THREE OF THE BEST

Circa 2 Ackland St, St. Kilda  Melbourne Ph: 03 9536 1122

The Botanical  169 Domain Road  South Yarra Vic  Ph: 03 9820 7888

Taxi Transport Hotel Federation Square Ph: 03 9654 8808

At the start of a new year it is worth looking back at three of my favourite eateries of 2007. All had superb food. All should go on the list for special occasions. But I found one thing at each of them that niggled me.

I’ll start with The Botanical because we have found ourselves going back there again and again. The Bubbles Bar at the back is a classy respite from the noise of the busy bar with the suits and sirens. Especially now that smoking is banned. I’d been driven out by selfish males with huge phallic cigars that should have prompted some Freudian psychoanalysis.

And the main restaurant lured me with its nightly selection of fresh oysters. Not only the gems from Coffin Bay near Ceduna in South Australia but some smaller beds in parts of New South Wales which have surprised me with their quality. Places like Wallis Lakes and oysters like Label Rouge Claire De Lune  and even Angassi mud oysters. They also have a great fish soup to challenge the best at The Brasserie at Crown.

I like their Chinese omelette when it’s on the menu and the zucchini flowers are always good. If you are a meat eater there have ‘just walk ‘em through the kitchen’ sized steaks including a giant one  described by The Age  as ‘ the best steak in Melbourne’.  Which, I’m sure, would piss off the King of the Carnivores, Vlado in Richmond.

Mrs Nosebag has a vegetarian dish which I think is called ‘gnuddi’. It’s a sort of a ‘naked gnocci’. Perhaps that’s where it got its name because they are little packets of ravioli without the pasta clothing. Mrs. Nosebag was so impressed she ordered  it for an entrée and again as a main course.

As with many of The Bot’s dishes the combination of tastes in that dish is stunning.

The Botanical is full and not only on Friday and Saturday nights. We have been there on a Tuesday and it has been chockers. And that’s my only complaint. Not that it is doing such great business but that the acoustics are terrible. The floors are polished wood and the ceilings high and angled. The noise seems to be thrown straight back on to the tables and voice volume increases to compensate.

Don’t try to do a business deal there. You could sell your house by mistake. On a table of four two people can’t hear what the other two are saying.

Taxi is a special dining treat for me. I have never had a bad meal there. Not one dish that has disappointed me. As I said in an earlier review Taxi is not so much a place where East meets West. It’s where East marries West.  From the east is sushi chef Ikuei Arakane and from the west executive chef Michael Lambie.  Their dishes and tastes and sights weave together. To call it ‘mix and match’ would be an insult.

Their sushi and sashimi tasting plates from which you choose  three or five pieces from kingfish, tuna, salmon, scallops, crab, octopus or prawns are great entrees. And you won’t find a lighter tempura batter in town.

It is the one restaurant in Australia where I succumb to a steak dish. Wagyu beef. Its succulent taste no longer surprises me because I have had it several times since first tasting it on a cruise on The World.  But it never disappoints. You really could cut it with the wrong side of the knife.

What does surprise me at Taxi is the price. And I am not joking. It was a big piece of beef with one quarter left in one piece and the rest sliced and resting. Served with a separate bowl of Japanese dipping sauce and a blob of horseradish mayonnaise.  It cost $49. I have seen such a dish listed at $90-$120 for 250g in Melbourne restaurants. In Sydney, you’ll pay $50 for an ordinary (non-Wagyu) piece of meat and then come the $8-$9 add-ons for salads and potatoes. At Aria the sides are $15 each.

The one thumbs down for Taxi is it’s location. To be more accurate –getting to the location.  You have to run the gauntlet of a mini-Oktoberfest in the huge popular Federation Square pub downstairs to get in. On our first visit I almost felt like calling myself a taxi and getting out of there.

The third leg of this ‘best of ‘07’ trifecta is  so good you tend to use it, lazily, as a yardstick. Things are ‘Circa-like’ or ‘reminds me of Circa’. Or ‘tries to be like Circa’. It is an understandable example to hold up. Because it is so good and so consistent.

I said in my original review they were brave people who started it. The address is ‘Ackland Street’  but it is really part of that old blood house on Fitzroy Street called The Prince of Wales.

And yet, tucked in the tattered back pocket, it is a restaurant of world class. The look, the food, the service – and one of the most comprehensive wine lists in the country – make Circa the benchmark for any Australian restaurateur striving for culinary greatness.

I have been there a number of times and you come away impressed by  the textures and the tastes and the combinations of dishes from a menu that is calculatingly not huge  and is now right up in the Sydney range when it comes to prices.

They can make tasty beds of cucumber diced so small they call it ‘caviar’.

I ordered both my dishes off the daily specials list and settled for angassi oysters topped with caviar (pitched well by the waiter) and the slow-cooked duck. I don’t like rare poultry but figured duck cooked for five hours couldn’t be rare. I’ve cooked Peking Duck and roasted Long Island duck each for well under two hours and the flesh was cooked through and the skin was crispy.

I was warned it would be ‘pinkish’. And it turned out pinker than the Barbie Doll pink walls of my wife’s new apartment decorating project. My fault.

The oysters were great. Angassi for me are a new treat. But there were only four of them although they had been dusted with real caviar. SAs they should. The entrée cost $32. Eight dollars an oyster.

It started a restaurant debate with frequent diners a few nights later. Should you be told the price of special dishes on the menu or should restaurants follow the J.P.Morgan creed: If you have to ask the price you can’t afford it?

We came to the consensus that if an entrée or a main special is in the general range of prices on the printed menu then it’s not necessary. But thirty-two bucks for four oysters should have been mentioned. I mean, if you ordered a lobster at $130 you’d expect to be told the price.

It was also the first time in a couple of years that I was hit with $20 corkage for my two BYO bottles of non-alcoholic Edenvale sparkling cuvee and shiraz. I had some trouble convincing the waiter that although it came in a wine bottle and looked like wine… it wasn’t.

Anyway, there are some highlights from the Hungry Hinch noshing in 2007. Others really recommended:  Melbourne – Dish, Number 8, JJ’s. Sydney – Guillaume @ Bennelong,  Pink Salt. Hong Kong – Lobster Bar and Grill, Island Shangri-La.