JAMON II
472 Church St
Richmond, Vic
03 9427 1233

This time of year -- the Spring Racing Carnival – is always a time for good food and good wine and good company and sexy outfits and foxy women and that’s just at the track from Saturday to Saturday.

But at this time of the year—with all the punting and the partying especially in the corporate marquees – there is also a heckuva lot of good dining away from the horseflesh.

City and suburban restaurants and hotels brace themselves for a welcome influx of interstate and overseas visitors and all weekend (especially yesterday) Melbourne was humming.

And Saturday night the taxi industry was flat-chat with people milling around taxi ranks in places like Richmond and South Yarra and the CBD and Toorak. The “ drink-drive-bloody idiot” syndrome was patently evident.

But you don’t have to have expensive meals at the swankiest restaurants to have fun. For example, yesterday for a late brunch Sir Hinchalot and friend moseyed off to a favourite and intriguing place in recent years and that is Cavalli in Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda.

A sunny afternoon – the usual passing parade of exotica and erotica like a couple of pneumatic blondes in sprayed-on tops and jeans on roller blades – and one of the best versions of a traditional American lunch you can find. At Cavalli they have turned the BLT into an art form. A huge double focaccia toasted BLT stuffed with melted cheese, bacon, tomato, rocket lettuce and a fried egg.

I saw about ten of them being served around me yesterday. But that was a diversion.

The main Sir Hinchalot report concerns Saturday night and good news, great news, for lovers of fine Japanese food. For lovers of traditional sushi and sashimi. True aficionados will rejoice when I say “ Charlie’s Back!”

To give you a clue about how significant that is I have to go back more than a year to when I raved about a Japanese restaurant in Prahran.

And I said:

This is going to be the strangest Sir Hinchalot restaurant review in years because I am going to rave about a miniscule but brilliant restaurant and I am not going to tell you where it is.

The restaurant that has sparked my love affair is called Jamon. A Japanese sushi and sashimi bar about the size of a large shoebox. It’s sort of in the Prahran - South Yarra region.

You don’t only eat raw salmon. You get fed tid bits from the salmon belly or the salmon tail.

There is a refreshing starter of cucumber cubes with a dressing and sesame seeds. There’s pickled vegetables and quail eggs.

I love oysters -- and I usually like them raw, not dressed up, with no accoutrements except some fresh lime juice.

How about a raw oyster on a slim slice of Japanese nashi pear? It is magic.

There’s chunky, made in front of you, California or Nori rolls, and plenty of fresh fish including octopus and deep sea tuna, kingfish and oysters.

And through it all you watch a maestro at work right in front of you. He’s clever… serving everybody… and you don’t mind waiting as the person on the next stool scores a gem.

He dolls it out: a little bit for you—a little bit for the other guy. It builds a mood of tranquillity and complacency.

And snippets and samples keep coming your way as you deal with a cook who loves what he is doing and loves it when you love what he is serving.

They are the things I said a year ago and we kept going back and going back to Jamon and then disaster four months ago.. Charlie disappeared. Jamon closed.

Well, I found him again Saturday night. Charles Greenfield – Japanese Charlie – has re-opened in Richmond. In Church Street right alongside the railway line just below Swan.

The sushi and sashimi bar opened Friday night and still to come is a special sake room, a lounge, a tempura bar, a yakitori bar. This will be three storeys of Nipponese heaven.

And soon he will also open for lunch a couple of days a week. And as Ned Kelly would have said if he had known the quality of this man’s food: “ Sushi’s Life!”