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.