Eating – and dining are a very personal thing here. Going out to dinner for a birthday, cooking dinner as a show of thanks, the family roast, a romantic dinner for 2. These are all ways in which we share our emotion and our friendship with each other through food. Each of these examples though are an inherently private experience. Having a stranger crash a birthday party would be construed as rude, a housemate inviting themselves into the thankyou meal may be alright, perhaps a little awkward and even an overly friendly waitress may strange during a romantic dinner.

And there is nothing wrong with feeling any of that. But couldn’t it – shouldn’t it be so much more than that? Isn’t eating a way of bringing in new friends and acquaintances? A shared meal with a new flatmate, going to the inlaws for dinner or having coffee as an initial business meeting. Each a common practice so why not with a complete stranger? Why are we so protective of our food when we are eating out?

But are we as a society afraid of taking this to the next step? Is having the only 2 spare seats at the communal table a little bit strange? Do we move the newspaper off the seat to invite someone to take a seat? Do we make eye contact? Say G’day? I don’t, but I should. Why not? Are these rituals so entrenched that other people entering in them is foreign and unwelcome. I know my mother would love the idea of the communal seating. Her super friendliness would have her knowing the life story of all her fellow diners in minutes.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was eating at Cumulus enjoy a late meal of cured meats. We had lucked out and scored a seat at the big communal table across from 3 people. As they were struggling through the lamb shoulder I asked them how they were enjoying it. They loved it and they offered for us to finish it. It felt awkward as we finished the piece of meat and though we thanked them for their generosity that’s where our relationship ended. This was the perfect peace offering, a breaking of bread, an offering of the olive branch and yet we didn’t converse. We shared no wine nor even a good bye.

We often think of bars as a place to go to meet people (though how good it actually is is debatable). There is a certain casualness, the bar forms a shared ground and naturally strangers will meet. Add a little bit of wine and conversation can flow and friendships may form. And now as restaurants are sharing more and more features with bars; will this same social dynamic occur?

This idea of sharing your meal with strangers isn’t that foreign when staying in backpackers. Often enough someone you don’t know will offer you a cup of tea, a plate of pasta or even a beer. It breaks down the barriers – it’s easy to enjoy a beer together with no common language. In fact, I learnt a lot about loving food from strangers in hostels. But where do we draw the line? Why is it that when we are out of our comfort zone we will let someone in, but at a restaurant or cafe perhaps not?

I’m really curious to learn more about how other cultures are affected by this. Is sharing eating experiences with strangers common elsewhere? Is there a shift towards social or anti-social eating?

I suppose it all begs the question. If a stranger offers you a lolly, do you accept?

As the menu suggests (see picture) the produce is all sourced as locally as possible and is as fresh as possible. The menu is italian, pizza, pasta, and meat. I haven’t even considered the pizza or pasta – the “3 hour slow roasted 90 day aged Hereford rib-eye baked gratin, seasonal veg, whole garlic & pinot jus” or “Wild fiordland venison, bacon arancini, Sicilian caponata & cherry balsamic” are far too tempting. To make matters even better, the prices are great – any one of these mains for $30  would be a steal but the entire menu is downright outrageous. Couple this with the fact that the portions are quite large and not only do you have brilliant food, it is at great value.

The food isn’t thae only thing going for it, the service is great; friendly, prompt and courteous and the wine list is well considered, a good range of prices and varieties but nothing over the top or pretentious.

What more can I say? Luciano’s probably isn’t going to feature on the list of New Zealand’s best restaurants but it damn well should. It encapsulates everything that the south holds dear – great food, good produce and a warm friendly atmosphere.

The duck and goose liver pate. I’m not normally a fan of pate however this was sweet and rich but not the flavour wasn’t too overpowering.

Slow cooked rabbit and hare ragu with brioche and chutney. I’m a sucker for ragu and this didn’t fail to impress. The gamey meats are perfectly suited for slow cooking – it falls apart perfectly but still maintains a great texture in your mouth. Served with brioche and chutney what more can I say?

Half a duck w baked kumara & leek, green beans, toasted almonds & caramelised orange sauce. I only tasted a little bit of the duck and the meat was beautiful but the skin was a touch too fatty. As far as I’m concerned this was the only blemish and perhaps hard to avoid.

The main attraction. Wild fiordland venison, bacon arancini, Sicilian caponata & cherry balsamic. If I didn’t like all the other food so much, I’d say this was my favourite dish. There’s something about venison that makes me wish for a baby’s bib so I don’t have to hold the drool in my mouth. This was no exception. The sweetness of the balsamic reduction cut through the weight of this dish brilliantly.

Rhubarb crumble with berry sorbet. Warm, comforting rhubarb. Sweet, acidic sorbet. Almond meal crumble. A well-balanced almost savoury dessert.

I don’t think I could say that over the 2 months we’ve eaten at every good restaurant in the resort – but we’ve damn well tried and I think the only restaurant on our list that we didn’t get to was closed for a private booking on our final night in town. There has been lots of meals, plenty of wine, a few photos and about 67 hamburgers to write about so it might span a few posts.

A few of the highlights from this trip have been:

1. Northburn Station: Spending the afternoon talking to Tom and Jan about the young winery and function centre that is Northburn Station.
2. Botswana Butchery: I’m a sucker for massive pieces of roasted meat so the slow-cooked lamb shoulder took me hook line and sinker.
3. Eichardt’s Private Hotel – Far and away my favourite place in Queenstown, the cocktails are always great and the whole place makes you feel like a king.
4. Motogrill – Being treated like a regular after not having been there for 18 months.

It is an interactive winery map with some cool travel planning functionality. It is a blog aggregator searching out blogposts from Australian wine and food bloggers and attaching them to the relevant wineries. It is a wiki – editable by anyone.

Call for help

I’ve spent a heap of time on creating something that I believe could be really useful and now I’d like to throw out a call for help. I’d like to ask anyone that has a blog or is on Twitter to help me spread the word. Anything would be really appreciated to help me get it off the ground – a quick blogpost; a Tweet; or if your Facebook friends might be interested, share a link.

I’d also love your help with contributions, feel free to edit the page about your favourite winery or region. Add a tag or edit the list of wine that a winery produces.

I’m not sure the last time they changed the menu here, but I don’t think it has changed in the last 3 years. So for what could be the most famous hamburger joint in the southern hemisphere, if not the world, this is big news.

There are 3 additions to the menu.

The Bulls Eye – $18.50

Prime New Zealand Ribeye steak (200g), Grilled medium, topped with rings of white onion, swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, aioli and tomato relish.

Chief Wiggum – $14.50

Slow roasted pork belly, lettuce, tomato, red onions, hash brown with aioli, and a delicious spread of apricot seeded mustard.

Double Ferg with Cheese

Same as the old, twice the meat. With Edam ($10.50), Swiss or Blue ($11.50).

It’s probably been about 18 months since last I had a coffee at Motogrill. I wouldn’t have ever considered myself a regular there but after a few minutes of sitting at the counter one of the owners turns around and asks, “You guys haven’t been in here for a while, have you?” She even remembered the running joke I had with one of the baristas about how they needed to serve beer. Turns out, now they do.

Not much else has changed, the menu is still about 8 different dishes, written on a blackboard above the stove. The cafe itself is bigger, but the furniture is still the same and I think I spotted a NZ Snowboarder magazine that I read 2 years ago sitting on the same table.

It is so easy to get caught up in the launch of a new cafe, the latest coffee brewing method or a new menu at a cool cafe. But it is little things like the barista knowing your order and the waitress knowing your name that actually mean something.

Posting may be a little slow over the next few weeks as we are in Queenstown snowboarding. Don’t worry, there will be plenty of eating and drinking.

Here’s a photo…

Looks good, I’m excited to see somewhere new opening in what is already a crowded space. It will also be interesting to see who supplies the coffee. Most of the 3rd Wave roasters are represented in a 2 block radius of this place. I’m betting on Coffee Supreme.

Wedged down an alley between halfway houses, backpacker travel agents and a few seedy nightclubs, Miss Jackson is a shining beacon of class in an otherwise classless (apologies to the Melbourne Wine Room, none such to the ever-so-trashy George lane-way bar) area. The café itself is a converted house that reminds me more of a rabbit warren than a café, the smaller nooks don’t quite fit the tables that they contain. It’s nowhere near as cramped as Wall 280 in Balaclava and there it adds “character”. Nonetheless the place has character and the larger communal tables are comfortable and spacious. There’s also an outdoor area, which thankfully parents seem to utilise to entertain their wild children.

The menu is everything you would expect without being outstanding. Corn fritters, steak sandwiches, and eggs every which way. But what the menu lacks in excitement it makes up with in the execution. While you might cook everything on the menu at home, it simply won’t be as good.

The portions are great, the food looks amazing and best of all it tastes spot on. In fact, of all the cafés around, Miss Jackson is my favourite for a comforting, hangover curing breakfast – morning or afternoon. Perhaps this is cause of a subtle focus on booze. There is beer and wine on the menu and a few bottles of spirits peeking out from behind the bar – important for my personal favourite menu item.

The “superstar DJ” bloody mary is everything you could want in this breakfast cocktail – good spice and acidity and a healthy sprig of celery. A bloody mary is tricky to get right at the best of times and they come out with amazing consistency.

The guys that run this place (Steve and Matt) are clearly drinkers – it shows – they know what’s good for you.

More photos on Flickr.

It is amazing to think that since the opening of Seven Seeds there have been so many other great coffee shop openings. So many in fact that Seven Seeds feels as though it is one of the “old boys.” It will be fascinating to see how the “scene” evolves over the next year.

Putting it all into context I’ve constructed something of a timeline of the last years specialty coffee shop openings. The dates aren’t exact (and I would welcome corrections) but they are pretty close.

• Seven Seeds, Carlton. 1 June 2009.
• Outpost, South Yarra. 22nd September.
• Dead Man Espresso (review), South Melbourne. 25th September.
• Proud Mary, Collingwood. 4th November.
• Market Lane, Prahran. 10th November.
• Sensory Lab, (review), Melbourne CBD. 29th November.
• Three Bags Full, Abbotsford. 27th January 2010.
• Monk Bodhi Dharma, Balaclava. 5th January.
• Espresso 3121, (renamed and revamped) Cremorne. 3rd February.
• Padre South Melbourne (review), South Melbourne. 5th February.
• 65 Degrees, Melbourne CBD. 18 February.

Cafes opening aren’t the only thing that has happened in the last year either, the blog coverage of cafes in Melbourne has gone through the roof with the usual suspects spending as much time reviewing cafes as restaurants. There is one specialty coffee blog though that has been providing an attempt at objective reviews of the coffee being served across the city. Backseat Baristas is doing a great job and can only get better as they refine the concept.

Like in so many other facets of life Twitter has become the best way to talk to people who are involved in the industry and coffee is no different. I have created a coffee list of the people I follow. It’s a great way to keep an ear to the ground.

In a summary of the year I would be remiss to ignore the fact that the actual coffee has changed quite considerably. Seven Seeds, St Ali, 5 Senses, Market Lane and Small Batch seem to be all be expanding the number of cafes they are supplying with beans and places like Dead Man are making the most out of the variety.

Experiencing these coffees has never been easier either with Seven Seeds and Market Lane (that I know of) doing daily cuppings.

This isn’t to mention alternative brewing methods which seems to have had a massive boom. The syphon has gone from strength to strength with a good number of these cafes using it. Pour over seems to be the flavour of the day though, with it allowing some subtle flavours to really poke through.