Archives for June 2013

Off the Map – Octopus Resort, Waya Island, Yasawa Chain, Fiji

June 17, 2013 by Andrew Christie 3 Comments

No news from King Street this week. But instead we bring you the first Off the Map report from Feej. Typed on the ipad, on the veranda looking out through the palm trees, past the Stropolina reading on the sun lounge, over the white sand and the lazy flopping waves to the smattering of snorkellers cruising up and down the coral reef about 50m off the beach. Hard to take.
We are here at Octopus Resort for a family holiday to celebrate the memory of the Stropmother who is now gone but whose memory lives on in a plethora of family legends, jokes, sayings and children’s songs. Having booked the trip on the interweb we were pleasantly surprised as we stepped out of our long boat, to find that it is even better than the photos. We are staying in a kind of 3 bedroom villa right on the beach. It is really 3 separate rooms connected by a long veranda. Perfect for the Pancetta to run up and down on her stiff stumpy legs. She steadfastly refuses to say bula, despite a hell of a lot of prompting from family and the locals.
The dining room here has a sand floor which feels nice on your bare feet but takes a little getting used to, as your chair sinks into the ground while you are settling yourself in front of the food. The food is charged at a fixed rate and there is a choice for breakfast and lunch, but dinner is a set menu. Which is fine by me, it is a relief not to have to make any decisions. Last night was a kind of seafood feast with prawns, fish with coconut 2 ways, ceviche, calamari, potato gratin, rainforest greens (I know, but it tasted fantastic) and a lobster bisque. We are busily exploring the drinks list too. Favourites so far are Fiji Premium on the beer front, and the local rum with coke (what coke should taste like according to Strop).
We are here all week so the investigations will continue, in between cooking lessons, fishing trips, manta ray viewing, and just sitting on the veranda watching all the boats that are constantly coming and going, ferrying people and things around the island.
So far Octopus is proving to be pretty damn good.

Number 145 – The Marly – Let the burger wars begin

June 9, 2013 by Andrew Christie 7 Comments

Hooray. First pub, first burger. But first I have to wait for Strop to return to civilisation from the outlands of Parramatta where she is working late, finishing things off before going on holidays. So I down a Dogbolter or two, read my Kindly book (Wool – it might be overrated but I am only halfway through), go for a walk, look at the young people, have another Dogbolter…

When Strop arrives she is in a very good mood due to being on hols and going to Fiji in a few days time. I have managed to appropriate a table in the crowded Garden Bar, conveniently close to the loos. The Marly is a Newtown institution, which is not necessarily a good thing in my experience. It has recently had a bit of a makeover though, and the vortex of the redecorating whirlwind seems to have settled on the back bar which has become quite girly and gardeny. There are friezes and murals on the general theme of plants, lots of exposed brick, and even internal window boxes with plastic lavender (I wonder how they dust those).

It’s all a bit gorgeous really. Still, the vibe is lively and the staff are very efficient and friendly. As they all have beards, tatts and oversized earings, the only way to tell them from the punters is by the tea towels they all wear, hanging jauntily from their waists.

Rule Number 6 says burgers, so that’s what we’re having. At first I like the look of the Newtown Cheeseburger – well it’s just the name really, I’m a sucker for a good name – until I read the fine print and realise it is a No-Meat option. No thanks, I’ve been waiting a long time for this burger opportunity and the presence of meat is non-negotiable. So the order at the bar is two Beefburgers With The Lot, another Dogbolter for my good self, and a glass of Rioja for the missus. While at the bar I notice that the top shelf is brimming with single malts and decide to forego dessert in favour of a Talisker later on.

There are pot plants in macrame holders hanging over the bar. I’m glad to see macrame is making a comeback with the hipsters, but it is an odd feeling when the trappings of your formative years become the next generations ironic plaything. Luckily the burgers arrive before I get too depressed by this thought.

Old school burgers - well apart from the girly red basket — Old school burgers – well apart from the girly red basket

The burgers come in little red baskets with chips on the side and they are excellent. Nothing ironic here, just a reverential tribute to the old-school definition of The Lot: egg, bacon AND pineapple. There may have been cheese in there too but I didn’t pause long enough to be sure. And the burgers are not too large in the diameter dimension. They are a traditional burger size, although piled high enough with fillings to warrant spearing with a bamboo reinforcing spike.

Strop decides she would like a bit of mayonnaise to go with the chips. The staff are apologetic, “Sorry we only have aioli.”

“Even better,” says Strop.

The only negative we find is that the buns are a little on the sweet side. This doesn’t worry me but Strop likes to make constructive criticisms. To my mind, the role of the bun in a burger is similar to a napkin, it is only there to keep your fingers clean. All you want to notice about the bun is the toasty inner surface, nicely softened by barbecue sauce and fat.

We finish off the evening with a Lagavulin and a Talisker before stumbling home to fall asleep in front of the television. The Marly has set a high pub-burger standard. I wonder how the others will compare.

Number 135 – Mad Pizza e Bar – A movie and a pizza on a wintery night

June 8, 2013 by Andrew Christie 5 Comments

It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon, so we’re off to see The Great Gatsby, along with everyone else. In our enthusiasm to get good seats we get to the Dendy very early and we’ve well and truly finished our crisps and beers by the time the movie starts. I wait till the lights go out before I put on my 3D glasses as I look so ridiculous with two pairs jammed on my face. I really don’t think the 3D-ness added much to the movie so basically I looked stupid for 2 hours for nothing.

After the movie we wandered along King Street towards Number 135. Our considered judgement on the film was: good but not great – so let’s go get some pizza.

Mad Pizza e Bar (I know, the name annoys me too) is our last venue before we get to cross Missenden Road. It will complete the first section of the quest, but as we approach, the doors are shut. Oh no, not another one closed, we think at first, but on closer inspection it turns out that all is well, the lights are on and the doors are only closed because of the wintry gale whipping down the street. Inside it is warm and welcoming. On most nights when we have walked past, Mad Pizza e Bar has been wide open, packed and pumping, but tonight it is relatively quiet, with a small early evening crowd that includes a number of families with young children.

The front of house is manned by a friendly chap with a beard and a nice line in banter. He points us to a table, explains the menu, and tells us to order at the bar. So we do, an olive and chorizo antipasti to start, and a pizza – half and half Amalfi (prawns) and Pepperoni – and a salad with rocket, pear and walnuts, all washed down with a bottle of Montepulciano.

The antipasti and the wine arrive quickly and are welcomed with enthusiasm. The antipasti comes in a little cast-iron frying pan and is very good. The wine slips down easily, and the venue starts to fill up. While we are waiting for our pizza the early crowd with children depart and are replaced by boisterous young people – it is possible that they are students. Then the DJ arrives and moves into a kind of tiled altar at the back of the bar where he can look out across us all while he is dishing up the beats. The place gets so crowded that extra staff are called in (it is just possible that they are students too), and the back room is opened up. Even so there are a lot of people sitting at the bar waiting for tables. This place is going off and I am inordinately entertained when the big table of young Asian women across from us all pull out their phones at once to photograph their pizzas. Sometimes I love Sydney.

The music is loud but not intrusive and Strop is enjoying the groove so much that she decides to go up and ask the deej what type of music it is, kind of like we are in a foreign country. This unexpected old-person move flummoxes the deej who at first tries to ignore her, but as you probably know, Strop is hard to ignore. Eventually the deej lifts his head from his computer long enough to explain that “It’s funk.”

Funk? Really? Are you sure? I mean it’s nice enough in it’s own jazzy groove way, but hell, it ain’t no James Brown.

When the pizza arrives, the crust is kind of miraculously thin, as if some kind of pizza dough magic is going on in the kitchen. However they do it, the results are highly edible, crisp and thin, with tonnes of flavour. The salad is very good too. We might be into triple-yum territory here.

We decide to go the cocktail route for dessert again. My No. 69 is overly sweet, leaving Strop’s Kinky Stallion to gallop away with the winner’s ribbon. Even so the cocktails aren’t up to the standard that we had been enjoying at Jester Seeds until recently, but then as Strop points out, these guys are still in business.

It has been a very good evening, spoilt only by the weather which decides to chuck it down again just as we leave.

Next up we cross Missenden Road to the Marlborough Hotel – our first pub and consequently our first burger. Can’t wait.

131 Rice Paper – Lost Speedos On The Waterslides of Life

June 1, 2013 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

We are simultaneously closing in on Missenden Road and a holiday in Fiji. I know which one I am looking forward to most.

Tonight it is just the two of us again and we have a weird role-reversal start to the evening. I find Strop in the front bar of the Marly, surrounded by noisy Waratah’s fans watching the big screens, looking ever so slightly pissed off as she finishes her beer. She can’t wait to get out of the pub so it looks like I’m missing out on my weekly instalment of Dogbolter and rugby. “Why didn’t you go out into the back, there’s a new girly, gardeny, bistro bar?” I ask as we cross Missenden Road. “I didn’t know it was there,” is the answer. It is going to be that kind of night, I mean who goes to a pub and doesn’t check out the back bar? Apart from Strop, obviously.

Rice Paper is mostly empty when we arrive, but fills up while we are there. It is only a couple of years old and the room is very modern and stylish in a Freedom Furniture kind of way, but the decor is somewhat let down by the detailing – our menus are held together by cable ties. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the adaptive powers of the cable tie. I once built an air raid shelter for our dog out of electrical conduit and cable ties. No, it’s just the context, you wouldn’t bat and eyelid if cable ties made an appearance at Thai La-Ong but here they let the side down a bit. The service is attentive though, so we quickly order before I dash across the road to get a bottle of plonk.

The unwritten law of nominal determinism means that we have to have rice paper rolls – there are four varieties on offer – 3 seasonal types and 1 geographic. We opt for the geographic option as it is named after Nha Trang, a town we have actually been to on the coast of Vietnam. We stayed there in a Stalinist version of a seaside resort. It was where I ripped the arse out of my Speedo’s accompanying the young Stropolina down a water slide so old that the terrazzo surface at the bottom of the slide had been eroded to an exposed-aggregate finish by the chemical laden water. The top was perfectly smooth allowing me to accelerate in the expected manner, but at the bottom I kept going into the pool while most of my costume stayed hooked up on the little bits of stone embedded in the slide. So of course I have fond memories of Nha Trang.

For mains we order Vietnamese Chicken Lemongrass Chilli from the Only-@-Rice-Paper part of the menu and some stir fried seasonal veges and steamed rice from the Same-As-Everywhere-Else part. Disappointingly the Vietnamese restaurant version of number 37,Rau mung, is a seasonal vegetable, just not this season.

When I get back with the Pinot Gris the entrées have just arrived. Strop and I chat about work frustrations while we attack the food, coming to the conclusion that if work was fun they wouldn’t have to pay you to do it. The Nha Trang rolls come with tasty little squares of charred meat balanced on top and a nice chilli and nut sauce. These are quickly disposed of and replaced by the mains. The chicken is nice enough but the vegetables are coated in an oyster sauce which is entirely unnecessary. Oh well.

“It wasn’t that good was it?” says Strop as we leave, running for a bus to take us to Enmore Road and the promise of an award winning gelato joint. This turns out to be the best part of the evening, but as it was not on King Street I can’t tell you about it.

Next it is Mad Pizza e Bar, which we have mixed feelings about. It recently replaced Slice and Ice which was our preferred gelato dispensary until it fell foul of The Churn. But we will try to approach our plates with open minds and hearts.

130 Atom Thai – Really strange name, really nice food

June 1, 2013 by Andrew Christie 1 Comment

Strop has been looking forward to this place for ages. “When we get to Atom, there are a whole lot of my work friends who want to come. It’s supposed to be really good.” Well obviously this kind of hype, not to mention the promise of a huge party of people I don’t know, freaked me out. As it turned out though the untimely demise of Jester Seeds threw out all the scheduling and brought Atom forward a week, so in the end only the four of us could make it: our good selves, and the delightful Bev from Liverpool (the original and the best, where the Beatles come from) and John from Telegraph Point (a place with one of the best names ever – it should have a song written about it – I’m thinking a fusion of T.Rex’s classic, Telegram Sam and Wichita Lineman – bound to be a hit).

Before attending the restaurant I manage to fit in a glass of my new favourite beer, Dogbolter, and stop off at the bottle shop where my eyes are grabbed by a label with a trout fly on it and I hand over the cash without further consideration. This turns out to be not-a-great-move on my part. Oh well. Trout flies, they work on trout and me apparently.

Atom is a little bit posh compared to most of the Thai places we’ve been to so far. While pouring your wine the waiters put their non-functional hand behind their backs, holding the bottle by the base, of course. They also place the (paper) napkin in your lap for you, just like the fancy places. There are lots of staff and they are very friendly and good at their jobs. Everything goes smoothly. As Bev and John are Atom aficionados – it is their favourite local Thai – Strop and I promise to relinquish all responsibility and leave the ordering to them – except for number 37.

Being a semi-posh place the menu is not numbered of course. Bev leaps at the chance to do the required counting, soon determining that the 37^th dish is Stir Fried Eggplant with Beef. There is a pattern emerging here: number 37 seems to spend a lot of time in the wok section of the menus. Bev asks if she should have taken into account the specials board in her counting. Strop and I look at her in wonder – aren’t the rules stupid and arbitrary enough already without slathering on another layer of complexity? “No that’s fine,” we say, “No need to count again.”

John loading up on Luv-a-duck before attempting the Barramundi Salad

To go with the eggplant and beef, Bev and John order Miang Goong (prawns and betel leaf) as an entrée, Luv-a-duck Panang Curry (I know, I said I’d let them decide but when I saw the name I had to insist) and their favourite Barramundi Salad.

The conversation wanders all over the place as we work though the dodgy trout fly wine and John’s far more sophisticated offering. I learn that VW Golf’s sumps have an aversion to cattle grids, for instance. Did you know that? And also that a little bit of epoxy applied by a trout farmer can save you a whole new German motor. I also learn that Liverpudlian families are very close. Very, very close. Bev and John took Bev’s extended family on their honeymoon with them. John is undoubtedly in line for some kind of honour come the next Australia Day list, for services to family harmony. While the rest of us are chatting away my dear wife is quietly falling in love with one of the waiters. She can’t taker her eyes off the one with the dimples and his hair pulled up into a bun. “Isn’t he sweet?” she asks no-one in particular. I personally can’t see the attraction but Strop is definitely smitten. She is still talking about the waiter with the dimples a week later.

The food is excellent with the possible exception of number 37 which pales in comparison with the other dishes. The Mian Goong are a perfect start. I could have just kept eating those little bite size taste bombs all night. The duck curry is smooth, mild, full of flavour and the unanimous choice for winner. Close runner up is the barramundi. It has been battered and fried then reassembled into a fishy shape and covered with a shredded apple, onion, mint and cashew nut salad. Double yum.

One of us isn't amused — One of us isn’t amused

I think we have a new candidate for the favourites list here. There are lots of other dishes on the menu that I would like to try but unfortunately that sort of indulgence will have to wait until we have eaten at every mediocre joint on the strip – for that is the nature of the quest.

Next we cross the road yet again to Rice Paper.