Deli 4 You, Maribyrnong

Edgewater?  Edge of the earth, as far as I'm concerned.  I think I got lost there pushing a pram once and have never been back.  So when a hot tip arrived for a brilliant Polish deli tucked away in the estate, I approached it with both trepidation and delight.

There was no-one in there when I arrived, which allowed me to go completely photo crazy, unfettered by shopkeepers' raised eyebrows or curious glances.

You know, I really love that show "American Pickers" where two blokes roam the backroads of small-town USA, rummaging through hoarders' collections for antiques or other hidden treasures.  I got the same feeling at Deli 4 You.  Here we have an enormous tray of goodies from Erik's Polish bakery in Braybook, including freshly baked plum jam-filled donuts!

Also from Erik's, all manner of babkas and kugelhopfs in all their unpronounceable glory...

...real European-style rye bread from "Baker in the Rye" in Elsternwick...

...and link upon meaty link of every conceivable type of Polish sausage.

Completely prepared to forget that chorizo is as Polish as pina coladas, given how good this stuff looks.

In the fridge, there are those dips they have at Sims, plus kefir (a fermented milk drink), quark and other Polish-style soft cheeses.

Plus a great selection of pierogi dumplings, which I would have raided the entire freezer of, if not held back by their quite high prices ($9 for about 10, and more for the Ola's brand on the top shelf).

There are also all the usual pickles, UHT borscht and Polish teas, but also a small range of spices from Gewurzhaus in Carlton and other nice Christmas hamper-worthy things.

Eventually the owner arrived to ring up my goodies.  I went with a pineapple kugelhopf which if I remember correctly was about $7.  Ridiculous!  All birthday cakes shall henceforth come exclusively from Deli 4 U.

Both it and the plum jam donut were completely off the hook - so moist and tasty!

I have a bad habit of buying things like pickles and relishes at farmers' markets which then proceed to moulder untouched at the back of the fridge.  The owner was so nice and let me try this pickled carrot which was awesome not just for its spicy, vinegary flavour, but for the fact it is made by "Russians in Bentleigh" (according to the owner).  This stuff was crack.  It was all gone in about three days.  It's not cheap but I highly, highly recommend it!

Not pictured are the very delicious Krysia's brand pierogi, made in Sunbury, Vic, which were all consumed with gusto by Mr Baklover.  I tried to hide them under the fish fingers but his Central European instincts sniffed them out like a truffle hound.

I guess the only thing I'm slightly hesitant to buy is the meats, as I just can't understand how somewhere so well-concealed can have significant turnover.  But I am ready to be proven delightfully wrong on that point!

Thank you Monique for the great tip!

Deli 4 You

55 Cumberland Drive, Maribyrnong

Phone: 9318 6669

Open daily 7am - 7pm (but check that as I'm not sure I'm recalling it correctly!)

Sunshine Devonshire House Tea Rooms

Now, I love a good burger.  But back when I first started eating burgers, "brioche" was a mythical food that only existed in French class - like Orangina.  Jal-a-peenos?  What the bloody hell is that?  Pass me the tinned beetroot and pineapple.  Pickles?  Those things only existed at Macca's, and for the sole purpose of throwing them against the wall.

And don't get me started on the prices.  We found one in Carlton the other day that had hit fifteen bucks, made all the more insulting to this dinky-diehard by being on a damper roll.  (I haven't had this burger.  I'm sure it's lovely.  But $15?!)

What if I told you I could time-travel you back to 1989?  What's the first thing you would do?

Meet Sunshine's Devonshire House tea rooms, your friendly local teleportal back in time.  It's a charitable venture of the Uniting Church in which it is housed.  According to the pseudo-gothic wording on the wall:  "Devonshire House is a venture of social concern instituted by the Sunshine Methodist Church.  It is in the main staffed and maintained by volunteers.  If any profit is gained it will be directed to youth and welfare services in the area".

All good, although how ANY profit could be gained from these prices beggars belief.  CHECK.  THEM.  OUT.  Sausages, egg n' chips for $5.50?  Soup, five bucks?  A "tomato and bacon special", which is certainly worth taking a punt on for a mere seven dineros?

Here's your lovely hamburger & salad ($7!) with a small side of chips ($1.20!)  The salad!  The cheese triangles, tinned beetroot, hardboiled egg and iceberg!  The tinned pineapple chunks!  Bless their cotton socks.

And here's mine - a "baconburger" and chips ($8.50!  Yes, every price hereafter mentioned includes an exclamation mark).  Behold its wobbly-yolked glory!  It was bloody delicious.  I had to have a little sniffle halfway through, it brought back so many childhood memories.

There's a big outdoor area that you can sit in on a nice day.  Another friend had told me about this place ages ago, having reported that she brought a group of mates and their kids here for her birthday.  She shouted them all lunch, player that she is, which ended up coming to about $35 - FOR EVERYONE.  (!)

I am dying to try the "Devon Latte".  I may be a born-and-bred Aussie, but even I don't know what that is.  I bet it involves whipped cream, a saucer with a doily and a glass with a handle.  (Google doesn't help - top result is a Mr Devon Latte from Quebec.)

Or maybe next time the "Spin Q" will be on offer.  It took me a good while to work out what the heck this is.  I think I've got it - spinach quiche!  For $2.20!!!  (Yes, that deserves three excy marks.)

I would like to quickly say that if I catch anyone bashing this joint on Urbanspoon for things like using caterer's margarine, Home Brand teabags or not having posh salt, I will give you a Chinese burn.  It is obviously not that sort of place.  Ditto any service quibbles.  The Queen doesn't like mean people, OK?

Sunshine Devonshire Tea Rooms

34 Devonshire Road, Sunshine (between the kindy and the church)

Open 10.30am-2pm Monday-Friday (last orders at 1.30pm)

French Baguette Cafe

The new French Baguette Cafe has taken so long to open - maybe, I don't know, a good year - that after a while, the Eiffel Tower in its logo started to look to me like a big middle finger.

Now that it's open, I think the Eiffel Tower in the middle actually makes the initials look less like "FB" and more like "FAB" - so I met up with a few folks to see if it lived up to its name.

It's really big inside, with large comfy chairs, including a few on a raised dais.  On a Saturday morning, it was full of folks enjoying coffees and a good old chinwag.

We hot-footed it straight to the banh mi.  There are all the classic fillings like mixed ham, meatballs and fish cake, plus grilled options including chicken, pork and (unusually) beef.  The rolls are particularly big - I think a good 5 cm longer than Nhu Lan's - and only $3.50.

The bread wasn't quite right for a banh mi.  Proper banh mi bread should be ridiculously crunchy on the outside, and with the middle gooshing down to almost nothing as soon as you apply some pressure to take a bite.  This was a big more dense, perhaps closer to an actual French baguette.  But the fillings were good, and service was with a smile.  I'd happily grab another if I was nearby.

I did spot quite a few peeps enjoying bo kho, Vietnam's answer to beef stew - big chunks of fall-apart-tender beef plus some tatties in a tomato broth.  A small bowl plus a roll will set you back just seven bucks.

Coffee was pretty good.  The milk wasn't silky enough and there was too much foam but the underlying shot was well pulled.  I've seen the barista before at Cafe Cui.

French Baguette also have a giant stronghold of cakes in the middle of the store, which you are encouraged to pillage, armed with a tray and tongs a la Breadtop.

This is a particular hit with the kiddos, as you can imagine.

Most of the cakes are on the big side and a bit OTT for my taste, but I did spy some Greek-style baklava that I've filed for future use.  Fun fact:  Do you know why my pseudonym when I first began blogging was Ms Baklover?  When my husband first moved to Melbourne from Chicago, he became hopelessly enamoured with baklava.  In fact, he became a bak-lover.  We started our own food blog about the best baklava in Melbourne.  I think we only ever did one post before I deleted it (I think I was worried about eating too much - HA. HA. VERY FUNNY, 8 YEARS AGO ME) but the name stuck!

French Baguette are still finding their feet.  It was a bit of a struggle trying to pin down eight clean glasses for water for our group.  I also think they need table numbers on sticks rather than the little rounded ones that sit flat on the table, as right now staff need to roam the whole place looking for you to deliver your coffee.

To me, it has a feel like Balha's in Brunswick - a multi-age, multi-ethnic hangout where you go to eat cake and coffee.  There's even a mezzanine level.

I love this sign.  FB, I really hope the last line comes true for you.

French Baguette Cafe
Cnr Albert and Barkly Streets, Footscray

123 Cake - Melbourne's first cake-decorating cafe!

Leaving things up to your kids' imagination can backfire badly.  Once, waiting at the international terminal to pick up their dad from a long trip away, I asked my oldest who she thought we were waiting for.  "A dinosaur?"  No.  "A herd of dinosaurs?"  No.  "Santa!"  No!  Smooth move, Mum, I thought - she is going to be so disappointed when her boring old dad walks through the doors.

So, deep in the school holidays, when I said, "Where do you think we are going?  PS:  It's somewhere AWESOME!", I did consider that the eager anticipation might surpass the end result.  But despite the kids' valiant and creative guesses, they were still screeching with delight when we walked into 123 Cake.

123 Cake is a cafe where you don't just eat your cake - you make it too!  In fact, you could say it's the Korean BBQ of cake.

Choose your base cupcake (flavours include red velvet and chocolate mud, plus gluten-free choices like vanilla spice) then power up with flavoured icing, ready to go in piping bags, and sprinkles galore!

SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!

All the decorations have different price points, from 50 cents to $2, and there are deals for three or more of the same colour.

Bare cupcakes are $3.50 and icing bags $2.  It might seem dear at first but if you have a few people and can share, it works out quite well and is more fun - for five fully customised cupcakes and two coffees, we paid around $28 which I think is quite reasonable for such a fun outing.

And boy, did we have fun.  I thought the kids would just knock back the pots of decorations like whiskey shots, but they were actually very careful and methodical.

You can reach for the sky...

...or be a smooth operator.  Spatulas are provided, as well as tweezers to get everything just so.  123 Cake also offer larger cakes to decorate which would be perfect for a birthday party.

Jing Jing and Natalie are the fresh faces behind 123 Cake.  They are high school mates and modelled the idea on South Korea's themed cafes.  (Other favourites in Seoul include cafes where you can get kitted up in full bridal regalia, and cafes full of cats which you go to be ignored, I mean, pat!)

123 Cake is open from 11 am till 6 pm Mon-Wed and until 9 pm Thurs-Sun evenings for good clean fun.  Well, until you try to lever your magnificent creation between your jaws!

123 Cake (Facebook)

472 Victoria Street, North Melbourne

Phone:  9329 6450

Dumplings in West Footscray and more tasty tidbits from around the traps

Sorry for the super long time between drinks, folks!  I have been really busy, and there are only so many things a girl can eat.  Although I did have a chuckle at this - it's pretty much my life!

Heh heh heh!

Anyway, I thought I'd make you a nice concentrated missal of all the goodies I've been chowing down on in the last couple of months.  Firstly, a shoutout to Tien, proprietor of Dong Que, hands down one of my all-time Footscray faves.

Dong Que do awesome coleslaws, from a prawn and pork with lotus root to this 'un, beef jerky with green papaya.

Their signature dish is bun ca thang long or turmeric-marinated fish served with lots of dill.  It's a northern Vietnamese specialty, related to bun cha Ha Noi (more on that later).  It's so popular that when you step into Dong Que, the air is redolent with gorgeous floral dill almost all the time.  To eat, you make a little DIY salad with noodles, herbs and fish.  If the supplied stinky anchovy sauce is too much, don't be shy to ask for the standard nuoc cham mam!

Dong Que were one of the stops on this year's Rickshaw Run.  I volunteered over a few sessions, as did the indomitable Kenny and Bennie from Consider the Sauce, as well as a number of FFB readers (big shoutouts to Chris, Mark, Jenny, Carolyn and Eve!)  We even had an awesome couple who had moved into Footscray barely a week before and liked what they saw so much that they signed up to volunteer too.

This is Eve who writes Conversation with Jenny who, despite her sylphic frame, managed to haul my ever-expanding person around one evening.  Thanks Eve!!  Footscray got some star power that night too with HaiHa Lee (next to me in the rickshaw), a long-time local resident and actor with many credits including Bed of Roses and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.  Her and partner Pier's go-to Footscray joint?  Not usual suspects Hao Phong or Sapa Hills - it's Tra Vinh!  Instant cred!

In other news, one day whilst roaming about, I found this little gem on the "other" side of Sunshine (near Dragon Express).

They sell gorgeous Polish cakes (I think by the slice) and plum jam donuts, plus take-home meals just like Babcia used to make.  (I had a Polish friend at school and I remember her mother pinching the skin on my forehead and saying, "STILL ROOM FOR MORE PIEROGIS!"  I think that's where my problems started.)  You can read more about Roli Poli over here at Pretty Wak by Amie Batalibasi, founder of Footscray's Colour Box Studio.

And while we're on the subject of dumplings, West Footscray's newest eatery opened just a few days ago!  It's called Magic Momo Kafe and it's the baby of Ravi (above).  Given the name, the four momo varieties are only a tiny part of the menu, which ranges from a big breakfast, to burgers or calamari and chips.  Everything is well priced, especially kids' options - from memory, pancakes with ice cream are about $4.

These chicken momos were yummy, the mince inside juicy and spiked with herbs, ginger and onion.  They can come simmered, steamed or fried, and Ravi said the steamed option is the most traditional.  We didn't get so lucky with the vegie version, which had collapsed somewhat.  Kenny and Bennie had better luck - theirs looked a bit plumper.  But surely all sins should be forgiven in the first week of opening!  (Magic Momo are at 588 Barkly St, West Footscray.)

What Magic Momo Kafe also have is a dizzying display of Indian sweets including four varieties of one of my faves, cham cham, which is almost like an eclair with a lightly-cooked gulab jamun-like exterior and a fudgy filling.  (It's the pink one above.)  They're all $2 each.

In other West Footscray news, Rino at Vari's Fruit & Veg has started offering seasonal organic fruit and veg boxes.  There are two sizes, $35 and $60, and you need to order by Wednesday for Saturday pickup.  He read me what was in both sizes and it's a very impressive amount of fresh organic produce.  You can also get eggs, and while I was there, Josh (aka, "the boss") and mum from Seven Hills Organic Farm came to drop off that week's order.  Boxes can also include Sourdough Kitchen bread (which Vari's actually sell fresh every day) and organic juice.  Call 9689 1491 for more deets.

West Footscray was pretty devvo that Andres and Shannon of Besito decided to hang up the arepa press, for family reasons.  The old site of Besito is currently under construction and is going to be the third Melbourne branch of Chawla's Indian.  According to their website, "Chawla's cream chicken was born not to die".  Yum, I think?!