coffee

Three Queens – Back before the beginning

November 8, 2015 by Andrew Christie 3 Comments

We first noticed Three Queens when we did a bit of a retrospective of the changing King Street scene. What used to be a closed up and unlamented pizza joint was reborn as a bright and airy café on the corner of King and Forbes Streets. Right next door to Izote Mexican, one of our old favourites. So when a breakfast outing was called for, Three Queens sprung to the top of our reQuest list.

The name of the café is apparently a reference to the three owners, two of whom started a café in Surry Hills called St Jude’s, that I have never heard of. So there you go: research done.

There is no actual big brekkie option at Three Queens, which immediately freed us from the usual café Rule. Strop decided to continue with her current fritter-esque fetish and chose the Potato and Lemon Thyme Hash Cakes. I decided on the Queen Plate, as this seemed likely to be the Three Queens’ signature dish and, therefore, equivalent to a big brekky. Also it came with poached egg and leg ham, which is a good basis for any breakfast. The juice choice was limited to orange, which is what I wanted anyway but I’m pretty sure Strop would have chosen something with ginger and dew siphoned from the hairy legs of Himalayan spiders, or some such exotic and trendy ingredient. She tends to keep up with such things, while I am busy watching TV shows about zombies. I think that is the secret to the success of our relationship; she gives me space to study techniques for killing the undead, and I don’t send her up. Anyway, the juice was sweet and cold, and deliciously refreshing.

The café is spacious and light, and refreshingly un-grungy, even with its polished concrete floor. There are big windows, and shelves with plants and carefully selected ‘random’ bric-a-brac. The windows are great to watch the passing parade on the footpath outside. At one point Strop exclaimed, “It’s really funny when people look like their dogs. Especially when they’re pugs.” People watching is our kind of spectator sport.

While not full, Three Queens did a steady trade in takeaway coffee, and seemed to be selling quite a lot of bacon and egg rolls, to hi-vis wearing tradies. There must be a construction site nearby. We had plenty of time to ponder such things as our food seemed to be taking quite a while to come, and a couple of other tables that had arrived after us had already been served. Normally we wouldn’t have noticed such things but, as I said, we had time on our hands. Happily though, the senior staff member on duty, who may have been one of the aforementioned Queens, noticed our wait, and apologised offering free coffees. Which was a really nice and considerate touch. Apparently they had a few new staff members, and a bit of on-the-job training was happening in the kitchen. The floor staff were very good, and very polite. Every thank you from us was greeted with a crisp you’re welcome in reply.

When our food did arrive it was worth the wait. Strop’s potato cakes were very good, and so was my Queen Plate. The poached egg was perfectly cooked, the ham tasty, and it came with an excellent eggplant pickle. The only let down was the labneh, which I have always thought was overrated.

We were having such a good time that we decided to have dessert with our complimentary coffee. Banana bread with ginger butter, it was as good as it sounds. The coffee was good and strong too, I’d have been happy to pay for it.

After breakfast we wandered back along King Street, checking out the ever-changing urban fabric of Newtown.

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.

549 The Gallaxy – not quite the cafe at the end of the Quest

May 17, 2015 by Andrew Christie 5 Comments

I’m sold. This place is great. Perfect eggs. Good coffee. The orange juice was freshly squeezed. A nice bright space with plenty of spare room on a sunny Saturday morning. Quiet. No canned music. What more could you want for your weekend breakfast? Service? Sure, just the right amount of care and attention dished up by friendly and efficient staff. Now if they could just spell their name right.

What else? Company. Our breakfast companion was Mark, a long standing PTB stalwart (Painting The Bridge is officially going all acronym now – it makes it look like everyone is saying the name so often that there would be a drain on national productivity if it wasn’t shortened).

We don’t see so much of Mark these days as he is currently dog-less and thus not a regular companion on the circuit around the park. So it was good to catch up. Good to talk about neighbourhood things like “Did you see what they’re doing to the bowling club?” and “What do you reckon your place is worth?” “That much? Really?” and “How’s your new house mate working out?” All that.

Mark drove us to The Gallaxy as the quest frontline has advanced so far that we almost need to take a packed lunch for the trip if we’re walking, and Mark had to rush off for a hairdressing appointment after breakfast. It was a perfect morning, sunshine, more parking spaces than we could reasonably use, and lots of smiling faces wandering about checking out the glory that is Newtown. There were a couple of people sitting outside when we arrived but plenty of room inside. We took a window table looking out onto the passing parade of pedestrians. There was a lot of traffic on the street and a lot of motorbikes. Presumably the sudden outbreak of sunshine had tempted a lot of two-wheelers out of their garages. Unfortunately, they all seemed to be Ducatis making slow but noisy progress through the King Street traffic jam. Oh well, at least they’ll be able to find a decent coffee.

We decided it must be Strop’s turn to take on the Big Breakfast, although she did side step the challenge slightly by going for the vegetarian option. I was half expecting her to order a side of bacon, but no, she played it straight. Mark and I went for the corn fritters. Having had my first choice gazzumped at our last breakfast outing, I decided that going with my gut instinct was more important to my gut than any concerns about doubling up.

The corn fritters were really good, coming with a kind of avocado and tomato salsa, and topped with bacon and a poached egg. Strop’s Big Vego Brekkie was full of tasty but unmeaty morsels, but she singled out the mushrooms for special note. They were perfectly cooked and had that buttery dry melty thing going on.

Our noshing and catching up was only interrupted by a phone call to Mark from his hairdresser wondering where the bloody hell he was. Oops. Got the time wrong didn’t he. You don’t want to do that too often with a Surry Hills hairdresser, you’ll get sacked.

Afterwards, now that he had nowhere special to be, Mark accompanied us to the button shop where Strop was on a mission to get some nice buttons for her new green winter coat. As Strop homed in on the heritage listed genuine vintage green buttons, Mark came over all helpful and fashion conscious, pulling out orange buttons, and yellow. “What about these? Or these? You want something that really pops. These red ones are nice.” It was fascinating, like watching a child skating out onto the thin ice of a lake, ignoring the cracks forming beneath them. As Strop’s smile got thinner, I realised it was time to distract Mark before he plunged into the icy waters. While Strop and the shopkeeper chatted about the historic origins of her chosen buttons, and how she should buy a few spares as they were irreplaceable, I gently pointed out to Mark that Strop rarely needs help choosing haberdashery. Basically, your button store, or indeed your sewing or knitting store, is a female domain, their equivalent of a hardware store, and really, we’re very rarely of any use in that environment.

420 Lou Jacks – Just a hint of Greekiness

December 3, 2014 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

It’s a café (well mostly), so it’s breakfast time again. Actually, it’s well past my breakfast time because we have already been off to the beach to get dumped by the shore break at Coogee, and stare in wonder at the enormous numbers of pink clad Nippers running up and down, and swimming all over the place. It’s good to know that there will be a new generation ready to rescue me should my old bones get into strife in the waves. Once we’d been home to wash all the sand out of our cossies, and walked up the hill (“It’s getting to be a long way now isn’t it?” “Yes. Yes, it is.”), we were really looking forward to all the goodness that a bought breakfast brings. And a coffee or two. Unfortunately, when we arrived the place was as full as a goog. We went for a wander for a while, hoping that a vacancy would arise while we checked out the street numbers of the upcoming quest candidates. It’s getting a bit tricky down this end of the street because the odds and evens are coming unstuck from their typical across-the-road relationship. The odds seem hell bent on tearing ahead and getting to St Peters a couple of blocks before the evens. This means of course that we are going to have to Pay Attention when deciding what’s up next. Strop was busy freaking out the owners of the Europe Grill by taking photos of their street number and standing outside making copious notes as they tried to get ready for the Sunday lunch trade. Luckily a couple of tables had become free at Lou Jacks so I was able to hustle her inside before there were any nasty scenes. Lou Jacks is fairly unpretentious with no particular theme to the décor. There is a hint of Greekiness in parts of the menu, and a couple of bottles of retsina lurking on the shelf behind the bar, but it’s very low-key. The vibe is pleasantly honest and straightforward. It’s just a café, with a bit of a courtyard out the back. I have no idea what the name means. I hope it is the names of the owners, but maybe it is their favourite bourbon. Who knows? The service is very efficient, we have a couple of coffee orders away before we have even had time to look at the menu. And the coffee is excellent. The menu is not one of those long ones, full of exotic middle-eastern, or south American meals, that seem to be in vogue at the moment. There is enough choice, but you don’t have to go flipping through pages and pages of exotic choices. I follow my gut (and the rules) and go for the Big Breakfast, while Strop chooses the Peasants Breakfast, which turns out to be a delicious omelette with potato, shallots and fetta – plus a side of bacon. The big breakfast lives up to it’s name with toasted Turkish bread, sausage, haloumi, mushrooms and tomatoes, to keep the eggs and bacon company. Yum. And a couple of orange juices. And two more coffees please. The crowd seemed to be mostly locals, getting their Sunday morning coffee and egg fixes. There were a lot of South’s tee shirts being worn – good to see that they’re maintaining the rage. One young man was waiting for a couple of takeaway coffees with a packet of bacon and a bottle of barbecue sauce in his hand, obviously planning his own version of a big breakfast when he got home. We were pretty full when we decided to move on. By that time the day was getting quite warm, and it was quite tempting to break up the long walk home with a cleansing ale at the Courty, but we resisted. No room.

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.

284 – Astino’s – We live in hope

March 26, 2014 by Andrew Christie 2 Comments

Strop was worried. “There’s never anyone in there anymore. It used to be popular, but now its nearly always empty.” She was right, for a long time now Astino’s has looked pretty empty whenever we’ve ambled past. It’s a cafe with a big room and large windows onto King Street, so it takes quite a few punters to make it look busy. When we first moved to the area it seemed to be popular, but not anymore.
So we arrived for breakfast without particularly high expectations. Our first surprise was that there were no tables outside. In my memory Astino’s always has tables outside, full of people sipping coffee and trying to converse over the noise of the traffic. Not today. But there is a blackboard outside. Specials. Smashed avacado on bruschetta. Poached eggs with stuffed hashbrowns(?), bacon and eggs on brioche. What’s going on? We were expecting bog ordinary brekkies again.
All of the customers are occupying the tables lining the windows onto the street, leaving the rest of the big room empty. Strop and I join this trend and squeeze onto a corner table at the front. It’s a beautiful sunny autumn morning, and King Street is its usual noisy, entertaining self. In light of the fact that Astino’s has menu items approaching the interesting on its shortish breakfast menu, I have decided to break the cafe suite rule and ignore whatever version of the big breakfast Astino’s do. Also, this is my second breakfast for the morning.

We start with a couple of coffees – which aren’t brilliant, it has to be said. Not awful but… this is Newtown, there is a lot of very good coffee around (although as we are finding, the best stuff is not actually on King Street). Our food arrives quickly which is good, and appropriate given that the place is not exactly heaving.
Strop’s smashed avacado is a very tasty mix with lots of coriander and red onion. My bacon and egg on brioche is exactly that, with a generous (possibly too generous) dollop of very nice tomato relish. Yum. By the time we have finished our food it becomes obvious that our juices are not going to come without some prompting.
The waitress is hand-over-mouth apologetic. “I forgot. I’m so sorry. Do you still want them?” Well, yes we do, that’s why we ordered them. They come quickly, with more apologies, and they are good. We are refreshed. We decide to forego a second coffee and leave on a orange-and-pineapple-juice-induced high note.
While I go outside to try to take a photograph without looking too uncool, Strop pays, which is only fair.
Strop has a habit that freaks me out: engaging people in conversation. She’ll talk to anyone and it worries the hell out of me. Luckily, I’m safely out on the street this time. While it is a risky habit she’s got, it does mean that she finds stuff out. This time she’s found out that Astino’s has just changed hands! And soon they will close for a week for a makeover!! We clap our hands with glee. Maybe new Astino’s will be wonderful.