Travelling Back to Melbourne

Today was travel today.  Time to say "until next time" to Tasmania.   For our coffee this morning, we had the instant coffee from the hotel room.  Surprisingly it was quite good - it was no long black - but pretty good.  I don't know why I had been nervous about trying it.  When we had checked out of the Freycinet Lodge, we took a few of the items from the mini bar to have in the Hobart hotel.  Two of those items were the sodas below.

Cascade Ginger Beer and Lemon, Lime and Bitter Soda

Cascade is a Hobart Brewery.  I tried a few of their beers and they were okay - I preferred Moo Brew and some others.  Like a lot of breweries. they have expanded beyond just beer.  You will see many are going into the distilling business with gin or vodka.  And others (like Cascade) are introducing non-alcoholic sodas.  I tried these before we left the hotel since we couldn't take them on the plane.  The ginger beer was nice and spicy and would have been great in a Dark and Stormy.  That is a drink with bourbon, ginger beer and an optional lime.  Or even in what my wife calls a Donkey which is Tequila and Ginger Beer. 

The Lemon. Lime and Bitter is a very popular drink I saw ordered at bars for kids.  It may be the equivalent of a Shirley Temple in the United States.  It is lemon and lime muddled together with simple syrup with a dash of angostura bitters, topped with soda water.  Very refreshing although I would have liked it a bit more bitter.

We flew out of Hobart and it was about an hour and fifteen minute flight to Melbourne.     Returning the rental car was a bittersweet since I had gotten used to driving the car and being on the "right" side.  No more driving until we got back to Tampa when I would have to drive on the right side.

While we were waiting for the flight, I decided to try something I had heard about - world famous Tasmanian scallop pie.    Pies in general are a big deal in Australia.  They are a perfect snack any time of day.  They come in both sweet and savory varieties.  I think they are so popular since they are the ultimate "on the go" meal.

The bakery in the airport had so many different pies to choose from.

The scallop pie was about the size of a pop tart, but as thick as a small chicken pot pie in the United States.

The crust was very flaky, but still had enough structure to hold the ingredients inside.  Inside was a creamy, curry flavored gravy that had about eight bay size scallops.  Surprisingly, the curry was balanced so you could still taste the delicate scallops.   

The flight was quick and easy.  After we checked into the Marriott we found there was a rooftop bar called Bomba just across the street.  They also had a sit down restaurant downstairs.  A rooftop bar sounded perfect for an afternoon!!

I had a delicious boysenberry sour beer from Moon Dog.

For snacks we got Pardon Peppers which were looked the same as Shisito Peppers.  The one difference is these were deep fried whereas Shisito are usually pan fried until they are slightly charred.  Seasoned so well with salt.  These were all on the sweet side.  Shisito peppers can be a roll of the dice whether they are hot or sweet.

Our other snack was a toasty - or what Australians would call a grilled cheese in the United States.  This one came with sliced pork, peppers and cheese.  The bread was similar to a sourdough and so crispy.  Who doesn't like a melty grilled cheese?

We contemplated several options for dinner, even walking around the block to see what restaurants looked good.  We ended up at the Bomba restaurant on street level.  We weren't super hungry but did try three things.

This was a scallop with chorizo, caper and fino butter.  What is fino butter?  I had to look it up as well.  Fino is a light sherry which flavored this butter.  This scallop was okay, but the standard had been set when we visited Apollo Bay when we were in Melbourne earlier on this trip.    Click the link below for that blog.

https://yourgastronomyguide.blogspot.com/2019/11/favorites-from-melbourne-victoria_16.html


Scallop from Bomba Melbourne.

Scallop from Apollo Bay.

Chicken skewer with hummus.  This was tasty and moist.

Char grilled corn with dried maize.  This came with a chipotle sauce.  This was my favorite bite of the night and one of my favorite bites of the whole trip.  I have had Mexican street corn before and this was similar to that, but elevated.  The corn had been perfectly cooked so it was still crisp with a little char.  And then what I thought was panko crumbs was actually dried maize on the outside.  It was so crunchy and savory.  The sauce, while really unnecessary, did have a nice spice to contract with the sweetness of the corn. 

Charcoal grilled calamari with squid ink potatoes and fennel salad.  The best part of this dish should have been the calamari but sadly that wasn't cooked very well.  I expected it to be charred more and have a combination of tentacles and rings but instead only got the "starred" pieces.  The fennel was charred well and had some good flavor.  The mashed potatoes were gluey and the squid ink added nothing - no flavor or texture.  It seemed like they only included it to make it sound exotic.  If the chef doesn't know how to respect calamari, then this dish should be changed to vegetarian with the nicely charred fennel and add in some carrots and roasted potato. 

We called it a night after this and headed back to the hotel.  Tomorrow we would have what my wife calls "Glenn's Day Of Fun" where I plan a day of bar visits (hardly a crawl).  Look for that blog to be posted soon.