June 29th, 2010
Now I’m not a fan of commercial TV.
Adverts on the box always treat you like you’re some cash-fisted supreme moron.
In fact we don’t even have a TV. Not that we’re book-loving, net-surfing troglodytes anymore than we are sun-loving, real surfing, socialites.
Like promise of dusting the bike off and riding a lung-bursting 100km, or getting oil paint so forced into your dermal layers you may as well be embalmed for the afterlife, life is an amazing place — to explore. With all that said, I have a confession to make.
I am a Master Chef fetishist.
No, not in that way.
I don’t ogle at the contestants nor any of the judges. Believe me, the sight of an overweight cravat-strangled crusty englishman, expressive as an anaesthetised bloodhound, is not my idea of romantic delirium. However, the dishes are.
I blame it on dinner at my old folks. They have the telly on Sunday night, eating dinner that was inspired from the week before. We’re there and we tune in. Food is central to any family. To see my mother’s cooking style change over time to something that is more experimental and edgy, is humbling. Every kitchen utensil has been replaced with tender detail to the functional and effective. The influence of good food has penetrated thanks to MasterChef.
Along with MasterChef comes events that expose people to good food. For a while now the Good Food and Wine Show have been running annual show-stage for everyone in the state.
So it’s no surprise this event will bring together en masse . The Good Food and Wine Show at Perth Convention Exhibition Centre will showcase gourmet creations like a shiny cabinet of curiosities.
From 2nd–4th July 2010 show up to wallow your way though the flavours of your dreams. And you won’t need to skip the adds.
Prices
Adults $30
Child (6-16) $22
Concession/Groups (10+) $24
Wine Lovers Ticket $75
Tags: Good Food and Wine Show, Perth, Perth Convention Centre
Posted in Drink, Eat, General, Gourmet, Wine | No Comments »
June 23rd, 2010
Skirting around the faux pas food–wine matching, Shiraz and Asian is an unlikely combination. But it’s a folly well played.
I know food and wine matching goose-steppers would resound crisp Riesling or Sem Savvy Blancs with Asian food, so it was with stubborn denial that I ventured with a friend to Hawker’s Cuisine with a McLaren Vale Shiraz in tow. The aim was to see what dishes this rickety bee-hive of a restaurant had to offer.
Upon first impressions, this restaurant looks like any grime encrusted eatery in China Town. If the jittery queue of people trying to get in is anything to go by, they would sure be blind to this fact. We were assured our table would be ready in 10–15 minutes. No biggie. I wouldn’t have expected a place bursting at the seams to accommodate anyone as a table walk-in.
After having a stroll around Northbridge to kill some time, we entered Hawker’s Cuisine again, bumbled around inside for a few more minutes, then sat at a table. I would imagine everyone goes through this triage in order to dine. Our waitperson scurries off with an order. Wine time.
While at Steves earlier on that day, I had bumped into a young winemaker, Tom Stransky. A graduate from UWA’s Viticulture and Oenology, his curious intensity lead him around the world in 13 vintages to almost every wine producing region bar Spain.
He has delicately made small-batch wines from McLaren Vale fruit, and had them emblematically labelled. The Mo’ Shiraz it’s called. Profoundly, it has a Mo’ on it.
Tom was to save the only spare bottle he had that day (the gold mo’s are apparently for family) to give to his uncle, but he graciously gave it for tasting. [Tasting note at the end]
We ordered Spicy Squid Tentacles (they apologised and brought out sliced squid tubes instead), Beef Rendang and Tofu Veggie Claypot. Aside from the squid being a little too oily with a thin batter, the flavour of intensity were commanding. The Rendang espically married the wine, a soft sweet fruit immixed with the star ainse based beef. The tofu came out on a little tea-light burner to keep it hot, was as expected in quality and mass.
This is a place for a no frills midweek meal. The service is edgy but effective.
Like most people dining outside, we disregarded the cockroach crawling up the wall in favour of a steaming bowl of Asian love. Really hits the spot.
Thumbs up for Hawker’s.
The Mo’ Shiraz 2008 (Mt Compass, McLaren Vale, Clarendon)
If supple could be used as a descriptor in wine, this red is a Russian contortionist. It has a chunky fruit-jube character on the nose, it’s a ripe temptress. Slurped with gusto over the tongue, The Mo’ is lighter than expected in tannin profile. This gives two impressions. One a bendy, flexible nature to it — a fleshy skinned plum cheek. The other, it’s not as tapering or elongatedly thread-like. It ends solidly with ample fruit weight. 17.1
Hawkers’s Cuisine
17/66 Roe St
Northbridge 6003
Tags: 2008, China Town, Chinese, Malay, McLaren Vale, Northbridge, Shiraz, The Mo', Tom Stransky
Posted in Cultural Food, Drink, Eat, Experience, General, Restaurants, Wine | 2 Comments »
June 16th, 2010
Mexican cuisine to the USA is Vietnamese to Australia.
We can go to pretty much any city and get decent true-to-form Viet fare. I can’t really say that for Mexican.
It’s not suprising (given our proximity to Mexico) we have a reached a glass ceiling on the stretch to fine mexican cuisine. Stodgy, canonical and banal would round up a usual “Tex-Mex” offering.
I’m not a pro when it comes to Mexican food — I don’t get the chance to eat enough of it. But when I do, it’s gormandised so quickly I’m usually left with a crusty adherence around my mouth — possibly resembling refried beans or tortilla crisp that people poke fun at long after I’ve left the table. This is what happened at The Flying Taco. It was a piece of lettuce that covered my tooth however, so I resembled someone who had a misadventure in pub brawl. The food was spectral. A rainbow of flavours. My eyes had finally opened to Meh-hi-co.
The Flying Taco is an honest, approachable entry into Mexican food. It has a modular menu which consists of a subway-esque ordering method. First choose your (carb) style, then your filling, then a salsa. It’s a chicane of possible flavour matches spurring a flexible choice for people that would tire of same old same old.
You can pick up a feed for less than $15 making it a port-of-call for frequenters of the Rosemount Hotel up the road.
I got a Burrito + Mole Poblano + Salsa Chipotle. It came nestled in a basket, resembling a soft glittering infant, warm from maternal care with smokey chilli-garlic sauce at its side.
And the taste? Round and fruit-inspired, the beans and rice gave an interesting texture to the soft flour tortilla. The salsa is where the joy was at. Piquant and agreeably hot (could have been hotter!).
I guess what stood out for me was the freshness and interplay of flavours. Not everything tasted like Old el paso taco seasoning. It’s the mantra that is written conspicuously on the back of the flyer.
“Genuine, healthy, homemade, fresh food — made to order, with love, quickly.”
Flying Taco doesn’t stray from that point.
The Flying Taco
40 Angove Street, North Perth, 6006
Wed — Sun
Noon– Late
BYO Cash & EFT
P: 08 9227 6393
Tags: Angove St, Eateries, Flying, Mexican, Noth Perth, Review, Taco
Posted in Cultural Food, Eat, Experience, Restaurants | 1 Comment »
June 10th, 2010
If there ever was a country’s dessert that could be classified as “comatose” for the level of sweetness, Turkish would be number one. (Indian a narrow second)
The fleshy cubes of rose-pink sugar-frolic, Turkish delight, is possibly the best known export. I speak from experience; I remember in my childhood years, hyper-speed afternoons spent in the yellowing sun, bouncing off branches and trees, in the throes of a sugary orgy. Perhaps it’s the body’s own self preservation mechanism — to burn the energy off before type two diabetes sets it. Back then, to have coffee with it would have been instant-death.
Now it’s mid-afternoon salvation. (Though the module has slightly changed, and I can assure you there are no more orgiastic exertions.)
Baklava is what the grown-ups have. With a coffee (my preference for long black) and a quarter-plate of sweetmeats, it’s something to ward off winter by delicately layering down belly fat.
But it doesn’t stop there. There are various incarnations of Baklava. Formed into filo rolls there are Ladies Fingers. Fashioned into a circle and filled with pistachio it’s a Bird’s Nest. Or was the Bird’s nest the one with the pokey tips? The man spoke loudly but mumbled. I didn’t quite get the last one.
These are some of the best Turkish Sweets you can find North side of the River (albeit in the ghetto). He sells it by the kilo ($16 last time I was there) and they are baked in an endless procession, as people winnow away his store. To be honest, I don’t even think the shop has a name.
You can find him inside Farmer Jack’s (review coming soon) in Girrawheen.
It’s further away than I would normally drive for food, but it’s well worth it.
Tags: Baklava, Girrawheen, Sweets, Turkish
Posted in Cultural Food, Eat | 3 Comments »
June 4th, 2010
Winter in Perth is punitive.
It’s not particularly so as a result of the weather — often the powder-blue lens of the sky curves around us most of the day — but more so for artistic diurnal options.
We struggle when it comes to arts and museums. Perth is culturally anaemic.
If only we could be more like our quirky and experimental sister, Melbourne. I guess however one could argue, we would be, er, Melbourne and lose our Perthian identity. Screw that — I ain’t wearing brown and grey tones.
Picking up on the flailing threads of a struggling arts and culture, the new elected Lord Mayor trumpeted to action, reviving Perth’s Arts and Culture scene.
So now we have more interesting nibbles when it comes to exhibitions. The Art Gallery WA is exhibiting ‘Relativity’, the grotesquely endearing works of Australian artist Patricia Piccinini. It unashamedly details the visual affect of converging biotechnology and the human body — we CAN return to apes. The WA Museum is also dealing out it’s own fire and brimstone. A Day in Pompeii it’s called. When Mt Vesuvius spat the dummy.
Due to contractual agreements, no photography is allowed in the exhibition . However what I can tell you is it’s worth checking out.
There is something mortally binding about staring at a body cast of a Roman knowing they were incinerated in 1000C pyroclastic flow. They carbonised.
Their jaggedly poised bodies, speak volumes of our own precarious existence of our life on top a sea of lava. How quickly life is abandoned and forgotten.
It’s an exhibition that doesn’t make the rounds a lot.
The last time it came I was inutero. All I can say is, that it was much better the second time.
A Day in Pompeii — Wester Australian Museum Perth (Cultural Centre)
Erupting 21st May — 5th September 2010
Prices
$20 Adults
$14 Concession
$12 Child
$54 Family
Tags: A Day In, Museum, Northbridge, Perth, Perth Cultural Centre, Pompeii, Western Australia, What's On
Posted in General, Live Life Love | 1 Comment »
May 29th, 2010
Tapas is today what “sun-dried tomato and basil” was in the 1990s.
You can’t dine at any small bar without hearing the words tapas, tapasy, share-plates and the likes.
In many ways it’s a welcome change to the usual stiff formality of Anglo-Gallic cuisine that calls for the traditional entree, main, dessert.
We live in an age where we like to have more options. And let’s face it, we all know the questioning eyebrow we flick when we see a fellow diner order something better only to look down at our lack-lustre plate-of-boring.
I guess, it was only a matter of time before people wanted small meals that actually filled your belly like a bigger one. Diners needed options, and the Spanish had it for ages. The benefits are — for those who like to try all flavours under the sun — an endless procession of flavour.
Tapas etymologically is derived from the Spanish word tapar “to cover”. One of many tales of tapas-genesis are the Andalusian sherry drinkers who wanted to keep away hovering fruit fly. Committed not to have a fly in the ointment, they covered their glasses with a slice of bread. Bits of cured meats — salivatingly salty — served along side the bread, gave sherry drinkers a reason to stay on. To abate a salty tongue with more alcohol, restauranteurs loved the idea. Ta-dah, tapas!
True tapas is a mix of seafoods, slow-cooked and cured meats, cheese of every description, and seasonal veggies. Convergent evolution has it’s benefits — Asia came up with Yum Cha.
Erring closer to contemporary tapas than something that would be found on an Andalusian street corner, we sizzled a few chorizo, dry battered fingers of haloumi and crunched it down with Onion and Thyme marmalade on the now ubiquitous turkish bread. To provide the redeeming flash of cleansing acidity, Larry Cherubino’s — The Yard ‘Channeybearup’ Pemberton Sauvignon Blanc 2009 was all that was needed.
[Insert here: a dew-fresh night, a temperamental gas heater, laughter-lines and smile-creases of full bellies in good company.]
Tasting for Cherubino The Yard ‘Channeybearup’ Pemberton Sauvignon Blanc 2009
“Valiantly standing in the face of the trans-Tasman Sauvignon Blanc tsunami, The Yard gives Australia (and Pemberton) something to ripple back to NZ. It’s pristine and highly varietal on the nose, polished gem-like in appearance holds nothing back on the palate. Gooseberry, nettle, some white peach as well. With texture that you just want to nibble at, piece-meal at a time, for the flavours burrow down into your tongue like a little lemon-lime driven auger. Impeccably balanced with a keen eye set on longevity, akin to a white Bordeaux. It takes guts to make SB in a market full of cheap imports — then to do it so well against the tide. 18.5 pts”
Tags: 2009, cheese, Cherubino, Chorizo, Cultural Food, Drink, Food, Gourmet, haloumi, Pemberton, Providore, Tapas, Wine
Posted in Cultural Food, Drink, Eat, Wine | No Comments »
May 24th, 2010
Testament to the age of this wine, it’s curiously named Rhine Riesling.
Back in the good old days when European countries weren’t yet up in arms over wine appellation, you could name your wine in honour of the region of the grape’s birthplace. Burgundy, Chablis, Champagne. In many regards, Australians today have abandoned the ‘Burgundies and the Chablis’ but are still grappling with the term Champagne. I hear it thrown about on a regular basis when the term Sparkling wine is meant. “I am after Bella Champagne” — “No, you are after Bella Sparkling.”
Unlike Champagne, the term Rhine Riesling has too gone the way of the dodo.
On that note, wines made in the era of lose appellation often surface now and again. 1986 turned out to be pivotal for Leeuwin, the Rhine Riesling soon to become the ‘Arts series’.
Deep yellow in colour like when you have too many B vitamins, it has all the toffee notes from afar, that flitter from butterscotch to lemon whizz-fizz. The palate has softened, bringing with it what it could drag from the nose. Toasty complexity meets limey zing. A totally coherent little bento-box of surprises. The acidity (still fresh) is enough to bestow the title of Methuselah. If only it had been on screwcap it could live for another two decades. Once in a lifetime wine.
Now 1986 is almost quarter of a century of life in the bottle. And who does the best value-for-money age-worthy Rieslings in Australia?
Great Southern.
Producers like, Castelli, Castle Rock, 3 Drops, Oranje Tractor, Frankland River Estate. They all do fantastic wines.
If you can track down a good Riesling and squirrel it away for 25 years, you’ll be surprised with what you’ll find.
Tags: 1986, Aged Whites, Aged Wine, Cellar Wine, Great Southern, Leeuwin Estate, Margaret River, Riesling
Posted in Drink, General, Wine | No Comments »
May 22nd, 2010
Shit coffee gives me the shits. Well not literally.
It’s because I know I can do it at home—better, that, and the fact I just forked out $3.50 to pay some chump at a machine to immolate my long macchiato.
On the other hand, good coffee is like a bolt from the blue.
It sends filamentous sparks across my brain, and somehow the waxing misanthropy is abated. I want to hug people.
So it’s reassuring to know that there are more and more boutique cafes poking up-and-out of our sunny pavemented city.
What is so special about boutique cafes I hear you ask? They are focused on delivering good coffee, in unique surroundings. Just think. If a boutique cafe made terrible coffee it wouldn’t last long. It too would suffer from a (fiscally) fiery death.
Mooba in Subiaco is not a place where beans are sacrificed. It is a place to get coffee that delivers that blue–bolt with precision.
Curving to the street corners of Outridge and Railway Road, Moodba is a cafe that makes clever use of light, space and glass.
The ceilings are high and the network of upstair’s plumbing is unapologetically contrasted in red. Polished glass meets structural steel that is cool and airy. This meets the warm brown decor echoed in Mooba’s signage. Artist prints hang from the walls. The coffee just looks that little bit browner…
But enough about the space.
How is the coffee? Top-notch.
The long macc I had, was a double ristretto pour. A Mooba house-blend by 5 Senses, it was piquant and pure, rounded by the soft-sweet milk froth. (Abstract Gourmet said he’d hurt me if I used my wine terms for coffee, so I’m taking self-defence classes)
It’s what I would expect for a small business that is switched on. Facebook. Twitter. Blog. They’re there.
You need coffee on the run? SMS your order to the cafe’s dedicated number and pick it up as you breeze though.
Now that’s using the old noggin. And it the old noggin works best when it’s had a good cuppa.
Enjoy.
(Mooba also holds a small bar liquor licence)
Tags: Café, Coffee, Mooba, Small Bar, Subiaco
Posted in Cafe, Experience, Small Bar | 2 Comments »
May 19th, 2010
The thought of eating raw meat isn’t something that I would entertain on a regular basis.
However, the curious experience of sashimi is always going to be a reoccurring daydream.
It could be because it’s insanely expensive, microbially volatile and possibly contains parasites. It’s like a culinary Russian roulette.
But the subtle sweet–umami character, with the texture that is both slimy and firm, propels me with edgy urgency for more. It’s a dish that polarises a lot of people.
Kalis Bros in Leederville is one of those places where you can get it.
I know it’s well known, but Kalis Bros. is a no-brainer for a good piece of fish, no matter what time of day, day of week, week of year.
However, if you are intending to eat raw fish and keep out of the hospital emergency department, there are a few things to consider:
1) Only buy ‘Sashimi Grade’ – this denotes the fish was killed by the Ike jime method. After being hauled aboard on a single line, the fish is quickly spiked behind the brain then plunged in a briny ice slurry.
2) Scope out the packaging date — only buy on the date packed.
3) The fish should not smell strongly! If it’s strong in smell, it’s going off.
Sashimi as a purist would have it, wasabi, soy, ponzu and daikon would be the only accessories.
I hear that nematodes dislike mustard.
That’s why I bookended my pieces with it, and put my sinuses into damage control.
Tags: Fish, Japanese, Kalis Bros, Leederville, Salmon, Sashimi
Posted in Cultural Food, Eat, General, Gourmet | 4 Comments »
May 8th, 2010
A playwright friend recently asked if I could photograph his upcoming play.
“The Myth of Julian Rose” it’s called.
This solemn and distortive play opens a can of festering worms into the incredulousness of maternal sexual child-abuse.
An unsettling theme flowing though the play like a toxic undercurrent, the main character (and audience) is terrorised by a demonic Minotaur presumably an allegory of suppressed memory thanks to an ignoble mother.
The lack of forgiveness can be seen as a destructive energy, wreaking havoc upon personalities. Yet this morbid glee has another side.
“The Myth of Julian Rose” is elegiacally puzzling as it is avant-gardist. It’s a squeamish, guileful and instructive invitation of contempt from the audience.
And if had that impact. It got through.
The Myth of Julian Rose, Perth Cultural Centre 53 James Street, Northbridge 8 – 26 June 2010, $25 Full/$20 Con
Bookings through The Blue Room Theatre or (08) 9227 7005
Tags: Blueroom, Myth of Julian Rose, Perth, Plays
Posted in General, Plays | 2 Comments »
