Chucky

nothing much to say about food as i was *ulp* stricken down with gastro on Friday and haven't been right since *queasily*

altho my grrl, the lovely director chick made me macaroni cheese when i could only stomach the blandest of the bland (bland in a good way) and my good friend the dessert doctor did minister to me with some extremely fluffy risotto last nite and a practice christmas pudding!!! (i managed to eat it - it was hard but i gave it a good go :-))))

testing!

The 40th bday gang - well the surfing ones anyway :-)))

holiday part 5 - dinner

3 memorable dinners i had in Perth - the first was with a bunch of mates and family at Lido on William St in Northbridge. Now Lido is a Vietnamese restaurant that has been around for a while (at least 5 years) and I remember getting very excited when it opened and then abandoning it after a few disappointing experiences. But a mate assured me that rather than going downhill it had gone UPhill and i should give it another try. She especially raved about the vegetarian food, and being pseudo-vegetarian myself (AKA happy to eat meat anywhere but at home), i thought i'd give it a go.

Lido is a big spacious place, and there were people sprinkled at the tables (it was a Tuesday nite) - we took over a big round table in the back corner - gotta love a big round table! You can see everyone and talk to everyone!! Although in this case the accoustics were a little tricky and i found that i couldnt hear anyone more than one person away from me, which weirdly got better as the nite wore on - whats up with that!! No i wasn't drinking LOL We ordered some of the fresh beef rice paper rolls - these were awesome. I wanted more! Had to make do with 2 :-( For mains - suffering from chronic indecisiveness and wanting some of everything i usually have a bad habit of ordering something that sucks and wanting what everyone else has! But not this time baby, no, this time i ordered some grilled pork satays that i really couldnt distinguish from beef (still unsure if they got it wrong or they just taste the same) and some fried tofu with spinach, mushrooms, garlic and ginger - it was really really REALLY good. The tofu was fried and melt in your mouth soft.. the spinach, mushrooms and garlic was braised slightly and very very yummy - the ginger was in barely cooked little strips in the middle of my plate which other people may not like, but i LOVE - so all in all it was a great dinner. Then i got a vietnamese coffee - for those who don't know, it's placed into a drip filter that sits on top of your cup and when it has dripped thru, you can either have it hot with condensed milk, or cold with condensed milk over ice which was what i had. MMMMMMMMM. Everyone else seemed pretty happy with their food too - so yeah two thumbs up for Lido!

The second dinner i loved was my 4oth bday dinner in Yallingup. I made the courageous (some would say crazy - indeed Director Chick made noises in this very direction) decision to invite a whole bunch of mates to celebrate at Yallingup Beach Holiday Park - an idyllic location!!!

http://www.yallingupbeach.com.au/

The dinner took some organisation - it involved a lot of emailing, at least one caterer pulling out and was the subject of significant hair pullage and greying on my part... but it all worked out in the end. Meal Up in Dunsborough came through http://mealup.com.au/ and were absolutely delightful to deal with - prompt on email response, phone calls, amenable to menu changes, cool with vegos, forthcoming with suggestions and delivered right on time. We ended up with:

1 x Nicoise salad

1 x Roasted root vegetable salad with pinenuts and roast beetroot,
mild horseradish dressing

1 x Baby cos and spinach salad with roast pumpkin and pepita seed,
creamy parmesan and herb dressing

1 x Asian noodle salad, nam jim dressing

1 x Mediterranean pasta salad with semi-dried tomato pesto

5 x Yallingup woodfired bread

Spicy red dhal, natural yoghurt and toasted roti bread (everyone went mad for this - we did it all on the BBQ)

Risotto balls with tomato kasundi

Despite some inconvenient rain and raging hormones, the dinner was a big success and i LOVED being there, with my buds and my family who made it all so fab :-))))))))))) WOOHOO!

The last memorable dinner was at a place called Green Planet in Margaret River http://www.vegism.org/ I found an ad for it in the local Rotary guide and was really glad that I checked it out. Run by a guy called ... umm..i forget - i think it was Anatol, clearly from Europe and established his greenie veg credentials for me by having a photo of him stuck on the wall with Woody Harrelson the actor, famous for his raw food diet. Being a sucker for any kind of celebrity action i decided that this place was the place for our take-away dinner. Director Chick and i had been subsisting on pieces of toast for days and i wanted something more challenging and yet not tooooo vego, cos Director Chick, unlike me, was brought up on a diet of chickpeas, granola, avacado smoothies and carob, so is less keen to revisit those days!!!! Anyway, i ordered the pasta of the day which was a vego bolognaise with plenty of grana padano, a lentil and chickpea burger which was FIIIIINE and a yummo, divine, delicious flourless chocolate cake (the likes of which only my friend the Dessert Doctor of Darwin (DDD) has been known to make) which we had with some vanilla bean icecream. YUM.

holiday part 4 - lunch

http://www.eatingwa.com.au/restaurants/goanna-gallery/

The only memorable lunch i had (i should qualify that by saying the only GOOD memorable lunch I had - we had lunch at the Sea Gardens in Prevelley and it was not good) was at the Goanna Gallery and Cafe in Dunsborough. We had already survived one unsuccessful attempt to find it earlier in the week and I was ready to give it a miss frankly, but was assured again and again by my old bud that it was WELL worth the trip...... so we headed off for a second try.

It was a bit of a mission to find it - by which i mean we packed the car up with all our crap and two squids (not crap) and headed out of Prevelley. First we drove to Marg River and then to Edible Art to drop the cake base off and then back to Marg River and out again to Caves Road.. then squid 1 said she was thirsty so we drove back to Prevelley to get water, back to Caves Road FOR THE 700TH TIME and drove about a hundred miles towards Yallingup - then we turned down the wrong road and turned back and by the time we eventually found it (off Comonage Road) I was at the point of THIS HAD BETTER BE F**KEN GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Luckily it was. Better than good. In fact it was the best food I've eaten in a long time.

First up it was friendly looking - lots of outside undercover tables, a playground with loads of play stuff in a sandpit so that squid 1 and squid 2 could play while we ate. Inside it had a massively clean and yummy looking cake fridge with rocky road (dark, milk and white chocolate varieties) and about 7 other really really ace looking home made cakes - not the usual crappy ones you find haunting the cafes of Perth and elsewhere. It had good coffee. It has a little gallery and shop where you can buy yummy natural body products. I ordered a ploughmans lunch for Director Chick, a ham n cheese toastie for squid 1 and a tasting plate for me. WELL! everyone elses lunch paled into oblivion as i hunched over my lunch (assuming the position i like to call it) GOD IT WAS GOOD. There was a house baked beer loaf to tear up and slather with things like home-made tapenade and tomato relish and a big chunk of cheese - there were ginger chicken wings (2) that had been marinated in soy and ginger and garlic and oils, a roulade of chicken which was stuffed with something (this was heaven on a stick), caremalized chorizo, roasted balsamic tomatoes, a little green salad with some persian feta... more was there more? And you know how in other cities you buy something and you feel ripped off cos you paid tooooo much and got crap? This was the opposite. $22 for my tasting plate and there was no way i could finish it all. And the flavours! Crikey! The service was great too - casual and friendly, not fussy or pretentious, but efficient. So there you go. I nearly cried when i realised that i live almost 4000 miles north of this place - Director Chick pointed out a bush block for sale over the road and so i am buying it and moving to Dunsborough to be close to my new grrlfriend, Goanna.

holiday part 3 - cake

It was my 4oth birthday while i was awandering the south west of WA and just for posterity I want to post a picture of the cake that my old bud and Director Chick conspired to produce (thanks guys!!!!!!!!). It was made by Edible Art in Margaret River - they are just off Boodjidup Road in MR. Carmello is the guys name and he did an awesome job!!! The boobs and the ass were slightly bigger than my own though.

:-))))))

http://www.edibleart.com.au/

holiday part 2 - coffee

I branched out this holiday to try a few local blends - I bought a Fiori expresso blend (Fiori being a WA coffee roaster in West Perth) which was bloody gorgeous and I bought some coffee from the Yallingup Coffee Roasting Company which i don't like that much.... this may be coloured by my experience in said store and in Dunsborough, which i found to be less than desirable - which leads me to the conclusion that you can build funky cafes and do whatever you like to make it look good, but you can't take the yobbo out of Dunsborough.

holiday part 1 - breakfast

Sorry about the double breakfast photo, still figuring out the intricacies of blogging!! (if anyone has any tips.. ?)

Well i flew out from the big D and managed to successfully manage to eat my way round Perth and not take any photos of anything cos i was so excited about all the food options.... after a few days and some clarity (Perth has more food definitely but lots of stuff about the eating experience in Perth still shits me to tears) i took myself off to the Merchant on Beaufort St in Mount Lawley for breakfast - avec camera phone! Going to the Merchant was in the interests of my neural pathways, never been there, the sissy said it was good ... rocked up - its all very funky with some couches, a bit of al fresco table action, perused the menu which has some funky little spanish options and some yummy looking frittery things on it, so i asked for the first option and was told it hadn't been made yet. hmm. asked for my second option and was told that it hadn't been made yet. mmmmmm. asked for my third option which was poached eggs a slow roasted tomato, house made baked beans, mushrooms, that gorgeous Fresh Provisions bacon (i think it comes from Elmars, the german butcher over the road - it is smoked and Freshies is the only place I have found to buy it - it is the BEST EVER!!!!! EVER!!!!!) and spinach (they said they hadn't PLUCKED IT FROM THE GARDEN YET - not - no, they didn't have it yet (!), so i got given rocket instead). It was all VERY delicious, although my eggs came out all boogery and i had to ask them to give them a bit more heat and the coffee was weak as piss, which was funny as they had quotes from the "barista" on the menu about the latest coolest coffee blend. The juice i had which had beetroot and all kinds of yumminess was really good. So i took myself away having had a bloody good breakfast that i had to work to get - which is not the best way to start the morning but far from being the worst. The Merchant needs to pull it's socks up a bit - don't put stuff on the menu you dont have yet!!! Or better yet, GET IT DONE IN TIME!!! Perth still has a way to go before it becomes Melbourne, but the old Perth brekky which used to be Fast Eddy's or nought, has improved outta site.

The only other brekky I had which was in any way memorable was at Cantina 663 on Beaufort St, near the Astor Cinema. Service is ace, really quick, the coffee is great, the tables and booths are comfy with lots of configurations and options for having something to eat and there's the whole undercover outside arcade thing going on so you can sit at a table and set your kid free and watch them crawling out the arcade door and onto busy Beaufort St at peak hour....oops

Food is tasty, presentation good, nothing humungously special about it, just good decent food. I had banana bread, toasted (yum) and some of their house-made granola which comes with some fresh fruit... also had scrambled eggs another time and they were pretty good - not amazing like the ones they used to have at Tarts before it went up its own ass, but good.

still waiting on photos but will post when they come through.... :-)))

family holiday - eek!

i've been roaming around Perth and the south west of WA so have some reviews to post... some photos of some places that were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good that i could nearly move from here to be nestled in close to them.. (goanna gallery and cafe i want you to be my grrlfriend)

hopefully i'll get some time this arvo to post them all up

:-))))

the cool aroma - AR AR

I've been thinking that since i moved to Darwin my standards in terms of cafes have .....slipped? Hmmmmmmm not slipped exactly, maybe it's being aware of how little choice there is in terms of cafes and restaurants so you learn to .. adjust! To illustrate - the other day a mate, let's call her Director Chick 2, was looking through the yellow pages to try and find a cafe we could go to for breakfast - after she scoured the 3 PAGES!!! we concluded that there wasn't anything we didn't already know about... i was kind of horrified and realised that my denial ran deep alright, cos i'd never really considered that i'd been to all the good breakfast places, i just assumed that there was a plethora of untried untested places just waiting for me to rock up and eat. Sort of like when i moved here and refused to walk around town cos i didn't want to believe that the city here consists of 3 main streets. Eek!

Anyway the point of all this is that there a couple of cafes in Darwin that i go to a lot, that probably dont offer the best brekky or food that i have ever had, but they're cheap and consistent and are very welcoming. The Roma Bar is a Darwin institution - it's in Cavanagh St in town and any local can point you to it.... i have had the normal brekkies which are nice and the more tropical offerings are great.... i can recommend their coffee, which is rarely bad, the breakfast dhal is great, the raspberry thriller (muesli, yoghurt, home-made raspberry saucy stuff), the sago with coconut milk, grilled pineapple, dried pawpaw and palm sugar is yummo, they also do some very excellent home-made hashbrowns. They are open for breakfast and lunch weekdays and weekends and shut around 3 in the afternoon.

The other place i go a lot is the Cool Spot in Fannie Bay cos they are super kid friendly and the staff pretty much ignore them as long as they aren't trashing the joint or setting it alight. Also you can easily bribe small people to go by metaphorically dangling ice cream in front of them - it works every time. They have one of those big menus that makes you go oh my god couldja pare it down a tad!! (like they have a duck salad! scary!) - but if you stick to their burgers (the vego, bacon and egg, homemade hamburger and steak are all good), toasties, ice creams (they offer a territory gelati called Lo Castro which i don't reckon is that gelati-ish - it's more like neapolitan icecream) and coffees you can't go wrong. Last time i was there i ventured into unknown scary territory - i ordered a tandoori chicken fillet with rice and raita and salad and it was good! Also the Cool Spot is open late (10pm-ish). Cool!

markety market

Its been too long and thats because ive been exploring the NT for work - went to Katherine, Pine Creek, Adelaide River and thought seriously about turning right in Katherine to head to Kununnurra!!! Food has been pretty ordinary since sunday, my last food photo day - we went to nightcliff markets as we do pretty much every sunday - in my experience markets can be variable in terms of godawful westernised asian food, but if you poke around Nightcliff markets and steer clear of that you can get some SILKY, YUMMY. GORGEOUSNESS ( i really put those words in to annoy my sister) ...errr i mean some pretty decent asian/NT food and here's what we got:

My mango, pawpaw and ginger juice from the juice stall near the orchid man: MMMMMMM

My vietnamese lemongrass tofu noodle salad with thai basil, mint, chili, cucumber, carrot and crunchy peanutty bits rice noodles from the vietnamese stall that, incidentally, my mate got food poisoning from (old eggs - why would you do it!!!) - easy to identify by the fresh rice paper rolls and banh mi: MMMMMMMM

Big Kid's nutella crepe from Ken's Crepes (Ken is famous for his Ken's Crepe's stall - you'll find him/them at all the Darwin markets except for Rapid Creek, usually with a massive line out the front - they do sweet and savoury crepes, even a bacon and egg hangover crepe): MMMMMMMMMMMM

Director Chick's Just Coffee medium iced latte with extra coffee beans (i can't speak for her, but as a mother of 2 kids who don't sleep a lot i would say): MMMMMMMMMMM

Some hours later... i came back to edit this cos in my excitement i forgot to put directions to the markets :-)

Where: Nightcliff Markets, Nightcliff, NT

When: Every Sunday from 8am- 2pm

Hungry

If you needed any further proof of what a craptus blogger i am, i forgot to take my camera phone AGAIN at lunch!!! clearly i have to learn that a blogger must never travel without multi-media or they can't be a creditable source of ... um .. mostly crap, but creditable crap I hope!

Anyway at lunch i met my mate hungry for lunch at Go Sushi Train, one of only TWO take-away sushi joints in Darwin. Now Go Sushi is always a reliable source of lunch as they meet the 3 basic great eating out criteria 1) they are incredibly quick to serve 2) they are pretty cheap (not to everyone, but as a public servant if any lunch comes in at under 20 bucks i really can't complain) 3) they are yummy and 4) (i'm just making up the 4th now) they're consistent. In my humble there's no point in fulfilling the first 3, if the next time i rock up it takes forever to get served and the sushi all looks like crap. At Go Sushi every meal is the same and i mean that in a good way. Oh and 5) the wait staff are good-looking and remember you if you go there regularly - always a bonus!

Run by a woman and her partner, i'm pretty sure i've seen a daughter working there too, so its a family affair. They offer pretty standard sushi fare with some chef specials (dumplings, gyoza) on the lunch menu, and they offer a more extended dinner menu (not so cheap) offering some bento boxes that are MASSIVE and agedashi tofu that is out of this world. Today I had some inside out chicken and avacado sushi (great), some of their fried barramundi (i alway have this, its 4 pieces of crispy fried barramundi in a nori roll with a mystery filling that involves feta cheese, served with a slice of fresh lemon and some mayonnaise. I know how weird that sounds but believe me, it is AWESOME!) and something else. Hungry had some of their miso soup which is always full of chunks of silky tofu and is REALLY good.

Go Sushi also has the added bonus of being open for dinner - only til 830 or 9pm but that's good enough to get something to eat before the flicks. Where are they? Near the Crowne Plaza Hotel, next to where the old Hanuman Resturant used to be - opposite Red Salt. I can't make it clearer than that.

the adventures of lassi

After dropping the wee kid off to preskool i headed over to martin's (where else) to get something for brekky and not wanting to fall into any kind of routine and being mindful of my neural pathways, i decided to have a mango lassi. Again i suck badly as a food blogger cos i drank it before taking a picture of it, and unless you want a shot of the container we'll just leave it at that. Anyway it was tall, cool, mango-ey, yoghurty and delicious. (Martin should be paying me!) He did tell me this morning that some of his recipes are going to be posted onto http://dysblog.wordpress.com/ i just had a look and that weird-ass but really really good chocolately chickpea cake is up. oh and i did take a picture of my quinoa this time, but you have to ignore the germ-laden chipped bowl it's in :-)

melbourne crap lunch

darwin casino sunset lounge in a word: shiteous

pork started it all

It's no news to my friends that i stopped eating pork (apart from my grandmothers) after my mother tenderly packed some crackling (the good stuff - all crunchy pork fat) into my lunch box and I found BIG GREY HAIRS in it *shuddering* yeah this bought me a whole lot closer to pigs in my mind than i wanted to be - so, no more pork. Then i made a deal with my mate Weedy that i wouldnt eat pork for a year because pigs are so badly mistreated in Australia.. and promptly ate pork. I dunno whether it was the pressure of the deal, or it was because pork, once the domain of roasts or limp grey scariness, and nothing in between, has become a freakin STAR in the last few years (the years that i wasn't eating pork). Since then i've been eating pork like it's going out of style.. especially as Darwin, which sports some of the best asian food outside of asia, is heavily pork-centric.

That long rambling prelude was purely to get to this - roast and noodle 328 in Darwin. Hidden down a mall, unprepossessing, but always packed with punters sitting at the plethora of plastic tables and chairs out the front. Everyone said this was the best roast duck in Darwin (i dont do duck) and in the interests of DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY (and burning myself some new neural pathways) i rocked up to check out the BBQ pork. Served up on a pile of fluffy jasmine rice with steamed bok choy, that pork was the best i've ever eaten. Hot, crunchy, caremalised, the pork was..well words fail me. It had the comfort of my grandmothers pork, looked healthy and tasted fantastic. get down there IMMEDIATELY - if you can find it. I'm not that good at directions.

today i ate a lentil

today is the day i start my blog.. *chanting*....today i made my way to martins a geeky nerdy warm vego cafe hidden away in a place called coconut grove. can i just say that finding a vego cafe in darwin is a pretty rare thing ( and something about hens teeth).

Swinging by Martin's has made me late for work twice in the last week.. the dude cooks awesome vego food and is planning on opening up adjacent to the yoga skool there... (so you can eat after all those asanas).. today he made me try a cake made of chickpeas no less. yeah. so far i've eaten his dhal and his quinoa which he stews with fruit and spices and serves up with creamy natural yoghurt and walnuts (i'm loving this in a dirty way alright) and now my workmate wants me to pick her up some too after she spotted me hunched protectively over my bowl at lunch.

hmmmmmmmmm should give you some details i guess, but i dont have them - martins cafe. coconut grove, darwin. if it stays a secret thats ok by me!!! would post a pic of his food but i ate it.