Eat here or take-away? It's All Good Cafe and Fishbone II

It's All Good Cafe: 234 High St, Kew; 03 9855 0823
Fishbone: 109 Lygon St, Brunswick East; 03 9380 4343

What shall we do?
Mused the restless two.
We’ll ride to Kew!

Which, as it turns out, is a quiet place on a Sunday afternoon. It was far enough away, however, and the getting there involved enough serious-effort-inducing hills, that upon arrival we felt we were exploring a whole new town. So cheery were we with our adventurism, that an eatery by the name of It's All Good Cafe seemed a natural fit.

Enhancing the illusion that we had crossed significant borders in our journey from Brunswick East to Kew was a menu of straightforward cafe favourites - not a drop of rosewater or spoonful of labne in sight. As such, I was inspired to partake of a classic myself: caesar salad.It delivered everything a caesar should: goopy egg yolk mixing with tangy caesar dressing (which was just bordering on excessive), complemented by salty bacon and all bulked up with chunky croutons and plenty of cos leaves.

A caesar salad is, to me, is a meal for mind and stomach. It's undeniably a salad - placatory to the mind when there's been a little too much of the fried and fatty going on - but it's satsifying to the stomach in a way a green (or lower-fat) salad isn't for most.

The same theory applied to a recent burger excursion to Fishbone. It may have sounded like a strange request: Can I get the veggie burger but with a meat pattie? I wanted a burger, but I didn't want that heavy after-feeling of grease, onion breath and indigestion. Fishbone's veggie burger comes with pesto, rocket, red onion, capscium and mushroom, which sounded like - and indeed was - a fine accompaniment to their moist but firm meat patties.
A new Brunswickian recently tried Fishbone and commented they weren't all that thrilled on their chips, which have always been a highlight for us. On the veggie burger occasion we got take-away and I will say that the chips did get a little soggy on the trip back home. My tip: make a night of it in that part of Lygon St. Grab a table and eat in at Fishbone; head across the road for a Coopers at the Comfortable Chair craft beer at the Alehouse, then head for dessert at Gelobar.

Pappa's Fish and Chips II

79 Holmes St, Brunswick; 03 9383 4331

After posting about Pappa's Fish and Chips last year I received a couple of suggestions in the Comments to go beyond their namesake offerings and try the burgers.

Firstly, let me say that we are blessed in Melbourne with accessibility to cheap burgers (eg Fishbone and Danny's) that aren't unrecognisable as food . I'm happy to add Pappa's to that list. The burger was not extraordinary, but given it was less than $6 it's an achievement.

The good news starts with the condiments. There are two types of sauce: mayonnaise on the top bun and BBQ on the bottom. The pattie looked interesting (that's not a euphemism, it tasted fine!) - it looked like it had been chargrilled and blackened, but I think it was just some rogue onion or sauce that had spent a while near the hotplate. As is so often the case, the tomato left something to be desired, starting out soft and progressing to mushy. More good news: there's smoky bacon, there's non-plastic cheese and there's crisp lettuce.

The single pack now has competition!

Devour Cafe

806 High St, Thornbury; 03 9484 8496 now closed

Have you ever fancied a hot chocolate that could serve as a meal in itself? Devour offer just such a drinking option. There really should be a size warning on the menu! The $4.50 drink comes in a tumbler, not a mere cup; is exquisitely decorated; and contains a winning amount of chocolate syrup. At that size, it's something you'd want to take slowly, but on this occasion it was somewhat tepid, so it was a matter of get into it or be relegated to slurping a sorta-warm chocolate.

Luckily there was time to be taken. Any trip to Devour leads SG or me to the Devour Burger, a divine, decadent meal that sports a pattie so enormous it carries a minimum 30 minute preparation time. When the burger arrives, it's speared with a skewer in order to keep the tennisball pattie sandwiched between the kaiser bun along with cheese, avocado, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach leaves, caramelised onions and tomato chutney.They've left no filling preferences to chance! The dish comes with a choice of eggplant or potato chips. I'm yet to sample the former, but the latter are extraordinary. They're chips of the long, flat kind, crisp and doused in delectable seasoning.

Devour also does a fine line in specials, particularly on their breakfast menu (eg their famous baked eggs). One of today's options was Eggs Krumpin. Something to do with eggs and crumpets, perhaps? Indeed! Two crumpets done french toast-style: dipped in egg, cream and parsley, then fried and served with bacon, maple syrup and Devour's baked beans (home-made, served with herbs and chilli). All very intriguing, but unfortunately my curiousity remained as unsated as yours...they were out of beans (out of beans! It's a Thornbury tragedy).

Second choice was their Breakfast Burger: everything good about a fry-up, but this time wedged between two slices of bread rather than beside. The bread in question is a Kaiser bun: a huge, round roll with a little pointy bit at the top - looks like an old-school helmet or a crown. Inside said bun is sausage, bacon (happy the carnivore), a fried free-range egg, spinach, tomato chutney and a huge smear of melted cheese on the top half. As if that wasn't enough, nestled beside the burger was a hashbrown: deliciously crispy and salty crumbing around moist, fall-apart potato. Who needs chips?

Devour is a small cafe, always welcoming. The fitout is all warm colours, with teal walls and drapes. The front section is brightened by sun coming through the plate glass windows; the slightly elevated back section is a warm place to sit by the fire, admire the artwork and work your way through a hot drink. There's also a courtyard out the back if you want to take in some sun, maybe with a locally brewed 3 Ravens beer.

Danny's Take-away

360 St Georges Rd, North Fitzroy; 03 9481 5847

Best burger in town is a coveted title for any establishment devoted to flipping patties; and it's one that many pundits have granted to Danny's. Recent trends in burger franchising have tended toward the gourmet: their menus run the gauntlet from avocado to zitar. Danny's is the opposite in approach and the winner in value and flavour.

Their burgers start with a good pattie, which after grilling still retains a mincey texture. Their basic burger is bun, pattie, lettuce and onion, and it's $4.50. Not much to fault there. Working down the menu lets you build a burger to take your fancy, adding bacon, cheese, tomato or an extra pattie or two. Even their works burger is only around $7.50, well shy of the $10 or so starting point of 'fancier' places.

For me the winning element at Danny's is the buns, the insides of which are lightly toasted. I always like that extra crunch and it means the sauce, and cheese if you've asked for it, melts into the bread. Their chips, too, bring the crunch and are salty without being dehydrating.

Having served Melbourne since 1945, Danny's retains a great retro interior, perfectly suited to burger, chips and an old-style bottle of soft drink.

Percys Bar (Astor Hotel)

418 Lygon St (cnr Elgin St), Carlton; 03 9347 1715

The notion of a Carlton pub would probably make most think of a designer interior, a too-cool-for-school drinks list and clientele to match. The Astor Hotel could hardly be more central to Carlton - tram passengers certainly get ample time to look at it during the interminable wait to woggle around to/from Melbourne Uni - but it certainly doesn't fit the Carlton mould.

Inside, it's a country pub, a place where locals sit at the bar and use everyone's names as they chat to each other and the staff. (Sitting at the bar does in fact take some getting used to, since the bar stools are incredibly high). The drinks list comes in a plastic sleeve and makes no pretensions to be anything other than serviceable.

Counter meals are available, in addition to a bistro-restaurant at the back of the pub offering a commendable array of dishes in the $15-20 range. On Tuesdays the bar menu is unmissable: $10 steak and pot or, even more affordable, $6.50 for a Percy Burger.

It's great value. The pattie is solid and genuinely mincey. The tomato is fresh and holds its form. The cheese clearly comes from a cow, not a plastics factory and the bread is toasted on the inside, soft on the outside, as it should be on a burger. It's definitely a pub burger, but it's not overly-salty nor too heavy.

In the background of the shot is the answer form for Percys Trivia: if you don't have occasion to exercise your body after polishing off the chips at least give your mind a workout and take it to the Melbourne Uni academics who come as regulars!

Fishbone

109 Lygon St, Brunswick East; 03 9380 4343

Although we’re in Brunswick East, when it comes to hamburgers our preference has been to head over to Dannys on St Georges Rd for special burger occasions. One night, after declining a 40-minute wait at Andrew’s in Albert Park, we popped into a previously untried takeaway shop much closer to home – Fishbone on Lygon St – for burger and chips. Things looked promising from when we saw the size of a small chips (more than the two of us could eat, not that we didn’t try!) They only got better when we started on the burgers.The patties are moist, flavoursome and made of quality mince. Along with the chips, they’re fried in cottonseed oil, which from my internet research has points for and against, but certainly neither burger nor chips leave a gluggy, oily feeling in the stomach. The buns aren’t toasted, a feature I love at Dannys, but they’re wonderfully fresh with a smattering of sesame seeds. The experience is further augmented by their sauce – is it homemade tomato sauce? The combination provides a subtly herbed and flavoured hamburger experience that feels more like a meat sandwich than a fatty indulgence.