Sable

Update 18/06/2023: Sable is now closed.

June 11, 2022

   

Sable has been operating in Cremorne for a while, and I've periodically seen their instagram videos of over-filled bagels and gooey cookies. Last month they opened a second outlet in Thornbury, and on the weekend we visited to celebrate our friend Natalie's birthday.

The all-vegan menu is a touch overwhelming! Mock meat rules almost every bagel filling: there's bacon, smoked salmon, pastrami, schnitzel, ribs, brisket, fried chicken, and crumbed deep-fried lasagne (!). An eater seeking something simpler can try the O.G. (cream cheese), call 1800 Avocado, or build their own filling combination from a choice of around 30 items. Gluten-free options are surprisingly prevalent and clearly marked.

   

We'd prepared ourselves to go big. I ordered the Marilyn ($17), a hash brown on the side ($3), and (spurred on by my Wombat breakfast) a vanilla malt shake ($10, pictured top). The shake and hash brown very good exemplars of their kind, though if I'd noticed that the bagels were served with potato chips I might have skipped the hash brown altogether.

The bagels were lighter and breadier than we expected, which was probably a good thing given that they're teamed with such dense fillings. Marilyn's bacon, egg, mozzarella, herb cream cheese and BBQ sauce merged into a sweet, salty, and squishy experience - it was tasty but I couldn't really discern any of the constituent ingredients. Michael reported that the pickles and sauerkraut cut through that same sauciness in his Reuben ($18, pictured above), which was otherwise full of pastrami, cream cheese, American cheddar, mozzarella, and aioli. 

This was a fun, over-the-top meal for a vegan's birthday celebration. Before I ever go back for another bagel I'm intrigued to try Sable's dinner menu, where it's possible to cobble together a nearly-traditional Italian meal.

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Sable

562-564 High St, Thornbury

9480 3371

food, (some) drinks

https://sable.org.au/

Accessibility: There's a step up on entry, a decent amount of space through the middle of the café, and densely packed tables. Tables are standard height, with a range of benches and backed chairs. We ordered at the table and paid at a low counter. Toilets were ungendered cubicles of standard width, with flat access.

One Pot, Pan, Planet

May 29-June 8, 2022

   

Michael's been relaying good reviews of Anna Jones' recipes to me for a few years, so for his most recent birthday I gave him a copy of her latest cookbook: One Pot, Pan, Planet. Since it's a relatively new release, we're going to show you the first five recipes we've made from it, hold off on reproducing the recipes themselves, and encourage you to buy the book if it appeals to you.

As you might guess from the title, the theme here is simple and environmentally-friendly cooking. It's all vegetarian, with vegan adaptations on almost everything. There's extensive text regarding Jones' philosophy of food, including (British) seasonality, centring vegetables, and reducing food waste and environmental impact. She makes an effort not to be overly preachy or elitist, and I'm ambivalent about whether she succeeds. 

   

That said, we're in it for the weeknight-friendly veg*n cooking inspiration, and there's plenty of it here. I invited Michael to pick a meal from the book that I would prepare as part of the gift. For dinner, he chose the saag aloo shepherd's pie (pictured top), which Jones admits is slower work than many of the recipes. The filling is a can each of beans and tomatoes with the full spice rack of Indian aromatics: turmeric, chilli, garam masala and cumin seeds. On top is a loosely mashed turmeric-yellow mixture of cauliflower, potatoes and spinach. It took two big saucepans, two baking trays and just short of two hours to make and we were satisfied with the results. This recipe includes ghee, but would be vegan with a coconut oil substitution.

For dessert, Michael requested the cherry and smoked salt clafoutis (pictured above). This was a one-bowl-plus-one-baking-dish affair that's heavy on the eggs and doesn't include a vegan option. The clafoutis was extremely simple to put together - a layer of jarred sour cherries covered in a layer of what looked like pancake batter, sprinkled with fancy salt and chunky sugar crystals. It baked in the still-hot oven while we ate our shepherd's pie. The batter set into something more like a custard, and it reminded me of this raspberry custard cake I made a year ago (and scored bonus points for not requiring egg separation or electric beating).

   

I had less success with the chocolate, olive oil and rosemary cake a week later. The skewer test failed me, and I had raw batter oozing out from the centre when I first attempted to cut some for afternoon tea! A second bake put that right but I still wasn't thrilled with the results. The recipe didn't call for sifting, and I ended up with little seams of bicarb soda flavour through the cake. That's easily solved on a second attempt. Less solvable is the effect of the olive oil, which seemed to pool up in the base of the cake. The vegan option on this cake uses sparkling water in place of eggs and dairy milk and I can't imagine the additional changes this would make to the texture. I've got such a strong selection of cake recipes at the ready (both vegan and non-) that I can't see myself revisiting this one.

   

The cake failure was followed up with our favourite One recipe so far: home-made flatbreads piled with a warmly spiced pumpkin mixture, pistachios, feta, pomegranate seeds and coriander leaves. This recipe took one bowl, one saucepan, one frypan and two people - mainly because the flatbread rolling and frying was a bit finicky. As you can see above, the result is a party on a plate and we'd love to make this again to share with friends for a weekend lunch.

   

Our final recipe trial thus far has been the carrot soup with rosemary and tahini. It's one pot, one frypan and one stick blender in the making, and vegan as-is. The soup is brightly coloured and flavoured with oranges as well as carrots. Michael took care to dry the canned chickpeas and master the crunchy, salty garnish, which is really what lifts the meal beyond one flavour note.

As you might have noticed, the One Pot, Pan promise of this cookbook doesn't quite deliver. Still, we're content to take on the level of effort and dishwashing actually required here. I'll likely pause on the dessert section a while, but I anticipate that we'll be exploring plenty more of the main meals in One Pot, Pan, Planet this winter. 

Maalu Maalu

May 21, 2022

   

On Sydney Road, Italian café Marcella was recently replaced; a new plain-text sign read 'All You Eat Buffet'. On further inspection, we learned that the buffet is Sri Lankan food (not spicy! assured another sign on the door) and the restaurant is named Maalu Maalu. We met up there with our friend Will for dinner to take our minds off the early hours of vote-counting this weekend.

The rice and curry buffet is available regularly for lunch and dinner ($20 per person), with thosai on offer Friday nights ($25 per person) and both plain and egg hoppers on Saturday nights ($25 per person). Vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options are abundant and well-labelled. We arrived early enough to receive just-cooked plain hoppers as soon as we approached the buffet and set about piling our plates with rice, noodles, curries and condiments. We were delighted by everything we ate, including eggs in a coconut gravy, lentil dhal, coconut sambol and pineapple chutney. I drank a mango lassi ($6) on the side. 

The restaurant setting is plain but it had a lovely atmosphere nonetheless: the air was filled with the aroma of coconut oil, the staff had smiles bursting through their masks, and the tables hummed with several rounds of satisfied customers. We'll definitely be among them again soon.

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Maalu Maalu

246 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

9380 6311

all-you-can-eat buffet $20-25pp

facebook page

Accessibility: The entry is narrow and includes one step. There are wide, flat passageways throughout the interior. Tables are regular height, somewhat densely spaced, and chairs have backs. The buffet is served at regular-height tables, but a person would probably need to be of standing adult height to see into and serve themselves from the bain-maries. We paid at a low counter, and didn't visit the toilets.

Florentines

May 8, 2022

   

My sewing machine is out of order, so I reverted to baking to entertain myself on Sunday. This fabulous Florentine recipe comes from my Meera Sodha Guardian bookmarking frenzy of January 2022. I've never thought of Florentines as a favourite, but I have long been fond of them. My mum had a Florentine recipe, most likely from this Australian Women's Weekly book. That's led me to occasionally choose the Florentines from café biscuit jars, although they often turn out to be stale.

This version is vegan (no butter, no honey!) and has a carefully curated ingredient list. No common old sultanas, glace cherries, or cornflakes; instead there are pistachios, dried cranberries, and crystallised ginger. That said, the preparation is less fussy than what I'm accustomed to: Sodha has us form the Florentine mixture as a large rectangular slab, which can be sliced into diamonds or just broken off by hand a piece at a time.

I rounded up the pistachio and almond quantities to use up what I had, and doubled the chocolate. No dainty drizzle for me! Instead I spread out a continuous layer of chocolate and used a fork to decorate it with waves like the café biscuits.

This recipe has promoted Florentines to a firm favourite, after all. I'm likely to make a second batch within the week!

Florentines

(slightly adapted from a recipe by Meera Sodha on The Guardian) 

60g pistachios, finely chopped

75g crystallised ginger, finely chopped

90g flaked almonds

50g hazelnuts, chopped

100g dried cranberries (or other sour berries)

2 tablespoons plain flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

75g vegan butter (I used Nuttelex)

50g brown sugar

50g golden syrup (about 2 1/2 tablespoons by my eye)

200g dark chocolate

Heat an oven to 200°C. Line a large baking tray with paper.

Chop all the ingredients that need it. Stir together all the nuts, ginger and dried fruits in a large bowl. Stir through the flour, salt and cinnamon until combined.

Place the 'butter', sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan and set it over medium heat. Cook the mixture, stirring, until everything has melted together and become smooth. Take it off the heat and pour it over the nut mixture in the bowl. Stir it all together to combine, then pour the mixture out onto the baking tray. Form a large rectangle about 1 cm thick; mine was about 30 cm x 22 cm.

Bake the Florentine slab for 10-15 minutes, until golden brown - keep a close eye on it to avoid burning! Allow it to cool completely.

Melt the chocolate using your favourite method and pour it over the flattest side of the Florentine rectangle. Use a fork to make decorative waves in the chocolate. Allow the chocolate to set completely at room temperature. Slice the Florentine slab into rectangles or diamonds to serve.  

Brother Bon III

May 4, 2022

   

Last week I visited my workplace for the first time in 2022, and I proposed to Michael that we meet at Brother Bon for dinner on my way home. It was a cold, wet and dark evening so I immediately zoomed in to the Comfort Foods section of the menu and ordered a chicken and gravy roll ($26).

This meal didn't quite match the Big/Red Rooster chicken rolls of my youth but still earned top marks in that comfort category. A soft round bun was unexpectedly sliced vertically, stuffed with coleslaw, fried chicken chunks and avocado. A passing staff member offered to fetch me a knife, but I couldn't see how that would help! I ate it awkwardly but happily with my hands. The small side salad was lovely, the chips were ultra-chunky, and the gravy was served on the side.

Brother Bon has such an extensive and appealing menu that'll it'll probably be a while before I circle back around to this dish. I'm glad I found the right occasion to try it.

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You can read about some of our previous Brother Bon meals here and here.

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Brother Bon 

377-379 High St, Northcote 

9077 1335 

menu page 1, 2 

https://www.brotherbon.com.au/ 

Accessibility: The entry is flat and tables are moderately spaced. We ordered at our table and paid at a low-ish counter. Toilets are individual non-gendered cubicles with a shared sink space. The cubicle I used included menstrual product disposal, and another one was marked for both wheelchair access and a baby change station.