Archives for June 2014

365 – 3 Olives – You’ll need to book. Do it now.

June 28, 2014 by Andrew Christie 3 Comments

Pre-dinner drinks. The prospect of a pre-dinner drink with Strop, has lured me out of the comfortable anonymity of a pub, into the irony-plagued awkwardness of a hipster cocktail bar. Unfortunately Strop can’t make it, she is stuck at Parramatta Station due to Transport Turmoil (and it’s not even raining), so I am alone except for the new Miles Franklin winner to read on my phone, and an excellent whisky sour to sip. Actually it’s not a bad trade. Except for the bill shock – oh well, I guess that is the price you pay for having a maitre de with a waxed moustache, and a 1980s soundtrack designed to make you feel old.

Tonight we are eating at a Greek restaurant called 3 Olives, we’re being joined by Matt and Jim, who last appeared in these pixels back at The Animal which, strangely, is also a Greekish joint. Matt and I are first to arrive at the rapidly filling restaurant. After a quick discussion about increased hangover propensity with age (there’s definitely a thesis in that) we get things under way with a bottle of wine and some dips. Matt is momentarily confused about whether the three dips are free dips, but luckily the waiter and I are clear about what is going on. We are soon joined by Strop and Jim, who help us finish the first bottle and the free dips. Then it is time to get serious about food.

Our enthusiastic and overblown first draft of the food order elicits a little shake of the head, and a quiet “That’s a lot of food,” from the excellent waiter. With his editorial guidance we pare it back to three shared entrees and three mains. The entrees are haloumi, white bait and octopus, and the mains are lamb cutlets, meatballs and quail. Because we don’t want to risk malnutrition we request that an emergency beetroot salad be held in reserve.

Now that we have got the decision making out of the way, Jim takes the opportunity to admonish me for not writing enough about the other punters. So here goes. There are a lot of them – the place is full by about 7:30, and is still full when we leave at 10:00. They are happy. They don’t look particularly Greek, but they are loud. There are a lot of family groups with young children. They are well dressed. They are mostly not teenagers, and they are definitely not hipsters. Although our waiter might be, sometimes it’s a fine line. And they know something that we are only just discovering: 3 Olives is a great place for a night out. It is a family affair, which is as it should be in a Greek restaurant, overseen by Olga, the matriarch who puts the hospitality back into Hospitality Industry. Throughout the night she befriends each table, smiles, makes jokes, and makes you feel like a friend. You will want to come back.

The food is all good. It is not stunt food, just really good, well-cooked simple food. And plenty of it. The octopus is excellent, the meatballs are delicious, but then so are the lamb cutlets and the quail. The accompanying salads are fresh and generous and the chips are crisp on the outside and soft and mushy inside. We didn’t need the beetroot salad.

Meanwhile the conversation was bouncing all over the place. Book writing, Matt’s near miss at being a Famous Author; who is the most passive passive-aggressive person we know; the glamorous new upgrade of Newtown station; drug dogs; young people en-masse; young people singing, and the end-of-an-era deaths of Sue Townsend and Rik Mayall. We probably talked about a bunch of other stuff too, but by that time I had drunk quite a lot and had stopped taking notes. We were having too much fun.

After a short hiatus we turned our stomachs to the subject of dessert. And sweet sticky wine. Jim was keen on the baklava, and Strop wanted galaktoboureko because “It’s the best dessert in the world.” After they had both received lessons in Greek pronunciation from Olga, we decided to share again and have some port as well. The galaktoboureko was good, but I thought it was surpassed by the baklava, which was the best I have ever had.

So get along to 3 Olives, you won’t regret it.

357 – Amazon Steakhouse – Bacon with everything.

June 22, 2014 by Andrew Christie 3 Comments

When I finally got around to looking at the menu, the vague feeling that I had somehow veered into a cartoon was confirmed. Specifically a Simpson’s cartoon. Nearly every entree featured bacon as a headline ingredient. Homer would truly be at home in this part of Newtown. And not just because of the bacon, there is something cartoony about the decor as well, though I suppose it’s more The Phantom than Springfield. There is lots of bamboo, palms, and bits of thatched roofing, and even a jungle waterfall on the way to the loos. I half expected to find Devil and Hero waiting for me when I made my way back to our table.

I think I need to be clear here, all this is a good thing. The Amazon Steakhouse is fun – as long as you like grilled meat and curly fries. And bacon. And seriously, who doesn’t? (Actually given that we are in Newtown it is a wonder that Amazon is not under constant pickettage by some radical vegan-rights collective).

Tonight we are being joined by our nephew and erstwhile house-mate, Kiof, but blow me down, before he arrives via a tardy 370 bus, who do we bump into but Linda and Sue, of Buzzzbar notoriety, AND an old Canberra mate (“haven’t seen you for years!”), Fiona. They just happened to be (stalking) in the neighbourhood (I strongly suspect cocktails at Bloodwood) and thought, “that Painting The Bridge mob are probably around here somewhere” and so we were. Ha.

That's not a knife... — That’s not a knife…

Once I had got past ogling the decor, the main item of note at our table was the size of the knives. They are enormous, and they really set the tone. Even if you hadn’t been tipped off by the ‘Steakhouse’ moniker, the cutlery would clue you in that this is no place for vegetarians. The knives said loud and clear that this was a place that expected you to eat meat, and probably kill it yourself as well.

Beer. We ordered some of those. Strop did provide some token resistance to Kiof’s and my bacon-based entree strategy, but we wore her down, and ordered mushrooms and bacon, and curly fries and bacon. Homer would have been proud. For mains I opted for mixed life forms impaled on sharp bits of metal, while Strop and Kiof went for the rib cages of sheep and pigs. Yumm (I expect the vegetarians will have stopped reading by now).

When the entrees arrived they were huge (I expect there is some logical ecological link between entree size and the biodiversity of the decor). They were meal-sized so it was just as well we had only ordered two dishes to share, we didn’t want to gorge on too many bacon-based starters, and not leave room for the meaty things that were making the mouth-watering smells emanating from the kitchen. Despite their size, the entrees didn’t stand a chance against us. We didn’t even have to use the knives, we were saving those for the mains.

When the mains arrived it was clear that I had won. My food came on a gibbet. Dead things swinging gently in the breeze, with greasy bodily fluids dripping out onto a bed of fried onions. The rib cages couldn’t compete, even if they did come with delicious mash, or curly fries.

I think I had better stop this particular line of macabre wankery now – I’m starting to make myself feel queasy.

Amazon is is a fun place with a good atmosphere, and it seems to be fairly popular. It is starting to get a bit tatty around the edges, particularly the menus, but the food was good: simple and well cooked. The waiters know what they’re doing, they’re relaxed and professional, although the two of them were kept pretty busy later on as the place filled up largish group tables.

We decided that we were going to have to walk off our entrees and mains before we had any chance of fitting in some dessert. As we stepped onto the footpath we bumped straight into some other old Questees, Amanda and Michael, last seen way back at the Vanguard. They said they definitely weren’t stalking us, they just happened to be passing, on their way home after checking out a new Turkish joint, a little further on.

Sure, sure, tell it to someone that believes in coincidences, I thought as I ground my cigarette into the pavement and pulled up the collar on my raincoat. “C’mon kids, we’ve got a date with a gelato,” I said, as we walked off arm in arm, into the glare of headlights.

I’d like to leave you with a slightly different image of Newtown. The discount store window display is continually reaching new heights of bizarro – I give you:

Chihuahua riding scooter, with backpack, and bubble-wrapped bone.

352 – Corelli’s – When big breakfast becomes big lunch

June 22, 2014 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

Corelli’s is a bit of an institution. It seems to have been there forever, on its corner surrounded by the Newtown school and the Greek church. I always imagine it as a place frequented by hardcore Newtownians. The people who only ever creep out into the daylight after midday, all skinny jeans, stringy hair, and bloodshot eyes, desperate for a fix of eggs and coffee before they can even start to think about what plans they need to make for the next night’s debauchery.

That’s certainly what I was expecting when Strop and I rocked up, ready for a lunchtime breakfast. But my fantasies melted away when the long-haired dude at the next table, looking very rock’n’roll, with a fist full of rings that Keith Richards would have been proud of, chatted to his mate about the price of air-conditioning units, rather than the price of drugs. And at the table on the other side of us, the conversation was all about divorce. Oh dear. In a week that saw Newtown reduced to a prop for a Coldplay music video, I suppose it is clear that the place is changing, but I had held out hope that Corelli’s would be a bastion of the old guard.

We sat outside, just off King Street, beside the entrance to the school, underneath umbrellas. I thought we were going to be cold but as soon as we sat down, the sun came out and we started taking off layers of clothing and being grateful for the shade. Aah, midwinters day in Sydney – glad to see there is an upside to climate change – personally I’m quite looking forward to the arrival of Rockhampton’s climate. I wonder if we can get them to hold onto their cane toads though.

We ordered coffees first. They arrived very hot (too hot to hold in a latte glass, which is why god invented cups with handles), and my flat white was doing a remarkable impersonation of a cappuccino.

The menu is pretty much what you’d expect. There were no great surprises or innovations, so Strop set about surprising everyone by ordering the Vego Works Brekkie with bacon instead of vegetarian sausages (shudder). This caused the waiter some consternation but proved to be a master-stroke, because with this conceptual leap, she ended up with everything a regular Works Brekkie had, plus corn fritters and yummy relish. I was frankly jealous as I surveyed my plain-jane regular Works. My orange juice was fine but Strop’s carrot, pineapple and ginger seemed short on pineapple and long on ginger, but then it is mid-winter and we aren’t Rockhampton quite yet.

The poached eggs were excellent with the orange-iest yolks I have seen in quite a while. The coffee was good but not great. The bacon could have been crispier, but that’s just how I like it. All in all it was a good breakfast but not a particularly memorable one. Mind you that could be down to Strop and I only having each other for company.

349A – Buzzzbar – Blathering the night away

June 14, 2014 by Andrew Christie 2 Comments

Buzzzbar seems a very relaxed place. When I arrived, a woman was just leaving, trying to pay her bill with a small dog under each arm.

After quite a bit of e-communication, we have been promised a largish group for tonight’s outing, but everyone else is running various kinds of late, so I am the first to arrive. Buzzzbar (I have to be careful to get the spelling right without falling asleep) is a big place, with tables and lounges and a back courtyard that opens onto a lane off Enmore Road. There are plenty of seating opportunities, but mindful of the group we are expecting, I nab the large lounge area. It is a bit too nippy to be sitting outside, and anyway it will be smokey. That is one of the problems with dining in Sydney, you can’t eat outside without having to put up with smoke.

The staff seemed very concerned that I had turned up by myself, and were disconcertingly attentive for a while – until I had ordered a beer and some chips. I told the waiter that I was part of a much, much larger group that would be arriving soon, but he tried to convince me that I should join another table anyway. I resisted, convinced that Strop and the others would not leave me in the lurch.

Eventually the others arrived, first Strop who wasted no time ordering a glass of something smooth and red. Then Linda, Sue and Julian find us, and lastly, we are joined by Matilda. This is the full complement, except for my brother Steve who is always a late starter.

Linda and Sue are aunts to Matilda, who is not-quite sister to the Stropolina. Julian used to be a local, but has defected to Melbourne now. The evening takes a short sci-fi detour when Julian lifts his shirt to show us the blood sugar monitoring device he has plugged into his side. “I’m not diabetic. I just wanted to try it out because my company makes them,” he said, showing the flat-line read out on the portable monitor that is linked wirelessly to the probe in his side. That’s dedication, that is.

Caught in the headlights of Bentley Continental GT fantasies

Drinks are ordered and mistakes are made. Matilda is not drinking, which is a pity because she spent the rest of the night knocking everyone else’s drinks over. Linda and Sue ordered a bottle of shiraz from somewhere called Ram’s Leap which turned out to be eye-watering and drew unfortunate comparisons with Ram’s somethingelse, and a lame joke from mygoodself that involved crutching, and was poorly conceived at best.

Around about this time we moved to a proper table and started thinking seriously about food. The menu is fairly typical of pub/cafe fare. There is a From The Grill section, an intriguing From The Fried section, as well as a somewhat nostalgic From The Larder section. Under these headings there are burgers, steaks, schnitzels, lots of pastas, and some salads. In the end, our order ranges freely over the menu, with a couple of pastas, 2 bangers and mash, fish and chips, a burger and a schnitzel. Very democratic if you don’t count salad, which I often don’t.

While we waited for the food, conversation ranged far and wide. From the merits of the Bentley Continental GT as a form of transport to jazz venues and racist dogs. Somewhere during this interlude the Ram’s somethingelse ran out and was replaced by a much more pleasing Argentinian vintage. Dogs were a hot topic for a while, particularly Linda and Sue’s entertainingly loopy kelpie which, in the absence of wooly livestock at the local parks, makes do with cornering some hapless spadoodle and trying to eyeball it into submission. And we thought our dog was crazy.

There were nice tunes on the obligatory speaker system – everything from Hendrix to Duffy – but the atmosphere was spoiled a bit by the cigarette smells that kept wafting through, dragged inside by the flow-through ventilation. The courtyard space seemed to be very popular with teenagers, who seemed to be very interested in smoking in groups.

When the food arrived, everything came but the fettuccine carbonara, “It will be slightly delayed,” said the waiter, “as the chef has dropped it on the floor.” When it did arrive, it came with a poached egg on top, which seems to be a new trend according to my in-depth google research. My hamburger was good enough to hold its head up with the rest King St burgers, the bangers and mash were voted “Alright,” and the schnitzel “Fine.” There was no trace left of the fish and chips, but there was quite a lot of the fettuccine with prawns left, but this might have been because Matilda was so busy knocking things over.

In the end the food was kind of irrelevant. We were having a fine old time blathering away, (bulldogs vs pugs, Melbourne vs Sydney, Canberra hipsters – really?), and that is what Buzzzbar is all about. As we were getting ready to leave we were presented with complimentary homemade chocolate and orange truffle things on sticks. And they were extremely yummy.

343 – Pho 88 – We’re keen – we’ve heard good things – and we’re not disappointed

June 9, 2014 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

There haven’t been very many Vietnamese restaurants on our King St journey, the last was probably Pho 236, so we have been quietly looking forward to this one. It is also a bit of a celebratory dinner with the Melb. branch of the family visiting, a couple of imminent birthdays, and the Stropolina about to make her annual winter-avoiding hemisphere hop. We are starting early because the 2.5 year old is in desperate need of an early night after she spent the whole previous day and night play-bonding with the cuzzy-bros.

Pho 88 is a small place, so our table for six creates a bit of a squeezy disruption, especially as one of our party seems to have left her inside voice in Melbourne. However, she is quickly connected to a coconut via a bendy straw and all is peaceful as the rest of us give some serious thought to the food offerings.

Only the juice of the coconut can quell the Outside Voice

Pho. There are quite a few of those on offer as you would expect, and there are also other Vietnamese dishes, some familiar, others new to me at least. There is also a section called ‘Infusion’ which features Ribs and other non-traditional culinary excursions. The menu includes glossy pictures of some of the dishes as well as hand written last minute additions. There was a fair bit of discussion about the share-ability of pho and whether we should just let one or two people do the ordering, so everyone else can carry on talking. Everyone thought this was a fine idea, disagreeing only on who should be burdened with responsibility for the food choices and ultimate happiness of everyone else. I realised that the obvious thing for me to do was to start ordering whatever took my fancy. This blatantly rogue act immediately compelled the sheilas in my life to correct my wrong-headed and inappropriate choices. Problem solved.

While food negotiations were ongoing, drinks were sought. The young waitresses, of whom there were quite a few, seemed to be a bit new to the game, and lacked any pro-active tendencies. One mistook the famous 333 Vietnamese beer for 666, the infamous devil’s brew, and another decided that six water glasses weren’t quite enough for six people, and started moving them out of the way so she could fit a new batch of water glasses on the table. Until we told her to stop.

Luckily when it came time to order, the senior staff member showed the others how this waiting-at-table gig should be done, giving very good advice on food choices and quantities. For entrees we had coconut prawns, spring rolls, fresh spring rolls, salt and pepper squids. These were all good but the prawns were a standout – fat, juicy prawns coated with shredded coconut and deep-fried till golden. Yum. The mains were pho with roast chicken, bun (pronounced with the U-sound from pull, I discovered – and chosen because I am a sucker for a funny sounding name), Hainan chicken, fried rice and DIY spring rolls with spicy beef. The food came quickly and table real estate immediately went up in value as space was required for all the pho garnishes and the DIY roll ingredients. Heater determined that the pho broth was excellent, but not as good as Melbourne. Fair enough, I wouldn’t expect any less from a Mexican. My bun turned out to be a kind of salad with vermicelli noodles, and was very good, particularly once I was shown how to dress and season it. The Hainan chicken and the beef DIY rolls were good too, but the fried rice was a standout. It was the most generous fried rice dish I can remember, full of enormous fat prawns and lots of freshly cooked vegetables.

Dessert was a no-brainer. Immediately above our table was a hand written notice imploring us to try their Fried Golden Gaytime special. So we did. It was unusual, but in a really nice way. A stickless Gaytime, wrapped in a kind of filo pastry and sprinkled with shredded coconut, crispy on the outside, and pure Streets on the inside. Weird but wonderful.

If we weren’t busily motoring our way toward St Peters I would definitely be going back to Pho 88. I might even drop in for another Gaytime on the way home from our next questing venue.