Melbourne Food Reviews

Mankoushe

323/325 Lygon St, Brunswick East

She Says
For a while now my friend T has been saying that we should come north-side and check out the lebanese pizzas at Lygon Street’s Middle Eastern bakery, Mankoushe. Unfortunately we’ve been taking turns cancelling on each other every weekend for over a month now. Fortunately by the time we actually managed to be in the same place at the same time our Mankoushe options had doubled with the opening of a new cafe next door to the bakery. Unfortunately I forgot to check what it’s actually called.

Mankoushe (the bakery) serves a selection of lebanese pizzas.  Mankoushe (the cafe) serves a small selection of lebanese breakfast and lunch dishes. They also give you the option of ordering pizzas from Mankoushe (the bakery). Perfect.

The fit out is pretty simple but the atmosphere was relaxed and I found the service to be really genuinely friendly. Add in some good food and you’ve got a lunch that’s worth rain-checking 4 times to get to.

He Says
Before I start, I’d just like to say that I was lured to Mankoushe’s Café Next Door under false pretences. Marg and her equally lawyery friend, T-Pain, tricked me onto Lygon Street with the promise of a new burger joint, and then at the last minute they switched the venue on me. Bang. Just like that, my burger dreams were gone.

The first thing you notice walking up to The Café Next Door is that it’s unsigned, which as you’ll know in Melbourne makes it instantly cool. T-Pain explained to us that the Café Next Door is the café offshoot of Mankoushe, the Lebanese pizza place next door, which is quite popular with the Brunswick locals. What really excited me though was the fact that you can enjoy the homely interior of the café, but get some of the menu items from its older brother. The Café Next Door looks like crazy Aunty Mavis’ living room, complete with pickle jars and a turntable. But instead of serving Lemonade scones and monarchism you’re treated to an eclectic mix of Lebanese dishes.

This is not the kind of place that you go to and then complain that you can’t get brunch staple X; you need to jump in and get out of your comfort zone. I really enjoyed cumin chickpeas, which isn’t something that you’d really ever see on a brunch menu, or something that I’d normally order. The Café Next Door is trying something new, and I thought it worked. The service was haphazard but friendly, but you can’t go past the interesting food and living room vibe. There was even a couple sitting on the couch not talking to each other.

We Ate
We shared a number of dishes between the 3 of us. To be honest we ate too much, we shared 3 of the breakfast/lunch items and 2 pizzas. And baklava. For the 3 of us I think that 2 meals and 2 pizzas would have been more appropriate. Lucky it was all pretty delicious.

First up we had the Fate – crumbed bread with cumin chickpeas, garlic yoghurt and pinenuts, served with a side of vegetables ($14.50). Other than the cheesy pizza (not it’s real name, see below) this was my favourite dish, the cumin and garlic yoghurt and pinenuts were a great combination. The crispy crumbed bread was really moreish.

Next we had the tasting plate with labneh, akiwe (admission time, I don’t even know what that is – a type of cheese?), dried fruit, halva, vegetables and pickled eggplant ($16). The tasting plate was good, and well suited to sharing. I would definitely recommend it as a share dish rather than a meal for yourself though.

We also tried the butter beans with carrots, parsley and a tomato sauce ($15). The beans were good, but again this is probably a dish best shared with a few other dishes.

We also wanted to try a bakery item but couldn’t decide between them all so ended up choosing 2. The first was the Kafta with mince beef, parsley, onion, spices, tomato and mayonnaise ($7.20). Gerard only managed to get a photo of half of this because I ate the rest of it faster than he could grab his camera. It was good, but not as good as the cheese (below).

The second bakery good we tried was the Saroukh – a calzone-esque pizza with 3 cheeses and olives ($7). This was the hands down favourite of the day. If I go back to Mankoushe I’ll probably just order a bunch of these. Seriously, a bunch.

We finished the meal by sharing a completely unnecessary baklava filled with apple custard ($5?). The baklava was good, but to be honest nothing could beat the saroukh.

To Conclude
We enjoyed Mankoushe; the eccentric food, the lounge room vibe and the hipster staff. You can’t get more Brunswick than this.

Chez Dré

287 Coventry St, South Melbourne

He Says

Every Monday morning for the last couple of weeks, I’ve received a barrage of “Have you been to Chez Dre yet?” comments. And every time I said that I’d love to go, but South Melbourne is a little hard for us to get to, and we’d try it out next time we were in the area not stuffing our faces with dim sims. So this week, I didn’t have to hang my head in culinary shame, as the planets aligned with Marg arranging brunch there with a friend.

After cantankerously cursing the general lack of carparking around South Melbourne, and being very surprised at the punctuality of Marg’s friends, we headed into the laneway containing Chez Dre. Due to the prime Sunday timeslot, I was expecting a bit of a wait, but after grabbing a waiter, and being given a bench outside to sit at, we were at a table for four within no more than 5 minutes, pouring over the menu. Having unfortunately spotted the case full of croissants on entry, a lot of the menu discussion centered around whether we should go for a croissant centric dish, or whether it was too gluttonous to order another item and then “share” a croissant.  Ultimately common sense prevailed, and by common sense I mean I really just wanted the rhubarb Danish (in addition to breakfast). Every breakfast needs a dessert.

She Says

Marg’s been swamped with work this week, so I’ll have to paraphrase her thoughts on Chez Dre: “nom nom nom nom. Croissant. Nom nom nom.” She bills in 6 minute blocks, so that conversation cost me $50.

We Ate

Marg had the omelette du jour with herb polenta, with a side of bacon. There was a little bit of an issue where the menu said that the sourdough side, which is the default, could be replaced with polenta, but the waitress wasn’t too sure. Luckily though when the omelette appeared it was flanked company by polenta. The omelette was delicious, as was the forbidden polenta.

I went a little out there and got the tomato & basil bruschetta with a poached egg and a side of spicy lamb sausage and bacon. I’m not a massive fan of poached eggs, so to me I felt it didn’t really add anything to the dish; I would have just preferred a larger amount of tomatoes. If you slap an egg on it, then it’s definitely a breakfast dish, right? I am just knit picking, as everything was top notch, with the spicy lamb sausage being a particular standout.

Marg’s BFF had the healthy option, a toasted croissant with smoked ham, gruyere cheese and tomato. Just look at it, it looks amazing (and not remotely healthy):

Collin Hill, the last member of our little quartet, and also the last person to receive their meal by a solid 10 minutes (the wait staff did apologise profusely), ordered the Grand petit dejeuner. Again, nothing to fault here, with a generous serving of everything.

After being paraded past the display cabinet, I couldn’t resist ordering dessert. I feel Chez Dre just encourages you to have breakfast dessert. Don’t judge me. Obviously the standard croissant was going to be my first choice, but I couldn’t go past the look of the rhubarb and custard Danish. And it tasted even better.

Conclusion

More croissants than Paris and a solid brunch menu to wash them down with. Chez Dre is up there with the best of the Melbourne brunch scene. Ooh La La.

Silo – By Joost

123 Hardware Street, Melbourne

He Says

I can still remember the first time I laid eyes on a Greenhouse By Joost installation. I was sitting at the Opera House Bar in Sydney, and I looked over at the Overseas Passenger Terminal to be confronted by an enormous mass of graffitied shipping crates and plywood boarding. I was fixated by. I didn’t know what it was, but I had to get closer; I didn’t want to be a curious bystander. Marg and I rushed back around to the terminal, to find that the exquisite mishmash of crates housed a restaurant, and more importantly a bar, that had unblemished views of the Opera House and Sydney Harbour. Not being close enough to dinner, we headed up to the bar to enjoy some homemade lemonade and some on tap Little Creatures (naturally). As we settled down on our little box seats and enjoyed our view, the thing that really struck me was the complete lack of hipsters for such  a cool pop-up bar. If this was Melbourne after 5pm on a Friday, you’d be beating the undergrounders back with a broomstick.

Since my first encounter, we’ve enjoyed the lovely Greenhouse By Joost back in Melbourne, I was lucky enough to check it out on its first day during this year’s Melbourne Food and Wine Festival (http://www.twomunch.com/2012/03/04/its-getting-hot-in-here/). My closing comment in that review, in case you’re not going to read it, was this: “The Greenhouse is here for only twenty days. Even if the menu isn’t necessarily your thing, the build and the design aesthetic are well worth the visit.”. So what happens, if in some twisted Peter Pan Neverland-like word, you don’t have to grow up, and you can go to the Greenhouse whenever you want? Well now you can. Read on, and stop checking out Tinkerbell.

So the enviro-geniuses at Joost (by Joost?), have opened up a permanent café dubbed Silo, strategically located opposite Hardware Society in Hardware Lane. They’ve translated their environmental approach to the permanent location, creating a ‘zero-waste’ café. The fit-out is mainly recycled, and you sit on kegs, used by the café, in the middle of a large communal table; the zero-waste philosophy is evident in every aspect of this café.

I ate

As Marg is currently being crushed to death under an exponentially increasing amount of work, I decided to visit Silo with a bunch of friends from work. The six of us were lucky enough to grab a seat at the big communal table, where you can watch your lovely lunch being assembled. I loved sitting on the kegs, but one of my friends who is getting a little pregnant, found it difficult. Not baby friendly.

So to start with, we ordered a round of Jason Chan’s Lemonade ($6). It came out in a beautiful brown jar, with a candy stripper straw. From the first sip, I loved the lemonade. The sweet, homely taste, with a hint of honey. It was delicious. But it was also $6, which is a little on the high side for a CBD lunch.

I had the 4 grains, beetroot and avocado ($10) salad for my main. It came out in a little jam jar, making it a bit of challenge getting out the bits at the bottom, but other than the physical challenges it was delicious. I loved the combination of the different grains, but it needed more avocado. Actually, I think it needed a bit more of everything. This seemed to be common consensus amongst my colleagues, that it just wasn’t quite where it needed to be price-vs-size wise. I assume they’re trying to make a statement about over consumption, but I’m not  sure if taking it out on my salad is the best way of making it.

The standout dish, which 4 of the others had, was the Brown rice with wild mushrooms ($14). It came out in a little pot, which made it even more adorable. Again, size was a bit of an issue.

Finally, there was also the Coddled hen egg with wild mushroom ($14).

To Conclude

A great café continuing the “By Joost” tradition, in a more permanent setting. Definitely worth a look, but just keep an open minded about the portion sizes. It’s as much about the experience as it is the food.