Show Me The Treasure: Food Review

Home Food Review

Showing posts with label Food Review. Show all posts

at 17:32

at 18:46

at 11:37

at 21:33

at 18:07

at 14:33

at 07:52

at 13:45

at 10:40

at 15:40

This might well be a Once Upon a Time report, as I am tempted to start off writing about the phenomenally good lunch we had at Vulcans in early July with: Once Upon a Time, S and I went to dinner at Oasis Seros in Paddington. I wore my favorite black velvet cocktail dress, and an older woman, in the Ladies,very kindly said how lovely the dress was . She had that kind of generous smile that may have been a product of the food but I suspect, with that the woman, attractive and well groomed, was that kind of generous spirit who knows a moment when she saw it. The food, I am sure, was most likely the necessary catalyst to bring about this awareness.

So, Vulcans. Why have I not been there before? That I tried once but it was booked out, now seems like a flimsy excuse. That we hardly ever go to the Blue Mountains seems like a flimsy excuse. The SMH Good Food Guide 2012 gives Vulcans a 15, says various good things, though it quibbles the service is a bit joyless. The good things are right but 'a bit joyless' is plain wrong, our waiter was lovely, friendly but not faux chummy. I take exception to the '15', it was twice as good as other mountain places given a 14.5. But to return to the food, why exactly was it so good? The first course I had was trout cakes, a kind of mousseline in a light roulade of brioche, balanced on the kind of sauce which is intensely delicious but hard to figure out why. Had I had a variant of this back in Once Upon a Time and that pleasant first encounter, forgotten by all conscious parts of my brain, was now telling me OH Yes, This Again? My main course, spiced braised duck arrived in that state where the delicious steam of being so very lately out of the oven has not had a chance to dissipate,but forms a kind of welcome committee for your olfactory-taste system. This effect too reminded me of a casserole dish served at Oassis Seros, which, when opened at the dinner, would result in a 'petite swoon', a steamy rush of anticipation of the extraordinarily delicious.

After this there was no need for dessert, but as I had seen what the table one over from me were eating, and said I we would have to be brave and order dessert, because it would be mad not to. Can it be considered gallant to demolish a Bombe of pear and ginger sorbet, edged in a quince concoction, borne up by chocoloate parfait and a perfect crisp coconutty macaroon base, even if I did carefully compare each flavour when partnered with each of the others was insightfuly wonderful? No, the virtue lies entirely with the kitchen.

I still have the little black cocktail dress and mercifully, we still have Vulcans.

This might well be a Once Upon a Time report, as I am tempted to start off writing about the phenomenally good lunch we had at Vulcans in...

at 18:20

at 18:14

at 12:30

at 10:25

at 11:18

at 08:14

at 15:09

at 08:52

at 15:44

at 08:26

Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )

Curiosity Cabinet

As a child I thought there was a jewel box hidden in my parent's house, I imagined there was a cache of pink cut glass rings - the ones with adjustable soft metal sizing - laid out in pink foam in the nailed tight plyboard box in my brothers' walk-in robe.

Years later, I realised the box was really the back of the bathroom cabinet. I got a lot of enjoyment out of those pink glass jewels that weren't there. Imaginery treasures are curiously satisfying.

Here is a central point where someone who might be interetested can see what bits of words, some links to work published in journals and ezines, and images that I have made.

Absent Knowledge

We are talking about knowing certain facts,

and he says, I know all that or used to,

it is only that I can’t remember.

Is this not knowing or forgetting

what you know? Perhaps the head holds

a trace of what was there,

perhaps it is there but can’t find

the way out; maybe it was there but left,

or there was a rumour that it was coming

but never did,

like the promised holiday ,

in Pennant Hills. At eight years old

I would lie in bed at night a hardly contained

precipice of anticipation that time

would take me to Pennant Hills and a big house

with a swimming pool. I can see

the façade of the house, the curve

of suburban street, where that house

I never went to might be - or even was.

Though I know I never went, maybe

somewhere, there is an unborn memory

of being there, and I am thwarted by absent knowledge

from enjoying what I did not do.

Carol Jenkins

From Voices from the Meadow Wollongong Workshop Anthology 2007 ( Five Islands Press)

Bambiraptor

The Going Down Swinging # 25 -special double CD edition has at last unwrappped itself in Sydney, with a lauch at the Last Bastion of Civilisation last Wednseday 25 September. I still don't know what is in this CD it apart from my spoken word poem Bambiraptor as I was incarcarated in an invention called Good Mummydom. I hope every one else had a good time at the launch party.

The fossil Bambiraptor’s importance in the evolutional of dexterity and the dissonant name gave me this rave by Blanche (Street Car Named Desire) - here she makes a play for Bambiraptor believing his tough and powerful persona is lined with tenderness, like Stanley. This poem is one of my bids to get fossils to colonise and take over the myth as the substratum of literature.