Due to my birthday month, I was lucky enough to visit a few good or top restaurants in Melbourne. Encountered a couple of surprises along the way, but to spoil the plot a bit, not everything was positive or negative! My ratings for the following places I visited: Vue De Monde - 18.50/20. Honestly creative and an unforgettable experience. Everything from food to wine to service was beyond this world and nowhere else in Melbourne will go to such extent with the food preparation. Frozen foie gras was amazing. Only gripe - desserts are still overly sugary and probably not suitable for my palate. Jacques Reymond - 17/20. More traditional French than it used to be half Japanese! The food philosophy backbone is as sound as ever, but the honest letdown is the taste of the food. The venison was too bloody in smell and taste, the eye fillet almost neutral in taste. Suckling pig was great yet hardly worth a re-visit. Biggest disappointment is the degustation wine course - all run of the mill varieties from local Aust although they were of good taste, but not high quality. Desserts were overly ordinary in execution but it was subtle in taste and not as sugary as VDM, petit fours were as usual 'awesome', coffee was bloody fanstastic (one of the best I've had in Melbourne). Attica - 17.5/20. Surprisingly, very affordable, and with better wine matching than Jacques Reymond's. The food ingredients is nothing extraordinary but the execution of the dishes and the effort put into making it a true degustation experience, is something that many strive for but fail miserably. Attica is definitely one of the successful ones in this respect. Food was slightly more tastier than Jacque's with obvious background preparations, dessert is most definitely better as well. Worth a re-visit when they change the menu. Hajime Tempura - 13/20. Surprisingly, very ordinary. Having made tempura for myself only 'once' and recently, so I can gauge myself to them and having a relative expectation, I was utterly disappointed that a dedicated tempura shop has a dull and boring menu and not that great a tempura. Having been to a few famous Tempura houses in Tokyo and Osaka, I must say Hajime is not even near the best of the rest, unfortunately. Mind you, they are very special with their use and combination of ingredients, but the palate doesn't lie, the food taste was below ordinary. Seamstress - 14/20. A nice little chinese bar and restaurant that has received the attention of almost everyone tuned in to the bar scene in Melb. Food is great for some dishes but the ubiquitous use of the same spices and sauces has leveraged down its hidden potential to be even better. A new start up so let's give it a bit more time to develop. All in all, Hajime is kind of disappointing and quite frankly I'd rather spend the money on the old fish and chips store on Burke Rd in Camberwell. Why the heck did that close ? Well surely the rental was expensive on that strip but it was the wrong location from the outset anyhow without much pedestrian traffic. Even Harry Ramsden with their good old plaice and haddock and a traditional yorkshire pudding proved to be a bigger enjoyment than 'H'. Not one I would revisit again unfortunately. Not a case of expectation being too high, but a case of having tried better elsewhere. | 