Bottega

Date: 22/11/2013. Restaurant: Bottega. Address: 74 Bourke Street Melbourne CBD. 

How do you impress your new girlfriend for her birthday? Well, you can start by taking her to the best pasta place in town. Initially, this appeared to be a relatively easy task but I quickly changed my mind after tolling the internet for a whole hour. I wanted somewhere that's easy to get to without too much effort after a few people drinks. After much debate, I settled with Bottega and manage to book a intimate table two days before the big event. 

Bottega is situated towards Parliment Station, in between a number of fine dinning rstuarents that Melbourne has to offer. From the outside, my first impression of Bottega is refined. It's decor was simplistic with French influences. All of the tables were well lit with candles but still offered enough privacy and a sense of mystery. 

In any good date, a good glass of wine was required. This was no exception. The wine list from Bottega gave us approximately 5-6 wines to choose from, which seemed relatively limited initally. This was before when I started counting the number of wine bottles behind the bar. I quickly realised Bottega does have an extensive range of wines, but they just have a limited space in their wine list. 

As usual, the always beautiful Dr B and I shared two main dishes together. The first dish was the house made ricotta gnocchi with feva beans, cherry tomato and stracciatella. The gnocchi was light and its flavour simple, clean and polished. The second dish was the house made strozzapreti with clams, mussels, prawns & calamari. The seafood was well cooked but the champion was the home made strozzapreti. Wonderful texture especially over a glass of red. 

However, despite this blog being a food blog, the main purpose of the thing is to spend quality time with Dr B. We would have been happy to be anywhere in each other's company but Bottega just made it that little more special. 

The Village Pizzeria

Date: 16/11/2013. Restaurant: The Village Pizzeria. Address 662-664 Old Calder Highway, Keilor VIC 3036. It's unusual for me to travel to the "west side", but I am always open to new experiences especially having the pleasure of Dr B's company. My first impression of the Village Pizzeria was that it is a small family owned restaurant. As soon as you walk into the restaurant, you see the boys hard at it on the left. Flicking pizza like no tomorrow. I was told by the trustworthy Dr B, that the restaurant was famous for their wood oven pizza.

The only problem was that we decided to try anything but pizza dishes. The first dish that we had was the calamari with garlic sauce with potatoes, carrot and broccoli on the side. The gnocchi was factory made but cooked well. The creamy sauce was comforting and perfect for a cold night. The Village Pizzeria was certain not stingy about the amount of calamaris. There were more than enough for both of us.

The second dish we had was the linguini in bacon basil pesto, virgin olive oil and chilli. Unfortunately, the linguini was factory made and slightly undercooked. The combination of using the basil pesto and fresh chilli was a mistake. The fresh chilli was just a little too sharp in flavour and did not work cohesively with the basil or the olive oil. I have no doubt that their pizza would be excellent but life is too short for not trying out new experiences. I am sure that there will be another post updating their specialty.