More cameraphone experiments at Barney Allen’s. Back to the dark ages in photographic quality but I was able to email it directly to Flickr.For all my overseas readers I’d first like to say that when I refer to Huey that I’m am not referring to Billy Connolly’s Glaswegian yawn. No, I’m referring to Iain Hewitson, who is the 1980s was Melbourne’s top celebrity chef. Nowadays he is an avid barbequer and until recently was the chef at Tolarno which closed, after the landlord took the piss with an unreasonable rent increase.Now Huey is back with Barney Allen’s (14 Fitzroy St, St Kilda, VIC 3182 +61 3 9525 5477) the latest incarnation of his rustic cooking style. Huey himself has been reinvented having lost tens of kilos by swapping steak and chips for Asian food. He has moved from propping up the corner of the bar in Tolarna to, as you face the room in Barney Allen’s, to sitting at the back left of the bar, presumably still wearing his trade marked belt and braces.Barney Allen’s is a big space. It is a spacious bar rather than restaurant and it almost seems that its cloths are too big for it. The walls are very red, the clientele the usual suspects, and a few copies of Mirka Mora artworks (which I always found a little naive and creepy) are hidden in the back of the bar. Old fashioned St Kilda waiters with tattoos and Lemmy-style Motorhead mustaches ply Huey’s food. That includes beer in long neck bottles that is so good that it doesn’t need to be advertised. Yes, I’m talking about Melbourne Bitter.We are happy. But then the noisy comedian Mick Malloy demonstrates the full reflective qualities of concrete floors and hard-edged walls. I can’t hear my friends speak and coherent conversation stops.Two handfuls of starters serve as an introduction to a single handful of medium sized courses and another single handful of mains. The choices include rotisserie chicken, a laughably large chicken cake (whch would have impressed me if it had pink icing), meat loaf and Huey’s famous burger and chips, arguably the best burger in Melbourne.On a day that sleet and hail fell on the city I’d set my heart on a shepherds pie with buttered cabbage. I’m told that this will return as a special as will other dishes. The meat loaf was okay. The chicken cake, I guess, also okay but the bed of cabbage slightly undercooked.Knowing and enjoying the old venue we were all slightly underwhelmed. Something in the move from a few doors up has been lost. And its more that Huey’s weight.
