Archives for July 2013

159 – Istanbul On King – Where the carpet is on the tables and the socks are on the wall

July 22, 2013 by Andrew Christie 2 Comments

Ok, this is really a takeaway joint but it does have tables, so I couldn’t talk my way out of it – even if the tables are covered in carpet.

After the Kuleto’s FOOD fiasco we have come here in search of nourishment and there is plenty on offer: kebabs, pizza, burgers, pide, and of course, chips.

No one is ever going to miss this place, it is lit up like a power station. The colour scheme and the staff uniforms feature the same fluorescent orange that features on hi-vis work gear. They are playing to their audience, Istanbul On King is essentially an eatery for the working man (and woman, but mostly the man – at least while we were there). Security staff, tradies, taxi drivers – this place is for them. Well, the front is. Out the back is a little bit more exotic and eclectic. It turns out to be particularly targeted at Strop. Along with carpets on the tables and walls (but strangely not on the floor), Strop has discovered intricately knitted gloves and socks stuck to the walls. I didn’t know the Turks were into knitwear, this place has paid for itself already.

We order a mixed vegetarian plate for her and a lamb plate for him. Both plates are huge and the vegetarian option has lots of variety (cabbage roll, felafel, vine leaf roll, omelette, tabouli) for the same price as six smoked salmon and nori crackers at Kuleto’s. But the lamb wins, firstly because it is meat, and secondly because it is tasty, crunchy and generally yummier than the vego gear.

I think Sherpa Kitchen is next but I could be wrong.

157 Kuleto’s – Happy Hour-and-a-half and the FOOD fiasco

July 22, 2013 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

Another weekend, another cocktail bar, such is the life of the King Street Questers. We hadn’t included Kuleto’s in our calculations until last weekend, when as we poured ourselves out of Corridor, we noticed a photocopied piece of paper in the window of Kuleto’s that was headlined FOOD. So here we are on Friday night at the start of Happy Hour-and-a-Half, sitting near the door, perusing the two-for-one cocktail offerings. The rather uninspiring list makes me nostalgic for the long lost Jester Seeds once again – it is heavy on the white spirits and fruit syrups. We opt for a pair of Long Island Iced Teas to start with, which turn out to be good, but unfortunately they are the high point for the eventing. The FOOD on offer turns out to be either hot-dogs or tasting plates. Strop manages to talk me out of a Texan Hot Dog by doing her only-speaking-in-questions-thing until she gets the Right Answer, and we order a smoked salmon and a salami tasting plate.

Happy Hour is working well, sucking punters in off the street by the taxi load despite the awful 90s music. They are predominantly young women with a smattering of young men, who know when they are onto a good thing, in tow. The hysteria level start out mild, but rapidly increases in volume and intensity as everyone rushes to have their inhibitions hammered out of shape for the start of the weekend.

A young woman at the next table has a laugh that could kickstart an ElectraGlide.

The staff behind the bar is kept busy by the throng, especially the dangerous-looking Lara Croft impersonator, who is dressed in black, with a utility belt full of cocktail-making essentials, and has an enormous bottle opener strapped to her forearm. This woman means business.

We decide to go with the flow and move on to another cocktail. This time a Thai Iced Tea which comes with lychee liqueur and is a bit sweet for my taste until I hit the pure vodka layer at the bottom.

The FOOD turns out to be underwhelming. $10 buys you six small water crackers with nori, smoked salmon and some of those black seed things that come on lebanese bread. There is more lime than smoked salmon on the well-used chopping board that it is presented on. The salami board is a bit better with about half a french bread stick sliced up, some gherkin and three types of salami.

We decide to stick around and see what happens when Happy Hour ends, which will of course require another cocktail to occupy us. This time we go for Hawaiian Splice which is pretty much what you would expect except for the melon liqueur lurking at the bottom. I really must remember to mix these things up before I start to suck on the straw. Or better yet just stick to whisky.

The end of happy hour is marked by a barman going around all the tables confiscating the two-for-one cocktail menus. Soon after groups of sozzled young people start stumbling out onto the street looking for the next piece in their weekend puzzle. We lick out the last sticky remains in our glasses and stumble out after them, looking for something to eat. Luckily we are just next door to Istanbul On King where they serve food rather than FOOD.

156 Mad Mex – Iron Man vs King Street Weirdos in Animal Onesies

July 21, 2013 by Andrew Christie 11 Comments

It’s Saturday night and King Street is busily pumping itself up into a crescendo as we arrive at Mad Mex with Em, Chris, Tess and the tiny terriers Will and Charlie. What was originally planned as an adults only evening at Corridor has morphed, a week later, into a family outing to Mad Mex. At the end of the evening, as we saw the cousins off safely strapped into their family-sized wagon, Strop turned to me and said “God, I’m glad I don’t have a 4 year old and a 2 year old,” rapidly followed by “I need a scotch.” Yes folks, the two Tiny Terrier Tornados gave the Mad Masked Mexican wrestlers a run for their money.

Mad Mex looks like a fun place, with huge murals of masks and lots over-size meaningless text on the walls. There are fun colourful signs, helpfully numbered so you know how to order. Pick one from column 1, add a dash of column 2, and a slurp of column 3, fold on the dotted line and insert tab B into slot C. Any place where they have to teach you the ordering system is a worry to me. The other worry was the noise. Mad Mex is from the open-fronted school of retail catering and is right next to a bus stop. I have a theory that Sydney has the noisiest buses in the world. I have no proof of this other than the damage done to my own ears, but I have been told that apprentice bus mechanics are taught the fine art of muffler perforation and fan-belt loosening in their first year at TAFE. When the frequent coming and going of buses was combined with the heavily accented front of house crew, the ordering process was reduced to pointing and shouting.

We went for a variety of burritos, naked burritos, and quesadillas. Strop and I also decided to share the Bucket-Of-Coronas-Plus-Nachos deal as a point of direct comparison with Guzman y Gomez, the other nearby Mexican fast food franchise which is coming up fairly soon. Generally, it has to be said, the food was underwhelming even if it is all wholesome, sustainable and pain-free as promised on the website. My burrito was mostly cold and the nachos were fairly free of flavour. Em commented that the only reason she finished her strawberry margarita was because it had alcohol in it. The beer was pretty good though.

While the rest of us were struggling to finish our red foil clad food, discussing new gas heaters and the turmoil of home renovations, the tiny terriers were getting restless (hard to imagine why, I know). They weren’t going to be mollified by colourful murals, nor are they the kind of kids that can be diverted by getting them to re-stack the sugar packets. No, these guys needed warm dough, sugar and an engaging wide-screen visual experience. Cue the churros with chocolate sauce and a window seat on King Street, where they were soon regaling the passing parade with their best Iron Man moves while sucking down the strangely straight, but really quite nice, churros. This ploy worked for a while and we had more conversations about reverse cladding and storm-water drainage, but Chris had to intervene when Charlie tried to pick a fight with a Buck’s Night group dressed in animal-skin onesies. Charlie was adamant that Iron Man could kick their collective weirdo arses if he put his mind to it. He was right of course, the only strange thing was that Will was the one wearing the Iron Man hoodie.

So that was Mad Mex. We’re are going to have to find someone to represent the Man Of Steel when we go to Guzman y Gomez, just to keep the contest even.

153A Corridor – Not entirely an irony-free zone.

July 20, 2013 by Andrew Christie 4 Comments

We have been looking forward to Corridor for a while, having been denied the chance to review our first cocktail bar by the untimely demise of the much lamented Jester Seeds. Corridor is an extremely trendy young persons bar. It may not be Newtown’s Hipster Central (there are lots of claimants for that title), but you can certainly see it from here.

Downstairs, Corridor lives up to its name and the implications of its subdivided address. It is long and narrow with the bar right at the front which means that it doesn’t take many punters to make it look busy. There are rooms upstairs as well but I have a recently buggered knee so I am sitting downstairs while I wait for Strop who has been working in Parramatta even though it is Sunday. Sydney’s public transport is not weather-proof, reliably failing if there is a heavy dew. You can rely on it to fail on weekends as well – the excuse of “Trackwork” would make some sense if it didn’t happen every weekend, and if there was even the slightest sign of things improving.

I have taken up a position behind a schooner of Young Henry’s Real Ale, at a tiny table and perched on a knee-unfriendly stool, as I wait for Strop to be delivered unto Newtown.

The music is good. This is significant as I am an old fart whose musical origins go waaaay back. But luckily everything old is new again, even if it is served up with a heavy dressing of hipster irony. The bar is resounding with retro blues-rock that wouldn’t have been out of place in 1970, and the barman is grooving along in a sailor’s hat, like the Skipper sported in Gilligan’s Island. My irony antennae are going off big time.

My irony related musings are interrupted by the arrival of Strop. While she is laying out her reasoned critique of Sydney Transport, in detail and with vigour, I observe over her shoulder that the poll-position street-front table is being vacated. Hating myself for short-circuiting her withering flow, I nevertheless point out the appealing nature of the newly vacant table. Strop is a big fan of sitting up the front and we are soon settled down with room to stretch our legs, and a passing parade of Newtown’s finest to observe and comment on.

Strop goes for a daiquiri while I decide to stay loyal to Young Henry – the evening seems a bit cool for cocktails to me, especially after Feej, which is now only a distant, but fond, memory.

The Po Boys on the menu catch our attention at first (I mean, what actually is a Po Boy?) but then everything else looks good as well. As we can’t decide what we’d prefer, we order a Tasting Plate reluctantly turning our backs on the Po Boys. This turns out to be the right thing to do. The Tasting Plate (actually two plates) is generous both in quantity and variety, and we are soon happily filling our faces and drinking, while commenting on the aesthetic and lifestyle choices of passers-by. Who could ask for more?

Po Boys entirely forgotten by this stage

The food has a soul food/Louisiana theme going on and features onion rings, candied yams, spicy fried prawns and fish, cornbread, collard greens, sweet corn, a kind of cassoulet and a sweet potato puree. Lots of yums.

The splendid blues-rock soundtrack is soon supplemented with enthusiastic live vocal accompaniment, by the the barman, and one of his very good mates. They sing along heroicly, in authentic 1970s stadium-rock voices, belting out the timeless, and apparently universally adaptable, lyric “Happy Fa-ather’s Day Dan” to every song. Corridor, it turns out, is not entirely an irony-free zone.

When a man from the bar with a creative haircut, steps onto the pavement for a smoke we pay no never-mind – funny haircuts are a dime a dozen in Newtown. But when he pulls out a bright blue e-cigarette and starts sucking on it, suddenly we’re in Blade Runner territory and start to pay attention. This bloke turns out to be the head chef (why do so many cooks smoke?) so Strop gets busy asking him to interpret all the dishes spread before us. Pretty soon it’s turned into a cooking lesson as he explains how to make the collard greens using cabbage and prosciutto. That’s one we will have to try if we ever eat at home again.

For desert we stick with cocktails, a culturally-themed Mint Julep for me, and a banana rum thing for Strop. We drink these peering out across King Street, to our next target, Mad Mex. I have been thinking of developing a new rule which would cross this place and Guzman y Gomez out: Must Have Proper Plates – No Paper – What Do You Think This Is A Picnic? but Strop informs me that we are already booked in there next weekend with her sister and family. So there is no escape – we will have to do the whole Mexican stand-off gag thing.

As we are preparing to leave Corridor, the kitchen hand leaves for the night, wheeling a fixie through the still crowded bar. Maybe we are closer to Hipster Central than I thought.

154 Tre Viet – The Classy Aquarium Vibe

July 13, 2013 by Andrew Christie 4 Comments

When we got to Tre Viet two things struck me. The empty restaurant was being warmed by the gentle strains of a Viennese waltz and they had an aquarium. These were both firsts for the quest and fitting additions to our first lunchtime outing. We have opted for lunch so that the Melbourne-based members of the family can join us. Specifically so that the Heathen-Outlaw can make it. We have also performed a bit of jiggery-pokery with the running order so as not to inflict New Taste or Mad Mex on the out-of-towners. The family are in town because we have just celebrated the 90th birthday of the G-rent-mother, which was very pleasant. So we have squeezed a questing into the packed program, between a morning’s outing to the Sydney Park playground and a mid-afternoon dash to the airport. Due to a lack of seats in our motor, Stropette and I volunteer to take advantage of the crystal clear day to walk to the restaurant pushing the sleeping Pancetta and her stroller in front of us.

This peramble gives us the opportunity to explore the far reaches of King St and to do a bit of quest calculating. As of last Sunday there are 50 eateries on the far side of the station and then another 16 to Church Street which is looming as our target for the end of the year. So I’m thinking that the quest is looking like a 2 year thing. This is do-able. Then we can get our lives back. There has been a bit of chat amongst Strop’s Crew about taking a detour at Enmore Road, because that is where the cool is now, but I think these notions have to be rejected as revisionist nonsense. We must stick to the plan, even if it is a bad plan.

While the Stropolina and Pancetta are oohing and ahhing over at the aquarium (it really is a classy aquarium, it’s got coral and stuff, just like Feej) the rest of us get the essential beer order in. Unfortunately in our haste to get a thirst quencher down our gullets, we miss the fact that they stock the trusty Vietnamese 333, so we have to quickly down our James Squires and Tigers so we can move on to the more culturally appropriate 333.

The restaurant is beginning to fill with a restrained Sunday-lunch crowd. There is a cool and relaxed atmosphere to the restaurant which is exemplified by the aquarium. Our table soon disrupts things though by deciding that we need a bigger table to accommodate the high chair. As the bemused wait-staff look on the female members of the party begin appropriating the adjoining tables and shuffling chairs, strollers and beer glasses. When someone, that might have been your correspondent, points out that we are disturbing the Vibe of the place, Strop looks disdainful and announces that she is “Deaf to the Vibe” which effectively ends the discussion.

When we are all re-settled and have identified our own beer glasses, the Heathen Outlaw throws a bit of a spanner in the food ordering works by enquiring about No 37. He obviously hasn’t been paying attention: the No. 37 rule only comes into force in Thai establishments. We are on the wrong side of the border here mate. Not that there is anything wrong with him choosing to order No. 37 if he so desires but it would strictly be on the basis that it was “just another dish, might as well be No. 19”. When the dish in question turns out to be a Chicken Curry with Coconut milk the issue is quickly dropped, and Strop takes over the ordering, while I tap out what are now indecipherably cryptic notes on my phone.

We start out with Betel Leaf Beef which turn out to be surprisingly similar to scrumptious little sausages only wrapped in betel leaves and with coriander flavours. They disappear very quickly, but are followed by fresh spring rolls, and a vegetarian pancake. While we are busily stuffing our faces, talk turns to the planning of a Wedding that will turn the Heathen Outlaw into the Heathen in-law. There is heated discussion regarding possible venues, catering, guest lists and gifting arrangements. It soon emerges that there deep philosophical divides regarding the righteousness of the Gift Registry. Some people are more risk averse than others I suppose. Personally I think the risk of receiving 13 toasters and 5 ugly vases is worth taking, but then I come from a generation that thought nothing of getting married in a park in February without even a thought to deploying a risk-management marquee.

The rest of the food arrives before the Gift Registry Stand-off turns ugly. There is a Caramelised Pork Hotpot (big ticks), Papaya Salad, Chilli and Lemongrass Beef (yum), Charcoal Grilled Chicken and eventually Poached Vegetables. This sounds like a lot but there wasn’t much left by the time we had finished. We even had room for Vietnamese Coffee, with a yummy hit of condensed milk, and a couple of those strange Asian drinks with the coconut milk, weird green agar worms and red beans. Pancetta thought this was nearly as exciting as the aquarium and indeed parts of the drink wouldn’t have been out of place amongst the coral.

Tre Viet is a similar scale and style restaurant to Thanh Binh but has a calmer and less hectic vibe (even allowing for a lunchtime visit the calming effects of the aquarium are obvious) but I think Thanh Binh has a slight edge on the food side.

Next up we are back across the road and back into the realm of cocktails at Corridor. See you then.

153 New Taste – It Ain’t Poetry But Blimey It’s Cheap

July 5, 2013 by Andrew Christie 12 Comments

It is freezing and pissing down for our first post-Feej foray back into the Friday night food frenzy of King Street. We have arranged to meet first at the Marly – tonight we are joined by Rebecca and Duncan who are friends of Strop, but I have apparently met them once. As everyone apart from me is running a bit late due to Sydney’s public transport not being water proof, I get to sit at the bar and down a Dogbolter or two while reading more of the latest Phillip Kerr Nazi crime-thriller. When everyone makes it to the rendezvous, dripping from the deluge, we all have another Dogbolter (I have converted them) while Rebecca politely asks about our holiday in Feej. We tell her we are renewed and re-invigorated, getting a little bit breathless as we describe the sunsets, the snorkelling (Clown fish! Just off the beach, can you imagine!) the granddaughter time, the cocktails, and the lack of shoes. And what have you been up to Rebecca and Duncan, we innocently asked, walking straight into their trap. Oh, we’ve been off on a bit of holiday ourselves, South America, in search of the Lesser Fat-Tailed Armadillo. I don’t think that’s quite right but it was something like that – the shorthand is not what it used to be – and I was still coming to terms with the fact that there was more than one type of Armadillo. Then there was the quicksand adventure in which Rebecca is left to sink slowly into the sunset while the guide leads the rest of the party to firmer ground. And the Jaguars stalking the river boats, chasing off the crew. Did you know that the Jaguar has the most powerful bite of any of the big cats? No, I didn’t either, direct descendants of Sabre-tooth tigers, apparently. And of course Piranha, it is South America after all. No no, they’re only a problem in the dry season, when the river dries up, and they get trapped in a shrinking puddle – then they’ll strip you to the bone as quick as look at you. Our Feej resort vacation is looking a bit feeble in the face of Rebecca and Duncan’s episode of Bomba the Jungle Boy. Time for something to eat I think.

Luckily the restaurant is just next door. It used to be called Won Ton Noodle Inn, but somehow while we were not paying attention in Feej it became something called New Taste. This is just sad really, Won Ton Noodle Inn is poetry, New Taste is just a bad lifestyle magazine. Nothing else seems to have changed though, as far as we can tell from the outside. It’s not the sort of place you would normally go into unless you needed a really cheap feed and you weren’t too worried about the sanctity of your stomach. Street appeal is in negative figures here. New Taste has rejected the new-fangled trend for wide-open welcoming restaurant frontages that the rest of King Street has succumbed to. It looks like a hole in the wall, just a doorway and a lot of very faded pictures of the food on offer. Going inside is like going to a different country, a country called the past: they do things differently there. The kitchen is up the front, but there is a dining room out the back with a few small tables. Further out the back is a strange outdoor room with lime-green walls and white plastic tables that are bigger and which might suit us better The Staff suggests, pointing out that our group of 4 is going to stretch the carrying capacity of the tables in the main dining area. However, we decide to squeeze up rather than risk crossing the yard and getting soaked by the downpour and possibly never being seen again. I’m not trying to cast any nasturtiums here, but there was something about that back shed and those fluro-lit lime green walls and the lonely looking garden furniture that screamed NO! Don’t you do it, you’ll never be seen again, or at the very least your food will be swamped with inches of rainwater before it gets to your table. So we stayed inside.

Another strange thing about New Taste – it’s a 2 man band, or at least it was on Friday night at 7:45. This may have something to do with the size of the joint but probably has more to do with the operating margins. In case I forget to mention it, this place is very cheap.

First things first: wine. New Taste is extremely conveniently located next door to a bottle shop. I had hardly noticed Rebecca had gone before she was back with an entirely drinkable bottle of Pinot Grigio. We thought about asking for wine glasses but it really looked as if this might be a challenge for The Staff so we just drank it out of our little ceramic tea cups instead. We drank it fairly quickly too.

"I didn't start to worry until the quicksand got up to here" — “I didn’t start to worry until the quicksand got up to here”

The Staff turned up to take our order with a biro and the back of a well-used envelope. Ordering the food took a little longer than getting the wine in. We ordered dumplings to start and a dish each but Rebecca is something of a part-time vego on account of being a full time animal-life-preserving person, so she wanted a vegetable dish to go with the meats and seafoods that occupied the menu, and that the rest of us had unquestioningly chosen. Rebecca had other ideas though, and wasn’t afraid to run them up The Staff’s flagpole. Unfortunately The Staff had other ideas too. Rebecca fancied eggplant. Ok, nodding and smiling from The Staff, he can do eggplant, how about Salt and Pepper Eggplant. Now, I would have given up the hunt at this point but not Rebecca. Well can you stir fry it, she said, maybe with some other vegetables? Broccoli? Sure, sure, fry it with little bit of batter, some salt, some pepper, you’ll like it. At this point Rebecca saw the way things were going, okaaa-ay then. What we got was Salt and Pepper Eggplant, and he was right, we did like it. We made the mistake of assuming we were still in Australia by ordering boiled rice for four. The Staff looked at us funny because he knew that in this country each dish comes with it’s own rice.

I have no memory of what the other dishes were, I know from the photos that peas featured in one of them, but they were all totally edible. The dumplings were very nice too, I do remember that. And it’s cheap, did I say that already? I mean really cheap, the dumplings and four dishes added up to a bill of $29. I would go again just for the pleasure of seeing the bill, but there is nothing wrong with the food, it’s just a bit unusual and on King Street that has to be a good thing.

Next up is a family outing to Tre Viet featuring the Outlaw. Can’t wait.