Duck

Mimosa Winery – Voucher system part 1: The Vouchsafe

June 2, 2017 by andyadmin Leave a Comment

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.

Bauhaus West and Kafenes via a hipster parallel universe

May 28, 2016 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

Last night someone served me a beer in a jar. It even had a picture of a hipster on the side, just in case you missed the joke. This cannot be allowed to stand. This is just taking irony too far. I’m looking at you Batch Brewing.

However, this assault on my drinking standards may have been just the impetus I needed to get me blogging. I have been bogged down last few weeks, working hard on the new book. Working with my editor and the beta readers, trying to get past fourth draft and into the fifth. It’s coming along now, I hope, having lost a few thousand words from what turned out to be a fairly flabby middle. (I could do with a bit of that myself, just have to find my own personal metabolic delete button). I’m currently editing in hardcopy which makes it all seem more substantial and as if I’m actually getting somewhere. It also makes it easier to get a sense of the thing as a whole, not just a series of scenes. The book will be called Tunnel Vision, and it will probably be finished sometime in September. Fingers crossed. It even has a cover ready to go which I’ll be flashing around like a mad thing at some point in the future.

So anyway, last night Strop and I hit Enmore Road without much hope or inspiration, as we are discovering that Enmore Road is mostly doldrums with a few islands of brilliance. We were meeting up for a drink after work and I’d suggested Bauhaus West, mainly because I had heard good things about it and I didn’t feel like another noisy Friday-night pub. We went to Bauhaus for a drink but ended up staying for a meal once we had a look at the menu. It looked a lot better than a lot of the other offerings nearby. Bauhaus W is somewhere between a bar and a restaurant. It has high stools like a bar, but with restaurant sensibilities.

We started out with a pair of excellent whiskey sours, followed by a Pinot Noir and a very nice beer, spoiled only by its container, which was straight out of some hipster marketing parallel universe.

Deep breath. Move on.

Anyway the menu sounded good, so we ordered a duck confit, some Chinese-y beef ribs, a side salad (not on the menu but happily provided), and chips. The food was very good, but very salty. Especially the ribs. On a Deb rating they would have been off the scale. When we mentioned this to the waiter, he came back with a message from the chef saying that he hoped it hadn’t spoiled our meal, but that we had managed to order the two saltiest dishes on the menu.

The atmosphere at Bauhaus was refreshing, good music, not too loud for us old people, and tables with views out to the street. Not much wrong there. It wasn’t cheap (3 Wendys) but I’d go back for the whiskey sours and the duck confit.

In terms of accessibility at Bauhaus W – okay as long as you don’t want to go to the loo. 1 Susan.

Our progress along Enmore Road has been fairly haphazard, and it will probably continue to be as we have given ourselves a couple of new rules. We will not eat at an empty restaurant, and, we reserve the right to avoid places we don’t like the look of. Which basically means we have no structure at all. Just like everyone else. It also means that our quest has lost any heroic pretence, which was basically all it had going for it.

Oh well.

A couple of weeks ago we had a lovely night out at Kafenes, which is a bit of an institution on Enmore Road. We had been there a long time ago to celebrate a birthday with Wendy, but I couldn’t remember much about it other than the generally warm vibe of a good night out. This is what Kafenes is excels at.

On our recent visit, we dined with Roy, Jill, John and Pauline, not to celebrate anything in particular other than just that we have known each other for a very long time. And that we were all available.

Jill had just had a procedure on her eyes and was successfully carrying off the nighttime sunglass look. It is a look usually favoured by rock stars, but Jill was managing to draw a few glances from people obviously wondering if she was part of the late show at the Enmore Theatre.

It is easy to see why Kafenes is is always full. The food is great, the service is warm and the whole place is completely free of irony. The menu features plenty of grilled protein and lots of hearty oven dishes. It is welcoming and homey in the most excellent of ways. We started out with all the dips and lots of bread. And quite a few wines. I seemed to have been left in charge of the pouring, not a role I am comfortable with, and I may have overcompensated. There was quite a bit of chat too. Then the mains arrived. When Kafenes says main they mean it, the serves are generous. There is still a little Greek doggy bag in our freezer, waiting to be thawed one night when cooking inspiration fails to strike.

I didn’t notice any salt, so I guess that’s 5 Debs. Money seemed okay so I’m going to say 4 Wendys. And I didn’t go to the loo so I can’t comment on that aspect of accessibility so let’s say 3 Susans.

Afterwards we stepped up the road to Cow and Moon for a gelato hit. These days we seem to be spoiled for choice, sharing our after-dinner gelato business between Cow and Moon, Gelato Blue, and Hakiki. And I don’t really have a favourite amongst that lot.

273 Bangkok Bites – fast and furious Thai for the movies

August 23, 2015 by Andrew Christie 5 Comments

Well, that didn’t take long.

This is our first go at repainting the bridge and it’s a great chance to check out the changing face of King Street. We haven’t been idle during our short hiatus. We made a pilgrimage back to where it all started at Number 6 where we had lovely quiet meal at Izote. We’ve also checked out Luyu &Yum Yum, which definitely deserves further investigation and a post of its own – if only for the chance to have another of their wonderful whisky sours. Excursions up and down the coast have revealed quite a few culinary highlights including Vietnamese at Newcastle with Camilla and Tim, burgers and retro rock at Catherine Hill Bay pub, home cooked chicken-in-milk courtesy of Peter and Zena down in the banjo picking hills of Cobargo, and a Quarterdeck breakfast on the inlet at Narooma with Lisa and Greg. So much food, so little time. Oh well, we can only eat what is put in front of us, I suppose.

You know you're on the south coast when... — You know you’re on the south coast when…

Bangkok Bites is a relative newcomer to the King Street midlands, replacing the unlamented Simply Noodles. Whereas its predecessor was for a long time, grey and empty, Bangkok Bites is all colour and movement with plenty of saliva inducing smells coming from the kitchen. The decor and the set up is reminiscent of the original Chat Thai, although there aren’t people queueing outside to get in. Not yet anyway. The new restaurant is located in a prime position, close to the cinema and promotes itself as bringing a taste of Bangkok street food to King Street. They certainly have the staff to provide quick turnarounds. Strop counted six in the kitchen and four on the floor. Vroom.

As we were shown to our seats, it was clear that they had squeezed as many tables as possible into the space available – I had to step into the very busy corridor to remove my jacket, holding up the progress of three waitresses. As one poured us glasses of water she told us that the establishment is cash only and BYO. Important to establish the ground rules up front. Luckily we had come prepared with folding stuff fresh from the ATM and a nice little bottle of pinot grigio. The other clientele were all couples of various denominations, presumably lots of date nights going on. It’s not really the place for big group tables, Thai Pothong has that scene pretty much sown up anyway. The colour scheme features lots of red and yellow, with occasional bursts of flames from the kitchen.

The menu is a comprehensive full-colour large-format booklet, full of graphic stylings that match the graffiti mural along the main wall of the restaurant. I went straight to number 37 which turned out to be a noodle dish, oddly called Buddy Bites Noodles. I didn’t read any further, I was just glad not to have to count my way through the menu. Strop fancied Kung Fu Fritters because she is a sucker for corn fritters as should be clear by now. We also continued our duck salad tradition.

The young couple at the table next to us were drinking coke in fake jam jars (handles? can we please end this madness), and having a deep and meaningful discussion about Game of Thrones, how the women have the best storylines (hmm possibly… except for the short guy), and how someone was “not long for this world,” however it was unclear just which world they were referring to. That’s how close the tables are.

Our food arrived quickly and the servings were large. Very large. Number 37 was first, piled high with noodles and dotted with slices of chicken and beef (oh, so that’s the buddy reference, I should have read the fine print). The flavours were clean and fresh but a bit sweet for me – maybe due to the chilli jam marinade used on the chicken. The duck salad was daunting too, basically a roast duck breast, sliced thickly and laid out on a bed of lettuce. On further investigations there were lots of salad bits and dressing hidden under the duck. And it tasted great, just a slightly deconstructed take on salad. Plenty of luscious duck, looking as if it was still waiting for a formal introduction to the onion and coriander. The fritters were tasty and crunchy, and came with big wedges of fried tofu. I ate them because they were crunchy but I still don’t see the point of tofu.

Bangkok Bites is a hectic and tasty experience. The staff are efficient and attentive despite occasionally sprinting from one end of the restaurant to the other. It’s a great place for a pre or post movie meal, and I’m sure it will give the Italian Bowl a run for its money.

We enjoyed the food, but were defeated by its sheer volume, and had to request a takeaway container to take the excess home. I’m looking forward to those leftovers.

Our journey home was slightly delayed when Strop was taken by the window display next door at Hum. She was taking photos of The Killing DVD box set because she wanted to copy the knitting pattern. Very Strop.

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.

543 Doytao Thai – Where 37 = 7.1

May 3, 2015 by Andrew Christie 4 Comments

Here we are at another Thai place. Just like Sydney’s buses, they seem to travel in packs.

Doytao Thai is one of the few restaurants in this part of the King Street strip that always seems to be busy. It certainly was on the night we visited. The noise levels made conversation difficult at times, especially for those of us a bit older and harder of hearing. Which was most of us.

Doytao is a bit of a local institution, having been around for a while, and it must be successful, as it has spawned a Thai food empire. There are eight Doytao restaurants stretching from Boronia Park to Sutherland. They must be doing something right.

The Newtown version occupies a broad double frontage and has big louvred windows at the front. There are a lot of generously sized timber tables that offer a lot of room for a dining couple, however when they are arranged, say for a group of five or six, the poor people sitting in the middle have to straddle the joint between the tables as well as having to accommodate both table legs between their knees.

We were joined by some of Strop’s crafting mates for the evening: Cecilie and Susan. Susan’s husband, Ed, and I were just along for the ride really – our challenge was to try to steer the conversation away from dangerous and contentious subjects like crocheting or knitting, towards safer calmer conversational waters. I was imagining we’d be pushing topics like politics or religion, but Ed opted to take things in a deeply personal and affecting direction, into the kind of territory that is more common in royal commissions and the media, than it is in Thai restaurants. His story of his primary school days at a Melbourne Catholic school shocked all of us – except perhaps Susan. Ed is a proper writer (the type who do research and deal in facts) so his story may well end in a book. However hard it may have been for Ed to talk about, he did keep the conversation away from knitting and crochet. For a while anyway.

Eventually we moved on to the discussion of food. This led to Cecilie admitting that she now eats things. I was confused by this, but it was apparently a reference to the fact that Cecilie used to be something of a ‘fussy eater’. Although now the term nowadays is probably wuss. Or perhaps vegan. Her emergence into the world of actual food has been curated by her new boyfriend, who is by way of being a Slovak. They know a thing or two about food, your Eastern Europeans, especially meat, and especially pig meat. And other pig bits. This revelation led to a bit of reminiscing by all of us about dead pigs we have known, but that line of conversation came to an abrupt end when Ed told the story of visiting a friend’s house when he was a child and being confronted by dead pig in the bath. Being bled out apparently. It’s a wonder he’s so normal really.

The menus at Doytao are numbered, but not in a way that is useful for establishing the identity of number 37. It’s numbered by section – 2.3 or 6.8, that kind of thing – so we had to resort to old fashioned counting. 37 turned out to be 7.1 – BBQ Pork, which was subsequently confirmed by Susan’s recount. That was me sorted, time to work out what everyone else was eating. I put a veto on fish cakes after last week’s revelation on their pointlessness (although Susan assured me that her homemade versions were delectable – I’m waiting for an invitation). Cecilie decided to stick with tradition and go for Pad Thai in the vegetarian format and Susan was keen on the Roasted Duck Salad. Strop and Ed wanted to try a steamed fish. This was called Exotic Fish – a whole snapper with Tasty Sauce, and minced chicken, and ginger, and vegetables.

All the women had bought a bottle of wine which was good because the men had other things to think about. I did manage to drink a bit of all of three bottles: the prosecco, the riesling and the sav blanc. I think the riesling was the winner out of that lot. And probably me.

There weren’t really any standouts in the dishes we ordered. I enjoyed the BBQ Pork and the Pad Thai, although Susan reckoned it wasn’t as good as the Sailor’s Thai version. I don’t think any of us were really surprised by that revelation. The duck salad seemed a bit on the sour side to me, but there was plenty of duck. The fish was a bit disappointing – or rather the Tasty Sauce. The fish itself was nice but it was overpowered by a lot of glutinous sauce.

Despite having plenty of staff, the service at Doytao Thai was far from attentive. Except for water. The water guy was great, always coming up with a fresh bottle just when you needed it. Pretty much everything else we had to ask for. This left us with plenty of uninterrupted time for chattering, but it would have been nice to have been asked if we were ready to order, or to have the plates cleared away in one go rather than having half of them waiting for another twenty minutes, or to have been asked if we wanted dessert. We didn’t, but that’s not the point.

534 Thai Hot Pepper – Good company is the clear winner

April 25, 2015 by Andrew Christie 1 Comment

Thai time again. At last, it’s been so long that I had nearly forgotten about Number 37. The last Thai restaurant was Newtown Thai II Express, all the way back at the station.

Tonight we are joined by The Julies who are newcomers to the quest. So we will treat them gently. Mostly. When I arrived (last of course, stopped for a quick beer and to finish reading Bring Up the Bodies), the first thing I noticed about Thai Hot Pepper was the noise. The traffic is incredibly noisy when buses or trucks start up from the traffic lights just outside. It took me two goes to say hello to everyone because it was so loud. Every time I opened my mouth another bus went past. I wonder if the noise is amplified by the wedge-shaped building, jammed into the corner of King and Angel Streets. The restaurant has a long glass front to King St. which also helps in capturing every rumble and vibration, but it does make it easy to watch the police cars sirening their way up and down, busily keeping the peace.

With hellos finally said and arses settled on seats we got down to some serious nattering. It was hectic, the conversation became so frenzied that we kept having to send the waitress away because we still hadn’t managed to look at the menu. My gender disadvantage became obvious early on as the topics lurched outside my comfort zone and into the dangerous territory of the mechanics of breast surgery and child birth. I was on safer ground when the chat veered towards camper vans although there too, I have to admit, my knowledge is mostly theoretical.

When the waitress turned up for the third time we decided we had better take the menu seriously. The first thing was to find out what Number 37 was. Unsurprisingly, it fell within the Stir Fry section – Cashew Nuts in this case, with your choice of chicken pork or beef. We went chicken.

One of The Julies was keen on a mussoman curry as it is relatively mild and she has a physical reaction to chilli. Coughing in her case. My own physical reaction to chilli is hiccuping. I was looking forward to a duet, but nothing we ordered was hot enough to set us off. There are two types of mussoman available – the traditional one with beef and a new one on us: lamb shank mussoman. We had to try that.

The other one of The Julies liked the sound of the panang curry (we went pork for that one) and Strop and I are always suckers for a roasted duck salad. For starters we stuck with tradition: spring rolls, curry puffs, and fish cakes.

Now, I have to admit that in doing my due diligence research (a bit late as it turns out – didn’t take enough notes did I) I realise that we were so busy discussing women’s health issues that we missed the main feature of Thai Hot Pepper. Their BBQ. That’s their speciality apparently, served with Special Sauce. And I’m quite fond of a special sauce. We really are going to have to lift our game on the research front, and preferably before we inflict ourselves on the next restaurant.

Anyway, the entrees were quick to arrive and the curry puffs were the clear winners – somehow managing to be both fluffy and crisp at the same time. And tasty too. The spring rolls were fresh and crunchy but the fishcakes were disappointing. Sometime I’m going to have to remind myself just why it is we keep ordering them.

Somewhere in-between courses one of The Julies wanted to know if there was going to be a sequel to Left Luggage, and if so, why didn’t I hurry up. Okay, of course, yes, just give me a minute, I thought to myself, I’m just in the middle of rewriting it because I decided to change the main character, and that means changing the POV (point of view) in most of the scenes, and I also had the brilliant idea of changing the gender of one of the villains. So more rewriting. These things take time and involve quite a few panic attacks along the way. But don’t worry, it won’t be long. Probably only another seven drafts to go. Oh and I’m about 30,000 words short of a novel, so… you know, I’m sure it’ll be okay. Eventually.

The duck salad was my favourite of the mains. Succulent pieces of duck and a nicely balanced salad. The panang curry was good too – creamy and aromatic. The cashew nut and chicken stir fry was strangely sweet, and the mussoman with lamb shank was a bit disappointing too. The flavours of the curry were good but the lamb shank wasn’t nearly tender enough.

We had a great night out. The food wasn’t brilliant, but it was good enough, and there wasn’t much left behind. The waitress had to make two attempts to clear the dishes away. I was still picking.

The thing about the quest is that it is like any night out: the quality of the company is far more important than the quality of the venue. Thai Hot Pepper is a simple local Thai restaurant with good service and reasonable food.