Jimmy Grants Fitzroy

Why do Greeks always open restaurants that fail? - George Chakiris

I am not exactly sure about the significance of this quote by the great George Chakiris, nor can I pretend any longer that I really know who George Chakiris is, other than what I am able to get from Wikipedia. The fact is, Greek restaurants are doing okay in Melbourne at the moment and I have a feeling we owe that to another George. Possibly the Greekest little Aussie on our shores... George Calombaris in case you weren't following.

True, Greek restaurants have been around in Melbourne forever but George made it popular, and when he brought us Hellenic Republic in Lygon Street, I was hooked on the stuff. The lamb, the chicken, the moussaka, the bougatsa! Far out! Nothing new in this string of foods, but I had to mention them simply because Hellenic Republic does them best. It turns out that everything I have just written is irrelevant, as this review is supposed to be about Jimmy Grants Fitzroy.

Jimmy Grants is everything you know and love from Hellenic Republic all wrapped up in a more condensed form, and revolving around the scrumptious souvlaki. 

There are 5 main souvlaki that you can choose from; Mr Papadopoulos, Nonna Maria, the patris, the bonegilla and homer. Essentially you are choosing between chicken, lamb, a mix of the two, prawns and falafel. What makes these the greatest souva's in Melbourne is the mixture of chips, mustard aioli and parsley. Whatever they do with that mustard aioli is what sets these particular souva's apart from any other. I personally will inhale 2 of the bonegilla and possibly a bowl of chips if my appetite approves, if it doesn't I eat all that anyway.

Being in Fitzroy some things are not quite as you would expect, or exactly as you would expect depending how you look at it. For instance, you can't get a coke or lemonade, you have to get organic cola. Organic Cola? Why? Is usually my reaction whenever we go there, but my addiction to sugar means I order and drink it anyway. The place is incredibly uncomfortable, not sure if it is supposed to represent the way places are set out in Greece or something. The tiny stools that they have are just short enough to be awful and the table height means you end up holding your souva in your hands above your lap. Even with a $300 pair of jeans with anti stain technology, you aren't going to be able to remove the stain that you are going to end up with when that oil/sauce drips from the souva and onto your lap. Your first reaction will be to try and save the oil by trying to suck it from your jeans because it is so precious and tasty and you know what just fell on your lap is the best part of the souva, but it is just oil and sauce and it now belongs to your jeans. Every time you look down at your lap for years after you will be reminded in the form of an imperfectly round stain that you once had the best souva of your life, and that souva was from Jimmy Grants. You will be told by dry cleaners that they couldn't get that stain out and your response will simply be "that's fine". You will see that stain and think of short bald Greek men, the thoughts may be impure, but you wont care about that either. Your dogs will headbutt you in the groin and sniff and lick so hard you will feel like you are being sexually abused, but you will understand and then just take your pants off and hand them over. You can't fight it.

The restaurant has a massive painting of a plane which was done by street artist Dan Wenn, but who cares...

- Stand a little out of my sun - 

Thermomix TM5 (The Husband Review)

If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one - Mother Teresa

Thermomix...

Me: What are you on about?
Wife: The Thermomix! Don't tell me you haven't heard of it!
Me: Nope
Wife: It is this fantastic machine that chops, and weighs and cooks and blah blah blah...

Sensing my excitement, my wife booked me into a demonstration to check out this amazing piece of machinery, but before that I did some research as I was told this thing was going to cost us 2000 bucks! I'm glad I did the research, and glad I went along to the demo.

The Thermomix TM5 is the new generation of a product that has been around since the mid 80's. Though the company behind the product has been making appliances with similar functions for longer than that, the mid 1980's gave us the first with the Thermomix name. Enough of the history.

The wait for a Thermomix at the time we got it, which was December 2014, was 6 to 8 weeks. Talk about popular, it's not like it is coming direct from Germany, there is a warehouse in Perth. Apparently sales are through the roof at the moment and they are struggling to keep up with demand, those consultants must be pulling some serious cash. The first couple of weeks after receiving it were a bit of a non event. A reluctance to dirty a $2000 cooking appliance accompanied by lack of experience using it meant very few meals were cooked early on, but then came the Nutella Christmas Tree desserts that took Christmas by storm. The Nutella Christmas Tree is a simple dough recipe that is mixed and kneaded within minutes, all inside the Thermomix. You take it out, let it prove and then you start spreading nutella and finally shaping it all into a nutella and sweet dough layered Christmas tree. This tree was such a hit it was almost the only thing that we made in the Thermomix in the 2 weeks leading up to Christmas, but we made it about 10 times. Massive hit! 
Having perfected the art of Nutella Christmas Tree making, my wife gained the confidence she needed to start getting into some serious cooking, and now we find ourselves using the machine almost every night for multiple dishes. The beauty of it is the fact that you can prep something like a cake before dinner, get it into the oven and then get into making dinner itself. For instance, the average risotto takes around 20 minutes in the Thermomix, big deal you might say. But think about this, you don't need to do anything! Once you follow the steps getting all the ingredients in and letting them get chopped up, you let it go and it stirs and saute's the risotto for you. That's twenty minutes you get to spend reading a book or sitting down watching some television, at the same time the cake is baking in the oven.

The machine is pretty massive, but when you take into account that it needs to perform all these amazing functions then you kind of figure it makes sense, but it doesn't change the fact that you need to find somewhere on your bench to put the thing. You don't want to be lifting an 8 kilo machine in and out of a cupboard every time you want to cook, plus you will be using it every night, so no point storing it away anywhere.

When it is kneading dough it almost looks and sounds like it is going to bounce off the kitchen bench, but it doesn't which is lucky because it would probably do some serious damage to the tiles. It has some other quirks, like the lid gets locked into place for safety reasons when it about to mix or cook or do anything, if you don't put the lid on properly (which is common), it doesn't let you do anything. I hate that stupid chime it makes when something is finished cooking or it is telling you to move to the next step in the cooking process. Also, I can't imagine how I am going to be able to watch a game of footy with that racket coming from the kitchen... there may be arguments. It is a very loud machine, no one will deny that.

All that matters in the end is that it puts a smile on our faces, like a picture of a minion eating a candle or something (lets face it, they could do anything and make you smile). Nothing beats the feeling you get when you stuff your face with awesome food and share it with those you love. The Thermomix helps you do that by making the whole process of cooking more efficient and less complicated. 

My suggestion is to find yourself a Thermomix consultant and get to a demo, it will blow your mind (and your budget, once you realise you just simply MUST have one). I feel like I should say that this isn't for everyone, but it kind of is. It is just a matter of justifying the cost based on how much you plan on using it; but don't forget, it does inspire you.

If anyone at Thermomix wants to hire me for promotional work let me know ;)

Chiba Japanese

***

I'm not making art, I'm making sushi - Masaharu Morimoto

***

I wouldn't say I am a Japanese food enthusiast and I am certainly not Japanese, in fact I have only recently started dabbling in the cuisine properly over the past 2 months. Recently we were lucky enough to attend a nice little place called Chiba in Moonee Ponds (that's in Melbourne for all you foreigners). We were invited to this restaurant for my sister-in-laws 25th birthday. Normally I am concerned to try new places, but my sister-in-law has particularly good skills in finding nice places to eat, and she introduced us to the last Japanese place that I had grown quite a fondness for, so I was excited at what lay ahead.

I always like to let others order for me if they are introducing me to a new establishment, especially if it is a cuisine that I am still fairly new to, so I avoid the menu like the plague. We are there about 15 minutes before the other 4 that are still to join us which means engaging in pleasant conversation with my wife. The waitress, in her typical Japanese courtesy provides us with an abundance of bow's and thankyou's while topping up our glasses with room temperature water. My wife scours the menu for anything that might be familiar from our other Japanese experiences and points a couple out to me.
"This place looks good!" she is also excited about the upcoming experience.
The remainder of our dinner party arrives and after some chatter around the table and birthday wishes, my sister-in-law gets down to business and starts spitting orders at the waitress who has made about 4 trips back and forth waiting for us to stop talking so she can take our order.

Before I get into the food, it's probably worth mentioning the establishment and service. It's a pretty standard Japanese restaurant in the inner city suburbs of Melbourne, situated at the end of a one way street running parallel to a busy shopping strip called Puckle Street. You walk in to a low lit restaurant which is pleasant on the bottom level with a few scattered tables by the counter and bar. We were seated upstairs in an area which looked like it could be sectioned off by a paper sliding door (I doubt it would block much noise). In addition to the paper sliding doors, the room was decorated with burgundy coloured paintings of a particular tree which I am told is a cherry blossom. I am looked at like I have two heads for not knowing more about plants and trees. Whether this is actually a Japanese tradition or not I couldn't tell you. For all I know it could be as traditional as an Italian restaurant plastering pictures of Ferrari's and soccer players on their walls.

First up, edamame. This delightful little dish is what we would call a bowl of soy beans, in fact the description is lightly salted soy beans. The term lightly salted was taken very seriously, I am sure there wasn't any salt at all, but they were actually a good way to start the meal.
The main dishes come to the table and I fall in love with it all.
Let's talk about the Soft Shell Crab Rolls first. Awesomeness at it's most awesome. Lightly flavoured soft shell crab melts in your mouth, you need to bite through rice paper and rice to get to it which you instantly find annoying once you realise what you have been missing your whole life. Cut out the rice and give me freaking crab!
There was the standard plate of inside out sushi rolls; one plate of crispy prawn and a plate of raw tuna, they tasted great. This was also the first time I had tried sashimi, and I came out of there pretty happy with myself and thinking it might be a permanent fixture on future visits to Japanese cuisine.
Then came the next course, the Wafu steak. Bits of tender steak cooked in a wafu sauce which is a kind of thick sauce I would put in a barbecue category. It was reasonable, but I have had better steak. The steak was accompanied by some steamed vegies and a great Japanese interpretation of an Aranchini. They probably invented it, but it was the first thing I thought of when I sunk my teeth into it, so to me they are simply Japanese Aranchini.
We also had the pot stickers and some Japanese spring rolls... not much to say about them really, other than my wife like the pot stickers so much that we needed to order another serve.

One issue...
The sushi was cut way too big to stick in your mouth without looking like you have been stung by bees while you are trying to get rice out from your cheeks. As anyone that has tried to eat sushi before would know; when you bite into sushi, what remains falls all over your plate and you spend the next few minutes using your chop sticks to drop each of the discarded grains of rice into you mouth. Smaller pieces would have been better.

So what's the go?

You have to get down to this place and get your face around the Soft Shell Crab Rolls. Everything was pretty good, but man, that crab... love that crab... mmm... crab. Sweet sweet soft shell crabby wabby.

- siamo alla frutta -