Landing in Melbourne: Best Fish and Chips

Ahh, so I finally landed in Melbourne. The city that everyone loves and wants to stay on forever. The city of food, of beauty, of culture. The core of Australia.

melbourne


Or so I heard.


After having heard all the fuss about Melbourne for so long from various friends and readers telling me how amazing Melbourne was, I was expecting myself to be looking forward to the day I landed in the city. However, I found myself dreading one thing when I took the flight there in August 2008.

The cold.

Oh yes, the deadly cold of the winter. Remember when I said I was already freezing my ass off in Gold Coast when I first landed in OZ, well, I realized one cold hard truth about my journey as I proceeded to hop from one city to another...

IT GETS COLDER AS I MOVE SOUTH.

findlers street station melbourne


Darn.


Lachy was nice enough to pick me up from the airport with his uber hot sexy girlfriend and brother-in-law? in his cool jeep. So figuring out transportation in Melbourne was least of my concern when I stepped out of the airport.

The next day, I arranged to meet up with my first Melbourne reader, Henry,

me and henry


at Melbourne Central under the big pocket clock?

melbourne central coop's shot tower


This is the Coop's Shot Tower in Melbourne Central.

coop's shot tower


Beautiful indoor infrastructure, ain't it?

Melbourne Central can be a bit confusing though. It's like a historical landmark, a shopping center and a train station all in one.

indoor or outdoor


Is in indoor or outdoor?


It's an outdoor indoor.

melbourne clock tower indoor


Get it? Outdoor trapped indoor. Haha... Ha...ha... ah.. nevermind.


Anyway, I have heard more than a decent number of times that Australia is where you can find the best Fish and Chips in the world, a fact that I wouldn't think twice to believe. Seeing that England was where Fish and Chips originated from, and that Australians were practically English anyway when they first "escaped" to the land down under; plus the fact that Fish and Chips in England really sucked big time, oily blunt tasteless stuff of vinegar and salt...

fish and chips arrival


It could just very possible that the Australians have taken the recipe and improved it over the decades?



I decided to scout it out. After catching up with Damon (another reader) and Henry at Melbourne Central, we drove out in Damon's car to St Kilda (said to have all the best seafood) for the best fish and chips in town.

Unfortunately the restaurant we wanted to go was closed that day so instead we stopped by a pub in St Kilda Beach for dinner.

st kilda menu


main menu


Damon has his steak while Henry ate his chicken.

steak


chicken


I of course went for my fish and chips. :D

my very big fish and chip


Which was holy crap the biggest fish and chips I've ever seen in my life.

huge fish and chip


Which was wrong because soon I realised in the following few weeks that that's the decent portion any decent restaurant in Australia would serve you.

big fish and chip


My say?

It was good, but it wasn't so good that one has to go around to shout about. Still, it was pretty good. I love the portion. Even though I forgot the name of the pub, but according to Damon, any pub in St Kilda served pretty good fish and chips anyway.

It's like saying cendol in any shop in Melaka is nice anyway. -.-


Not satisfied, Henry and I went out early in the morning the following day (11am was early for me) to continue our tour around Melbourne and the best Fish and Chips in Melbourne.

me being silly at statue


We went to the Victoria Market but it was closed. :(

It's ok, since I'm going back there soon this year. Oh yea~

henry being silly


And the weather was freaking cold!!!!

me in melbourne


I looked like a freaking Eskimo here.


The thing about Melbourne was that it's filled with trams.

tram lines in melbourne
Notice the tram lines in the sky all over the town.


Public transportation here can be classified into trains, and trams.

trams excepted sign


Trams are so important and plentiful, priority must be given to the vehicles at any one time.

pedestrian give way to tram sign


Not like I care anyway. :op



If you know how to ride, some trams are free in town from certain destination to destination, wait, or was that only in Adelaide?

mirror in tram


Oh well, that's the great thing about having a guide who can bring you around.

camwhore in tram


Finally, we arrived at the beautiful St Kilda Beach.

me at st kilda beach


Honestly, I thought Gold Coast had better sea view than this.

We proceeded to Beachcomber, highly recommended by Damon's friend, a rather exclusive looking cafe by St Kilda beach.

beachcomber


me at beachcomber


henry


Where we ordered the Catch of the Day straight from the menu. (Dayum, AUD26 for fish and chip? that's expensive!)

catch of the day menu


reading menu


Which came with a complimentary champagne.

champagne


And a glass of sweet dessert wine which was my favourite.

dessert wine


Sevenhill Botrytis Semillon, oh my god I love you.

drinking botrytis semillon


drinking dessert wine


and some starter.

oysters


:D


As for the fish and chips. (read my food blog if you want to see more photos)

All I could say is....

Let the picture tells it all.

fish fillet meat



I'm definitely going back.

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16 kissed Nicole

  1. Nice food snap shots. I understand outdoor in indoor. There's something similar here in Belfast. And normally we expect indoor to be warm and fuzzy but this indoor is like freezing cold even though it has a roof or whatever they call it.

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  2. Lol...the comment on the nice pictures was suppose to be on this post...anyways...really good display of photography skills..very neat indeed.Lol.(;

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  3. Unfortunately, one always has to know where to go for good fish and chips. Sorry you had some bad experiences in England!

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  4. I am indonesian living in UK. And I have to agree with you nic, the fish and chips here in UK normally quite tasteless, which explain why there is no British cuisine!
    However, if you try fish and chips or cornish pasty in Cornwall, south UK, that's definetely different :-) in a good sense I mean.

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  5. Hey pretty pretty!

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  6. Foods look yummm! The champagne..*droool*....

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  7. Nope...The best fish and chip is the one in Hull!

    You remember the shop along Cottingham Road? 4 pounds for a huge ass fish with damn a lot of fries?

    Add viniger and chip spice....hhhmmmmm.....makes me wanna go back to Hull...

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  8. Unfortunately August is our coldest month and often not much fun but it looks like you managed to get out and about and enjoy some of our city. Just as well yo are not here at the moment. last week it hit 45 degrees and this week is only slightly cooler. Jamie M.A.

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  9. Well, the strength of the flavour depends partly on the fish. The UK traditionally uses delicately flavoured fish (cod, haddock) in fish and chips; anything with too strong a 'fishy flavour' tastes wrong.

    Indeed, the point of the batter is to protect the fish while it's being cooked quickly and evenly, so you don't lose the delicate flavour and you don't need to annihilate it with seasonings.

    But I guess at the end of the day you either like it or you don't. ;-)

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  10. I bet i sound like a broken record, telling u, ur pictures are fantastic over and over again, but oh my god, either u just made Melbourne look better than it really is or i can start regretting that i never really bothering to take in the view from where u took your pictures!

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  11. Hi! Just found your blog. LOVE your travel posts. Keep em coming!!

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  12. Melbourne? I wanna go !!

    Love your jacket :)

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  13. Melbourne is so freezing cold because it is actually a port (Port Philip) where there is also plenty of rain if compared to other Australian cities.

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  14. St. Kilda is look extremely beauty when there's sunset and near by there's a cafe named La Roche is good too. ( I've stayed in Melbourne for a year)

    If you like scenery and good food like fish and chips there, you should try going to the island there, Tasmania. Great place too and obviously much colder there.

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  15. Never-ever-ever cut thy hair. It's gorgeous. You're probably wondering "who the heck is this" but yea...just one of ur readers.

    Toodles!

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  16. The first restaurant you went to in St. Kilda call Greasy Joe's. I just came back from Melbourne 2 hrs ago and we went there for dinner too, had fish n chips too, but really nothing to shout about, just very ordinary. I believe Perth has got better fish n chips, maybe u shud come to Perth!

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