onesies Archives - Painting the Bridge

Strop and I were a bit nervous. Well actually, we were very nervous. Friends are coming from all the way over-the-seas, and we want to show them a good time on the quest, impress them with the wonders of Newtown – but all we have to offer is Twelve. What does that even mean? Twelve what? The reviews aren’t exactly inspiring. We considered changing the order, but there wasn’t anywhere much more appealing coming up in the next few blocks either. There didn’t seem to be any point in swapping Twelve for Moan. In the end we thought fuck it, let them take their chances – that’s what we do every week. Ha! We laugh in the face of danger. We’re out there on the edge, risking food poisoning, and each other’s company, putting up with hipster irony and onesies, week in and week out. If we can do all that, our guests can take a chance on some less than spectacular looking eatery.

After that little rant we felt better for a while, then we felt guity, then we thought fuck it again, and then it was time to go to the restaurant.

I was on time but Wendy (a little surprisingly after her last outing) was even earlier, sitting alone at a big table with a beer and a little plate of warmed olives. I was impressed by the olives, especially as I thought they were some sort of complimentary starter thing. But no, after I had scoffed a fair proportion of them I discovered that Wendy had actually ordered them because she was hungry. Still they were very nice with a beer on a thunder-stormy Sydney evening, with the public transport system once again demonstrating its complete lack of water-proofness. The others eventually arrived, dripping and muttering about traffic snarls and dissolving trains. Tonight was not just a simple meeting of very old (bordering on ancient) friends to share some food and wine. We were also taking part in a new Underground Railroad involving the handover of Bruce and Laila (refugees from over-the-seas), from the care of Roy and Jill, to Wendy, the next stop in their secret journey to a new life (well a couple of months anyway) of freedom and safety. Though God knows why they would want to come to the land of #Abbottism.

By now everyone had arrived and was talking very fast. Wine is called for. We peruse the list, make some choices, tell the waitress, get told, “Sorry, that’s the old list, the new list is over there on the wall,” peer around the column in the middle of the room that is screening the new list, and wonder why the hell they gave us the old list in the first place.

The wait staff were very friendly though, despite their slap-dash attitude to fine dining. They were very prompt bringing the wine to the table but obviously thought that we were all big enough and ugly enough to take the screw cap off the bottles by ourselves. Which of course we are, we do it all the time at home. And the tables were jammed in quite close in the corner, so getting plates passed across was obviously more efficient than squeezing through. And they smiled. And they took a photo of us too. Twelve is that kind of place – comfortable and relaxed and suburban – a John Howard eatery, if John Howard was a Modern Australian – slash – Italian. Going there is like a slipping into a comfy pair of slippers, or a onesie, for an evening in front of the teev.

But what about the food? Well it was mostly pretty good really. Certainly better than the reviews had led us to expect. And there was plenty of it. We probably over-ordered on the entrees. The zucchini flowers were big enough to be mistaken for crab claws, the polenta chips were crisp and creamy all at the same time, and the antipasto stuff was good too. (I didn’t write much of that down – more olives I think, some meaty stuff too).

The only disappointment in the mains was my pork belly, which over-achieved on size, crispness and cookedness, and under-achieved on tenderness and digestibility. But everyone else seemed to enjoy theirs. Laila said the barramundi was perfect, and Roy’s lamb shanks disappeared so quickly, Jill didn’t even get a chance to taste test them. Strop enjoyed her lamb rump, particularly as it was better than my pork.

The most popular dessert was a mango-passionfruit-coconut something, that everyone except me ordered. I had an affogato with a generous slurp of Baileys over it instead (and I can report that this is an innovation worth pursuing). I didn’t taste the mango-passionfruit-coconut something but there was none left on any of the plates so you can draw your own conclusions.

In between the eating there was lots of chit chat about this and that – the usual stuff for our demographic: hearing aids, knee repairs, insomnia, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas…

As we stumbled out into the night Strop could be heard singing “ging gang goolygoolygoolygooly wish wash” which was apparently part of a combined apology and explanation of the cultural imperatives that require her to refer to Bruce and Laila collectively as the Laila-Shayler-Waylers. They’re still talking to us, so presumably they bought the story.

Outside the restaurant we decided to split up and make our way separately to a rendezvous in a dark Camperdown back alley for the refugee and suitcase handover. That way we would confuse anyone trying to follow us. It seemed to work.

Next up is the worryingly named M.O.A.N.

Gingganggoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolyginggganggoo

Onesies – suitable for any season

Onesies - suitable for any season — Gingganggoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolygoolyginggganggoo

Onesies – suitable for any season

It’s Saturday night and King Street is busily pumping itself up into a crescendo as we arrive at Mad Mex with Em, Chris, Tess and the tiny terriers Will and Charlie. What was originally planned as an adults only evening at Corridor has morphed, a week later, into a family outing to Mad Mex. At the end of the evening, as we saw the cousins off safely strapped into their family-sized wagon, Strop turned to me and said “God, I’m glad I don’t have a 4 year old and a 2 year old,” rapidly followed by “I need a scotch.” Yes folks, the two Tiny Terrier Tornados gave the Mad Masked Mexican wrestlers a run for their money.

Mad Mex looks like a fun place, with huge murals of masks and lots over-size meaningless text on the walls. There are fun colourful signs, helpfully numbered so you know how to order. Pick one from column 1, add a dash of column 2, and a slurp of column 3, fold on the dotted line and insert tab B into slot C. Any place where they have to teach you the ordering system is a worry to me. The other worry was the noise. Mad Mex is from the open-fronted school of retail catering and is right next to a bus stop. I have a theory that Sydney has the noisiest buses in the world. I have no proof of this other than the damage done to my own ears, but I have been told that apprentice bus mechanics are taught the fine art of muffler perforation and fan-belt loosening in their first year at TAFE. When the frequent coming and going of buses was combined with the heavily accented front of house crew, the ordering process was reduced to pointing and shouting.

We went for a variety of burritos, naked burritos, and quesadillas. Strop and I also decided to share the Bucket-Of-Coronas-Plus-Nachos deal as a point of direct comparison with Guzman y Gomez, the other nearby Mexican fast food franchise which is coming up fairly soon. Generally, it has to be said, the food was underwhelming even if it is all wholesome, sustainable and pain-free as promised on the website. My burrito was mostly cold and the nachos were fairly free of flavour. Em commented that the only reason she finished her strawberry margarita was because it had alcohol in it. The beer was pretty good though.

While the rest of us were struggling to finish our red foil clad food, discussing new gas heaters and the turmoil of home renovations, the tiny terriers were getting restless (hard to imagine why, I know). They weren’t going to be mollified by colourful murals, nor are they the kind of kids that can be diverted by getting them to re-stack the sugar packets. No, these guys needed warm dough, sugar and an engaging wide-screen visual experience. Cue the churros with chocolate sauce and a window seat on King Street, where they were soon regaling the passing parade with their best Iron Man moves while sucking down the strangely straight, but really quite nice, churros. This ploy worked for a while and we had more conversations about reverse cladding and storm-water drainage, but Chris had to intervene when Charlie tried to pick a fight with a Buck’s Night group dressed in animal-skin onesies. Charlie was adamant that Iron Man could kick their collective weirdo arses if he put his mind to it. He was right of course, the only strange thing was that Will was the one wearing the Iron Man hoodie.

So that was Mad Mex. We’re are going to have to find someone to represent the Man Of Steel when we go to Guzman y Gomez, just to keep the contest even.