Weekend Eating. (part 1)

Wow.

what an amazing weekend. Mme Mouse's 21st party on Friday night, a fam wedding on Sat. A kitchen tea on Sunday lunch and then Yamagata for dinner on Sunday for the actual birthday, then home for coffee and cake with the family.

A weekend pretty much made of all types of awesome sauce!

First shout out to Belgian Beer Cafe at Eureka. Chris and his staff were just awesome. The food was sensational and the venue was just spectacular. Big platter of finger food comprising of twice cooked pork belly with apple pickle, pork and veal meatballs with tomato and sage, gruyere and emmenthal squares with fresh lemon and fried parsley, shelled mussels lightly fried and served with tartare sauce were perfectly accompanied by a beer list including Stellas Artois, Hoegaarden White, Leffe Blonde, Leffe Brune and Belle-Vue Kriek. Plenty of 2008 Yering Station ‘Little Yering’ Chardonnay, Fratelli Moscato and 2007 Yarra Valley Tempranillo Rosé flowed as well!

Next shout out goes to Crabapple cupcakes, or Great Cakes, as they are soon to be known. They did us an awesome 5 tier display of choc on choc goodness, and an amazing pear, almond and vanilla yoghurt cake. Both types were topped with silver cachous and edible glitter that sparkled in the subdued lighting. The chocky ones were topped with tiny strawberries and the pear ones with Cecille Bruner rosebuds.



Stand by for a report on sensational wedding food and a traditional high tea.

All you can eat sushi/sashimi

Mme Mouse and her squeeze, TiMOthy recently asked out to an amazing find. An all-you-can-eay Japanese restaurant in Doncaster. I have to admit that I was a tad nervous. All you can eat Asian restaurants conjure up, for me anyway, images of nasty greasy food in baine maries LONG after they've past the Staphylococcus aureus point of no return. Limp prawn crackers and ubiquitous Asian/Aussie dishes like lemon chicken.

I shuddered to think what an all you can eat resto would do to sushi and tempura.

Yamagata Teppanyaki - Melbourne Restaurant Address: 15 Andersons Creek Rd, Doncaster East Phone: 03 9841 988.

$33 on a Friday night will get you seated in a bustling, noisy resto that is strangely reminiscent of the "Island Trader" franchise of the 80's, only smaller. There are a couple of Teppanyaki stations, but the patrons are mostly there for the all you can eat.





It's not a buffet. It's an al a carte of sorts. The kind you see more and more often these days in Asian conclaves such as Box Hill, Springvale and Glen Waverely. You get a menu with (in this case) about 30 different items on it, You tick what you want and it's brought to your table.



A trick here for the first timers.

Order EVERYTHING you think you might want, because your first order will be fine, but we found that subsequent orders got lost in the last minute rush by the other patrons.

The sushi and sushimi very fresh. The rice lacked the distinct rice wine flavour of other restaurant sushi, but hey, we paid $33 a head for it. I wasn't complaining.

Rather than Aussie-ising the menu, Yamagata offeres some more traditional fare such as whole deep fried sardines, and yakatori eggplant.


And of course, there is tempura, miso, gyoza, tataki, green tea icecream ,tonkatsu pork and other familiar dishes.

Australians are used to the rarefied Japaneses restaurants, all tatami mat and Shamsen elevator musak, with students in kosode and obi. Maybe a little bit of slap-and-tickle frivolity if you miss catching the fried rice bowl at Teppanyaki.

While the food may not be up to the standard of Kuni's or Shira Nui, it is much more like a bustling Tokyo Ginza cafe from the 70's, No nonsense good food served fast, efficiently and cheaply.