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Andrew Christie

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pasta

The transition from Inner West to Far South

May 9, 2017 by andyadmin Leave a Comment

Hello there.

It’s been a while I know, but a lot has happened. Let me tell you all about it.

Some of you will have gathered that we have moved our base of operations. Having been close to everything for a long time, we thought we would have a try at being far from things. Far, far away from things in fact.

As all places are defined by their proximity to the birthplace of our nation, we have moved from the warm and noisy embrace of the Inner West, all the way to the startlingly beautiful Far South Coast. Here, under the ever-changing gaze of Mother Gulaga (look it up) we will embrace small town life, get to know the sea mammals, and constantly re-fill the bird baths. (Wattle birds obviously know nothing about water conservation.)

It has been a big change for us, but an exciting one.

We have been pondering what this move will mean for the Quest. The Far South Coast is definitely not King Street. Indeed, in our hometown of Bermagui, the real challenge for the Quest would not be to dine at every eatery, but to do them all in one day. Perhaps that can be a challenge we will put to visitors.

Another option we considered was a survey of the bacon-and-egg rolls of the region, but suspect this might not be as interesting for everyone else as it would be for me. (However, if you are down this way and fancy a lovely breakfast roll, check out the Blue Heron Cafe in Moruya. Highly recommended.)

So without having any fancy scaffolding to prop up a new Quest, I suspect that we will just check out the local offerings, as and when the opportunity arises.

So here we go, starting with a classy Italian restaurant called Il Passagio, which I gather means passage but can also mean passing, crossing or transition. All of which are particularly appropriate to our current condition.

We dined at Il Passagio at the end of Easter, on the last official night of our extended house-warming event, which saw us accommodating 15 wayfarers. Friends and family from near and far joined us for a chaotic, but fun-filled few days. By the last Friday of the holiday everyone had gone home except for the Stropolina, so we took the opportunity for a night out. The good thing about living in town is that, like Camperdown, it is easy to walk anywhere you might want to go. In this case it was across town to the Fisherman’s Wharf, where we stopped first at the Horse and Camel Wine Bar to get ourselves in the mood. After a momentary confusion during which we found ourselves perusing the ‘expensive wines list’ we were directed to the row of bottles on the bar, which were better suited to our modest whistle-wetting needs. We enjoyed their Rosé and Shiraz, but the Stropolina seems to have taken against Temperanillo, claiming it tastes like compost. Sometimes I despair of the young people.

It is interesting in getting to know a new town, to see who drinks where. We noted that the demographic supporting the wine bar seemed distinct from the one at the pub. Even though the wine bar is located at the Fisherman’s Wharf, most of the clientele didn’t look like they had much to do with fish until it was lined up beside a pile of chips.

Our fun evening was somewhat tempered by a sobering phone call from my father’s doctor. Another round of drinks was required to buffer this reminder that even cutting edge therapies have their limits. So we drank to Dad. And Mum, and all the others who have reached their limits over recent years.

Then we moved next door and proceeded to test the limits of our belts. Italian food will do that.

Wapengo oysters to start. These creamy little puddles of seaside essence were hastily slurped out of their shells. Next was an excellent potato, rosemary and anchovy pizza. It was simple and crisp, with clean strong flavours. After the pizza we decided to take a run at all the pastas. The purity of our ambition was somewhat tempered at the last minute when Strop decided we needed to tick the vegetable box too. So she threw a salad into the mix.

My gnocchi was a knock out, and the prawn linguini and spaghetti hardly got a chance to cool down. The salad featured apple, pancetta and a soft cheese I had never heard of called burrata, and it didn’t last long either.

For dessert I went with the specials board: orange and thyme ice cream. And yes, it was as good as it sounds. Stropolina opted for the old favourite, Tiramisu while Strop went for something with meringue and marscaponi – washed down with a glass of Limincello. By this time I was worried about the tightness of my belt, and conscious that the walk home was up hill, so I abstained.

It was a lovely evening and a fitting first outing on the Bermie leg of this blog.

In doing what we laughingly call research here, I discovered on the Il Passagio website, that they are advertising the restaurant for sale. It seems such a pity, but it is a very familiar situation given our experience with the restaurant churn on King Street. We will just have to use it as an excuse to go back again as soon as possible.

If any of you are wondering where the next John Lawrence book is up to, never fear, I haven’t left him in a shallow grave beside the Princes Highway. The manuscript for book 3 is here in a pile beside me, waiting for a decision on whether it requires the merciful attentions of a scalpel or an axe. Or possibly a garden fork.

So as the wood smoke mingles with the salt spray, and the cat yowls to be fed, it is time to say farewell from the far, far south coast. Until next time.

Filed Under: Bermie Tagged With: Bermagui, Far South Coast, Italian, pasta, pizza, South Coast

349A – Buzzzbar – Blathering the night away

June 14, 2014 by Andrew Christie 2 Comments

349A buzzbar

Buzzzbar seems a very relaxed place. When I arrived, a woman was just leaving, trying to pay her bill with a small dog under each arm.

After quite a bit of e-communication, we have been promised a largish group for tonight’s outing, but everyone else is running various kinds of late, so I am the first to arrive. Buzzzbar (I have to be careful to get the spelling right without falling asleep) is a big place, with tables and lounges and a back courtyard that opens onto a lane off Enmore Road. There are plenty of seating opportunities, but mindful of the group we are expecting, I nab the large lounge area. It is a bit too nippy to be sitting outside, and anyway it will be smokey. That is one of the problems with dining in Sydney, you can’t eat outside without having to put up with smoke.

The staff seemed very concerned that I had turned up by myself, and were disconcertingly attentive for a while – until I had ordered a beer and some chips. I told the waiter that I was part of a much, much larger group that would be arriving soon, but he tried to convince me that I should join another table anyway. I resisted, convinced that Strop and the others would not leave me in the lurch.

Eventually the others arrived, first Strop who wasted no time ordering a glass of something smooth and red. Then Linda, Sue and Julian find us, and lastly, we are joined by Matilda. This is the full complement, except for my brother Steve who is always a late starter.

Linda and Sue are aunts to Matilda, who is not-quite sister to the Stropolina. Julian used to be a local, but has defected to Melbourne now. The evening takes a short sci-fi detour when Julian lifts his shirt to show us the blood sugar monitoring device he has plugged into his side. “I’m not diabetic. I just wanted to try it out because my company makes them,” he said, showing the flat-line read out on the portable monitor that is linked wirelessly to the probe in his side. That’s dedication, that is.

Caught in the headlights of Bentley Continental GT fantasies
Caught in the headlights of Bentley Continental GT fantasies

Drinks are ordered and mistakes are made. Matilda is not drinking, which is a pity because she spent the rest of the night knocking everyone else’s drinks over. Linda and Sue ordered a bottle of shiraz from somewhere called Ram’s Leap which turned out to be eye-watering and drew unfortunate comparisons with Ram’s somethingelse, and a lame joke from mygoodself that involved crutching, and was poorly conceived at best.

Around about this time we moved to a proper table and started thinking seriously about food. The menu is fairly typical of pub/cafe fare. There is a From The Grill section, an intriguing From The Fried section, as well as a somewhat nostalgic From The Larder section. Under these headings there are burgers, steaks, schnitzels, lots of pastas, and some salads. In the end, our order ranges freely over the menu, with a couple of pastas, 2 bangers and mash, fish and chips, a burger and a schnitzel. Very democratic if you don’t count salad, which I often don’t.

While we waited for the food, conversation ranged far and wide. From the merits of the Bentley Continental GT as a form of transport to jazz venues and racist dogs. Somewhere during this interlude the Ram’s somethingelse ran out and was replaced by a much more pleasing Argentinian vintage. Dogs were a hot topic for a while, particularly Linda and Sue’s entertainingly loopy kelpie which, in the absence of wooly livestock at the local parks, makes do with cornering some hapless spadoodle and trying to eyeball it into submission. And we thought our dog was crazy.

There were nice tunes on the obligatory speaker system – everything from Hendrix to Duffy – but the atmosphere was spoiled a bit by the cigarette smells that kept wafting through, dragged inside by the flow-through ventilation. The courtyard space seemed to be very popular with teenagers, who seemed to be very interested in smoking in groups.

Not the one from the floor
Not the one from the floor

When the food arrived, everything came but the fettuccine carbonara, “It will be slightly delayed,” said the waiter, “as the chef has dropped it on the floor.” When it did arrive, it came with a poached egg on top, which seems to be a new trend according to my in-depth google research. My hamburger was good enough to hold its head up with the rest King St burgers, the bangers and mash were voted “Alright,” and the schnitzel “Fine.” There was no trace left of the fish and chips, but there was quite a lot of the fettuccine with prawns left, but this might have been because Matilda was so busy knocking things over.

In the end the food was kind of irrelevant. We were having a fine old time blathering away, (bulldogs vs pugs, Melbourne vs Sydney, Canberra hipsters – really?), and that is what Buzzzbar is all about. As we were getting ready to leave we were presented with complimentary homemade chocolate and orange truffle things on sticks. And they were extremely yummy.

349a-3

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bangers and mash, Bentley, burger, cafe, fish and chips, pasta, poached egg, schnitzel, smoking

255 – Italian Bowl – Fast, fresh but no frills

January 25, 2014 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

255 italianbowl

This is where we were supposed to go last week when we were fooled by the discrepancy between geographical and numerical order. Anyway, we are here now, a bit earlier than usual because we are off to the theatre (“Darling”) afterwards, for our last festival outing. After taking last year off, we approached the festival this year in our usual ill-informed manner with perhaps an added pinch of  cultural risk-taking. It hasn’t paid off. Especially for Strop. Her post show comments have included “Dire!” “Wankers!” and the ever-reliable classic, “That’s ninety minutes we’re never getting back.” She especially didn’t like the afro-futurist jazz played by an eighty year old saxophonist. The only thing she has loved so far was our first outing to a magic show, which was very good. Entertaining, even.

(Optional magic show Rant: There is something strange about going to a magic show. You enter into a consensual contract with the magician to be lied to. You know that there’s nothing magic going on, that it’s all about deception and illusion, but if the trick is wrapped up in an entertaining package you go along for the ride, trying not to give too much thought to how they’re doing it, because the answer is always going to be completely mundane, and in the end you want the showmanship more than you want the truth. Much like religion really. End of Rant.)

Italian Bowl is all about pasta. And speed (no, not that kind). The food is fast, fresh and relatively cheap. It caters to a lot of pre-movie punters and it does a fair trade in take-aways as well, but it is not the sort of place to linger over your linguine. Its business model is based on fast fettucine and the occasional rapid risotto (okay, too much of a mediocre thing, I agree – and you probably can’t cook risotto quickly anyway).

Look at me diligently taking notes!
Look at me diligently taking notes!

It is not a large place and more than half of the floor area is given over to the kitchen which runs along one side, leaving punters squeezed against the other wall. Or out on the street. We arrived at 6pm, right in the middle of the pre-movie rush and the only table was right out the back. Tonight we are joined by the Stropolina, and it is a bit like being back in Vietnam again as we sideways-shuffle our party of wide-bodied Australians through the packed-out tables, and squeeze into our seats trying hard not to bump the other patrons who are busily slurping up their spaghetti. It was only after I had settled myself down that I realised I was going to have to get up again and go and order at the counter at the front. The big Italian guy taking orders at the front is something of a maestro of efficiency, plucking order out of the noisy chaos around him. By the time I’m half way to the front he has a number on a stick ready and is waiting to take my order. By the time I have got back to the table the garlic bread is hot on my heels.

Italian bowl is not somewhere for a slow romantic meal. It is noisy (you are basically eating in the kitchen), full of the clatter of pans, and a bizarre music soundtrack that Stropolina reckons must have been programmed by someone’s mum. It is however fun, and it is fast. The food may not be brilliant but it is tasty and freshly prepared in front of you. And I do love an Italian place that has parmesan shakers on all the tables.

Afterwards Strop and I strolled back along King Street towards the Seymour Centre, enjoying the light rain, and doing a bit of restaurant reminiscing (I can’t understand why that place is always full etc.) and noting the closures and openings (what’s happened to Asian King?). The show, Ockham’s Razor, turned out to be great, aerial theatre/dance in three short acts. Beautiful, engaging and entertaining, – not a lot to ask for really, and a good way to end our festival.

Next up, according to Strop’s calculations, is Milk Bar which I think is a cafe so it might be another breakfast outing.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Food, Italian, King Street, Newtown, pasta, restaurants

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