13 April 2012
DOMINION RD ADVENTURES
I took my mother for a drive yesterday along Dominion Rd. We lived in Valley Rd when I was young, so it was a familiar stamping ground; somewhere where we went to the doctor, bought our shoes and conversed with our neighbours. How it has changed!
It's a total miscellany of businesses and there are some stunning shops and restaurants. There's also what seems like hundreds of tiny ethnic eating places and I would love to have recommendations for many of them. My mum was quite put out that her favourite vege shop had gone, to be replaced by a Chinese cafe.
La Voie Francaise at 875 Dom Rd is a French bakery not-to-be-missed! The young Japanese baker, whose name is Tetsuya, creates amazing bread and feather light pastries - the best artisan products I have seen or tasted since I was in Paris. Those are his breads in the photo, and they disappeared in about five minutes when I got them home.(I was the only one there!)
Next door at 873 is Serandip, a stunning treasure trove of Sri Lankan food products that brought back memories of last year's trip. I bought red rice, mango chutney and my favourite herbal remedy as an insurance against the cooler weather. It's posibly the cleanest, best organised Asian store around.
And then there are the restaurants. Michael Meredith's sensational place is at 365 Dom Rd. He stole the show at the recent South Pacific food and wine festival in Fiji with his freestyling with green coconut and I would love to see him do a totally Pacific-inspired degustation menu there.
At 215 Dom Rd is the wonderful Jeremy Schmid's Two Fifteen bistro. He's the master of sausage making and cured meats and I have had a sneaky peek at his forthcoming book. It echoes all the things I think about his food; deliciously approachable, unfussy and with huge emphasis on flavour. My mother wants to go there for her 89th birthday next month and it will be perfect.
And just off the road on the corner of Dominion Rd and Walters Ave at the Valley Rd intersection is Serafin. How classy is this? A tiny gem where Serafin Bueno Sanz himself produces a range of tapas that start with little toppings on bread and work their way through to meaty treats. It's a real touch of Spain in the neighbourhood and a real treasure.