The life, times and recipes of a remarkable restaurant.
Best-selling author Iain Hewitson shares 130 recipes from his iconic restaurant, Tolarno, in this beautifully illustrated cookbook.
'Tolarno Bistro' celebrates the extraordinary and colourful history of this iconic restaurant, both culinary and otherwise. Started in the 1960s by Georges and Mirka Mora, taken over by Leon Massoni in the 1970s (where it was the training ground for the likes of Guy Grossi), then rescued from ruin by Iain Hewitson seventeen years ago, this is no conventional tale. Celebrities and ratbags, the gifted and the eccentric have passed through both the dining room and kitchen of Tolarno.
As French bistro food enjoys a resurgence in popularity, Iain Hewitson says its popularity never waned down St Kilda way - where else could you go for moules mariniere in 1962, and find the same dish forty years later, in the same dining room, with the same enchanting figures beaming down on you from the walls?
When Tolarno Bistro closed its doors at the end of May 2006, an amazing era ended. This cookbook is more than a memento - it's a record of what probably happened, and who might have been there, complete with what would have been cooked, adapted for contemporary times. With 130 recipes, quirky memorabilia, decorated menus, and the proprietors' personal snap shots, something of Tolarno will now live on. And the recipe for the famous Tolarno burger is on page 196.
