• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation

Painting the Bridge

Andrew Christie

  • Quest
  • About
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Policy
  • Contact

salt

Hobart: MONA and Aloft

March 20, 2016 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

hobart1
Cocktails at MONA

Back at the end of February, Strop and I took ourselves off to Hobart for a long weekend as part of our wedding anniversary celebration. The main motivation for going to Hobart was that we were getting sick of being asked if we had been to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) yet, and having to shake our heads sadly while we were told “Oh, you must go, it’s” [choose from the following list: “amazing”; “wonderful”; “different”; or “well, I’ll let you make up your own mind, but you must go”].

So eventually we did, and with the anniversary as an excuse we splurged on the fancy boat tickets to MONA and a nice dinner afterwards at a newish restaurant overlooking the harbour.

We started our Big Day in Hobart with a trip to the edge of the bush for a breakfast date with old friends of Strop’s, Bob, Fran, Isla and Charlie. We spent a wonderful couple of hours eating excellent pancakes in their newly extended home, enjoying the view of Mt Wellington through an enormous window, and talking about kids, gardens, books and kayaks. Fran dropped us back into town just in time to be handed a glass of champagne on the ferry to MONA.

The thing about MONA is the weird way the building has no real external image. It’s kind of like there is no there, there. The building is mostly below ground, built into a headland overlooking the Derwent River. It only emerges in a few seeming unrelated structures to let in light or to provide access. As such it is a hard place to get a sense of from the outside, which explains why all the visual images used to promote MONA are of the internal spaces or of the collection.

It might be the landscape architect in me but I quite like this approach to designing such a significant building. Making it more of a place than a thing, but it does take a while to get used to. Inside, the galleries are arranged vertically, dug into the raw sandstone of the headland. The accepted approach seems to be to dive in, heading down as far as you can go and then work your way back to the surface, by which time you will be gasping for some refreshments and of course, needing to buy some postcards.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The Rules according to Gilbert & George

The big exhibition at MONA was a George and Gilbert retrospective. Before this exhibition my only knowledge of these two was of their pudgy, be-suited personas, when occasionally appearing on television. Their art though, is amazing. Terrific graphic styles and motifs. I loved it. They kind of reminded me of a pommy, and slightly more politically focussed version of our very own Mambo artists.

We spent most of the day at the museum exploring all the galleries and having lunch on a grassy terrace overlooking the river. It was a Saturday and the gallery was quite busy but it didn’t detract from our appreciation of the place. One of my other favourite works was a long tunnel with a sound sculpture that responds to movement. I was lucky enough to go through the tunnel on my own and get the full effect of the sounds building and bouncing around as I moved along. When there are more people in it, the clarity of the effect gets a bit lost.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Strop exits the tunnel

After our big day out we had a little lie down in our hotel before dinner at Aloft. It is a fairly new restaurant and we were only able to get a booking for 8:30 which is a bit late for us, especially after a big day out arting about. Still, anniversary and all that, have to put in.

We were pretty hungry when we arrived back to the same new pier the ferry to MONA had left from earlier in the day. The restaurant is in a lovely space, upstairs at the end of the pier, with big windows looking out onto the harbour.

Our waitress was young and charming, providing lots of useful information on the options. We decided on the banquet as it meant that we had fewer choices to make. Strop was keen to try an orange wine and the sommelier was very helpful, suggesting wines to go with the various dishes.

The food is very high concept, concentrating on the quality of the mainly local ingredients rather than on stunt presentations. We started out with a water egg custard thing and crunchy pigs ears.

As we ate, the room started to thin out, the earlier sittings heading off home or to shows.

hobart4
Aloft

Most of the food was great, but I did find some of it too salty. Particularly the lamb, it was probably a 1 out of 5 on Deb’s salt scale.

Apart from the salt issues, things were going swimmingly until 10 pm, when things suddenly started going pear-shaped. Our waitress must have finished her shift because she suddenly appeared with a jacket over her work clothes and sat at a nearby table to have a glass of wine with the couple dining there. Unusual, but kind of charming. Then groups of people started arriving and sitting up at the bar, chatting to the kitchen and floor staff. This all coincided with us being forgotten – as if we had just dropped off the radar. Whoever was supposed to take over from our waitress mustn’t have been able to see us because our water glasses were left empty, to the point that Strop had to actually wave her glass in the air to get a refill. By this time the other tables were thinning out, and it seemed like the staff just wanted to get away and chat with their friends. It was very odd.

Luckily, the dessert was excellent. Strawberries and blueberries in a fennel sauce with goat curd sorbet. Yummo. Then we were presented with the wrong bill. The waiter came back with the right one, and he did apologise but… There was a sense that the staff just wanted to hang out with their mates rather than look after their customers. None of it was horrible, it was just a bit of a surprise, and a contrast to the service earlier in the evening. It was definitely at odds with the image they present, as a high-end restaurant. Maybe it’s just a small town thing, a function of everybody knowing everybody else.

Our departure, after paying the correct bill, went un-noticed by the staff.

On a more positive note, the access is excellent – 5 out of 5 Susans. The Wendy value scale is a bit more problematic. 3 Wendys, maybe.

So, have you been to MONA yet?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Hobart from the harbour

Filed Under: Off the Map Tagged With: art, Gilbert & George, Hobart, salt, service

Russo & Russo – loudly living up to its reputation

November 1, 2015 by Andrew Christie 2 Comments

r2-1Our visit to Russo & Russo has been a long time coming. Our first few attempts were thwarted – every time we tried to go something went wrong. Russo2 (or should that be Russo x 2? – a question for the mathematicians among you) was the place that started everyone saying we should detour down Enmore Road instead of finishing off King Street, because “there are so many cool places opening up there now.” They were right up to a point, but you know, rules are Rules. And also, in between the handful of shiny new things on Enmore Road at that time, there was still an awful lot of dross.

We had tried to get to Russo2 in the middle of the Quest, to celebrate a Strop birthday but decided we needed a larger venue for the celebration. As soon as we got to St Peters, Russo2 leapt to the top of our wish list. We even made a booking, but then I got the flu and we had to cancel. A month or so later we tried again, and this time the arrangements stuck.

So here we are, accompanied by that well-seasoned regular Quester, Mark, and relative newcomer Debra, previously spotted at the Botany View Hotel.

Russo2 is a serious foody type of place. Proper. And for the occasion we are having dinner at a proper dinnertime: 8pm. Which is worryingly close to my bedtime, but then I’ve always been a risk taker.

Before dinner we met up at that well known pre-Enmore-show-drinks venue, the Duke of Something, which happens to be next-doorish to Russo2. Debra was there first (keen) and had bumped into a work colleague and her husband who were pre-show drinking before getting their fill of RockWiz. I had noted the crowd outside the Enmore, on my way from the station. The footpath was full of grey-haired men of a certain vintage who looked as if they had once been well acquainted with stadium-scale rock shows, but were now more interested in superannuation than supergroups. My peeps really. Once we had a quorum, and Deb’s friends had trotted off to test their rock-n-roll knowledge, we adjourned to the restaurant.

The first thing we noticed was the noise. Popular restaurant + lots of hard surfaces x confined space = LOUD. Strop blamed the marble tabletops, but I tend to blame all the people enjoying themselves. Whatever the reason, we needed to have line of sight of each other’s lips before we could have a conversation.

r2-4

The menus came in a series of glossy (and quite heavy) old 1970s coffee-table books. Luckily we only had to read the first few pages unless we really wanted to know about Old World Visions on a New Continent. The food sounded much more interesting. We ordered a round of cocktails and got on with negotiating the rocky terrain that lay between the menu and our collective food intolerances and prejudices. This took a bit of time but we seemed to have reached a solution in which Mark basically got to choose, as he has an issue with seafood, and the rest of us got to veto. This entente cordial seemed to be working a treat until the waitress arrived and Strop performed a neat little coup d’état, outflanking us all by the simple expedient of ignoring everything that had been agreed to that point. She left the choices up to the chef on the proviso that he respected the boundaries of our various cuisine-based concerns. By this stage the rest of us were all so hungry, that the only response to Strop’s beaming request for approval was a few muttered What-evers.

The cocktails were excellent. I have no idea what they were but they were refreshingly cold and lemony. The first dish to arrive was what looked like a plate of chocolate profiteroles but which turned out to be filled with yummy duck liver pate. Very Hester Blumenthal I thought to myself as I licked every last skerrick off my plate. El Yummo. Next up was a ricotta dish with herbs and something crunchy – there may have been a few beans in there too. Doesn’t sound like much, but you should try it, your mouth will thank you. So far, so good. By this time Strop’s coup d’état had been forgotten as we looked forward to the next dish. That is the great pleasure of this type of dining. Living on the edge, not knowing what you will be asked to eat next. In this case it was asparagus with garlic milk. And grapes. This was not just any asparagus; according to Mark this was the best asparagus I’ve ever eaten. I have to agree with him.

r2-5

So far the food was excellent: imbued with Italian sensibilities, it was clever and surprising without being pretentious. Above all, it was delicious. Things got a bit more complicated with the next dish. Risotto. Beetroot risotto. Salt-baked beetroot risotto in point of actual fact. And it turns out that Debra has a previously un-mentioned intolerance to salt. Had we been ordering from the menu … well, the salt-baked bit would probably have been noticed and avoided. As it was, Deb couldn’t come at it, and I have to admit that the deep-red risotto was quite salty. Not enough to stop the rest of us from polishing off her portion, but for someone who doesn’t like salt it would be a challenge. I suppose those are the risks of leaving the food choices up to the chef. The staff were very good about it, and provided another round of asparagus for Debra.

r2-2

The next dish was pork neck with celeriac and radicchio, less stunt-oriented than some of the previous dishes, but wholesome and excellent nonetheless.

This was followed by another surprise. A clever version of cheese on toast: crostini with cheddar and quince. And lastly a dessert that was described as a Sardinian brulée, with freeze dried blood orange. As far as I was concerned it was all YUMMY. I have no higher praise to give. It is the best meal this project has been presented with so far.

When the bill arrived it came in another book, this time a text on Italian Verbs. It is a pity that Debra didn’t enjoy the food as much as the rest of us. Next time we might have to go to the trouble of reading the menu and choosing for ourselves. Probably safer that way.r2-3JPG

Filed Under: Off the Map Tagged With: asparagus, beetroot, Italian, risotto, salt

Copyright © 2023 · Author Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in