Max's Café & Wine Bar

Max’s Cafe always seem to be busy. On the night we visited there were several large groups and as we sat in a small room off the main dining area, we were worried we would be forgotten by staff. Happily, we were not.

ET ordered a steak and was told that the T bone was not available but if he ordered a porterhouse they could prepare it the same way. ET seems to keep having back luck with steak, as although he ordered medium-rare, it arrived closer to medium. Nor was he impressed by the onion rings it arrived with and how it was all plated.

Me, on the other hand, ordered the barramundi. I found it a tad dry and lacking in flavour. I’m not sure if I was meant to use the oil from the accompanying stir fry vegetables as the sauce, because it had way too much oil on it for my liking. I was also unimpressed with how some of the carrots were cut in pieces and others in thin slices. I’m not sure whether my pickiness was because I had just watched Masterchef right before dinner or not.

Nevertheless, although this place had a nice enough décor and staff, the next time we come back will probably be just for coffee and the nice looking cakes which we decided to skip on this time around.

Max's Café & Wine Bar

1-5 Leake Street, Essendon

Tokyo Sake Japanese Restaurant

ET & I think this place was named incorrectly because they do not seem to be fully licenced and therefore you cannot order any Sake...or any alcohol for that matter.  :(

Staff was at first too keen to take our order but then we couldn't catch anyone's eye when we finally read through the menu.  We ordered entree which arrived pretty quickly.  Unfortunately the miso soup arrived cold.  Perhaps this is a new way to serve it but ET was not impressed.

After they cleared our plates, they came back to double check ET's order for main.  Then we had a relatively long wait for the mains to arrive.  The server did offer to give us our drinks for free.  Which was not passed on because we were still charged for them.

As the restaurant has only been open for a few weeks, they still seem to having some teething problems.  We overheard several tables have their orders confirmed after ordering.  Perhaps there's a language barrier because at times they seem to have as much trouble understanding us as we had understanding them.  (This is by no means racist as there were at least 4 different nationalities in play here).

Anyway, the food was all nicely presented.  ET was very happy with his main; he thought it delicious.   My bento box was quite large and considering we already shared 2 entrees, I surprisingly managed to finish most of it.  Thank goodness for the delay between entrees and mains!  But by far the best thing about this place was their crockery.  It was all so pretty that even ET expressed how nice the tea cup and side plate was.

P.S. Apologies for having no photos on this post.  I had no memory left on my camera AND I also forgot to charge my battery!  Such a pity too - I was ruing not being able to take photos as they served us the nicely presented food on the pretty crockery :(


Tokyo Sake Japanese Restaurant
174 Warrandyte Rd, Ringwood North 

Sassy's Cafe Bar

The cafe being inside the shopping centre seemed to keep it busy with a turnover of customers.  So much so that we were kept waiting for someone to take out order.  Luckily the waiter caught our eye to let us know he would be with us when he could.

I ordered the scrambled eggs with toast; the extra thick cut of casalinga bread was a nice change to the usual sourdough that seems to be proliferating all Melbourne cafes at the moment.  Although by the time I finished eating, there was still at least a full egg's worth of scrambled eggs left on my plate.  Having just recently woken up, I probably would've ordered another slice of bread if I was awake enough to feel hungry.

ET ordered from the specials board - scrambled eggs with salmon & chives.  Plus he requested a sausage as well.  I didn't initially realise why, when served his meal, he looked up at me and back down on to his plate.  As previously mentioned, I was half asleep so he had to ask me "Does that look like salmon to you?"...

Hmmm....Unless I was still asleep or that salmon is actually brown and fried in strips, I'm pretty sure that was bacon on his plate. And where the hell was the chives???!

Sassy's Cafe Bar

286-292 Whitehorse Rd, Nunawading

Bucatini Restaurant and Bar

Yet another busy restaurant in the suburbs Bucatini is attached to a pizza takeaway so ET was a bit reluctant to order a pizza.  Not being able to recall seeing a particular pizza on the takeaway menu, ET was not disappointed with his choice.  He thought it was delicious!

I went for the Atlantic salmon special.  I was worried about the mention of onions and capsicums.  However, I was able to pick out the onions and was surprised how sweet and soft the capsicum was, so it was only the onions that was left on my plate.

Being a fan of capers, I was disappointed to count only 2 on top of my salmon.  And I'm not sure if I was just real hungry or it was a small serving, but not only did I polish off my meal but ET (surprisingly not being able to finish his meal before me for the first time ever), gave me a slice of his pizza which I also managed to polish off!  After picking out the capsicums and onions first, of course. ;)

Staff seems to always be good here.  I'm just not sure it's a good idea to announce specials after you've already read thru the menu and decided on a meal.  As the wait staff said, "Just to confuse you even more"...

Bucatini Restaurant and Bar

454 Whitehorse Rd, Mitcham

7/10 Update - Embarrassingly this restaurant's name was originally misspelt on this post.  Woops!  All fixed now though. :s

Joe's Garage

On the way to see a Michael Chamberlin we wanted something reliable and quick. Having chosen a table by the bar, rather than the dining area of Joe's Garage seemed to put us at a disadvantage.  I tried to catch the eye of one of the three waitresses by the bar, to no avail.  Being on a time constraint, Et finally walked up to the bar and returned with a waiter.

Thankfully drinks were quickly served.  Soon the somewhat anaemic looking garlic bread was put down in front of us sans side plate.  Weird.  We tucked in regardless and were surprisingly served our meals while still chewing on our first slice of garlic bread.

Carbonara ordered by ET was fine but he had to pick out some of the bacon as he felt there was way too much in it.  He said it felt like they were just using up all their bacon so they would not have any left overs.

I felt the same way with the shoe string fries they served as part of my fish and chips.  Even with ET's help we couldn't eat all of it!

 Having been initially ignored by the staff, we were then approached several times after ordering.  We even got a comment of "You're just enjoying the wine" when ET said he didn't want to order another glass of red.  Hmmm....

 

Joe's Garage

366 Brunswick St, Fitzroy

Enrik's Restaurant (II)

Another weekday night, another busy and unfortunately, a rather loud night at Enrik's.

ET, not being overly hungry decided to give the kangaroo a go.  The serving was adequate which looked and smelt quite nice.  ET was impressed and made no complaints.

Being on the hungry side, I went for the good 'ole chicken parmigiana.  It was by no means fantastic, but it wasn't bad either.  And thankfully the portion size was manageable so no complaints here either.

The staff weren't too bad but they did forget to show us the night's specials.

Enrik's Restaurant

25 Railway Rd, Blackburn

Juniper Cafe

ET is somewhat of a regular here because of the coffee, so he was looking forward to having some when we got there.  His first coffee was quite good but his second, a short black, fell below the cappuccino standards.  For the record, I had no complaints about my soy latte.

Being close to lunchtime, we both went the sandwich route.  I chose the chicken, avocado and lettuce.  The chicken may have been a little on the dry side, but being shredded, I guess it can be forgiven.

Smoked salmon with cream cheese was ET's choice.  He gave it a "quite nice" rating. 

When we ordered at the counter, we were given and shown the different bread options which I thought was a nice touch.  Usually the varieties are just reeled off and I would only ever remember the first few choices.  It was nice to be able to see the choices for a change. 

What I did find a bit weird was they served the toasted sandwiches with only one side buttered on the outside.  I don't think I've ever seen that before.  And to be honest, I'm not quite sure I liked it..

Juniper Cafe

26 Britannia Mall, Mitcham

The Firehouse (II)

Being a Friday night, we actually made a booking at Firehouse.  ET had wanted to visit the bar beforehand but we took an unintended detour before getting there and ended up arriving right on time.  Since our table was actually ready and we were quite hungry, it looks as if the bar will have to wait until next time.

We were seated in the small room off the main one.  I would dearly have loved to sit by the window but unfortunately that table was already taken by the time we got there. And, incidentally, they were still happily drinking from their carafe by the time we left.

But anyhow, lucky I had already started this blog or I wouldn't have been able to answer ET's questions about what we ate last time we were here.  This time ET was eyeing the omelette and the chickpea churros had me sold.

The omelette, sadly to say, was quite bland.  Both ET and I put seasoning on it.  :(   The churros, however, was a real winner.  ET seemed quite surprised that he enjoyed the unusual choice.  He thought the taste was quite mild but matched well with the aioli - a good dish to have as an entree.

For main I went for parpadelle with beef ragu.  Beef in the dish had quite a strong flavour but eaten with the sheets of pasta (they looked more like sheets to me, not wide strips of pasta) meant it wasn't over-powering.  I wasn't quite sure about the pine nuts in the dish though.  And the cut of meat had a little too much fat on it for my liking.

The porterhouse, much to my surprise was requested by ET as medium rare.  He said they did a good job on it.  Although we weren't quite sure what they were trying to achieve with those sad looking peas.  Judge for yourself --

For me, the chickpea churros is definitely enough to bring me back.  It may be a little crumbly, but the aioli had a strong garlic taste which I surprisingly enjoyed, and smothered all over the churros.  Yum!

The Firehouse

253 Maroondah Hwy, Ringwood

Enrik's Restaurant

We arrived late one weekend to find a hens night in progress.  ET & I were seated for several minutes and with menus closed, still had to wait a while before our orders were taken. Once they were, we were told it would be a 20 minute wait and suggested we order entrees.

As suggested, we ordered cheese bread.  But the plate put in front of us was garlic bread.  ET & I looked at each other and back down to the plate.  Yep, it was garlic bread alright.  The waitress returned to apologise.  Apparently they mixed our order up with another table.  They offered to bring us the cheese bread but it was late and we were hungry and since we had already tucked in, we declined the offer.

We were then served our mains while I was still eating the last of the garlic bread.  There was by no means a 20 minute wait for the mains, so we were left wondering whether the suggestion to order entrees while we waited was just a con.

ET wasn't any happier once he started tucking into the dish.  Having ordered his steak, then being told a few minutes later that it was actually unavailable, ET was already disappointed.  And is it just me, or do the vegetables seem a little lacking in quantity??

I ordered the chicken off the dairy-free menu.  It was a little dry and a tiny bit pink in some places.  However I liked the fact that they served it with a mix of potato and sweet potato chips.

Upon leaving, they apologised again for not having the steak that was originally ordered and the mix up with the bread.  Which, thankfully, they did not charge us for.

I'm not so sure if we'll be back any time soon.  One thing though - kudos to for providing a gluten AND dairy free menus.  It's something I've never seen before and wish more restaurants would do it. 

 

Enrik's Restaurant

25 Railway Rd, Blackburn

Escape on Puckle

To be honest, ET & I chose this place because it was the only one that had outdoor tables available.  It was the day after Melbourne's craziest storm and it was way too muggy to sit inside.

Upon reading the menu, I asked ET what BBQ dim sims were.  He was just as perplexed.  But, surprisingly, was willing enough to try it.  And just as well, cos it was a winner!!

Although it was just your average dimmy cut in half and grilled, it tasted quite good and both ET & I agreed it would be a good way to serve dimmies from now on.

For lunch ET chose chicken schnitzel focaccia.  He said it was quite good.

I chose the salami, olive with napoli sauce focaccia.  I was once again surprised by the taste.  I expected this to be slightly weird but I didn't find that at all.  But perhaps they can put more salami next time?

No complaints about the staff, or the coffee and overall, we had a good experience.  I, for once, am willing enough to try it again.  But only if I get to order the BBQ dim sims again.

Escape on Puckle 

103 Puckle St, Moonee Ponds