Life with Bees

Bowral - a sort of upmarket hill station for Sydney colonials - is where ladies who lunch retire. They go to country house hotels for a pedicure, trawl the shops for vintage furniture and take their antiqued mothers out once a week for afternoon tea and champers. So what is a trendy joint like Biota doing here?

Biota - sorry, Biota Dining - has only been open for a couple of months. It’s modern and stylish with a  kitchen garden, a tiny pond and an automated greenhouse (no, neither). It’s set incongruously next to a pink motel but clever hedging makes the restaurant and its surrounds seem secret and sanctuary-like. There’s one of everything - a sunny stone courtyard, a private dining room, a lush garden, a chic cocktail bar, a verandah for alfresco eating, a casual lounge for tapas.  It’s a wonder they remembered to include the restaurant itself but everything is cleanly put together, from the wide, theatrical kitchen window to a centrepiece table full of glassware and bonsai.

Biota’s gastronomic aspirations are made clear very soon. Two glass beakers with cubes of rhubarb are set down and a chef arrives armed with a chrome soda siphon. Oh dear - it’s the liquid nitrogen. “No, no, it’s an infusion,” he reassures, filling the beakers with a gleaming froth. The eucalyptus-infused foam is mentholated without being harsh, its sweetness cut through by the tart rhubarb cubes. As an amuse bouche it works well, bringing a little smile and setting out the terrain that this kitchen wants to explore.

TK opens with potato in smoked buttermilk with burnt beetroot and egg yolk ($19). The potato is light and fluffy with hints of smoke. It’s accompanied by a perfect yolk wrapped in foam that simulates the outer white of a boiled egg. A thin strip of duck breast in juniper sugar ($20) is tender and sinuous like sashimi, surrounded by crunchy grains of cereal and served with another perfect, buttery duck’s egg.




The mains are equally interesting - a fillet of mulloway ($38) is straight out of the Heston Blumenthal “Sound of the Sea” playbook. There’s sea-foam topped with a grey curl of what appears to be kombu, salted and crispened to emulate fish skin. The fillet itself tastes a little plain, but is tender to the fork. As the foam dissipates, the briny broth yields sunken treasures, including green soybeans and tapioca pearls like fish eyes.  TK has a lamb rump ($41) which is clean and juicy without being, as he puts it, “mindblowing”. It’s set off by oat milk,  a smoky “garlic ash” and bursts of olive, all flavours that make welcome but sporadic appearances.

Crappy iPhone shot

 For dessert, a cold infusion of eucalyptus with fruit ($14) is refreshing and exceptionally pretty. There’s no foam here, thankfully, just a chilled eucalyptus liquid over soft plum segments, pumpkin and rhubarb. Cubes of cucumber and speckled chia seeds add to the pleasure. It’s a lovely summer dessert but at odds with Biota’s seasonal mandate, given that we’re nearly into winter. TK’s honey and pumpkin cream over a pumpkin shortbread ($15) is silken over crisp shortbread with a ginger sorbet. The individual elements are excellent but the dish becomes a little overbearing.

The food is intelligent and the work of a thoughtful chef who backs himself. It’s nicely executed and some of the combinations may not be to everyone’s taste but there’s no doubting the skill underlying the trendy locavore manifesto. Worth stopping over on your way to Sydney just to see what they come up with next.

www.biotadining.com
Kangaloon Road, Bowral
02 4862 2005

I've been on holidays and have been using the long, lazy days to catch up with some restaurants. So I had lunch at Sage at Gorman House this week.

The restaurant always gets approval from our friends and I was pretty keen to finally check it out. It's a small but very charming restaurant that sits just on the side of Gorman House in Braddon. The dining room is white and minimalist with plush seating and soft, first-date lighting, though this is all going to change in an upcoming refurbishment. The Canberra Times Food & Wine magazine reports owner Pete Harrington is going to go for a sunnier look with bright colours, which would be lovely for summer.

Sage offers an $18 Express Lunch menu as well as its a la carte menu of $18 entrees and $32 mains. I ordered a caramelised pork belly with yellowfin tuna sashimi from the express menu. It was a pleasant spring day, great for sitting outside in the courtyard. The squares of pork belly were glassy and caramelised on top and mostly tender beneath (I did get one leathery dud square). The tuna sashimi was clean and strong with a sprinkle of rock salt or sugar on top. It all went beautifully with a pile of basil and a puddle of raspberry caramel that had more in common with pekat soy sauce.

Because I'd had the cheapo main dish, I splurged on dessert. There's a short but sharp dessert menu (all $14) with interesting-sounding dishes such as a jasmine tea creme brulee and a chocolate fondant with malt ice cream. I got two fat brandy snaps filled to bursting with fig and whiskey cream, served with a scoop of olive oil ice cream and a citrus scone.

Let's praise friends who get things done. They make the bookings for the hotels, they remind everyone what time we were having drinks and harass everyone to pay their share of the bill. So thanks Al, for rounding us up and booking us in for no less than three Chinese restaurants in a month.

1. Spicy Ginger Cafe, 25 Childers St, Civic
It's Szechuan and it works. Dip into a hotpot of pork filled with chilli flakes (two of us inhaled  the fiery flakes and nearly choked to death).  Try not to squabble over a nest of super-thin french fries seasoned with onion and spices. They're the savoury, deep-fried equivalent of spun sugar.  A huge plate of thousand year eggs encased in aubergine is stodgy and less successful. Forget about desserts, which are mostly Western-influenced or old standards such as fried ice cream. It's student cheap - $99 for four of us.

2. The Scholar, 23 Woolley St, Dickson
There's a slightly more upmarket feel to this restaurant, which sits upstairs from the Dickson strip. A tank of live seafood and abalone at the front of the restaurant looks promising and the menu is diverse. Roast pigeon is a little dry but comes well seasoned and complete with pigeon head. Al, who loves pigeon, eats the (admittedly rather tiny) brain. TK is enamored of a beef brisket hot pot and a plate of tofu layered with seafood is picked off by the boys, despite the meatier dishes on offer. Desserts include a complimentary and lightly flavoured wolfberry jelly but the fried ice creams are redolent with grease and soon regretted. The bill for four of us is $120.

3. Shanghai Dumpling Cafe, 35 Childers St, Civic
This dumpling cafe sits on the same strip as its rival, the Spicy Ginger Cafe. But there isn't much to compare. For us, the food was a little forgettable. "What did we eat?" I asked TK a couple of days afterwards. There was an ominous silence. Eventually he did offer that the main dishes come complete with generous servings of rice, perhaps too much. The dumplings are a little thick but very reasonably priced. Desserts are possibly the best of the lot, with fried red bean cake and rice balls in sweet soup on offer. They're not terrific but it's a change from that damn fried ice cream. Another $99 for four people.

This weekend we accidentally went to dinner at the E.U. Cafe. We planned to go out to dinner with Al and Simex and try a new restaurant. Our first pick, the Austrian restaurant Vienna, had closed since we added it to our list of places to try. And I only found out after listening three times to their garbled answering machine while trying to make a booking (“... and finally, please note Vienna restaurant has been closed for two months”). Our second choice, Ethiopian comfort food specialists Fekerte's, was closed for renovations all week. And the third choice, Iori, had already been visited by Al and Simex. So I randomly booked at E.U. Cafe, which has a very solid rep for good pan-European food but which I didn't think the guys would really be interested in.

And it was a corker! TK's interest was piqued while we were still walking toward the restaurant, when he spotted their outdoor sign with “Waffle Wednesday” printed on it. Inside was a tapas list so appealing the guys couldn't decide which to order. “Stuff the mains, let's just get everything on the tapas menu,” TK eventually announced. So we (mostly) did.

Plate after plate filled our cramped little table. Golden arancini with prawn risotto and corn salsa ($10). A dish of sauteed mushrooms with garlic and chili ($8). Tarts of caramelised onion on puff pastry with anchovies ($8). Seared prawns with sweet smoky chorizo ($10). Melting squares of unctuous pork belly ($8). Hungarian-style meatballs with tomato and a dab of sour cream ($8). Piles of chillied tiny calamari rings with toasted bread crumbs and pine nuts ($9). And a bowl of shoestring fries with garlic aioli so moreish that TK's quick visit to the facilities became a tactical error (Al and Simex left him exactly one chip.)

I was hungry and didn't want all the tapas so I ordered a small plate of Venetian spaghetti ($16), with fennel, shreds of crab, scallops and mushrooms tossed in olive oil. It was light and tasty and there was enough to share with Simex.

Desserts were beautiful despite a disappointing chocolate and espresso parfait ($12). TK had a slice of immensely satisfying Oscar torte ($7), a dark chocolate and hazelnut cake. But all the competition was for Al and my shared mascarpone and vanilla panna cotta with champagne strawberries ($12). The panna cotta was jellied and creamy, speckled through with vanilla bean. The only odd note was a triangle of decorative puff pastry, but Al appeared not to care.

With seven tapas dishes, a small main, and four desserts, the bill came to $146 for the four of us, or about $36 each. Pretty reasonable for such a good feed, and you'll eat a lot worse in Canberra for twice the price. We plan to be back for their popular, hearty-sounding brunches – and Waffle Wednesday.

E.U. Cafe, Griffith Shops.
Food: 4/5
Service: 3/5
Value for Money: 5/5

We were in Sydney this weekend for a concert - and you can't go to Sydney without eating out. Sunday afternoon we spent at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe, having deep dark hot chocolate and opulent cakes at a table looking out over Darling Harbour. TK had a Lindt waffle, a perfect little creature with a scoop of rich vanilla and a pot of melted chocolate on the side. If you look closely you can see him in the glossy reflection of the chocolate. Luckily we'd managed to miss the lurid red dust storm or this photo might have been less appetising.

We also went to our favourite Brazilian churrasco, Braza, and ate some of the most tender, caramelised barbeque you'll get at a restaurant. They bring it round on swords and carve it for you at the table and there's no limit on how much you can have. We had four guys in the party - so lunch took a leisurely three hours. One of our friends, who hadn't eaten red meat for months beforehand due to a blood condition, established his manly credentials by relentlessly eating everything in sight for the entire meal.

I survived the three hours by cannily eating only one piece of everything and avoiding the various cuts of lamb and beef altogether. But it was an endless caravan of meat and it was all good. Highlights included pork ribs that were caramelised and pleasingly charred all round but slid tenderly off the bone; crisp bright orange prawns; and firm chicken hearts cooked over an open flame. Worth the drive to Sydney alone.

Simex has friends coming to Canberra. I haven't posted to the blog in a while. So here's a list of suggestions for places to eat as you take a visiting friend around the capital. Most of the places are picturesque, slightly glam (by Canberra standards) or in lovely surroundings such as the national institutions. Those that aren't have been chosen for passably pleasant food. Making the list is good practice for when friends come to visit from interstate or abroad. Yes, there are too many places to eat than most people will have time for. But hopefully there are enough options to work with any Canberra itinerary, so no matter what you do you'll find a nice place to eat alongside it.


In the Parliamentary Triangle
- Friday night drinks at the meat market (OPH courtyard)
- Brunch and shopping at Old Bus Depot Markets and then Kingston Glassworks
- Coffee on the outdoor terrace at Bookplate Cafe in National Library
- Sculpture Garden and Regard cafe or restaurant at the NGA
- Parly and Manuka – cafes on the Lawns, Verve, Pangaea or Ginseng
- Drinks at the Belgian Beer Cafe, Realm or Press Club (the Chair Sniffer cocktail)
- Lennox Gardens and long elegant high tea at the Hyatt
- The Oaks Brasserie at Yarralumla nursery if you like trees
- Views from Onred, Red Hill
- Feel smug at Silo Bakery, Kingston
- The Brodburger van at Bowen Park, on the lakeside


City
- Floriade, including High Tea at the Lotus Lounge and don't forget NightFest
- Ice cream martinis and desserts at Koko Black
- Tapas and drinks at Parlour Wine Room, New Acton and more drinks at Wig and Pen
- National Museum and coffee on the terrace at Axis
- Lunch at Alto, Black Mountain Tower, or cheaper view and food at Mt Ainslie cafe


The Poachers Way
- Smokehouse Cafe at Poachers Pantry and Germanic goodness at Country Guesthouse Schonegg, Murrumbateman
- All the wineries: Clonakilla, Shaw, Lambert, Wily Trout (at Poachers Pantry), Helm, Dionysus
- And the randomness of Gold Creek on the way out to Hall/Murrumbateman
- Murrumbateman Moving Feast in October long weekend.


Outside Canberra: Bungendore and Goulburn
- Beer at the Carrington Inn, Bungendore
- French food at Le Tres Bon, Bungendore
- Lark Hill, Bungendore's biodynamic winery
- Cute at the Roses Cafe or greasy spoon at the Paragon Diner, Goulburn
- Mulled wine and coffee at Lerida Estate, Lake George


The Southern Highlands
- Lunch at the faux colonial Elephant Boy Cafe, Bowral
- High tea and wine tasting at Centennial Vineyards, Bowral
- Super posh dinner at Horderns, Milton Park Hotel, Bowral
- Or more posh dinner at Katers, Peppers Manor House, Sutton Forest
- The giant barn at Berkelouw Books, Berrima
- Walk: Fitzroy, Carrington, Belmore Falls

We were converted to the Brazilian churrasco experience earlier this year when we ate ourselves silly at Braza in Sydney's Leichhardt. Braza was a lucky find - TK discovered it on his phone while we were in Sydney for Top Gear Live and it capped off a delightful weekend. The churrasco - or Brazilian barbecue - proved an instant hit with its endless parade of roasted meat, game and fish served on swords, known as rodizio-style barbecue. The punchy, sugar-filled Brazilian cocktails and platters of traditional sides such as plantain chips rounded out the meal and gave a counterpoint to the vast meat array.

So the guys have been excited about the prospect of Canberran churrasco in the form of Mistress at Manuka. This fairly new restaurant sits on Manuka's main food strip, alongside Paparazzi bar and Lawson's Grill, and also does service as a tapas bar and red-lit nightspot.

The two men had the full all-you-can-eat churrasco ($55) while I, mindful of my small and useless stomach, had a half-churrasco ($35). The entrees were an assortment of chicken wings, beef ribs, grilled mushrooms and tiny meat skewers (I didn't have one so I can't remember what they were). A couple of deep-fried haloumi made a good snack but a similar pile of prawns just tasted like seafood Burger Rings.

Next a platter of accompaniments - sliced green beans, canned mango and onion, generic salad and banana fanofo, a traditional side dish which at Mistress amounted to little more than shrivelled cubes among dusty breadcrumbs.

And then the parade of meat began. Everything melded into one - not because of the sheer size of the array, but more the immense blandness of the meat. TK, who had rubbed his hands in glee when he saw Mistress promised to grill its meat over ''bourbon soaked hickory chips", inspected everything for a smoke ring and was disappointed every time. There was beef, and then pork, and then something else, each promising a flavour, a twist, an idea, on the menu but delivering a generic barbecue taste. A lime and quince chicken stood out - it actually tasted of lime. A blackened scotch fillet was given approval. Several baby octopus looked promising, but were buoyantly rubbery. They were only memorable visually. My gentleman companions, who had enthusiastically eaten everything in sight at Braza for about three hours, laid down their meat tongs in disgust after an hour at Mistress.

TK christened it "Meh at Manuka'' while Si said it was "mediocrity in all the right places''. Perhaps, like all mistresses, the lady at Manuka is fickle and there is better barbecue on other days. And when you compare her to Braza, where delights are found for $40 a head, she is a very expensive roll in the hay.

Mistress at Manuka
42 Franklin Street, Manuka
Food: 2/5
Service: 3/5
Value for Money: 1/5

I'd been looking forward to this weekend for a long time. Not only did I get four days off (random rec leave) but it was Simex's first full weekend after a month of working six-day weeks. And given his recent entry into the Cannot Live Without Roti Canai club, the three of us made a day trip to Sydney to visit Mamak on Goulburn St and to load up on Malaysian sweets and food.


Thanks to Maeve O'Meara and Joanna Saville's Food Safari on SBS, I'd also discovered Makan at Alice's in Thornleigh which sold Malaysian sweets (known as kuih). So I rang up and pre-ordered three boxes of my favourite kuih. We had a box of kuih talam with a deep green bottom of sweet pea and pandan and a layer of coconut cream on top. We also had kuih lapis, a Malaysian staple, with its bright stripes of pink, red and green. The last box had a baked tapioca cake with a light crust.

We drove down in the afternoon, squabbled our way through the northern suburbs ("I thought you were navigating!") and eventually got to Makan at Alice's. It's on Bellevue Road - turn off Pennant Hills Road. After picking up the sweets, we headed back into the city on the M2. TK was very excited about driving over the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the first time. With Si and me shouting out lane changes and checking blind spots, we slowly began merging towards the harbour bridge and the city lights of Sydney. "Hm, we seem to be all banking and IT,'' TK remarked, looking up at the glittering towers that loomed over the bridge.

"What?" asked Si. And as TK started to explain how the big signs on the office towers sometimes indicated the state of Sydney's economy, the lane for the harbour bridge flashed by and we had disappeared into the maw of the cross city tunnel, accompanied only by a shriek of protest from TK.

After doing a comprehensive tour of Oxford Street, we found our way back to the city and finally got to Mamak. It was 6.15pm and there was already a sizable queue out the front. We got a table at the back of the restaurant, argued again over the menu and ordered tons of food. In one mild frenzy we got through three or four roti, beef murtabak, lamb curry, chicken satay, rice, spinach with chilli and shrimp paste, iced rose syrup and beans, and iced coconut with little green sweetpea worms. Along with much of the drinks menu (including a mixed tea-and-coffee drink), it came to about $98 for the three of us. There was no room for a trip to George St to visit the 85 Degree Bakery.

So we did a quick dash through the rain to go on the Darling Harbour ferris wheel and tooled through the Asian grocery in World Square. By the time we got back to Canberra it was nearly 1am - but it was well worth the trip.

We recovered the next day by lying on the couch watching the National Spelling Bee on ESPN and eating the Malaysian cakes and some of our stash from the Asian grocery. This included:


Every Burger biscuits which, quite frankly, looked just like on the packet. They were a sesame biscuit sandwiched with milk chocolate.


And then there were the strange flavours of KitKat:


Muscat of Alexandria was brightly fake grape-flavoured white chocolate while Sweet Potato was just that, creamy and slightly earthy. It was followed by the best almonds in the world.

Sadly, they were not more delicious than we could tell. But thankfully there was also no ''aftertaste without end'', which would have interfered with the beef goulash and buttery mashed potato TK made for dinner.

Sometimes, a restaurant just doesn't get you - and you don't get it. The dishes sound good on the menu, they're attractive on the plate, and passably well-executed when you start tasting. But there is no spark of delight, no chemistry between your palate and the flavours. And then there are the other factors - service that looks good but is horribly inefficient, and prices that compound the pain. That was our night at Flint earlier in the week.



The restaurant is in the New Acton precinct, a former government block turned into a fashionable collection of swank hotels, bars, beauty salons, and restaurants. Flint was full when we rang up but we got a table out in the corridor, with a little sofa banquette in a corner. All pleasant enough, but very dimly lit, causing TK to mutter darkly about "Flint, not squint".

We had been told by TK's friend Carly that Flint boasted the best pizzas in town. She was distinctly wrong. The pulled chicken pizza ($24) looked promising but failed to deliver. The basil was overly sweet, the cheese a little offputting and TK deeply underwhelmed. "First she gives me a cold, and now she recommends a bum steer pizza.''

The twice-baked goat's cheese souffle ($17), an entree ordered as a main, was delicious and piping hot. Just creamy enough, though not particularly goat-like, and surrounded by a little puddle of butternut squash. Si's steak frites ($28) was a good serve of tender meat, the frites curly and crispy-deep brown. But "medium please" hadn't got through to the kitchen and the bavette was wine-dark red in the middle, visible even in the semi-darkness of the corridor.

Desserts were an improvement - albeit an extortionately priced improvement. TK had a chocolate platter ($15) which came with a shot of mousse, a chocolate log and two curious home-made "Twix'' sticks. The first two went down more than acceptably but the Twix stuck in the throat - a dry piece of shortbread with a coat of chocolate and missing the caramel sandwich layer of a normal Twix. "It's like one of those dodgy sports ovals where everything's just sand and grass,'' Si choked out. I had a slice of nougat ($15) with strips of apple and grape on the side. It was honey sweet and rippled through with fruit and nuts, nicely balanced against the slightly tart fruit. Si's parfait glass of coconut-milk tapioca pudding ($15) was possibly the best of the trio, a layer of passionfruit, lemon sorbet and pearls of tapioca topped with cloudy cream. The only problem here was a technical one - the dessert spoon didn't fit the parfait glass, leaving a tantalising goo of passionfruit on the bottom. A small detail, but an important one.

Bryan Martin in the Canberra Times suggests the floor service is Flint's weakness. It doesn't appear to have improved since his 2008 review in the Times food and wine section. We had three different waiters and waitresses, all pleasant enough and cheerful, but the wait times between menu delivery and ordering left much to be desired. TK, somewhat rudely, resorted to waving the menu in mock frustration and pointing at his desired dessert on the page. Perhaps it was harder to keep track of us sitting out in the corridor but at times it felt as though the restaurant was full of waitstaff busily ignoring the customers.

The cooking at Flint is not too bad and the chefs are looking to expand their menus but the value for money and service lets it down. The food, like a nice girl on a first date, just didn't click. "It was like playing battleships with a five-year-old,'' TK pronounced, glaring through the warmly lit windows at the kitchen staff and portraits of Barack Obama on the wall. "Lots of misses and not many hits.''

Flint Dining Room and Bar, New Acton, Civic.
Food: 3/5
Service: 1/5
Value for Money: 2/5

After our discovery of Mamak several weeks ago, we were directed to the similarly-named Mamak Corner restaurant at the Garran shops in Canberra. The direction, I hasten to add, was purely on the basis of the similarity of name. TK's colleague Elisa asked us to check it out and see if it was as good as Mamak, or even any good at all.

Well, it isn't. We went on a Tuesday night with our friend Simex and ordered a variety of Malaysian dishes. But they were all found sadly lacking. The chicken rice had a suitably broth-filled rice and the chicken was crispy on the outside, but bone dry on the inside. The char kuay teow had the requisite flat kuay teow noodles and some prawns - but that was about it. It was better oiled than Victoria Beckham at St Tropez and twice as dark.

Mamak Corner also failed the roti canai litmus test. They were soaked in oil, soggy and limp. Even TK, who sometimes has to be prevented from eating too much roti, refused to eat any more after an initial test mouthful. Simex, with the enthusiasm of a neophyte, became instantly addicted - much to TK's distress. Poor Si was forced to come home with us and eat a semi-decent roti from a frozen instant packet, and promised a trip to Sydney to visit Mamak.

So if you ever find yourself at the Garran shops, keep well away from the little Asian restaurant on the corner.

Mamak Corner Restaurant
Shop 4, Garran Place, Garran.
Food: 1/5
Value for Money: 3/5
Service: 3/5

Authentic Malaysian food is hard to find in Australia, the land where any fool can throw noodles and vegetables into coconut milk soup and call it a laksa (and they all do). This weekend we stumbled on a cheap and cheerful place in Sydney called Mamak which serves fresh roti canai, satay and very passable real Malaysian food.

We walked past it on Goulburn Street in Haymarket near Darling Harbour. A couple of dough boys make the roti out the front of the shop, stretching the roti dough out until it's tissue-thin and elastic and whirling it in the air. The place is very popular - the queue stretches out the door the entire hour and a half we spend at our meal - and it attracts a fair number of Malaysians.

There are a suitably wide variety of roti options on offer, just like at home - from a strange Westernized roti and ice cream dessert dish to the full murtabak (a meat, onion and cabbage casserole wrapped in a roti parcel). We get carried away and order a number of dishes for TK to try out. There is a beef murtabak, a dish of ayam goreng (Malay fried chicken), nasi lemak and a roti telur. There are even traditional hawker drinks, frothy sweet teh tarik (milky tea poured from a great height to create foam) and iced coffees.

The murtabak ($10.50) is suitably meaty, the beef garlanded in onions and cabbage. The slight sweetness of the flaky light roti counterbalances the hearty beef filling and even TK, who hates vegetables, is happy with the onions and shredded fried cabbage. He loves the fried chicken($12 for four pieces), which is a deep dark red-brown with tender white meat below. The nasi lemak ($7.50) is a traditional peasant dish, a mound of creamy rice cooked in coconut milk surrounded by fried peanuts, tiny crunchy sardine-like fish, and a (sadly very mild) jammy sambal. Chunks of cucumber and a boiled egg add interest. It's not great, but it's the real deal. And the roti telur ($6.50) is light and flaky but filled with tender fried egg.

For dessert we have ais kacang ($5) - a glass bowl of shaved ice coloured bright pink with rose syrup, and made sweet with condensed milk and palm syrup. Hidden within the cold syrupy depths are squares of delicate grass jelly, crunchy corn kernels and red beans. It's a bit too sweet because it lacks the plan flavours of kidney bean and the corn is creamed (and hence sugared) but it's not a bad approximation.

Mamak started out as a stall at Chinatown's Friday night markets and opened as a restaurant in 2007. They keep good Malaysian hours, staying open till 2am on Friday and Saturday nights and feeding customers seven days and nights a week. They are so popular they're outgrowing the current Goulburn St shop and are expanding next door which will hopefully allow them to cut the queues of faithful.

Malaysian food is hard to recreate properly - the mingled Malay, Indian, Chinese and Eurasian cuisines mean each dish requires knowledge of specialised techniques or a new food culture. Mamak (quite sensibly) limits itself to a menu which focuses on roti and dishes from Malaysian Indian and Malay cuisine. The rotis are churned out at the front while the curries and chillied vegetables dishes come out from the kitchen quickly and efficiently.

I'm already planning my next excuse to go to Sydney.

Mamak Restaurant
15 Goulburn St, Haymarket
Food: 4/5
Value for Money: 2/5
Service: 3/5

We recently went on a holiday down the NSW coast and stopped to check out the pretty seaside town of Merimbula in the far south. The town is lovely, with a marina and a big sandbar providing a surf beach on one side and a pelican haunt on the other. Whales cruise past the town on their way to Antarctica and the fishing is apparently quite good.

For lunch we tried out the Cantinas tapas bar and restaurant on the main strip. The food sounded interesting but nothing was Spanish. There was no paella, no tortilla (Spanish omelette), and only a whiff of chorizo on the menu. The mains included a fettucini with chicken and rib-eye steaks. But after a morning spent out on the bay, we were hungry so we had the speciality "tapas plate for two" ($60) which promised to give us a good spread of dishes.

The plate, when it came, was piled high with little savoury dishes and a heap of Greek salad. A generous helping of salt and pepper calamari was a highlight - they were cleanly seasoned and seemed fairly fresh. TK thoroughly enjoyed two Greek lamb skewers with yogurt dip and I favoured the corn and coriander fritters which were well herbed and juicy. The salad was reasonable - sliced cucumber, capsicum, a few cubes of fetta and olives - and the plate left us quite full.

But not everything was good. A fetta and potato spring roll was just that - a dim sum masquerading as tapas. A pair of spanakopita were extremely ordinary and ended up left on the plate. And there was a curious, curious serve of indistinguishable curry and rice, so thoroughly overcooked that the ingredients were falling to pieces and absolutely smacking of leftovers that the chef wanted to be rid of.

The service was cheerful and prompt, though one waitress had to ask the boss what was actually in the tapas for two. We were able to sit in the open window and watch tourists drift past on the main street. There was plenty on the drinks menu and it didn't seem to matter if you wanted a meal or just a glass of riesling on the comfortable couches to people-watch with.

It was a nice holiday meal - but it was only holiday good humour and hunger that left us satisfied. For $60, you should expect more. Not necessarily more food but more style and thought from the chef. Perhaps even a little proper Spanish cooking. And you certainly shouldn't expect to be palmed off with leftovers from last night's dinner menu.

Cantinas Tapas Bar and Restaurant, Merimbula NSW
Rating: 2/5
Value for Money: 1/5
Service: 3/5