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.

melbourne

What to say - I LOVE MELBOURNE FOOD!!!!!!

Such good food - such good coffee. The standouts:

The Moroccan Soup Bar - situated in North Fitzroy, when a friend suggested it, I had to get on-line to check reviews. I was a bit cynical I admit about a place that had soup in the title, even though I love soup. What I found on the internet were unequivocal raves about the place, which it totally lived up to. It's hard to quantify exactly what is so appealing about this place and I tried - I took a poll with all the people I was with. The results?
The line snaking out the door, so that if you get in you feel like one of the chosen people. Really.
The spoken menu - nothing written.
The attention to personal detail - food intolerances, allergies all catered for.
The ambience - cluttered, warm, bright inviting colours, rickety chairs so you feel like you've been invited to someone elses house.
An owner that obviously feels passionately about what she does.
The price! 20 bucks for a banquet that included 4 extremely delicious courses and was so massive that we were in danger of exploding. I had to go for a walk in the middle of it.

Atomica - Brunswick St, Fitzroy.
I'd never been to Atomica before but what I found was great coffee (their own blend), a comprehensive menu with some good sweet and some good savoury, good service despite crowding, a communal table that was great to sit at. I had some french toast with caremalised bananas and pecan crunchiness that was the bomb.

Marios - Brunswick St, Fitzroy.
I always go to Marios to feel like a local. They've been there forever, the food is always consistent (not fantastically innovative or anything, but nice), the coffee is lovely, the service is soooo quick and I love the gruff waiters in their ties, waistcoats and aprons, they do breakfast all day and you can bet your bippy you'll run into someone vaguely famous there. Not Tomkat sadly, but still, Spicks and Specks is pretty good.

Babka - Brunswick St, Fitzroy. Are we detecting a theme here?
Oh. My. God. What can I say about Babka that hasn't already been said? The BEST croissants, baked yummy things ever. The smell. The warmth. There's always a queue to buy baked stuff or to get a table. Locals come prepared with a paper and take up a posi against the wall until they get a seat. I got up super early (for me)(on Saturday) and headed down to share a table with a complete stranger and it was soooo worth it as I tucked into my citrussy blintz filled with cottage cheese. YUm!

Cafe Bedda - High St in Northcote.
So good! Italian never tasted so fresh and clean.
Starters: Warm olives, (yuk I thought, but promptly changed my mind when I ate them), eggplant fritters, pork and fennel sausages - yum!
Mains: I had some soft pillowy gnocchi in tomato sugo with scattered basil leaves - so simple. Awesome.
Great desserts: a twice baked chocolate souffle that looked like heaven!!! I had cannoli and coffee and felt all italian.

melbourne baby!!!!!

Off to Melbourne tonight - expect breakfast/coffee/food blogging from around
Melbourne on my return :-))))

we gove there

No we didn't, we flew there, but i had to slip that into my header somehow!!! hmmm.... songs for nhulunbuy....on the wings of a gove.... i'm not in gove...
and i gove her

I've just been to Nhulunbuy.

Ate at the Walkabout Lodge restaurant two nites running - it was really nothing special. The first nite I had chicken with wasabi butter on a thai salad. Even though the chicken was pretty nice, there was nil evidence of wasabi and the thai salad seemed to consist of mostly western salady type things. Second nite I had pesto encrusted lamb with market vegetables, which i think should translate to vaguely pesto-ey tasting lamb with a lot of fat but cooked very nicely, with some yucky old veges i bought down the local Woolies and didn't bother to cook very well (am i sounding negatory yet?). Had coffee (twice) at Munch'n'Crunch. Hard to trust a cafe with that many apostrophes in its name *frowning* Nothing to report there either apart from lots of preparation and elaborate pouring-milk-off-the-back-of-a-spoon type business. Had a coffee at the three C's cafe, which would be my pick of the bunch.

Gove - I gove in.

let's groove tonight

Friday nite was a big night out for us ... yes.... woohoo.. get down.. wait for it.. we went to the Groove Cafe! For dinner!

Those of you in the know will know that over the dry season the Groove (out the back of the Nightcliff shops in Nightcliff) is open for occasional Friday and Saturday nite shennanigans - Off the Page poetry and spoken word events, dances, bands, solo guitar performers etc etc. When I came to Darwin I described the Groove as being like a lesbian nite in the 80's LOLOL. ALSO, its pretty close to the kids playground at the shops - so if you get a strategically placed table - or just place one strategically like we did, you can watch your munchkins wearing themselves out while you eat. Anyway I get a bit excited about going which is pretty sad I know. So off we went.

The Groove is pretty casual, a little hole in the wall cafe where you order, a fridge full of drinks you can buy or just help yourself to water - in front is a fridge with a selection of salads and baked pastry and quichey type things and outside is a massive open air but undercover dining area under a huge awning. The dinner menu for these nites consisting mainly of pizzas and burgers - none of which are fantastic, all of which are part of the charm of the place. That and seeing the chef meander round the corner in his stained apron with a handful of salad greens he had obviously just picked up from the 5 Star Supermarket!!! The real bonus is that its licensed, so you can get a beer or a wine while you eat. And they have decent coffee too (fairtrade), good chai and yummy smoothies. Also the lunch stuff there is very very good and whilst I have never been the recipient of a good breakfast there, loads of people go there regular like, so there must be something keeping them coming back!!!

So to the picture (not the one of the cafe) - the picture i've posted is NOT of anything we ate at the Groove because it was dark by the time it arrived, and not worth photographing really - it's of some VERY hot, yummy crispy chips that we got from Nightcliff Fish and Chips to tide the kids over - a variable fishnchippery that somtimes just hits the right spot.

Groove Cafe, 4/35 Progress Drive, Nightcliff
Nightcliff Fish and Chips - same shops, different corner

wouldn't you think if your name was "Just Coffee" that you'd do it well??!!!!

evidently not!!!

Just Coffee - Nightcliff markets. Just don't do it.

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

Cawfee - next day

Coffeenut

I've been bagging out Coffeenut ever since it first opened. Fair? Definitely not. Never had a coffee there ever. Completely unreasonable. Stopped in there the other morning to try a short black with a mate and it was gooooood!!!!Admittedly the boy on the machine had to ask how long she wanted it, but at least he asked. It was black. It was tasty. It had golden crema. Even though that word *crema* makes me feel sick, even i know it's one of the hallmarks of good coffee.

Coffeenut (all they do is coffee) - open in the mornings in Smith St, Darwin (next to Manoli's)

Cawfee

Jays Coffee - Take 2.

I really like the fact that after my fish and chips (they must be good for you, the Health Minister was lurking in Finnegans kitchen with a beer) I could stroll over, get a coffee from Jay's and take it out on the jetty. How cool is that!!!

First impression - he looks STRESSED. Of course this may be because, coffee wanker that I am, I'm (after asking of course) SNIFFING his single origin coffees. *shrugging* Anyway I end up opting for a very delicious smelling Brazilian Coffee, but disappointingly, it tastes weak - good but weak. One of my friends tastes it, if anything a bigger coffee wanker than I am - and pronounces her theories:

1) the beans have been slightly over-roasted and that's why the flavour doesn't have as much depth as it should

2) the cup is too big and therefore the ratio of milk to coffee is too high

And promptly dumps her short black (also Brazilian and very tasty, if a tad long) into my latte and LO! the coffee is perfect. Problem solved.

My advice? Go for a small coffee. It's only $3 bucks.