Saint Lucia

Disclosure: I was invited to dine as a guest of the restaurant 

When Melbourne’s nice, it’s real nice. But the second it finds a bit of a rain and a gust of wind…it ain’t so much. As winter starts making itself more and more known, the nights are frostier, wetter and terribly uninviting. You can’t blame Melbournians for not wanting to leave the house.

However, one very wet and cold night I still found myself heading out to Saint Lucia, and I couldn’t ask for a better shelter from the storm. 

Bar? Restaurant? More like house. More like living room even, where Bean, the family dog, comes over to say hi (literally!) 

Saint Lucia is beautifully bohemian, a discerning mix of summery greens and rattan furniture, romantically lit with dimmed lights and well loved candles; inspired by owners, and husband and wife, Charlie and Steph’s travels around the world…but in particular the Caribbean, Cuba and Southern America.

Settled in with a glass of red wine (Melbourne’s wintery weather doesn’t always inspire the mood for mojito or other delightful rum based cocktail…but maybe another time), the menu of nibbles is small enough you can almost get a bit of everything, but too big that you can’t and have to make some tough decisions!

Smokey roasted cauliflower with creole remoulade sauce for $6 is an amazing value and absolutely delicious nibble to start a meal. What’s not to love about the sweetness of the cauliflower mixed with a bit of savoury smokiness? Very, very moreish.

Also very moreish, are the fried plantains with paprika salt. Shaped like a banana, plantains are much more savoury, and are fried to crunchy perfection and served with a chipotle mayo that’s got some serious punch and kick. Even though it was cold outside, the heat’s on in Saint Lucia!

When it comes to the bigger eats, I’m torn between all of the proteins. Although fried chicken calls out my name, we instead opt for the smoked caramelised beef brisket with house barbecue sauce, which has a lovely unexpected heat and a lovely texture, not too dry and not too fatty, and the low and slow maple chilli pork ribs, smoked for 4 hours of hickory and apple wood, which I just savour pulling off the bone. I adore the pickles served with the pork ribs which are punchy and bright, perfectly cutting through the richness of the meat. 

Not gonna lie though, I was most excited for dessert (as I usually tend to be). The ‘milk + cookies’ dessert takes the Dominique Ansel ‘cookie shot’ to the next level. 

Hazelnut dark chocolate chip cookie ‘cup’, lined with dark chocolate, and filled to the brim with peanut butter mousse and dulce leche. Um. Yes. 

The cookie cup is far bigger than I expect it to be, and is definitely best shared between two people. The cookie is a bit hard to break into, but the flavours and combination of cold peanut butter mousse and cookie are simply to die for. 

We also make ours ‘R rated’ with a bit of rum mousse as well. Lush.

Saint Lucia is a stunningly intimate space, in an area that’s becoming super trendy and too cool for school, it’s nice to have a little refuge where you can feel like you can kick back and really just chill out. With delicious Carribean food. Please have plantain chips become a thing Melbourne. Please. 

Saint Lucia

78 Chapel Street

Windsor 3181

 

Yukie's Snack Bar

Disclosure: I dined as a guest of the restaurant

I have this tendency to fall in and out of love with cocktail drinking, or perhaps it’s bars in general. While I love going out to eat, I’m almost sometimes more content to prepare myself a gin and tonic at home, or indulge in a bottle of wine with something light and cheerful to nibble on. Too often cocktail and bar snacks are salty, deep fried and fatty. Which isn’t a bad thing in itself…maybe just not too often.

Yukie’s Snack Bar though, has got me wondering if perhaps I should get myself out of the house a bit more. 

Tucked out the back of Mr Miyagi in Windsor, his mistress Yukie is entertaining the guests when there’s not quite enough tables, or they just want to stop in for a quick little nibble and tipple. 

The cocktail selection is varied, from Hello Kitty sour’s (lychee, citrus, and egg white) in curvaceous glasses with playful garnishes, to one of my personal favourites, Yukie’s green juice (cucumber, lime, sake and vermouth)…it’s almost kind of healthy! 

On a whole though, the cocktails were well balanced and not too sweet (a pet peeve of mine). 

She’s not just all about the booze though, Yukie’s got some great snacks to go with your cocktails; all with a bit of an Asian flair of course.

The rice paper rolls, soba with master stock poached chicken and lap cheong hoi sin and Japanese grilled eggplant with miso glaze, cucumber and peppery leaves are plump and generously filled. Fresh and light on the palate too, perfect if you’re just looking for something little to keep you going until dinner. I particularly enjoyed the grilled eggplant rice paper roll; but I love miso, so can’t help be a little biased!

Himalayan salt slab cured kingfish, with quinoa, green chilli, coriander, fennel, apple and lemon is everything. I loved the firmness of the fish, and how refreshing the dish was, the quinoa was slightly crunchy, fun little texture pops and the chilli just the right amount of zing. 

The two wagyu dishes, wagyu brisket betel leaf with peanut satay, red chilli, coconut and lime and the wagyu tartare pipe with peanut butter, Korean miso, capers, sesame and spring roll pastry were both good, but not my favourite dishes of the night. I found the pipe a little on the dry side, but I loved the flavours. 

However, I adored the flavours in the apple wood smoked salmon tostadita, the contrast between the crunchy tostadita and the meaty salmon was lovely, along with the smack of flavour that came with it. 

Top tip, it’s not on Yukie’s bar menu, but Mr Miyagi will sneak you some nori tacos if you ask sweetly. I raved on about them last time and god damn. They’re literally still one of my favourite things to eat in Melbourne. Crunchy, gorgeous thick cuts of grilled lush salmon belly, creamy Kewpie and chilli oil (my favourite combo ever). Do it. Don’t think too much about it. 

Yukie's Snack Bar

99 Chapel Street

Windsor

 

Belleville

I love Melbourne. I love that we travel with umbrella and sunglasses at all time. I love how much food we have available to us. I love that you have to explore and that sometimes, the best food isn’t just found on the shopfronts facing the main streets. 

Climbing stairs, and sneaking down into basements; enchanting visitors and locals alike, it's always a good time.

I had heard a lot about Belleville, and how good their chicken was, but hadn’t gotten around to visiting (as always); so it was good news when my boss decided that we should have our work Christmas dinner there last year to round out our year.

To find it, head into Chinatown, find Globe Alley just off it and climb up a couple flights of stairs until you enter the unexpectedly ginormous space. In true Melbourne-style, it’s got a bit of a worn out warehouse feeling, with mix n’ match furniture and neon green walls adorned with graffiti, framing the huge windows. 

It’s definitely an easy chilled out space, with a fun and accessible cocktail menu, presented in a graph. It asks you what type of person you are and what time of day it is, then at the intersection, provides you a suggestion of a cocktail. Or you can just read through and make the choice yourself, but where’s the fun in that? 

All our cocktails were delicious; I suitably don’t remember exactly what we had, but I do recall them being easy to drink, not too sweet and gone very quickly.

I do remember our food though. Watermelon salads with chargrilled watermelon, Vietnamese mint, roasted peanuts and Sichuan peppers and Rad Thai’s; wok tossed glass noodles with crispy eggplant were refreshing salads with plenty of crunch. Perfect for summer. There was also a green mango salad special available that evening, which matched the refreshing Asian theme very well. 

Streetcart Corn - chargrilled corn with spiced parmesan, butter and miso aioli were almost totally creamy and cheesy mouthfuls; the guys at Belleville were very generous with the parmesan, and that’s totally okay with me! 

Popcorn chicken, karaage chicken with togarashi and tonkatsu aioli, are delectably crunchy bites with a pop of spice to the flavour. They disappear very quickly, especially when you’ve got a cocktail on the side!

Personally though? My favourite side has to be the Belleville poutine, beer battered chips with shredded cheese, house chicken gravy and hot sauce. This really could just be a meal on it’s own. I absolutely adore the fries, with that gorgeous battered crust, they’re crunchy delights, which go so well with all that gravy. Completely and utterly moreish. 

But we can’t forget the rotisserie chicken at Belleville, which is really the star. Whilst everyone else in town is battering and deep frying theirs, Belleville’s is a salt water brined free range chicken, that’s perfectly roasted. We get a whole chicken that’s miso butter glazed (Yes, yes, yes), and it’s an epic looking little feed. Pitchfork and all. 

The chicken itself was a touch dryer than I hoped it would be, but I still absolutely lapped it up, I loved the skin, I loved that I convinced myself it was ‘healthier’ than fried chicken, and therefore ate a whole lot more. Totally logical right…?

Dessert specials rotate, and on this particular evening we enjoyed warm chocolatey Nutella ‘bombs’/donuts with a raspberry sauce or something similar to dip into and a very decadent popcorn and salted caramel pannacotta (on the jiggle scale it scored very highly too). 

For somewhere with a relaxed vibe to hang with the friends (a lot of them too if you wanted to), have some drinks, and possibly have some great food as well, Belleville is a great option; I’m coming back for that poutine!

Belleville

Globe Alley

Melbourne, 3000

 

The Noble Experiment

Disclosure: I was invited to dine as a guest 

I have to say that recently I’ve kind of gone off cocktails. I much prefer something neater, and a little less sweet, like a refreshing gin and tonic or a deep and mellow whiskey, or a glass of vino. 

However, a little while ago, I was reminded just how fun cocktails were though, and how well they could be done, with a visit to Noble Experiment.

I mean, anyone who’s going to serve you a cocktail in a bathtub with a rubber duckie has got the fun factor turned up. But beyond the novelty, the guys at the Noble Experiment stay true to their name, their experimental with their cocktails, but seriously know their stuff. 

Our rubber duckie friend here is happily floating in the ‘Bath Tub Gin’ cocktail (aptly named) with Bombay Sapphire, house made tonic water, Lillet Rose, pomegranate liquor, lemongrass syrup citrus, topped with spiced rhubarb and pink grapefruit air. There’s a lot going on in there, but it’s immensely well balanced, and very dangerous. Who can even taste the gin with the lovely sweet pomegranate, rhubarb and grapefruit in there? 

To go with our cocktail tasting, we also had a sample of dishes come out, which, much like their drinks, are thought out and beautifully executed. The lightly cured kingfish was cut generously, topped with honey and grapefruit vinaigrette with charred mandarin which was refreshing but richly sweet as well. Sea scallops with a smear of goats curd, cauliflower and wood ear were also cooked perfectly.

As mentioned earlier, the guys pride themselves on experimenting, and trying new things. One thing they do take pride in, are their bottle and barrel aged cocktails, which are exactly as the name might suggest! We had the absolute delight in trying out their bottle aged negroni (which I think had been bottled for 6 months), which we had with just a wee bit of orange peel, which we wiped around the rim of the glass. Oh man, what a difference it made to the flavour of the negroni! This was so delicious; the alcoholic edge of the negroni was softened, and the flavours were rich and warm. Beautiful. Also dangerous (as everything ended up being this particular evening…)

Fried green tomatoes with fresh goat curd, buffalo mozzarella and basil makes for a delightful bar snack. Very much reminiscent of a caprese salad in flavours, but with an additional crunch; which contrasts beautifully with the juiciness of the tomatoes. Absolutely loved these!

A sous vide duck breast with mead cooked radicchio, duck skin crumble, balsamic and beetroot gel and parsnip is warm and comforting. Also, did you read that? Duck. Skin. Crumble. Hell to the yes.

Can I just say, barrel aged espresso martinis are the espresso martinis you never knew you needed in your life. 

For our last cocktail, we got a little table side liquid nitrogen action for the Spiced Berry and Basil Smash. A concoction of Hendricks gin, Lillet Rose, house made spiced berry puree, nitro muddled basil, citrus, sugar and basil sherbet, this was the perfect cocktail to have with dessert. Sweet and berrylicious, but with a herbaceous and fresh note from the basil to cut through.

With this, our dessert plate carrying a warm chocolate fudge brownie, with burnt fig and honeycomb ice-cream, chocolate soil and honeycomb, passionfruit curd with coconut meringue, Chambered berries, coconut and lime sorbet, and finally a beetroot sorbet, all went down a treat. 

The fudge brownie was as promised, melting in the mouth with a smooth and velvety texture and  the passionfruit curd punched up the palette with it’s bright and vibrant flavours.

I’m absolutely keen to bring back some of my best girlfriends with me to Noble Experiment. It’s the perfect spot for a relaxed, but still fun evening, with people who appreciate the good stuff but also know how to have a good time. The guys here push the envelope, without being pretentious, and make everything they do so accessible; you don’t even know how progressive you’re being!

Make sure you’re not driving when you visit! 

The Noble Experiment

284 Smith Street

Collingwood 3066