The Vine

It isn't just opposable thumbs and using cutlery that mark us as the world's dominant species. We also have big brains. This means we've come up with euphemisms to hide the fact that some of us are a trifle guilty, or more accurately, three trifles guilty, of greed and gluttony. The word gourmand gives these traits a nobler air.

Quite frankly I abhor the word. It has the stale perfumed Francophile veneer of the dilettante. Far preferable the good old Aussie description of being good on the fang or, even better, the honesty of the Middle English word trencherman. This has something of the ditch-digger's appetite about it, a heartiness that comes from a trencher being the stale bread plate your meal would be served on in the days before plates. Gourmands dine; trenchermen eat - even to the point of devouring the flatware.

The Vine Hotel could be the clubhouse for Melbourne's trenchermen (and women). This is an old-fashioned pub dining room serving comfort-food classics.

It's all exposed wood joists and rough, raw walls of sandblasted brick and planks. It feels a bit like a grand homestead's tool shed - with carpet. No wonder so many old-school blokes feel comfortable here.

You will rest on simple, padded, black vinyl chairs and eat at sturdy varnished timber tables, which is a good thing, because the hearty tucker here is about as far removed from the modern fashion for dinky doll-house dishes as you can get. Lamb shanks, fried calamari rings with or without chilli, chicken parmas made from beaten breast, or from boned Marylands if you prefer brown meat, is the fare here. Specials may include steak-and-kidney pie, homemade rissoles or corned beef with sauerkraut and mustard. Large dollops of slightly lumpy mash, that tastes of real potato rather than just butter, seem to accompany everything bar the pasta and the stuff with chips.

The Vine specialties are skinless cevapcici sausages, meaty, stumpy fingers of beautifully cooked ground beef and King Island beef. Rib eyes, and 380 or 550-gram porterhouses, account for half the meals sold here. To drink, most go for beers or reds that range from $28 to the 2001 Hollick's Ravenswood at $75.

The sauces - such as the mushroom - can be a little too thick and three-dimensional for my liking so stray from the blokey path and ask for them to put yours on the side. This is especially important with the excellent mound of lamb's fry with smoky bacon and sweet stewed onions. It comes exactly as ordered, rosy pink not dishwater grey, but it's almost lost under a blanket of gravy.

Desserts are even bigger, such as the giant slab of sticky date pudding, or a pleasantly tart, berry-filled crepe. Each arrives with a small bucket of commercial vanilla ice-cream.

One word of advice. Don't mistake the Vine Hotel in Collingwood for Richmond's Vine Hotel - that's more for sportsmen than trenchermen.