Monday, February 6, 2012

Mauritian food at Crouton, North Melbourne

Some eateries are superheroes - when evening falls, they step into a metaphorical phone box and transform themselves from standard sandwich bars or cafes into Nepalese or Thai restaurants and the like. This double identity can be challenging, though.  Often customers aren't aware of the establishment's flipside and so it suffers from lack of patronage.  Other times, maybe they over-reach.

P1030724

Still, there's such a thrill on browsing a menu you think you've got figured out before you read the second line and some exotic dish jumps out and ambushes you.  Crouton Cafe is a small, workday cafe that offers a Mauritian menu at Saturday lunch only.

P1030716

Mauritius is a small island nation to the east of Madagascar, off the southeast-African coast.  It was apparently uninhabited until the early 1500s (apart from dodo birds!) and waves of Portuguese, French, African, Indian and Chinese settlement have produced a truly multicultural, creole cuisine.

P1030721
Dholl puri, $5

The British ruled Mauritius from 1810 to 1968.  Slavery was abolished in the early 1800s and, as occurred in Malaysia, Britain imported indentured labourers from India to work the sugar fields.  This dish takes up the Indian thread in Mauritian creole cuisine, featuring a chewy flat bread similar to roti filled with turmeric-scented stewed vegies.  This was tasty but the vegie curry was very oily - the oiliness could indeed be authentic, though.  See more about Mauritian street food here.

P1030720
Bol mixe, $9

Crouton Cafe offer a choice of "bol" (short for boulette, I believe) which are various ball-shaped goodies in soup, such as fish balls, bol chou chou (choko balls), and wontons.  We got to try all three in this mixed dish.  The fish balls tasted like standard fish balls you would get at a Malaysian restaurant - bouncy and fresh.  The wontons were quite dense and the pastry a bit overdone.  The bol chou chou were pretty good, balls of rice, a little mushroom and green choko.  I'm pretty sure the stock was powdered - it was really just a vehicle to suspend the bols in.

P1030723
Fried rice, $9.50

This was recommended but after the rice in the bol chou chou, I wished we had tried the haleem or lamb curry for something different.  It came covered with the omelette like a little blanket, perhaps harking back to this Mauritian dish, bol renverse ("upside-down bowl").  The rice was quite nice with chicken, Chinese sausage and carrot with light soy flavour but unless it's Vietnamese fried rice with salted fish, I'm probably a pretty hard customer in terms of fried rice.

I'm not sure what to make of our meal.  It was fun to try something different and the staff are lovely, but I think I might have gone for the wrong combination of dishes.  Compared to when I first spied this place, I am pretty sure the Mauritian menu has been pared back - maybe they don't get enough customers because of their everyday-cafe outward appearance.  Still, if you're passing by, the prices are low enough to take a punt.

Crouton Café on Urbanspoon

5/520 Victoria Street, North Melbourne
Phone:  9329 5304
Hours:  Mon-Fri lunch (standard menu), Sat lunch (Mauritian menu)


View Footscrayfoodblog reviews in a larger map

P1030714




Also just opened at 20 Wembley Avenue, Yarraville, is Cup and Bean, a coffee-centric cafe and greengrocer combo serving Cartel Coffee out of Geelong.  Sadly I didn't love my latte but I am of genus fussus pottus when it comes to coffee, so do try it out for yourself.  The owner is very passionate and a sandwich, freshly made from produce straight from the fridge and on house-baked bread, was fab.  See more at Consider the Sauce.

16 comments:

  1. I live just around the corner from Cup and Bean and have had a few coffees from there. I'm also quite fussy about my coffee but mine have always been good. Love that I have a great local so close to home!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's great to hear! It must have been a one off. Yes, that part of Yarraville has been "dry" for a long time!

      Delete
  2. Saturday lunch only? I'm going to try to get there next weekend - gotta support such an endeavour!

    Too bad about your Cup & Bean latte! I've become a regular - and each and every coffee has been very, very good.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep Sat lunch only. Used to be Sundays too and their website has some info about a seafood night, but that doesn't happen now it would seem. Would love to hear how you find it. Glad that you are another Cup and Bean fan! The guy is so nice. Hopefully he got mobbed when Wembley PS went back today.

      Delete
  3. How interesting, my mum and I didn't really eat any of these things when we went to Mauritius several years ago (after a long campaign by my teenage self after seeing a video about it in French class :D ) I remember amazing fish with chilli sesame sauce, the best fish soup I've ever had, banana cream tarts....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cool, I am so envious! I couldn't have even told you where it was on a map until researching it a bit, and I'm really intrigued. They do have a sort of pineapple tart here with a lattice on top, and they also have Orangina!! (I did go to New Caledonia and developed the obsession there!)

      Delete
  4. well well i have been there last year. the mauritian foods are great. i had the deer curry with roti. yummy

    ReplyDelete
  5. That is so random! Really amazing that a place called crouton cafe has a once a week Mauritian menu. Apparently the Mauritius are THE place to go on a honeymoon.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Crouton Cafe...!! Oh man, I had a truly magnificent meal at this restaurant a couple of months ago. My Mauritian friend has been meaning to take us to a Mauritian restaurant to introduce us to his wonderful cuisine first hand. We ate so much and the food was fantastic. The only thing that made me apprehensive about blogging this place was that they don't normally serve Mauritian food (had to call to check) and their opening hours seemed almost completely up to the chef. There were days when they didn't open for some reason so I felt worried about blogging/recommending this place cause they still seem to be finding their ground...? Still, great meal was had, lots of potential and hope they have some stability soon...! Glad to hear your experience was enjoyable too! =)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Winston, that is so cool to hear! Maybe they put on a special banquet menu for you?

      Delete
  7. An interesting place with a cuisine that i have yet to try. I might have to add this to my places to try in West Melbourne.

    Twitter shark4chipdrink

    ReplyDelete
  8. as a half australian/mauritian who has been to mauritius and eaten the AMAZING street food and home cooked mauritian cuisine, I can tell you that crouton cafe do excellent authentic mauritian food. my sister took me at the start of this year, and i was so excited to taste the mauritian food that i had tried when I went to Mauritius in 2010, and some that I had not tried before. dholl purri off the streets in Mauritius is probably my favourite food in the world! cafe crouton did a pretty good job of it. it is meant to be oily, that's very authentic for mauritian food. it wasn't AS amazing as the street food, but it was still damn fine! my favourite dish at cafe crouton would have been bol devire (upside down bowl). id never had it before and it was absolutely beautiful! definitely taste the chinese influence! and for dessert, the napolitains were to die for... exactly like i remembered them!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for all that great info Brigitte! I'll keep those in mind next time I find myself back at Crouton. :-)

      Delete

I love getting your comments! They're what make blogging worthwhile. Unfortunately, the amount of spam I get is obscene and it is so tiresome to have to moderate every comment, so I have had to turn on annoying word verification. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but please know how much I love you having your say!

Related Posts with Thumbnails
Related Posts with Thumbnails