Pireaus Blues

Location:310 Brunswick Street
Phone: 03 9417 0222
Cuisine: Greek
website: http://www.pireausblues.com.au/

The Food and The Experience:
Brunswick Street is one of those quirky streets in Melbourne where there's a foray of good cafes, restaurants, bars combined with all this arts/craft/shopping. It's a vibrant location and it's busy busy busy (always).
So there's no surprise when you come across a place like Pireaus Blues (frankly I'm glad that I'm typing this up and not having to discuss this because I'm not even sure how exactly one pronounces "Pireaus") because it's a GEM.
It reminds me of Hellenic Replublic without the flashy decor and the celebrity chef, or perhaps this is what Hellenic Republic is trying to replicate however to some degree more modern.

Prior to heading out Pireaus Blues, no it wasn't a place I just happily stumbled upon after an awesome day of emptying out my bank balance on Brunswick street (a friend had suggested that we try such a place), we had checked out their lunch menu online and were pretty excited to try out their express lunch banquet.

Apparently this "lunch" menu did not exist as we were told by their "apparently" long time serving very arrogant employee who wanted to argue us out of getting this express banquet. There is NOTHING worse when the waiter argues with you, then tries to justify with "ive worked here 5 years and NO ONE has ever ordered this! this does not exist", only to be proved otherwise (we live in a technological world where mobile phones can access the internet that says otherwise) and needless to say we got what we wanted.

As with anything Greek (well at a Greek restaurant anyway), you can't go pass an assortments of dips. These dips were served with Pita bread. Frankly, we couldn't get enough of the dips and it was OH SO FABOLOUS and extremely tasty.
I'm a tad bias, I love dips (provided it's of the vegetable kind i.e caspicums and the like).
As this was being shared between 3 people, it was plentiful.

Then the Loukaniko(greek word for sausage) came out. I have to say, I wasn't the biggest fan of it, but I couldn't help myself either. You know when your brain says "nah, its not that great" but your tummy says "to hell with that, just eat it!?!? eat it?!?!?" I'm sure months on, my thighs are still carrying some of that Loukaniko as we speak. HAHAHAHAH. It was made better having copious amounts of dips left to slather over the sausage... and eating it with the pita bread.

I used to think that I was a massive fan of Saganaki and then I went to Hellenic Republic and the experience put me off so bad that I became hesitant to eat the damn thing, mainly because I can't stand the smell of hardcore cheese, it makes my nose want to put my partners dirty stinky socks up my nose just to eradicate another bad smell.
Fortunately Pireaus Blues' Saganaki was nothing of the sort, it didn't have a strong taste of cheese and it tasted well frankly just beautiful. It was like a party amongst my tastebud, the taste of cheese noticeable was not repugnant and didn't scare the daylights out of me.
You know your heart breaks when you have one triangle piece to share with 2 other people and you have to savour every moment like it's the last piece on earth (well as part of the banquet there wasn't anymore unless we decided to order more)

The lemon lamb, the calamari and the greek salad came out and oh man.... where does one start? The lemon lamb was succulent, tender and each bite was yum yum. I tend to steer away from lamb dishes when I'm eating out, mainly because a lot of places (i.e Maze) don't actually marinate their meats, and just like strong cheese, I really cant stand the smell of lamb on its on. But here at Pireaus Blues, they certainly got something right.
The calamari was lightly crumbed, the kinda stuff you wished people consistently did but always got it wrong but this place surely didn't. And the salad? Well there's nothing much I can say about salad, it's just a salad! LOL

And for dessert, we got ice-cream to share. There's nothing really to scream about the ice cream.

The overall experience was an absolute positive one when it came to food. It's very rare that I can walk away from a restaurant going "wow" that was pretty good.
It's just a shame that the waiter who was such a smart ass to us, kind of left a bad taste to the experience. But until I find a better and perhaps a cheaper alternative than the $29.95 I paid for the banquet experience, I'd be surely going back, especially if I'm in the area

Flower drum

Location:17 Market Ln, Melbourne Vic

Phone: 9662 3655

Time: Dinner

Price: Expensive

Cuisine:Cantonese cuisine

What got dished out:

Our first dish from their banquet menu was an assortment of dumplings. These dumplings were pretty much standard dumplings one would acquire at your standard yum cha place. It wasn't the best, nor was it all that bad. I don't know what I was expecting, okay I lied, when I saw dumplings, i thought "oh wow, it's going to be awesome", it wasn't that, it was "oh, this is so shark fin house style, except less rude and more pretentious"

 S.A King George Whiting (entree) came out and it was fish that definately deserved a second helping. For someone who doesn't like fish, I did like the fish, the batter was light, it was tasty (okay maybe a little less salt) but still very tasty

As part of the 4 course "tasting" banquet, FlowerDrum had "peking" duck as part of their menu, and oddily enough it was part of their "main course", seriously speaking, I'm not quite sure how peking duck can be considered as a main unless of course they're going to feed me an entire duck itself.(which they didn't). I can't say that the duck was the best thing ever, because it wasn't. It wasn't a total disappointment like my Quanjude experience, but I must add, at the time, I hadn't gone to QuanJude yet, and at the time, I thought my experience at flower drum was somewhat ordinary and a total disappointment, seriously I expected a lot more from a classy, top end restaurant, especially when it came to peking duck. In all honesty, for half the price (which would have fed a table of 4 people) i could have gotten much better peking duck elsewhere. Actually, i didn't just think this experience was THAT ordinary, i thought it was VERY ordinary, and to some degree, annoyed. (and then i went to quanjude for peking duck, and realised that flowerdrum had someone who beat them to making very ordinary duck)

The "Grain Fed Eye Fillet with Black Pepper sauce" had a mixed response from our table. Everybody was impressed because you got a choice of " how you wanted your meat cooked, medium/nuked etc etc)  Frankly it wasn't a winner because nobody was all that impressed with it, including myself. You know when your gut feeling says "stay away" and you don't listen, it's at this point you want to kick yourself in the nuts (if you had some that is), well it was for that very moment.
Don't get me wrong, the meat was nice and succulent and very tender but what was the biggest let down of them all had to be the sauce. Even if I was a fan of the sauce, it would have been nothing but a disappoitment, it was like an array of wtf-ness bouncing off my tongue, it just didn't taste right and no matter how much coke or chinese tea i consumed, i couldn't really get rid of the peppery or lack thereof taste out of my mouth.
On the menu it also stated "seasonal vegetables" and as you can see in my photo, apparently the only seasonal vegetable showing happened to be some bok choy. Seriously WTF!??! no broccoli? no beans? no carrots? someone can't be telling me that the only thing in season is bok choy, (probably the cheapest crap on the market at the time)... don't worry, i found this hilarious, of the crappy kind.

We had a choice of desserts, and of course I decided on the mango crepe thing (sorry can't remember the exact name of the dessert), and to it's credit, it was very tasty. However, I've had something similar (at a yum cha place) where they did something similar and they added whipped cream inside the crepe and mango (it was far more delish). I guess, if I hadn't been spoilt and eaten something like that, the dessert served on the day would have been given the two thumbs up.
So in many ways, if you're not like me, and you happen to NOT like whipped cream in anything, this is for you.






 

My thoughts:

I've been to Flower drum on several occasions before, all of which had been several years ago. Some of the things don't change, for example the impeccable service and the high price tag for every single dish.

The service which everybody always comments on is to some degree creepy, borderline stealth/ninja like. What the heck am I talking about? This is perhaps the only place I know where the waiters are already pouring tea into your cups just as it's half full. The moment you move to stand up to go to the toilet, someone's already there to push your chair out, and fold your napkin.

Which basically means it can be unnerving knowing that someones staring at you to watch your every move.

The one thing I won't complain is that the staff can actually speak English, not broken English, or Foblish (you know when an asian puts a twang to english and at times, you're not sure if they're speaking english or their own language but it sounds like something that you think you understand, and you nod your head politely because you don't want to embarass them or yourself).

Don't get me wrong, other Asian restaurants should look at Flowerdrum and use it as an example, especially to those who have a lot of Western customers, you need to have FLUENT and comprehendable staff  and are FRIENDLY. But I guess, when restaurants only want to pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys working.

My biggest disappointment had to be the steak, mainly due to the fact that many years ago, I had cantonese steak at Flower Drum, and I have to say, it has to be the best cantonese steak I've had in Melbourne (that one experience made me order cantonese steak at every chinese restaurant i knew). Needless to say, I was disappointed with every cantonese steak I ordered after that which meant that I would put Flower Drum in a revered status of "awesomeness", but like most things, it's only a distant memory, and when you go back and be as crushed as you were with this experience you start to question "perhaps it wasn't as awesome as it was"

Another thing that puts me off Flower Drum is the high cut price charged for the food, sure, some of it's tasty, some of it's OMG, but for what you pay for at Flower Drum, you could probably eat out at a simple chinese restaurant for the same amount of money spent for an entire week (probably including lunch and dinner).

So I guess the people who are going to frequent such an establishment would be people who have bucket loads of money (literally they shit out money when they go to the toilet), those who want to be served properly at when at a chinese restaurant (i mean how often are we subjected to bad service?) or want an experience of a different kind.

Speaking of toilets, the biggest let down for flowerdrum has to be the toilets, I'm quite sure what the male toilets were like, but the female toilets were a tad WTF? especially for a place that's a hatted restaurant, (these days a lot of restaurants ensure that the toilets are nice, clean and uncluttered), Flowerdrum's experience is a total mess. The female toilet seems to be the dumping ground of the restaurant's unwanted tables and chairs, it's like going to a different world altogether, you've got a beautiful restaurant front, lovely staff, and then you got the toilet. It's almost like going to one of those Chinese restaurants in the 'burbs and having to go down some dark alleyway to go to an outside toilet that reeks of dead meat. Thankfully the toilet at Flowerdrum isn't as bad as that, but i guess if they had that option, it would go that way. Don't get me wrong, the toilet wasn't dirty or unhygenic, it was just unsightly with all the furniture being dumped there.

Overall, the food wasn't spectacular, and for $99 I paid, I felt ripped off. I expected more, I expected my socks to be spinning off my feet or something like that, it didn't.

Would I go back to FlowerDrum? Well, lets put it this way, not unless someone else was happy to foot the bill because my bank account says NO to FlowerDrum.