Lonely Stretch

Alawhatthefucka! is what I would like to call Alaturka Restaurant after last nights debacle. You know when you go to dinner somewhere you've really been interested in going to and then it all goes bad and wrong? And so it was in this case - started out well and yeah, it all kind of took a wrong turn. In the immortal words of the Triffids: I took a wrong turn off an unmarked track...I did 7 miles I couldn't find my way back...

First impressions: I walk in the door and get a little bit lost. The register and maitre d are all WAY down the back of the restaurant which is somewhat - howyousay - cavernous, so I'm left standing like a bump on a log. Luckily when I hail a waitperson she is over in a flash and I'm seated quickly. I have a look around and it looks pretty flash - iconic turkish pictures on the ceiling, pretty paintings, nice furnishings, candles on the table, a palpable hum in the air... all boding well for a good night. Service attentive, drinks come quickly - I'm feeling good! So where exactly does it start going wrong... ?

Is it churlish of me to mention the bread? First course is dips, eggplant, hummus and the turkish equivalent of tzatziki - but served with STALE turkish bread and some random lebanese bread thrown in for good measure. Passable - even I can forgive stale bread. Benefit of the doubt and all that. So we move on to the other appetiser, which is presented on a very imaginative garnish - a capsisum that's been carved to look like a crocodile! Even I am impressed by this. The meatball that comes with it - a minced lamb meatball that the menu informs me will be rolled in nuts n stuff and covered in lashings of cous cous - comes out and is very very tasty, although I can find no evidence of cus cus (SP). Tick. Moving on.

Mains arrive. Now let me tell you that the menu was quite specific in listing the components of both the dishes that we ordered - for me, mini chicken stuffed with rice, sultanas, peanuts and turkish herbs, for her, swordfish skewers with grilled potatoes and mushroom sauce with pomegranates. What came out? Hmm well.....my mini chicken was definitely not stuffed with any of the ingredients stated, it was stuffed full of greenness, which led me after the fact to suspect that perhaps it was one of those leonards mini rolled chickens. It was nicely presented though, came out with a mound of rice, a wee bit of salad, some yoghurt, oh and did I mention the wedges? Yes, you read right, WEDGES, the lesser known staple of turkish cuisine. Dining partner looked at her dinner in dismay - 3 swordfish skewers in the middle of the plate stuck into a lemon half and some scattered busyness around the plate which kind of gave the illusion of food without actually providing any - oh and yes - again with the wedges. No grilled potatoes, no mushroom sauce. Taste-wise - the chicken was ok, a bit dry, and didn't taste of sultanas, peanuts or herbs really but the swordfish skewers were pretty unlovely - if it had been my dinner I would have cried my eyes out. And the worst part was that it cost almost $30! $30 and not a side in sight!

Moving on - just let me mention here that while the service started with a bang, it's totally disintegrated by this point in the meal - the restaurant is totally packed and our table is full of old glasses and plates n shiz - so the logical thing to do is to visit the toilet. So I head down the back to find the toilet and find the ambi-pur toilet fresheners are kicking around the floor in the hallway OUTSIDE the door of the toilets. When I go inside I can't find the lock on the door, there's no toilet paper on the toilet-roll holder and I'm trying not to look at all the dust on the shelf. I have a mate who calls this kind of stuff "dirtyflash" - it's all good on the surface, but if you poke around a little you uncover all the hideousness.

By the time I come out I'm done with this place. It's inconsistent and overrated. Mama turkish lady is scowling at me everytime I walk past her. But I gird my loins to tackle dessert. Kadiyifi with icecream. It comes. It's yummy. The icecream (3 flavours) is good. The sweet turkish coffee i've ordered is FABULOUS. But nothing can bring me back from the wedges.

Signatures (from a source)

And my source says: Got a tip from a kiwi builder friend of mine (Hi Duncan!) ... Signature’s Cafe in the Chinatown building. Had a quick lunch there today and it was damn good. A little Greek lady serves it up and just wants you to be happy – calls everyone darling (couldn’t really understand much else she said!). I had a skewered sausage thing – looked like some kind of native mammal poo to tell the truth – but it was delicious and meaty and garlicky, with extra garlicky-ness in the yoghurt sauce. There were also stuffed cabbage leaves and a spanakopita about the size of a truck tyre. Greek sweets too. I think my poo skewer plus salad was $8.50.

not Mingy in the slightest!

Ming Court... what to say what to say. Last night as I tucked into my second straight night of Ming Court Pizza, somebody asked me if I had blogged about it, to which I thoughtfully replied in the negatory. The reason it was a thoughtful reply is that I spend a lot of time blogging about really good places or really bad places, but can forget to write about the staples that sustain us - and we regularly eat their pizza.

Ming Court Pizza has never been my favourite pizza place, there's too much in the topping department, the bases bend under the weight like nobodies business and sometimes I can't tell a Margerita from a vegetarian, but it's the closest to our house, the one with the funniest service (and possibly the most helpful if you get them on a good day) AND never in my puff have I come across a Chinese restaurant that makes pizza, which surely makes it the most unique pizza place in Darwin, if not Australia. They are pretty expensive for what they are, but they are loved far and wide, have a massive wait on weekends of up to an hour, are cherished for their wide range of pizzas that span standard aussie toppings to gourmet vegetarian (the Meditteranean with blobs of greek yoghurt), not to mention their range of Asian pizzas (never been game enough to try one but they even have a Thai-style pizza). The garlic bread is usually a bit limp but it's ok. It's all ok. It definitely deserves a mention.

Ming Court

Jingili Shops

18 Jingili Terrace

Jingili NT

Ph: 89851755

BEST BURGER

A little while ago the NT News ran a competition to see locals vote on the best burgers in town. It was narrowed down to 3 finalists and the taste test saw Melissa's Takeaway win hands down and I've been meaning to get down there ever since. So today I did. Well OH MY GOD is not all I have to say - I also have to say that it was the PERFECT burger. Soft white bun, home-made meat patty that definitely contained fresh herbs and spring onion, beetroot, fried onions, perfectly shredded lettuce (iceberg, thin), thin slices of tomato - it was the bomb.

Melissa's Takeaway
Shop 12, Westlane Arcade
Darwin NT
89422001

Bull or no bull?

Suffice to say that circumstances led me to the door of the Raging Bull Steakhouse in Parap, in the far end corner of the Parap Village Tavern (15 Parap Rd, Parap), or if you're really motivated you can check it our here: http://www.parapvillagetavern.com.au/categories/Raging-Bull-Steakhouse/

Now I've never eaten at a Steakhouse, let alone one in Darwin, the NT, or a pub, so I had no idea what to expect.... except that I figured it might be grimier, harder and involve more guns. But I had heard (word on the street and all that) that this was a good place to get a steak. Which is not something I get to eat a lot. So I pushed open the doors and found.... a bright, inviting, well lit space with polished concrete and wooden floors, highchairs, families, clean bathrooms, good service, wine, lots of Australian and imported beers and meat - lots and lots of meat. The only thing I found marginally offputting was the faint odour of smoke drifting through from the pub next door, but to be fair it was very very faint - detectable only to a nose-to-the-wind-ex-smoking-nazi (me).

To dinner: well they have a big, well set out menu focussing on meat, but providing seafood, vegetarian and kids choices and there are also daily specials (check that link for massive schnitzel nite, massive steak nite etc etc - salads and greenery of any kind are definitely an afterthought). My dining partner (podner) and I ordered some calamari as an entree and it took ages to come out. It was ok, a generous serve, tender (if a bit floury) but passable. Mains saw me asking for some guidance from the staff and they recommended ribs (ribs! how .. how... meaty!!) with a smoked sauce, mash and salad and my podner ordered steak. Steak steak steak. He was very happy with it, it came exactly as he'd ordered it (rare) with a little rare flag on the top, HUGE, with mash. I didn't love mine, although I felt the romance of being at one with the wild west with my ribs - they fell from the bone, tasted ok, but my tummy definitely paid the price for it all later! Mash was very creamy but untasty and the salad was fresh with a little mustard vinaigrette that I didn't mind. Dessert was pretty uninspiring - choc mousse slice with icecream and cream - it wasn't hideous and if I hadn't thought to put my spoon down I would have absentmindedly eaten the whole thing....all in all I would probably go back in a pinch, I've had much much worse food.

so not Thailicious!!!!

After I dropped my sunglasses off to the optometrist today I ducked past Roast Duck and Pork 328 and came up beside Thailicious – it’s a relatively new joint that opened up in the arade about 4 months ago and it’s still open. Which is why perhaps my better judgement eluded me today. When I stopped by previously to have a look at the menu, I wasn’t convinced. It’s largely a selection of bain marie dishes, none of which look very appetising with a very limited specials menu.. why today of all days, for the LOVE OF GOD I decided to stop and eat I have no idea. Especially with the quality of food streaming out of 328!!! But I did – taken perhaps by the sign that declared “steamed chicken and rice” (say no more). Really, a dish that if done well is delectable and if done badly, really really sucks - and I’m betting you can figure out which end of the spectrum this landed. That’s right. Dry stringy chicken, tasteless watery stock, dry old cucumber – the only thing I would rate at all is the rice, which is if I had to come up with a descriptor is ….. *thinking*….pleasant. And that is now my lunch. I’d take a photo and put it up on my blog, but it might put you off yours. MMMMM rice – lucky I love you. The irony is that the woman who served me brightly tried to persuade me to attend the OTHER Thailicious on Mitchell St! Not. Bloody. Likely.

Thailicious. Don’t go there. Ever! Just head to the lunch stall at the very very end of the arcade where the thousands of other (not foolish foolish me) people are.

the great chicken rice challenge

Sam 1 and Sam 2 were chatting to me one day and we got onto the topic of all things chicken rice in Darwin. This was inspired by my visit to Singapore at Christmas where I became OBSESSED with chicken rice: the cheapest, the yummiest, the most authentic, the biggest serves… and then I came back to Darwin. With a thud. But figuring that Darwin has a massive Asian population, there MUST be chicken rice. But where? Thus the great chicken rice challenge was begat. Admittedly, we started it after Christmas this year, and it’s now July *sheepishly*. I would like to offer up this excuse: I was so scarred by one of our chicken rice experiences that I couldn’t write about it, plus I ate chicken rice 3 times in one week and after that it was all over – no more chicken rice for CWG *gag*

We ate our first chicken rice at the Waterfall Café (Saturday and Sunday only). Mine was singularly unappetising, the chicken a greyish colour, but everyone else was pretty happy with theirs. They serve up their chicken rice with BBQ pork, but again, mine for some reason was very random, the pork all cut against the grain looking very weird. There was also a very unpleasant tasting soup. The spice mix served up is lovely; the rice nice, and it was mixed opinions all round. But they clearly have a faithful following as the times that I have been there it has been full of locals chowing down on chicken rice!

Later that week was a chicken rice experience in town, Asian Pot I think it was called, in an arcade off Smith St and it was foul! No pun intended. The chicken had been deep fried I suspect, to expedite the process and it really doesn’t do anything for the chicken. Even remembering it makes me sweat. I liked the soup; the rice was dull, and all round it was pretty shite.

Then there was Roast Pork and Duck 328 – always a winner. Chicken plump, pillowy, chunky, slices of fresh cucumber served with chicken and sweet corn soup (admittedly this is breaking from tradition but it’s sooo good), spice mix delicious, steaming jasmine rice … to say that this place has a faithful following would be to misrepresent what happens in this arcade every lunchtime – it’s almost religious the way people queue up. Service is always quick and efficient and it’s also excellent value for money. So 3 for 3 and the clear winner is Roast Pork and Duck 328 – but wait, there’s more….. or is there?

Zushi

BarZushi in Casuarina Shopping Centre is one of 3, yes 3 places in Darwin where you can get decent sushi. I'm pretty much avoidant of anywhere but Go Sushi Train in town, but when you you're far far away on a shopping jag and you need a sushi fix (cos it's either that or the shitty food court) then BarZushi is an acceptable substitute. I'm not a massive fan of the layout of the place because the train annoys me, it's hard to get a seat if you don't sit right in front of it, tables are a superfluous afterthought, it's usually packed and noisy and all the stuff in the fridge looks like it was made really really early in the morning and is still sitting there at 2pm which is usually when I get around to visiting... so imagine my joy* when I spyed a new BarZushi joint near the Coffee Club in Casuarina! (Near Colorado)! *dancing

Yesterday after taking one of the squidgy didges to the movies (Ice Age 3 - enough intertextual references to keep a grownup happy), we headed there. No train, heaps of seats, heaps of tables, hardly anyone there, yay! The menu was a scaled down version of the other BarZushi joint and I kept my expectations low, but surprisingly everything that came out of the kitchen was awesome - this included some inside out beef contraption where the beef featured as the nori, plain avacado sushi (simple, fresh, perfect) and miso soup (lots of bean curd and spring onion). YUM! Oh and fresh San Pellegrino to wash it all down in really tall glasses with lots of ice. Yeah.

*2011 update:  Sadly my joy has turned to disappointment.  The sushi has taken a dramatic downturn (missing dishes, wrong dishes coming out, big drop in quality) and the service, which I once dismissed as quirky and lovable in its eccentricity, is frankly, terrible!

SSSSSSaffron

The other afternoon I had the luxury of an afternoon sleep and when I woke up, I couldn't get the Morroccan Soup Bar out of my head *see last post. So I lay there for ages yearning for MSB takeaway for dinner that night.. which led me to dark thoughts about Darwin's shitty takeaway options. THEN I thought that, actually, you know, I've become complacent. Goddammit. We regularly get TA from about 5 places - all pretty ordinary. Why not get something GOOD I thought, strike out on a limb. And Saffron popped into my head.

Now I've only been there once and from what I remember the service was weird, they tried to rope us into a banquet that none of us wanted, no-one knew where to get cutlery, crockery or water and we all got jack of it pretty quick and then never went back. BUT from memory the food was really good. This being a classic case of cutting ones nose off to spite ones face, I decided that Saffron was the TA option I had been denying myself. And you know what? It was really really really really nice! I could go even go WAAY out on a limb and say that it was as good as HANUMAN!!! (crazy I know). Have I mentioned that it's Indian food?

We started off with small ordering intentions, but by the time the sissy and I had finished with the menu we had ordered 90 bucks worth of stuff including saffron rice, steamed rice, some very yummy very deliciously charred sweet breads - one was a garlic naan and the other was a onion and cheese bread that was soooooooooooooooo good - tender sweet, really tasty....we got butter chicken (average - oh maybe that's unfair, I'm not a huge fan, so I'm probably not the best judge), a green dhal that i LOVED, and a paneer dish with peas for the vego girlfriend - my only criticism of it would be that they were all a bit sloppy - a lot of liquid and perhaps not huge amounts of other content and paying what we did, I would expect there to be CHUNKS of THINGS dammit - especially when it's peas and cheese!!! The other massive bonus for kid bearing folk is that they offer a kids menu, which looked so yummy I would have been quite happy to eat off it :-)))))) baby vego spring rolls, baby vego curry puffs, breads, chicken with coloured rice - yum!

Ok so Saffrron is out the back of the Parap Markets - near the alleyway that contains 24 hour Art. This is so slack but you might have to look it up on the net - incidentally you can see all their menus and contacts on the internet, which is pretty handy.

Martin's

I always enjoy stopping in at Martin's Cafe on my way to work, feeling like I've stolen time (I usually have), slipping round the corner near the clocktower into my carpark out the front of the hydrotherapy centre. It's always cool and quiet and vaguely hippy-feeling...Martin is always beavering away alone trying desperately to get everything ready before the rush.. I love the neatly stacked piles of dhal and rice, bali curry, beetroot curry in the fridge. This morning I stopped to grab one of his vegan salads. I can't remember if I've ever talked about them before but they're a wicked option if you're looking for a healthy lunch. Big chunks of roasted veges (carrot, pumpkin, beetroot), crunchy red capsicum, green olives, hummus, kidney beans, sunflower seeds and lettuce - lots and lots of lettuce, which I'm not so much a fan of cos I reckon it's one of those fluff items that canny retailers use to bulk out salads to make them seem like you're getting a lot when you're not. And occasionally - just occasionally, if you come too late in the week, the lettuce in these salads can be little, how you say, BROWnish around the edges. Martin usually makes them fresh on Monday mornings so they're ready by lunch time, so I reckon getting one on Monday or Tuesday would be your best bet.

Martin's Cafe, Coconut Grove

Spread the word ....

a tip from a source:

Sari Rasa is now open for dinner from Tuesday to Saturday nights: more or less the same yummy bain marie gear* as they serve at lunchtime, cheap as chips, BYO.

Tell all your friends – there was hardly anyone there last night, which is almost criminal.

*There was a prawn and potato dish I hadn't seen before.

hark! THE GOOD BREAD HATH COMETH!!!!

How long have I been saying ad infinitum (and ad nauseum my loved ones would say) that Darwin NEEDS GOOD BREAD?!

Well it's here. Nigel is a German baker and he is turning out a range of organic breads that just beg to be eaten. Dark, chewy Rye, Baguettes and organic Sourdoughs - they are just GORGEOUS. You can find his breads at Greenies (Shop 12, Rapid Creek Shopping Centre) and at Parap Fine Foods (40 Parap Rd, Parap). Fresh on Tuesdays and Fridays @ Parap and fresh on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday? (I made up Sunday, it just seems logical cos thats when the Rapid Creek Markets are on). Yeah!

i really should be famous for my shitty photos by now

A Precis.

Istanbul cafe - eagerly anticipated (not by me, I reckon this AusTurk stuff is way overrated), newly opened, turkish music wafting forth, iron tables under the shade in the park outside the cafe in the stinking hot Darwin weather, they offer pide, meaty extravaganza's, kebabs, with some homemade desserts and cakes - the usual turkish stuff you'd expect. I had felafels with rice, salad and dips = $9 (score!), in a peculiarly Australian touch they gave me chips to have with my dips instead of turkish bread cos they'd run out - I had to refuse. Felafels were of average size, yummy, crisp, but only got 3 to a serve, rice was fluffy with mystery brown grains, the salad was more pleasing than the average salad, with mint and roasted red capsicum to offset the usual greens, fresh red capsicum, lettuce, cucumber and tomato, dips - well there was some weird dip that i didn't even bother tasting (it had a yellowish tinge and contained carrot so that was enough to put me off) and a mint, garlic and yoghurt dip that was yummo and i threw all over my lunch.

An update: The sissy and I ended up at the Istanbul Cafe for a quick dinner before a movie and ordered chicken kebabs - they were really really good! About $10. Yummy. Then I cried "your most turkish dessert if you will" and ended up taking away some minty rice pudding which I devoured at the movies - in my minds eye I could see myself sitting in Istanbul with a gritty Turkish coffee and my rice pudding. Not that I tend to romanticise or anything :-))))

Istanbul Cafe - Knuckey St, Darwin.

Chicken Photos

From a reliable source from the Yum Cha restaurant in Cavanagh St in Darwin City.... having sampled the goods which were thoughtfully heated up for me and delivered straight to my office (!!!), i can say categorically that it is very like chicken rice, just without the rice, the soup and the cucumber.. so not at all like chicken rice in that sense, but taste-wise is pretty damn good. I'mgoing to take Hungry and Gourmet chick there so that we can have a go of it. At lunch the other day we tried to decide the criteria for ranking places in the great Darwin Chicken Rice Challenge - the top 10 Darwin Chicken Rice experiences. I think we decided on taste, price, speed of delivery and qualityof service. Or maybe i just made that all up and it's just whether we like it? We'll be hard pressed to even find 10 I reckon. Anyway stay posted :-))))

Saigon Star and some unexpected latte art

I was talked into going back to Vietnamese Saigon Star to sample two dishes and perhaps do a little to counteract the very emphatic thumbs down I gave them previously. The first dish was the Rice Noodle Soup (pho) with Sliced Beef which came with a very sexy side-dish of mint, bean shoots, cut red chilli and wedges of lemon, all to add to the pho (this was given the double thumbs up by Hungry and my other lunch friend who i should nickname Referral Grrl this week). I, on a whim (and on a very clear recommendation) had rice vermicelli with grilled pork - which looked SOOOOO good when it arrived that the woman sitting next to me leant over to ask what it was so that she could order it next week! Grilled pork with a bit of crumbage, sliced very finely on a bed of rice vermicelli, bean shoots, cucumber, lettuce, fresh mints (oops i meant mint dammit!), coriander, chopped peanuts... mmm mmmm it was good.

Afterwards we walked over the road to Dolce so that Hungry could get some of their very delicious chocolate gelati and the barista from Manoli's (Manoli's Greek Taverna) was there making the coffees, and i spotted a display of his latte art! You may remember i mentioned in a previous post that he had done a cat in the froth of Hungry's latte one night at Manoli's - man he is good! He does fish and dragons and all sorts of stuff. Check it out. Dolce on the corner of the Smith St mall. Oh and VSS? Yes. Give them a go. It was delicious. It may be dish-dependant, but at least you have two dishes you can be sure of. YUM!

karen's kitchen

I've been avoiding Karen's Kitchen for a while now, mostly cos it got really same same - the same boring sandwiches, the same boring salads. And my biggest gripe was that they never ever had eggs! On Tuesday, I ended up there cos Energy to Go on Mitchell St kept me waiting to be served for 5 minutes in a line with about 10 poor other fuckers and we didn't even get the common greeting of overstressed overworked lunch workers everywhere of "how you going, sorry to keep you waiting, be with you in a minute" and i fucked off. As i had promised Director Chick a sandwich, i was looking for a sandwich bar - so popped into Ks Kitchen on a whim... and LO! and BEHOLD! Fresh sandwiches! Home made lasagne! DIFFERENT SALADS (changing daily i noted)! Inviting interior (as opposed to the bare minimum being on display it looked as if there was lots and lots to eat)! Strategically placed fruit and veges for decoration! Got my sandwich (cheese, tomato and egg on multigrain that DC declared very yummy and she can be pretty fussy) and a salad for me (they had 3 or 4 housemade salads on display) - they're happy to let you have one big salad or two or 3 mixed up. The first day I had a barley salad with fresh veges and parsley and a roasted pumpkin, beetroot, fetta and spinach salad with a boiled egg. Dressing (accomodating or what) on the side. The next day I went back wondering if it had been a flash in the pan? No! Different salads, yummier again - i noticed some strategic recycling of Tuesdays salads - the barley salad had felafels added to it and some fresh parsley and more veges it seemed and the pumpkin etc salad made a reappearance with lamb koftas and couscous! Thursday ( i like to push these things) i didn't like the look of any of the house-made salads, so they were very accomodating and let me make up my own salad and when it came it was delicious. Lamb koftas for the second day running! Who said salad had to be boring!

Karen's Kitchen - next to Go Sushi Train in the mall just after the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Open for lunch. Ooh and they do catering.

Manoli's take 2

Hungry and I slipped into Manolis Saturday night after a trip to the movies to see Milk - i guess after having such an amazing first experience at Manoli's we wanted to see if it was a flash in the pan. Earlier in the week I had tried to book us in, but they were booked out! So on a tip we decided to slip in at 845 pm and ask if we could be seated near the bar, which is where we were last time. Sure enough, they were sweet and accomodating and within seconds we were whisked inside, seated and fed. Very similar to last time, but if anything the food was better!

New things we tried: Saganaki - greek cheese in a pizza sized wedge, fried and golden and deliciously bad for you... Bougatsa, a puffy golden pastry dessert filled with custard and dusted with icing sugar... more greek coffee, Hungry got a taste of extreme latte art when she was directed by the Barista to notice the image of a cat on her latte! Mama Manoli came and sat with us for half an hour.. we met Papa Manoli, chef Manoli, sisters Manoli and family friend Alex (all working at the restaurant of course). Then when we went to leave, free Baklava and Kataifi were pressed into our hands to take home. In Perth i've had this kind of experience before - i call it going thru the portal - by which i mean that speedy service, great food and nice atmosphere don't necessarily equate to a magical experience, but sometimes, just sometimes, you hit the jackpot and it feels like something magical is happening. That's Manolis.

When we left it was raining and we pressed our free desserts into the hands of some people sitting in the rain on the street - seemed only right to share the love :-) :-) :-)

Burnett house i salute you (and remove you from my hit list)

Sunday, Director Chick (DC) and I, who were fed up to the back teeth with squiddy illness in the house, received a spontaneous invitation to join DC2 and her mama for a spot of high tea at Burnett House at Myilly Point. A few weeks ago we had a bit of an altercation with Burnett House after we were unable to get into celebrate DC's 40th birthday - it's a long story - but i think a fair precis of the event would be that it was all their fault. Nevertheless and having no emotional investment in it working out in any particular way, we went. Burnett House is a lovely historical piece of the original Darwin, boasting original tropical architecture and a few bullet holes from world war 2 and has lush green tropical gardens and a slide to keep the kiddiwinks amused. Tables are set in the garden surrounding the house - free water is supplied. In the wet season people can squeeze into the main dining room inside if it rains. Luckily it was a beautifully sunny fake dry season day and the kids just got to trip around the garden until it got too late and they had a fight over a special rock and it all ended in tears...anyhoo that came later. The best thing about high tea here is that you can go and you don't have to get dressed up. And you can take the kids and let them run wild in the gardens - just keep them off the road.

We had high tea for 4 - this included lots of pots of very good tea (or you can have plunger coffee), scones jam and cream with little tropical touches - a corner of dragonfruit sitting in the cream for example - and CWA cakes (if memory serves there was a lemon tart smothered in cream that was out of this world), shortbread scrolls and savoury pastries as well as the traditional finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off - we also ordered savoury platters, which weren't that memorable - crackers, a few savoury pasry bits, some cheese, a lone piece of beef... really i just remember a lot of cheese getting very hot in the afternoon sun.

Burnett House high tea goes from 330pm - 530 or 6pm on Sundays pretty much all year round. Get there early to bags a table.

the dry season cometh?

While i was sitting at the park in the rain on saturday nite, i had heard tell of a new venture based in the Nightcliff swimming pool carpark and always intrigued by tales of toasties and coffee and bacon and egg sandwiches, i made a date to check it out next weekend. but. when i woke up yesterday morning i peered thru the louvres and lo and behold! hark! yay and verily! it was sunny!!!!!! i can't emphasise how good this was after all the shitty grey wet season-ness i've been dragging my ass through so i rallied Director Chick and the two squids round to the pool to check it out on the way to the markets yesterday.

They're called Box Jellyfish, a blue trailer that's hard to miss as it's right on the edge of the walkway to maximise the traffic (foot and otherwise) cruising by. they sell Vittoria coffee, which i really really like, they grind it then and there and though my flat white and DC's latte were on the weakish side, it wasn't hideous. they made a good toastie (we got a plain cheese one and a ham and cheese), judging by the way they were wolfed down and i enjoyed my bacon and egg s/wich (although you'd have to do something really really wrong for me to not like anything that involves bacon and eggs). they also delivered everything to our table as we chased squid 2 around which was sweet and they brought over chocolate frogs for the squids to eat (nothing like chocolate on an empty stomach at 10am) the other thing is that its such an excellent place to eat overlooking the sea and the sun.. ah the sun... i soaked it up as i ate, watching the three crazy people swimming in the sea below me with the box jellyfish..perhaps they too had been tricked into thinking it was a dry season day?

Box Jellyfish: Nightcliff Pool Carpark - definitely sat and
sun mornings.

Parap Fine Foods - Saturday morning

NGO chick sent me a text the other day saying that i should blog about the parap fine foods pastry selection - she reckons it's the best selection of gourmet breads and non-brumby/bakers delight type pastry yumminess in Darwin. This is not the first time i've been told this - Hungry told me some years ago now that she used to wait out the front of PFF on Saturday mornings to buy 2 of only 8 chocolate croissants that are available!! Not sure if this is still the case, and having not checked it out myself, i can only tell you what they've said and suggest it might be worth checking out. Not sure where they get their bread/pastriness from either...... it's all a mystery!

http://www.parapfinefoods.com/ i think they're open from 8am, 9 on Sundays.
Parap village, 40 Parap Rd, Parap.