Passionflower

ICE-CREAM.

We don't have enough of it in the city. I'm dead serious. Ever since Trampoline left the city, I've been at odds at finding a really good ice-cream place to get my fixes. Sure the odd magnum from seven eleven is good (no wait, awesome) now and again, but there's just something so wonderful about getting good scooped ice-cream or gelato in fascinating or comforting flavours.

Yes I know. There's that gelato place on the corner of Swanston and Latrobe, yes there's New Zealand Natural, yes there's ice-cream at Lindt cafe, but they just don't seem to do it for me.

So I was naturally very excited when I saw the development of Passionflower as I sauntered up Bourke St to the gym. Gym and ice-cream....bit ironic isn't it?

A few short weeks later, it was open.





I dragged Brad over after dinner at Izakaya Den, surprised upon approach that it was overrun with Asians. Hmm. Sorry Brad.



One of these is not quite like the others....(I kid, I kid <3)







There was a smorgasbord of flavours, and some rather specialty flavours as well which definitely showed who their target audience was. Durian, green tea, adzuki bean, all the Asian favourites were there. Two that did tickle my fancy though, was pandan and taro flavoured ice-cream. Chillipadi used to do a killer pandan mousse and I was always spoilt on rich and absolutely delicious taro ice-cream back in the Philippines, so I naturally could not resist giving them a try.



Whilst nice and creamy, the flavours weren't as pungent as I'd have liked them to be. They were quite weak and the not the overwhelming flavours I was somewhat expecting. Disappointing, but maybe I need to come back and get the basic flavours, trial them out before summer swings in...the quest for ice-cream never ends....

Passionflower
Shop 2, 168 Bourke Street
Melbourne, 3000

Izakaya Den

I kinda noticed Brad and I have mostly been eating at cafes and whilst I do love that, I did notice we haven't had a nice dinner in a while and hey, I love having a little dinner date every now and again. A chance to dress up, sip a little too much alcohol and really try something different, what's not to complain about? So when the option came up one Friday evening, I pretty much decided straight away we were eating at Izakaya Den.

Finally! I must have been one of the only food bloggers to not have made their way to this intimate little haven of slicked up Japanese izakaya goodness. And it is indeed, very slick and quite sexy. (At least to me)

It's very matrix like, as you descend down through the glass entrance, glowing a soft neon green, through a black curtain and into what looks like, an extremely long and bustling bar. Very underground, very hip.

We couldn't get a seat right away but were politely told it would be about a 30 minute wait. Figuring we had nowhere to go, we hung around by the entrance with the other couples, marvelling at how much space was hidden underneath the streets of Melbourne. Only to discover when we were seated later that there was just a huge square mirror at the other end of the room deceiving us! Neat little trick there.



So within 15 minutes we were seated on the lounge to have a drink first and were encouraged to order first, so that when we were seated we'd have our food served to us much sooner.

The drink selection is very extensive, and what got me most excited? They actually had a selection of umeshu and not just the standard Choya (which is really not that great)! Oh the choices, some marked with a red stamp, indicating that they had been specifically shipped from Japan for Izakaya Den.



I decided on the 'Nanbu Bijin', described as 'True' ume flavour, with no sugar, delicate and fine. This was an absolute treat, I've never been fond of Choya because it is so sugary sweet, but you can really taste the plum in this and it's very crisp instead of being very sugary. Very, very freshing and very, very, very easy to drink. Almost like drinking a fruit juice. Almost.



Since I was all over the umeshu, we (I) decided that Brad should try the 'Cup Sake - your own all-in-one sake glass'. Huh? Essentially, sake in a sealed, totally adorable cup. Which are then reused as water glasses. Fantastic idea. I was tickled that when our waiter brought over the drinks that he gave me the panda glass and Brad my plain umeshu glass. Over the night, I got Brad to get the other sake glasses so that we had the full collection.







And I just continued drinking the same umeshu. Aren't they just darling?



We were soon seated, by the bar as I was hoping for, the benches are wide, comfortable and well designed. Hollow underneath so you can swing your legs underneath you and with plenty of space on the side to put your bag down next to you and cuddle up with your significant other. Pre-ordering our food earlier meant that within a couple minutes our food was upon us. Which was great. You kinda get hungry after waiting. The food is designed to be small and tapas style, made for sharing and for tasting. And gosh. So beautifully presented.





We started with the fresh salmon roll, with pickled konbu and ponzu. Oh, what a way to start, such a beautiful, tender and velvety texture, the perfect cool temperature on the tongue and I just loved the pickled konbu, great flavours. Possibly my favourite dish of the night.





After reading it on many a food blog, I insisted we had to try the tuna tataki. This time 3 of the 6 portions came with a spicy mayo dressing and the other half with a garlic soy. The spicy definitely had my vote, it really had bite to it, but the garlic soy was still a treat as well. I loved how the tuna was cut, lovely chunky pieces, great for sinking your teeth into, a little bit harder to scrape all the dressing on to! Even once all the tuna was gone, Brad was literally wiping the plate with his finger to make sure every last bit was had!



I can never, ever, go past eggplant. And this was no exception, being one of the first things I knew I wanted to order from the menu. Eggplant and konnyaku 'dengaku'. Sitting in a ring of dried eggplant skin, were big, beautifully cooked chunks of eggplant, quite different to what I expected. There were also chunks of sweet potato and....something we couldn't quite get our head around, mixed in with the eggplant. Although saucy, it didn't feel too heavy and was just plain delicious.



It's described as 'beetroot, button mushroom 'an-kake'' but...they don't really look like button mushrooms to me. All the same, coming from an Asian family, we don't often have beetroot, so I do enjoy it now and again. Especially when it's cooked through to be so sweet and soft. Probably one of the less exciting dishes, but the calibur of food presented was so high, I suppose it's not entirely it's fault!



These were accidentally brought over to us when we first sat down, but since we weren't quite full after four dishes, I decided on ordering these for us. Sweet corn kariage. Oh my goodness, so savoury and just delicious, they were slightly firm and slightly charred on the outside, but just still so sweet and juicy on the inside. Fun to eat. I kind of wish they were the size of popcorn chicken from KFC so you could just pop them in your mouth.....



Whilst I would have loved to try some dessert, we both decided that we needed a break from eating and I was kind of craving something simpler....like ice-cream. So satisfied with our meals, we called it a night. I've read reviews that have complained that the food is a bit pricey at Izakaya Den. For 5 dishes and 4 drinks, our meal came to exactly $120 (I love a good round number!). Now yes, sushi rolls are $2.50 a pop these days, but if you want to go out for really quality Japanese food, particularly seafood, it will always still be a pretty penny and I think for the amount of variety we got to have and the quality of the food and the experience (we both enjoyed ourselves so much), I'm very satisfied. The service we got the entire night was impeccable, wet towels while standing in line, polite and informative answers when quizzed on if we were going to get moved to a table from the lounge and efficiently delivered food.

I would come back.

Izakaya Den
114 Russell St
Melbourne, 3000

Trunk Diner

It's interesting to see the restaurant industry adapt, change to and adopt trends. No booking policies, 2 course lunch specials, tapas, slow food. Doing a bit of freelance graphic work for a restaurant has also helped me observe how these influences can immediately effect the marketing plan or the approach a restaurant takes to engaging with it's customers intimately.

One thing that is of course important for a restaurant to acknowledge, is it's clientele, what slice of the market is the restaurant trying to cut? Based on this, how can one market their restaurant as an experience to the target audience and convince them to visit with wallet ready for expenditure?

I think what Trunk have done is quite clever.

I had been to Trunk a year or so ago for dinner and absolutely hated the experience. Stuffy, slow and pretentious service, underwhelming and overpriced food. I'm not that hard to please, and I'm usually extremely forgiving, but my friends who I had dinner with that night all agree with my extreme distaste for the place.

When I heard about Trunk Diner on tummyrumbles, I was extremely skeptical at first, but reading the reviews since it opened, my curiosity couldn't help but get the best of me.







Trunk Diner is Trunk's answer to casual daytime cafe cuisine, easy going food for the office crowd who want a quick, but tasty bite and maybe a glass of wine before going back to work. Or for someone like me who just likes a casual lunch in a relaxed environment. Ingenious in my opinion, firstly there was so much unused space at Trunk so converting the courtyard into a retro style marquee cafe gives customers options and a more accessible space. How often do people really go for $30 lunch mains after all?







It really is a polar opposite to what Trunk is, light, colourful and bright, you can't help but smile as you step in and are greeted in return with genuine warm smiles and prompt, attentive service.





I always love a generous sized chai latte, but unfortunately I found it a wee bit too milky for me, not quite enough flavour there! Although, I thought the sprinkle of cocoa on the top instead of cinnamon was quite a nice change. The chai tea, which David had, was much better.

So decisions, decisions! Salads, quesadillas, soups and burgers to name a few things on the menu. Oh the burgers. More on that soon.





I thought I might go down the healthy path and opted for the tuna salad with green beans, boiled egg, tomato, chickpeas, spinach, barley and lemon. It was definitely a generous serving as I positively found myself stuffed after! I loved how fresh and bright the whole bowl looked, baby spinach leaves were just so moreish! The ever light lemon dressing really accentuated the natural flavours of the tuna, and I also loved that the eggs were specifically sprinkled with some salt rocks. According to David, the bread wasn't too exciting, tasty, but a little bit hard for his liking. He was also a bit underwhelmed when I initially chose a salad, saying they all tasted the same, but when you do get a good salad, you can really enjoy it!

Although I suppose you can't blame him for being a little less impressed with what I got, when he ordered....the wagyu burger.





175 grams of fresh ground wagyu beef in a grilled brioche with baby cos lettuce, tomatoes and house made pickles. To go with his medium rare burger, David also decided to get caramelised onions and sauteed mushrooms. I love the little trays everything is served on, really does make you feel like you're in a diner right?

The burger came slightly deconstructed, with the additions already placed in the burger but the lettuce and tomato and pickles on the side, to put in as you please.







Which David did. And what a treat it was all together, the meat was just seasoned magnificently, was tender and the sweetness of the onions and flavours of the mushrooms really came through. It was a multitude of fairly strong flavours and different textures just melding together perfectly. I can only imagine how perfect this would have been if he had ordered some cheese to go with it as well...mmmm....

After finishing our meal, we skipped up to the dessert counter (we really do skip) and I couldn't help but coo over the adorable little dessert pies. So.



A banoffee pie appeared on our table. Oh my goodness, don't let it's small and humble exterior fool you for inside is an absolute smorgasbord of a party waiting to happen on your tongue. The bananas inside were so sweet and so prominent, then combined with a thin layer of extremely rich decadent chocolate, it was pure heaven. Once we got into it, we couldn't stop!





Until the last bite.

David: "You have the last bit"
Me: "Oh no, you have it"
*David makes a face at me*
Me: "No, no you have it"
David: "There's banana."
....
Me: "Banana."



I was just so tempted to get another dessert pie to try after that last bite, but David convinced me otherwise, since we were actually both pretty full after that.

Even on a cool day as it was, with an assortment of heaters within, the marquee does a wonderful job of keeping you warm whilst letting you feel like you're sitting outside with it's clear perspex sides.

So whilst I may not fancy Trunk himself, do I fancy the younger brother?

I think so. I think I do.

Trunk Diner
275 Exhibition St
Melbourne, 3000

Banana Chocolate Bread

I'm not much of a cook. But I do love a good bake. Although I'm sadly still quite inexperienced in the world of flour, ovens and ear piercing smoke alarms. (No don't worry, I'm not THAT bad. I don't think)

So whilst I'm not very good at coming up with my own recipes, I find I can learn new recipes very quickly, or maybe I just have a knack of finding ridiculously easy recipes to whip up in the kitchen aid and throw into the oven.



Like this one from butter sugar flour (although she's now moved to toasty biscuit)- a delicious banana chocolate bread. I had made it once a few months ago and been very happy with the result, so when I knew I was going to have the boys over again, I thought it might be a nice little thing to whip up. (And I was really in the mood to bake and take pictures of the process and result. Ulterior motives! Oooh la la!)



I mean, heavens know, look how BIG and ripe the bananas are! They are just begging to be baked!



It's a beautifully simple one bowl wonder, which makes cleaning up so simple (well bowl and a half, it's still very easy cleaning)! The first time I made this recipe I did use chocolate and chop it up finely, but this time I was a bit lazy and just used chocolate chips. While it came out well, I think the chopped chocolate works better as it distributes more evenly through the bread, the chocolate chips tend to get a bit heavy and sink towards the bottom of the bread!



It came out a bit burnt looking initially (so I've discovered our oven is a little stronger than I expected....), mum later informed me that because it's so high in sugar because of the bananas I need to be more careful....







But it was much better after coming out of the tin, cut fresh, with the chocolate still soft and melted and had with a cup of tea.

Banana Chocolate Bread (From butter sugar flour)

250g plain flour

2.5 teaspoons baking powder

big pinch of salt

125g dark or milk chocolate, finely chopped

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup caster sugar

2 large eggs

4 large, ripe bananas, mashed (don’t add anymore bananas – it will be too stodgy).

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Grease and line a loaf tin and set aside.
2. In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Stir through the chocolate.
3. In a larger bowl, mix together the eggs, sugar, vanilla and banana.
4. Gently combine the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and be careful not to over mix.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
6. Cool on a wire rack, but eat it warm. It tastes good toasted the next day too