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The Hardware Societe

120 Hardware St, Melbourne
Phone 03 9078 5992

Okay…I don’t want to get all gushy again and fawn over places I fall in love with, but dang, it’s hard not to fall in love and fawn all over The Hardware Societe.

Many of you may remember a post I did on a fabulous lil’ cafe called Beetroot a few years ago. At the time, it was run by Di and her husband Will, and was pumping out seasonal breakfasts and lunches, and the most decadent fairy floss topped hot chocolates. In 2007, after five years at the coalface, they decided it was time to move on, and sold the business to return to the 9 to 5.

But they obviously couldn’t keep away from their love of food or the laneway, and have returned with their take on the cuisines of France and Spain, inspired by their travels and cultural heritage. We’re talking just honest-to-goodness bistro-type fare, awesome produce and spectacular attention to detail. At present they are only open Monday to Friday, for breakfast and lunch, but please, please, please, open soon for dinner so I can languish with a glass of wine and some tapa! Fingers crossed this becomes a reality in the New Year.

And Di – I must confess my admiration that you remembered our coffee order after two years away from the business! We were WAY impressed. As you can see, the delectable Coffee Supreme is their coffee of choice, and I absolutely adore those retro looking cups. The minature doughnuts on the side, spiked with a hint of annisete, was the perfect accompaniment.

Now excuse the continuity of this post, as I’ll be talking about the food from a few different visits, as is my want.

To kick off a lazy lunch, one excellent place to start would be the tapa. From the back we had little bowls of potted mussels (buttery and tender), the most delectable sardines and green olives. Now I must confess I am not a big sardine fan, but I have been turned by these ones. In fact, I initially thought they were mackeral! Yum! Then to the front, there were some slices of chorizo, tortilla de patatas, caper berries, smoked almonds, roasted peppers, manchego cheese with a beautiful dulce de membrillo to offset the salty with sweet, slivers of jamon and then, oh yes, some delectable croquetas de bacalao (salted cod croquettes).

The tortilla de patatas gave me one of those food memory jolts, of my Italian grandma making patate fritte in her old black cast iron pan; basically thin slices of potato cooked in a ridiculous amount of oil. It is like the confit of the potato world, and this tortilla reminded me of that delicious flavour. I confessed to Di how wonderful it tasted, and she confessed how much oil she used to make it

The paella mixta is also a triumph, a family recipe from Will’s Spanish grandmother. The saffrony rice is studded with little chicken wingettes, mussels, calamares, prawns, roasted peppers, olives and peas to name just a few. The garnish of lemon, when relieved of it’s acidic juices, just totally lifted the dish. Seriously, this is one damn fine paella. It absolutely leaves mine for dead.

As mentioned above, I just love detail. Look at those lovely fresh tulips. I also love the mobile herb shelf, which is wheeled outside to get a bit of sun during the day, and wheeled back in for protection during the cool of the night. It is nice to see a bit of greenery in Hardware St.

They usually have one or two specials on a day, and this was the salad of asparagus, potato, jerusalem artichoke, slow roast tomatoes, rocket, chickpeas and pan fried chorizo. The chorizo had unleashed a few of it’s tasty fatty paprika juices, which added to the lovely lemony dressing.

They also do a mouth watering selection of baguettes, and for lunch EG had the thinly sliced pork rillette with brandied apples. As you can see, the crunchy bread is from one of my favourite bakeries, Noisette.

They also do breakfasts, and on this occasion I went the brioche french toast with chestnut puree and marscapone cheese. All I’ll say is that it’s a helluva moreish combination.

Now one might think that macarons are “the new cupcakes” by their sudden popularity in Melbourne, but let me just say there are macarons, and there are macarons. I feel like I’m eating cardboard when I bite into those lacklustre ones at Lindt. But these lil’ chewy jewels are frankly, to die for. They might not be the most perfect looking (especially in the eyes of some purists), but they are some of the best tasting ones in Melbourne. Above are the nutty pistachio and awesome lemon curd, bright as a daffodil.

On another visit, I also couldn’t resist the blueberry and strawberry ones. EG and I have come to an agreement of sharing our macarons, so we can delight in both flavours whilst not over indulging (well, too much anyway!).

Anyway, one of the nice things about The Hardware Societe, is that they have a lovely rotating specials menu, which might one day be garlicky escargot, or another day, a steak. I love this attention to keeping things fresh on the menu, seasonality, or to what’s looking best at the market on any given day. It makes me want to go back for more.

I just wish it were closer to my work so I could do exactly that!

The bottle of milk

52 Mountjoy Parade, Lorne, VIC
Phone 03 5289 2005

Just wanted to give a thumbs up to a great burger joint in Lorne. “The bottle of milk”, despite its unusual name, offers an impressive selection of twenty-one mouth watering burger variations at lunch (…and three at breakfast). The venue is urban and chic, the staff hip and happening, and my god, the chips worth driving 157km for.

Above are our two burgers, all served up on awesome La Madre buns. I went the Bingo Bango; grilled chicken breast pieces with lettuce, tomato, red onion, coriander, house mayo and home made chilli paste ($13). The chilli paste had an impressive kick, which was tempered with the good thick mayo.

Dan went the tofu option, which included a big thick steak of marinated tofu, lettuce, tomato, onion, alfalfa sprouts and house made relish ($11). It had nice chargrilled flavours, and the relish added a lovely sweetness.

And these are the hot chips ($4) with a choice of house mayo or ketchup, or both (come on, you gotta have both!). Dang, they were some of the best chips I’ve had in ages, double fried for extra crispness and flavour.

Kaya Toast & Eggs

I’ve previously waxed lyrical about my love of kaya toast and eggs, a breakfast dish that EG introduced me to when we first started going out. It’s a dish that he regularly ate for breakfast in Singapore, and when I went, it too became a firm favourite in my breakfast repertoire.

To make this dish at home is quite easy (although honestly, not as good back in S’pore). The trick is getting the eggs cooked just right. This is my failsafe method.

Find yourself a small lidded pot that will hold your eggs snugly. Put the kettle on to boil, and when boiled, wait for about a minute and then pour the water over the eggs to cover. The reason I wait for a minute is that pouring the boiling water over the eggs directly may make them crack – so a minute rest between pouring seems to do the trick.

Place the lid over the eggs and then time exactly four minutes (the iPhone is the ultimate timer!). Pour out the water, and once again, fill up with just boiled water for another four minutes (all up, this is eight minutes). Pour the water out again, and then run in some cold water to stop the cooking and make them easy to handle. Pick up eggs and crack them into a bowl – you may need a spoon to help you get out all the whites. They should be all nice and googy (soft boiled).

Now the next part of the dish is the condiments. From the left we have the kaya, which is an eggy coconut jam flavoured with pandanus, which you spread on toast. Then to season the eggs, dark soy, tabasco and freshly cracked black pepper.

The other traditional accompaniment is kopi, or coffee. In this instance, a long black gypsy blend from Seven Seeds does the trick. As you can see, the eggs are seasoned and ready to be eaten; either by dipping the bread and scooping up the eggy goodness, or going in with a spoon (or both).

I usually keep one piece of toast expressly for the purposes of consuming the eggs. The other piece of toast I reserve to slather with kaya jam, and eat it, kind of like dessert.

Kaya toast is the absolute best.

The Organic Food and Wine Deli (TOFWD)

28 Degraves St, Melbourne
Phone 03 9654 5157

Being the dainty public servant that I am, my head is filled with a myriad of mind-boggling acronyms. Which is good, because the only mouthful I want to have is food and not words.

The Organic Food and Wine Deli, or TOFWD for short, has been selling vegetarian, vegan and organic fare to health conscious Melbournians for about 10 years. It’s all good stuff, and my arteries damn near sing when I sit down to a plate of their perky colourful salad and wholesome pies.

On this occassion I went the vegan Kashmir – a somewhat crunchy maize pastry crust packed full of brown rice, silverbeet and herbs. Being vegan, this version is topped with potato, but you can also get it topped with cheese. A tart and spicy tomato ketchup was the perfect saucy accompaniment.

Pettavel Restaurant

65 Pettavel Road, Waurn Ponds, VICTORIA
Phone 03 5266 1120

To kick of Honeymoon Number 2 (the first being spent with some overseas relatives in Tassie – yeah, I know, my posts are all out of order here), we decided to stop by Pettavel Winery, which just so happened to be on our way to Otways, our destination for a week of R&R post-wedding.

Sitting on the far side of Geelong, Pettavel sits high on a hilltop overlooking a vale of grape vines and, the Princes Highway. The building itself is a little imposing when you drive up to it, and I’m not quite sure I felt entirely comfortable in the modern, grape-y interior. But thankfully the food (and the service) more than made up for that. There is some interesting fare to be had, which is well experienced with the five course degustation at $75 per head (lunch)

As we were driving, we only had the one glass of plonk, in this case a 2006 Platina Chardonnay. It had a nice tease of toasted oak, yet was citrussy and somewhat floral.

After an amuse-bouche of mushroom and truffle soup, we kicked off with the polenta with quails egg, nasturtium and hazelnut. The soft polenta square was generously infused with butter, and was a good compliment to the crunch of the hazelnuts and tuille type shards. The peppery wild rocket and bitter nasturtium nicely cut through the richness.

I very much enjoyed most of the seared scallop with ‘chorizo’ and paprika. The scallop sat on split batons of white and green asparagus (surprisingly, the scallop was in fact cold, which I must admit I wasn’t so keen on), and that sat on a smear of paprika infused pureed roasted capcisum. The ’chorizo’ was a deep fried crumbed ball of minced chorizo – tasty!

The next dish was a caramalised piece of pork belly with apple and pickled onion. What I loved about the dish was that it wasn’t overtly sweet – the pickled onion, the unripe globes of fruit (was it a grape?) and the smear of apple puree. The scatter of spiced crumbs (did I detect a hint of ginger) was perhaps the element that drew it all together for me.

For our main, Dan chose the perfectly crisp kingfish on a puree of avocado, with a foamy cloud hiding teeny pieces of tempura’d spanner crab. Dan said it offered more a textural than taste sensation, as no flavour really dominated. He adored the fish, but the nebulous crab cloud was kind of, er, confusing.

I chose the Lara rabbit, which was a spectacular choice. The boned and rolled bunny had a centre of almost white loin meat, and it sat in a puddle pea puree with a salad of pea shoots, croutons and parmesan. The rabbit was just so moist and juicy.

Between mains and dessert we decided to wander down to the restaurant gardens, where we spied one of the Chef’s picking some produce for the kitchen. I was quite impressed, we found all manner of herbage, leeks, cavolo nero, edible flowers and salad leaves. I can’t wait to have a garden so I can plant such delectable things.

For dessert, Dan went the Citrus with olive oil, vanilla and ice cream. This dish was the essence of Summer – a variety of citrussy jellies and leathers, juicy segments of sweet orange, a crumble of vanilla shortbread, and a lip smackingly tart citrus gelato. I might have been jealous, but…

…I think my dessert rocked too. This is the apple pithiver with caramel and date – perfectly puffed pastry in the shape of a French coal miners hat (thanks Jack for that interesting tidbit of info!) encasing tart cooked Granny Smiths. On the side, lines of caramel and date puree sat beneath matchsticks of the same grannies, and a plate lickingly good quenelle of caramel and vanilla bean ice cream.

Petits Fours were a great way to end the meal. Sherbetty squares of rosewater turkish delight, almond friands and a fruit and nut panforte. The coffee was pretty good too!

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