Up in the clouds...

Ok so finally I have gotten my act together and actually written something that relates to food at a restaurant that I have visited! Yay! A small step for man kind.....


Now I know that the title is a little bit sad given the title of the restaurant that I am reporting on, but honestly I was on my flight to Los Angeles and given my nostalgia about tasty food after watching Rick Stein, I thought I would start writing a food review.....once again not the smartest thing to do on a long flight with no food options. Anyway....yes it's a bad pun and for those of you that know me, you know that I like to make bad puns and quote song titles - so don't be surprised if they pop up in future blogs! 
So as I was flying high above the clouds, I thought what better restaurant to blog about than Cumulus Inc. on Flinders lane.


Cumulus has been opened a few years now and not surprisingly there is still a wait required to get a table. I hadn't been there for over 12 months (too busy trying new restaurants about town) so it was nice to go back and see that  my favourite dishes were still on the menu. It has not lost its mojo!


We chose Cumulus because it happens to be a favourite of the Greedy Cat himself who chose it as his Christmas present from my sister and I. We have had some fantastic meals here and we've never left dissatisfied or hungry (although to be honest, the latter never happens because we always over order!).


The 'no reservations' policy is still in tact so we arrived just after 12pm and had to wait!! We thought we'd be smart and get there early but we forgot it was holiday season and many people were just out and about hanging around after their brunch. Fortunately the wait wasn't long and the service staff were very friendly and kept us informed of where we were in the line!


When we finally sat down and looked at the menu, the fried school prawns that we literally inhaled the last time we were here, were no longer on the menu. So disappointed, my dad just asked anyway whether he could order off menu if they had them, but our waiter said no, and suggested the fried softshell crab with school prawns seasoned with chilli spicy salt. I have a penchant for softshell crab so I was super happy to order this dish! It was accompanied by a chilli/mayo combo (more of the former than the latter)......A little too spicy for me so I had it sans condiment. It was beautifully prepared and not overcooked which can be a danger with softshell crab. 

My favourite dish at Cumulus has to be the Fois gras parfait which I think is the best I've had in recent times. The texture is just so smooth and it really has a good Fois gras taste. The accompanying brioche is light and not very sweet. Personally I prefer to have it with the complimentary sourdough they provide as it has a crispy, slightly salty crust and its heaviness compliments the richness of the Fois gras. It is a very rich dish so I wouldn't advise anyone to have one to themselves.....no matter how greedy you are! You may not feel well after....trust me!

Because our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, we ordered an additional two small dishes because my dad wanted to try them. 


The first was marinated ox tongue which came out in cubes. I think I was expecting something a bit flatter,  possibly thinking of my own tongue for unknown reason! Unfortunately this dish was too salty. The texture was soft and bouncy, kind of like a marshmallow only less fluffy. I'm surprisingly more game to try things like this in recent times so it was a bit disappointing that this wasn't done very well. 



The other small dish we got was a Boudin Noir with a smoked tomato and parsley salad. To be honest, Boudin Noir is a bit of a strange notion to me, I mean it's cooked blood. I've never understood eating it especially having seen my dad look so pleased when he ordered ox blood as part of the 'special' pho at Vietnamese restaurants. But I thought I'd give it a go. The texture is a bit grainy but the flavour was rich. I think i was deterred by the texture and so only had a little bit. The greedy cat finished it off with much delight. 



By this stage we were all getting pretty full which didn't bode well for the next dish. I had the same dish a little while ago when I was there last so I knew what was coming. A 1.4kg shoulder of lamb, seasoned with salt and a few unidentifiable herbs (my palate isn't as developed as it should be!). The waitress last time said to us that the weight was mostly bone but I'm pretty sure that's not entirely true! It is massive! So with all the dishes we ordered this time I would unequivocally say that we over ordered by a lot. However,  it was honestly cooked to perfection - the meat was tender, moist and came off the bone easily. It was way too much for the three of us but we did a pretty good job. It's quite good value as well so if you go and want to have have this, I would recommend going with only two smaller dishes and the lamb, otherwise you'll be rolling out of the restaurant! (the photo below doesn't even begin to show how big it was!)

We did enjoy the lamb with a wonderful tomato salad. I'm not sure I remember the last time where I ate such sweet tasting tomatoes but this salad was the perfect accompaniment to the lamb.


We didn't have dessert on this visit, but on previous visits I have had more than of the Madelines and also they did make their own salted caramel petit four which was heavenly!


So all in all, I pretty tasty meal. I'd definitely recommend going but perhaps not ordering as much as we did!


I should give this place a rating of some sort, it seemed like it was something I should do but I did canvas this with a few people who suggested that perhaps I could give it Meow ratings or something like that. But to be honest I'm no food connoisseur and my blog was meant to just give a brief summary of what I ate and whether it was any good, so I think I'll just leave it at that!


Until next time, happy eating!

Slowly but surely...

So I launched my long awaited blog in early January to much fanfare (ok it was in my head and there were the sounds of those long trumpets that only Royal families have) to a few select people who I thought would provide me with honest feedback and critique my writing style.

Honestly, I wanted to have my first blog vetted in case it was (a) written poorly (I still contend that despite being born here, English is not my first language because I had migrant parents....ok yes they speak perfect English but I still think they spoke to me in Chinese in those very important developmental years) and (b) it was overly narcissistic as all I did was talk about myself.

Fortunately, there were a few grammatical errors that were picked up and very few comments about narcissism (only after I asked if blogging was slightly narcissistic)! I thank everyone for their positive and supportive feedback bar one contentious issue which everyone had a word about (I'll explain later). It did give me the encouragement to write again and I was hoping to put up a food review given this is largely what this blog is for (although perhaps I do see it as a forum for random topics that might come into my head)!!!

Anyway, this blog still does not contain any restaurant or food reviews, partly because I wanted to explain to those people who have repeatedly asked me where my next blog is (you know who you are AW)  why it's taken so long to write blog 2.
Well here is my explanation......

I got lazy.....well this blog is called the Greedy Kat and what do you expect greedy kat's to do when they eat a lot.....laze about and watch TV and eat more food! Well I did eat a lot over the month of January, so much so, that there were several occassions where fat pants would have been useful. When you get very full it does make you incredibly sleepy! The second thing is that the sun was out and with so many wonderful bars and outdoor establishments in Melbourne, who's to blame me for spending time having fun sampling the delights on offer?? Besides, I was led astray by many so technically it's not my fault!!! Lastly, I went on holidays to the States and Mexico where I was too busy sampling local delights in order to capture all the necessary details for future blogs. I'm doing you all a favour the next time you go to New York, Washington and Chicago in the US and Cabo San Lucas in Mexico as I will have meticulously detailed which restaurants to do to and which signature dishes you should have!!!

I did say to a few people that on my holiday I would have plenty of time to blog but to be honest, I did most of my blogging on the plane. I had borrowed my dad's Samsung Galaxy tab for the holidays thinking that it would be a much better option than dragging around my MacBook. I really wanted to like the Samsung galaxy but it's really hard to use and type....I had really wanted to like it because I don't want to be one of "those people" who have everything Apple...but unfortunately I have to say that my friend's iPad was way better to use and navigate!

Anyway, the flight to LA was 14 hours and I did manage to get out half a blog. However, I wanted to provide you with a little advice for long haul flights...and it's not about the airplane food (I've been to where they make the food and I'm even happier to eat it - that's a story for another day)
My advice to you is that you should never, ever, watch any TV show where the subject matter is Food. Because on a long haul flight your food options are very limited and always a little bit unsatisfactory. You are essentially trapped from a food perspective because you cannot go anywhere and get what you want or even make it!

I made the mistake of watching Rick Stein's Tour of Spain on that flight. Rick Stein is awesome and I love to watch all his cooking shows (the recent one he did in Asia is particularly good) but when you're on a flight watching him cook and eat tasty Spanish food, you end up getting very hungry and also very sad. I think I only realised this after the first episode and by then I was hooked. I had to watch the next two!  Let this be a lesson to you that if you do watching anything like that on a long haul flight that you have packed some Spanish Iberico Jamon, some tapas and some paella. Or something a little more substantial than what they serve you for dinner as it's tiny!

I finished the first blog (minus the photos) on the beach in Cabo and was going to do another but  between inhaling nachos and beef tacos (they were so good I had one serve every day), lying on the beach seemed way more appealing!!

Never fear, the blog that took me a whole trip to do, is actually a blog about food and at a restaurant in this lovely city that I call home! I'll put it up next, followed by several reviews of the restaurants that I went to on my travels. I was lucky enough to be in New York during Restaurant Week. The restaurants participating in Restaurant week have fixed price menus for lunch ($24.07) and dinner ($35). Many of the restaurants were top rated ones in Manhattan and normally you'd be spending about $70-80 for a three course meal but instead it's only $35! I was smart/greedy enough to book a whole bunch of restaurants before I landed on US soil! So I had many wonderful meals in many wonderful restaurants. I look forward to reliving them via this blog!

Before I sign off, I said earlier that my selected initial reviewers all gave really positive reviews. The only thing that people were divided about was my choice of picture for this page. The Waving Cat. Who doesn't love a cat that waves? Well, some people really liked it and some people really hated it. Comments included "it's not fat enough", "not the waving cat again" and "it looks scary".
Although helpful, reviewers found potential replacement pictures of giant fat cats, cats dressed up in weird outfits, Hello Kitty, Garfield, Asian good luck cats and even a scary looking black cat that looked evil. But this waving cat looks so cheery and I'd like to think if I were really a cat that ate a lot, I'd like to look like that!

So do you like the waving cat or hate it?? Feel free to comment. But if I can't find a better alternative I'm keeping it!

I'll bid you all adieu now until my next blog where I promise it will be about a meal I had recently with the actual Greedy Cat (see my first blog) and I promise to do something with the formatting because apparently it's very plain......!!

Until then...Happy Eating!
The Greedy Kat
meow