pizza

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.

654 Pizza Picasso – The end of the beginning

August 9, 2015 by Andrew Christie 5 Comments

It was a big night, the last restaurant on King Street, and I caught the wrong train. It would have been the right train if I’d left work when I had planned to, but we were farewelling three people from my office that night so the normal Friday drinks routine was a bit stretched. Anyway, I had intended to get the train to Newtown and walk down to St Peters for a bit of a reminisce, it seemed more apt than just crossing the road from St Peters station. More appropriate to the marking the end of the beginning. The Quest will continue, possibly as the reQuest or the beQuest, but this is the end of the original and best Quest.

Unfortunately though, I didn’t adjust my travel plans in response to my delayed departure, so instead of an indulgent stroll, I was rushing down the hill muttering about how St Peters seemed to be getting further and further away. Strop had already texted me to let me know that she was nearly at the pub for a pre-dinner drink. I got to the St Peters end not too late, striding past Pizza Picasso, and noting the table set up outside with a reserved sign on it, thinking that it must be for us because nobody else would be sitting outside a pizza joint in St Peters in the middle of winter. When I got to the traffic lights at the end of King St, I could see Strop chatting away to Ashleigh and Ned in the front bar of the Sydney Park Hotel.

Our party for the night was complete when Paul arrived a few minutes later. He had also been to a function, and like me was already a couple of drinks into Friday night. Paul, Ash and Nedsky, (Blossoming Lotus and Yenikoy) are neighbours and good friends, who live a short dog walk from us. We don’t see them as much as we used to now that our dogs are less agile, so it is good to have a chance to catch up on the Quest again. We didn’t hang around long at the Sydney Park. It is a hardline old-fashioned pub, tiles, taps, and fluoro lights. Although Strop would like to point out that it does serve wine by the glass at $4.50 – so presumably she’ll be going back. It is not exactly a hipster haven though. While a bottle of wine was being purchased, Ned took a sudden interest in the pool table, and Ash and I decided that someone needed to invent hipster darts for all the trendy pubs to go with the craft beer, and to give the bearded ones a new interest as they slide into middle age.

Across the road we were greeted by a very enthusiastic and happy host who directed us to the table I had seen earlier. Pizza Picasso is located in a new building with apartments upstairs and shops at street level. We were the only eat-in customers and were seated outside but off the street, in a kind of forecourt that leads to the entrance to the apartments. There is a bus stop just out the front so we always seemed to have an audience of people waiting for a 422 or a 370, as well as residents coming and going from their apartments.

We needed food quickly as Ned had to keep his strength up to play footy the next day and express his support for Adam Goodes by tattooing himself up with number 37. I didn’t really pay much attention to the ordering. I’m not really sure why, because I certainly wasn’t taking any notes. In the end we got three pizzas between us, as well as garlic bread. There was some issue about the pizza of the month that I never really understood. It seemed to be linked to a pizza ominously called the Thunder and Lightening, which came with jalapenos and pepperoni. As we were having a vegetarian outing, we got them to hold the pepperoni and replace it with mushrooms. The other pizzas were a vego version of a greek pizza with crumbled fetta and olives, and a kid-friendly margherita.

Paul works in television so the conversation dipped in and out of popular culture as viewed from the living room. There was some discussion about why Western Australia delivers so many bio-pic subjects. So much money, so few people possibly? I claim some expertise in this matter as the only one at the table who has never been across the Nullabor. We then moved on to the evolution of television comedy, holding out for a while against the gravitational pull of the conversational black hole that is Sydney real estate prices. Eventually though we gave in and started being astonished all over again, at the latest auction results. At the last minute though. we were able avoid complete disaster by veering away into the somewhat more interesting eddy of house repairs. Leaky roofs, leaky taps, and when to get a man in.

During this lull the garlic bread and the first bottle of wine disappeared. Paul was quick to react heading back to the bottle shop for reinforcements. Meanwhile, the pizzas started arriving. Ned had quite a time doing tricks with the the melted cheese, while the rest of us were being pleasantly surprised by the quality of the toppings – they were really good. The crusts were thin and light, and everyone else seemed to like them, but I found them a bit biscuity for my taste. The vego Greek was terrific, and the Thunder and Lightening was gratifyingly spicy even without the pepperoni. I didn’t get a chance to try the Margherita as Ned was keeping it tied up in cheesy knots.

We were pretty astonished when a Dominos pizza guy turned up with a delivery for someone in the building. Why? When you’ve got somewhere like Picasso downstairs, why would you choose Dominos. Sometimes I despair. Ned took it personally and started booing the guy.

We were looking forward to dessert. Ned had his heart set on gelato but they had run out, so Ash took him off on a sub-quest. They ended up across the road at Alberto’s. While Ned was having his gelato cravings quenched, Strop, Paul and I were enjoying a couple of saucy puddings. There was some disagreement about which was the better. Paul thought the chocolate was definitely best, but he was wrong. The banana was the definite winner.

It was a great night out, a really relaxed and enjoyable way to end the Quest. As we made our way back up the hill, through the Friday night crowds, Paul was busily reminding us what a great place we live in. Full of variety, full of life. He wasn’t wrong about that, but he was wrong about the pudding.

589 – Alberto’s Pizza – Alberto vs The Hiccoughs

July 4, 2015 by Andrew Christie 1 Comment

It may have been and error of judgement to meet up at the Botany View first … Wendy, tonight’s guest performer, is a Quest virgin. (No, not that Wendy another Wendy – sometimes known as Weed.) Now, an important thing to remember here is that for some reason which was never made clear, (or if it was, I wasn’t paying sufficient attention) Wendy had been on a beer fast for some time prior to our meeting up at the Botany View. Wendy and I arrived first and availed ourselves of a couple of hipster ales. When Strop arrived, her first concern was whether Alberto’s Pizza, was licensed. She wasn’t worried so much about whether to buy wine to take with us but more concerned about how many drinks she would need first.

The Botany View is a likeable pub on a Friday night. Very local, not too hipster. The pub golf club runs a chocolate wheel in the bar amongst the diners and the drinkers. There are lots of screens, particularly up the TAB end. Depending on which direction you look you can be distracted by greyhounds, golf, or rock and roll. I don’t remember hearing any music over all the chatter, but the music screen was showing images from my era: Jimmy Barnes; ACDC; Hoodoo Gurus; The Sports. It is a convivially chaotic scene and I am looking forward to trying the food out.

Wendy and Strop have been knitting and sewing soulmates for a long time. At one point in the distant and misty-moist past they started a short lived venture called Fiasco Fabrications which unfortunately lived up to its name. The conversation pin-balled its way from knitting, wool collections, Italian Vogue, cakes, retirement planning, buttons, rising sea levels, Open Sores (aka Ocean Shores), and the tragic loss of the original Darrell Lea shops and uniform. In between there was some drinking, a few toilet breaks and one or two arguments about how long ago a particular event happened.

Before the chocolate wheel was spun, we headed out into the cold and walked the short block to Alberto’s in search of food. Now Wendy blames the fizziness of the beer, but I think the shock of cold air could be to blame, but whatever the reason the result was clear. Hiccoughs.

As soon as we sat down in the otherwise empty restaurant, Wendy’s diaphragm started spasming at regular intervals. Which made ordering an interesting procedure. She tried holding her breath, but had to avoid eye contact in the process to maintain the required level of concentration. Strop suggested drinking water upside down, but Wendy was wise to decline the offer. It’s not really the type of procedure to be tried in public. Not that there were many people to see, only the staff. We were the only customers at that point. A few others came in later, un-deterred by Wendy’s periodic eruptions, and there was a steady stream of take away customers and pizza deliveries all the time we were there.

Wendy managed to get her breath long enough to order a Santa Euphemia (or santa euphemism as my auto-corrected notes prefer), Strop chose the potato pizza, her personal favourite, and I ordered a Napoletana, because anchovies. Then there was the discussion about size. Wendy gritted her teeth and clamped down on her diaphragm long enough to suggest small, but she was out voted by Strop and I who thought we needed mediums. We should have listened to her, despite her affliction she had a better handle on our consumptive capacities. By this time we had well and truly decided that no more alcohol was required and we were getting through the water at a pretty good clip, even without any upside down hi-jinx.

The pizzas arrived promptly and took up most of the table. The toppings were generous, but it was a bit hard to tell the pizzas apart because they were all covered with a thick layer of cheese. The potato pizza was not what Strop was expecting. It came with thick slices of roasted potato and tomatoes, not the thin slices sprinkled with rosemary she had been remembering from Rome. All the pizzas had lots of fresh vegetables in the mix but the crusts were a bit thick and soft for my taste and there was a lot of cheese.

We were just starting to realise how much more pizza we had on the table than we could fit in our stomachs, when Alberto himself emerged from the kitchen and did a tour of the tables chatting to his guests. This sort of opportunity is right up Strop’s street, of course. When he got to our table she started quizzing him about his life, how long he had been running the restaurant, how long he’d been in Australia, which part of Italy he was from. And Alberto was up for the challenge, telling us how he had arrived in 1953 at the age of 17 and had followed Queen Elizabeth around the southern half of Australia as his ship made its way from Perth to Sydney. While we were listening to his stories, Wendy sat still with a mildly surprised expression on her face. Alberto had performed a miracle, the hiccoughs had departed as soon as he had arrived at our table. When Alberto had to leave to prepare more pizzas, Wendy sat nervously in case the hiccoughs were just waiting for him to turn his back. Luckily the Alberto cure stuck, and just to make sure, he returned a couple of more times, bringing with him photos – him with his brother, a couple of lads about town in the 1950s – him with his band playing accordion for the workers on the Snowy Mountains scheme at Thredbo. There was no sign of the hiccoughs after that.

So there you are, go to Alberto’s for generous toppings, history and hiccough cures.

We had been planning on stopping off at Izba for some Russian dessert treats on the way home but we were now well and truly stuffed -and there was still almost a full pizza if you reassembled the left over slices. Oh well, Izba will have to wait for another time.

379 Gigi – Again!

July 19, 2014 by Andrew Christie 1 Comment

We’ve caught up at last! After Strop’s out-of-sequence-birthday-indulgence we are finally back at Gigi. We’ve had quite a few discussions about whether to return or to skip on to the next eatery. As it has turned out tonight we are dining with friends (John, Pauline, Jill and Roy), and we don’t really think that Japone’s sushi train is well suited to a largish group and the required levels of cross table bantering. Gigi seems like a much better bet for this particular outing, so we are doing our first re-run.

One thing at Gigi that hasn’t changed is the no bookings policy. When I turn up and say that we want a table for six, the waiter just smiles and says “Really? It will be a while I’m afraid, I already have a five and a nine waiting. It could be an hour and a half.” I do a quick calculation, Roy and Jill have been overseas for 6 weeks – that should include enough adventures to keep us going while we wait for food. Having handed over my phone number we retire to the Newtown Social Club for a few bevvies while we wait. The conversation starts off in Spain then moves to Berlin before leaping to The Shire, racism, the speed at which velcroed cushions will detach under wind pressure (110 km/hr in case you’re wondering), and the national dickhead quotient (it’s on the rise according to John’s brother, and he’s an engineer so he should know).

After our first round there was a brief discussion about whether to forget Gigi and just eat at the Social Club. Luckily we decided to have another drink and see what happened. Soon after that the phone rang. Strop didn’t hang about. She was off like a shot, muttering something about “not missing out,” while the rest of us were still finishing our drinks.

Gigi was packed when the saner members of the party ambled in, so it took a moment or two to locate Strop even though she was jumping up and down and waving to us. The layout of the restaurant has changed a bit with the pizza oven moved further back which presumably makes more room for punters. The new oven is bright and shiny with white tiles on the outside, and the muscly looking blokes tending it look less orc-like than last time. This may have something to do with the fact that Peter Jackson hasn’t released a new film lately.

We ordered pizzas. Strop insisted one of them be the potato one. We ordered salads including the pear one (Pauline’s choice which almost got overlooked). We opened bottles of red wine. Lots of talking and laughing. More wine. Etc.

Sometime during this period I became confused by the fact that the waitress’s tattoos seemed to be moving around, appearing in different locations and different shapes each time she brought something to the table. It was a while before I realised that there two waitresses who looked exactly the same. “Hey, they must be sisters,” I said, possibly quite loudly, and with appropriate extravagant hand gestures. This resulted in bemused looks from both sisters, who thought I needed some help (they may be right), and apologetic smiles from Strop.

The pizzas were excellent, better than last time. I imagine that is down to the white tiles on the outside of the oven. There was the potato one, another with mushrooms, one with prawns and another one that I have forgotten. All good. All disappeared quite rapidly. For dessert there were affogatos, pannacottas and gelatos. They didn’t last long either.

Gigi was crowded, noisy and lots of fun. I think this going back to the good places thing might catch on.

But unfortunately the rules say otherwise, so next we will be pressing on to Japone Sushi for another try at conveyor belt food.

324 Level 1 – Onyx Lounge – The post nuptial brain freeze

May 4, 2014 by Andrew Christie 1 Comment

We’ve been away in Melbourne for a week, wedding the Stropette to the Heathen in a flowery and chilly open air ceremony, in which the Pancetta stole the show. But now it’s back to the serious task of eating our way to St Peters before we lose interest in this project.

This week we’re still on the Newtown Station railway bridge, but upstairs this time, at the relatively new Onyx Lounge. I arrived a bit early and waited next door in the Bank Hotel till Strop made her way up the hill. The front bar of the Bank is very noisy and crowded on a Friday night, so the chilled, calm vibe at Onyx was a pleasant relief, although I bet the owners would prefer the crowds that Bank pulls in. It was still quite early as we made our way up the stairs, and I wondered if we might be the only ones there. We weren’t, but they weren’t exactly crowded either. Onyx is dark and moody, with little red lights marking out the stairs, dark brown walls, low lights, ferns and a macrame room divider. The music is cool too, bass-heavy and jazzy. It is all just so chill. Strop liked it because we could actually hear each other without having to shout. There was a sign down on the street advertising live music later, so I was hoping that we would be able to stay awake long enough to hear a bit of that.

The staff were immediately present and attentive, directing us to a window table with views up Enmore Road. The other customers seemed to mainly be young and in pairs. My generalisation generator immediately went to work and I came up with the theory that Onyx was being used as a fairly safe first-date setting out point. I have absolutely no evidence to support this theory but I don’t care, they looked clean cut and innocent, at least for Newtown. There was certainly no evidence of hipsters, even though the fake ferns and macrame can only be seen as ironic. At least by someone of my generation, who of course invented macrame.

Onyx looks a lot like a restaurant, but the food is generally limited to bar type food with a bit of a Mexican-slash-Spanish flavour. There are share plates, pizzas, sliders (little tacos in this case) and burgers. We decided to put ourselves about the menu a bit, (while avoiding the burger-wars as Onyx is not an actual pub) choosing a latin themed pizza with chorizo, prawn taco sliders, and empanadas from the share plate menu. I opted to stick with beer while Strop went looking for a nice red wine by the glass. She started with a shiraz which she found too peppery then moved on to a pinot noir, which was more to her refined tastes.

The food arrived quickly, which was just as well because I was starving. The pizza topping was good but I found the crust a bit doughy and sweet for my taste. All the food was a bit disappointing which is a pity because I quite liked the vibe of Onyx. The empanadas and tacos were okay but nothing memorable. Oh well, it’s a bar, you come for the drinks not the food.

By this stage the live musician had arrived, complete with guitar and amps. Great, we thought, let’s stick around for some of that. So we decided to try a cocktail for dessert. I feel that we only have ourselves to blame for the result of this decision, even though the helpful waiter backed up our dumb decision. Based on very limited logic, we decided to have cocktails that incorporated ice-cream, because… well, dessert. This was a bad decision. They were sickly sweet, and they gave us brain freeze, and they got us more pissed. We had a lengthy discussion trying to tell which cocktail was the one that was supposed to have the salted-caramel, neither seemed particularly salty. Meanwhile the singer had no sooner set up all her gear, than she sat down to a hearty meal. I did wonder how she would go, singing straight after a meal like that, but then what do I know about the needs of starving artists. The meal was probably part of her pay.

Strop and I ummed-and-aahed a bit about whether to wait for the music to start. I think neither of us wanted to end the night on an ice-cream-cocktail-brain-freeze note, so we tried again. This time we kept it simple, Franjelico over ice for her, and a mojito for him. And they were good. And the music started, and she could sing. It was all good. We clapped. If the crowd had been a bit bigger Strop might have given her a whoop or two too.

Later we stumbled out onto King Street to find that some wag had been liberally deploying Joe Hockey masks. Who would have thought that someone in Newtown would take umbrage at something Joe said.

Next up its burger-wars time again as we leave the bridge behind and make our way to the Townie.

224 – M.O.A.N. – So many gags present themselves…

November 30, 2013 by Andrew Christie 3 Comments

What to say about M.O.A.N.? Well for a start – what the hell were they thinking? Moan? Really?

This place used be called Cicciolina (the name is still on the awning), seemingly named after the Italian porn star/politician. It famously used to have a sculpture of a giant clitoris on the wall, which was presumably a very particular part of the theme. The sculpture disappeared after a while – presumably looking a giant clit in the eye was putting the punters off their Spaghetti alla puttanesca. I tried to find an image of it for you on the webz, but when I entered cicciolina + clitoris into Google Image Search the results were so distracting that I had to have a little lie down.

So, MOAN. Well why the hell not? It is Newtown after all.

Strop assures me that M.O.A.N. stands for Menus Of All Nations or possibly Mix Of All Nations. Either way it is a completely stupid idea, and demonstrably untrue. The place is pretty much Italian, with a big dollop of oz-pub burger cuisine on the side. All the infrastructure (except for the sculpture) from Cicciolina days seem to have survived including the wood-fired pizza oven, and this drives the menu. The beer list does have a touch of the international about it. You’ve got Australian, Belgian, German, Japanese, Australian, Mexican, and another Australian. So, all nations.

Strop and I have fortified ourselves with a regulation Dogbolter before entering the fray, so we are full of confidence as we swan in and choose a table at the front so we can look out the window at the passing parade rather than having to talk to each other. The M.O.A.N. is not crowded, but there is a large and very excitable birthday group up the back next to the kitchen and the toilet. I imagine that they are warmer than we are, being closer to the pizza oven. Its a cold evening and I only have a nylon raincoat over my tee shirt but Strop says I can’t zip it up because I will look too much like a trainspotter.

I order a Belgian beer and Strop orders a Merlot Of All Nations to go with our entrees of pulled-pork pancakes, and char-grilled vegetable salad. For mains we choose a pizza with sausage and mushroom. Strop pushes the idea of the Thai beef salad for a while on the grounds of All-Nationism, but I veto it on the grounds of stupidity. You don’t go to an Italian joint for Thai food – especially in Newtown.

The pancakes turn out to be small and skinny. They are almost lost on their big fluffy bed of salad leaves. But at least the pork filling is tasty. Tangy, sweet and salty. Really quite salty. The char-grilled veges are similarly lost in a sea of salad leaves as though someone has emptied a bag of mixed leaves from the supermarket, and put too much balsamic on it. The zucchini and eggplant are nice enough but the sweet potato is a bit undercooked. Oh well.

The pizza takes a while. In the meantime we argue about the political correctness of early birthday present giving in the context of grandchildren whose birthdays are only 3 days south of Xmas. We also discuss this year’s Christmas Tree strategy, next years holiday strategy, and try to figure out a retirement strategy that doesn’t involve pet food. All this strategising leaves us with empty glasses. Another round is called for. Unfortunately the glass of wine Strop gets is different from the one she had been drinking, but she doesn’t realise this until she has poured the dregs from the first into the new glass. All class.

Meanwhile in the kitchen they have been putting the wood-fired oven too good use. The pizza crust is excellent, but it is let down by the disks of Colesworths Best English Beef Sausage that are sprinkled generously on top. I mean, I was expecting Italian sausage. Is that an unreasonable expectation?

So don’t M.O.A.N. Just don’t. We went there so you won’t have to.