Melbourne!!!!!

Following the British & Irish Lions has been a tough few days what with jet lag, pre-match nerves, etc but we've done our best to try the best food in Melbourne and succeeded pretty well I'd say. We've also tried to taste as much booze Melbourne has to offer so will be providing a more detailed review of the restaurants when my head recovers but here's a taster....

More by luck than judgement we're staying in an apartment on Flinders Lane that seems to have more than its fair share of restaurants.

Chin Chin - what can we say? This place is awesome if you like thai, pan-asian fodder. You can't book so luckily we went in for a very late lunch/early dinner. By the time we left there was a queue down the street. A mixed selection for 5 of us partly recommended by the brilliant staff was spot on. Crying Tiger beef had grown men weeping with chilli induced exquisite pain and  the phad thai described as the best ever. Like the rest of Melbourne seemingly, you have to go here basically!

http://www.chinchinrestaurant.com.au/

Coda - we'd booked ahead for our match day lunch and having been a bit slow first thing in the morning we literally went from breakfast to lunch 5 doors down the street. It's a shabby chic basement kinda place with very enthusiastic staff. The asian fusion menu is brilliantly confusing allowing the waitress to make our minds up for us. The 'smaller' courses are priced for one portion so you end up ordering 5 of them, for 5 of us, and they're not cheap, and you need several smaller courses. Pretty tasty but perhaps not as good as the staff think it is. The local wine was great and the extra enthusiastic waiter gave us brilliant recommendations for pubs in Fitzroy that proved to be a much needed post-match booze up. Highly recommended but you perhaps need to go once to get know how to order the second time.

http://www.codarestaurant.com.au/

Terra Rossa - 5 doors up or so from Coda, this is where we had breakfast 
(literally as a starter before Coda). 

Good breakfast of slow baked beans with a side order of smoked trout 
with the boys having more conventional breakfasts. 

Post-match day lunch, having woken up at 2pm (a combination of jet lag 
and hangover), was a tricky shout but a couple of pizzas, ham hock and leek 
croquettes and a salami plate 
washed down with local Pinot Noir was a good stomach liner before going to the 
Aussie Rules Footy. 

The waitress had a rather noticeable English accent and went to the same 
school as me!! You can take the girl out of Newport Pagnell.......

http://www.terrarossarb.com.au/

European - a recommendation of a mate of a mate is as it says on the tin actually quite European despite us trying to eat and drink local. No Aussie wine, mostly French, but we can live with that when the food's so good.  Anjum Anand, the Indian tv cook was in there so we assume she knows what she's doing!

A few oysters each as a pre-starter starter because we're greedy followed by some good lamb ragu, duck 7 ways, and a good homage to St John in London's marrow bone with parsley were all excellent and some really imaginative desserts.

http://www.theeuropean.com.au/

We haven't reached Sydney yet and that's got some work to do to beat Melbs!