Accidentally delicious

i must confess that we stumbled across Anada quite serendipitously - we thought it was another restaurant altogether but decided to give it a go when we realised our error. It was lucky we did this as the food was delicious. Anada serves tapas as well as main dishes. We started with scallops topped with migas, which contained tiny bits of the most delectable Jamon. A sliver of Manchego quesa followed, and then the chicken and seafood paella, and what a paella this was! Infused with lip-smacking flavours of the sea, it reminded one of sunsets on some Mediterranean coast very very far away... you could almost smell the sea air and feel the breeze in your hair as you ate it. As for dessert, the creme catalan is faultless, and you get a generous portion of this caramel delight (we'd suggest sharing).
Oh, and can I add, the service there is nothing but delightful - friendly, efficient, sincere and consistent. Go there if you are in need of something to warm you during this cold dreary winter - and who doesn't?

You'll never eat pho anywhere else again

Footscray may have suffered from the reputation of being a rather shady suburb, and hey I should know - I used to work there. It does, however, boast some excellent food, and Thu The is an absolute diamond in the rough. A most non-prepossessing place, looking like just another Vietnamese noodle shop with the usual plastic tables, pictures of cows and chickens, dried flower arrangements, and the requisite TV on the wall blasting Vietnamese k-ok. There's no menu - or rather, no English menu, but there is a good English description of the dishes available pasted on the front entrance - best to check that on your way in. No spring rolls, no rice paper rolls, no broken rice - this place just specialises in rice noodles, served with either a chicken broth or Pho (beef stock).

The pho here is out of this world. Real aromatic broth, bursting with flavour and intensity, cloudy with the end product of simmering beef bones and herbs for thirty days - ok maybe just for hours. The noodles are soft velvety strips of heaven. The chicken broth is equally divine, and you get excellent quality shredded chicken here, not the scraps that you are often served at other noodle joints.

The only problem is, eat at Thu The once and you will never deign to have Pho anywhere else again - which makes you sound like a right food snob - or is that Pho snob?

It Just Didn't Blow Me Away....

Now we don't usually make a point of going to fine dining restaurants but don't get me wrong, we enjoy our food and wine. So when the idea of splurging on a decadent degustation meal we chose what was presumably the best in Melbourne - Jacques Reymond, the only restaurant to be awarded 3 Chefs Hats (whatever that means). Gourmet Traveller had raved about the food and there had been a recent minor refurbishment.

I also take into account that with such an experience as dinner as Jacques Reymond, it doesnt start and end with the meal - it begins, first of all, with a telephone call to book a table, and ends with a credit card bill. The former was a very pleasant experience - the phone call being answered, it seemed, by someone in an office, rather than by a harried waiter juggling the lunchtime crowd. The latter, I'm afraid, will be much less pleasant - though not as painful as with certain other fine dining places in town.

The atmosphere and ambience at JR is rather like being in some affluent friend's dining room - or perhaps in a boutique hotel. The new colours are warm and modern at the same time, and a fire burned invitingly. The service is slick and polite, although I did wait for a topup on my water once - and we had more waiters than tables on this extremely quiet Tuesday night. Now I normally wouldn't bat an eyelid about this at all - who would? - but at $150 a pop for a degus without wine, one has high expectations.

The chefs at JR served us a 7 course degustation menu which was surprisingly Asian in flavours - they love their coriander (it was everywhere) and soy/sake marinades seem to be the go. Perhaps it was my fault for not being au fait enough to realise that JR served Asian fusion food - but with a name like Jacques Reymond one might expect something different? no?

An appetiser of ?Parmesan flavoured foam and a tempura mushroom was bite sized and quite tasty, and it was followed by a green crunchy lettuce soup "Like minestrone" with what appeared to be a dollop of tempura battered "siu yok" (Chinese roast pork). Hmm interesting but I didnt quite get the minestrone thing, and the soup was pleasant but rather bland (apart from the roast pork, of course).

A tiny black lasagne of blue swimmer crab also failed to tantalise my tastebuds, which were crying out for a little spice or flavour here.

I cannot remember the third course and I do not think it was too memorable. The fourth course was a poached Eye fillet marinated in soy and sake - deliciously tender and certainly edible but again just failed to blow me away.

The fifth course I had high hopes for because a piece of suckling pig was promised, but while it was tender and juicy, the flavours failed to excite and just always seemed to border on a side more subtle than "yum".

A grilled piece of raclette cheese served with potato crisps and a miniscule fennel and potato tart (smaller than my little finger) was of course quite pleasant (when is cheese never tasty?) and the dessert of a trio of chocolate mousse, spiced pineapple and ginger cream and a lemon myrtle and bush pepper ice cream was delicious but I felt rather safe in flavour.

What did blow me away was the teensy macaroon that was brought out as part of the petit fours after dinner. We were also very impressed with the sommelier's excellent choices of matched wines - a delightful Yarra Valley chardonnay, a surprisingly robust Geelong pinot noir, and a Pyrenees shiraz to name a few.

It was all very pleasant, polite and proper, and the flavours were subtle but not innovative, and never quite got me excited. I was expecting to be blown away with each course and I progressively got more disappointed. Perhaps it was my expectations to start off with, but if this is 3 hats, then I'm happy go with tried-and-tested no hats restaurants that tantalise me with rustic and traditional food that bursts with flavour, spice and herbs, and leaves my wallet in a much better shape.