Manoli's (again), happy greek easter, the best bbq pork sausage EVER and thailicious!!!!!

In case my pics come up all skewiff, they're of the Thai Food Fair here in Darwin. One day i'm gonna figure out the photo thing with this blog!!!!

Things have been a little slack at chickwithguts lately - the sissy has arrived from Perth and has been settling in, plus a bit of generalised anxiety and a mother-in-law visit have all been taking up a bit of time and space in my head. If i was a different person i would be furiously blogging away regardless, but i'm not, i disappear up my own ass. So i'll do a quick catch up instead:

Took the sissy to Manoli's for lunch last week, our first lunch visit - lunch very different to dinner. Some offerings on the menu that don't appear on the dinner menu - a home-made moussaka, spanakopita, all served up with a bit of uninspiring greek salad on the side. I don't know whether it was the lunch time ambience, my head, or WHAT, but it lacked the usual Manoli's magic. But then everything has lacked magic for me lately, so I won't hold it against them.

This weekend was Greek Easter, so we decided to do a bit of a greek-themed dinner party on Saturday night - everyone got very inspired, Hungry whipped up a very spinachy spinach and ricotta pie, the sissy a bit of her own made-up-recipe Tzatziki, I made a Horitiaki salad and the Dessert Doc made a greek rice pudding with some little citrussy orange shavings that rocked my world .... then we sat outside in the tropical humidity clutching our stomachs, pouring with sweat, so very very far from the Greek islands... MMM!

Sunday I took the sissy and the wee grrl to the Nightcliff Markets. I know I've talked before about a vietnamese stall there that does a lemongrass fish salad which is fresh and minty and perfect for Darwin.. well I was standing in line waiting to order it when the woman next to me ordered the BBQ pork sausage salad. An odd combo you might think, but this stall does the best BBQ pork sausages. Simple rice paper rolls are elevated to new heights when you stick one of these babies inside. So I decided to branch out. Try something new. Create a new neural pathway. God it was good. SO good. Fresh. Cool. Minty. The sausage sliced into big rounds of porky goodness, nestled into the rice noodles. Meaty, but not unpleasantly so, and very very tasty. I have absolutely NO regrets about this decision, the sissy was so taken by it she had to get one too.

Later Sunday afternoon we joined all the other adventurous Darwin locals looking for a bit of Thai and Laos food fair action. These food fair fundraisers are held a couple of times a year at a civic hall in Malak (?) and they are sweaty stinking hot affairs where you can get Thai and Laotion specialties that you wouldn't find anywhere outside well, say, Thailand or Laos. There are always safe options like Pad Thai for sale, or things sitting in Bain Maries (yuk) - but the more adventurous souls cruise around sampling the real deal - like the steamed prawn and chive dumplings ... the fried chilli mussels... fish maws... the fish soup so hot that when i ate it my lips swelled up like i'd done a quick round with the botox doctor... yup. If you are ever in Darwin and see that one of these is on, you need to get down. The sissy and I spent a minimal amount of money for great food and then perched on the wall with what looked like the whole Asian population of Darwin and tucked in. Good stuff.

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.

for once i have something interesting to say!!! Manoli's Greek Taverna Rocks!

Saturday nite I flipped my wig and not in a good way - so Director Chick told me to get out of the house, mingle, socialise! I suspect the subtext was 'get out of my hair dude' so I went. I was going to go to the Groove Cafe to check out the first spoken word poetry nite for 2009 and eat some of their pizza, but then Hungry called me and said do you REALLY want to go to the Groove? Gently suggesting I think that if we thought outside the square we could go somewhere
else. Anyway when I rocked up to their place (Hungry lives with her lovely partner the Dessert Doctor (DD)), we all lay around on the couch going thru the same old options... Hanuman, Vietnamese Saigon Star, the wharf, Char, Yots... we needed something that catered for the vego among us yet also gave Hungry and I some meaty options should we desire them (I was pretty sure we would). Suddenly l had an epiphany, leapt from the couch, declared we were going to Manolis, the new greek restaurant that my new friend had told me about. Not leaving any time
for argument or indecison we jumped into the car and sped into town spontaneous-like, not even taking the chance of calling them to see if they could fit us in (it was only 630 so I figured we were in with a chance). We asked whether they could take us and they very sweetly agreed to, despite being fully booked. Just a note - they've only been open a month, so to be fully booked (and it's a big restaurant) is a pretty amazing feat.

We had to squeeze around a table for 2 near the bar. Now I know that some people would prolly shit their pants at being seated near the kitchen with the swinging doors and waiters barrelling through, but personally I like the rough and tumble, so it was cool with us. Plates, napkins, cutlery all magically appeared in double quick time. Waitstaff charmed us (I was particularly smitten by the boy with the white-framed glasses - it takes a bold man to dress outside the square like that) and the menu was delivered. And to my joy, this was not at ALL like Vietnamese Saigon Star where I read and reread the menu to see if I could find just one solitary thing I wanted. This time I read and reread the menu cos there was so much! I should prolly explain, as the waitstaff did to us, that Manolis specialises in Mezedes - which is kind of like greek tapas. Lots of dishes to share. You can order them all at once or order a few and then order a few more. The menu was organised into 3 columns, one of which was almost entirely vegetarian which made DD very happy. Hungry and I were equally happy to see yummy calamari and meatiness. Also, I won't eat greek salads, I boycotted them after getting too many bad salads that feature slimy past-their-use-by-date kalamata olives, or those rubber tyre olives with no pips and squares of tasteless feta cheese. But I made an exception on this night and we ordered a variation on a greek salad and was DELIGHTED to discover FRESH, yes fresh herbs (not sure whether it was thyme or oregano) and rocket in my salad, deliciously tasty feta, chunks of imaginatively shaped cucumber and our own oil, vinegar and seasoning so we could DRESS OUR OWN SALAD!!!

What else did we order? A bowl of Greeky tasty chickpeas, the greek salad offshoot mentioned above, calamari (tender, small pieces, big plate, delicious), zouzoukakia which are greek meatballs in a red tomato salsa, 4 to a plate (of all the things this is the one i would prolly give a miss next time - there was nothing wrong with them, but there was a bit of a funny aftertaste), saganaki balls (little balls of fried cheesy crumbed heaven), fried eggplant with skordalia dip (garlic and potato) to spread over the slices - this was heaven. Heaven I tell you! Everything was served with big quartered chunks of local lemon and lime to squeeze over the food. There was a whole lot of appreciating going on at our table I can tell you! Afterwards I was craving a sweet thing, as you do, so I asked about desserts. They don't have a dessert menu as such, but I was told the milfe (pronounced mil-fAY) a greeky vanilla custard tart that they serve, is baked by the chefs mama and dropped off to the restaurant at 6- 630 before service! So I had to have a go of that. We ordered the milfe, baklava and a canaries nesty thing to share and coffees for two - Hungry got a latte and there was LATTE ART. Yes. And I got a sweet greek coffee. Previously I've not been convinced about greek coffee either, but this was delish. I found myself sitting in athens in a kafeneion sipping my greek coffee and tucking into my milfe. Really it was the best. Transformative and transportative! We patted our bellies and made our way to the counter where we paid the grand total of $94 for 3 people :-))))))

So in a word? Go. But don't tell anyone about it.

Manoli's Greek Taverna, Smith St, Darwin City. Near Throb Nightclub and Coffee
Nut.

vietnamese saigon star - 1 star :-( Is it just me?

It was pouring with rain when i set out today to get my lunch and i had a hankering for roast duck and pork 328, but i can't base my entire blog about my eating experiences there cos that would be tedious. So seeing as it was far, and the legs of my pants were soaked despite my umbrella, and i was only on the upper part of smith street, i decided to give a vietnamese restaurant a go today.

While Darwin is often described as having the best asian food outside asia because of the masses of asian families residing here, there is only one reknowned vietnamese restaurant here - Vietnam Saigon Star. I know it might be unrealistic to expect un-westernised asian food in the west, but there you go - thats what i was after - an authentic vietnamese experience. You can probably guess that wasn't what i got.... i wanted something fast and i was twirling (the phrase anyone knows me uses to describe the lightheaded crazy state i go into when my blood sugar drops and i need food FAST) which never helps my decision-making. So once the woman personning the counter established i was there to get something to take away i was handed the lunch menu. To my disappointment it wasn't that imaginative, pretty standard stuff - i dunno about you, but if a menu is interesting, things will grab my attention straight up - if i have to read it over and over again hoping to find something i missed the first time then its just not going to be good. But i was kind of in a spot - twirling, wet and needing to eat - so i resigned myself to an average eating experience.

I ended up spotting a tomato rice with diced beef on the back page of the lunch menu that in my twirling haze i thought was like the vietnamese stew you get at Annas in leederville in perth, which is rich and yummy and full of meltingly good beef and star anise - but no! Once i ordered it, i realised it said rice fried in tomato and when i tried to clarify with the woman, she mentioned tomato sauce and fried rice and i panicked not wanting any fried tomato sauce business. Then she said i could have my diced beef cubes WITH steamed rice which sounded even worse. So i did a redo. Asked for the proper menu. Cancelled the beef cubes, ordered prawn rice paper rolls for entree and beancurd and mushroom as a main off the vegetarian section of the menu.

This set me back $20 which was tooooooo much for what i got. I carried it back to my desk - i'd like to say it was with anticipation, but it was with something decidedly less than anticipation. What was it like? I ended up with 3 pork and prawn rice paper rolls - these didn't look flash but they were yummy and fresh and minty - and a bowl of very large tofu pieces, carrots and tender shitake mushrooms in a nondescript sauce - which is an odd thing to have for lunch. And an odd combination, those carrots just didn't belong there - and does anyone else have a prejudice about big round pieces of carrot? i'm not a carrot fan at the best of times - but when they're BIG and ROUND - well that's just not right. I truly believe that restaurants have a tricky time dealing with vegetarians and they throw these weird things together that just don't belong together just cos they're vegies! And there is just NO EXCUSE for not making it even a little bit memorable with a bit of coriander or basil, or SOMETHING! AND i ate it all and i'm still hungry. AND i spilt it all over my new pants which made me feel even sulkier.

So would i go back? I might. If i did, i'd order some pho and see if that made me feel like i was living in Vietnam. But I don't think it would, so i don't know that I will.

Vietnam Saigon Star
Shop 4/21 Smith and Knuckey St
Darwin Central
Ph: 89811420
Dine in/takeaway
Open for lunch and dinner

my uninspired eating week - oh wait, is it only Tuesday?

It's been an uninspired eating week for the ole chickwithguts. The best thing i've eaten was tiny little limey/lemony meringue tarts whipped up by my good friend and favourite Dessert Doctor. They were all golden crispy meringue, perched on top of this beautiful citrussy filling and then the pastry! homemade, just the right combination of buttery and flaky, not sweet - a good counterpoint (!!) for the sweetness of the rest of it... honestly if she opened up a place in Darwin she'd make a killing!!!! I was only supposed to eat 1 and then i ate another half and then a whole nother 1 *sigh* talk about moreish!! I had to step up the workouts this week to burn up those babies.

Sunday i went back to box jellyfish at nightcliff swimming pool for another toastie and got charged $4 for a bubacino *frowning* pretty funny cos a proper grown up coffee costs $4.50 - maybe i should have just hyped the squids up on coffee for bang for my buck - LOL (just imagining it). Toastie was good. They had free muffins this time and asked for my blog address - so HI!

Monday arrived *sigh* and Director Chick 2 had pointed me in the direction of a cold chicken noodle salad they make at roast and noodle 328. i have to say i don't reckon it's up to their other offerings. a sign i should have paid attention to was my tummy growling at the sight of the bowls of roast pork rice and bok choys being wolfed down around me ... a lesson in sticking to what i really really want in the future :-( anyway, the noodle salad was pretty nice - steamed chicken pieces on some rice noodles with chilli and soy and bean sprouts.. but yeah, kind of uninspiring. MAN just thinking about that rice and bok choy makes me want to run down and get some now *burp*

Tomorrow - Sari Rasa :-))) yeah!!!