Short bites: Salted Egg at Quincy, new look Om Nom, Chae’s waitlist soars
Gone are the days of cake for dinner, with dessert restaurant Om Nom reinventing itself. Here’s more food news with Kara Irving.
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Gone are the days of cake for dinner at Melbourne’s Adelphi Hotel.
Dessert restaurant Om Nom has reinvented itself as a wine and cocktail bar, ditching the elaborate, Heston-style sweet treats for local, produce-driven snacks from this Friday.
Charcuterie and cheese platters, rosemary halloumi fries, beef tartare with smoked egg yolk and toasties packed with triple cream brie and ’''''nduja (spicy sausage) are among head chef John Law’s (ex-Entrecote) drink-friendly snacks.
Knock back wines from Red Hill’s Port Phillip Estate or the Bellarine Peninsula’s Leura Park, or Om Nom’s signature cocktails by Grant Collins including the Make The Call Pimms — a raspberry liqueur creation served in a red London phone box.
Don’t worry, dessert isn’t entirely off the cards with one chocolate and one fruit dessert, as well as a chef’s special, on rotation.
Om Nom reopens as a wine and cocktail bar on Friday, open from 4pm to late and Saturdays 6pm to late. omnom.kitchen
THAI DELIGHTS AT CITY HOTEL
Adam Woodfield’s never been a “tweezer chef” when cooking Thai food and prefers the rustic romance of eating streetside snacks in Chiang Mai — like sticky rice with grilled beef slathered in a fragrant lemongrass and palm sugar marinade, cooked over coals, before being bashed with a wooden mallet until tender.
You’ll find this authentic cooking across three new eateries that Woodfield oversees as executive chef at new CBD hotel Quincy.
After stints at Chin Chin and The George on Collins, Woodfield draws influence from his travels across South East Asia to create a mix of playful and traditional Thai dishes at cafe SingSong, Salted Egg restaurant and rooftop bar The Q.
Start the day at either SingSong or Salted Egg, with stir-fried Asian greens and poached eggs on a spiced cashew cream or an eggs Benedict with a Thai béarnaise sauce.
The tweezers come out of the box at Salted Egg for lunch, dinner and dessert, where Woodfield delivers more refined, pretty-looking plates.
“I’ve always been a rustic cook, but now we are looking at doing three to four elements on the plate and that’s been a big, welcome challenge,” he said.
“But we are doing things true to the origin of the dish, I’m quite adamant about that.”
That’s why you’ll find the restaurant’s namesake of salted egg, smoked eggplant and dried shrimp at Salted Egg and that tenderised roadside snack, reborn as Mekong whisky beef lettuce cups at The Q.
Salted Egg and SingSong open daily, The Q open Wednesday to Saturday 6pm to 1am, at Quincy Hotel 509 Flinders Lane, Melbourne.
CHAE’S WAITLIST SOARS
The waitlist to eat at Melbourne’s smallest restaurant Chae has blown out in one week.
The tiny Korean eatery only seats six people from the home of head chef Jung Eun Chae and her husband Yoora Yoon.
Before the Herald Sun wrote about the fully-booked restaurant, only 4000 people were on the May and June waitlist. Now Chae has more than 6000 people waiting for a table — 3447 in May and 2766 in June.
Chae costs $59 per person for lunch or $69 for dinner, which includes about five to six courses, without drinks. Bookings for July and August sittings open on June 1 at 7pm.
SHAKING UP A STORM
Many of us played bartender to beat the lockdown blues last year, but on Tuesday Melbourne’s Kayla Saito will take her skills to another level when she competes in the Diageo World Class Bartending finals in Sydney.
The Leonardo’s Pizza Palace bartender won the state heat, earning the title of Melbourne’s best bartender for her take on a Johnnie Walker highball cocktail, using fermented ingredients made by chef Chae at her tiny Brunswick restaurant.
If Saito wins this heat, she’ll be crowned the World Class Australian Bartender of the Year.
No, Chris Lucas didn’t name his new French restaurant ‘bastard’
Eight years and a rumoured $45m later, Chris Lucas is finally opening his newest venue — a four-level French behemoth in the city next month. Just don’t say the name has a crude translation.
New elevated Italian joint takes rooftop restaurants to new heights
It’s been two years in the making, now the team behind Williamstown’s Sebastian has launched a buzzy new eatery at the top of Cremorne’s tallest building.