Village Hoppers, Cranbourne North, Melbourne

The winds of fate wove our paths to Village Hoppers (Shop 3/1655 Thompsons Road, Cranbourne North, Melbourne, tel : +61 3 9702 0928) which has Indian and Sri Lankan food in this locale. 

We were introduced to their spicy bonda & lamb rolls.

Those spicy bonda were filled with potatoes underneath their shells of fried bread. They were hefty starch on starch balls that lived up to their names by being packed with respectable heat. Nice.

Pretty good tasting lamb fried rice. I'm not sure if the intention was for those lamb bits to taste like lamb jerky though.

That's rice with a pretty yummy dal and a kale gotu kola sambol. The latter wasn't as flavour packed as the pennywort rendition from Rasa Raja Bojun. Not bad as a whole though.

Chicken briyani was also savoury and flavourful from their concoction of masala. Bird's pretty tender. No qualms coming back for these.

Country Cob Bakery, Springvale, Melbourne

One of the things we've been looking forward to this trip was pies. After some "research", I had to concede that the options were overwhelming. Country Cob Bakery (890-892 Princes Highway, Springvale, Melbourne) looked like a good shop as any for a newbie because...... 

......it's home of Australia's best pie? 😂 Even the options here was overwhelming.

We settled on a few. They all looked mostly the same on the outside with that buttery brown pastry shell.

Curry scallop pie's not bad. The curry appeared to have a lot of green peas in them and was a little coconut-y. Not as much scallops in it as I thought but I'm not complaining.

The Malaysian prawn pie tasted like an creamy and less spicy version of laksa. Most people back home will never identify this as laksa. It tasted like laksa rempah. Just not exactly laksa. And no laksa leaves. Not bad. Chunky prawns in there.

My favourite was their plain beef pie which had a intensely flavoured, creamy and velvety filling of beef gravy. There's small bits of beef in that delicious gravy and I liked it. 👍🏼

Vanilla slice - or what I also discovered was named "snot block". Our first snot block. The layer inside between the pastry tasted custardy like how I imagined it.

Lune Croissanterie, Fitzroy, Melbourne

Came across Lune Croissanterie and their hype engine which included the founder Kate Reid, a former Formula One aerodynamicist who pivoted to baking and now uses her background to bring technical precision to the world of pastry.

From what we gathered, every croissant takes three days to make through meticulous dough-folding, resting, and temperature control inside a futuristic glass cube kitchen. 

You already know you're never ever going to discern all of that effort in the pastry.

We skipped the shop in the CBD under advisement and visited the larger shop at Fitzroy (19 Rose Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne).

Sparkling water is....free. As much as you want. 😬

That's the "Almond" - frangipane filled with a ridge of toasted almond slices. It's okay-ish. I prefer the rendition of croissant aux amandes from The Stamford Brasserie which I thought was more expressive with the frangipane. 

Kouign amann also okay. Buttery, sweet and almost like a croissant. I don't understand their intricacies enough to comment further but I do feel that the bak kwa version from Tiong Bahru Bakery has more character in its flavour. I am aware it's not a fair comparison.

Their morning bun's like another croissant with sugar and cinnamon. Not bad.

Coffee's pretty decent. Aromatic and adequately intensity from the roast.

We packed a croissant back to try because these were apparently the thing that Lune is known for. It's okay. Pretty sure I didn't taste all the engineering that went into it.

That being said, I didn't dislike anything we had from Lune. I wouldn't mind coming back for more pastries if I didn't have to wait in line for it.

The Cevapi Project, Dhanga Djeembana Walk, Melbourne CBD

First meal after touchdown in Melbourne. We came across The Cevapi Project (Dhanga Djeembana Walk, Melbourne) online and since they were open early, we made breakfast. While these guys are have the tendency to be mentioned in the same breath as Queen Victoria Market. They're not in the market. They're across the road from the market.

We wanted some of their origigi which was basically cevapi served with somun (their variation of flatbread) and chopped onions. Came across some off menu freshly baked borek so we got those as well.

Really flavourful smoke-y and salty cevapi (those beef sausages if you still haven't caught on) which one could pinch with the somun and chase with those onions to cut through the richness. 👍🏼 

Beef borek. Fresh out of the oven with the moist bits of minced meat in flaky pastry. Nice.

The cheese borek had stuffings that might have been something like salted cottage cheese. I'm not sure but it could have been a mixture of cheeses which included feta as well. Also delicious.

Tutto, Jewel

Dinner at Tutto (#02-246/247 Jewel, 78 Airport Boulevard, tel : +65 6035 7880) by Da Paolo.

Calamari's a little hard. Kinda disappointingly mundane considering that these guys (meaning the Da Paolo Group) have been in the business of restaurants for ages and a pedestrian rendition of a common starter was all they could manage. Lemon aioli's not bad though.

What we thought was memorable was their limone e stracciatella - spaghetti with stracciatella, Pecorino Romano and lemon zest. Pasta was creamy, cheesy, lemon-y and light at the same time. Only available at Jewel.

Quite impressed by their pizza cotto e funghi - the simplicity of it brought out the flavours from the ingredients which were the ham, mushrooms and tomato sauce. Like that their sauce wasn't tart.

Our pizza had a broken blister like a popped pimple. 😬

Burrata gelato with chilli - I liked the creamy spicy combination.

A recent trip to Lai Heng Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle (來興香菇肉脞麵)

It's been a while, more than a couple of years actually, since we last ate at Lai Heng Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle. Prices have gone up by a dollar since then. The big bowl is now $8. This was a 40 minutes wait on a sweltering Sunday late morning.

Seriously got quite irritated with the wait. I guess it was a combination of heat/humidity, crowd and being hangry. 

When all was said and done, it dawned upon me how I've had just almost imperceptibly (even to myself) determined if a place was not overrated. Maybe just one of few of such ways. All that roiling boil pent up beneath the surface dissipated in short order after I've tucked into the bowl. The spicy umami and textures immersing through and shrugging off that previous 40 minutes of vexing sweat.