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Andrew Christie

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Mimosa Winery – Voucher system part 1: The Vouchsafe

June 2, 2017 by andyadmin Leave a Comment

 

Back last year when we announced that we were decamping to the far south coast, a couple of things happened. Some people burst into laughter, others into tears – but some gave us vouchers. Gift vouchers to be exact, for restaurants in our new neighborhood. I suppose they thought that otherwise we would never get a decent meal again, or that we, and this blog, would fade away, with nothing to sustain us but the gorgeous Sapphire Coast scenery.

We received three vouchers: one given to me by the Stropette and the Stropolina, and two others given to Strop by her bookish mates. As the vouchers were received into our hot little hands well before we were actually due to depart, it was obviously important to keep them safe. I naturally found a cunningly secure place to store mine. I put it in my spare wallet – the black one that I keep in the top drawer. And I backed up this repository with an internet-wide reminder system that would beep and flash, reminding me to look in said spare black wallet, once we were safely relocated, and in a position to enjoy the fruits of the voucher. Foolproof. Obviously.

Strop stuck her two vouchers to the fridge door with magnets. Very strong magnets admittedly, but still, its a system that is basically lacking in any type of cunning. And where is the back up?

It wasn’t until I began to pack up my office that the fatal flaw in my cunning plan became apparent. I was going to have to pack up my top drawer, which meant moving the spare black wallet from it’s safe place to another safe place. Easy. Except when we arrived at our beautiful new abode, and started opening all the boxes, the spare wallet wasn’t where I thought it would be. The opening of each box from then on, was greeted by a rapidly inflating bubble of hope and desperation, which then burst as my scrabbling fingers reached the bottom. There was no sign of the wallet. The wallet had gone into the void, over the event horizon that forever separates lost from found.

Meanwhile of course, Strop’s two vouchers were back on the fridge, waving gently every time the door was opened. Hello, they seemed to say, here we are. Let’s eat.

In the end it didn’t matter because everything is on the internet and the Stropette just emailed a new copy and Strop printed it out. Surprisingly she made something of a point of putting it on the fridge with the others.

Anyway, the vouchers were a very generous set of gifts, and they have given us a running start at the local eateries.

Our first voucher-fueled outing was to the Mimosa Winery restaurant, which is down the road a bit. About 15 minutes drive. (We now live in a spread-out world where distance is measured in driving times rather than in walking times.)

We dragged our friends Zena and Peter along for this outing. They are locals now, refugees from Canberra, and have been our guides to living on the south coast. We stayed with them when we first started looking for somewhere to park our escape pod, and we fell in love with their local area.

Our visit to Mimosa Winery was on a perfect Sunday. The way you always imagine autumn weather: blue skies, warm, and no wind.

The restaurant is perched on a hill overlooking vineyards and surrounded by artfully backlit coastal forest. You enter the restaurant from a courtyard on the high side (excellent accessibility), and proceed through to a large deck over looking the vineyards.

Now Peter is a man of strong opinions and an Irish complexion, so he was initially wary of the table we were offered on the deck. However, after a bit of umbrella heaving we settled ourselves down at the newly shaded table and began the nattering. This largely consisted of valuable advice on how to survive life on the Far South Coast.

Where did you get your firewood from? Oh him, he’s all right, but there’s this bloke in Quaama that will do you a truckload for the same price. Fresh fish? There’s this place down a back street in Narooma. Doesn’t look like much, but it’s bloody good value. Jam? If you’re not making it yourselves, the 777 supermarket in Bermi have all those Eastern European brands. (These are what our family has lovingly referred to as Chernobyl Jam since that unfortunate incident with the radioactive cloud.)

It took the arrival of the waitress to bring our attention back to matters of immediate consumption. That was when the irresistible force of Strop’s desire for a glass of Rosé met the immovable object of Peter’s disdain for pink wine.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

His objection seemed to be based on the fact that Rosé is an abomination, neither red nor white, and definitely not complex enough. Zena I and felt compelled to maintain our respective party loyalties, so a demarcation was established down the middle of the table with Shiraz on one side and Rosé on the other.

For entrée we split down the middle again. Szechuan squid vs Porkbelly, but this time Zena and I had our money on the squid. Unfortunately porkbelly was the clear winner, even though the squid held its end up gamely.

Zena and I again teamed up for the mains, opting for the fish of the day – Blue-eyed cod – while Peter went for confit duck breast, and Strop went for local mussels. Zena thought her cod was a bit overdone so the event ended up a tie between the duck and the mussels. Both of which were excellent.

There were only three competitors in the dessert round, Strop having decided to rest on her laurels. Zena and Peter with their chocolate mousses in martini glasses vs my plucky little passionfruit semifreddo. Luckily for me the semifreddo kicked it out of the park. It was strong and clear and very passionfruity. A real zinger.

The afternoon, and Mimosa Winery, proved to be worthy of the generosity of our friends and family. It was also heartening to see the restaurant relatively busy. It wasn’t full by any means, but there were plenty of punters willing to make the drive and enjoy a terrific lunch.

So thanks be to the voucher givers. You know who you are.

Filed Under: Bermie Tagged With: Duck, gift voucher, mussels, passionfruit, rose, semifreddo, winery

186 – Thai Yindee – Exceeding Yet-Another-Thai Expectations

September 15, 2013 by Andrew Christie 2 Comments

186 thai yindee

I’m developing a new hypothesis. It goes like this: there is a direct correlation between worn menus and good food. When I can convince CSIRO to take this important piece of research on, I think that Thai Yindee will make an excellent test site. The menus at Thai Yindee appear to have been put through a thresher, and yet the food is full of pleasant surprises. Indeed most of the menus are missing their cover pages. Without these it takes a while to work out that the menus are really two separate menus (lunch and dinner) stuck back to back and upside to downside, in the one dog-eared document. The upside of this culinary duality is that there are two number 37s to try. Hooray!

Our visit to Thai Yindee came at the end of a challenging week, and as usual our research was not extensive.

“What’s next?

“I think it’s called Thai Yindee.”

“Really? Another Thai? I thought it was that dumpling place.”

“No, that’s before the Indian. After the Japanese.”

“The Japanese was last week.”

“Not that Japanese.”

“Oh… Do you think we need to book?”

“God knows.”

So our expectations weren’t high, but King Street on Friday night always lifts the spirits. It is a good way to start the weekend, there is a relaxed buzz in the air on Fridays, as if all the punters are just glad to have survived the week. On Saturday nights it is a bit more crazy. There is an air of desperation to the good-time seeking, as if Saturday is the last chance to get wasted or laid before the next week comes charging over the horizon. (Elmore Leonard reckons I should cut this because it looks like writing, but fuck him, he’s dead now.)

From the outside there is nothing to lift Thai Yindee out of the ‘yet another Thai’ dining category, but inside there are clues. The first is the delicious smell, the second is the layout with the kitchen up front, and the third is the well worn menus. The restaurant is warm and welcoming and the other diners look happy. Tonight we are joined by the Stropolina who is in fine form having just had a few days work at a school attached to Randwick Children’s Hospital.

We have been too disorganised to manage to get some wine on the way to the restaurant, so we decide to choose from the wine list. I notice that the couple at the next table have a bottle of rosé that looks very appealing. It is beaded with condensation, and is that pale pink that I associate with nice dry rosés. Unfortunately my primate brain leaps to the conclusion that it is the same as the one in the wine list. No. It is not the same. The one that we get is warm, deep red and very sweet. Strop is undaunted though, quickly saving the day by ordering ice which makes the wine cold and also somehow manages to make it less sweet. Anyway we have absolutely no problem finishing the bottle.

For entrees we order Potato Prawns, Satay Chicken and something called Moo Ping which turns out to be bbq pork on a skewer. For mains we have the two number 37s – Egg Fried Rice and Banana Flower Salad – and Jingle Curry with duck. (I know that it is really Jungle Curry but I am the sort of shallow person who will order a dish purely on the basis of a silly sounding name, or indeed a misspelt one. Strop is further amused by the wait-person’s pronunciation of jungle which involves swallowing a whole live letter g. Small minds etc.)

So about the hens night...
So about the hens night…

While we are waiting for the food to arrive there is a very tense moment when discussion of upcoming nuptials reveals that Strop has not been invited to Stropette’s hens night/weekend. Tension abounds – Strop is actually quite hurt by this revelation that she does not qualify as a BFF. To avoid any hasty phone calls to Melbourne, Stropolina and I engage in some rapid subject-changing manoeuvres.

“Did you know that it’s very important to keep the oncology kids away from the cystic fibrosis kids.”

“No, I did not know that.”

“Well it is.”

“How so?”

“Suppressed immune systems are incompatible with phlegm.”

“Oh.”

Thank god, the food started to arrive.

It was soon followed by the first of many mutterings of the phrase of the evening, “Yum, this is better than I was expecting.”

The entrees all come with four pieces, which is a bit of a problem as there are only three of us, and knowing our family THAT could lead to nasty scenes. While I am wondering how to cut the fourth potato prawn into three with a fork and spoon, Stropolina comes up with the perfect solution – everyone gets a second helping of their favourite. She quickly gobbles down her own favourite (Potato Prawns) before her parents realise that this solution only works if we all have different favourites. This is the kind of parent managing strategy that you learn after years of working with children apparently.

The Jingle Curry, and the Banana Flower Salad are excellent and the Egg Fried Rice is fried rice with egg. The phrase of the evening gets more of a work out. The Banana Flower Salad is the stand out dish, and the only disappointment, apart from the wine was the satay sauce which was a bit too salty. The wait-persons are friendly and efficient, keeping the food coming and the water topped up.

I would be very happy to go back to Thai Yindee – but that would involve breaking the Rules.

We have had a few queries from friends wanting to join us on future outings so we are going to put up a page listing  the next few eateries on the schedule.

Love to all.

Will you just take the photo...
Will you just take the photo…

Thai Yindee on Urbanspoon

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Food, hens night, King Street, menus, Newtown, restaurants, rose, Thai, Thai Yindee

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