, we ordered way too much food and left quite a bit of the chicken and almost all of the chips. Anyways, it was excellent.

We started with saganaki – Kefalograviera cheese with peppered figs – and a white cod roe taramasalata with pita bread that was so good I could have eaten it by the bucket.

This probably would have been enough food but we also ordered some chicken from the spit and chips with feta, garlic oil and oregano – which we left most of.

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Cocktails

Beneath Driver Lane

Friday night cocktails were at a bar underneath Driver Lane appropriately titled Beneath Driver Lane. I did tell you about this place after my last trip to Melbourne, but that was one of the posts I lost in the great blog disaster of July…of course, I exaggerate just a touch.

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Anyways, it’s located in what used to be the money order office of the GPO and is seriously cool. It also gets busy on a Friday afternoon so book ahead if you want to sit in the booths.

Dinner

Kisume

Located in Flinders Lane between Swanston and Russell Streets.

From the same crowd that brought us Chin Chin (Flinders Lane), Hawker Hall (Windsor) and others, my friend had eaten here previously and raved about it. As well she should have. I couldn’t fault it.

We went for the tasting menu and to be honest I’m not sure I can tell you exactly what we had, but I’ll give it a go.

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The chrysanthemum tofu in the miso soup moved and swayed like anemones do in the ocean…which was almost mesmeric.

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In case you’re wondering…

Taramasalata is a dip made from tarama or cod or mullet roe. Most of the tarama we get is pink. The taramasalata at Hellenic Republic is made from white cod roe. It’s available from delis although I haven’t seen it here on the Sunshine Coast.

You can buy taramasalata in the supermarket, but once you’ve tried the real thing you’ll be spoilt forever. The texture is so much lighter and fluffier.

Anyways, the dip is made from blitzing the tarama with onion, garlic, oil, lemon juice and fluffy white bread. The recipe I’ve used in the past is from Greg and Lucy Malouf’s Moorish. You can find a link to it here.