I had wanted to dine at David’s for many years, my interest being piqued by the fact that some of David Zhou’s dishes blend Shanghai cuisine with traditional chinese medicine. An interesting concept - one can have a great meal and perhaps cure a couple of ailments too!

The restaurant exudes an interesting funky vibe, helped by the high ceilinged warehouse conversion. This gives one room to throw some rather big features around - cherry blossom lamp shades the size of barrels, an interesting giant bamboo light wall feature and giant vases spiked with bamboo lengths. But it does retain some of the traditional - white tablecloths, timber floors and furniture, and the most magnificent old style shelving system that backs onto the bar (complete with sliding ladder to help one reach the top).

The service was a little hit and miss though. It was efficient, but had the manner of wanting us to “hurry up”. I hate being rushed when it concerns food - so I found this a little disconcerting. Also, I would have liked a little guidance as to how much we had ordered. As it was, we probably had enough food for 3-4 people. It was bloody great food though, so it wasn’t too much of a hardship to bear.

We decided our first course should be a dish that has been used as a traditional tonic for hundreds of years. Whilst it didn’t look pretty, the Double Boiled Duck Soup had nourishing “Ying” or cool energising properties. This soup was especially good for alleviating dryness of skin and increasing my “Chi“. It also enhances mental clarity and intelligence. I certainly need some of that..so bring it on! The soup was very gentle - it tasted healthy and temple-like.

An unctuously spiced lamb with a “good taste and strong bouquet” arrived cradled in a crisp lettuce leaf. Apparently lamb is meant to increase the warming energy or “yang” - which meant by this stage, I had been cooled and warmed in equal measure. So was I back to where I began? I digress.

Anyway, this was a winner of a dish - satisfyingly good in a sweet, salty and spicy way.

My tastebuds were surprised by a cold entree of Shanghai style fish, sliced in pieces and marinated/smoked with sweet soya sauce. It had an unusual texture and mouth feel, almost tasting candied in a way. This particular dish should enhance my digestion and provide beautifying properties. Bring that one on too!

X.O. Chilli Scallops also enhanced my digestion - that is because it tasted so bloody marvellous. Plump little scallops were sauteed with snow peas, zucchini, spring onions and chilli and a wonderful little X.O. sauce that punched you right in the tastebuds.

The next dish almost required a standing ovation. A very satisfying plate of stirfried chinese broccoli with assorted mushrooms was just wonderful. As I may have mentioned previously - I am always overjoyed when it comes to a good plate of greens. And this one was a superior example. Well done.

With the mains being dispatched and devoured, we made our way to the dessert menu. This is where a little help from the ol’ wait staff would have been greatly appreciated. We ordered two dishes, and really - one would have been more than ample considering they were both DFGs (deep fried goodness), cooked for our artery clogging pleasure.

Golden Almond Pudding with black sesame powdered sugar was quite an interesting dessert - something I have not seen on a menu before. The only way I can think of describing the texture is chewy rubbery custard. It is not as unpleasant as it sounds - just somewhat bizarre in mouth feel. And I’d love to know what the setting agent was. Perhaps tapioca flour?

Red bean pancakes wiped every notion that what we had consumed to this point was a somewhat healthy (if you don’t count the chewy custard - but then the first dessert never counts). But dare I say it (as if there weren’t enough calories to start with), this would have been really great with ice cream and/or a syrup. Both desserts are designed for sharing - they are way too big to eat on your own.

By this stage both EG and I could hardly move we’d eaten so much. Luckily David’s is in partnership with Ay Oriental Teahouse - so there was a delightful selection of teas to aid the digestion. Our choice was a lychee jasmine brew (top photo), which was a hand-made tea ball with antioxidant properties. It was lovely to watch as the ball slowly unfolded into a beautiful flower. Good for the visual, taste and olfactory senses.

With an extensive menu of over ten pages, this place has the potential for numerous repeat visits to sample the many dishes on offer. I very much look forward to my next adventure there.

Kenzan does a damn fine bowl of ramen, in this case Yasai Ramen with vegetables and tofu. A sublimely rich miso stock was the salty sea that supported silken wakame kelp, sliced spring onion, slender slivers of bean shoot, tender bean sprouts, carrot shards, kernals of corn, a boiled egg, small blocks of tofu and a tangle of wheat noodles.

This wonderfully busy little laneway restaurant suffers from good patronage though. So if you want a lunchtime feed on a weekday, I suggest getting there early to nab a seat before the office crowd (12 noon should do it). It is also not a place to laze over a long lunch either - you are there for a good Japanese feed, and quickly.

Kenzan is also one of the few places to do kickarse onigiri and handrolls. And due to ingenious wrapping/packaging that requires one to have an engineering degree to work out, your nori stays fantasically crisp around the well executed rice and fillings.

You may want to read Madame Anna’s, or my trusty lunchtime companion of the day, impression of Kenzan here. We both think it rocks.

More lunch fun in the city, and this time I think I’m turning Japanese. Uh huh. I really think so

Kimurakan is a rather small and somewhat unpolished looking venue. So avert your eyes from the scruffy paintwork, dirty windows and chipped bento boxes. And don’t fuss too much when it’s really hot, as they don’t do aircon. But what it does do is one of the freshest looking bento(h) boxes I’ve had in quite some time.

As I scanned the tatty looking menu that features all the regular faves such as bento, donburi (rice) and ramen (noodles), my gaze traveled towards the dish of the gentleman sitting next to me. Too easy. My mind was made up.

“Sashimi Bento” I mouthed to the waitress, pointing to the man beside me.

“Hai!” was her reply.

First to arrive was a tall glass of iced lemon tea (it comes with the bentoh). Refreshingly sweet and kept cool by large cubes of ice.

Then to the bentoh. The sashimi (salmon) was positively oishi; as fresh as it gets with large streaks of fat that just melted in your mouth. One can not help but feel supremely virtuous eating such a thing of beauty. But in all things ying/yang, one must balance this with some deep fried goodness, in this case katsu, or crumbed pork fillet. It was zig-zagged with a sweet barbecue plum sauce, and sat atop a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce. A herby garlicky gyoza took up another little compartment sitting in a pool of dipping sauce, and tofu puffs took up another, drenched with a sweetish soy/sesame/chilli combo. A super crisp garden salad (unfortunately adorned with mayonnaise) and steamed rice garnished with toasted sesame seeds completed the box.

Damn, I enjoyed every little bit of that (except for the mayo…bleh!) You couldn’t have got any fresher had you caught the fish and pulled the veg out of the garden yourself. And all it cost me was $9.50. Kakkoii!

UPDATE 14 May 2007
I have ventured back to Kimurakan a few times since I originally posted this review, and it has always been pretty good (though somewhat shabby). But on my most recent return a few days ago, it appears something has gone awry. The restaurant had an altogether unpleasant stench and the hygiene/cleanliness was also questionable. It was a rather grubby looking Chef who presented us with our menus. Hmm…I decided I didn’t want to eat here on this occassion.

Can life get any better than this? After reading about the freshly shucked oysters at Theos in Prahran Market, EG and I just had to go and experience it for ourselves.

For $12.00 you get a dozen oysters, freshly shucked for your convenience. That’s a dollar each people! A restaurant would normally charge three times as much, and I’d doubt they’d be as fresh as these little beauties were. We decided to go for a taste tester - one of each of the four varieties on offer that day. With tray precariously balanced (so as not to lose the briny juices), we made our way to Rumbles Cafe to pick up a couple of glasses of bubbles, the perfect accompaniment to our meaty molluscs. A quick twenty paces to a table in the sunny courtyard to devour our saliferous booty, and we were as happy as two foodies in any food market can get.

From front to back was the small Tasmanian mud, Coffin Bay, St.Helens, and Sydney Rock. It was interesting to line them up and taste their subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences. The Sydney Rock for example was quite irony, as is the Coffin Bay (though more subtly), whilst the St.Helens and small Tassie Muddy are delicate and sweet. Hands down, St.Helen’s was voted the best by EG and I. It offered the perfect taste-of-the-sea mouthful.

The name of this establishment always provides me with some amusement, as I’m not quite sure whether it alludes to a trendy meal or a terrible bout of delhi belly. Alas, I can attest to the fact that I haven’t suffered any ill effects from my visits, so the curries must truly be funky (in the cool sense of the word ;-)).

Funky Curry isn’t about fine dining. In fact I normally baulk at the sight of a dreaded bain marie. But I suggest you check your reservations at the door, and embrace the idea of the germ incubator (aka. bain marie) and cafeteria/jail style metal trays.

For $6.90 you get what is considered their small plate (above). It is by no means small, so venture here on an empty stomach. You can fill your plate with any choice of rice, meat curries, vegetable curries and dhal. My bent is towards vegetarian options - so above is a vegetable korma (with real frozen vegetable dice), a moreish pumpkin curry, and an eggplant and potato aloo. Steamed plain or saffron rice accompanies, and for an extra dollar or two you get some naan.

It’s cheap and it’s tasty. It might not be the best Indian you’ll ever eat, but just remember, it’s funky.

When a spring roll arrives at your table already dismembered for your convenience - well, one has got to wonder. Is it a half arsed attempt at nouveau food styling? Or did the chef think the plate was too stark to send out on its own without a splattering of spring roll pastry decorating the plate? Hmm…I dunno. I don’t get it. But that is pretty much indicative of the dining experience I had at Lau’s Family Kitchen. Yes, the food was great (when it wasn’t broken!), but there were a few little quirks that just had me wondering.

The Lau family is somewhat of a stalwart on the Melbourne dining scene, being creator of the legendary Flowerdrum. Gilbert Lau, big daddy of said establishment, retired back in 2003 - some say to pay off gambling debts, others say to just rest after six day work weeks. Either way, he now has his finger in the pie at Lau’s, along with his sons who now appear to be running with the Lau show.

First quirk of the evening was the request for two glasses of sparkling. They only had enough for one glass (which was complimentary when they realised the error - good move!), as they forgot to put the bottles into the chiller from the busy night prior to our lunch visit. This wasn’t a bother so much, but the very stern reprimand to the waiter who “forgot” the task did bother me.

And despite having five staff on the floor on what is pretty much a small dining area (40 seats), the service was a little hit and miss. One waiter would plate your food, whilst another wouldn’t. You were either ignored for a period, or awash with attention. They also didn’t notice our empty wine glasses.

The menu is small - a range of approximately 20 dishes. You can choose from the retro and kitschy sweet and sour pork to the endangered patagonian toothfish (which I refuse to eat due to it’s status). Nothing will jump out and bite you on the arse though - so don’t expect any culinary surprises.

For entree we started with the dismembered lamb spring rolls (photo above), which despite the massacre on the plate, were wonderful. Crisp pastry, tasty lamb and vegetable filling, and served with thick sweet plum-y type sauce.

Next entree was the eggplant and yam dumplings - mashed yam/taro stuffed into slices of eggplant and capsicum, battered and deep-fried to absolute deliciousness and dressed with a reduced and thickened stock. You want to eat this one rather quickly, else the batter turns less than crispy. But it still tasted pretty good all soggy.

We then moved to the mains and chose the Beef Hor Fun. It was a tender pile of meat set in a rich satay sauce atop slippery flat rice noodles. Best thing to do with this dish is dig your spoon in and mess it all about, to get the noodles coated in satay sauce.

A fresh bowl of steamed and braised mixed vegetables (snow peas, bok choy, shitake, chinese broccoli) accompanied our now messed up dish of Hor Fun. The veg did come with something a little extra - about four strands from some sort of brush (perhaps used to clean down the wok?). We pointed this out our waiter, but didn’t get any recompense/apology etc. That was a little disappointing.

We decided to forgo dessert in favour of Acland Street treats not too far away, and the fact that a dessert menu wasn’t offered to us.

I think Lau’s would be a great place to have a good casual meal with your mates. It doesn’t hold any aspirations of being the next Flowerdrum. Basically, I think they just want to offer honest food to regular punters. If they could just iron out a few of their service quirks - they’ll do absolutely fine.

How amazingly vibrant can a salad get? Slowfood Piadina has become somewhat of a local for lunchtime jaunts. On this occasion $9.50 got me a spicy chicken bake, which consisted of three levels of food; roasted potato frittata, spicy cuminy curry chicken, and baked spiced rice. Mmm - hearty goodness. And the salad, so fresh it crunched with each mouthful. A shred of red/white cabbage, carrot and beetroot, and sliced radishes with curly greens. A gentle lemony dressing coated the vegetables, and the whole thing was served on a lovely recylable dish with wooden cutlery. Luckily it didn’t come with the dreaded dukkah that I have also had the displeasure of eating. Here’s hoping they change that little accompaniment.

If you ever require an extreme hit of chilli goodness, then may I suggest a trip to Ye Shanghai for their Gong Bao Ji Ding. If this dish doesn’t set your eyes watering and your sweat glands into overdrive, well then…I’ll eat my words.

Ye Shanghai is elegantly grandoise yet funky. It has high ceilings, exposed bluestone walls, oriental wooden features, lots of imperial red and luscious wallpaper, dark leather banquettes and white tablecloths. The service, well it is rather perfunctory. Front of house are clad in traditional black and whites (with waistcoats!), and their manner is as stuffy as their attire. Which is somewhat at odds with the rather hip interior. But that doesn’t really matter - you are just glad when the waiter anticipates you need another glass of water!

Gong Bao Ji Ding is better known in the West as Kung Pao (pow!) chicken. It does differ somewhat from the traditional Sichuan Gong Bao Ji Ding, which uses Sichuan peppercorns to give that mouth numbing feel. In this case, the rather large handful of small dried red chilli’s does the trick just perfectly - I think it wiped the lining from my mouth almost instantly! Despite that particular effect, it is a wonderfully flavoursome dish. The chicken pieces are braised in shao shing (rice) wine, dry whole chillis, bean paste and red vinegar, and accompanied by carrot slices, spring onion batons and roast peanuts. It is smoky, barbequey and sweet - and as I have mentioned a million times previously, devastatingly hot.

So for $8.80 you too can partake in the Ye Shanghai mouth numbing lunch special. This will get you a soup, steamed rice, your choice of about 8 dish variations, pickles/veg and a fruit/dessert. It arrives neatly on a tray, the main dish kept warm by a tea candle. It is just like a Chinese version of a Japanese bento box. Love that idea.