Mozzeenet

As promised in my last entry, herewith follows an account of a memorable dining and wining (or more precisely ‘spiriting’) experience one fine…well slightly chilly actually…Saturday evening in Melbourne in April 2005. The scene of this tale is Chapel Street in the inner-city, south-eastern suburb of Prahran (pronounced prah-RAN - I was initially inclined to say prah-RARN). The protagonists of the story are Andrew and I with a cameo performance from Stuart (Andrew’s brother).

It was early evening when Stuart dropped Andrew and I off at a busy intersection, close to our destination. On all sides we were surrounded by up-market restaurants, bars, shops and charcoal chicken shops (the last remains unverified but as reliable sources on the ground claim that Melbourne has the world’s highest number of charcoal chicken shops per capita, they had better not be left off this list).

We were headed for a place called Borsch, Vodka and Tears. What a brilliant name – it evokes a scene of a deep Russian Winter and a dark, smoky bar where two secret lovers meet to drown their sorrows and capture a few stolen moments together. Our port of call was indeed a vodka bar with an attached restaurant serving Polish food. It is best described as a bar first and a restaurant second because there are 105 vodkas on the menu!

We walked through the door into a longish room with muted lighting, wooden furniture and Slavic music playing and a waiter approached us. He informed us that regrettably there were no free tables. Disappointed, we asked if he could call us if one became available. He agreed and we wandered off along Chapel Street to the Borders bookstore in South Yarra to fill in some time.

About 40 minutes later we received the call - a table had become available. We hot-footed it back to the restaurant (incidentally I hope one day I will learn that new shoes always give me blisters – by the end of the night I was hot-footing it everywhere) and our waiter welcomed us back and showed us to our table. We began to peruse the menu. It was printed in small letters in old-fashioned type-writer font, the food listed at the top and below a very long list of all kinds of exotic-sounding vodkas.

Being of Polish background on his Dad’s side, Andrew had been there a few times before. He suggested we get a sampling plate of 3 vodkas. For the meal we decided on lightly crumbed fried sheep’s milk cheese as the entrée and for the main, Polish sausages for me and Andrew had another Eastern European specialty (which was obviously stored in random access memory).

The highlight was the vodkas. We each were given a plate with 3 shot glasses. One of the vodkas we had chosen had a flake of gold in it! Each one had a unique character and set of ingredients. They warmed my insides as I threw them back. Each one was a little different but all had a smooth taste and were easy to drink unlike cheaper spirits which I am not fond of drinking straight.

After an enjoyable few hours (including amusement derived from a riotous hen’s night going on behind us) and feeling all warm and tingly, we left the restaurant and walked back along Chapel Street, keeping an eye out for a cab. In those few hours, the scene had changed completely. Now, hotted-up cars cruised along with groups of guys and girls hanging out of windows and music pumping. I was quite surprised as it didn’t seem like the type of place for this. The attraction might be the long, straight road and the sophisticated clubs and bars. If you know Sydney, I’d compare it to Norton Street in Leichardt or Bay Street in Brighton-le-Sands at night. Chapel Street however is very up-market from what I can gather, more like Paddington in Sydney so it was kind of unexpected.

Not seeing a cab, Andrew called on Stuart (you’ve got to love siblings) who kindly picked us up and dropped me back at the hotel where Mum and I were staying. It was a fantastic and unique experience which I am hoping to repeat sometime soon.