Holiday Breakfasts

Breakfast is a luxury. Most of us are too sleep deprived, too much in a rush for work/school to have a real breakfast but the popular saying is that breakfast is the most important meal and so, in my time of leave, I've had the luxury of multiple opportunities of real breakfast.

Beetroot, Melbourne:
- very good coffee


- beautiful bircher muesli with poached fruits and mixed nuts



- good standard hot brekky of eggs, bacon, spinach and pesto mushroom

- decadent french toast of chocolate, banana and vanilla mascarpone



The European, Melbourne

- goats cheese omelette with the most beautiful roast mushroom


- the European breakfast


- sublime Valrhona chocolate tart made to order served with in house orange ice cream


Thom Phat, Brunswick East:

Roti Omelette: Cheap Eats Melbourne's breakfast dish of 2007
- Sheets of roti pratha with Chinese style omelette, encasing loads of bacon, protecting the fragrant flavours topped with tomato salsa, fried shallots and coriander

- beautiful mix of flavours and texture

Mart 130, Middle Park:

Beautiful scrambles

Homemade baked beans topped with goats cheese

cappuccino

Squisto, Melbourne:

Good scrambles, lovely herb baked mushrooms and crispy pancetta

Spoonfull, Prahran:

Smoked Salmon Omelette with Wild Flour Sourdough

Cafe Sweetheart, South Melbourne:

Blueberry Pancake with hazelnut butter, hash and grilled bacon with maple

Las Chicas, Balaclava:
- personal favourite

Big Mama - grilled bacon, omelette, tasty spinach, herbed mushrooms and sweet pistachio ricotta

Homemade fresh polenta, herb and pumkin loaf with homemade beans, wilted spinach, gem-like poached eggs and mushrooms

Warrnambool

Located on the shores of beautiful Lady Bay, Warrnambool, the largest city on the Great Ocean Road is an ideal place for exploring nature’s finest attractions. From the picturesque Lady Bay that offers protected swimming along with more challenging pursuits of surfing, yachting and windsurfing to the beautiful Stingray Bay, with rock pools; award winning Foreshore Promenade with a wonderful 5.7 kilometre track that stretches from the Breakwater along the coastline at the famous Southern Right Whale Nursery at Logans Beach to the fantastic Lake Pertobe Adventure Playground for an all year-round family attraction, Warrnambool offers plenty but the highlights are the wide range of exceptional cafes.

Time and Tide
- located just a few minutes from Port Fairy, this waterfront cafe is my favourite for the beautiful food and coffee and exceptional view of the sea.

Toasted focaccia with omelette, spinach, smoked bacon and chutney

Cappucino - with hazelnut cocoa dusting

Sticky Banana Pudding - served with caramel drizzle cinnamon dusted vanilla ice cream and double cream. This is a beautiful pudding, dense and flavourful of rich bananas

House-baked cheesecake with fresh passionfruit curd.

Chocolate brownie cake - mounted with rich truffle

Half serve, warmed

One would be overwhelmed if they had these desserts because it's actually pretty large a serving, the size that of a bowl but beautiful to share. The lovely thing is that it's individually made and not a slice cut out of a cake.

Rebecca's

Raspberry and Mascarpone Cake

Flourless Chocolate Hazelnut Cake
- so much hazelnut, whole and crushed with a rich thick nutty fugde center

Sticky Banana and Macadamia Cake with Butterscotch

Salt Marsh
- blow glass cafe

Baked Berry Cheesecake

Flourless Chocolate Pudding with Timboon Ice cream


Self saucing

Bojangles

Death by Chocolate - Housemade chocolate cheesecake

12 Apostles - Great Ocean Road

2007 Life Celebration

Birthday Eve Dinner - Third Floor, JW Marriott
Winner of Best Local Chef in Malaysia 2001/2002.
First dining outlet to win 10 out of 10 rating for food from Malaysia's Best Restaurants 2001 guide


Entree:

Coriander and Pepper crusted Salmon confit with flying fish roe
- confit: traditionally peasant prepared meat immersed in a substance ie salt for preservation and flavour, cooked in its fat, the salmon retains its raw texture with plenty of subtle mixed flavours

Truffle Linguini
- the French black truffle is considered the fines of the edible fungi, widely considered as the jewel of French cooking for its unique flavour and intoxicating aroma, its capacity to perfume any dish

Lobster salad
- whole de-shelled perfectly grilled assembled lobster with a salad accompaniment - such a happy feast of juicy satisfying crustacean bite

Main:

Roasted Lamb Shortloin
- with mash and veg

Double cooked crispy Duck breast with balsamic and tamarind
- beautifully executed

Dessert:

Poached Cherries in Shiraz with vanilla ice cream

Chocolate Fondant with sabayon and vanilla ice cream

Certainly our most gourmet meal

Birthday Lunch - Lafite, Shangri-la
- Malaysia's No. 2 restaurant
- “World’s Most Outstanding Wine List", 2006
- “Golden Cauldron Award: Best All-Around Restaurant", 2003-2006
- “Best Overall Restaurant", Hospitality Asia Platinum Awards, 2004


The Showcase Luncheon offers appetisers displayed in a futuristic perspex tower and desserts individually portioned in silverware and porcelain. Mains cooked to order.

Appetisers:

Sushi with soy pipette; watermelon mocktail; prawn on avocado; scallop salad; mix salad, Vietnamese paper roll

Smoked salmon with roe; prawn and salads including Caesar salad

Main:

Wagyu beef Shepard's pie

Seared Lamb loin
- with tzatziki

Desserts:

Chocolate Brownie with candied cranberry; Chocolate Tart; Mix Fruit Jelly; Meringue; Pistachio sponge with blueberry

Chocolate Nugget; Vanilla Bean Creme Brulee; Fresh Mangoes in filo pastry; Custard Raspberry Tart

Chocolate bowl

The Breakfast
- Cherkas' signature dessert of an egg on top of hollandaise sauce aka my birthday cake courtesy of head chef Kevin Cherkas at the request of baby sister Jade
Yolk - mango pudding: so alike a yolk that once popped, oozes and once spooned, comes together in a protein-like membrane
White - coconut cream chilled with liquid nitrogen producing the crisp edge resembling a fried egg
Hollandaise - delightful sharp passionfruit mousse Beautiful textures eaten together

Kevin Cherkas

- graduated with top honours in culinary art in Vancouver; worked at some of the world's most outstanding restaurants including 3-Star Michelin Arzak Restaurant in San Sebastian, 2-Star Michelin La Broche in Madrid, and 3-Star El Bulli in Roses, all in Spain.

At Lafite, Cherkas will create his own interpretations of culinary foam to flavour his culinary compositions. Foam is a big feature in many of his dishes. But this foam does not use cream and egg. Rather, it is made with the main ingredient (be it espresso or mushroom) and air in a whipped cream maker equipped with liquid nitrogen cartridges.

Another technique of his is esferificacion, a process by which liquids are trapped in a thin alginate casing, which when crushed in the mouth, bursts open and bathes the tongue with divine flavours, incorporated in the Breakfast. Indeed much skill he has attained under the apprenticeship of Ferran Adria of El Bulli in his meshed kitchen/laboratory to create "molecular gastronomy". It's not just cooking.

Kevin aims to give diners the best meal of their life which I can say, I have experience and am in awe. Unlike the conventional, Kevin enjoys sitting down and chatting with diners to devise a menu for them base on what they love.

My utmost of gratitude to Jade for the experience of the best meal: a combination of fusion appertisers of the freshest produce with gourmet inclusion, the most beautiful lamb and the best selection of fine desserts of decadent chocolate with a balance of fruits along with state-of-the-art food creation and a personal encounter with a renown chef.