restaurant – Page 3 – Abstract Gourmet

Adelaide: Day 1

So yes… It’s a church. What can I say, there really are a lot of churches in Adelaide. Not all of them are particularly photograph worthy, but as a concession to church lovers the world over, here are my first and last church photos. I know I’ve been slack about updating the site with all the news and happenings in South Australia, but if you’re been around for any length of time you’d realise it was completely inevitable… The fact that I had a couple of thousand photos to sift through alone should be a good enough indication as to why my procrastination has been so pronounced.

So after a relatively short flight from Perth on that stunningly cheap (in every way) airline Virgin Blue, we arrived in Adelaide. The basic plan was to spend some time with my friends Paul and Kara (who were getting married), and Sharon’s friends Serena and Chris, as well as fit in as much good wine and good food as was humanly possible.

After being picked up at the airport by Paul and Kara, and bewildering them with my need to bring my entire knife set with me (because you just never know when a spontaneous dinner party is going to break out). We had a quick lunch and wandered around the streets of suburbia. I have no idea where we were as I was still almost completely disoriented, but my initial reaction was that it seemed like a big country town. Which is not a bad thing if you like country towns of course :)

Later that evening, after unwinding and becoming acquainted with Kara’s miniature schnauzer Ebby (who had an unnatural fascination with my feet), we decided to try out the first place on my list of recommendations, Good Life Organic Pizza. This one came from Kam and Louise of Fiori fame, who had many good things to say about reasonably priced tasty pizza, and an excellent list of wines.

I’m happy to say they weren’t mistaken. We ordered the roast organic vegetable pizza, the Angaston spicy salami pizza,
(with organic kalamata olives, organic red onion, fresh baby bocconcini and basil), and the Free-range roasted duck
with shitake mushroom and spring onion ginger jam ! Oh boy… they were all so very good. My personal fav was most likely the duck pizza, however the roast vege one did a great job of making me forget about my carnivorous tendencies for a while.

We also ordered a bottle of Geoff Hardy’s K1 Cabernet/Tempranillo, starting a trend that would continue throughout the week of consuming vast quantities of great wine (in moderation of course – one after another :) ).

The service was casual and the staff did a good job of sounding genuine in their concern for all things organic, which was also nice. It was also nice to be having dinner with my good friend Paul, one of the nicest guys I know, and one of the few people on this world that I know can eat more than I do. I happily left him the last piece of pizza as we slowly eased our way into holiday mode, ready for the rest of the week.

Suraj Indian Cuisine

What can I say about Suraj ? Ever since being introduced to it by my good friends Ben and Jen, it’s been a regular place for dinners of both the rowdy and refined version, a point of reference to every other Indian restaurant I’ve been to, and a wonderful example of food that is honest and simple and good.

Suraj is run by Roger, and his wife Susan (get it… Su-Raj). It’s also convenient that Suraj means “Sun”. He’s been in business for close to 15 years in the same spot, and I’m willing to bet that the menu hasn’t changed a hell of a lot in all that time either.

Suraj is not so much a restaurant but an institution of traditional Indian cooking, often dwarfed by it’s elaborate and decadent neighbours in the ever trendy Highgate strip. But while places like Jacksons, Veritas, Must, and Soto try to ooze style and charm, and fancy looking Indian chain restaurants start up across the road promising glitz and glamour… Suraj is unchanging in it’s quaint approach to no frills dining.

So after yet another great night of dining there with a group of friends and curry lovers. I thought it best to put something online about this place, as it is sorely under represented in the high stakes (steaks?) world that is the Perth restaurant scene (which may or may not be an oxymoron) .

Of course I can see why it would be easy to overlook Suraj. The decor is drab (and that’s being polite), the florescent lights normally flickering overhead are more reminiscent of a hospital waiting room than a restaurant… and when there is more than 2 people in the place it’s almost impossible to hear anything over the resounding din caused by a complete lack of sound insulation.

But really… does any of that matter ? (Feel free to skip that question if your favourite restaurant is the Witches Cauldron, because you clearly enjoy spending stupid amounts of money on bad food, for the sake of supposed reputation).

Click here for large menu

Roger makes regular pilgrimages back to India to refill his spice coffers with the right quality of stock to use in his exacting recipes. Garam Masala is all ground by hand and even though I reckon I’m a dab hand at making the odd curry at home, Roger said it’d take me at least 3 years working full time to be able to reproduce any of his… which I will reluctantly concede may be true.

The menu is simple and consists of a number of curry dishes that for once actually taste different to each other. I can do no more than to point you to the blackboard above which is in essence all he does, aside from the occasional goat curry that manages to slip its way onto the menu depending on what his Halal butcher has in stock.

Highlights for me personally are the chickpea curry, the masala dhal, the beef vindaloo, and the magnificently airy pooris (or puri, i’m not really sure which, but i’ll go with what’s on the menu). The great thing though, is I can turn up to the place whenever I want, regardless of how late it is, and know that if people have already ordered I will love everything that comes out.

Suraj is not the kind of place to go if you’re in a hurry. Something I had to get used to the first time I went. But given the nature of the food, and the atmosphere of the place, I’m not sure you can rush things without losing some of the magic. Certainly the look on Rogers face when a large group of people all come in at once is a little troubling… but when the food arrives all is well and right in the world.

On a sad note however. It seems that this little slice of Highgate history may not be too long for this world. The owners of the building are planning to take the shop back over within the next few months, and according to Roger, turn it into one big restaurant / bar combined with the shop next door. I asked if he’d be moving elsewhere and it doesn’t sound like he has the energy to start from scratch all over again. So the days of simple Indian pleasure Suraj style may be numbered.

If you haven’t been yet, then do yourself a favour. Get a couple of good bottles of wine, a few close friends, and swing by Suraj for a taste of food the way it should be made… from the heart.

Suraj Indian Cuisine
513 Beaufort St
Highgate, WA 6003
(08) 9328 2858
Get directions

Return to Ria

Ok, well this is probably a lot longer coming than it should have been, and a testament to the fact that I’ve been off gallivanting around the countryside far too much, because I haven’t been back to Ria in quite a while now.

For the unacquainted (or out of towners), Ria is a wonderful restaurant in Leederville, that serves up an array of Malaysian dishes, in a trendy and informal setting. Nothing too indepth about the food this time, other than my stance on what is “authentic” is as firm as ever (i.e: If the food tastes good, I couldn’t care less how authentic it is).

I was lucky enough to be joined on this latest expedition by Grendel, Mrs Grendel, and 2 x junior Grendels, as well as Kam, Justin + Irene (trusting lender of expensive cameras), the ever lovely Sharon, and potato growing, bike riding, Irish/Kiwi valkyrie Lorraine.

So after finally making it into the place (that doesn’t take bookings) with 10 people, I had to struggle not to pry the vegemite sandwiches from the hands of a junior Grendel with discerning tastes. Then ordered essentially everything that looked good on the menu (most of it).

Prices of the dishes vary, but the majority of the curry dishes are around $18 – $20, a few other dishes cost more of less, depending on what’s in them.

Stand outs… definitely Mum’s Lo Ak, a caramelised duck covered in a rich sticky sauce, and the Nonya Achard Fish; a deep fried fillet smothered in sesame seeds and dressed with a chilli viniagrette.

Wine was a Pinot Blanc by Hugo & Fils of Alsace, well chosen by Kam.

Dessert (for me at least), was a delicious sago in coconut milk, with a dark sugar syrup hiding underneath.

All up, another outstanding Ria experience, and a great night shared with old and new friends. If you’ve been waiting to try this place out, now is definitely the time.

Ria Authentic Malaysian
Unit 1
160 Oxford St
Leederville 6007 WA
Phone: (08) 9328 2998

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Nine Fine Food

Friday evening in the city (Perth that is)… a group of news friends and acquaintances gather to catch up, drink wine, talk coffee, and listen to some great Jazz (with accompanying impromptu tap dancing) and ease their way into the weekend with some quality dining. The scene is set for one of the best restaurant experiences I’ve had in a long time.

The venue for the rest of the evening was Nine Fine Food, a modern Japanese restaurant on the fringes of Northbridge that is doing some excellent food at the moment. They are tucked away in a relatively nondescript area of Northbridge on Bulwer St, not particularly close to the rest of the Northbridge scene, but equally far away from North Perth or Highgate, and certainly not somewhere I’d expect to find a restaurant of this quality.

So Sharon and I, and our dining companions, laden with bottles of wine, whetted appetites, and great expectations, made the short trip down from Hotel Northbridge to Nine.

On arrival we were greeted cheerily by the waiter who remembered our dining companions from the last time they came. It’s nice that even in a place where they must get a lot of new people coming through all the time, they can still add a personal touch by remembering names and faces.
The waiter then seated himself casually at the head of our table and proceeded to take the order.

The menu all looked interesting. The modern Japanese theme is worked through almost every dish, each having it’s own unique take on traditional style Japanese ingredients, in beautifully presented combinations and what could be called a European style setting.

We started off with a couple of tasting plates that were mostly little morsels of deep fried goodness. Tempura fish, spring rolls, karaage chicken, with 3 different dipping sauces, a wasabi cream, a chilli soy, and another mayonnaise… Now with a taste of things to come and rapidly moving our way through the first bottle of wine, it was time for mains.

As is generally the case when you get a group of food lovers around a table, there was much tooing and froing of ideas and opinions on what we should try, who should get what, and how best we could suitably get to try a bit of everything on the menu. That was until we saw the specials board, of which almost everything sounded more intricate and alluring than the last. With great difficulty I finally settled on one of the cooked specials… basically a tasting plate (mental note: remember names of dishes next time) consisting of scallops, duck, prawns, octopus, mussels wrapped in chilli seaweed and fried tempura style. Sharon had the spider crab and tuna, Marhsall and Linda had the sashimi salad, Daniel had a sashimi tasting, Alex I think had a steak dish (?) and Cathy… crushing all my hopes of thoroughly enjoying my meal… ordered the Wagyu rump.

Now all of the dishes I sampled were fantastic, beautiful clean flavours that effortlessly combined the best of Japanese and European cooking, with wonderful presentation. But the waygu was something else entirely. Cooked medium rare the way any steak should be, it literally melted in my mouth as I savoured the morsel Cathy was nice enough to let me try. Combined with an excellent choice of wine in a Glaetzner Shiraz, it was heaven in a mouthful… and made it that much harder to go back to my own plate… however lovely it was.

We finished off the evening (and a few more bottles of wine) with dessert, choosing the Azuki bean and chocolate pudding with ice cream. Another taste sensation and a perfect way to round off a great meal.

Perhaps it was the wine talking, perhaps the fact that the company was so enthusiastic, but I can’t remember enjoying a restaurant experience as much in a long time. I can now easily see why Nine Fine Food won “Best Asian Restaurant” at the 2007 Restaurant and Catering Industry Association Awards. An accomplishment only detracted from by the the fact that the term “Asian” is relatively vague, and to my mind means about as much as “meat” when you’re reading through a menu wondering what to order. Though I suppose that’s more of an indication of the lack of variety in the Perth scene when it comes to “Asian” restaurants that are pushing the envelope in terms of taste, quality, and presentation.

Still, credit where it’s due… this place is a welcome addition to trendy dining in Perth, and deserving of it’s status.

Fully satisfied, and a little merry, we stayed long past the time when everyone else had left… getting an impromptu piano recital from one of the staff, while the rest of them cleared up. Not even a hint of stern “will you just bloody well leave already” look was seen, which is a credit to their commitment to their customers.

Definitely a place to go back to soon.

Nine Fine Food
227-229 Bulwer St (corner of Bulwer and Lake St)
Northbridge
Phone: (08) 9227 9999
BYO

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That Little Mexican Place

Rejoice… good Mexican food exists !!

Just recently I was lamenting as to the state of “Mexican” food in this city, or any city for that matter. I was musing that it would be a sad indictment on Mexican culture if the pinnacle expression of their cuisine was to be found in a greasy burrito smothered with sour cream and ‘tasty’ cheese, with an indiscernible concoction of meat and bean filling.

Alas, this was my experience of Mexican restaurants. I’ve tried Pancho’s, Acapulco Annies, Santa Fe, and numerous other places that can only really be described as Tex Mex nastiness, that no amount of cheap margaritas and dodgy sangria will ever wash down.

That was until we came across “That Little Mexican Place”. We got the hot tip from some friends who had been there recently and described it as delicious and unassuming, and definitely out of the ordinary when it comes to Mexican restaurants.

My interest piqued, it was time to pay a visit.

That Little Mexican Place is located on Fitzgerald St in North Perth, in what might soon become a small hub of restaurants and bars. It’s up the road from the Rosemount, and in amongst a couple of other Chinese restaurants and Kebab shops, and I’m certain if I didn’t know it was there I would have missed it.

The owners traveled to Mexico prior to opening the restaurant, and attended some kind of cooking school, which means that the dishes they are serving are at least based on authentic (there’s that word again) Mexican dishes, and where possible made with local equivalents or ingredients sourced from Mexico.

The restaurant itself seems a little awkward to me, the tables and cutlery are ridiculously big for the space they have, and it feels a little bit Ma and Pa’ish when you walk in and have to squeeze past people to get to the front to indicate you’d like a table, and then feels vaguely like the kebab shop next door when you need to loiter around outside waiting for a table to be free. Personally speaking (in my capacity as a completely unqualified restaurant consultant), I’d be making the tables much smaller, and arranging things better so as to make better use of the space, which I think could fit at least 12 more people at once.

Perhaps the number of people is how they’d like it for now though, as there seems to be an air of “still working things out” hanging over the place.

That’s not to detract from the food however. Everything we ordered was great. We started off with the nachos de napolita which were (from the menu) “an individual serve of tortilla chips topped with sautéed mushroom, chayote and cactus and oxacan style cheese”. It was in fact one big nacho with a tasty mixture of the cactus, chayote, and mushroom on top… and was not dripping with cheese or sour cream and sprinkled with spring onion (as I was dreading).

Along with the dishes, there is a complimentary trio of salsas served at frequent intervals during the meal. They were a roast chili salsa, a salsa verde, and another one I’ve forgotten that name of… but I think it was tomato based. They came in handy for dipping and spooning over basically everything… and as soon as we’d used one up a fresh bowl arrived to replace it.

For mains Sharon had the mole negro, which was “roasted chicken breast and a sweet, dark sauce of chilies, spices, nuts, seeds and Mexican chocolate, served with banana chips”. I got a few tastes of that before it was devoured and it was nice. Great flavours combining together with the chocolate and the chicken were not strange at all.

I chose the barbacoa de Borrego “slow roasted lamb in oregano and mexican chilies”, another fantastic dish, combining the lamb and spices together beautifully.

We finished up the night with some churros, and sopapillas. Both great Mexican desserts of deep fried dough dipped in cinnamon and sugar and served with chocolate sauce.

All in all we had a fantastic meal. I’m not sure if it was because I couldn’t get over how non “Tex Mex” the food was, and how sincere and unpretentious the service was, but I was left with a definitely impression that these guys are trying their hardest to distinguish their food apart from the greasy masses of deep fried cheese topped Mexicana slop bucket places.

Definitely go in and give them a try if you want to experience something a little different.

That Little Mexican Place
382 fitzgerald street
North Perth

phone: 08 9227 5755
www.thatlittlemexicanplace.com.au

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Pony Club

Image by bozo_z_clown

I grew up riding horses. Not pretty little ponies, but real, gritty, working mans horses. Ok, well maybe not working men, but men who have things to do and places to be, and no time for fancy shenanigans. We grew up in New Zealand riding the family horse Pinky, who was a former pacer (racing name: Inky Pinky Parlez Vous). Pinky was a good horse, but a crazy horse… She would at random and unknown times decide to switch from running forwards, to running sideways, and when you’re riding bareback (because you don’t own a saddle), that can be a problem. Dad decided it would be a good idea for me to start learning to ride her by myself when I was about 4… possibly one of the scariest moments in my life up until that point, but after the bruises healed, it soon cemented my love of horses.

Skip forward a few years and we find ourselves in Australia, horseless… Though it doesn’t take Dad long to find a local crazy called Joe who had plenty of crazy horses but no time to ride them. Joe lived on the outskirts out town and had amassed himself a huge junkyard of old cars and machinery, and (inexplicably) a small herd of Welsh Mountain Ponies.

One of these Welsh Mountain Ponies was named Rocky… and was every bit the battler of his famous namesake (Marciano not Balboa). He was of course a stallion, and prone to choosing his own course of action whilst galloping through a forest at high speed… which always made for an interesting ride. Rocky was not the most stable horse to ride… Dad had broken him in (along with the other horses there), and trained him to accept having someone ride him… but there were times when he conveniently forgot about all that and just did his own thing. In some ways that’s why I liked him so much… he was his own horse… he just let me sit on his back sometimes.

The pony club on the other hand, stood for everything that I wasn’t. Privileged, polished, and perfectionist, and all the pluck and courage in the world did not stop Rocky (and I) drawing the scorn of the primped and plaited members of the pony club brigade. I despised them… Their perfect little ponies prancing around in circles with ribbons in their tails and plaited manes… They were the bourgeois and I was the proletariat. My rugged little pony and I would gallop through the bush jumping logs, tree stumps, fences, and generally causing mischief. I didn’t have a helmet, a crop, jodhpurs, riding boots. I had a hard head, a stick, some old jeans, and a pair of well holed K-mart special Traxx.

Every year the local agricultural show would happen, and the pony club girls would get their parents to help them groom and ready their ponies, load them into a horse float, and drive them into town. I would ride my bike out to Joe’s place, saddle up Rocky, and ride him the few kilometres into town myself.

We competed well, but the judges seemed to be less interested in how fast I could ride and how high we could jump than they were at how nicely you can post whilst trotting around in a circle, and at exactly which angle you hold your feet in the stirrups. So sadly my technique for holding the reins that I’d developed from the need to jump off in a hurry before Rocky went crazy, didn’t win any votes. Still, we did manage to come away with the award for champion pony stallion under 14 hands, of which he was the only entrant…

Such is my experience with the ilk of the pony club… Elitist and over privileged, with little respect for what they’ve got.

What the hell does that have to do with food you say ?? Well nothing… but it does set the scene for the main attraction… My restaurant review of “Pony Club”.

Pony Club is a new tapas restaurant in Mt Lawley, where Infusion Noodle Bar used to be. The layout is basically the same as it was in the Infusion days, with a little more of a plush intimate feel coming from the use of a few velvety curtains here and there. The fit out is stylish and refined and the lighting dark (I have a feeling it actually got darker as the night went on). It looks and feels like it’s going to be a classy kind of place, and this is where my rant begins.

Tapas are bar snacks ! This is how they started off, this is how they should be. They are a brilliant idea. Bring out lots of tasty little dishes and charge next to nothing for them so people can happily snack away all night whilst consuming large quantities of wine and beer, before perhaps moving on to somewhere more substantial for dinner later. The moment they spread out into their own themed restaurants, things started to go down hill.

Now I’ll admit, I was once enamoured with the idea of the tapas restaurant. What a great concept it seemed. Lots of different flavours and tastes combining to make a meal. Easy to share with large groups of people who can happily graze over dish after dish of sumptuous Spanish delicacies.

Not so !

The reality is that most of these places are massively over priced and serve up minuscule dishes that everyone on the table fights for a piece of, before forgetting was it even was two seconds later. This is what we ordered at Pony Club:

Chermoula Prawns,
Dhukka Chicken,
Spanish Meatballs,
Chorizo Stew (look for my version coming soon),
Salmon Tartlets.

I would have thought that would have been a decent meal for two people… but $100 and less than an hour later it was all over and we went home still hungry. Now even if you aren’t blessed with my tank-like physique and uncanny eating abilities, I’d challenge anyone to be truly satisfied after getting a few bites of any one thing.

The food itself was nice, but uninspiring. Having made or tasted something similar to most of what was on the menu I was singularly unimpressed by all of it. And at around $14 per dish… they were far from worth it in my book.

The tiny wine list had some nice looking entries on it, but with only 3 available by the glass, and my eventual choice of a glass of Tempranillo setting me back a cool $9, I would have much rather been at home with a bottle from my small but growing collection of Spanish wines soothing my gourmet nerves.

So in the end… a revelation occurred. Fancy tapas restaurants are not for me, and until I have sampled and written off every tapas bar in Spain, I will be weary about any place that makes it seem like I should expect to pay top dollar for glorified bar snacks. To be fair, there is a “main meal” section of the menu, but we weren’t ordering from that, so I really can’t comment on how good it was. The girls next to us seemed to enjoy their Moroccan Chicken Salad.. however strange it’s appearance on the menu was.

I’m sure some people will like this place, it may even turn out to be very popular, but just remember that you heard it here first… Yo no quiero tus tapas !

The Pony Club
620 Beaufort Street, Mt Lawley 6050
Western Australia

Tel: (08) 9228 8801
www.theponyclub.com.au

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Ria: Authentic Malaysian

This is restaurant review in as few words as I can manage.

I went to Ria recently with my fellow bloggers from Perth Norg, for a bit of a get together and to see what we could see. I had previously heard some quasi Malaysian friend of a friend bagging it out for not being ‘authentic’, which made me wonder if it was any good or not. What I’ve since realised after going there is that the only thing that probably wasn’t authentic enough was the price, and the fact that some actual care has gone into the food rather than just throwing it onto a plate and grunting in your general direction (ala many of the Malaysian restaurants I’ve been too).

Now I’m not going to put myself up to be some kind of expert on Malaysian food, or curry, or really anything to do with original authenticity of ethnic dishes… personally the ‘authentic’ debate doesn’t interest me. It’s tired and is constantly pulled out as a reason to dislike a style of food or restaurant for unjustified reasons. Just because someone makes a style of curry in a different way than your great great great grandmother who originated from the very village where it was FIRST CREATED EVER… it doesn’t mean it is a bad meal. It just means it different. Funny little word that, but a very significant one. If uniformity in food was a good thing, then we’d all be eating at McDonalds and Han’s (and that’s a world I don’t want to have to imagine).

The nature of food in Australia is such that it is inherently a conglomeration (avoiding the word ‘fusion’) of many different types of food. You’ve got ye olde English roasts, your Irish stews, the huge Mediterranean influence of Italian, Greek, and French food, all manner of styles of Asian cooking, and most recently the middle eastern and African migrants bringing lots of lovely spices and styles for us to absorb into the ever growing organism that is the Australian diet.

So onto the restaurant. It’s kinda funky and relaxed, up market but not overly wanky. It is Leederville after all… If it was in Subiaco it would probably have turned out like Buddha Bar, which would not be a good thing. The restaurant is run by chef Deborah Ting and her husband Richard Serrano, who apparently got bored of cooking Italian food, closed up the shop, and reopened as Ria. She is Malaysian Chinese, and the food takes into account a lot of family recipes that she has given her own particular style. It’s quite hard to describe the food, but hearty currys and piquant flavours flow through the whole menu. Look up the style of cooking that is Nonya, and you’ll get a good idea of what some of the food is like.

Her signature dish is a braised caramelised duck called ‘Mum’s lok ak’, and its superb.
Other things we tried were the Chinese Shredded Beef and a Beef Rendang, along with some bok choy and tofu as a side. All very tasty and surprisingly moreish. So much so that I went back the next night to try a few more dishes.

Knowing Sharon would be keen to try this place out too, we headed back again on a Thursday night, after having just eaten there the night before. This time we ordered a chicken and chickpea curry, a lamb curry with star anise, the Nonya Acar Fish (absolute stand out), rice, more bok choy and a bottle of wine. Which was in fact more than we’d ordered the night before when we had 4 people.

Second time around it didn’t disappoint either. We also managed to do some star spotting with ‘HG Nelson‘ apparently in town, and stopping by for a casual dinner with his lady friend.
My only complaint about the place was that our waiter looked like had never carried more than one plate before in his life, and I was expecting to wear half of the dishes he brought over as he shakily fumbled them onto the table. That an the fact that he decided to finish his shift before asking if we wanted any desserts didn’t help either. But I’m not going to write off a place for a couple of oversights.

All in all the food was excellent, the vibe relaxed and happy, and the price just right to not break the bank while probably sending the majority of people who bemoan ‘newfangled’ upmarket restaurants that make traditionally based foods, back to food court land to get their fill of cheap eats with plastic forks. Most dishes are around $18 or so, and substantial enough so that you don’t feel ripped off.

So yeh…that’s all. Go try it, authentic or not, it’s intensely tasty… and keep your eyes out for some Nonya inspired meals coming to an Abstract Gourmet near you soon.

Ria Authentic Malaysian Food
Unit 1
160 Oxford St
Leederville 6007 WA
Phone: (08) 9328 2998