Adelaide breakfast: Drift; The Big Table; Central Market

Drift: 20 Jetty Road; 08 8294 0055
The Big Table: Stall 39 & 40, Adelaide Central Market; 08 8212 3899

In a couple of recent conversations, friends have lamented the lack of innovative breakfast options in Melbourne. Cafes have all jumped on the well-stocked bandwagon of baked eggs, dukkah, savoury french toast, labne etc etc.

It's all relative, however. A stroll along Glenelg's Jetty Road revealed just how limited a breakfast menu can be, and how homogenous cafes can become. It was a sunny Sunday, so there was no shortage of diners, but their breakfast choices didn't extend much further than poached eggs done hollandaise- or benedict-style; muesli or fruit salad; or pancakes with nothing more adventurous than maple syrup and ice cream. Some venues were even charging extra for eggs to be scrambled.

The standard 'gimmick' dish was a breakfast bruschetta, which was the most appealing option to me on Drift's menu. The dish was fine in theory, though suffered a little in execution. The ciabatta's crust was too hard to cut easily, and the bread itself was so fluffy and holey that there wasn't a lot of it! The bacon was the best part of the dish - cut thick and well-cooked without being too crispy. They were generous with the sliced tomato, but it was all a bit much for the bread and a plate of sliced tomato - while no doubt delicious for some - was for me a bit below expectation.

Not being an egg man, SG had little choice other than the pancake, and it was ordinary, to say the least. Thin, dinner-plate sized, not particularly sweet, very doughy, with supermarket maple syrup. Wholly unsatisfying.

Rather more impressive was the breakfast we stumbled upon at Central Market, after landing at 7:20 am (that is, arriving, not when we left Melbourne, when we landed). Adelaide's Central Market is on a more manageable scale than the monolithic Queen Vic Markets in Melbourne. There are a lot more bakers and some shops, such as Grind (teas and coffees), have their main outlets within the markets.

The Big Table has been there for years and is known for its takeaway baguettes, which were being prepared with admirable efficiency in the teeny space ringed by counter space on three sides and a kitchen on the fourth.

For breakfast I had mushrooms lathered in Big Table's own pesto, on a fresh, crusty baguette. It was just delicious - the mushrooms so earthy and springy, and the pesto creamy enough that it clung to the funghi, but basilly enough that it didn't feel over indulgent.

SG chose a winner with a Magic Strawberry Milkshake - it was, indeed, magical. My beverage was chai from nearby Grind - brewed on water, not milk, but spicy enough to still deliver a kick.

Not sure if this was the source of the mushrooms on my breakfast dish, but, oh, for one of these at our local shops (that is, a dedicated Mushroom Shop).
Returning to the markets later that afternoon for provisions, we visited the Euroasian foodstore, selling both Russian- and Chinese-style dumplings. Run by perhaps the sweetest counterhand in the city, we rested our walked-out feet while they steamed up a fresh batch of beef and onion dumplings. They tasted more interesting than this photo looks, with a winning dough around an acceptable meat filling.

The rest of the weekend saw me returning again and again to a market-sourced snack of brioche-style croissant smeared with an extraordinary White Pearl camembert from Tasmanian Heritage, and an astounding caramelised fig paste, flavoured with star anise and fennel.

Laksa Me

16 Liverpool St; 03 9639 9885

Laksa Me opened to great acclaim just over a year ago. It's an excellent city lunchtime option. While you can spend more, a lot of their lunch options, including the laksas, are $10 or under. One menu item definitely worth digging around to find some extra change for is their Thai chilli calamari ($14) - strips are 'flame tossed' and served with chillies, roasted peanut, red capsicum, Thai chilli paste and soybean oil, accompanied by rice. It reads as well as it looks and tastes.

The lunch menu offers three laksas - a lemak with fish cake and dumplings, prawns and tofu; the 'skinny' laksa with mushroom, spinach, tofu and eggplant; and the signature My Mum's Laksa, with pho noodles, pork, chicken and prawns. I had the latter on my last visit and I think managed to score their one off-day in the kitchen! That presented a dilemma: ordering the same meal again seemed too narrow, but I was still keen to finally sample such a well-rated dish.

Compromise won the day, by going for a different type of broth dish. The duck broth wonton noodles comes as a steaming bowl of pork and prawn wontons in duck broth with choi sum (chinese cabbage), egg noodles and a side bowl of pickled green chillies.Although broth is water-based, when it's been well done - that is, started with quality ingredients and given time to cook properly - it gives the impression of being more of a soup, thick and rich with flavour. This duck broth had that quality and was not overly salty. The wontons looked like little comets, with 'ruffled' edges and long 'tails'. They were quite hefty and hard to miss (it's always nice to find an extra wonton at the bottom of the bowl!). As the chillies were served on the side the dish itself wasn't too hot, unlike other plates at the table, which came with sweat-inducing chilli levels. That reaction was probably exacerbated by our proximity to a powerful bar heater - concrete floors and plate glass windows do not a warm restaurant make, but no one wants to eat in a sauna.

One of the big talking points about Laksa Me when it opened was that it didn't have a wine list - owner Allen Woo insisted that beer was a better match for the type of food being served. And fair enough too, but from the presence of a wine list on our table it looks like enough diners didn't agree!

If a craving for any combination of chilli, soup or dumplings hits you while you're in the city, Laksa Me is handily placed, slightly south and east of centre, and offers high quality, well-priced 'modern Asian cuisine', filled with fresh ingredients rather than MSG.

www.laksame.com

Shanghai Village

112-4 Little Bourke St, CBD; (03) 9663 1878

The glory of yum cha is the chance to say to the waiter: 'I'll have that, and that, and that, and that...' and so on, giving one a feeling of decadence that lasts until the bill comes, when it is replaced by a feeling of satisfaction for wangling so much for so little. That satisfaction can veer close to smugness if, at Shanghai Village, you've also availed yourself of enough cups of free green tea from the communal urn at the front of the restaurant.

This restaurant suits the lackadaisical approach. The waitstaff are pretty casual - both in dress and attention to service. But that's OK because you know the food will be speedy and filling. While the dining area is hardly gawdy, the colours employed - on the bright pink feature wall or the disturbingly bright orange chopsticks - are certainly not casual.


The first dish to reach us was a chinese pancake.
It fared well with the addition of soy sauce. Looking a bit like a hollow omelet, and consisting of a very straightforward, fried batter, it served as a great raging-hunger-queller before we got into the meatier dishes.

There is no yum cha without pork buns, but this restaurant's offering are not the large sweet-doughed-savoury-filled variety. They're 'mini pork buns' and are more of a dumpling to be honest. The filling is quite respectable, but it's a shame not to have that unique casing, akin to a chewier, more floury meringue texture, to go with it.

Three spring rolls are suitably crisp, but their accompanying sauce - perhaps plum - is quite bland, and without a killer filling it leaves the dish as a bit rudimentary.
More exciting are the steamed beef dumplings. There's just so much meat and dough goodness on the plate! They are utterly impossible to eat with chopsticks: the dough slipping around and the globe of meat inside inevitably escaping to be eaten solo.

Overall the meal was entirely satisfying, particularly as we'd brought voracious appetites to the table. I left with a fairly voracious thirst however, which I doubt was entirely due to my liberal splashings of soy sauce, but rather to some heavy-handed salting in the kitchen.

Wild Yak

350 High St, Northcote; 03 9486 2733

Time to try a new cuisine: Tibetan. Wild Yak in Northcote is a laminex-tabled, plastic-chaired, faded-postered kind of restaurant, run by an effusive native who works the floor with enthusiasm. The food is extremely well-priced, the restaurant is BYO, the atmosphere is simple. It's fundamental international suburban dining.

But what to eat? A bit of research reveals that Tibetan cuisine is based around barley, the flour from which is used to make noodles and dumplings (are we the only country in the world without a national dumpling?). Yak, goat and mutton meat also feature. Wild Yak is no doubt true to the spices and cooking style of Tibetan cuisine, but serves no eponymous meat. Choice instead runs to beef, chicken and, bizarrely, calamari. The menu is broken down in the traditional way of Asian restaurants: entree, soup, then repeated dishes featuring the different meats or a vegie or tofu option.

Momo, the Tibetan steamed dumpling, features first up. It's available as a main (at $9.50 I'd rate it as one of High St's best bargains) but we choose the beef variety as entree (fried and vegetable are also available).My, they were good. The dough was so pliant, but held its shape, even if the lightly-spiced but beautifully cooked meat fell out while one was utilising the dipping sauces. The ying is a soy-style sauce, while the yang was a notably piquant mixture, masquerading behind the appearance of satay.

I had some difficulty choosing a main and enlisted the help of our host. He steered me from the sha gogpa (lean beef with rich garlic sauce) to the sha nyamo-kyurmo (tender beef cooked with lemon, honey, tomatoes and herbs). His recommendation was spot-on. Here we had something that little bit different and very striking. The sauce was rich, perhaps a little runnier than tomato soup, and the balance of tomato with the sweet and sour of honey and lemon was exact. The meat had been treated gently and was indeed 'tender'. The beans and red capsicum were fresh and crisp and I was thoroughly pleased.

Just as well, since I'd been pipped in my first choice by my dining partner, that dish being thukpa: a Tibetan soup with noodles (egg, not barley in this case), beef, chicken, vegetables and 'fungus' (luckily she's a scientist, so is adept at assessing fungal risk and decided to give this one the go-ahead!) in a rich soup.The broth was hearty and not too salty. The dish featured an excellent distribution of meat, veg and noodles to liquid. Maybe a little excessive on the fungus side of things (though not in a health-inspector-concerning way) but that earthy, warming flavour and effect was a big winner.

Two mains, a starter, rice and corkage was $35. I'll be back - those dumplings are calling.

Pierogi, Polish Festival

Would you spend an hour in a queue for these tasty morsels?

In the normal run of things I wouldn't, but in homage to the way Melbourne embraces her cultural events, I was happy to get my dose of 30+C sun hanging about at the Polish Festival at Fed Square in the line for the only stall dishing up the pierogi (Polish dumplings).

And they did live up to expectation. The dough was quite thick, but very giving, and slightly salty. This was a good seasoning match to the meat filling, made a little bit peppery by shredded cabbage. On top are some caramelised onions contrasting all the mushy stuff with some crunch. Especially given the Albion Polish Association must have sold several thousand of these on the day, they were a quality, fresh product.

There was also plenty of this fine Polish pilsener, Okocim, to be had!