Champion’s Bistro - Mother's day Lunch

In my opinion I had chosen the perfect place to celebrate with my family. Clinton McIver and his team are serving the most incredible food in the most unlikely of places.

There, you won't find ornamental decorations, you won't find Christofle cutlery and you won't find a 55th floor view of Melbourne but when the food is this good none of that stuff really matters in the grand scheme of things.

What you will find is McIver and his amazing team dishing out first class food and first class service in Clayton's local bowlo.

Everything was simply divine from the duck egg with hand foraged mushrooms to the luxurious Belgium chocolate mousse for dessert. The beef was definitely a highlight, a ridiculously tasty cut of Blackmore wagyu brisket that was cooked low and slow at 55 degrees for almost 24 hours.

Finally to top everything off, Lunch was 4 courses with a glass of prosecco for just $60. What incredible value for money.

Aline (Clinton's gorgeous girlfriend and superstar pastry chef/floor staff) has recently informed me that they've finally gotten through their VERY long wait list and that the new online booking system is now running so getting a booking will be a lot easier from now on. There'll be many more events happening in the future as well so stay tuned for more.

Tea Cupping & Food

Hello Readers,

I'm really excited about today's blog so I'm not going to babble on but get straight to it.

On Saturday, I attended the first session of Bistro Vue's Tea Cupping classes. 

This session was focused on Green Tea and they're held by Charles Serveau, the Tea Sommelier who replaced Sarah at Vue de Monde. He was such a delightful teacher and his passion and enthusiasm for tea was inspiring. 

A truly educational and eye opening experience that was held in the beyond gorgeous function room of Bistro Vue, my friend couldn't help but admire the architecture. 

We tried so many different kinds of Green Tea, I felt like I was in heaven. So much precision and care needs to be taken but it's worth it to brew a perfect cup of tea.

The day couldn't have possibly gotten any better....but it did. Our class was followed by a wonderful 3 course lunch paired with matching teas whipped up by the head chef of Bistro Vue, Chris Bonello. Chris was really friendly, such an easy going guy.

Photo courtesy of Charles.

Our first course was Cured Kingfish with salt bush, wood sorrel, lemon oil, seaweed salt.

Second course was Confit Duck Leg with Jerusalem artichoke puree, roasted carrots and beer pickled onions. It was incredible how well the teas matched with this dish.

Finally for dessert a Rum and Vanilla parfait with 8 spice, honey and a White chocolate mousse.

An unforgettable experienced....well worth the early morning wake up and a bargain at $70, in my opinion. I only wish I could afford to attend ALL the sessions.

To top my day off, both Chris and Charles follow me on twitter! I feel kinda star struck haha.

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Before I finish this blog I'll do a very brief review and add some last minute food porn.

If you want good pizza in a stylish restaurant setting with spirited and charming waiters, +39 is where it's at. It was The Age's pizzeria of the year and I now understand why.

We ordered 3 pizzas, which were all good but the Quattro Fromaggi was mind-blowing. A 4 cheese pizza that has a really intense flavour.

Dessert was a Nutella pizza with strawberries and vanilla ice cream. It's hard to believe but this was the first time one of my friends had tried Nutella...I was mortified but he'd only been in the country a couple months so I let it slide. hahaha

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Now as promised, the food porn.

House Cured Vodka and Beetroot Salmon with a Mandarin, beetroot salad.

Salt and Pepper dusted Squid with Watercress and Mandarin Segments.

Porcini Mushroom and Chicken Risotto.

Beef Burger on a Brioche Bun with beetroot, lettuce, tomato, tasty cheese, bacon.

the CRISPIEST potatoes ever made by my masterchef boyfriend.

Lamb chops and vegies by the boyfriend. Don't let this picture fool you, I ate seconds....or was it thirds?

That's all! Sorry for the long post....See you next blog.

It's been the most wonderful year.

Hello all!

I'm so glad that you've decided to read this SUPER EXCITING LOVELY blog.

I honestly am extremely excited to be sharing such a wonderful part of my life~

Lately the weather in Melbourne has suddenly turned really nice, so I think it's pretty safe to say Summer has officially and FINALLY arrived!

It's perfect 'cos it's matching my mood lately as well. 

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Basically the big news is that on the 10th of November it was our first anniversary. This was my first ever anniversary so It's a huge deal! 

Unfortunately my boyfriend had work on that day and I had somehow forgotten it was even our anniversary but I was delightfully surprised by a delivery at my door.

It was a dozen roses and chocolates. Thanks mum for the photo! I don't know why she wanted to take one...But hey! I could use it for my blog.

It was the sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me, so I spent a bit of the day prancing around the house like a princess. 

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The best part was that the surprises weren't even over! The next night (Friday night) we planned to have dinner together but I wasn't allowed to know the restaurant. 

So Friday night comes and the surprise restaurant is......Vue de Monde. It's a french restaurant on the 55th floor of the Rialto Tower, you have to catch a special elevator just to get to the restaurant! 

So needless to say, I was VERY surprised and happy because I was under the impression that they were fully booked for the next 2 months due to previous attempts at going.....

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The restaurant is gorgeous, everything is so stylish and the view was quite good too!

The food there is so unique and delicious. We decided on a 7 course meal, which to our surprise included a few things in between courses as well. 

I loved this place because It's not just your normal, bring the food out and you eat it kind of thing. Everything is practically an experience. The stones and twigs on the table are rearranged according to your course, they rest your cutlery on them, they hide the salt and pepper! It was just so fun to see what was going to happen next! 

Here are so photos from the Vue de Monde website of just a few of the dishes we had.

Spanner crab, avocado, lime and caviar

Pine mushrooms, walnuts, bird’s cress and cona infusion 

Marron, corned beef and butter emulsion

Now this was a really cool in between dish. This was a refreshing sorbet to cleanse our palate. It involves liquid nitrogen though! There are flowers and herbs, they freeze them with the liquid nitrogen and then you crush them and then it's mixed into your sorbet. It was really sweet and refreshing!

Four petit desserts. 

Our second dessert was a chocolate souffle with dark chocolate mousse and a vanilla injection, something along those lines. 

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Probably one of the things I enjoyed most was that we opted to have a kind of tea expert, match a particular tea with every course we had. It was a brilliant idea, I LOVE TEA and it was just so lovely to try all the different teas with all their gorgeous Japanese cups and teapots. Most of the teas we had were from Taiwan but there was also Sri Lankan and Indian and Chinese teas.

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So here are some of my own photos, you can kind of see the view and our first Taiwanese white tea in it.

The stones from our table.

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That's all for now, I'm just going to end this blog by saying I'm so happy to have spent an entire year with someone so amazing and I can't believe how lucky I am.

See you next blog!

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