Archives for July 2015

644 South End Cafe – nearly there!

July 26, 2015 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

It’s our last breakfast on the quest, and a chance to catch up with old mates. As we’ve got closer to the end of King Street we’ve had a flurry of activity with lots of people wanting to fill up the dwindling supply of Quest berths. The previous night we had an enthusiastic catch up session with John, Pauline, Jill and Roy. We didn’t have any room for them left on the Quest, so we met up in the Rocks instead, at the Lord Nelson, and had an extremely jovial time. And a bit of a hangover the next day, which made me regret the ease with which I had agreed to that third bottle of extremely drinkable New Zealand Sav Blank. Pass the paracetamol please.

By the time I got to South End Cafe I had perked up a bit but was still feeling that weird lack of temperature control that seems to come with hangovers – or is that just me? Anyway, I was a bit early which gave me a chance to have an excellent flat white to settle things down a bit.

South End is a popular cafe, full of what looked like locals having breakfast or getting takeaways. The front room is quite large with windows on two sides and there is a second room out the back for overflows if needed.

Pete and Mindy (last seen at Lentil As Anything) were our Quest guests for this outing, stopping in for breakfast on their way to the airport to pick up their daughter who has been doing work experience in Fiji (in my day you only got to go to AWA in North Ryde). They arrived just before Strop, who had come straight from a community rain-garden planting session. In between explaining just what a rain-garden is, we managed to order a round of juices. Pete wanted something with ginger, Strop and Mindy had beetroot, apple and something with ginger, and I had orange juice.

Alarmingly the juices came in jars (hipster alert) but were very pretty and colourful as well as being highly tasty (so I am going to hold off slipping into full anti-jar-rant mode, but as Uncle Carl says, no one ever thinks about the lids, the real victims in this situation).

Food ordering was quite an extended process. Pete has some quite particular dietary requirements. He is allergic to red meat and to dairy. This is not some kind of airy-fairy gluten-free wannabe shit, this is full on anaphylactic carry-an-epi-pen-or-you’ll-die-if-some-arsewit-cooks-the-mushrooms-with-the-sausages territory. So it was great to see the waitress taking it very seriously and checking how things were cooked when she wasn’t sure. She also worked out the cheapest way to order the breakfast that Pete wanted. This turned out to be the Vegie breakfast with a couple of substitutions, to replace the haloumi and the mushrooms. All the service was very good, but this aspect was a standout. And Pete survived the meal, so you can’t say fairer than that really.

Mindy went for a bacon and egg roll, Strop ordered the pea and haloumi pancake, and I had the South End Brekkie (big breakfast equivalent).

The chat ranged far and wide, covering holiday destinations, Fijian markets, all the nasty diseases ticks can give you, the density of foxes in urban areas (8/km2 if you were wondering), and where the best trout are at Fryingpan Arm. Pete drew a napkin map for the sake of clarity. X marks the spots.

The food was good, although I was a bit disappointed that the olives with my brekkie were standard stuffed olives, but on the other hand I had sausages as well as plenty of bacon AND haloumi. One of Pete’s substitutions turned out to be very nice home-made baked beans. Strop commented that she couldn’t really find the haloumi in her pancakes (she could have had some of mine), but they looked great – very green – and the peas with caramelized onions were delicioius. Nothing was left over so it definitely passed that test. We followed up with coffees and tea. I can’t comment on the tea, but the coffee was really good. I would go back again just for the coffee.

It is really heartening to find so many good cafes at the far end of King Street. It is certainly worth a walk in the morning sun to check them out.

609 The End of King Cafe – and a quick King St audit

July 25, 2015 by Andrew Christie 6 Comments

It was a Saturday morning, cold but sunny with no wind thankfully. We set off on a spontaneous adventure brought to you by a cancelled tree-planting session on the Cooks River. The bad weather during the week gave everyone cold feet and led to the last minute cancellation of Strop’s planned outing. So I was allowed to take her out and entertain her on King Street.

With all this superfluous time on our hands we decided to undertake a Painting the Bridge audit. A sort of retrospective tour starting back at the beginning to see what has changed and what has stayed the same. We wanted to map the King Street churn, to see how much has survived, which places have gone bust or changed, and which are completely new.

We started back at the top of King Street and walked all the way to St Peters to our breakfast target, the aptly named The End of King cafe. We had a list and we were checking it twice. The map above is a snapshot summary of how things in the eatery world of King St have changed.

Black dots are places that have closed.
Pink dots are places that have changed their spots (sorry),
and green dots are brand new places.

Overall, while there has been a lot of churn, the picture is pretty positive. Most places have stayed red. Only two restaurants are currently closed, all the others have re-opened as some form of eatery. And there are more than twenty completely new places. Which is great. Some of them look pretty interesting too, and will require further investigation. Izote has lost its place at the head of the queue, with Three Queens cafe sliding into poll position on the corner. Thai la Ong2 has had a name change and is now Alice’s Thai, and Simply Noodles has been replaced by a new and interesting looking Thai place called Bangkok Bites. We’ll have to go and check out their number 37 some time. A few places had changed more than once in the time since we went past. There is a lot of turnover in the Newtown restaurant trade.

By the time we had walked all the way to the End of King we were in a very good mood and were pretty hungry. We decided to sit outside in the sunshine and soak up the other-end-of King Street-ness.

The breakfast menu looked very interesting, with lots of new and interesting combinations – and no Big Breakfast. This is a bit of a shock and also a relief, because it does tend to tie us down to the same-old, same-old, and can lead to nasty scenes when it isn’t clear who’s turn it is to take one for the team. No such fuss was required this time, we could both have free-form breakfasts.

We had a couple of coffees to start while we studied the menu in some depth and Strop did her soc-med checking in thing. The coffees were good, even though Strop wasn’t as convinced as I was. Her diminished taste buds demand a particularly strong brew, to fire the right messages into her brain and set off all the good feels. But for a normal person (me) the coffee was just the thing. In between having this argument we managed to make some choices about what to eat. I went for a special called Smashed Avocado, mainly because it has everything I fancy including a poached egg. Strop goes for the Smoke Stack because it includes corn fritters and she asks for a bit of the eggplant pickle that featured on one of the other specials, on the side as well. Such a rule breaker, she is. And some juices too. Happily Strops corn fritter is much better than the last time she ventured down the breakfast fritter route. It is light and crisp on the outside. The rest of the Smoke Stack is good too.

My Smashed Avocado is good too, although the signature avocado is not obvious at first. It is buried under a pile of haloumi, some excellent smokey bacon and a lovely poached egg. The egg yolk is the same colour as the wedge of orange on the side of the plate. Yum.

The juice was very good too. “No ice,” Strop commented approvingly to the waitress, who looked a bit surprised. “No, not in this cold weather,” she replied. Quite right too.

As we were sitting outside we didn’t really get a feel for the inside of the cafe until we went inside to pay up. It is crisp and clean, and surprisingly spacious inside. Check it out, you’ll enjoy it.

597 Darley Street Bistro at the Botany View Hotel – Food reviewing gets hijacked

July 18, 2015 by Andrew Christie 4 Comments

“Hey, Mr Andy,” Mark said, following me as I got off the train at St Peters, with my Opal card held tightly in my hot little hand, intent on getting to the scanners before the crowd. St Peters is a very popular station, lots of people get off the train there, but I think we were the only two on that train who were going to the Botany View.

It’s going to be a big night, lots of guest appearances. Strop who handles the bookings and general socialising, is expecting upwards of 15 Quest veterans, and possibly a few noobs, because the Botany View is really the last opportunity to get a reasonable sized crowd together. From here on, until St Peters it’s just a couple of cafes and a small pizza joint. So tonight is a bit of a celebration of the Quest, and of friendship. Or possibly acquaintanceship. Anyway we’ve got people coming from far afield just for the occasion. Uncle Carl will be dropping in from Brisvegas courtesy of Quaint-arse, and Jude is coming from Canberra courtesy of Murray’s and free WiFi. I am feeling a bit of trepidation at the thought of so many guests, because I am not very good at paying attention to what is going on and taking notes, particularly after the second round of drinks.

I am quite fond of the front bar at the Botany View (I like its chaotic pubiness and lack of pretence, but Mark is not so keen – probably due to his latent hipster tendencies), but I have never ventured upstairs to the dining room before. Tonight when we arrive Strop is already ensconced at the centre of a huge table, beer to hand, ready to greet all comers. Once drinks are obtained we start telling Mark about the play we saw the night before: The Dog/The Cat. Two plays really, different writers, but about relationships and pets. Excellent theatre. Strop has been soc-meding it up all day, “I even got re-tweeted by Brendan Cowell,” she exclaims.

Talk of pets, naturally leads on to Mark’s current and lamentable, dog-less status. And something about the RSPCA. Mark notes my attempts to take notes and wonders “What are you writing? No one’s said anything interesting yet.” If I waited for that I wouldn’t get anything down. He suggests that I mention the Botany View’s total lack of a view of anything other than a carpark. Seems like a bit of a cheap shot to me though

We are soon joined by Jude and her friend Debra, and Uncle Carl straight from the airport, on time. Naturally all the locals are running late. The new arrivals trigger off another round of drinks and a halt to my attempts to take notes. Even if I had tapped out more notes it probably wouldn’t have helped. My last entry is QAnya’s tales, and no, I have no idea either. Thank you Mr Autocorrect. Eventually the locals arrive, Wendy, Keren and James, Linda and Matilda, and last but not least Rebecca and Duncan. A few prospects have pulled out at the last minute so we are a total of thirteen. Obviously a lucky number. We set one of the tables adrift as there are plenty of other punters looking for somewhere to park their plates, and squeeze up nice and close. It’s talking time. Quite loud talking, including lots of “And how do you know them?” discussions. Despite the disparate nature of the group everyone gets on alarmingly well. There might have been some more drinks. Every time I turned around there seemed to be more wine bottles on the table.

At some point food was suggested. I started talking about a burger but Strop interrupted me. “It’s a named restaurant at a pub! No burgers are necessary.” Really? Yes, she’s right, we are at the Darley Street Bistro apparently, so the Burger Wars are cancelled. We haven’t had a named pub restaurant since Animal at the Newtown Hotel, which was quite a long time ago.

Despite having a name the arrangements are all very pub: you order at the kitchen and get buzzed when the food is ready. There are acres of blackboard menus covering the walls, so you have plenty to read as you queue up to order. Strop and I timed our run to hit the peak, when the queue stretched halfway up the stairs. But that was okay, we weren’t in a hurry, we had plenty of chatting and drinking to do. The menus start out with pub staples (burgers, snags, etc) and get more exotic (and expensive) as you approach the kitchen. I was sorely tempted by the beef shoulder wrapped in pancetta, but finally settled on the salmon with scallops. Everything sounded good and looked good too. One of the advantages of the queue is you get a good view of everyone else’s food as they squeeze past with their orders. Strop went for the Orecchiette (pasta – I had to ask), with Swiss Brown mushrooms. We were nearly the last of our table to order, so we were able to keep drinking while they were getting stuck in. Linda and Matilda must have been disappointed by my lack of note taking because they started doing it for me, and emailed it to Strop.

A bit presumptuous I think you’ll agree, but here you go, this is what they thought:

Chicken breast w rosemary and celeriac mash. Delicious. The beans were cooked to perfection, as was the chicken – moist with crispy skin. OMG

Pork belly w crispy crackling, yummy cabbage stuff and celeriac mash. Oh my. And very tidily presented. Neatest parcel of pork belly I’ve ever seen! I don’t even remember them collecting my plate.. Maybe I ate it 😐

Fish and chips. “It’s good but not amazing.”

Orecchiette “very tasty and creative. A bit too oily but great flavours and very yummy crumb”.

Barramundi quesadilla – tex mex with a twist. Lovely, wouldn’t say it’s mind blowing but I blame Matilda for suggesting that it might be. Now onto the duck pasta thingie….

Duck farfalle – looks better than it tastes – it looks like a bad hair day and it tastes like a bolognese. It’s more complex than first thought. Something crunchy (hazelnuts?) gives it a few extra points.

The sticky date pudding came with a drunken date. Do I need to say the rest? Very nice – salty caramel and just yum.

The last crumble in Newtown is hot and once my tongue has recovered I will tell you if it tastes any good. Quince crumble. Officially delicious according to James.

41 years of relationship mistakes and we’re still going says Cath who let Andy choose the sticky date pudding while she was left with some cheesecakie thing that was less than perfectly satisfying…

I think I am just going to leave that last bit alone – except to say that the quince crumble had been my first choice, but unfortunately Keren and James nabbed the last one. I would have been cross with them, except that James recommended that I try an excellent hipster stout. Which I did, a couple of times, just to be sure. This may explain to the next day’s paracetamol consumption.

On the food front I will add that the salmon was probably worthy of a double yum and that Mark wouldn’t shut up about how good the beef shoulder was.

All in all it was a wonderful evening which only ended when the staff requested that the last of us vacate the dining room. Duncan and Rebecca stumbled on to a conveniently timed bus, Carl tottered off down Union Street to visit a friend, while Strop, Mark and I wended our weary way home along King Street. Just as it should be.

593 Ladda’s The Thai Takeaway – Number 37’s last hurrah plus afters at Izba

July 11, 2015 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

It’s Saturday night and it’s cold and Painting the Bridge is on the prowl for some fresh Thai. And to give Number 37 it’s last ever official Quest outing (until we start repainting the bridge). We’ve been walking past Ladda’s ever since getting the train to St Peters, rather than Newtown, became a more efficient way of questing. Ladda’s window display of fresh ingredients, waiting for their turn to be called up for some wok time, has always been appealing. I wonder why more restaurants don’t do this – it certainly advertises the freshness of the made-to-order menu.

Tonight it is just Strop and I, in an unscheduled outing. We were supposed to be away this weekend but had to cancel those plans as I have had the flu all week and didn’t feel up to driving for hours down to the south coast. Mind you, walking to Ladda’s takes nearly as long, and it’s is a cold night so it is a relief to eventually step into the bright fluorescent lwarmth, and to have our nostrils filled with foody aromas. The staff are mildly surprised, and a bit amused, by our desire to eat in rather than take our food away. Judging by the array of old newspapers spread out on the tables, the shopfront is mainly used as a waiting room for takeaway pickups rather than dining. There are lots of tasty-sounding specials pinned up around the walls on bright orange bits of A4 paper, and plenty of vegetarian options. The soft-shell crab immediately grabs Strop’s attention and I am drawn to something ducky – in this case the salad. We already have our hearts set on these before we remember that we have to include Number 37 in our calculations. Oh well, three mains, it’s a bit like having two mains and a couple of entrees, I suppose. Number 37 turns out to be lamb with green beans. For drinks, we each have a bottle of ginger beer.

Ladda’s has their kitchen up front, occupying half the shop, so you get a good view of the wok work and plenty of sizzles and smells. All the time we were there, the telephone orders kept coming in and the takeaway orders kept going out. It’s a popular place with the locals, and when our food arrives it is easy to see why. The servings and the flavours are generous, and there are plenty of fresh, crunchy vegetables. The lamb and beans are a bit of a hit, tasty, crisp and hot, possibly the best Number 37 ever. The roast duck salad is also very good, although given how cold a night it is we might have done better with a duck curry. The soft-shell crab is excellent, crunchy, with lots of vegetables and a sharp sweetness to it.

If Ladda’s was a bit closer to home I think I would get all our Thai takeaways from there – Thai La-Ong is our current takeaway of choice.

Despite having over ordered, we managed to save enough room for a nice bit of Russian cake at Izba. At last. I opt for their “most famous” honey cake and a cup of Russian Caravan tea (well obvs) but Strop has a bit of trouble with the whole ordering thing. Every cake she selects from the menu is out of stock. She finally settles on the Birds Milk cake, and a decaf coffee.

Luckily, the light, layered, creamy cakes come in bite size as well as brick size so we have no trouble squeezing them in. I really liked the honey cake but I think Strop’s Birds Milk was the winner, despite it’s bizarre name. Suitably fortified, we step outside and struggled home along King Street, through the blizzard of Saturday night incomers.

589 – Alberto’s Pizza – Alberto vs The Hiccoughs

July 4, 2015 by Andrew Christie 1 Comment

It may have been and error of judgement to meet up at the Botany View first … Wendy, tonight’s guest performer, is a Quest virgin. (No, not that Wendy another Wendy – sometimes known as Weed.) Now, an important thing to remember here is that for some reason which was never made clear, (or if it was, I wasn’t paying sufficient attention) Wendy had been on a beer fast for some time prior to our meeting up at the Botany View. Wendy and I arrived first and availed ourselves of a couple of hipster ales. When Strop arrived, her first concern was whether Alberto’s Pizza, was licensed. She wasn’t worried so much about whether to buy wine to take with us but more concerned about how many drinks she would need first.

The Botany View is a likeable pub on a Friday night. Very local, not too hipster. The pub golf club runs a chocolate wheel in the bar amongst the diners and the drinkers. There are lots of screens, particularly up the TAB end. Depending on which direction you look you can be distracted by greyhounds, golf, or rock and roll. I don’t remember hearing any music over all the chatter, but the music screen was showing images from my era: Jimmy Barnes; ACDC; Hoodoo Gurus; The Sports. It is a convivially chaotic scene and I am looking forward to trying the food out.

Wendy and Strop have been knitting and sewing soulmates for a long time. At one point in the distant and misty-moist past they started a short lived venture called Fiasco Fabrications which unfortunately lived up to its name. The conversation pin-balled its way from knitting, wool collections, Italian Vogue, cakes, retirement planning, buttons, rising sea levels, Open Sores (aka Ocean Shores), and the tragic loss of the original Darrell Lea shops and uniform. In between there was some drinking, a few toilet breaks and one or two arguments about how long ago a particular event happened.

Before the chocolate wheel was spun, we headed out into the cold and walked the short block to Alberto’s in search of food. Now Wendy blames the fizziness of the beer, but I think the shock of cold air could be to blame, but whatever the reason the result was clear. Hiccoughs.

As soon as we sat down in the otherwise empty restaurant, Wendy’s diaphragm started spasming at regular intervals. Which made ordering an interesting procedure. She tried holding her breath, but had to avoid eye contact in the process to maintain the required level of concentration. Strop suggested drinking water upside down, but Wendy was wise to decline the offer. It’s not really the type of procedure to be tried in public. Not that there were many people to see, only the staff. We were the only customers at that point. A few others came in later, un-deterred by Wendy’s periodic eruptions, and there was a steady stream of take away customers and pizza deliveries all the time we were there.

Wendy managed to get her breath long enough to order a Santa Euphemia (or santa euphemism as my auto-corrected notes prefer), Strop chose the potato pizza, her personal favourite, and I ordered a Napoletana, because anchovies. Then there was the discussion about size. Wendy gritted her teeth and clamped down on her diaphragm long enough to suggest small, but she was out voted by Strop and I who thought we needed mediums. We should have listened to her, despite her affliction she had a better handle on our consumptive capacities. By this time we had well and truly decided that no more alcohol was required and we were getting through the water at a pretty good clip, even without any upside down hi-jinx.

The pizzas arrived promptly and took up most of the table. The toppings were generous, but it was a bit hard to tell the pizzas apart because they were all covered with a thick layer of cheese. The potato pizza was not what Strop was expecting. It came with thick slices of roasted potato and tomatoes, not the thin slices sprinkled with rosemary she had been remembering from Rome. All the pizzas had lots of fresh vegetables in the mix but the crusts were a bit thick and soft for my taste and there was a lot of cheese.

We were just starting to realise how much more pizza we had on the table than we could fit in our stomachs, when Alberto himself emerged from the kitchen and did a tour of the tables chatting to his guests. This sort of opportunity is right up Strop’s street, of course. When he got to our table she started quizzing him about his life, how long he had been running the restaurant, how long he’d been in Australia, which part of Italy he was from. And Alberto was up for the challenge, telling us how he had arrived in 1953 at the age of 17 and had followed Queen Elizabeth around the southern half of Australia as his ship made its way from Perth to Sydney. While we were listening to his stories, Wendy sat still with a mildly surprised expression on her face. Alberto had performed a miracle, the hiccoughs had departed as soon as he had arrived at our table. When Alberto had to leave to prepare more pizzas, Wendy sat nervously in case the hiccoughs were just waiting for him to turn his back. Luckily the Alberto cure stuck, and just to make sure, he returned a couple of more times, bringing with him photos – him with his brother, a couple of lads about town in the 1950s – him with his band playing accordion for the workers on the Snowy Mountains scheme at Thredbo. There was no sign of the hiccoughs after that.

So there you are, go to Alberto’s for generous toppings, history and hiccough cures.

We had been planning on stopping off at Izba for some Russian dessert treats on the way home but we were now well and truly stuffed -and there was still almost a full pizza if you reassembled the left over slices. Oh well, Izba will have to wait for another time.