Jam Jar Lounge, Battery Point

Happy new year!

Jam Jar Lounge is another Hampden Road cafe in a great building with lots of different rooms and a fantastic courtyard out the back, which is where we chose to sit on a recent sunny day.

I had the spatchcock with bread salad and labne. The spatchcock was perfectly cooked and delicious, but the salad didn't excite me too much.



One friend had the French toast with salted caramel and a lemon curd cream. The caramel was insanely good!



Another friend had a roast beef sandwich which looked and tasted spectacularly good, but sadly I forgot to photograph it.

Between Jam Jar, Environs and Jackman & McRoss, Hampden Road has a lot going for it in the cafe department!

Environs Cafe, Battery Point

Environs Cafe is a newcomer to Battery Point but I have a feeling that it will be around for a while - it's just that good. The food is fantastic, the menu is really interesting and it's very reasonably priced.

From the breakfast menu, the Cottage Green: almond-coated sardines, poached egg and rocket on a hash brown ($12.50). The hash brown is on the left and the sardines on the right - this is a pretty tasty light meal.



The savoury breakfast ($14.50) is enormous, and one of the best full breakfast-type plates I've ever tasted. It comes with scrambled eggs on a corn cake, and bacon, hash brown and tomato, topped with hollandaise sauce. The corn cake and scrambled eggs are the highlights! The picture below shows the dish ordered with their home-made sausage ($3.50 extra), which was nicely spicy.



The French toast with poached fruit, labne and pistachios ($12) is a winner for the days when something sweet is wanted.



The risotto ($13) is on the lunch menu and comes with roast vegetables, mushrooms, garlic and parmesan cheese. It was lovely and hearty.



I didn't try the chicken pasta ($15) but it looked fantastic - I plan to try it soon! It's pappardelle pasta with roast chicken, pumpkin and cashews and a garlic cream sauce.



Both the breakfast and lunch menus are an option all day, and there are also some antipasto dishes that I've yet to try. Definitely a new favourite place to eat!

Mo Mo Bubble Tea and Coffee House, Sandy Bay

I've written about the city Mo Mo store before and am a big fan of the place, but until last week I hadn't had a meal at their Sandy Bay store. Everything at this outlet is vegetarian and the menu is mostly made up of mock meat goodies.

To start with I tried one of my dining friend's green dumplings. These are relatively pricey compared to other dumplings on the menu, but very tasty.



I had the San Bei 'chicken', which has a sauce of soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil. The sauce was quite tasty, although I was hoping for a more pronounced sesame flavour (I love sesame oil!). It was really filling, and the fake meat had a great texture.



A friend had the 'beef' ribs which came skewered on sugarcane. I tried one and it was very nice - the marinade had a lovely flavour and I enjoyed chewing on the sugarcane.



Another friend had the crispy 'chicken', and it was my favourite of the dishes. Crispy goodness!



Mo Mo Sandy Bay is a great place for dinner - the food is interesting and very reasonably priced. If you go there make sure you get bubble tea too!

Mai Ake Thai, North Hobart

Mai Ake Thai is on Elizabeth Street in North Hobart. It's a popular Thai restaurant that has been around for quite a while.

We started with the roti bread with peanut sauce. It was good value and a great start to the meal.



The chicken pad thai was fantastic, a great example of the dish.



The duck curry was a bit disappointing - the pieces of duck were chewy and gristly, and I'm pretty sure the menu said that there was lychee in the curry but we couldn't find any. Royal Thai definitely does a better red duck curry.



Still, overall it was a tasty dinner and we left feeling quite satisfied.

Pilgrim Coffee, Hobart CBD

Pilgrim Coffee is a new-ish addition to Argyle Street, opposite the hospital. The fitout has a very Melbourne vibe. I've been here twice, and on the first visit I grabbed a couple of macarons:



The one on the left was pistachio - it didn't have a strong pistachio flavour but the ganache was nice and rich and there was also a dollop of tasty jam (strawberry or raspberry?). The left-hand macaron was lemon or lime and wonderfully zesty, with two different ganaches in the middle.

On another visit we sampled a couple of rolls from the delicious-looking selection. I was a bit disappointed that they didn't have either the duck or pork belly rolls that I'd heard good things about, but found some tasty alternatives.

Lamb and lentil:



Chicken, avocado and cashew:



J and I shared these, and they were lovely. A little pricey but worth it - the quality of ingredients was clear.

We're not coffee drinkers but I've heard good things about their coffee!

Random Melbourne eats

To wrap up my recent trip, here are some bits and pieces from Melbourne.

Naked for Satan in Brunswick Street. I love their pintxos, and they're a steal at 80 cents each during lunchtime.



Drinks in the Ikea cafe: pink lemonade with rosella and sparkling pear juice. The lemonade was super nice, and we were disappointed that it wasn't for sale in the Ikea food shop.



But we did find the following in the shop: moose pasta and a packet mix of the Swedish meatball sauce, yum.



We went to see the Tutakahmen exhibition at the museum, and had lunch at the Tcheft Marquee restaurant there. The lamb burger and vege burger sounded good on the menu, but weren't terribly exciting.





Cheeky Rascal strawberry and apple cider - I was intrigued to try this after I received some comments about it on my Rekorderlig post, especially because it's not available in Hobart. It was pretty good.



Finally, some desserts from a self-serve Chinese bakery that I forgot to note the name of. A tasty pistachio layer cake:



And a really, really yummy mango sponge cake.



I love Melbourne!

Shanghai Village Dumpling, Melbourne

Shanghai Village Dumpling is in Little Bourke Street, very close to where I was staying on my recent Melbourne holiday. We walked past one evening and there was a line out the door - a good sign! We headed there for dinner the next night. It's a funny little place, with seating on several levels. It's noisy, a bit dirty and very chaotic, but I loved it! The food was fantastic, and dirt cheap. I wish we had places like this in Hobart.

Fried spring onion pancakes ($3.50). This was a great start to the meal, although I do think the pancakes at Written on Tea are better.



Crispy pumpkin pastry ($3.20). These were unusual, but I loved them! They were sweet and almost custardy with a nice pumpkin flavour.

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Steamed chicken and prawn dumplings ($7). Tasty with a nice wrapper. I saw bamboo steamers of dumplings being delivered to other tables that looked even better, but I couldn't figure out which dish they were on the menu.



Shanghai fried rice with diced chicken ($7.80). It looks like standard fried rice but was very tasty - a perfect filler dish.



Great food which fed the two of us for under $30 - bargain! I'll definitely head back next time I'm in Melbourne.

Chocolate Buddha, Melbourne

Chocolate Buddha has long been one of my favourite Melbourne restaurants. It's right in the middle of Federation Square and serves fantastic Japanese food that's always tasty and fresh, good value and great for sharing.

Sunomono salad: shredded seaweed, cabbage, cucumber, carrot and daikon with a sweet vinegar dressing. I love this salad and it's something I always order here. My favourite part is the seaweed - I wish I could get just dish of it on its own!



Yakitori skewers: teriyaki sauce glazed chicken pieces with a spinach and cucumber salad, pickles and rice. These were great - perfectly cooked and juicy.



Green gyoza: vegetarian dumplings that have been steamed then seared. Great with the accompanying dipping sauce.



Tempura pumpkin roll: an inside-out sushi roll filled with tempura pumpkin, beetroot, seaweed salad and avocado. Usually I get a soft-shelled crab sushi but decided to try something this time. It was great... I did regret not getting the crab when I saw it being served to someone else sitting nearby, though!



We enjoyed a couple of glasses of Te Whare Ra "Toru" GRP wine with dinner - I wish I could find this wine back in Hobart!

Website.

Burch & Purchese Sweet Studio, Melbourne

Burch & Purchese is an amazing shop tucked away discreetly in Chapel Street, not far from the Toorak Road intersection. They sell cakes, individual dessert concoctions and a range of other products like chocolate, jams, and much more. They also have a pretty incredible wall full of jars of all sorts of ingredients that they use in their dishes, and an open kitchen where you can see creations in progress.

We shared three stunning desserts. First was the 'Rhubarb, apple, crumble, cheesecake'. The desserts are packed into boxes, and they thoughtfully include a piece of paper that lists the components of each dessert. This one has caramelised apple, custard cheesecake, malted walnut crumble, rhubarb compote jelly. I don't recall finding any apple, but it was a rather nice cheesecake.



Next up is 'Raspberry, white choc, honey, lychee', with components of white chocolate and raspberry mousse, raspberry and lychee jelly, muesli and honey nut sponge, raspberry and hibiscus jam, honey, lychee syrup, exaggerated raspberry cream, white chocolate velvet spray.



This one had heaps of components, and they all added up to a pretty tasty dish! Here's a shot of the innards. The mousse was rather lovely but I found myself wishing that there was a bit less mousse and a bit more of the rest. The best part were the lychee pieces - one of my favourite fruits.



Finally, we had the 'Passionfruit, chocolate, caramel'. Components are chocolate shortbread, passionfruit curd, passionfruit salted caramel, dark chocolate dome, dark chocolate jelly, toasted macadamia, passionfruit marshmallow, milk chocolate velvet spray.



And here's the innards shot. Damn, this was good - absolutely my favourite of the three. The caramel, curd and jelly within the dome were AMAZING.



Here's a glimpse at some of the other desserts on offer. It was really hard choosing just three!



I definitely want to go back to try more (and maybe get another of the passionfruit, chocolate, caramel!).



We got a few goodies to take home with us. I got the raspberry and pistachio chocolate fudge and a jar containing half chocolate hazelnut spread and half spicy pineapple jam.



Burch and Purchese website. They also have a blog!

Cumulus Inc., Melbourne

It's been a little while since my last post - oops! Life has been pretty busy, but I enjoyed a brief getaway to Melbourne recently. Lots of delicious food was eaten - posts to come - and I knocked another restaurant off my wishlist: Cumulus Inc.

We were seated at the bar which overlooks the kitchen - it was a great spot to watch all the action! We were very impressed with how calm and organised the kitchen is. The staff conversations were entertaining at times!

We enjoyed a bottle of white wine with dinner, with is unfortunately not listed on the restaurant's website... drat! All I recall is that it was from a Coal Valley vineyard.

We were served complimentary bread which was fantastic - it seemed like the crust had been lightly fried. Very moreish!

We started with the kitchen charcuterie selection ($26). It was brilliant, and very good value. Clockwise from top is a fennel-laced salami, wagyu bresaola topped with beetroot and horseradish, jamon, bread, duck terrine and a rabbit rillette in the center. EVERYTHING was tasty, but my favourite was definitely the rillette.



The mustard crumbed pig's tail, celeriac remoulade and caperberries ($28) turned up next. This is the first time I'd tried pigs tails, and they were pretty good! The meat was incredibly juicy and cooked to perfection. I wasn't so keen on the remoulade though - it was tangy and rich. It would have been nicer to have something light and fresh to offset the richness of the crumbed tails.

We also ordered the cracked wheat and freekeh salad with preserved lemon, barberries and almonds ($12). It doesn't look like a big bowl in this picture but it was a very generous serving, and tasted great - I did avoid the dollop of somewhat-tangy dressing though (because of the previous dish!).

We were hoping to order another dish on the menu that was out of stock that night, so instead we were offered a duck and leek special (I think it was $39). Duck is a favourite meat so getting it was a no-brainer! It was again cooked perfectly.



I'd hoped to have enough room to try the infamous lemon curd madeleines for dessert, but we were stuffed! Next time...

Website.