Eat Like Ushi

In my absence, the Melbourne addition to the first world's street food revolution is souvlaki. It comes as no surprise that George Calombaris led the way with Gazi (focus on Greek street food) and Jimmy Grant's (focus specifically on souvlaki).

My cravings for Stalactites lamb gyro souvlaki was put on hold as I made a booking for Gazi as venue for a long overdue catchup.

I didn't take any photos that evening (which is a shame) and in a way it was telling that the food took backseat to the conversation and catchup. This could mean the conversation was all encompassing, but also the food was not particularly special.

For ease, the Doing It Greek Style 10-dish sharing menu was selected. It was a lot of food.

- 3 dips + flat bread - tzatziki, taramosalata (fish roe) with prawn crackers, miso melitzanosalata (eggplant, miso);
- Saganaki, honey, sesame, lemon - delicious fried cheese with a good amount of saltiness, elasticity and a tiny bit of crunch;
- Soft Shell Crab Souvlakakia (mint, coriander, honey, mayonnaise) - very nice soft fried crab;
Duck Souvlakakia (chips, parsley, onion, pear, mustard mayo) - very very crispy strips of duck meat with unmistakable duck flavour, but lacking the succulence the meat usually deserves;
- Wood-Fire Grill Swordfish - sadly was well cooked through and a bit dry;
- Wood-Fire Spit Pork Belly (white beans, apple skordalia) - moist soft chunks of belly meat that I couldn't stop helping myself to;
- Chips of Tiganites Patates (oregano, garlic oil, feta) - reasonably crispy chunky chips, good seasoning, and the feta lifts it to another level of silky unhealthiness;
- Acropolis Now (stawberry mousse, coffee and mastic) - very sweet strawberry dessert;
- Loukomathes (honey nutella, crushed hazelnuts) - excellent warm doughnut balls crispy smothered in honey.

There are two dishes I can't recall - one was probably a street food starter and the other was a salad. I was a bit disappointed there wasn't any lamb, not even available as a souvlakakia.

What I will gripe about is the service. A friend had previously warned me they had several different waiters and a degree of neglect overall. Our experience was again, having 4-5 different servers - I don't tend to mind this much, but when there is no communication between them and every 5 minutes a different waiter comes to ask us how everything is, it starts to really get annoying.

Next time I would order the a la carte instead of tasting menu. I'd be quite happy to eat the Saganaki, Pork Belly and Loukomathes again. I'd be willing to give the Crab and Duck Souvlakakias another try with more of my mind's focus, but am also tempted by the rumours about the Beef Brisket one. Off the dishes not yet tried, the most enticingly worded are Crispy Lamb Brains, Wood-Fire Grill Lamb Cutlets and what would likely be the piece de resistance, the Koondrook Braise of Kid Goat for 2.

After returning from London, one of my most missed foods for either late night (post-alcohol) snacking or a really lazy unhealthy dinner at home was the fried chicken from Royal PFC 2 in Whitechapel. Needless to say KFC never stacked up against it (although the opposition from the KFC backers was strong).

Combining this with what appears to be Melbourne's arrival of Korean food, I ended up at 10pm going to Gami. I thought it was a new place arriving in my absence, but was told it had been around at least since 2011. Who knew?

In traditional Korean meal fashion, a few freebies were thrown to start off as drink snacks - Calbee prawn crackers and some pickled cubes of white radish. I didn't realise these would soon be used to offset the chicken.

- Half Chicken with Spicy Sauce - a large half of fried chicken cut into palm sized pieces and smothered in a thick, red, burning chilli sauce. It brought tears to my eyes and a sting to my tongue, but only a little too hot for enjoyment. It didn't stop it from being finished by 2 of us;
- Chicken pieces (wings) - original fried chicken drumsticks and wings with a nice crunchy batter.

Both came with a cabbage salad with mayonnaise to appease the heat. The chicken was well cooked, not dry, but not particularly moist either. It hit a spot and I would go back if I was craving it, although probably not too far out of my way. The Gami house lager was the first beer I've finished voluntarily (maybe the heat numbed and burnt my tongue enough to tolerate the lighter beer taste),

Next time I would order the fried chicken either sweet chilli or sweet soy garlic sauce to try the different versions. I like the meat on these larger pieces better than the wings, and the wings don't come with the sauce options. There are other light meals listed, but why would you get them at this place?

10-2014

A recent (month long) craving for fried chicken brought me back to Gami. Reading through my last entry (one of the great things about having a food journal) guided me into ordering a whole fried chicken - half sweet chilli and half sweet soy garlic sauce. The sweet soy garlic sauce is a milder flavour, light on garlic that is rather pleasant. The sweet chilli is a milder form of the spicy sauce with a very minor amount of burn. Both are good and recommended. Funnily enough I preferred the soy garlic sauce on the night I ate it, and the sweet chilli on the subsequent two nights after microwaving. Odd. 

Once again the cabbage salad was simple enough to break up the chicken taste and I particularly liked the pickled radish cubes too. Takeaway took 20-30mins, so I'd advise to phone order in advance if you have enough forward planning skills.