Borsch, Vodka & Tears

173 Chapel Street
Windsor
3181 Victoria

Just south of the junction with High Street Borsch, Vodka and Tears treads the line between restaurant, cafe and bar. When we visited on a Friday evening around 8 it was busy and pretty noisy. Inside it has a fairly European vibe which suits the Polish and Russian theme and menu.

Although we were near the front window, it was pretty dark, which meant the mobile snaps didn't turn out that well. I selected a couple of traditional eastern European dishes, the first being the vegetarian Polish borsch, a clear beetroot broth made using a vegetable stock, and was a lot thinner and less satisfying than the Russian variation I have tried before. 

The soup was served with a pancake, rocket salad and sour cream

My other choice was pierogi the traditional polish dumplings which were stuffed with a porcini mushroom and sauerkraut and coated with a breadcrumbs. These were fine but didn't quite live up to home made versions I've tried before!

I also got to try kopytka, the panfried polish gnocchi with a wild mushroom ragout and finished with truffle oil, possibly the best of the dishes I tasted. The service was reasonable given the venue style and the number of people in. The bill came to around $80 for two with a few drinks.

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Hoo Haa

1/105 Chapel Street
Windsor
VIC 3181

We were at Hoo Haa for an event, it's up some stairs from the street and the unimposing entrance could be easy to miss.

Once you are up on the first floor it opens into quite a large space, with some dining booths running down the left hand side, a large island bar in the middle of the space, a casual seating area towards the street and a small open area at the back. It straddles the restaurant/bar line and has a pretty stylish fit out.

I tried slices from a few different pizzas, including the tomato, fior di latte and basil, the prosciutto, tomato mozzarella and rocket, the bugmeat, zucchini and coriander, the chorizo and roast peppers smoked scamorza and the mushroom, taleggio, green olives and sage. They were consistently well put together with great thin bases. They weren't huge but they were a size that would normally satisfy me.

We also sampled the leek and gorgonzola arancini, the stand out crab croquettes with aioli, Deano’s sausage rolls and the roast beef and mustard rolls, the shots were taken the following day from a doggy bag we took home, so perhaps not looking quite as good as when served, but in better light!

I wouldn't have thought of eating at Hoo Haa before, but would go back again if we were in the area and fancied some Italian food.





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Red Door

1 McIlwrick St
Windsor, 3181

Red Door is down a laneway off Chapel St in Windsor. It doubles as an antiques shop, and it is certainly a change from some of our usual Footscray eateries! We visited on a Saturday lunchtime, there were 3 or 4 other groups of diners there.

We ordered a few dishes, the northern Chinese vegetable jiao-zi, which were very tasty and quickly demolished. When these arrived we eventually managed to explain we would like the rest of our dishes fairly quickly, we had to be somewhere later that afternoon.

The rest of dishes arrived pretty quickly. The Prawn and Crab dumplings were gorgeous brightly coloured as the wrapping was almost see-through and big chunks of prawn inside! The chicken curry buns were good and suitably filling! The beef dumplings good too.

We didn't linger, but the vibe was very relaxed. The service was fine. It all came to just over $30. It would be good to go back in less off a rush!

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