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Nice Sydney friends who speak Mandarin and have fairly decent cleavage.

I’ve always like dictatorships. Communism and fascism both share an idealism that when I was younger could have switched me either way.
Of course, now grown-up physically at least I abhor the human rights abuses in China although I wouldn’t be able to ejaculate over my shoulder if it wasn’t for bear bile on tap.
I think we can agree that we don’t like dictatorships, or at least lack of democracy.
We should have sent John Eales, a famous Australian rugby cap I believe, to tackle the Olympic Beijing 2008 torch bearers in their trip through Canberra.
I do find this strange that we didn’t protest.

When I arrived in Sydney in 1996 France was boycotted because of nuclear testing in the South Pacific. You couldn’t find French totty or decent croissants anywhere and I suffered four years without being able to buy a carbon steel Sabatier chef’s knife. All I ate was Yum Cha and Thai.
I suppose in Melbourne we are too comfortable in our safe little world of unaffordable houses, late model (whatever the heck that means) European cars, free air (frankly it would be a bit much if they didn’t pump-up the tyres) and an annual outing to the Flower Drum, allegedly the best Chinese restaurant in the world.
I’ve only been three times to the Drum in six years. Once for business. Once for an impromptu birthday lunch to celebrate some Tiffany Pearls (try E.G.Egetal, it’s much cooler) and my favourite tea cosey wearer’s birthday.

Steamed fish at the Flower Drum: bland and overcooked. Veggies were great though.

Our most recent to the Drum to catch up with five friends, three from out of town, started like this:
Me: “Why the fuck our we going to the Flower Drum?”
Tea cosey: “I think thingy from Perth booked it.”
Me “Why the fuck did she do that?”
Tea cosey: “Could you wipe that off your shoulder?”
We introduce ourselves to a man behind the counter (17 Market Lane +61 9662 3655), which together with a cloakroom and Melbourne’s slowest lift, is all the restaurant will fit downstairs because hidden away are tanks and tanks of fish and small bears.
Upstairs a couple of waitresses are doing good impersonations of Chinese tour guides (they all wear name tags) who guide us through a room that looks like it is set up for a wedding.
Our friends from Perth and Sydney arrive. We relived our four years in Sydney, swapping fags (cigarettes) and eating in what are now nameless restaurants. We popped downstairs to smoke on the Flower Drum’s doorstep returning upstairs in the impossibly slow lift.
The boring bit is the food which we just asked them to serve. Nobody orders off the menu here. Or so our local food dictatorship at Epicure would have us believe.

Soft shelled crab: greasy and not terribly good.

This was a Friday night. The room was packed. But with the tables spaced far apart it lacked the buzz of at least two other more casual places that serve very similar food - Asiana (181 Victoria Ave, Albert Park +61 9696 6688) and most important Lau’s Family Kitchen (4 Acland St, St Kilda, +61 8598 9880) run by Michael and James, the sons of Gilbert Lau who owned the Drum and built its reputation.
Of course, the service at The Flower Drum is much better than these places. My personal waiter was so attentive that every time I gesticulated he poured me water and I knocked his glasses off.
But. And with the prices charged it comes with an astonishingly large fiberglass B, popularly know as The Big B.
The steamed fish was bland and in more than one case overcooked. The soft shelled crab was greasy and probably just there for the sake of it rather than the quality of the product.
In retrospect we should have sent both back. Neither should have left the kitchen. But we weren’t there to posture over the food but to catch up.
I could tell you more about the food. It was all universally good, fresh ingredients served in the westernised without MSG way that good Chinese-style food is served here.
But next time it is to Lau’s Family Kitchen - if we can get a table - where we just ask them to serve us what is good and I’ve eaten better food. And if we can’t get in there it will be Asiana.
I’m not saying the Flower Drum is horrible. I just think it is an anachronism and should be doing better for the prices charged. Come to think of it just better in the case of steamed fish and soft shelled crab.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I never met Donlevy Fitzpatrick. But I certainly have spent more than enough time in The Dogs Bar at the end of my street and The Melbourne Wine Room in the George in the other direction. These were his creation.

George Biron notes his peaceful death at 11pm on Thursday 21 February.

Brian Kearney, the director of Liquor Licensing in 2003, wrote to The Age:

“The benefit that we all enjoy as a consequence of the diversity of licensed businesses in Victoria, including the bar scene, is very much a consequence of Don’s unrelenting challenging of the status quo of licensing law … All the industry now owes a great debt to him.”

In a feature on his recovery from a brain tumour inThe Age in 2003 journalist Peter Wilmoth also wrote:

“He was the pioneer and symbol of St Kilda’s rebirth. He was there before every second joint was a cafe, before house prices rocketed, before the rich moved in. He was the antithesis of the vulgar developer, slightly reserved, softly spoken. “He was never really the front man,” says his friend John van Haandel, the owner with his brother Frank of St Kilda’s Prince of Wales complex and The Stokehouse. “He was more comfortable sitting down talking about ideas…“With its snack-heavy menu, The Dog’s Bar attracted paint-spattered artists, Versace-suited real estate agents and everyone in between. Deals were done, love affairs started. But despite its success, Don was frustrated by the council’s refusal to allow him to open up the building’s rooftop garden. “I love gardens,” he says now. “In Melbourne, everything was inside. This place was all garden, vines growing, pizza ovens. But they wouldn’t let me use it. Because I couldn’t make that building what it was meant to be, I saw the opportunity to do The George and put my frustration to bed.”

Perhaps plans to finally open the Dogs Bar’s rooftop this year will serve as a fitting tribute to him as will raising a glass of wine to the pioneer.

Miettas in 1997:

“So what’s the secret of the Dogs Bar? Perhaps its position, in a cut off part of Acland Street, away from the bustling shopping strip; perhaps its quirky style, the wrought iron on the gates and doors which designer and regular patron Mark Douglas put in eleven years ago; the good quality and good value wines, chef Sabrina Santucci’s array of food on the bar?For Don, the secret lies in the locals themselves, ‘The Dogs Bar has been one of those incredible businesses that has worked on auto pilot, thanks very much to all the locals and everybody else, and the staff.’”

He created my St Kilda, the one I first moved to in 1996. And back to from Sydney in 2000. Plans are afoot to open the rooftop terrace above The Dogs Bar. It would be a fitting tribute.

Everything Port Phillip Council plans with the St Kilda Triangle is the antithesis of everything Fitzpatrick achieved.

Popularity: 22% [?]

My usual cafe is closed so it’s to a new place around the corner on Carlisle St. It takes courage to try a new unknown cafe. It takes even more courage to walk out after asking to read the menu.

I wish I had more courage. I could tell from the menu that it wasn’t the kind of place I wanted to be in. But it was crowded so I gave it the benefit of the doubt and ordered sausages with fried potatoes and a San Pellegrino water.

What arrived was ugly. Split sausages atop a pile of fried sliced potatoes - some a little too brown - garnished with two basil leaves. The sausages were spicy and spiked with fennel. Although they tasted good I was already spitting out lumps of gristle and fat.

Then it was grit that crunched and wedged itself between two molars. What I picked out was glass and at last I had an out. It was tiny but still a massive problem in a commercial kitchen.

The waitress offered me something else. But I left not having to pay for the meal.

I’m back home and ready to blog. But I won’t be back there.

Food fascist
Come on show some spine and name the place.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Who knows the fate of Tony Soprano? I know the fate of my old friend, Termini an Italian restaurant at the old St Kilda train station on Fitzroy St. Bumped off, dead, caput.I - my family - was there at the beginning when it was part of the Fitzroy Street tram terminal building site. Then you needed a key to pop around the corner to the loo.It offered well executed and reasonably priced Italian food. The vine leaves stuffed with ricotta and fried in butter with sage leaves was a perennial favourite, as was the fish stew. I also enjoyed the set lunches - two courses and a glass of wine - that seven years ago were $15.Now that’s all gone. Restaurateur Mauro Marcucci bought out his other partners in the joint. He’s reinvented the space as Pizza e Birra, a concept he honed in Sydney’s Surry Hills.He’s decluttered the room, added contemporary graphic twists and opened-up the kitchen which now features a wood fired oven. Essentially the room remains the same with shelves of wine and produce and the same large distressed mirror as features of the room.Does it work? Yes. It’s not a bad reincarnation. Pizza e Birra (60a Fitzroy St, St Kilda, Vic 3182 +61 3 9537 3465) is casual with a short wine list of interesting local and italian wines. Boutique beers include the restaurant’s own Birra made by the Holgate Brewhouse in the Macedon ranges.This place is really about pizza. Pizza made and stretched by hand, the thin crispy bubbly type that hasn’t seen a rolling pin. As Mauro, a Roman, recently told me:“…othersuse a rolling pin which rolls all the air out and we don