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.