Breakfast at the Langham

I've mentioned before my love of a good breakfast at hotels, and the requirements to be considered as such. One of the best I've seen is at the Langham Hotel on Southbank
The hotel is exceptional all around, service is excellent and the beds are huge making you feel like a kid again, but I digress back to breakfast.

They tick all the boxes, decent range of cereal, like 6 different types of fresh juice, bakery items, regional stuff like congee, and dumplings, bacon, eggs, sausage, hash browns, etc. The crowning glory however is the pancakes complete with icecream and chocolate fountain, yes they have a chocolate fountain for breakfast!

Currently the Langham breakfast, in my opinion, is the best breakfast buffet going. Like Molly Meldrum says, do yourself a favour and check it out.

Hofbrauhaus, Melbourne

I was catching up with a mate and we wanted a few beers and something to eat. Having been there before I suggested we try hofbrauhaus, a German restaurant curiously situated in the Chinatown district of Melbourne.

Like I said I've been there before and had some very good nights, however when I walked in the door it looked different from when I'd been there previously. It wasn't jsut several of those beers making my memory hazy they'd definitely deon some renovations. I later found out that they'd actually had a fire in Mid 2011 and renovated out of necessity.

We pulled up a seat upstairs at the traditional style bench seating, always a great way to dine if you want to meet other people and have a social occasion, not so good though if you're out on a romantic first date. Like a lot of things it's neither good or bad, rather right or not right for the current situation. We were just out for a catch up and a beer so it was perfect. Our waitress was authentic Bavarian, she laughed when I pointed out that she was too young to be a widow as her Dirndl was indicating, only something a Bavarian would get.

Like Oktoberfest and German Brauhaus' they serve the beer in steins, a giant 1 Litre mug of goodness. They have quite a selection of beers including the obvious Hopfbrau brews as well as beers from other brewerys like Paulaner and Erdinger. A move I can only liken to serving Tooheys at the Foster's brewery. I went conformist and just went for a HB Original.

After some catch up we decided to get something to eat as we were feeling hungry. HB has all the usual German fare; sausages, pork knuckles and schnitzel. I opted for the Knuspriger Schweinebauch, oven roasted pork belly on a bed of red cabbage sauerkraut and a bread dumpling kind of like a potato rosti.

The pork was cooked to perfection and the crackling was awesomely cispy although a little burnt at one end. The dumplings were a good addition and helped soak up some of the lovely juice from the pork. If you're on a diet, especially a no carb diet, this is not for you as it is on the stodgy side, but went down excellently with a few beers. Mostly becasue after 500 years or so of brewing they've mastered the art of food that goes well with beer. HB in Melbourne also holds up the fine tradition of German beer and food.

Emporio della pasta @Crown Casino

Again still in Melbourne and staying just down the road I decided to try Emporio at the Casino (http://www.crownmelbourne.com.au/emporio-della-pasta) as we were looking for something just casual, reasonably priced but still good food. The location is good, opposite the Exhibition Centre aka Jeff's Shed away from all the other restaurants in the Casino out on SouthBank.

As the name suggests they do Italian food; pizza, pasta and some traditional Secondi like Osso Bucco and Scaloppine. There's seating for hundreds of diners, but I recommend if you can gettting a seat at the bar setup that overlooks the kitchen where they prepare the pastas. Very interesting watching everything go on, and you can pickup some tips if you're a budding home chef.

I had the Tagliatelle con salsiccia al vino rosso, which roughly translates to pasta with sausage and red wine. It was brilliant, the sausage seemed to be house made, and had a hint of fennel whcih made the dish quite unique. The pasta was cooked well, and the other ingredients were fresh and flavourful. Definitely recommend it.

So much so that I was back there a few adys later. I was catching up with my Mother, Sister and her 3 boys. They wanted somewhere kid firendly and reasonably priced, plus my Mum isn't a great driver in the city so wanted somewhere easy to get to. So I suggested Emporio having been there earlier so new it would suit the kids and with mains about $20 the price as well.

This time I had the Emporio pescatora, the seafood pasta. Once again the pasta was cooked al dente and the seafood fresh. The portion size was just about right for me but some may find it a little on the large size, I'm not sure if they do entree or smaller sizes but it's worth asking.

Definitely check out Emporio, I'd say even worth a trip especially if you're in Melbourne.

Soda Rock Cafe

It's been a while since I posted anything to this blog, not that the zero followers would have noticed.
Anyway I was in Melbourne last week for work so eating out every night. I thought this would give me a good opportunity to get some pics and try out a few restaurants.

Monday and first off the ranks was a decent hamburger. I had read an article on the web not long ago about the best 10 burgers in Melbourne so thought what better place to start. The top place apparently is something called the Beatbox Kitchen. According to the article itwas on a rooftop in Swanston St so we headed there only to find the place is a bar. They do serve burgers but they didn't look that good and it certainly wasn't beatbox. A quick search thanks to wonders of technology showed that the Beatbox Kitchen is now mobile, and the only way to find where it's at is via twitter or Facebook http://www.beatboxkitchen.com/ and they didn't seem to be anywhere Monday night.

So I shelved the Beatbox Kitcher for another day and moved to what was supposedly number 2 on the list, the burger at Collins Kitchen in the Grand Hyatt. We trudged back across town to Collins St to checkout the Hyatt's burger offering, only to find they now only serve burgers on the weekend at lunchtime! Grr.

Having been bitten twice now I decided to take the time to enjoy a beer in the bar and do a little research before hiking all over Melbourne. Seems the only place we could find that was supposed to have a good burger, was open on a Monday and wasn't way out in the 'burbs was a place called Soda Rock Diner http://www.sodarock.com.au/. So  we jumped a cab and headed to Chapel St.

The place was a little run down and fairly empty but it was a Monday. I decided to get the Two Tons of Fun burger, some Chilli fries and chocolate shake. Service was prompt and didn't take long for our burgers to arrive. They looked the part so score marks for presentation, but that's about the best of it. I know I ordered a burger that specifically didn't have lettuce or anything else resembling salad, but that was a mistake. Partly mine, but partly theirs too IMO for even offering it in the first place, after all the trekking and psyching up for a good burger I wanted something substantial hence the double patty but they didn't have anything on the larger side that had salad.

My other complaint with it was the patties were dry, they could do with not cooking them quite as long, bt that probably violates some stupid health standard. The shake was good, can definitely recommend that, my eating partner had the vanilla one and reported that it too was just as good. The last pice though was again a dissapointment. The chili itself was good and flavourful, but the chips tasted like they'd been cooked in 6 month old oil and lacked any decent crunch. I think with a soggier topping like chilli on fries you need thinner crunchier chips, not the thick fish and chips store style ones they used.

All in all I'm not sure how anyone put this place anywhere close to a top ten list, it was OK and if you're down that way probably a good place to stop for lunch, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat there again.