Meals in Melbourne: 1932 Cafe

For our second meal to celebrate my birthday, we decided to try out the new restaurant in what was "our breakfast place."  I'm not sure how the little cafe on the ground floor of the Manchester Unity Building became our breakfast place when we're in the city, but it did.  Both dearest and I felt it keenly when it was closed for remodel and we were both happy to see it back as an eatery.

First off, 1932 Cafe is a good bit fancier than the previous incarnation as Caffe Mediterraneum.  But the friendly waitress showed us a table immediately AND they offered breakfast, so we decided to give the new idea a go.  I was so very glad we did.  The prices have gone up a bit with the fanciness of the newly remodeled location, but it was well worth it.

Dearest and I both had Eggs on Toast with Hash Browns.  I really think it's a better judge of restaurant to test out how well they handle simple dishes than how well they execute complex art project dishes.  The skills to create art on a plate are not the same as the skills required to create edible meals on the plate.  Gravity-defying presentations are fantastic to look at, but usually I go to restaurants for food I can eat.  And I want that food to taste good and be cooked correctly.

1932 Cafe succeeded.

The eggs were poached without vinegar, which is very nice, because I find most people who use vinegar for poaching put too much in the water and it can leave an unpalatable flavor in the eggs.  Dearest has spoiled me with his poached eggs, perfected poaching eggs for me, and I compare every one I have to his perfect examples.  These were very nice, if a bit overdone for my personal preference.  I like my eggs cooked only until the white sets and the chill has been warmed off the yolks.  Yes, I know, the Surgeon General's warning is for people exactly like me, but I've never liked hard cooked eggs and I'm not going to change my taste now.  I'm willing to take my chances with whatever consequences there may be from consuming what the FDA considers undercooked eggs.

Initially I thought they were being a bit stingy with only one piece of sourdough toast under the eggs, but after the meal, I decided they knew what they were doing. Two pieces would have been nice, but they would have been surplus to requirements. I also wondered about the dish of butter rather than the chef buttering the toast, but in the end I decided I preferred that as well, because I could control how much butter went on my toast, which is nice because sometimes too much butter is not as good a thing as you might think.

The hash browns were well fried, crispy and creamy, and all the things you could want in a perfect hash brown cake. They were McDonald's type deep fried cakes, rather than the Waffle House type scattered shredded potatoes cooked on a flat top into a pancake. I had hoped for the pancake type of hash browns, but I was not disappointed by the cakes.

The only thing I would change would be that I would have preferred the pepper mill to be on the table rather than having the waitstaff dispensing pepper on request.  Not a big deal, but till a little thing that can sometimes bother me.

To go with my Eggs on Toast, I chose an old-fashioned style Blueberry and Lime Soda.  It was very, very nice.  Dearest tasted it and did not find it quite as nice as I did, but I enjoyed it very much.  I was a bit apprehensive because of the menu described it as a "low-sugar" soda, and most artificial sweeteners give me migraine headaches, but I was pleased to find it was not created with artificial sweeteners.  The whole blueberries at the bottom of the glass were a welcome bonus!

And I would be remiss if I did not mention our waitress.  She really made the experience for us. Sometimes servers fade into the background and that's what you want, but Saturday morning I was in a festive mood and the waitress was a big part of that.  Dearest picked her American accent early.  I am terrible at picking accents, so it would not have occurred to me that she would have been American.  As it turned out, she was originally from Montana, which while no where near my hometown was still a welcome bit of home, without the baggage of the thing-which-will-not-be-mentioned (at least not in this post).  I think we may have been welcome to her as well, because when she brought out our eggs she asked if we wanted Tabasco sauce.  I would have gone for some Tony Chachere's Cajun seasoning, but I keep Tabasco for rice dishes.  Much like the buffalo wing sauce at Mr Big Stuff last night, I find Tabasco tends to overpower the delicate flavors of most breakfast foods.

It may not have been exactly the breakfast spot we remember, but it was a well-done re-incarnation.  The remodel kept the period, funky feel of the our original spot.  It was like going home after years away.

Overall Rating:  ☆☆☆☆☆

Meals in Melbourne: Mr Big Stuff

(This is the first of the restaurant reviews from my birthday weekend adventure in Melbourne this past weekend.)

Dearest somehow manages to find some really great places to take me to dinner.  This time he picked out Mr Big Stuff, which describes itself as a "unique spin on old school soul food flavors."  The menu definitely reflects that.  I knew what everything on the menu was, but I am certain some of the dishes may be foreign, and quite possibly challenging to native Melburnians.  Some of them were challenging to me, but that's not because I didn't know what they are, but because I knew what they were and don't like them.

Before starting dinner, we each had a drink.  Dearest had a bottle of Abita Amber and I indulged in a non-alcoholic Run, DMC (a blend of agave syrup & lemon juice topped with a bitter grapefruit soda garnished with an orange slice).  I can't say how the Abita Amber was, but I know it was a true imported Abita beer and not just something brewed here labeled as Abita Amber.  That made me feel very good.  And I have to say the NOLA snob in me was quite glad he that picked the Abita beer over PBR.  My mocktail was very good, I could definitely have a few of those, and quite often at that.

After some discussion, and discounting the special-of-the-day house-made pimento cheese (more because I don't like it than anything else), dearest and I decided to split several items and have one sandwich each unto ourselves.

We split:

Fries with Housemade Capsicum Ketchup:  The shoestring fries were crispy on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside; just what you want in a French fry.  They were served liberally dusted with smoked paprika, which was very nice, but somewhat overpowered the housemade ketchup.  And that's too bad because the ketchup was very nice indeed.  If it were an option, I would have bought a bottle to bring home.  I think of French Fries as a good test of a restaurant.  Even with pressure deep fryers, good fries are hard to turn out consistently.  I find fries are a fairly good test dish for restaurants that serve them.  These passed very well, though I would have preferred the garnishing hand not been quite so heavy with the smoked paprika.

Cheesy Corn Grits:  These were excellent -- traditional cheese grits, served with a restrained sprinkle of smoked paprika and a drizzle of olive oil.  The olive oil was truly unnecessary, but not a bad addition to the grits.  I'm sure it takes the place of the more traditional pat of butter melting into the grits.  I am not entirely sure what cheese/s were used in the grits, but it melted well and did not separate or get grainy.  As the meal went on the consistency of the grits firmed up (as you would expect) and the last bits were quite firm, which to me is not a bad thing at all.

Buttermilk Biscuits:  The menu says they are home-baked biscuits, and while I absolutely believe they are baked on-site, I would swear up and down they are actually Pillsbury Flaky Layers biscuits from a can.  I saw the tell-tale manufacturing mark on the bottom of one of them.  And I wish I knew how and where they import Pillsbury Flaky Layers biscuits because those are one thing I cannot recreate in my own kitchen.  The biscuits were dipped in honey butter before serving, which made them a bit sticky, but still very nice.  If pressed I would say the biscuits were either under-baked or baked in a too cool oven because there was just something unfinished about them; it was not the just honey butter that made the layers hard to pull apart, but I'm not sure that's down to the kitchen staff not knowing exactly what they should taste and feel like when properly baked.

Mac & Cheese:  This was a standout dish.  It's a traditional baked macaroni, with a cheese sauce and buttered breadcrumbs on top.  It's served in an individual cast iron skillet, fresh from the oven so the cheese is still bubbling and the breadcrumbs are crisp and toasty when it hits the table.  Like most baked macaroni dishes, it will get a bit dense upon standing, but this one was not as dense as I thought it would have been, and the crisp bits around the edge of the skillet are a great reward when the casserole has been shared.

For our individual item, I had the Chicken & Waffle Open Faced Sandwich:  I ordered mine without cheese as I thought that might compete with the delicate flavor of the waffle and I've never been a fan of savory cheese and maple syrup together.  It was a crispy-coated classic buttermilk fried chicken thigh on one-quarter of a savory rosemary waffle with a good drizzle of maple syrup, that leaked through the waffle and pooled on the plate below.  The waffle was fantastic.  I would have been perfectly happy with a whole waffle as my main meal.  The maple syrup was a great touch.  But the chicken was, sad to say, a bit disappointing.  It was well fried, and it was definitely crispy, but I had two issues with it.  The first was that it was a bone-in thigh and I was not expecting that.  I was glad my sandwich was open-faced and I had already prepared to eat it with a knife & fork rather than picking it up to eat with my hands.  Biting into a chicken thigh bone, which in my case broke under very slight pressure from my knife, would not have been a good experience.  As it was, I worried about shards of chicken bone, so I left a bit more meat on the plate than I would normally.  The second issue I had with the chicken was that the coating was either made with buffalo wing sauce, or it was dipped in buffalo wing sauce just prior to being fried.  The wing sauce overpowered pretty much every other flavor so that all I could really taste was the sauce.  I was very glad we had the bowl of cheese grits and mac & cheese to tone down the fire in my mouth after the spicy hot coating.  The wing sauce was so powerful that it completely masked the flavor of the pickle that was on the sandwich.

Dearest chose the Fried Green Tomato & Waffle Sandwich as his individual item.  It was made with two-quarters of the same savory rosemary waffle as my sandwich, and the tomato was fried in the same buffalo batter, so while I didn't taste his, my guess would be that the flavor of the green tomato was lost to wing sauce.  I can't say for sure, but I would not be surprised if the flavor waffle was lost to the wing sauce as well.

We debated dessert, but when I asked about the Chocolate Pecan Pie we decided against it.  I was expecting a traditional chocolate pecan pie with a cookie crust.  I could not work out where the pumpkin would have gone, but my guess would have been in the custard somehow.  It was explained to me as a pie made from a pecan cookie crust (like Pecan Sandies) filled with chocolate mousse and sweet butternut squash on top.  I love pumpkin pie, and I love pecan pie, but neither really goes well with chocolate mousse in my opinion.  And while I know it's Pumpkin Spice Season again in the US, I just can't see Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Mousse Pie selling well.  In my opinion the flavors compete with each other.  But, as I said, we decided to skip the pie, so I really can't say.  Maybe it does work; the waitress did say it was her favorite of the dessert options.

On the whole, it was a great concept, and a funky little eatery.  There are still a few menu items that I could gladly try -- the pulled pork biscuits, 3-bean salad, and hushpuppies among them.  We had considered ordering more items, but thought we had picked enough for a start.  And after the meal, I was sure we did not need to test anything else.  I despise waste of any kind and food waste is a particular peeve of mine, so I was glad we did not order anything that we would have left mostly untouched or half-eaten.

Mr Big Stuff is definitely a place I could go back to happily, but I would prefer if the menu had warned unsuspecting diners about the bone-in fried chicken and the fire-in-your-mouth buffalo wing coating.

Overall rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Silent Sunday

Menu Plan August 4-10, 2015

Tuesday:  Southwest Chicken Risotto, Sliced Apples
Wednesday:  Red Bean Burgers, Tater Tots
Thursday:  Spaghetti Turnover, Garlic Bread, Green Salad
Friday:  French Toast, Jell-O with Fruit
Saturday:  Vegetarian Chili with Cornmeal Dumplings, Jell-O with Fruit
Sunday:  Beef & Noodles, Buttermilk Pudding
Monday:  do-it-yourself dinner

Silent Sunday