And, just a week ago, Dani Valent reviewed The Royston in The Age, which I have also earlier posted about, and which is also a place I want to go for dinner. If only I had the time.

Reviewing is a difficult art. There are certain constrained forms I particularly like. The obituary. The chess column. The restaurant review. All so constrained by the necessaries, requiring clever use of what little room there is for the decorations. The English tend to do them best. Zia Mahmoud does the most with the least with The Guardian’s bridge column. Haiku fascinates me. The very word puts me on edge. I hate haiku about as much as shakuhachi music, but at the same time I love it about as much as a good egg breakfast, a short speech, photos of Japanese taking photos of cherry blossoms with unbelievably expensive cameras (snap thanks to a great photographer, Mark Alberding), and the way sacred cows get in the way of traffic in New Delhi. Short is good. Less is more. Small is beautiful. Metre is a useful discipline for the poet’s natural tendency to ungrammatical excess. Some of the most elegant writing going around today is to be found on this website. I particularly like:

After enough beers
My intelligence dazzles.
Others are jealous.

and

ugly red flowers
bloom on the floor of the bar
after the big brawl

and

Bagged a centerfold
But awakened to road kill
Damn you, beer goggles

All of which is an ironically long introduction to Jamie Wodetzki’s Breakfast Blog. He has concision down pat, and does well with the form of the restaurant review. Since first reading his blog, I was sure he was a lawyer. Many lawyers can’t write, but some can, and his writing had the ring of a lawyer who could write. A moment’s google searching confirmed my suspicions. See Jamie’s review of Cavallero here, Birdman Eating’s here, Cafe Rosamond’s here, Richmond’s New York Tomato Cafe’s here.

John Lethlean does well too. I think it would take some self-confidence for the town’s leading food critic to give Lentil as Anything a glowing thumbs up, but that’s what he did.

The Age’s John Lethlean gave Lentil as Anything the thumbs up the other day. Now that same journal’s Michael Herden has given Cavallero on Smith St a decent plug. I’m dying to try the place: the assiduous Breakfast Blogger got there almost a month ago, and he’s got the whole of Melbourne to cover. He wasn’t totally convinced, but I’m calling it teething problems: I want to like the place. Mr Herdern calls Smith St a “psychotically eclectic strip”. Too many interior decor shops already I reckon, but there’s room for a few more Cavalleros (snap). According to the folk who supply their coffee, the Cavalleros have “a shiny new chrome 85 series two group”. That’s a cofee machine.

The Age has helpfully identified “10 of the best” — I like the modesty of these words in a best of list — inventive cheap eats. Southern Richmond’s Pearl gets an honourable mention for $16 eggs on toast (keep it real, Cheap Eats), but I have to admit it’s one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to, and you can go there for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a drink. Then the Builder’s Arms on Gertrude Street Fitzroy comes in at number 3 for a $14 “3 mint pea soup with smoked paprika butter with steamed prawns” which sounds rather good. And Replete just down from MLC in Hawthorn, but metres away from being Kew, gets another gong at #6 for $12.50 ricotta hotcakes with lemon curd and strawberries. Thanks to Flickr’s Spin Spin for the photo of an uncommonly unpopulated image of the Builder’s Arms.

It was time for a mop chop at Dr Follicle’s again this week (actually it was well and truly time last week, but it just didn’t happen) and on the way I popped my head into Roundhouse Roti (don’t you think it’s amazing that no Melbourne Malaysian restaurant has called itself Koala Lumpur yet?), finally open, Rose Chong’s gift to her son of part of her emporium turned into an innovative eatery, a place that specialises in roti channai, a Malaysian specialty of really good roti and chicken curry, where you break the roti into pieces and into the curry and eat the combination. A girl was swinging around from the stove when I explained that “I’ve just popped in to check you out”. I realised at the same moment, as she swung into view, that she was a gorgeous vamp with beautifully defined eyebrows, and a nanosecond later that she was almost certainly Rose’s daughter in law (or daughter outlaw, depending on the marital status of the union which produced the child harnessed to her bosom). I quickly added in the direction of he whom I deduced to be Rose’s son “Well, not you personally”. I immediately liked the place. I want to go there now and eat roti channai, but it’s closed. Can’t tell you any more than that, but when you go, please leave a comment for all our benefit. Lee, son of Rose, is going to add roti pisang to the small little menu just as soon as banana comes down in price. That will be the day, ooff yeah. Maybe, in time, we will see durian cendol added as the ultimate in authenticity, and God! give me some nasi lemak.

I popped into the first Slow Food Market at the Convent today, arriving just in time to hear a politician give quite a short speech. It was that old Melbourne Grammarian who ended up as the Member for Broadmeadows but has never lived in the electorate, the Minister for Regional Development, the Treasurer, Mr John Brumby. Here he is having a chuckle with Maggie Maguire, the Convent’s CEO. Unbound by any code of ethics whatever, I nevertheless deleted the photograph of the treasurer flanked brilliantly by a toddler because the bastard blinked and looked kind of goofy. So you know now you’re reading a quality broadsheet.

That’s Tim, presumably the Bird Man himself, proprietor of this oddly named cafe next to Dr Follicles in what was formerly Organic Gertrude on Gertrude St, near Smith St’s corner (9416 4747). What he needs to do is strike up some entrepeneurial deal with the ready reservoir of fellas waiting for a mop chop next door (I’m thinking a brass bell with a rope which travels through the wall to bling bling a couple of minutes before it’s your turn, or a little doorway through which espressos could travel). It’s a spic and span place, probably a bit too s ‘n s for my tastes, but it’s brand new, and cosy clutter will no doubt round off its sharp corners over time. It’s an interesting place with an interesting menu, a breakfastry that lists eggs and bacon as extras, but boasts interesting options including:

• black pudding with bubble and squeak and poached egg
• coconut quinoa porridge with banana and palm sugar
• granola with berry fool
• home made crumpets with leatherwood honey
• coconut and papaya toast with lemon & lime marmalade
• hot cinnamon doughnuts with chocolate sauce
• ricotta hotcakes with poached fruit and maple syrup
• girlled asparagus with twice cooked egg (bacon optional)
• grilled kippers with fried potato and horseradish butter

It’s not cheap — even good coffee just should not cost $2.80 (it should cost $2) and Earl Grey tea definitely should not cost $3.20 [What is the world coming to?]) — but the food’s damn good. I had baked eggs on top of small bits of bacon, asparagus and tomato and it was divine. Miss K had what might have been an even better combo, baked eggs atop really good mushrooms and fontina cheese. I’ll be going back to try the other two varieties of baked eggs, which turn up in miniature very very hot cast iron frying pans.

Here’s John Lethlean’s review of Richmond Hill Cafe and Larder, the restaurant that goes along with the newly renovated cheese room.  I don’t say it’s cheap, but the queues at the door are evidence of the fact that it is not charging above market. Damn they do a good breakfast. It’s a 14/20 in Breakfast blog’s and John Lethlean’s opinion alike. Thanks to S2uart for the photo, which is in fact from the Cafe itself.