Gong Hay Fat Choy – We are in the season of Chinese New Year, with red lanterns, dragon dancers (my personal favorite of all the terpsechordian arts) and festive meals, so tonight we ate at No. 8 (the luckiest of the Chinese numbers). Our “booking” was honored promptly despite our early arrival and we were seated at a lovely table outside with close proximity to the street festival in full swing along the south bank of the Yarra River. Red paper lanterns stretched along the promenade, buskers performed, caricaturists drew and crowds surged past our table, enjoying the benign weather. The wine list was presented and while the human male sipped at his 12 year old Glenfiddich (there being neither Smuggler’s Cove, nor The Nant, nor The Lark available) I determined the best choice was The Dalrymple, a lovely 2012 Tasmanian Pinot Noir bursting with fresh strawberries, soft but supple tannins, and a gorgeous color – in honor of the plan to leave on the morrow for Tasmania where many good spiritous things are rumored to be abundantly available.
The sommelier appeared pleased with my choice, and MiLady seemed contented. Menus appeared to assist our contemplative state of mind, and wonderful homemade bread with salted encrusted butter arrived. Then the spectre of ruin raised its ugly head. A couple was seated at the next (upwind) table – and she lit up. I was, for many, many years a consumer of Pocohantas’ revenge, quitting only when forced to do so, and then not very graciously, but having regained my senses of smell and taste, I am extraordinarily loath to surrender their sensous joys. Perhaps, I thought as the delicate nuanced flavors of the Pinot were lost in her smoke, she’ll just indulge in a single odoriferous offense, and our meal can resume its trajectory. Sadly I was mistaken. From the butt of the last, she lighted the next. Visions of mayhem and cruel revenge fantasies danced through my brain – using my tail to upend her table and soak her with wine seemed a promising avenue to pursue. Fortunately an alternative strategy presented itself – the maitre d’ was summoned and the following conversation ensued.
Me: It is entirely my fault for not having asked prior to being seated, but does No. 8 have a non-smoking seating area?
Delightfully charming (female) Maitre d’ (sniffing out the problem instantly): Oh dear. That’s unbearable. How will you ever be able to enjoy your dinner? Let me relocate you to a lovely table that just became available at the other (upwind) end of the terrace so that you can properly enjoy your meal.
Perfect solutions are rare but this was handled so diplomatically that only the waiter, the maitre d’, Milady, the human male, and I were even aware anything had transpired. Brilliant.
The six delicately flavored oysters sprinkled with nothing more than lemon juice, were unaffected by the previous miasma, and were delectable. Medium sized, firm, fresh with a hint of brine, they were what oysters were meant to be. The paper thin Waygu beef carpaccio with dots of egg yolk (given the color and texture, probably duck) and translucent daikon radish slices with miniaturized pumpernickel croutons, capers, and red onion melted on the tongue. These slices were the best explanation of why, given the opportunity, one should mortgage one’s offsprings futures to indulge one’s senses in the here and now, without the slightest twinge of guilt.
The local lamb chops were heavenly. Thick cuts of the finest grass-fed lamb, grilled to absolute perfection and supported by a tangy yogurt they were superb. The rack of venison MiLady ordered was simply the best I’ve ever tasted. Crusted with a little herb rub, ruby red and yet noticeably hot, they were exactly what I’ve wanted for dinner for a very long time. Duck fat potatoes and a delightful beetroot with the same yogurt which graced the lamb completed the sumptuous dinner offering. As deeply satisfying as was the chocolate ganache and raspberry sherbet confection we shared to finish the meal, it was almost an anti-climax. The cappucinos were the weakest part of the entire meal – they were not quite hot enough to satisfy me, though they were properly prepared and very tasty.
My conclusion, No. 8, was a very lucky place to dine.

MiLady loves seafood – so when it came time to choose a dinner spot, she instructed the concierge appropriately. He recommended Rubira’s and booked a table for dinner. A short cab ride Murghk Dragoon, doesn’t the TARDES work yet for even short hops?) brought us to an unprepossessing corner pub in Port Melbourne. Upon entering MiLady expressed her concern that it did not look like the sort of place where one could request the hostess call a cab at the end of the meal, but I assured her that because Australia has a very low blood alcohol limit (0.05) AND pub owners are liable if their customers run afoul of the law, I was quite certain they had a list of taxi company phone numbers tucked under the bar, and she should adopt the local attitude of “No worries mate.”
We were promptly seated and, after noting our respective appearances of age, asked whether we could pass the constructive eye test posed by the chalkboard at the far end of the room, or would prefer printed menus. We chose the latter. The waitress then inquired whether we had dined at Rubira’s before and we allowed as how we had not. She explained the custom was one or two appetizers, perhaps one or two entrees (in the US those are called “starters” or “small plates”) and then a “main” for each dinner- which could be shared. In fact, she noted, if we’d just like a tasting menu to share, all we needed to do was pick out the dishes and she’d instruct the kitchen to prepare the correct size portions. While we were thinking about what we wanted, a wonderful, carefully curated wine list appeared.
The menu contained six (6!) different preparations of oysters – one natural (cold) and another five cooked in various ways: Mornay, Kilpatrick, steamed, beer-battered, poached in Champagne. Now, as MiLady doesn’t eat her mollusks au naturel, we opted for 4 each of the Kilpatrick, Mornay and beer-battered preps. We also indulged in grilled scampi with garlic butter, Moreton Bay Bug tails fried in a cornmeal batter, a Moreton Bay bug grilled then sauced with ginger and scallions and split, King Prawn spring rolls with scallions, a side of chips, and a bottle of 2012 Barossa Valley shiraz.
Our waitress returned with the wine, looked at us, and announced that the vintage of the bottle was not as proffered on the carte du vin, was too chilled having just been brought from the wine room, and “didn’t feel right.” So, she asked if she could bring us a 2013 Maclaren Vale shiraz instead. We agreed, and were delighted with the replacement. Inky purple, fruited with dark berries and powerful (14.5% ABV), it was delicious – standing up to the “garlic and ginger”, “bacon and worcestershire” and Mornay sauces during the course of the meal.
Moreton Bay bugs are like giant lobster tails with almost imperceptible heads, swimmers but no claws. They are sweet and delicious and when properly prepared, can be removed from their shells with a single strong pull from the top towards the tail. Like lobster, they can be sauced in a variety of ways – and we gorged on two of the best – cornmeal battered then deep fried, and in a sauce reminiscent of a Chinese ginger and scallion approach. Heavenly.
The grilled scampi were excellent – but after one has said they were perfect, why gild the lily? The King prawns were expertly grilled, split, lightly brushed with garlic butter and finished with a momentary exposure to the charcoal. Perfection cannot be improved upon.
Sadly, we cannot report on the chips – they never arrived. By the time we and our waitress noticed the kitchen’s omission, it was too late. We were sated.
Fortunately there was just enough room for the homemade chocolate tarte. Moist, creamy, decadently luscious and served with a dollop of rich, vanilla bean ice cream. (And I’ve been doing so well, until now, at maintaining a balanced flying weight.)
A superb meal to top off a wonderful day.
(And yes, Rubira’s called a cab for us and we were safely whisked back to The Langham.)

There are no dragons native to Australia, and given the exceptionally long over-water flight required to reach Sydney from any non-Australian port of embarkation, I was surprised to look up Hickson Street last night and see my cousin Aloysius’ portrait staring down at me. Even more surprising was that his smiling snout adorned the side of a hotel clearly named after the grand nemesis of all English-speaking dragons, St. George. I knew humans believe that the antipodean ethos actually inverted things, but I thought we dragons were better than that. For a member of my species to become the smiling ambassador for a human who’s sole achievement was the eradication of dragons from the countryside of a smallish island, was astonishing. Clearly something extraordinary was afoot.

Saké is extraordinary. Hidden behind an unremarkable doorway in the shadow of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Saké is a world class food experience. The restaurant was full of people enjoying Japanese-inspired dishes whose taste and presentation rank at the tippy-top of my dining list. The room is on the dark and very noisy side. The drum sounds were felt in the solar plexus as much as heard – they had to be to compete with the sounds of drinking (apparently something the Aussies are very good at) and merry-making (another Aussie specialty). Initially I could barely hear the waitress explain the best approach was to choose one or two starters, one or two robata, a small plate or two, and two or three mains. The house prides itself on its varied menu of its namesake libation as well – and the spirits menu is replete with descriptions of alcoholic beverages distilled from rice, sorghum, wheat and barley, and, in an homage to local culture, grapes. Recovering, as we were, from 27 hours of confinement aboard an aircraft, we avoided the temptation to rehydrate with anything more than the local tap water (not as good as NYC water, but much better than most big cities) and two glasses each of Australian shiraz. The shiraz was delicious – round, well-defined with a predominance of juicy black fruits. Sadly I misplaced the slip of paper on which I wrote down the rest of my tasting notes, including the name and vintage – but I won’t regret diligently searching through many wineglasses over the next month to rediscover it.

We followed our waitress’s suggestion, and with her help, we chose starters of spider maki and waygu beef tatakami. As our robata (the Japanese technique for charcoal grilling little skewers of mouth-watering delights) we chose lamb chops. The main courses were waygu beef teriaki and popcorn shrimp. The legitimate question you are asking is why we did not avail ourselves of the fresh and attractively prepared sushi and sashimi decorating other diners’ tables. The philistinean answer is, sadly, that we were starving and because everything is prepared only once it has been ordered, we might well have expired before the items arrived. (The fact our bodies thought it was 6AM after pulling two consecutive all-nighters without benefit of even a single Red Bull may have had something to do our desperation.)

The beef tatakami arrived in due time. The paper thin slices of bright red waygu gently moistened with vinegar, ginger and soy, then artistically positioned around a mound of shredded daikon radish and exotic greens was spectacular. Silky beef, salty with sharp acidic pinpoints of flavor spiked with a bit of heat from the ginger is a serious contender for one’s attention no matter how sleep deprived one might be. The combination wakes up the mouth and everything else follows along. The portion was generous – I recall there being about eight or nine pieces, each about a square inch, of incredible flavor arranged in a flower petal pattern on this tiny little plate.

Next to arrive were the lamb chops on a miniature charcoal grill, accompanied by a perfectly constituted chimichurri. Succulent little morsels on the bone, they practically melted on the tongue. The sauce was balanced, offering just enough pizzaz to serve notice that these little lambies weren’t going to cry all the way home, but they weren’t hiding a wolf underneath either. Australian lamb is particularly tasty, probably because it is all free range and grass fed, with no artificial anything. I would have happily devoured the entire lamb if offered the opportunity. One of the things that I miss about the old days when St. George was engaged in his dragon control project and we were allowed to consume entire sheep washed down with tuns of wine and the occasional errant knight are the lamb chops. These were no pale substitutes, but rather the real deal with all the flavor intact. Delicious. Slurp.

Popcorn shrimp are a treat – one bite shrimp which are coated in a light batter, flash fried so the batter is just crisped, and then covered in a orange ponzu sauce. They aren’t like popcorn – unless you consider the inability to eat only one piece of each is enough of a similarity to warrant the plagiarism. (In which case they probably should be called potato chip shrimp – though come to think of it that would probably bring the lawyers running with papers alleging trademark infringement so maybe popcorn shrimp is a better name after all.) By whatever name, they are amongst my favorite combinations of crustaceans and preparations and these were the very best I’ve ever chomped. Slurp, slurp.

The waygu teriyaki that followed was the best I have ever enjoyed. The chef takes a perfect little filet of beef, marinates it in a magical sauce, and cooks it to perfect 121º (rare to medium rare) and slices it in thicker, bite-sized pieces than the tatakami. The beef was so tender that it really did seem to melt when it touched my tongue, and my only regret is that I had to wait until now to taste it. Yum! At about this point in the meal we noticed the spider maki hadn’t made an appearance yet.

As our bio-clocks began to strike 8 we were nearly ready to abandon our maki vigil and turn into pumpkins, the spider maki arrived. Crispy fried segments of softshell crab wrapped in perfect sushi rice and laced with wasabi and soy. It is the perfect way to dine on softshells (unless you flash saute them and sauce them with ginger and garlic) and also turned out to be the perfect way to end our meal. The chocolate fondant which followed was anti-climactic. Properly tempered, the chocolate was delicious, but somehow not as impressive a display of the kitchen’s talents as the courses which proceeded it. I called for the check, handed it over to the human male and we departed for the Park Hyatt. The evening’s meal was another victory for the forces of fine dining over the evil attempts of mass-produced, calorie-laden and uninventive cooking to divert us from the pursuit of perfection.