Wide Open Road IV

November 16 & December 24, 2014

I was quite surprised to discover that it had been about two years since we last wrote a proper blog post about Wide Open Road. Since that post we've moved to a new flat not too far from Barkly Street and quickly made it our go-to local cafe option - I get coffee there all the time and Cindy and I regularly stop by to check out the seasonal menu changes. It's probably our own familiarity that has limited us to the occasional tweet and facebook post, but a couple of visits within a few weeks of each other this summer is a good excuse to remind our readers of this place's charms.

It's a lovely space - a cavernous and stylish interior tucked away behind a fairly brutal industrial exterior. There are communal tables, bench seats, booths and regular tables, but they're all almost always full and on a weekend you'll almost never get a table without at least a few minutes of waiting around. In spite of the ridiculous turnover and seeming chaos of the place, the staff are relaxed, charming and incredibly efficient - it's a slick operation.

The menu changes around semi-regularly and always has a bunch of vegetarian options available. They've stopped being explicit about dietary requirements on the menu these days, but there's a note clearly welcoming inquiries about which dishes can be done vegan or gluten-free. We had a couple of shots at the most recent incarnation of the menu.

On the first visit I ordered fried eggs on sourdough with an avocado and black bean dressing and Asian herbs and chilli salad ($15.90) plus a gruyere potato cake ($5) on the side to share with Cindy.

The potato cake was excellent - crispy and cheesy and completely indulgent, but it didn't really belong with the rest of this dish. The dish itself was incredible - the black bean dressing had a rich savouriness, while the noodle salad had crunch and a decent dose of chilli heat. Throw in half of an excellent avocado and two perfect fried eggs and you've got a really excellent and innovative breakfast dish.

After she'd polished off her share of the potato cake, Cindy tackled her dish - local strawberries with whipped cream fraiche, praline and balsamic flakes on toasted brioche ($15).

The toppings on this were great - a nice combination of sweetness and tartness - but the toasted brioche itself was like a thick slab of cake and difficult to share around those pretty toppings.

I'm a big fan of the coffee that Wide Open Road serves up and Cindy reports that their chai is excellent as well - spicy and not too sweet.

Our more recent visit was a lunchtime trip, specifically so we could try the fried cauliflower sandwich (with carrot jam, walnut labne, chard and herbs served on Rustica pumpkin bread, $15.50).

It was an unwieldy sandwich - basically impossible to eat without taking it to pieces and using a knife and fork. The fillings were wonderful though - battered, deep-fried cauliflower florets, a mild labne dotted with walnut chunks and a lot of sweetness from the carrot jam. Between the soft sweetness of the pumpkin bread and the carrot jam, the dish was at the sweet end of the savoury menu, right where Cindy likes it.

I had enviously eyed off the Egyptian fuul on our previous visit, so was set on ordering it this time around. It's a broadbean-based dish, topped with battered, dukkah spiced poached eggs, a pomegranate and mint salad and some flat bread ($16.50)

This was another spectacular dish - I highly approve of the practice of battering poached eggs and henceforth encourage all cafes to offer it as an option. The fuul itself was a little drier than examples we've enjoyed at Brunswick Foodstore and Half Moon Cafe, but was hearty and well spiced, with the mint and pomegranate providing some sharp freshness to cut through the rest of the dish.

There's good reason that Wide Open Road is wildly successful - it's menu is innovative, varying and the food is consistently top notch. They do great coffee, are always playing excellent music and have a group of superbly effective and personable staff. It's a high-end breakfast (you're almost always paying $15+ for food), but they really justify the high prices in ways that lots of other cafes don't. They've got a reputation for being super vegan-friendly, but I'm not sure how the current menu works out - I'd be interested to hear about the experience of any vegans who have visited recently.

____________

Read about our previous visits to Wide Open Road here, here and here (and on Facebook here, here and here). Since our last blogging visit a couple of years ago, it has been positively reviewed by: The Good Hearted (back when WOR had more explicitly vegan dishes on the menu), The World Loves Melbourne, The Filthy Platen, Klaus & Fritz, melbourne brunch scene, Dale's Blog, The Owl's Nest, Mel: Hot or Not, I talk too much my mouth hurts, Doughnut forget me, Miss Muesli, Do You Want to Stay for Breakfast? and New International Students. There are a couple of less enthusiastic write-ups at Melbourne Food Snob and The Travel Journo.

____________

Wide Open Road
274 Barkly St, Brunswick
9387 6079
menu: food, drinks
http://wideopenroad.com.au/

Accessibility: Tables outside are on a sloping footpath and there are a couple of steps up on entry. There's a fair bit of space inside, although they manage to squeeze plenty of tables in there. There's full table service. The toilets are tucked away out the back, are gendered and fully accessible.

Little River

Update 27/1/2019 - Little River seems to have closed down (although there's some indication on their Zomato page that this is only temporary)

December 21, 2014

A couple of months ago, one of my workmates helpfully pointed out that a new vegetarian cafe was under construction on Albion St. A walk by and an online search had us hooked in to Little River's facebook page and we kept a close eye on them. To be honest, their original menu didn't inspire much excitement - there was fruit salad, toast, corn fritters, eggs with everything savoury and a coconut yoghurt option on the muesli as the only vegan breakfast.

Melbourne's vegan community pointed out this dearth quickly and politely, and Little River responded with a new, more varied menu. Now there's scrambled tofu in a brekkie wrap, a vegan option on the veggie breakfast, and a vegan waffle on the specials menu.

Michael's vegan veggie breakfast ($16.50) was big and bursting with colour, with grainy toast, scrambled tofu, mushrooms, tomato, saffron potatoes, avocado salsa, baked beans and veggie sausages. The 'sausages' had distinct vegetable flecks and weren't attempting to mock meat; Michael reported that everything was well prepared but within the realm of what we can achieve at home thanks to Vegan Brunch.

Of course I had to have a shot at that vegan Belgian waffle ($8). I must admit some bafflement on its arrival - it was barely two inches in diameter! On digging in, bafflement begot disappointment. This waffle had the character of stale bread squished into a waffle iron. (It's again thanks to Vegan Brunch that I know fluffy, flavoursome, crispy-edges vegan waffles are possible.) Little River did get the toppings right - the coconut-based icecreams, fresh strawberry wedges and dark chocolate sauce were all excellent.

As luck would have it, I'd also ordered a 'recovery smoothie' ($7) from the specials list. It certainly restored my faith in this cafe with its filling banana base, bold chocolate flavour and chewy toasted coconut and cocoa nib accents. This passes as a great chocolate thickshake even for a superfood-skeptic.

On our way out the door I noticed some handsome rolls, wraps and pastries in the display case - all good candidates for a low-fuss lunch. 

With one major miss and a couple of solid hits, Little River is doing OK after little more than a month of trading. We're optimistic that they'll hit their stride soon.

____________

Little River
Shop 7, 208 Albion St, Brunswick
9973 0473
menu: standard, special
facebook page

Accessibility: There's a small lip on the door and a shallow ramp as an alternative to the three steps up inside. Tables are arranged quite spaciously; we ordered there and paid at a low-medium counter. We didn't visit the toilets but noticed a unisex label down the hall. As you can see from the photos above there are a couple of high chairs and a kids' corner.

Lentils, radicchio & walnuts with Manuka honey

December 13, 2014

Cindy headed off to the country for work over the weekend, leaving me at home with our newly purchased Christmas present to ourselves: Yotam Ottolenghi's new cookbook Plenty More. I couldn't resist a flick through, which inevitably led directly to a more attentive reading, which progressed directly to dinner plans for Saturday night. 

I started with one of the simpler dishes in the book - a lentil-y salad, typically loaded with herbs and fancy flavours, including the ludicrously expensive Manuka honey that I'd bought by mistake months ago. There are a handful of different components to put together - the lentils, the walnuts and the radicchio all get cooked separately - but nothing is very taxing and it's all simply stirred together at the end. It's the usual flavour riot - the dill and radicchio combining into something quite bitter, offset by the sweetness of the honey that's infused in the lentils and the crunchy walnuts. It's an excellent dish - even better as leftovers the day after when the flavours have had more time to soak together. Like Plenty before it, Plenty More is looking like it's going to get some serious action around here.

Lentils, radicchio & walnuts with Manuka honey
(adapted very slightly from Ottolenghi's new book Plenty More)

200g puy lentils
2 bay leaves
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
80g Manuka honey
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 small raddichio, roughly chopped
100g walnuts
80g pecorino cheese
20g basil, roughly chopped
20g dill, roughly chopped
20g parsley, roughly shopped
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 170°C.

Put the lentils and the bay leaves in a medium saucepan, cover with plenty of water and bring to the boil. Get it on a low simmer and cook for about 20 minutes, until the lentils are tender. Drain, pick out the bay leaves and return to the saucepan.

Whisk together the red wine vinegar, half the honey, half the olive oil, a teaspoon of salt and some pepper. Stir this dressing into the warm lentils and leave it all to cool.

Mix together the rest of the honey, the chilli flakes, turmeric and a few shakes of salt with a teaspoon of water, creating a thick paste. Toss the walnuts through the paste, coating them.

Spread the walnuts out on a lined baking tray and roast for about 20 minutes, until crunchy.

Add the remaining olive oil into a frying pan on high heat. Quickly stir-fry the radicchio - you want to cook it for no more than a couple of minutes. Take it off the heat and stir it together with the lentil and walnut mixes, the pecorino and the herbs. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Great Canadian Ketchup Cake

December 14, 2014

I know my way around the kitchen reasonably well, but my skills are limited to the imprecise world of cooking, rather than the careful and measured art of baking. So every year when I tell Cindy to pick out a cake for me to make for her birthday, she's basically taken pity on me and 'forgotten'. This year I persisted, and she nominated this simple but strange ketchup cake that she originally spotted over at Lemonpi. It probably helped that she was going out of town for the weekend, so she didn't have to hear the cursing and see the chunks of icing flying off the beaters and across the kitchen, instead coming home to spotless counters and this slightly misshapen treat.

The actual process isn't really that difficult - at least if you're vaguely competent with electric beaters. My lack of any real skill only became evident at assembly stage, when my cake pieces sat a bit oddly on top of each other and my icing application left a few big gloopy clumps. It's not all about presentation thankfully, and this cake actually tasted alright - the tomato sauce isn't particularly obvious, but if you know it's in there you can catch a slightly odd salty flavour lurking under all the sugar. It's reasonably moist and the cream cheese icing is sweet and tangy, but otherwise it's a pretty basic cake - the novelty of the tomato sauce is really the key reason to give this recipe a shot. Still, it's a confidence builder for me - who knows what complex creation I'll bust out next December!

Great Canadian Ketchup Cake

(original recipe on 'Heinz it Up!', originally spotted on lemonpi)

cake

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1.5 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 cup tomato sauce (yes, really!)

1/2 cup water

2 tablespoons red food colouring

175g softened butter 

1.5 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

icing (note: this makes nearly double what I actually managed to smear onto the cake!)

175g brick-style cream cheese

175g softened butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

500g icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and line two identical cake tins - I used a pair of loaf tins.

Combine the flour, spices, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl and stir together. 

Mix the tomato sauce, water and food colouring in another bowl (enjoy the shockingly red colour!).

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until the mixture is smooth. Beat in the eggs. Once combined, add in the flour and the tomato sauce mixtures, beating it all steadily and scraping down the sides to get everything combined.

Divide the mixture between the two cake tins and bake for about 35 minutes, until the top is springy. Leave the cakes to cool for 15 minutes and then extract them from the tins and leave them to cool completely.

While the cakes are cooling, stir together the icing. Start by beating together the cream cheese, butter and vanilla and then gradually add the sugar, beating the mixture as you go to combine everything.

Once the cakes have cooled, spread the icing over the sides, the top and between the two cakes to make a big messy cake tower.

Roll'd

December 13, 2014

Way back in October when I was going through a slightly obsessive banh mi phase, Cookie Daux tipped us off via Facebook that the chainstore-looking Vietnamese place at Barkly Square was a creditable veg Vietnamese option. We've stopped by a couple of times since then, but finally used a lunchtime Saturday visit to blog the place properly.

Roll'd is a fast-growing franchise, with twenty-something locations listed on its website. Their focus is fast, affordable Vietnamese food, a kind of food-court version of the super cheap bakeries you find in Richmond and Footscray. The menu is pretty veg-friendly - there's a tofu option for each of the six or seven dishes they offer, including pho, noodle salads, rice dishes and more. The atmosphere is cheery, but you're still sitting in a shopping centre, so you're not really going there to soak up the good vibes. 

We started out splitting a tofu soldier (rice paper roll filled with tofu, rice noodles and fresh veggies, $3), with a serve of the chilli mayo for dunking. This was fine - a bit noodle heavy and not bursting with flavour, but cheap, fresh and a good warm up for our mains.

I couldn't resist the tofu banh mi (or, as they strangely label it: Bun Mee). It's a pretty decent rendition - crusty roll, loads of fresh chilli, coriander, carrot, mayo, cucumber and a few cubes of tofu dotted throughout ($7.90). Vegans will need to alert the staff to hold the butter and double check the mayo situation - we've also heard a few reports of pate turning up on the tofu banh mi as well, although that's never happened to us.

Cindy ordered the tofu and mushroom banh xeo - a crepe with a tofu/mushroom mix, chilli some greens and a few herbs ($6.90) served with a sweet sauce. It's a light meal (3 bits of tofu and 3 mushrooms), so it doesn't really compare with the similar dish offered at Fina's or our homemade version.

She bulked it up with a side order of sweet potato fries ($3.90), which were surprisingly crispy unlike so many sweet potato chips - probably Roll'd's most impressive achievement!

You can order Vietnamese iced coffee, iced tea and aloe vera drinks to take the heat out of the chilli. Service is brisk, friendly and effective. Roll'd are never going to measure up in either quality or value with traditional Vietnamese bakeries like Nhu Lan or N. Lee, but it's a super convenient option for us and does a decent enough job of veg-friendly Vietnamese. They're popping up all over town, so keep an eye out if you're struggling for lunch in a food court somewhere.

____________

There's plenty of love for the various Roll'd stores, with mostly positive write-ups at Gastrology, Arrow Foodie, MEL: HOT OR NOT, Eat And Be Merry, For Tomorrow We Die(t), Peach Water, Asian Restaurants in Melbourne, Love, Adjpants, Calenex, Champagne for the Pain, Krapow, Banh Mi Maniac, Chomp and Slurp, JP & Melbs and foodie about town.

The Very, Very Hungry Caterpillar, Pigging Out Around the World, New International Students, Consider the Sauce, Gourmet Chick, PhoCity and I talk too much my mouth hurts weren't as impressed.

____________

Roll'd
Barkly Square, Sydney Road, Brunswick
9380 9075
http://www.rolld.com.au

Accessibility: Roll'd has a flat entryway and a slightly cramped interior (especially during the lunch rush). There's a mix of high and low tables. You order and pay at a low counter. We haven't visited the toilets (in fact they probably rely on Barkly Square's general public toilets, which are pretty accessible).