European Taste Delicatessen

19 Hill Street ROSEVILLE NSW 2069
Phone: 98848055

Review originally posted on the 14th September 2003

Unfolding in my previous review entitled: The Upper Crust, was a development that I am hopeful will continue here. One that sanctions the commercial dining room as anything I can be arsed writing about.

But if it's food you want to read about, then read on.

Nestled within an unassuming series of suburban shops with a sign announcing delicatessen suspended from the overhang is lodged the European Taste Delicatessen.

The owner is from Poland. Likewise are the exquisitely gorgeous females whose lives have been shaped by this food; and who'll answer any product query enthusiastically and knowledgeably.

You know how there's bacon, but then there's bacon? Yeah? Well, eating meat or cooking meat is like that too. And I'm all for a big resurrection in the eating of meat. Everyone can knock up a quick pasta dish, stir-fry some vegetables, or typically, burn their toast. But cooking meat properly takes an accomplished skill rather than the sheer justification brought about by hunger pangs.

Smoked meats, sausages of quality, and specialty products ranging from impressive pastries to velvety smooth confectionery are all tinged with a Polish nudge here. They're spread throughout this superb shop in quantities as profuse and flowing as the stream of weekend customers crowded around the display cabinet. Customers, who'll trek from distant suburbs often representing several families and then return home laden with a wealth of luxury appropriate to their discriminating taste and discerning eye for value.

Weekly, my growing list of provisions from here includes a slab of speck that is a blueprint for bacon. Whether cooked and smoked or merely smoked its fragrant aroma creates anarchy amongst my housemates every time I fry the stuff.

I hope I'm not relating this place as some sort of modishly groomed food-hall clip joint. Yesterday, while walking around such a place, I watched just how far removed from practicality the old gravy train to Foodieville has become. Aimless browsers like me similarly made mental notes of things like Tarago River marinated Chevre at $63:95 per Kilogram then brought a bakery item like my German Bretzel (spelt with a B apparently.) for $O: 85c.

A floorwalker, whose job appeared to be reassuring people how they've really made it couldn't kiss enough babies at such stratospheric prices. Furthermore, Isn't a floorwalker an antiquated philosophy?

Let's claim some progress and derail this loco-motionless before Casey Jones drives us all to the end of the line.

Anyway, this deli is splendid.