Milk & Honey Nashville

I've been to Nashville quite a few times now, but rarely have I had the chance to grab a good brunch. Luck would have it that on a lovely Friday mid-Spring, I would up in Nashville within walking distance of Milk & Honey, a cafe that came highly recommended by a local friend.

Milk & Honey Nashville

A charming cafe by day, and a hip bar by night, it's a beautifully laid out, casual space with a great breakfast menu, and extensive drink options. Of course, I settled for a cold brew with a splash of coconut milk, perfect for the early heat of the day.

Cold Brew

Smooth and delicious, the delicious drink boded well for the food to come. The brunch menu has a heavy focus on sandwiches and bagels, but also has a reasonable selection of what they call "Other Good Stuff", including Shakshuka, Omeletes, Chicken & Waffles, and my order, the Hodgepodge Hash.

Hodgepodge Hash

This was a lot of food. With roasted red potatoes, sweet potatoes, pastrami, sausage, sauteed veggies and peppers, caramelized onion, pickled red onion, chipotle crema, feta, and cilantro, all topped with an egg, it was certainly a busy dish. Busy, but undeniably tasty. And filling. 

With a choice of sides, the fresh fruit seemed like the sensible option to offset the heaviness of the dish. All pretty reasonably priced too at $14 (pre-tax & tip of course).

My dining companion chose something a little less messy, but no less indulgent and delicious.

Alabama Pork Biscuit

Because when in the South, why not have a rich Biscuit for breakfast? With pork confit, caramelized onion, Alabama white sauce, white cheddar, onion spread, and an egg, it's a gratifying breakfast, smothered with silky yolk. What's not to love. 

Milk & Honey is a great choice for brunch to celebrate and indulge in food and life, with rich dishes and smooth coffee. Good service and a fun atmosphere top it all off, and I look forward to returning next time I'm in Nashville.

Milk & Honey Nashville
214 11th Ave S, Nashville, TN, USA
Sun - Thu 6:30am - 10:00pm, Fri - Sat 6:30am - 11:00pm

Maude

How is it almost February already? Did January really disappear so quickly?

Reminiscing about the past isn't something I do outside of life as a food blogger, but there are times that I'm really, really glad that I reminisce about the meals I had because they were just damn awesome. And my credit card statement really does force me to think about some of them, like this one.

Due to quite a bit of coincidence, M and I managed to score a NYE reservation at the tiny, tiny restaurant Maude in Beverly Hills, LA. With a new menu every month focusing on a single star seasonal ingredient and headed up by Curtis Stone, this was a must try as soon as  we discovered its existence. 

The NYE menu was always going to be extra special (with an extra special/expensive price tag of $250 per head excluding tax and tips to match of course), and there was no better way to start than a glass of Krug. 

Krug

When I say Maude is tiny, I mean it's really tiny. At a maximum it seats 25 people and there's a clear view into the kitchen area.

Maude

Maude

This creates a comfortable sense of intimacy. The mellow lighting and vintage silverware and crockery also adds to this (although contributes to some less than perfect photos so you'll have to excuse me).

Being a fine dining restaurant, the menu started off with some amuse-bouche.

Pumpkin Packet

Eel

Uni

Oyster

Straight up we were incredibly impressed by how much flavour and texture each of these small dishes had, and the obvious care that had gone into crafting them. How can you not have fun with packets that burst with liquid flavour (the pumpkin packets) or foam (accenting oyster).

From there we moved onto pancakes.

Traditional Caviar

Yep, tiny fluffy pancakes (blini?). I prefer to think pancakes are the star of the show here because they're just too darn cute, but of course they're overshadowed by the indulgently delicious generous heaping of salty cavier. In keeping with a winter theme, there was some pumpkin puree to lend a touch of sweetness to the dish. 

Next up was a squash salad. 

Squash salad with farro, watercress and pumpkin

The presentation of these dishes really are beautiful. The composition is beautiful to look at and the colours were so much more vibrant in person (curse that yellow lighting). The textures also played nicely in this dish with the crunch of the farro contrasting nicely with the lightness of the squash foam and the crispness of the watercress.

Course 4 (if you count the amuse-bouche as a single course) was a Hiramasa Crudo.

Hiramasa Crudo with Bottarga, Pumpkin Cured Salmon Roe and Dashi Gel

The hiramasa, otherwise known as yellowtail kingfish, was delicately soft and a deceptively large serve. Accented with two types of roe, it was a great reflection of fresh seafood. The dashi gel is always great fun, although in this instance I'll admit it didn't have much of a flavour. 

More seafood for the next course:

Striped Bass with Little Gem, Anchovy and Chicken

Take a lightly seared fillet of bass with some little gem lettuce and chicken skin and you have another good tasting dish. I probably liked the other dishes more than this one, but it's not like this was skimping on taste or presentation in any sense.  

Lobster, Carrot, Buttermilk and Curry

How could I not like this next dish? Sweet, tender lobster, with slightly crisp/crunchy carrots and a slightly tangy sauce. I've only just started cooking with lobster myself, and am now determined to get my hands on some incredibly fresh lobster. Pity it's the wrong season though.  

When they brought the next dish out, I had flashbacks to Chemistry courses in university. 

Consomme

Isn't that coffee siphon? Indeed it was, but the creative minds at Maude had appropriated it to make a consomme.

Consomme

A ramen-style broth (without any pork) heated heated through a combination of herbs including fennel and beech was entertaining to watch (and isn't fine dining about classy entertainment?). 

It was then poured over a combination of dried mushrooms (enoki & oyster) and squid to create a moorish Japanese-inspired broth. 

Consomme with Squid, Mushrooms, Fennel and Beech

I will take a detour and say that this was 'wine-matched' with sake. Different but somehow it worked!

The next dish was simply glorious. 

Truffle Ravioli with White Alba Truffle

Look at that ridiculous amount of white truffle! It was shaved at the table and the scent was overwhelmingly indulgent. M was in positive ecstasy, but then again he loves truffles more than the average person. 

The dish was comforting, and indulgent and made us incredibly happy. It had the side effect of making us incredibly full as it was unsurprisingly filling, not that we really cared.

We did have to soldier on through three other courses, not including dessert!

Pheasant with Kabocha Squash, Parsley Root and Pearl Onion

The next dish really couldn't hit the lofty heights of the truffle dish, but that was to be expected. It was nevertheless well balanced with pheasant cooked two ways, another riff on the squash theme and a slight tang from pickled onions.  Can we also just take another moment to appreciate the beauty of vintage silverware? Time to hit up some markets myself I think.

Wagyu Cheek with Nori, Radish and Turnip 

Whilst the puffy white thing is reminiscent of pork crackling, it's not. It was in fact beef tendon. Just let that sink in a bit. Beef tendon? How did they manage to do that to something that's meant to be tough and inedible until it's stewed to death? It worked incredibly well with the Australian Wagyu and so we had another great dish. 

Wrapping up a meal, it's almost expected that there'll be a cheese dish and indeed there was.

Vacherin with Pumpkin 'Caviar'

I'll admit that this was the only dish that I couldn't finish. After all, there's only so much rich dairy that I can take. The cheese was reminiscent of Camembert, but with a stronger flavour and was paired beautifully with the slightly sweet pumpkin 'caviar'. Once again, I have no idea what magic they used to turn pumpkin into tiny little balls of flavour, but it was gleefully impressive.  

Then it was on to dessert.

Pomegranate Sorbet

As a foreshadowing of the January menu, the first dessert was a refreshing pomegranate sorbet. Slightly bitter, it was nevertheless interesting and delicious.

The second dessert was significantly heavier. 

Kuri Squash Beignet with Rice Sorbet, Carmel & Cinnamon

A rich, rich dessert that had plenty of sweetness, it was perfectly accompanied by a bitter coffee.

Espresso

After all, this grandma needs some caffeine if staying up till midnight was required. 

Petit Fours

As a final bookend to our meal, we were served petit fours (or should it be petit threes?). The macarons could have rivaled any good bakery, and the gellies were a perfect sweet ending.

All that was left after this was a midnight champagne toast to celebrate the new year with other diners and the hardworking staff.   

Nightcap

We had a great time at Maude: it was our first fine dining NYE experience, first degustation experience in the USA and it did not disappoint. While expensive, it was a worthy investment for a night of culinary alchemy/magic, the best service you could hope for, and of course, great tasting food with plenty of indulgences sprinkled throughout. This is by no means a typical menu (because really, NYE is special) but looking at the menu for 2015, there's plenty to look forward to - truffles in November and December anyone? 

Maude Restaurant

Tue-Sat 530pm-10pm (reservations required)

Villagio

You know that moment when you're stuck in a mall, and can't find anything other than fast food? Yeah, I hate that and avoid it at all costs. So what I end up doing is organising any essential mall trips (and by essential, I mean there's stuff I need, but don't know where to get it from) around meal times. 

As was the case last Sunday, I organised to meet up with a few friends for lunch, then tackle the shopping list. For convenience sake, we ended up at a mall restaurant that was relatively well reviewed on Yelp, Villagio, that's tucked into a corner of the upper level of Fashion Outlets of Chicago. 

It's fairly obvious that the restaurant is part of the mall, but if you choose an inner table, it definitely doesn't feel quite so much like a food court.

The best thing by far at the restaurant was the bread baskets.

Bread

Not satisfied with just giving out slices of crusty, warm bread, they're also generous enough to provide flat bread with a delightful, vinegar and tomato-centric bruschetta topping. If you do happen to devour the basket and plate like we did, then they're happy to provide you with more. 

The menu is extensive and focuses on Italian cuisine. There are cold platters, warm appetizers, salads and soups kick the meal off, followed by the usual pasta, pizza and Italian-style meat mains like Parmigiana and Scaloppini, and paninis.

Seeing as I'd gorged  myself on the bread, I ended up ordering a seafood soup.

Zuppa Mare e Monti

With mixed fish, rice, calamari, shrimp, clam broth, tomato and zucchini, it really is a throw-whatever-you-can-find-into-the-pot kind of soup. While warming and flavoursome (the seafood and tomato combination just works), I was hoping that it would both be thicker in texture and larger in size. 

The dishes enjoyed by my companions were much more substantial:

Pizza Pepperoni

Linguine Nettuno

I  tried neither of the pizza or pasta dishes but what struck me most as they came out where how big the servings are. This is America after all, so I shouldn't be surprised. 

The pizza base was unfortunately soggy, but apart from that, both companions seemed to enjoy their meal enough. Both ended up with take-home boxes of food.

Dessert was somewhat disappointing.

Tiramisu

While pretty enough to look at, the tiramisu was heavy on both liquor and cream, and lacking in substance and interesting flavours. What a shame in my eyes, because tiramisu isn't really that hard to get right.

Villagio does decent food for a decent price. Given its location in a food court, it certainly stands a class above the other options. The service was friendly, although somewhat haphazard (requests were frequently forgotten) and that seemed to be due to the inexperience of some of the servers. Regardless, we came out with our bellies full and happier than if we had eaten at the food court so I'd definitely recommend Villagio if you're in the mall. I'd skip dessert though. 

Villagio
Fashion Outlets of Chicago
Way, Rosemont, IL
Mon-Sun 1130am-11pm

Penang Malaysian Cuisine

Ever since moving to the USA, I've been struggling to find decent Malaysian cuisine. Coming from Melbourne, Australia, we have so many choices for cheap, cheerful and quality south-east Asian food that the dearth of anything that isn't generically just 'Asian' is somewhat depressing.

Luckily, after moving to the Chicago area, a friend introduced us to Penang Malaysian Cuisine.

The menu still reads slightly like a mish-mash of various cuisines, but given that Malaysian cuisine really is from a melting pot of different cultures I can forgive that. The dishes themselves also have the punch you'd expect, with customisable levels of spiciness to suit your taste.

I didn't take any photos from my first visit, but for the record the roti was perfectly oily and flaky. The wonton-mee was decent with plenty of juicy wontons and a mass of egg noodles in a heart-warming soup and was certainly better than any I've had recently, although not quite as satisfying as one from a street-side noodle shop in Hong Kong.

On my return visit however, we explored the menu a little more and were certainly rewarded for our efforts.

The highlight was the Curry Lamb Shank.

Curry Lamb Shank

A lamb shank cooked slowly in a coconut broth until it was melt-off the bone tender, the flavours of the dish were vibrant and absolutely spot on. The spiciness could have been greater for a chilli-lover like myself, but it was rich and satisfying.

Equally satisfying, although not 'quite' as impressive was the Curry Mee.

Curry Mee

The cooler weather really has brought out my noodle soup cravings, and what better way to warm up than with a slightly spicy and coconut-ty curry mee. Once again, with a generous amount of chicken and prawn, this was a delicious dish. 

After the richness of the first two dishes, we attempted to balance things out with an order of Clay Pot Seafood and Tofu.

Claypot Seafood & Tofu

My only annoyance at this dish were that the pieces of tofu we too large compared to the other elements of the dish. Otherwise it was a reasonably seasoned with a dash of soy sauce, made with ingredients that were fresh enough (although obviously not straight from the farmer's market or sea) and healthy enough to assuage the guilt. 

Overall we had a great time at Penang Malaysian Cuisine. The decor is nothing to rave about, but the servers are friendly and the food comes out quickly. For the price and especially for the food, it really is a great local restaurant. I'm definitely coming back again anytime the craving for authentic(ish) Malaysian food hits.

Penang Malaysian Cuisine
1720 W Algonquin Rd, Arlington Heights, IL 60005

Mon-Thu 11am-3pm, 430pm-10pm, Fri-Sat 11am-11pm, Sun 11am-9pm

Lake Chalet Seafood Bar & Grill

It feels like every week I'm in another place, and something always gets in the way of blog posts. So after trips to Australia, Brazil, the UK and a semi-permanent move to Illinois, I'm finally getting around to blogging about a celebratory Sunday brunch in April. Yes, four months ago.

Given the new circumstances as well, there's likely to be a bunch more cooking rather than restaurant reviews appearing in the blog which is both good (hooray practical) and bad (less impressive food). Without further ado though, let's recap a fun meal at the Lake Chalet Seafood Bar & Grill in sunny Oakland, CA.

Firstly, what a location right by/on Lake Merritt. No photos unfortunately, but ask for a table by the window for full effect. When we arrived for our reservation, we were promptly seated in a quiet two person table along one side of the restaurant, and settled in with a glass of sparkling while we peruse the menu.

On to the food. As the name suggests, there's a focus on seafood dishes. There are also non-seafood options for those that prefer steak, pasta, burgers or chicken.

Smoked Salmon Deviled Eggs

Before getting into the taste of these, can I just say I love the presentation. I'm not sure I've ever seen seaweed as a purely decorative accent and even though the deviled eggs had nothing to do with the sea, it was still a fun dish to have arrive at the table. The eggs themselves were nothing to rave about although I did like the 'pop' of the roe. A restaurant meal is about taste and presentation, so this comes dish out about even.

Local Rock Cod Ceviche Verde

The cerviche was a much more interesting starter. With green herbs, shaved radish & cucumber, avocado, jalapeno and a bucket load of lime, this definitely delivered a kick of flavour. Unfortunately, the textures clashed and the tortillas were a little dry, so this dish still wasn't a winner.

The mains were fortunately an improvement on the starters.

Organic Chicken with Spring Asparagus & Truffles

I love truffles, so that probably biases my judgement of this dish but luxury ingredients aside, I thought this was a good dish; the chicken was tender and slightly sweet, and the asparagus was crisp and fresh. A great interpretation of spring in my opinion. Such a pity that spring was so long ago, and autumn is slowly creeping up.

Pan Roasted King Salmon

The salmon with clams had both good and bad; the shellfish-based broth was well flavoured, with an enjoyable kick of curry chilli, but the salmon was unfortunately dry. Once again, it was a decent dish, but nothing spectacular.

Bread Pudding with Lemon Sorbet

To end on a sweet note, we shared a bread pudding with lemon sorbet; a mix of indulgence and refreshment and which was definitely satisfying. Something to replicate at home perhaps?

Overall we had an enjoyable meal; the atmosphere was lively with beautiful views, with great service, but the food was only average. Nothing great, and nothing terrible. So if you're just after a fun meal at a reasonable price without caring too much about top-tier dishes, then the Lake Chalet is a decent option.

Lake Chalet Seafood Bar & Grill

, Oakland

Mon-Thu 11am-10pm, Fri 11am-11pm, Sat 10am-11pm, Sun 10am-10pm

Vic & Anthony's Steakhouse

As a mini-indulgence after a few months of hard work in the US, M and I decided to meet up and spend our Christmas and New Year’s in hectic New York. Known as the city-that-never-sleeps, the cacophony of noise, and the sheer mass of people is probably something that I would never get used to.

Thankfully, there’s plenty of good food to be had. On a freezing cold winter night, we headed off to Vic & Anthony’s Steakhouse near Union Square to get our fix of, well, steak.

Vic & Anthony's Steakhouse

Vic & Anthony's Steakhouse

Cosy and warm with a friendly atmosphere, the restaurant had a focus on hearty meat-based meals, and suitably strong red wines to match. We decided to start with half a dozen natural oysters.

Fresh Oysters

They were accompanied by simple dressings intended to enhance their flavour. I’m still getting used to the milder flavours of US oysters vs. the Australian ones, but the most important element for an oyster dish is that they are fresh. These were certainly so.

For the mains, I continued the seafood theme (and broke the expectations of coming to a steakhouse), by ordering the sesame-crusted Ahi tuna. Still, tuna 'steak' is still steak right? 

Sesame Crusted Ahi Tuna with Wasabi, Picked Ginger and Soy Ginger Glaze

Firm yet delicate, the slightly sweet glaze added a nice counterpoint to the meat-y flavour of the tuna. The crust was crunchy and not too thick, and the refreshing ginger and wasabi were requisite elements to complete the dish.

M chose the feature-dish in a filet mignon full of beautiful fat marbleised throughout the meat. 

Filet Mignon with Port Peppercorn Sauce

Rich and moist, it was a pretty perfect steak. The peppercorn sauce was creamy and not overly salty and helped balance out the heaviness of the meat.   

We had a great nice overall at Vic & Anthony’s. The service was efficient and the general ambiance was relaxing and romantic, but not overly so (a business dinner would be fine here). The food was excellent and while on the expensive side, easily justifiable for an indulgent night out. Next time, we’ll order dessert and a few more glasses of red to make it a perfectly decadent night.

Vic & Anthony's Steakhouse

Mon 12pm-10pm, Tue-Sat 12pm-11pm, Sun 4pm-9pm