Painting the Bridge

Andrew Christie

Bermie

Saltwater Café – Voucher System Part 2: Redemption

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Greetings from the treehouse.

As I explained in the last episode, some very generous friends gave Strop and I gift vouchers for local eateries when we moved to the south coast. The last of these was for Saltwater Café, a little stand alone fish and chip joint perched above the waters of the boat harbour in the middle of Bermagui.

We had already sampled their wares a couple of times, mostly sitting at the tables in the nearby park, watching the boats and other harbour goings on, and fighting off the gulls. The setting is fantastic, and the fish and chips are a match.

For this special voucher-powered visit, we decided to try the dining-in experience instead. We went for lunch and found a table out on the balcony, so we would still be in the fresh air. The café part of Saltwater doesn’t seem to get the same lunchtime queuing action as the takeaway window. There were only two other couples there the day we went.

We decided to maximise the value of our voucher by trying to sample as wide a variety of offerings as possible. So we ordered the Seafood Platter, however as Strop is a stickler for healthy eating, lifestyles, we opted for grilled instead of battered. This last-minute lurch away from my usual cholesterol-charged dining tendencies put us in line for an unexpected treat. When our enormous platter arrived, its foundation layer was made up of enormous yellowfin tuna steaks. I imagine that this is subject to seasonal variation, but we were very impressed. While Saltwater Café is primarily a takeaway operation, it obviously makes great use of the local catch, and they decided that a grilled platter should make use of the best grilling fish they had. It was very terrific, but a little more generous than even we could cope with.

On top of the tuna there were plenty of other treats. The oysters came in two styles – natural and with grilled cheese. Now, the whole grilled oyster thing can be controversial, and I admit it seems a bit weird to me, but then others argue that eating oysters any way is weird. In any case, I for one am happy to eat them any way someone is willing to prepare them. The prawns came two ways too: grilled and cold. There were also grilled scallops and a pile of calamari. Plus chips and salad for the vegetarians.

It was a feast, but we had left some room for an after-lunch gelato, and walked away with a takeaway box jammed with leftover tuna, and a surprising amount of dignity.

The aptly named Gelato Clinic is in the new boat harbour complex, within an easy cast of Saltwater Café. We have always been impressed by the unusual and delicious flavours this joint produces. My favourite so far is coffee and cardamon.

So now all our vouchers have been redeemed, and I am very happy to report that there is no danger of us starving down here, so far from the bright lights of King Street.

Mimosa Winery – Voucher system part 1: The Vouchsafe

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Back last year when we announced that we were decamping to the far south coast, a couple of things happened. Some people burst into laughter, others into tears – but some gave us vouchers. Gift vouchers to be exact, for restaurants in our new neighborhood. I suppose they thought that otherwise we would never get a decent meal again, or that we, and this blog, would fade away, with nothing to sustain us but the gorgeous Sapphire Coast scenery.

We received three vouchers: one given to me by the Stropette and the Stropolina, and two others given to Strop by her bookish mates. As the vouchers were received into our hot little hands well before we were actually due to depart, it was obviously important to keep them safe. I naturally found a cunningly secure place to store mine. I put it in my spare wallet – the black one that I keep in the top drawer. And I backed up this repository with an internet-wide reminder system that would beep and flash, reminding me to look in said spare black wallet, once we were safely relocated, and in a position to enjoy the fruits of the voucher. Foolproof. Obviously.

Strop stuck her two vouchers to the fridge door with magnets. Very strong magnets admittedly, but still, its a system that is basically lacking in any type of cunning. And where is the back up?

It wasn’t until I began to pack up my office that the fatal flaw in my cunning plan became apparent. I was going to have to pack up my top drawer, which meant moving the spare black wallet from it’s safe place to another safe place. Easy. Except when we arrived at our beautiful new abode, and started opening all the boxes, the spare wallet wasn’t where I thought it would be. The opening of each box from then on, was greeted by a rapidly inflating bubble of hope and desperation, which then burst as my scrabbling fingers reached the bottom. There was no sign of the wallet. The wallet had gone into the void, over the event horizon that forever separates lost from found.

Meanwhile of course, Strop’s two vouchers were back on the fridge, waving gently every time the door was opened. Hello, they seemed to say, here we are. Let’s eat.

In the end it didn’t matter because everything is on the internet and the Stropette just emailed a new copy and Strop printed it out. Surprisingly she made something of a point of putting it on the fridge with the others.

Anyway, the vouchers were a very generous set of gifts, and they have given us a running start at the local eateries.

Our first voucher-fueled outing was to the Mimosa Winery restaurant, which is down the road a bit. About 15 minutes drive. (We now live in a spread-out world where distance is measured in driving times rather than in walking times.)

We dragged our friends Zena and Peter along for this outing. They are locals now, refugees from Canberra, and have been our guides to living on the south coast. We stayed with them when we first started looking for somewhere to park our escape pod, and we fell in love with their local area.

Our visit to Mimosa Winery was on a perfect Sunday. The way you always imagine autumn weather: blue skies, warm, and no wind.

The restaurant is perched on a hill overlooking vineyards and surrounded by artfully backlit coastal forest. You enter the restaurant from a courtyard on the high side (excellent accessibility), and proceed through to a large deck over looking the vineyards.

Now Peter is a man of strong opinions and an Irish complexion, so he was initially wary of the table we were offered on the deck. However, after a bit of umbrella heaving we settled ourselves down at the newly shaded table and began the nattering. This largely consisted of valuable advice on how to survive life on the Far South Coast.

Where did you get your firewood from? Oh him, he’s all right, but there’s this bloke in Quaama that will do you a truckload for the same price. Fresh fish? There’s this place down a back street in Narooma. Doesn’t look like much, but it’s bloody good value. Jam? If you’re not making it yourselves, the 777 supermarket in Bermi have all those Eastern European brands. (These are what our family has lovingly referred to as Chernobyl Jam since that unfortunate incident with the radioactive cloud.)

It took the arrival of the waitress to bring our attention back to matters of immediate consumption. That was when the irresistible force of Strop’s desire for a glass of Rosé met the immovable object of Peter’s disdain for pink wine.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

His objection seemed to be based on the fact that Rosé is an abomination, neither red nor white, and definitely not complex enough. Zena I and felt compelled to maintain our respective party loyalties, so a demarcation was established down the middle of the table with Shiraz on one side and Rosé on the other.

For entrée we split down the middle again. Szechuan squid vs Porkbelly, but this time Zena and I had our money on the squid. Unfortunately porkbelly was the clear winner, even though the squid held its end up gamely.

Zena and I again teamed up for the mains, opting for the fish of the day – Blue-eyed cod – while Peter went for confit duck breast, and Strop went for local mussels. Zena thought her cod was a bit overdone so the event ended up a tie between the duck and the mussels. Both of which were excellent.

There were only three competitors in the dessert round, Strop having decided to rest on her laurels. Zena and Peter with their chocolate mousses in martini glasses vs my plucky little passionfruit semifreddo. Luckily for me the semifreddo kicked it out of the park. It was strong and clear and very passionfruity. A real zinger.

The afternoon, and Mimosa Winery, proved to be worthy of the generosity of our friends and family. It was also heartening to see the restaurant relatively busy. It wasn’t full by any means, but there were plenty of punters willing to make the drive and enjoy a terrific lunch.

So thanks be to the voucher givers. You know who you are.

The transition from Inner West to Far South

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Hello there.

It’s been a while I know, but a lot has happened. Let me tell you all about it.

Some of you will have gathered that we have moved our base of operations. Having been close to everything for a long time, we thought we would have a try at being far from things. Far, far away from things in fact.

As all places are defined by their proximity to the birthplace of our nation, we have moved from the warm and noisy embrace of the Inner West, all the way to the startlingly beautiful Far South Coast. Here, under the ever-changing gaze of Mother Gulaga (look it up) we will embrace small town life, get to know the sea mammals, and constantly re-fill the bird baths. (Wattle birds obviously know nothing about water conservation.)

It has been a big change for us, but an exciting one.

We have been pondering what this move will mean for the Quest. The Far South Coast is definitely not King Street. Indeed, in our hometown of Bermagui, the real challenge for the Quest would not be to dine at every eatery, but to do them all in one day. Perhaps that can be a challenge we will put to visitors.

Another option we considered was a survey of the bacon-and-egg rolls of the region, but suspect this might not be as interesting for everyone else as it would be for me. (However, if you are down this way and fancy a lovely breakfast roll, check out the Blue Heron Cafe in Moruya. Highly recommended.)

So without having any fancy scaffolding to prop up a new Quest, I suspect that we will just check out the local offerings, as and when the opportunity arises.

So here we go, starting with a classy Italian restaurant called Il Passagio, which I gather means passage but can also mean passing, crossing or transition. All of which are particularly appropriate to our current condition.

We dined at Il Passagio at the end of Easter, on the last official night of our extended house-warming event, which saw us accommodating 15 wayfarers. Friends and family from near and far joined us for a chaotic, but fun-filled few days. By the last Friday of the holiday everyone had gone home except for the Stropolina, so we took the opportunity for a night out. The good thing about living in town is that, like Camperdown, it is easy to walk anywhere you might want to go. In this case it was across town to the Fisherman’s Wharf, where we stopped first at the Horse and Camel Wine Bar to get ourselves in the mood. After a momentary confusion during which we found ourselves perusing the ‘expensive wines list’ we were directed to the row of bottles on the bar, which were better suited to our modest whistle-wetting needs. We enjoyed their Rosé and Shiraz, but the Stropolina seems to have taken against Temperanillo, claiming it tastes like compost. Sometimes I despair of the young people.

It is interesting in getting to know a new town, to see who drinks where. We noted that the demographic supporting the wine bar seemed distinct from the one at the pub. Even though the wine bar is located at the Fisherman’s Wharf, most of the clientele didn’t look like they had much to do with fish until it was lined up beside a pile of chips.

Our fun evening was somewhat tempered by a sobering phone call from my father’s doctor. Another round of drinks was required to buffer this reminder that even cutting edge therapies have their limits. So we drank to Dad. And Mum, and all the others who have reached their limits over recent years.

Then we moved next door and proceeded to test the limits of our belts. Italian food will do that.

Wapengo oysters to start. These creamy little puddles of seaside essence were hastily slurped out of their shells. Next was an excellent potato, rosemary and anchovy pizza. It was simple and crisp, with clean strong flavours. After the pizza we decided to take a run at all the pastas. The purity of our ambition was somewhat tempered at the last minute when Strop decided we needed to tick the vegetable box too. So she threw a salad into the mix.

My gnocchi was a knock out, and the prawn linguini and spaghetti hardly got a chance to cool down. The salad featured apple, pancetta and a soft cheese I had never heard of called burrata, and it didn’t last long either.

For dessert I went with the specials board: orange and thyme ice cream. And yes, it was as good as it sounds. Stropolina opted for the old favourite, Tiramisu while Strop went for something with meringue and marscaponi – washed down with a glass of Limincello. By this time I was worried about the tightness of my belt, and conscious that the walk home was up hill, so I abstained.

It was a lovely evening and a fitting first outing on the Bermie leg of this blog.

In doing what we laughingly call research here, I discovered on the Il Passagio website, that they are advertising the restaurant for sale. It seems such a pity, but it is a very familiar situation given our experience with the restaurant churn on King Street. We will just have to use it as an excuse to go back again as soon as possible.

If any of you are wondering where the next John Lawrence book is up to, never fear, I haven’t left him in a shallow grave beside the Princes Highway. The manuscript for book 3 is here in a pile beside me, waiting for a decision on whether it requires the merciful attentions of a scalpel or an axe. Or possibly a garden fork.

So as the wood smoke mingles with the salt spray, and the cat yowls to be fed, it is time to say farewell from the far, far south coast. Until next time.