The Age has reviewed a bar that I like, the Abbotsford Convent’s Handsome Steve’s House of Refreshment. I never seem to get there though. This could be the prompter.

I do like the Panama Dining Room on Smith St. Used to be a pool hall, when the floor below was a Latin Band venue — The Stage — which used to go off, and where I had some of my best evenings. Now The Age is onto it, and here’s their review. In fact, they like it so much they reviewed it again. It has that up 2 flights of stairs, you have to know about it excellence, but unlike so many such places, it is an expansive place once you get up there. There is a free pool table, and apparently on Sundays they have table tennis. They only got a sign recently. This one will be with us for a long time, like Spleen, and The Lounge, and 20 Myers Place. The photo of the Room’s bar is by Ben Richards, one of the Crumpler crew whose HQ is not so far away from the Room. Here are some more of his lovely Room photos:

The Age’s take on Kent St, the good Smith St Bar, is here. Our Melbourne daily has forgotten that the city side of Smith St is actually in Fitzroy, but who cares? It’s an odd review which does not ring true to the location for me. What is meant by this passage for example?

‘Behind the large roller door (which is a glossily bright shade of Margaret Fulton kitchen green), Kent St unfolds in a marvellously ramshackle fashion. Like Miss Haversham’s formerly grand abode, had Miss Haversham lived in an upstairs-downstairs townhouse near Number 96, the place is like a ’70s dream house gone to seed. You half expect to be greeted by a bunch of dust-covered ladies-who-(didn’t-make-it-to)-lunch in bell-bottomed playsuits clutching stale vodka stingers.’

Whether this is a reference to Miss Havisham (as is suggested by ‘dust-covered ladies’) or Miss Haversham from the BBC series ‘Upstairs Downstairs‘ (as is suggested by the spelling and the alusion to upstairs-downstairs), neither is evocative of Kent St, and how do we segue from either period to the 1970s?

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.

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.

This is Cocoro Japanese Pottery Cafe in Smith St, which has been open for a year. One of our friends married a wonderful Japanese woman. Months ago, we cooked a dried apricot tart for them (with a bit of help in the form of pastry purchased from the Richmond Hill Cafe & Larder) and they brought around all the requisites for green tea. As far as I knew, the watery stuff my sushi bar lunch haunt provides me with was green tea, and the green tea ceremony was something in which everyone moved agonisingly slowly. Only when I saw the splendid paraphenalia — in particular the chasen, the bamboo whisk — and the luminously green frothy tea, did I begin to understand how a ceremony might be crafted around this drink. I had never seen anything like it, and never tasted anything like it. Here is a photo:

(I also learnt that people don’t move agonisingly slowly in the green tea ceremony.)

On Saturday night, we had a meal on Victoria St, but it was too noisy for conversation, so we headed to Cocoro for dessert. It is a very lovely place. We sat in a little lounge area newly installed in the front window where you can also nurse a tea or coffee and read the paper. I had my second black sesame icecream for the weekend there — the first was a gustational revelation at Charmaine’s on Brunswick St which I can’t recommend too highly. This one was formed into two balls — “buns” in the language of the menu writer — stuffed with red bean “jam”. It was good, and most of the desserts, many of which featured green tea (“macha”), were equally good. There are safer options for those less culinary adventurous. It seems to be another Austrapanese couple-run place. It’s a tiny place. There are only a few tables. It is a great place to go for conversation.

Like Wabi Sabi Salon across the road, the traditional Japstralian menu is eschewed in favour of less familiar and frankly more interesting home-style Japanese cooking. But this is a serious place. Their website indicates that they are seeking to set up a farm so as to source their own organic vegetables. And they do real frothy bitter luminously green tea, served with the traditional flourish of ritually turning the cup until its “front” is facing the guest. Though I didn’t verify this fact, our friends suggested that based on their previous experiences of this place, they expected that the tea would have been fresh, as in recently flown in from Japan. It turns out that Cocoro are actually starting up an organic green tea wholesaling business. Our tea was from Kyoto, source of the very best green tea according to Wikipedia.

I can feel myself heading towards grumpy old mandom when I think about the price of coffee in Melbourne. $3 is usually too much for a cup of the stuff, but here, a big dose of good coffee, served in their beautiful pottery handle-less cups, is bearable. The Age’s Epicure’s take on the place is here. Thanks for the first photo go to an Irishman, Jeremy Keith.

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.