MELBOURNE UPDATE: Hot EATS

(check out www.yellowpages.com.au for a location maps)

Phillippa's
1030 High Street, Armadale, Victoria
Open 7days. M-F 8am-6pm,
Sat 8am-5.30pm, Sun 9am-5pm
Tel +613 9576 3111
For your nearest stockist you can call 03 9576 2020.

Arguably the best artisan bread in Victoria is from Phillippa's in Armadale. The store offers excellent breads, pastries and provisions. Stockists across Victoria, as well as in Launceston, Tasmania ensure a delivery of daily bread to everyone who appreciates the very best bread. Phillippa's products are also the choice of many chef's.

The bakery offers breads of great flavour, made from natural and wild yeasts and small production flours sourced both locally and worldwide. Their signature breads include Pane Toscano - full flavoured and low in salt, the horse-shoe shaped Pane Francese with it's crisp chewy crust and a light tang from the wild yeasts used. My favourite is the fig & anise sourdough. Crammed with moist figs and with a punchy anise flavour it marries well with a good blue cheese and a sweet wine or it makes wonderfully fragrant toast.

The story on Phillippa's bread bags say it all:
" We are intensely passionate about our breads and committed to using traditional production methods. We combine natural ingredients, mould each loaf by hand and set them down to bake directly on the brick floor or our oven. The result…delicious, chewy, crusty loaves. We do not add stabilisers, improvers, pre-mixes, preservatives or artificial flavours. Such ingredients ensure consistency but contribute nothing to the flavour or texture which we value most highly. Slight variations from day to day may be noticed (particularly when the weather changes) which is typical of a naturally made product.

Phillippa Grogan and her husband Andrew O'Hara, both ex Kiwi's met in London while Phillipa was working with Clark's restaurant and deli. Andrew was a baker for Clark's. Needing a good baker for her new bakery in Melbourne, she rang him and offered him a job. That was 6 years ago, and since it was hard finding and keeping good bakery staff, Phillippa married the baker. Earlier this year they hatched a bun in the oven, a darling little daughter Sophie.

chez phat
Level1, 7 Waratah Place, CBD, Melbourne
Tel +613 9663 0988

It's hard to imagine the seedier side of Melbourne to house the latest and hippest foodie establishment. My multimedia friend MB, who is always on cue, lead me down this back alley adjacent to Chinatown, I thought this must be a short cut, certainly no romantic little lane. UP a flight of stained burgundy covered stairs, the distinctive sound of mah jong tablets being pushed and thrown across tables was in earshot from the floor above.

Through a hole in the wall and you are immediately taken back in time with the retro 50's/60's interior. Tasteful, minimal, groovy. Here a talented team headed in the kitchen by Elena Bonnici, who has cooked and trained under Stephanie Alexander, is delighting urban creatives with a simple, stylish and modern Australian menu. Our party of 5, shared the large communal table with a flow of other Friday night diners. We ordered up tasty and easy fare, food that is not too difficult to comprehend and flavours that are balanced and not too challenging.

Dippy things, long slender French fries with tarragon mayo, whole artichokes roasted in parchment, spaghetti with clams, rabbit pie, calves liver on lentils and for pud, Campari blood oranges with panna cotta. The menu is also reasonably priced. I'll be back.

Kin Kao
Shop 26, Prahan Central, 30 Cato Street
Prahan, Melbourne
Tel +613 9510 8788

If the kick of Thai spices or the clean, clear flavours of Vietnamese cuisine take your fancy, Kin Kao offers a beautiful modern décor to enjoy it in. Under the direction of well known cooking teacher Meera Freeman, it's well worth a visit. It is not far from the markets in Prahan. Go there for well executed favourites, such as Vietnamese rice paper rolls, glass noodle salad and heady green and red Thai curries. The ingredients used are very fresh and the pastes and sauces prepared in house.

LIP café bar
133 Fitzroy Street
St Kilda, Victoria
Tel +613 9593 6133
Open 7 days, 11am till late

As the name suggests, Lip is the sort of place where you know you're going to have a lot of fun as well as enjoy some superb and well priced dining. It too is furnished in funky retro style and you can find comfort in the vinyl seating. The menu is a successful eclectic mix of ethnic and Australian foods and is designed so that you can order tasting sized portions of whatever pleases you. Where else can you enjoy sausage rolls, a lip-smacking spiced quail starter, a laksa and Pavlova all on the same night?

ezard at adelphi
187 Flinders Lane, CBD, Melbourne

Teage Ezard has moved on from Guernica and opened his new restaurant in the basement of the Adelphi Hotel. The menu and Ezard's execution of bold flavours is fresh and stunning. His use of Asian and Mediterranean ingredients - sensitive and innovative. Patrons who enjoyed his fare at Guernica, can still do so, as Teage's former second chef continues to serve a great menu in keeping with this style.

An Ezard classic and still a favourite recipe is one he demonstrated at the 1997 Melbourne Wine & Food masterclass - Barbecued Ox Tongue with Pink-Eye Potatoes, Bean Salsa and sticky mustard dressing. On one of the few occasions that I get to cook in Melbourne, I made up his recipe for coconut batter for blue-eye served with a Vietnamese noodle salad much to the delight of my cousin, a kiwi then living in Melbourne. She was missing good, battered fish. Apparently the Aussies prefer their deep-fried fish crumbed!