Is Perth growing up?

I went to a mate's 30th birthday dinner the other night.  She and her girlfriend had chosen a hotel where we were going to have dinner - the Rose and Crown in Guildford - and I must admit my heart sank when they told me where we were going.   My imagination went straight to the bad, overpriced food place - as it turned out, there was no need.  The Rose and Crown turned out to have a perfectly fine menu with a bunch of well-priced options, good variety, good service, decent dessert and good coffee (and a couple of really inviting fires - always a way to get me in).  But it made me wonder why I reacted the way I did.  I know I wasn't the only one who felt this way, in the car in the way home we all agreed that it had surpassed our expectations.  Now if this was Melbourne I don't think I would have had that reaction - hotels are not necessarily synonymous with bad food in Melbourne, in fact, it's probably the complete opposite.  But Perth often has a bit of the hit and miss about it.  I've been to a lot of hotels where the food is over thought, overambitious and often turns out to be just plain bad.  When combined with shit service and +++ prices this can add up to a frustratingly bad night.  Especially when you venture away from the city.  It's like teenagers pretending to be grownups:  trying too hard; and a bit pretentious.  But something occurred to me as I started writing this - am I like an adult looking at a teenager - guilty of seeing them as they've always been..refusing to see that they're growing into something else.. growing up?  Perhaps Perth is growing into itself and I don't want to see it. 

What do you think?

Elmars I love you

Elmars is one of the nicest secrets on Beaufort Street.  A German butchers, they sell the most amazingly scrummy selection of cured meats and smallgoods.  They pride themselves on their lack of preservatives, make deliciously mumsy homemade food like rissoles, schnitzel, smoked sausage goulash and pea and ham soup (I went in today to get some and there was a big pot on the stove - not today, tomorrow they said, it has to get creamy :-))).  They also make the most gorgeous rolls - I like to get a sliced rissole or some of their house made ham with all their salads in a wholegrain roll with mustard.  MMM MMM!  For an unhealthier (but probably yummier) option, get them to slap on some of their home made mayonnaise.  People who like to hang out or visit Mount Lawley on Saturdays will know that they set up a sausage stall out the front - but not just any old sausage - venison, bratwurst, knacker, fleishwurst..... oh yeah!  They also do a smashingly awesome continental smoked bacon that is out of this world.  Last but not least, if you have any German buds that suffer from occasional Germsickness LOL, they sell little German things like German lemonade and Ritter Chocolade.  Surprise someone!

Elmars
493 Beaufort St
Highgate

Pea and ham soup and a ham and salad roll w mustard

Are you?

Bar 399

This is my friend Dawn holding a cup of coffee at 399 on William St.  This was taken a few months ago and I've been meaning to blog about it - not the coffee, 399.  But it's kind of like falling in love - sometimes you come over all articulate, but in my case, which isn't that great for someone who writes, I came over all inarticulate.  But what I can say is this:

• the coffee is great
• the bar peeps are friendly
• you can usually get a seat and not a hideously uncomfortable one, either at the bar, or in one of the many booths with the many cushions
• they have wifi
• they don't think you're a freak if you come in on Friday night and order coffee and play uno
• the bouncer will look out for a seat for you if you can't find one
• they have yummy biscuits
• ooh they have yummy other stuff - little plates of stuff
• although drinking isn't really my thing, they do offer some of the yummiest beers, including a wheat beer that won "best beer in the world" or something - it's $10 for a stubby which isn't much more than a crownie LOL
• they can show some serious cocktail love
• they play very funky, very laid-back, always appropriately pitched, tunes

Yup we love it there :-)

http://www.399bar.com/

399 William St Perth

Royal flush?

I've eaten 2 meals at the Queens in the past 3 days - if you were with me and noticed me lingering over the menu it was because I was scanning it for something, ANYTHING that was edible and wasn't turkish bread with a trio of dips or potato wedges, two of the most uninspiring menu items to ever (dis)grace a menu:

1) A steak sandwich.  One would think relatively inoffensive and hard to fuck up.  The descriptor of 'onion jam' even made me mildly excited.  Sadly, so much onion jam had been slapped onto it that I couldn't taste anything else and it made the sanger so slimy that everything fell out.  All over me.  Not that good. And how hard is it to get chips that wrong!!!!  So wrong - yellow and waxy and tasting of oil... bleugh.

2) A BLT. It was ok.  The bacon was crispy, it was was pretty tasty, it had tomato and it had lettuce.  They should totally get rid of the turkish bread though... it's so early noughties!!  But the chips - wrong again.

The thing that the Queens has going for it is a glorious beer garden.  Oh and nice beer. But stay away from the lunch and dinner food cos it's trading on a time when its food was good, when not everyone offered turkish bread, wedges and some kind of shitty pasta.  That time is OVER baby!!!  But if you're drunk and can't leave the premises, can I suggest that you sit back down, relaaaax and eat a refreshing trio of dips?

To end on a positive note though:  As I was flicking through the breakfast menu in despair I noticed coco pops with cream and strawberries.  Even I'd go back to have a go of that. 

VERY Good Fortune

People have been asking me when I was going to blog again and I've been pretty evasive, think I lost a bit of my blogging mojo after moving from Darwin... but late this weekend after checking out the Mundaring Truffle Festival and then chilling out watching The Runaways, I rounded off a perfect eating day at Good Fortune Roast Duck House.  Good Fortune - well anyone who went to Hung Long to eat all those years ago is familiar with the site of Good Fortune.  A tiny shop front shining red and gold in the heart of Northbridge on William St (344 to be exact), Good Fortune exudes the happiness of people eating EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT. You can tell you're getting near if you see people queuing outside on William St day or night... some of them peering in the window watching the chef hacking up roast pork, duck or chicken with his cleaver, some waiting impatiently and checking and rechecking to see if their number has come up. We were lucky 100 and had to wait 20 minutes to get in and it was worth every second!!! 

The first thing you'll notice is that Good Fortune is PACKED.  Packed full of happy eating people.  The second thing you will notice is, hopefully not the dying fish in the tank that we noticed, rather that the service is brilliant: orders will be taken in under 2 minutes, your food will be on the table in 5. The third thing you will notice is meat.  Lots and lots of meat.  Roast duck, roast pork, BBQ pork, steamed chicken, roasted chicken... Good Fortune is a meat lovers paradise.  They also do seafood but I kind of overlooked that in my meaty frenzy.  Not that you can't also find one or two good vegetarian dishes on the menu - I usually find it pretty hard to go past their salt and pepper bean curd with lots and lots of green chilli or their gai lan or bok choy with ginger sauce.  But last night I was there for the meat.  I don't know why a good living largely vegetarian eating girl (for the past 7 and a half years at least) such as me occasionally wants to just go crazy with meat but there you go.  Last night it was BBQ pork that I was craving.  Also, once I realised that you can order off the takeaway menu for a dollar or two more and get everything you want (rice, chilli, pickled cabbage, BBQ pork and bok choy) on one plate I was the happiest girl alive.


One of my eternal regrets is that you can't usually order everything you want unless you spend a bomb or share, and that means everyone has to want to share... luckily I got to eat out with my friend whom I shall name my food girlfriend or MFG for short.  MFG likes to share and to eat and has no girlfriend, my girlfriend is far away and thus we are joined as one.  MFG ate a meaty platter off the takeaway menu also - her meatiness was a two meat combination of roast duck and BBQ pork.  Normally I don't rate duck, but I think I've changed my mind.. or should I say Good Fortune changed my mind!  Succulent is a word best left to the likes of Matt Preston but oh my god it was!!!  Tender, succulent... I've turned for duck.  As for my dinner, the rice was fluffy and hot, the pickled cabbage was tart, pickley, the green chilli hot, crisp and doused in soy, the bok choy was tender, maybe a bit oily and the PORK!  The BBQ pork was crisp, sweet and savoury all at the same time - all things good.  Our other two dining partners had a - well I'm guessing now because I was so mesmerised by my food and hunched over my plate - but I think it was a two meat combination with noodle.  Another important point to note, if, like me you are sometimes disinclined to wait, is that Good Fortune do a roaring trade in takeaway (and according to their menu, you're more than welcome to place phone orders).  I saw half a pig disappearing into the back of a ute and heard an order that went BBQ pork and rice thanks, with extra pork... YEAH!  not hold the pork, or I hate pork, but I'll have pork thanks with some extra pork.  That's definitely saying something.


MMMMMM MMMMMM and by the end of dinner my lips were covered in an alluring layer of duck fat.  All the better to eat you with.


Good Fortune Roast Duck House
344 William St Northbridge
9228 3293
www.goodfortuneduckhouse.com.au
Open 10am - 10pm

to market to market!!!

Last week a mate invited me to accompany her to the Subiaco Farmers Market.  And just in case I was in any danger of not going, tantalising mental imagery was used... phrases like free range ham, market spinach and freshly baked organic rolls were used in a not very politically correct fashion and, you know, I'm just not the kind of person to be able to withstand that kind of emotional pressure!!  Here are some pictures of my journey that day:


First, a quick stop at Boucla for a restorative coffee (declared to be the best coffee in Perth - them's fightin' words thar)

Oh and hang it, a little muesli cakiness to be going on with

God and what's all that other good looking stuff?

After a little bit of a rest we headed off to the Farmers Market - which was so fun and we were, like, total cliches talking about the sense of community and how lovely it was to talk to random strangers.  Anyway it was a lot of fun even if I did spend about a hundred bucks on two organic apples and an organic butter croissant... and it all looked SO GOOD that I bet any of you would spend a hundred bucks too!

you can see my two apples right here

Arty fish shots

Honey honey how you thrill me uh huh honey honey wa wa wa wa-OOOOOOH

SOOOOOO good - i think these were triple cho brownies.. all fudgy and gooey and delicious

And just to round it off - a little bit of $90 gorgonzola my good woman :-)

MMMMMMMMMMMMMM MMMM!!!!!

a spewing of sorts

Since I got back from Darwin I've been going crazy eating eating alla time eating... Darwin has some amazingly good food but the bulk of it is Asian with a few rare exceptions: hi Manoli's :-).

I've missed deli's and great bread, Italian food and amazing butchers.. so it seems like everywhere I go these days there's something I want to try or write about. I've also realised that I've been storing up all these little Perth food nuggets for years and now I finally get a chance to write about them! So I'm starting with the Mount Lawley strip because that's where I scour the mean streets looking for my lunch.

Antonio's Continental Deli must be one of Mount Lawley's most loved institutions - an Italian deli, in a nondescript alleyway tucked in behind a tobacconists and a butcher, it opened around 12 years ago. It also has the sweetest women working there! It does a roaring trade in lunch rolls cos they are sooooo good... so good that when I'm getting one I have been known to textually torment my sister to which I can pretty much guarantee an anguished and/or abusive response. My favourite is the swiss cheese continental roll with all the salads - this guarantees a crisp italian roll (fluffy on the inside) stuffed with layers of swiss, beetroot, cucumber, tomato, spanish onion and any other yumminess you can dream up - everything that should be in a roll and so rarely is.

Anyway I digress - the reason I started this post is because of their pizzas.
Every Friday for years now Antonio's have gotten in stacks of wood fired pizza's neatly wrapped in their individual plastic bags, all ready to be taken home and loved. They used to be a cool five bucks and 12 years later they're 8 bucks (that's an inflation rate of 25c a year!). They come in potato, zucchini, eggplant, a plain mushroom and tomato and on occasion I've seen a hawaiian tenderly placed in the fridge. They even sell the plain bases (which the Antonio ladies tell me MUST be turned upside down and the topping placed on the bottom so it doesn't slide off). Anyway, now that I've told you about them I don't want you to have any. More for me.

Antonio's: 7/623 Beaufort St Mount Lawley, 7 days a week

http://www.antoniosfresh.com.au/

Perth: good meat hunting

I just have to send a big shout out to Mondo's butchers on Beaufort Street in Inglewood for making the best pies I have ever tasted, anywhere EVER.  I had one years ago but didn't have a food blog that I could write in because they hadn't been invented yet.  But now I have and so I will say these puppies haven't changed a BIT in all these years - they are just SUBLIME, crammed full of huge chunks of steak and pieces of real mushroom (apologies to the vegetarians), no gravy overload here and the best pastry I have ever tasted. I also bought a chicken one for my housie and even though it was full of massive yummy chunks of chicken AND she offered me some, I only had eyes for my new girlfriend the Mondo's meat pie.


Mondo's:  824 Beaufort St Inglewood
Times:  Open every day but Sunday and Monday (busy prepping all that loveliness I'm guessing)

http://www.mondo.net.au/