local

Lady Hampshire – welcome back to the local

December 22, 2016 by andyadmin Leave a Comment

After a lengthy closure, our local pub, The Hampshire, has reopened with a gender re-assignment, as the Lady Hampshire. The closure was long and unexplained, although there were mutterings about fire regulations whenever the locals gathered to gossip. On a couple of occasions I did a bit of lazy googling to see if there was any mention of what was in store for the pub, but never found anything. Over the years we have had a bit of a rocky relationship with our local. When we first arrived, in the ‘hood, the Hampy was a venerably run down but functional local institution. It was good for a quiet beer, but the dining room was always plagued by the sickly sweet smell of urinal cakes wafting out of the Mens every time the door opened. It was enough to put you off your parmy.

Then someone got the idea of putting someone with a bit of nous and vision in charge of the kitchen. For one shining year we had a local pub that was still run down and smelly, but which served wonderful food. Proper food too, not just schnittys and burgers. The chef, Tony, was the real deal. The main menu changed according to the markets and the seasons, but there were regular favourites. A standout was a dessert whose name escapes me, but which lay hidden within a cloud of spun sugar. And Camperdown Fries: crisp roasted smashed spuds. Served with everything, they were Tony’s version of chips.

But it didn’t last. Tony left. We never found out where he went to, presumably somewhere he didn’t have to work seven days a week. Then the pub was sold. New owners took over and in the kitchen, the faces changed regularly. With each change the menu slumped further into mediocrity. Saggy and uncomfortable lounges started to creep in from the back lane, as the new managers tried for a grunge vibe. A lone pinball machine appeared. Never a good sign. We still went along occasionally. Tuesday night trivia was fun for a while, till the quizmaster had a falling out with the management.

Then we stopped going altogether, so it was a while before we noticed that the Hampy had stopped opening. For nearly two years the only sign of life was the growth of an increasingly dusty pile of unopened mail just inside the door of the main bar.

Then last month, signs of activity. Open doors giving glimpses of ladders propped against walls, and extension cords snaking across carpets. Oh ho, I thought. Someone is going to give the Hampy the renovation it needs.

Not quite. More of a spit and polish, with a spray of graffiti on the side.

Within a week there was a some new Lady Hampshire signage up and the doors were open. There wasn’t any fanfare, just a chalkboard scrawled with “Yes We Are Open”. And of course a few lights on.

I dropped in for a quick one on what might have been the first afternoon, using the flimsy excuse that I needed somewhere quiet to read the last piece of work from my writing group before our meeting.

After such a long closure I had been hoping for some change, but the main changes were new carpets and a bunch of murals. The only structural change is the closure of one of the doors to the men’s toilet, which at least means that there is less of the urinal cake smell.

One of the major pluses of the new Lady is having Wayward Brewing’s excellently drinkable Camperdown Ale on tap. But this has to be balance by a front bar that is dominated by enormous screens, all showing competing sports channels. On that first visit, in the middle of the afternoon, the front bar was empty, probably because of the loud and unnecessary commentary accompanying a US college basketball game.

The dining room has been spruced up a bit with murals everywhere, and all the fashionably uncomfortable lounge furniture has gone. It was probably an requirement for OHS complience. Out the back nothing relieves the domestic landscape tragedy that has always been the courtyard / smoking area.

The kitchen follows the current trend towards Americana. There are tacos, and fried chicken, and a bunch of other stuff that I haven’t tried yet. So far I have had trouble getting past the taco section of the menu. Two for ten bucks – it is too good a deal for me to overlook. My favourites so far are barramundi (fresh, clean flavours) and beef brisket (smokey, melt-in-the-mouthness). Obviously there is going to have to be a lot more research done. A lot more, just as soon as I’ve made sure about the tacos. The American food trend is marked by a proliferation of those red plastic baskets, which seem to be some kind of symbol of authenticity. Still I suppose they are step up from serving food on wonky chopping boards.

The side passage that connects Parramatta Road to the courtyard, and is potentially the Lady Hampshire’s most interesting space, has now been embellished with an extremely long mural featuring enough caricatures of Australian television personalities to populate anyone’s nightmares. It draws a lot of attention from the punters, trying to name all the personalities, which is something I suppose. The young people seem to like it.

So go and check out the Lady Hampshire. The food is good. Really good, so far. I’ll be going back, I plan to work my way through the whole menu. On our last visit Strop and I tried the dessert. It’s no spun sugar extravaganza but the deep-fried Golden Gaytime is exactly as advertised and does not disappoint.

Camperdown is having a bit of a renaissance at the moment with The Commons, Wayward Brewing, and now the Lady. And about time too.

Wayward Brewing and a first look at Camperdown Commons

July 7, 2016 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

The Wayward brewery is a relatively new arrival in our neck of the woods. It is hidden away, down a side street in a light industrial part of Camperdown, so it could have been here for a while. It is one of those places that you have to know about to know about. Strop and I ventured across Pyrmont Bridge Road to check it out on a cold winters night. It wasn’t our first visit to Wayward, that had been the week before, when we braved the tail end of an East Coast low to have a drink at our new local with Paul, Ashley, Ned and Mark. It was very jolly inside, with live music, a convivial crowd and quite a lot of beers were drunk. Especially by Strop.

Wayward is open four nights a week as a bar, but I assume that the brewery part is going full-time. The arrival experience a takes you down a broad ramp into a cavernous space with a bar on one side, a brewery round the corner, and a couple of smaller rooms at the back, that look a bit like Hitler’s Bunker if he had been around in the 1970s, or maybe somewhere in Falujah.

Reassuringly, the bar staff are all heavily tattooed and bearded, so at least we know we’re still in the inner west. They have a few wines for sale, but the main deal at Wayward is definitely beer. There is a row of numbered beer taps along the wall behind the bar, and above them a beer menu. There are a lot on offer, and the descriptions are pretty fruity. But in a good way – lots of pineapple, raspberry and passionfruit mentions.

The night Strop and I went on our own, the place was packed, mainly with thirty-something men. It turned out that the brewery was running tours, and most of the punters had turned up to be shown around and to try the range no doubt. Strop and I found a free table at the back, in one of the concrete bunkers. These things are so secure that no phone signals can get through, which might explain why there were some spare tables in there. The bunkers are furnished somewhat eccentrically, and feature a wide range of furniture. The chairs were very comfortable in a way that only the 1970s managed, although at the cost of aesthetics.

My first choice beer, the Camperdown (nominative determinism rule), wasn’t available, so Strop bought me an Otis, presumably named after the lifts. She chose the appropriately named Charmer for herself, which was strong and chocolatey. My Otis on the other hand had distinct passionfruit tones, which was pleasantly weird.

In the laneway outside Wayward there was a tent set up, and a sign promising Italian food. We went the whole hog and ordered ragu in focaccia, arancini, and polenta chips. It was all good but the ragu was a standout, especially on a cold and rainy night. Very warming. El yummo.

You can also get pizza ordered in from one from of the local pizza joints. Unfortunately, it isn’t one of the local pizza joints that we favour with our custom, but I will be more than happy if the guy in the tent keeps serving up the ragu.

Another new arrival in our area is Camperdown Commons. This is what has become of the old Camperdown Bowling Club. Nowadays it is a restaurant slash urban farm. I think I would have rather kept the bowlo but it had an unfortunate habit of going broke, and, frankly, serving crap food. The two facts may be related.

The new venture has high ideals, grows its own kale, has a chook yard, even serves Wayward ales, but we are yet to see if it walks the walk. There is a fair amount of style over substance going on. It is cleverly styled with lighting so subtle that Strop had to pull out the torch on her phone to read the menu. The furniture is very nice, slightly rustic, and wooden, and there are big tubs of firewood lying around as well. I kept looking but I couldn’t find a fireplace anywhere. Maybe they’re going to do wood-fired pizza.

During the schmoozing-of-the-neighbours stage of development, there was a lot of talk about this being a local joint for local people. A quick glance at the price list suggests that it is the sort of local you are probably going to save for the odd special occasion. Strop and I dropped in for a quick meal on its first weekend. The bar food was okay, but nothing to write home about.

Camperdown Commons (surely a name devised by a committee) promotes its locally-sourced everything, and ethical proteins etc, but there are nowhere near enough tattoos for my liking. Given it’s size, it is going to have to drag a lot of punters through the door. We shall see. I hope it is a success, especially after all the work they have done on the site. But unless they review the prices I will keep heading across Pyrmont Bridge Road for my Wayward beers and the ragu from the tent.

523 Pastizzi Café – The Italian local we wish was a bit closer to home

March 29, 2015 by Andrew Christie 4 Comments

Pastizzi. They make a mess sure, dropping crumbs everywhere, but they’re crunchy, tasty and obviously really good for you. Basically, they’re just Italian sausage rolls. With more flavours maybe.

Pastizzi Café, as its name implies, has made a speciality of them, and does a hectic take-out trade, selling a wide variety, including sweet ones as well as savoury. But the café is also a restaurant, a very busy one, as I found out when I arrived at 7pm on a Friday night. As I approached, I thought I was in luck. There were two empty tables out the front, but as I got closer it became apparent that the empty tables were occupied by nasty little Reserved signs. Inside the café, all the tables along the side of the narrow room were full. When I asked one of the busy looking waitresses if they had any tables, she said “Sure,” and disappeared so quickly towards the back of the restaurant that I nearly had to run after her. She went out a door at the back, and by the time I got there, I was just in time to catch a glimpse of her disappearing again at the other end of a very narrow passageway. It was so tight that my shoulder accidentally bumped the fence, which was immediately followed by a crash and some muttered swearing. It seems I had upset the neighbours, or at least something that had been balancing on the fence. When I finally caught up with the waitress she was standing beside an empty table in a makeshift dining area that had been created by putting a roof over the backyard. There were a couple of other occupied tables, and at least it was close to the toilets. When this Speedy Gonzales of waitressing had set me up with a menu, cutlery, and napkins, she put some music on and disappeared again. The music was a disco version of Sweet Child of Mine, which she must have like because she had it turned up really loud. When Strop arrived we could hardly hear each other until a second waitress, this one with tattooed legs, turned it down again.

The menu Pastizzi Café is fairly simple and very Italian as you would expect. Lots of fresh pasta options, some fish, chicken and beef. There were some specials too but we decided to stick with the basics. There is home made ravioli and, of course, pastizzi. Strop had the bright idea of topping and tailing the meal with pastizzi. So we ordered a couple of salmon, dill and ricotta pastizzi to start, figuring we’d have a couple of sweet ones for dessert. In between times, she ordered ravioli and a small salad, while I opted for chicken parmigiana. Having decided on the food Strop headed for the nearest bottlo for some wine and I looked at my phone. When she came back with a very welcome bottle of Pikes Clare Valley Riesling, she wrinkled her nose and muttered “I can smell dope.” Now this is a bit of a thing with Strop. She reckons she can smell people smoking dope nearly everywhere she goes, and especially in Newtown. There must be a lot of it about, either that or she has a very finely attuned set of nostrils because I can never smell it. These days I need to be actually handed a joint before I can smell it. When the waitress started pulling a strange face and mouthing something, which, after we gave her a series of bemused looks, turned out to be “Can you smell weed?” She had to whisper it because there were a couple of impressionable children at the next table. Strop was delighted to have her nostril’s accuracy confirmed, “Yes!” she exclaimed, “I think your neighbour is smoking dope.” It was at this point that it occurred to me that the thing I had knocked off the fence earlier, may have been their bong. It would account for the swearing.

Our salmon pastizzi were hot and crunch and tasty. They didn’t last long and were soon followed by the mains. Strop had opted for the entrée size spinach and ricotta ravioli, which was a smart move because the serves are generous. Her small salad was enormous, and my chicken was so big that there was only a bit of room at the edge of the plate for a splodge of mashed potato and a few vegetables. The ‘parmi’ was the best I have had in a long time. There was plenty of eggplant, the chicken was tender and moist, and the tomato sauce fresh, tasty, and abundant. Yum. The ravioli was good too, with a similarly tasty sauce.

Strop wasn’t able to finish the salad, so we decided to take it home, together with a couple of dessert type pastizzi – to have at home, or for breakfast in the morning. Either or.