HOT: Degraves Espresso Bar, 23 Degraves St, Melbourne

Blind dates are always a risky endeavour. But I've always had good luck forming close friendships when my friends set me up with their friends, and even once managed to sustain a two year relationship as a result of a blind friend date. So when Matchmaker Huy suggested that Jenny and I meet Andrea (' I think you all will really get along, mainly because you're all Asian chicks with white boyfriends'), I thought 'of course!'.

Degraves Espresso Bar is the worst-kept secret of the best of Melbourne's secretive laneway cafes. Cosy and convivial, it was one of the first places which gave Melbourne its European-living reputation and those cinema seats and school desks are still rocking it. However, the louche atmosphere and quirky decor are basically propping up the so-so food. My spaghetti with mussels and chorizo ($17.90) was fragrant and hearty, but the pasta was overcooked way past al dente - in my book an unforgiveable error for a professional kitchen. Despite that hiccup, the date went well - Andrea really is very similar to Jenny and I, except with long hair!

HOT: Anada, 197 Gertrude St, Fitzroy

If you have a Monday birthday there aren't too many options for a birthday meal, so I was delighted when Tranzie suggested that they treat me to dinner at the Spanish restaurant Anada, one of those funky Gertrude St places that I just never got around to trying before.

The chef has previously worked at Moro in London and Movida so with that pedigree we quickly decided on the 9 course banquet ($48). Unfortunately my camera couldn't handle the dim lighting so I can't show you the procession of delicious dishes, from little glasses of celeriac soup with black salt, sardines wrapped in vine leaves and pork cheeks with crispy crackling and rice pilaf. I highly recommend the banquet for its breadth of flavour and textures, and you come away extremely full (so I don't recommend splashing out on the 12 course banquet). In fact, I suspect the proper adult-sized portions makes Anada the 'Anti-Gigibaba'.

HOT: Mediterranean Wholesalers, 482 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

I think the best way to navigate Mediterranean Wholesalers is to bring your own Italian nonna. Really, they should offer a No-Nonsense Nonna rental service along with the shopping trolleys.

Since no such service exists, I was left to face the fomidable rows of dried pasta shapes on my own. The supermarket also sells pallets of other mediterranean goods, from caranoli rice to tomato passata, jerry cans of olive oil, frozen filled pasta, as well as offering fresh bread, wine, sweets and deli products such as chorizo and baccala. When you're done with your shopping, you can even settle down at the authentic-looking Italian bar for an espresso and a slice of super-cheap apple cake or marble cake.

My shopping basket:

• frozen beef tortellini ($5.50)
• Carmelina sundried tomatoes ($4.55)
• Mazzetti pesto because I don't have enough basil to make my own now ($4.65)
• La Risera Arborio rice - just picked a brand randomly ($2.99)
• Reggia pasta - again no idea, but I spotted a little old lady stocking up on the sale items, so figured it must be ok ($0.99-$1.19)
• Di Martino bucatini - mainly just so I'd have a point of comparison for the Reggia pasta ($1.19)
• Di Martino Calamarata - cos it came in a nifty box and was an unusual ring shape ($2.29)
• Montefiore mozzarella and prosciutto for my pizza ($3.99)
• Giant hunk of grana padano - 600g was the smallest I could find! ($11.91)
• Arroz de Calasparra - the best rice for paella as told to me by a snobby Spaniard ($7.95). It's double the price at Simon Johnson!
  

If anyone can enlighten me as to what brands I should have been buying or whether I made the right choices, please let me know!

HOT: A1 Bakery, 645 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

I remember my first visit to A1 Bakery and being astounded by the cheap prices for the freshly baked lebanese pizzas. Well, amost 5 years on and it's still dirt cheap, mostly hovering around the $3 mark.

My zaatar pizza ($1.50!) consisted of a soft pillowy base, the complete opposite of a crispy Italian crust, topped with a tangy zaatar. There's lots of other (basic) toppings to choose from, and the warm bready base was so good that I could have kept eating and eating. However, I wanted to save room for one of the delicious baklava - a morsel of intense sweetness with firm filo pastry and a hint of orange-blossom water ($1).

On a Monday afternoon the spartan dining area was a microcosm of harmonious multicultural Australia: pimple-faced youths; middle-aged Lebanese men arguing animatedly; stout po-faced matrons dressed in black hajibs; and Anglo families with kids mesmerised by the lurid Lebanese music video on the flat screen TV. It made me feel warm and fuzzy inside!

HOT: Hausfrau Bakery and Cakes, 32A Ballarat St, Yarraville

Hausfrau is a cute bakery cafe styled with kitsch 50s-style laminate, enamel jugs and crockery of bright blooms which serves an array of savoury and sweet treats as well as selling loaves of bread. Its warm cosiness was very popular when we popped in for a movie post-mortem so we had to wait a while before securing a table on a Sunday afternoon.

It's the perfect location for an afternoon nibble and general gossip - flaky mini sausage rolls, a pastry snail, cute citrussy cupcake and a corn cake with tomato relish. And if you're a true hausfrau, you can even buy a hausfrau canvas shopping bag ($4.50) or apron ($20)!

HOT: Alice in Wonderland featuring Little Creatures, Cafe Vue, Little Collins St, Melbourne

As I mentioned before, my birthday treat from my parents was dinner and drinks at Cafe Vue.

It wasn't as busy on Friday night as I was expecting, so we had our pick of the outdoor tables (with overhead heaters). For the next three hours, we tripped through Alice in Wonderland with drinks in hand, alcoholic for RM, non-alcoholic for moi.

First up was triangles of gruyere and mushroom croque monsieur topped with intensely fragrant truffles. A taste sensation of wintery earthiness matched with The Mad-Hatter's Tea (Pipsqueak apple cider with lime) and a blood orange juice and ginger beer concoction.

Then my favourite dish, steamed Angasi oysters with Chinese wine and brown bread. The juicy and creamy oysters apparently came from the best oyster man in Australia and each rested in an edible 'shell' - brown bread baked into the shape of an oyster shell. Served with a pint of White Rabbit ale and pineapple juice, chinotto and honey syrup mix which tasted surprisingly like the ale, without the beery bitterness.

'Cabbages and King...Fish' consisted of a topsy-turvy plate of chips that looked like fish and fish that looked like chips! The dish was served with a pint of Little Creatures Pilsner and a mocktail of mango puree, limonata, orange blossom water and soda water.

A bizarre March Hare's carrot and goat's cheese gnocchi with beetroot dressing. The 'gnocchi' was actually cheese that had undergone some chemical process so they were presented as little tubular marshmallows. The carrot had been cooked over many hours so it had infused the flavours of stock. A bit of magic went into the Pale in Thyme cocktail, which consisted of a pale ale with the initial bitterness removed by the flavours of thyme, leaving only the lemon myrtle flavour at the back of the palate. My drink consisted thyme syrup, passionfruit puree, lemon syrup and sugar syrup.

Finally, breakfast-as-dessert reminiscent of The Fat Duck. We each received an egg carton labelled Pullet Eggs (poulet, haha) where the eggs had been replaced with madeleines filled with lemon curd or topped egg shells filled with a layer of vanilla custard and tea jelly. Hmmmm.....

All in all, a very enjoyable night of creative and delicious food, lots of drinks and the great service typified by all my Vue de Monde experiences. You'll have until the end of July if you want to follow me down the rabbit hole.

HOT: Sushi Burger, J Cafe Restaurant, 167 Exhibition St, Melbourne

The Japanese are reknowned for their quirky mash-ups of Eastern and Western culture, from costume-play to J-pop.

So it's no surprise that someone thought "Hey, I like burgers, I like sushi - I know! A sushi burger!" This bizarre sounding ensemble consists of two sushi rice patties, special sauce, lettuce, no cheese or pickled onion, your choice of filling, all wrapped in a sheet of nori seaweed. Unlike a Big Mac, it's made fresh to order at J Cafe Restaurant, a regular haunt of Asian international students and curious foodies like me.
Is it better than a real burger? My spicy raw salmon sushi ensemble ($6.50 takeaway) wasn't as pretty as the eye-catching flourescent plastic display, but it was fresh and tasty and didn't leave me burping burger breath the rest of the night.

NOT: Gigibaba, 102 Smith St, Collingwood

Today I welcome my first ever guest blogger, Tranzie. The binary rating system is catching on! Here's her potentially controversial NOT for Gigibaba:

hey, we tried gigibaba last night and the food was so delicious, the atmosphere was great and they had a great wine list (where you could buy your wine in odd portions, like 300mL to share and match your meals).

but the meal portions were hilarious, they were so small that we both tried hard but couldn't help but laugh out loud when the food came out - $8 for one tablespoon of taramasalata and for $12 you can get HALF a quail to share between two! Interestingly the bread was also miniature.

some of the dishes were very unique and carefully prepared, like the lamb sausage felt like it had been minced by hand and was so intense and meaty. the dips were of a better quality than your usual turkish joint, but i am still not sure what to feel or whether it was worth it given it lacked that turkish generosity of portions in such a big way.

in fact, we saw the couple next to us arrive and order three dips, baba ghanoush, hommous and taramasalata (they would have paid $6 to $8 for each dip) and we stayed a bit longer at the restaurant just to see their reaction when the food came out. like us, they tried really hard to conceal shock!

i mean, i knew it would not be value for money but i didn't realise to this extent. [Jetsetting Joyce: This is the bit that made me laugh the most] after forking over $110 for a mid week meal, we went home and ate cereal because we were still so hungry. If we were that hungry, YOU would have been starving!

i think they have upped the prices since they became so popular. I read two reviews on epicure, the one of Nov 2008 said that it was GREAT value! And I think the one in Feb of this year felt similarly to the way I did, in that the servings were just so mall. SUCH a shame as if the prices were better, we'd like to frequent the place.

i guess you could have a great meal, but expect to pay what you would for 3 courses at somewhere like grossi. thought we'd let you know in case you were going to stop in for cheap mid week turkish!

Tranzie's NOT assessment is disappointing, as Gigibaba has been on my local to-do list for a while. I would be so annoyed to have gone out for dinner and then had to eat again! Especially when there are perfectly good dips and breads at Sonsa right near by.

Here's what others have said about Mini-baba:

• Fitzroyalty: Gigibaba is not a place for the famished.
• Gosstronomy: The dishes certainly weren’t mind-blowing and a bit lacking in value.
  
• Menufeast
  
• Your Restaurants

HOT: Shark Fin House, 131 Little Bourke St, Melbourne

Whoops. Luckily no one important reads this blog, otherwise by now I would have been held to account for my wee defamatory comment on Shark Fin House.

Correction: There is no third floor, and the top floor (second floor) doesn't appear to be a special area for non-Chinese where they serve sub-standard food. Although if you don't have an eagle eye it's likely that you'll still be shunted the cold egg custard tarts - I had to ask specifically for fresh baked tarts and not the ones sitting on the heated trolley shelves.

Also a tip - if you have a group which is larger than three people, it's best to pre-book a couple of days ahead. We had six people and spent a nerve-wracking twenty minutes wondering whether our queueing was in vain. Fortunately no - an hour later and $15 lighter, I tumbled back out into the noon sunshine and shuffled home for a digestive nap.

HOT: Commercial Bakery, Rear 360 Lt Collins St, Melbourne

Commercial Bakery is the kind of hidden Tardis-like cafe on which Melbourne thrives. At first I thought it was a tiny establishment selling only what was displayed in its window shelves, but step inside and you see that a large warmly-lit split-level area stretches into the back beyond.

Its frontage caught my eye because of the exiting lunchtime throng trading in their sandwiches and coffee. Even though I'd just had lunch, my 1.5 hour yoga session obviously created a ravaging hunger which meant I could fit in a second lunch immediately afterwards. Straight to a large square of spanatopika ($6.50)! It consisted of thin bready pastry, almost like a pizza base and not traditional filo, stuffed with a thin smear of spinach and cheese. Best of all, not oily and saggy.

HOT: Cafe Vue, 430 Little Collins Street, Melbourne

I can still remember my visit to Shannon Bennett’s first Carlton restaurant and my initial encounter with multiple courses of wildly fantastical food combinations. Now, when I am asked to name Melbourne’s best restaurant, I invariably answer ‘Vue de Monde’.

Since moving to his CBD location, Bennett has expanded his repertoire beyond molecular gastronomy to encompass the rustic French cuisine of Bistro Vue and the casual scene of Café Vue. His empire now hits all price points, but the high quality of the food and careful attention to detail remains a consistent theme.

Café Vue is a narrow indoor/outdoor metallic space which serves surprisingly reasonable food. To whit - their $15 ever-changing lunch box menu is delightfully presented and delicious. On the day of my lunch with Leanne, our ‘box’ contained a shot of jewel coloured borsht dolloped with a poached quail’s egg; pearls of Tunisian couscous with broccoli and red onion served in a Tiffany-box frilled ramekin; a buttery oxtail and vegetable pastie and two little, almost fizzy, yoyo biscuits made of yuzu. As they say on Masterchef Australia, every dish had ‘punch’. I noticed that most of the office workers queued up for the sleek burger and fries ($12), so I presume it’s also good.

Already I’m looking forward to my next sojourn to Café Vue for my birthday treat. Every Friday they host a cocktail night and happily July’s theme is my favourite children’s book, Alice in Wonderland. So I can’t partake in Heston Blumenthal’s Victorian Feast, but I can enjoy five small courses at Café Vue including magical mushroom croquet-monsieur, March Hare’s carrot and goats cheese gnocchi and bread and butterflies pudding. There’s even something extra for RM - each course is matched with a Little Creatures beer or beer-based cocktail.

HOT: Ca De Vin, GPO Melbourne 350 Bourke St, Melbourne

When I logged into Facebook in the morning, I discovered that my Tokyo-based friend Andrew was in town for a one-night only showing.

Whenever I have visitors in town I always try to take them to somewhere in a laneway. Ca de Vin was right near his hairdressing appointment, and a perfect venue as it was, as he said himself, 'so Melbourne'. I can't vouch for the food as we only had a wine and peppermint tea, but it's narrow, dark and tightly spaced and epitomises the kind of sophisticated European aesthetic that Melbourne exudes effortlessly.

HOT: Palomino, 236 High St, Northcote

The design brief for Palomino seems to have been 'stylish kitsch'. Look around and there's tacky porcelain ornaments randomly resting on the ledges and dotted around the boxed wooden shelving. The backdrop though is a stylish royal blue feature wall, fern wallpaper and hanging round orbs of soft light over the bar.

Only Anita tried the food and hot chocolate, but Palomino is the kind of low-key cafe that I'd like to hang out in all the time. It seems that Northcote residents and visitors feel the same way, as there was constant traffic in and out of its cosy warmth on a Sunday afternoon.

NOT: Cho Gao Restaurant & Bar, Level 3, Melbourne Central, Melbourne

I had suggested Cho Gao for Saturday lunch with my long-lost high school friend, despite my misgivings about its shopping centre locale, because I had heard about its expansive view of the State Library. Unfortunately, it was too cold and cacophonous (protests about the Northern Territory intervention) for us to sit on the balcony for a pleasant catch up, so we picked a corner table indoors in the dim oriental wood styled dining room.

We each selected a roti wrap from the express lunch menu - beef for me, pork for Emily, plus a soft drink each. My wrap was extremely unappetising, containing the sort of nasty shredded corned beef that you find in sub-standard sandwich bars and slathered with gloops of processed mayonnaise. Emily declared her roast pork wrap with spiced apple compote delicious - or maybe she was just being polite as I had picked the restaurant.

On the basis of my meal, I don't think Cho Gao will ever be able to fill its cavernous dining room, and during our lunch there was only one other lonely pair of diners. The silver lining to lunch was that the damage to my wallet was limited to $10.

HOT: Strangers Corridor, Parliament House, Spring Street, Melbourne

Continued unemployment means that every day is a potential duvet day. I have ample opportunity slump around the house in tracksuit pants and a food-splattered fleece, so any excuse to dress up and get out of the house is always welcome.

On Tuesday I decided to take my ladylike self to high tea at the Strangers Corridor. I donned a spotted silk dress, slipped on a pair of demure heels, pulled on my embroidered gloves and then topped my outfit with a plastic bike helmet to cycle in an elegant manner to Parliament House.

The restaurant isn’t as it sounds, like some dark windswept outpost in the back corners of the building. In fact, it’s a cosy wood panelled room filled with padded chairs and delightful little alcoves, perfect for whiling away an afternoon sipping tea and leisurely scanning the newspapers.

The quality of the food was equal to any of the delights served by the Windsor Hotel high tea, without the high cost. The large platter contained two bumptious sandwiches (smoked salmon and cucumber), an enormous featherlight scone served with homemade jam and thick double cream, various small quiches and three mini cakes ($27.50). In addition, the personal service was exemplary; from the moment I was escorted from the Parliament front desk to my chair by name, to the regular enquiries about whether I wanted more tea and then an offer to join a Parliament tour and to visit the back balcony.

It’s a shame that the restaurant is only open to the public during Parliament’s non-sitting weeks and only during weekdays, as it’s such a wonderfully soothing and refined experience that I’d love to return again and again.

HOT: Cacao Fine Chocolates and Patisserie, 52 Fitzroy St, St Kilda

St Kilda's favourite artisan chocolate shop Cacao has sprouted more branches since I was last in town, which is a happy indicator of Melbourne's ever-expanding appetite for beautiful handmade chocolate treats - even at $1.95 a mouthful.

Cacao's chocolates are made with the finest Belgium couverture (naturelement) and I like their brightly decorated avant-garde designs. The photo of my personal selection through the crinkly bag doesn't do the bright hues justice, but I can vouch for the amazing flavours of the Safran - a pop of citrus caramel ganache and milk chocolate ganache infused with saffron, then dipped in dark chocolate.

HOT: Baker D Chirico, 149 Fitzroy St, St Kilda

Daniel Chirico's small brightly-lit bakery/cafe has been producing quality sourdough for Melbournians for many years, but today was my first visit. The apron-clad staff looked happy, healthy and like they were in love with bread. After a bit of discussion, I decided on the $6 raisin loaf (light, white, organic sourdough packed with juicy fruit) rather than the fruit loaf (a denser sourdough with raisins as well as figs, dates and apricots). I personally preferred it to the loaf produced at the Natural Tucker Bakery, whereas RM came to the opposite conclusion. Potatoes, potartoes.

HOT: Panama Dining Room, Level 3/231 Smith St, Fitzroy

When I first dreamt of living in Collingwood, I dreamt of living in a huge warehouse apartment with lofty ceilings and huge windows like those in the Panama Dining Room.

This dimly lit and palm-fronded dining room was buzzy on a Sunday night as we settled down for a low-key dinner with friends. The menu was an eclectic Mod Oz mix - from wagyu beef steaks with mash, crisp pheasant pie to a wet, spongy spinach and yoghurt souffle with subtly Indian spiced vegetables. The food was pleasant but not outstanding, but combined with the ambience it worked as a great local restaurant.

HOT: Corner Store Cafe, 100 Scotchmer Rd, Fitzroy North

The gaudy plastic strips hanging over the door, mismatched formica tables and the stream of regulars trailing kids and dogs really do make the Corner Store Cafe feel like the low-fi neighbourhood hangout. Our large lunch plate ($13.50) contained one of the day’s specials (our choice was the large red capsicum stuffed with risotto) served with salad and an unfortunately oily potato dauphinois. Sitting on the miniature pavement table, listening to the local patter and soaking in the sunshine – a perfect way to spend a Friday afternoon.

HOT: Loafer Bread, 146 Scotchmer St, Fitzroy North

If you’re going to visit two bakeries in the same area, then it’s only right that you should conduct a comparison visit of the third bakery.

Cheerful Loafer Bread seemed to specialise more in cakes, pastries and pies than bread, and their window display of delectable pastries convinced me to try a walnut scroll ($3.50). Absolutely delicious – the right amount of nuts, not too sweet and reminiscent of the orgasmic pastries from Baker and Spice in London.