“Food is family, family is life, life is everything.” – George Calombaris
I had been excited about visiting The Press Club before I saw George Calombaris cook prosciutto-wrapped gorgonzola cannelloni on Ready, Steady Cook, that wonderful daytime cooking show hosted by the always fabulously fey Peter Everett, but it was his inspired tube of pig-encased blue vein that finally inspired me to make a booking. “So tell me about this sausage,” Everett swooned, flapping over to Calombaris’ corner. “It’s not a sausage,” Calombaris fired back from behind his fogged-up, thick-rimmed glasses. “It’s cannelloni.”
Something about the exchange amused and impressed me all at once: This guy has ideas to burn, I thought. And he clearly means business.
Throw into the bargain some positive reviews and the endorsement of an elderly couple I met at a cheese and wine tasting in March—they told me, in no uncertain terms, that The Press Club was the place to be—and by the time I am finally being whisked in out of the cold to our unfortunately ill-positioned table (right next to the door) in the old Herald and Weekly Times building on Flinders Street, I am just about ready to have kittens. The Press Club is one of the two or three restaurants I have been most looking forward to visiting. And by the end of the night it will be one of the ones that I am most looking forward to returning to.
My dining partner and I have decided in advance to surrender ourselves to the chef and his will. Of the three Kerasma (sharing) menus available, we order the largest, Kerasma C, a seven-course degustation that covers all of the food groups and then some ($75 per head). We pay $9 per head for all-we-can-drink San Pellegrino (you can also choose Aqua Panna) and, bending the rules a little, I ask if I can be served a selection of Greek wines to match each course (an option usually reserved for those who order the chef’s special symposium menu). Sommelier Andrew Phillpot is only too happy to oblige. Over the course of the evening I am to be treated to three whites (one of which isn’t on the wine list), a rosé, two reds, and two fortifieds, all of which have been imported from Greece. (“We’re currently at the stage with Greek wines,” Phillpot tells me, “where we were with Spanish wines a couple of years ago.”) To my surprise—and delight—my ‘open beverage’ (which is how it appears on the bill) costs me a mere $50.
We are advised by our genuinely likeable waitress to not fill up on bread—which is a hard thing to do in a restaurant like this, where the bread service is so exemplary. An orange-coloured, almost focaccia-like offering, flavoured with sun-dried tomatoes and chilli, accompanies a less interesting, but still appealing, white variety; the former, which I prefer, has a pleasant yet subtle kick about it. A small bowl Cretan olive oil—among the best I’ve had in Melbourne—and another of flinty black salt flakes hint at the importance of bread to the meal, and at the chef’s attention to detail. Although we treat ourselves to another piece of the tomato-flavoured bread later in the meal, for the most part we do as we are told and try not to gorge ourselves too early.
This turns out to be a very wise move. The meal proper begins with a solid wooden serving block of bite-sized mezedes (tastes): a bowl of pickled octopus; two rich, rice-stuffed dolmades; cherry tomatoes stuffed with fetta mousse (a clever little riff on the fetta-stuffed bell peppers so adored by antipasto-lovin’ foodies); a bowl of marinated olives; and, most interestingly, a saganaki martini. This consists of two little cubes of haloumi, fried golden-brown and skewered with a metal toothpick, suspended above a cloudy-looking concoction of chopped tomato, herbs, and gin. All the produce is the best of its kind and the course bodes well for the rest of the meal.
Two orektika (appetisers) are served in quick succession. Two crispy scallop loukoumades—fleshy bites of seafood encased in traditional fried-dough pastry—come out straddling a long toothpaste-like squeeze of baby pink taramasalata, and find themselves garnished with salmon roe and a drizzle of lemon honey dressing. The second dish is one of the most impressive of the night. Four meaty shards of Cypriot pork sausage sit beneath a small canopy of microherbs and are flanked on one side by a poached free-range egg and a tangle of fried calamari. The small pile of sausage brandishes a streaky tail of intense, cherry-flavoured sauce, which, when applied to the dish’s various ingredients—most notably the runny egg yolk—unites the range of individual flavours whilst simultaneously showcasing each. Both orektika dishes playfully collapse the sweet/savoury divide.
Silent suffering Sexologist Doctors In Delhi Males generally don’t discuss their sexual problems and as a result, many couples get free viagra in canada deprived of the joy of parenthood. Women around the world say that getting pregnant levitra fast shipping is made easier with this pregnancy system. Enhanced levels of testosterone improve blood flow to the commander cialis you could try this out reproductive organs, you need to consume avocado. Fibroids are viagra on line order http://www.midwayfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Approved-Minutes-1-9-18.pdf common in women during their reproductive years.
The soup course proves another highlight (thus justifying the decision to order the seven-course behemoth that we’re still less than halfway into). Alone at the centre of an empty bowl, a delicate pyre of apple matchsticks sits adorned by an oyster baked in a cocoon of stringy kataifi pastry; a traditional broth of trahana (cracked wheat kneaded with buttermilk)—made, we are told, by George’s mother—is poured from a long-handled pot at the table. This theatrical flourish is nicely offset by the humble homeliness of both the broth and the story behind it; the frothy, slightly creamy, soup is offset by the delicate crunch and subtle fruit notes of the apple, the fleshiness of the oyster, and the slight crackle of the pastry. It’s a dish that, like the one that follows it, boldly combines, not only a plethora of seemingly incompatible tastes and textures, but also, in almost equal measure, the traditional and the modern.
The dish of the evening is undoubtedly the cumin-roasted beetroot salad with pistachio biscuit and labna balls. Calombaris’ understanding of and willingness to experiment with texture—the tactile play of foodstuffs on the palate—is arguably his strongest suit; here, the spongey pistachio ‘biscuit’ (it’s really a cake) sits in contrast to, whilst wholly complimenting, the slightly crunchy pieces of beetroot and the gooey little balls of herb-covered labna. The combination of flavours and textures is, again, both unexpected and inspired. It’s also a lot of fun to eat—part salad, part desert. It’s certainly not a dish you want to share, no matter who you’re eating with.
The evening’s vegetables—baby carrots, kipfler potatoes and aubergine, served atop a dollop of natural yogurt—appear in one of the more traditional dishes. We are told that George (everyone on the floor refers to Calombaris by his first name, reinforcing the pervasive sense one gets that this is a genuinely close-knit, almost familial, operation) recently returned from Greece where he was inspired to create this dish. It’s simple, hearty fare, and it works well.
The kyrio (mains) of meat and fish—land and sea, as the menu puts it—is the most traditional course of the evening, though by no means any less impressive for being so. Served on a mattress of white bean skordalia and festooned with green beans and crumbled fetta (with side dishes of Greek salad and lemon potatoes), four sides of perfectly spit-roasted baby lamb from the restaurant’s rotisserie represent peasant food at its best: simple, succulent (the bones slide out with ease) and—somehow—deeply comforting. (As the lamb melts in my mouth, I am reminded, by some weird quirk of memory, of my own grandmother’s roasts. And it seems to me that this, to some extent, is precisely the desired effect.) Pickled cabbage, buttery couscous and a surprisingly potent capsicum dip nicely compliment two golden fillets of crisply seared John Dory.
We’re almost relieved when the glyka (sweets) platter arrives—it would be an understatement to say that we’re getting full—and what a platter it is. A tall cocktail glass of creamy pannacotta and champagne-soaked strawberries keeps watch over a chorus line of slightly twisted favourites: more loukoumades (without the scallops this time), a chocolate tart with pistachio ice-cream, a piece of not-too-sticky/not-too-dry baklava (with distinctive hints of clove and nutmeg) with Greek coffee ice-cream, and an ouzo-soaked crème caramel. The latter of these, positively potent with the flavour of aniseed, ultimately proves too much for my partner. She has a bit of history with ouzo.
The Press Club hovers somewhere between the traditional and the modern, and Calombaris’ food is at its best when collapsing such divides. The results are consistently very good and occasionally breathtaking. Throw into the bargain a professional-but-affectionate wait staff, an excellent wine list, and the joyous atmosphere of a family get-together and you’ve got yourself a winning formula. The Press Club is the place to be. That elderly couple, it seems, was right.
The Scene, 20 June 2007
