meat

403 – 2042 Okay so it’s the postcode, but we already know we’re in Newtown

November 20, 2014 by Andrew Christie 4 Comments

2042 is an odd one – part cafe, part restaurant, part bar – and it calls itself a deli. The name is strange, not giving any clues as to what sort of experience to expect. It keeps unusual hours, and has more room than it really knows what to do with, especially compared to most of its cramped competition. Whenever we’ve walked past it has been fairly empty or closed. This is because it does most of its business in cafe mode during the day when we are not about, it is only open for dinner on Friday and Saturday nights. The generous open-to-the-street, double-wide room gives plenty of seating options but it does leave it looking sparsely populated even when there are quite a few punters enjoying themselves inside.

Our visit was at the end of a hot day, with the promise of a relieving southerly buster on the horizon. I was running late because I had to take home a large box of books that had been delivered to work.

Did I mention that I had written a book? You can get it on Amazon and lots of other places.

Getting off a crowded bus without bashing someone with a box of books while you wield your opal card is quite a feat let me tell you. By the time I had dropped the books at home and walked the dog, I had to hustle up the hill to Newtown. The frontline of Painting the Bridge is getting further and further away and the journey each week is getting a little bit longer. Of course being a Friday night near the end of the year, and at the end of a hot day, the streets were full of party-mode pedestrians, who didn’t seem to understand that letting me through was more important than their discussion about Darren’s new piercing or Louise’s new tatt. So I was just about ready for a beer when I arrived.

Strop was already there deep in conversation with the Stropolina. This was a pleasant surprise, I’d thought it was just the two of us tonight. But unfortunately the Stropolina was only making a brief stop, taking mercy on her aged parents, and was soon on her way to re-join the party-mode pedestrian throng.

Strop had chosen a table near the front with an excellent view of the street and of the supermarket opposite. 2042 has a much nicer vibe from the inside, especially when you have a beer in front of you. There were a few other people also enjoying the vibe but the room was far from full. During the evening we watched a lot of people walking back and forth on King Street, often stopping to check out the menu on display at the front, and mostly keeping on meandering. I felt like shouting “Come on in, you’ll like it.” But of course I didn’t.

It wasn’t until the Stropolina had departed and Strop had done her Facebook checking-in thing that we were able to seriously consider the menu. My first glimpse immediately set off my quinoa and kale alarms but I was soon placated by the presence of pork belly – there were at least two dishes featuring the underside of a pig, and one of them was cooked twice. Unfortunately due to the heat neither of us felt like a heavy meal, which was a pity because there were a lot of nice, but substantial-sounding things on offer.

To start we chose a cold meat platter, and because I couldn’t make up my mind between the Jamon Iberico (32 months), and the Jamon Serano (18 months), let alone the Shulz Smoked Wagyu, we decided to have All the Meats. And a bottle of your finest rose please. Yummo. The smoked beef won the battle of the meats, but the Jamons were very nice too, each in their own subtle hammy way. The board included very nice fat Sicilian olives and some pickles. The bread was pre-drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with a bit too much salt.

All the Meats turned out be Quite a Lot, so we decided to take it easy on the next round because we were in the mood for dessert.

We decided to share a salad and some polenta chips, which was probably an error as the salad included polenta too. Oh well. The blue cheese dipping sauce that came with the chips was very good, better than Bloodwood’s version I thought. More delicate. The salad was good too, but the dressing seemed a bit sweet.

For dessert I couldn’t go past the affogato with Frangelico, Strop had a disappointing creme brûlée that she thought was a bit rubbery, and came with an enormous pile of super crunchy praline. That she left some of the praline on her plate says that the pile was too large.

We left the restaurant just as the southerly buster finally hit, bringing a stinging blast of grit to pepper the backs of our legs as we walked home.

Having given the day time menu a bit of a glancing at, I am keen to go back and check out 2042’s breakfast offerings sometime, but it’s a long way to walk that early in the day.

357 – Amazon Steakhouse – Bacon with everything.

June 22, 2014 by Andrew Christie 3 Comments

When I finally got around to looking at the menu, the vague feeling that I had somehow veered into a cartoon was confirmed. Specifically a Simpson’s cartoon. Nearly every entree featured bacon as a headline ingredient. Homer would truly be at home in this part of Newtown. And not just because of the bacon, there is something cartoony about the decor as well, though I suppose it’s more The Phantom than Springfield. There is lots of bamboo, palms, and bits of thatched roofing, and even a jungle waterfall on the way to the loos. I half expected to find Devil and Hero waiting for me when I made my way back to our table.

I think I need to be clear here, all this is a good thing. The Amazon Steakhouse is fun – as long as you like grilled meat and curly fries. And bacon. And seriously, who doesn’t? (Actually given that we are in Newtown it is a wonder that Amazon is not under constant pickettage by some radical vegan-rights collective).

Tonight we are being joined by our nephew and erstwhile house-mate, Kiof, but blow me down, before he arrives via a tardy 370 bus, who do we bump into but Linda and Sue, of Buzzzbar notoriety, AND an old Canberra mate (“haven’t seen you for years!”), Fiona. They just happened to be (stalking) in the neighbourhood (I strongly suspect cocktails at Bloodwood) and thought, “that Painting The Bridge mob are probably around here somewhere” and so we were. Ha.

That's not a knife... — That’s not a knife…

Once I had got past ogling the decor, the main item of note at our table was the size of the knives. They are enormous, and they really set the tone. Even if you hadn’t been tipped off by the ‘Steakhouse’ moniker, the cutlery would clue you in that this is no place for vegetarians. The knives said loud and clear that this was a place that expected you to eat meat, and probably kill it yourself as well.

Beer. We ordered some of those. Strop did provide some token resistance to Kiof’s and my bacon-based entree strategy, but we wore her down, and ordered mushrooms and bacon, and curly fries and bacon. Homer would have been proud. For mains I opted for mixed life forms impaled on sharp bits of metal, while Strop and Kiof went for the rib cages of sheep and pigs. Yumm (I expect the vegetarians will have stopped reading by now).

When the entrees arrived they were huge (I expect there is some logical ecological link between entree size and the biodiversity of the decor). They were meal-sized so it was just as well we had only ordered two dishes to share, we didn’t want to gorge on too many bacon-based starters, and not leave room for the meaty things that were making the mouth-watering smells emanating from the kitchen. Despite their size, the entrees didn’t stand a chance against us. We didn’t even have to use the knives, we were saving those for the mains.

When the mains arrived it was clear that I had won. My food came on a gibbet. Dead things swinging gently in the breeze, with greasy bodily fluids dripping out onto a bed of fried onions. The rib cages couldn’t compete, even if they did come with delicious mash, or curly fries.

I think I had better stop this particular line of macabre wankery now – I’m starting to make myself feel queasy.

Amazon is is a fun place with a good atmosphere, and it seems to be fairly popular. It is starting to get a bit tatty around the edges, particularly the menus, but the food was good: simple and well cooked. The waiters know what they’re doing, they’re relaxed and professional, although the two of them were kept pretty busy later on as the place filled up largish group tables.

We decided that we were going to have to walk off our entrees and mains before we had any chance of fitting in some dessert. As we stepped onto the footpath we bumped straight into some other old Questees, Amanda and Michael, last seen way back at the Vanguard. They said they definitely weren’t stalking us, they just happened to be passing, on their way home after checking out a new Turkish joint, a little further on.

Sure, sure, tell it to someone that believes in coincidences, I thought as I ground my cigarette into the pavement and pulled up the collar on my raincoat. “C’mon kids, we’ve got a date with a gelato,” I said, as we walked off arm in arm, into the glare of headlights.

I’d like to leave you with a slightly different image of Newtown. The discount store window display is continually reaching new heights of bizarro – I give you:

Chihuahua riding scooter, with backpack, and bubble-wrapped bone.

Cheeky Czech – Number 124 – Full of Middle European Meaty Goodness

May 4, 2013 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

Friday night, time to hit King Street again. I have developed a bit of a habit of arriving early and going to a pub for a fortifying ale before embarking on the night’s eating. It is the only time I get around to watching Super Rugby and it reminds me how much I used to enjoy going to the Brumbies matches in Canberra. I don’t care about the competition at all but I do enjoy the rugby, mind you, the rugby played in the park across the road by the Shammies is more entertaining. In a ten minute sojourn around the park you are likely to see three or four tries scored. They’re not very big on defence.

Tonight we are crossing the road and leaving Asia briefly to visit Europe, and I am looking forward to it. Nothing against Asian food, but we’ve just had six in a row and I fancy a change of pace. We are joined tonight by some local chums. Mark has just returned from a holiday visit to Prague, Budapest and Berlin, so he is along to check for Authenticity – see how I resisted temptation there. Lorinda, Jay and Ned (he’s the one with the hat) are just along for the food and the fascinating company.

Cheeky Czech. The cute name – it brings to mind Mardi Gras revellers – and the yellow colour scheme suggests a franchise in the offing but I can find no evidence to back up this theory. Google Streetview tells me that the site was previously occupied by a wrap bar – whatever that is – called Giraffe, which solves the mystery of the large African themed light fitting. Cheeky Czech is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner although there doesn’t seem to be anything very Czech about the breakfast menu. The blackboards on the street and the walls proclaim lots of special deals which all seem to offer meat and beer in various combinations. I’m liking the place more and more.

We order Czech beers to start and continue with them through the night. Mark accuses me of drinking a Belgian beer but I point out that the menu begs to differ. While we are chatting and admiring young Ned’s skill at putting the little paper tubes of sugar back in their container, our nostrils are being seduced by the luscious smells coming from the kitchen. For entrees we have meatballs, potato cakes and mushrooms. There is some confusion over the meatballs. While I am busy typing what turn out to be incomprehensible notes into my phone, I get the impression that Jay has been talked out of ordering the meatballs because we have all ordered them but no, it turns out that they only have one serve left which I ordered while everyone else was umming and ahhing. The price of indecision. The meatballs are the winners, nice and crispy, but the potato cakes and mushrooms are not so appealing.

For mains we go the full meaty spectrum: pork belly, schnitzel and beef roulade from the menu, and braised beef and roast duck from the specials board. The pork belly is very tasty and comes with very good red cabbage and some rather stodgy potato dumplings. I am probably being unfair to the dumplings: stodge is the whole point of a dumpling. A bit like accusing a duck of quacking. Speaking of which, the roast duck is huge and very good according to Mark. The schnitzel is, well, a schnitzel so no surprises there. The two beef dishes are a bit disappointing – both a little over done, tough even – although I wonder if that is just the nature of this type of European food. The roulade is wrapped around an egg and Strop describes it as being like a giant scotch egg which is an alarming idea.

The service is friendly, efficient, and comes with culturally appropriate accents. There is only one dessert and it is the apple strudel at the bottom of the specials board. It apparently comes with ice cream and toppings. We are a bit worried these might be chocolate sauce, or hundreds and thousands, or even M and M’s. When they arrive the surprise is not in the topping, which is supposed to be honey, but in the accompanying ice-cream. They seem to have run out of vanilla so we get a chocolate and a strawberry as well. The fruity and spicy filling is very nice but the pastry could be a bit lighter. But again stodge – it’s what they do in that part of Europe isn’t it?

By the time we leave, we are all groaning about how full we are. A litre of beer will do that.

I had a good time at the Cheeky Czech, even though the food is a bit hit and miss, and the quirks, like the deconstructed Neopolitan ice-cream I found quite endearing. Next up is Basil – a pizza joint that uses the word gourmet a little too freely for my liking.