Eat Like Ushi

My goodness - looking at the Franco Manca website today I realised the place has spread like wildfire. During my time in London there was only one or two of these stores, and the mothership was in Brixton Market and the main reason for taking the Northern Line all the way down south.

Although the menu is only small, the pizzas are cheap (£5-7 each) and well known for the slow-rising sourdough base. The result is a complex masterpiece of soft gelatinous dough, a gently crisp surface and some nice toppings. Realistically the star is the dough and a Franco Manca pizza was the first one where I enjoyed eating the crust at the end moreso than the topping part.

Great toppings require excellent ingredients. Great dough requires outstanding skill.

I've tried the dough recipe from the cookbook. It uses yeast rather than sourdough starter (more due to availability than anything else) and although the taste doesn't have the same sourness, the texture comes close. It's definitely the best home version I've had.

I thought I'd heard from my dad that this pizza place had won a world pizza championship in Italy. I was a little disappointed to find they competed but didn't win - nonetheless that's a pretty incredible feat.

As the reputed home of pizza I remember my first (and only) trip to Naples back in 2005, where pizza was apparently born. We spent the whole time going from one pizza place to the next as recommended in the Lonely Planet. We barely ventured out at night due to safety issues but during the day I could appreciate the old buildings and the incredibly bad (or is it tactical?) car parking on the streets. One of the Zero95's pizza makers is from Naples and he even offered to allow me to come back sometime and make my own pizza... how exciting that would be.

But for this trip I remained solely on the eating side.

- Fried calamari - wickedly soft, tender and extremely well cooked without any hint of rubber;
- Pizze Frutti di Mare $24 - exceptional soft and chewy crust topped with cheese and good quality seafood. It's definitely better for presentation with the shells on but I'm not sure if I'd prefer to eat it without having the remove them;
- Calzone Buffalo (stracchino, prosciutto, rocket, yellow cherry tomatoes, black buffalo cheese) $27 - the typical calzone is filled (this with prosciutto and black buffalo cheese) but also this had a beautifully presented exterior to the toppings laid.

The ingredients are high quality, the dough is exceptionally good (could it be better than Franco Manca? - http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/franco-manca-london-10-2013) and the staff are so friendly and so passionately Italian. I adore it all and will be back to try each of the pizzas and calzones.

I arrived at my hotel around 730am. That's one of the issues flying from Canberra - there's only two direct flights per day at 6am or 7pm. The hotel had a check-in time of 2pm which left a solid amount of time to sit around before deciding that sitting elsewhere than the hotel lobby may make time go faster.

After a quick search of the Rundle Mall area, I came across high reviews for L&L especially for coffee and toasties. I found it after a short 10min walk (tempted by other coffee places and a food court along the way). It's located in a stylish looking arcade and has a definite hip feel about it. There's sitting space both inside and outside to enjoy relaxing and chatting, using your phone, people watching or pulling out the iPad/MBA.

The coffee looked well constructed, but as a non-drinker I settled for a soy chai latte which was good - not overly sweet, not syrupy, not too heavy in cinnamon, nice. I'd also read about the Bolognese & Bechamel Toastie ($7) which was thickly sliced pressed bread with some nice cheese and meat sauce. I think it could have used more sauce overall as some bites had a bit too much bread and dryness (especially the crust areas) but it wasn't a big deal.

The menu prices are excellent too. A reasonable sized bircher is $5 for a healthier breakfast option. 

If I ever find myself straggling during an Adelaide morning, I'd definitely come back here.

In quite possibly the funkiest decorated cafe I've ever seen, this place would have been fantastic to have more time to sit, read a newspaper, scroll through a phone and enjoy the atmosphere.

The menu is quite limited with the specialty being pies, sausage rolls and a handful of sandwiches.

My first day there I felt like bircher muesli. They didn't have this but accommodated by making me a takeaway cup of yoghurt with granola. It was adequate but nothing special. Some fresh fruit would have probably made all the difference.

The second day I sat for a bit longer and had a croque monsieur. The cheese was nice, the ham was fine, but the bread quality could have been more exciting than plain wholemeal. I suppose I would've preferred something seeded or even slices of a sourdough loaf.

To takeaway I had a homestyle sausage roll and a famous neufchatel (cheese) chicken pie. Both were eaten 3 days later and remained quite delicious. The pastry was more flaky than buttery, but that could be attributed to the delay and rewarming in the microwave then oven at home.

Overall the setting, friendliness and more time to enjoy would bring me back here. I'd settle for a fresh sausage roll or chicken pie or try their roast beef on sourdough.

I was looking for something close to my hotel (Adelaide Rockford) to eat during a late Wednesday afternoon. Interestingly enough Zomato didn't have many options that were open, looked relatively fast and very decently rated. Funnily enough a souvlaki store down west past the university and away from all the other food places seemed to shine out.

Considering the Greek influence I became subjected to in Melbourne around the high school age of 16, I've valued a really great souvlaki. Over the past 4 years my favourites have changed from the supremely tasty and fatty Stalactites, to the wonderful authentic pork version in Bairaktaris and more recently the upmarket tender lamb version from Jimmy Grants. In Adelaide I had previously tried a place up north designated "home of the Ab" and found their meat to be reasonable but still lacking the intense herbed flavour I prefer.

Yianni's on Hindley had pretty good comments and there were plenty of workman ordering the enormous full sized yiros. In order to try 2 of the 3 meats on offer, I purchased 2 mini sizes. Each of those is very big on their own and could easily be a full meal (for $7!!). I ordered the lamb (as typical for yiro in Australia). In retrospect I should've made the other chicken for a bit of contrast, but the pork version from Athens weighed heavily in my mind. The lamb was nice, reasonable flavour, decent meat with some fatty bits. The pork version was a bit chewier and didn't really have much additional marinade flavour.

Next time I would order the chicken version to see how much flavour they can get out of it. Otherwise I'll settle quite happily for a mini yiro lamb.

Yiro or giro?

During my last trip to Adelaide in February I starred a lot of places around Rundle Mall. It was unexpected that the highest rated place on Urbanspoon was ULC - a lunch only Mexican place with remarkable reviews.

Finally on a hot 33C October afternoon I made it there walking through the sunny streets in a suit. Considering it would quite possibly be my last trip to Adelaide for a long time I had to ensure that the heat didn't affect my food choice, particularly when it came to adding the selection of spicy sauces.

- Elote (grilled corn on the cob with chipotle mayonesa, lime & dry cheese) $3.90 - my hybrid recipe using Thomasina Mier's, Melbourne's Mamasita and online recipes is still my overall favourite, but this was a nice version with juicy corn, salty cheese and a mild chilli mayo;
- Mexican Traffic (fried eggs with pork chipotle mince, fresh tortillas, cilantro pesto, rice, black beans, crema & salsa Mexicana) $14.90 - of all the menu items I think the reason I picked this was that the overall ingredients list appealed to me. I think in overall combination it is something I wouldn't usually have selected for myself. It was a nice meal of carbs soaking up the sauces and various condiments. It wasn't as (heat) hot as I expected for a rice dish and I ended up adding quite a lot of extra sauce to add the taste which I wanted. It was decent but not particularly special and I'd try a different dish next time.

Next time I would order Sloppy Jose, ULC Dog or Quesadilla and an added taco (probably fish) on the side. I'd wash it down with a Latin American flavoured soda also.

On my most recent trip to Adelaide, I stayed at the Adelaide Rockford Hotel. The location was selected due to its proximity to the Adelaide Convention Centre, but it seemed a short walk only to the main shopping and food area that I had starred in Google Maps from my previous visit. Due to the 30+ degree heat, I found myself often not really wanting to walk too far away so started looking at food options closeby. There was the restaurant located at the hotel (Asian, decent sounding menu, rather ordinary reviews for the prices), an Indian curry place across the road (didn't look too interesting from the outside, decent reviews online), a souvlaki place further away from town and a nearby highly rated cafe. It wasn't until my last night staying at the hotel that I noticed from the window of my hotel a girl standing outside the restaurant across the road advertising to people walking past.

Usually that's not a great sign of things - I specifically can mention Lygon Street and the restaurant street Rue de Bouchers in Brussels for this. Additionally I have to admit I found it unusual that pho was being touted by a non-Vietnamese (and more specifically non-Asian) person. Funnily enough the relative health safety of Vietnamese food (with the exclusion of banh mi that's been sitting in the sun), the minimal amount of distance to cover, and quite simply I had a hankering for decent Asian noodles brought me in.

I found out that this was day 10 of the restaurant's opening, and the owners/management were Vietnamese and very friendly. The fit out was modern and slightly edgy with a flair of traditional, similar to the new-age Asian restaurants that are the rage in various cities.

- 3 Colour Drink - if I had any particular recommendation for improvement, it would be on this. The best 3 Colour Drinks are made with finely shaved ice that melts easily when stirred into the coconut milk. Unfortunately this had thick chunks of ice that mean you spend a lot of time crunching through, with dilute flavours and having difficulty finding the elements;
- Wagyu Beef Pho - given the restaurant name, my pho craving that evening and the delicious wagyu pho from Bistro Nguyen, this was an easy choice. The noodles are well cooked and slightly uneven (this probably means they are fresh not dried, possibly handmade but you'd expect this to be advertised, or just unevenly machine cut). The meat was nicely soft and tender. The broth is very strong and full of the flavour of pho spices.

I was impressed that evening by the atmosphere, setting and general friendly vibe from the staff. Considering the location I ended up back the next day to try the other classic Vietnamese noodle soup. Actually I particularly wanted banh xeo, but they told me that was only on the dinner menu.

- Bun Bo Hue - the broth was flavoursome and not overly spicy and lightened with lemon. The large size is quite hefty such that I had difficulty finishing it along with my jackfruit smoothie (maybe too much liquid overall). The thick rice noodle was unfortunately slightly overcooked and so was quite soft rather than the characteristic slight firmness of this noodle.
- Jackfruit smoothie - not sure why I ordered this since it usually is made from canned jackfruit marinated in sugar syrup. However this one wasn't very sweet and a little dilute of jackfruit flavour.

Overall the food was very tasty with strongly flavoured stocks and I would be happy to eat either the pho or bun bo hue again. To my taste I think the drinks could use a bit of improvement. Perhaps I'll try the freshly squeezed sugar cane juice or avocado smoothie next time.

One of the highlights of my trip to Russia was the Red Arrow Train from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Considering the train departs at 2355, I ended up lazing around the hostel chatting to a Mexican guy from the USA and one of the blonde Russian hostel receptionists. I eventually left and made my way to the station.

It isn't the fastest train (that is the Sapsan) but it's certainly the most famous. The train itself actually looks sleek and impressive. I spent a good few minutes peering through the windows into the higher class rooms and the dining cart.

The bed is comfortable, the other guests were courteous and quiet. After a pleasant sleep, I sat up to snack on the free box of breakfast items - a very average breadroll, a packet of water and a few snacks. Overall it was a pleasant trip which arrived at the estimated 0800.

St. Petersburg and the White Nights awaited - what a stunning city...

The Entertainment Book allows a nice discounted seafood dinner along the foreshore. At full price some of the dishes seem expensive (although this is Canberra and it is along the ever expanding foreshore).

The dishes were nice and the calamari and fish well cooked. A satisfying meal altogether without being spectacular.

Quite possibly my favourite meal along the Golden Ring was in Yaroslavl. After staying in a small hostel and having a good chat with the gorgeous model who was the receptionist there, the stage was set for a nice walk about town. There is an impressive cathedral in the middle of town, with a close walk to a waterside area where the sun shines down. People wander about pleasantly, some playing ball, others more non-specific.

In the evening I found my research choice in Sobranie. The specialty of the house is food stewed in cast-iron pots in Russian oven. Who doesn't like a great stew?

- Borsch (seasoned soup with veal, cabbage, beetroot together with a beef rasstegai pastry);
- Stew of traditional roast pork with potatoes & mushrooms served in a cast-iron pot.

The atmosphere is lovely and the food is great. I was lucky enough to have the whole oven room to myself (other than the staff coming in and out occasionally to move the pots in and out).