Pacific Highway GORE HILL
Phone: 99420671
Review originally published on the 8th of February 2003
There was enthusiasm, disappointment, queuing, and humor. Plus deception, romance, reinvention and rage. Everything, in fact, that serves to mitigate known evils appeared amidst a sweltering summer heat. Welcome to enrollment day at Gore Hill TAFE College 2003.
The Basement Café previously catered to a potential of nearly eight thousand students. It was tucked in behind the quadrangle next to a cleaner’s lean-to. The cleaners, incidentally, deserved far better billeting than next to a bunch of students… Two years ago plans were hatched for the new venue that today is called J&Ls Catering (irritating abbreviation isn’t mine). Anyway, in I go and instantly I feel a major sneer attack coming on. It’s ferociously modern for a TAFE college. There’s burnished stainless steel, anodized aluminum and plenty of glass. Ceiling fans and industrial heaters glued to the walls, with louvers allowing a cross-flow ventilation to waft through. Together with an outdoor eating area where the presence of a maitre de wouldn’t appear inconsistent.
TAFE food is largely about instant gratification. A quick shot of invigorating coffee, chips and iced factory cakes. There’s no sense in advancing an indulgence. It’s not as if many students want to actually learn anything. However, in spite of my squeamishness, I sauntered up and hollered.
It was all there: focaccia, salad, pasta, stir-fry (sans-wok!) and enough Mars Bars, Cherry Ripes and Snickers, incongruously dispersed to appease the most jaded of pupil palates. Plates ranged in price from $4.80 to 6 bucks, and the J component of the J&L consortium claimed a diverse student body supported a wide choice of food predilection. Nothing at all wrong with my Greek salad, and I am a feta-shist for that country's cheese. It was plentiful and good. The J&L squad operated at Crows Nest TAFE before bringing their “usual table” style of operation here. The theme is maintained with Segafredo coffee and when leaving I was reminded of the pancake story:
A daughter asks her mother why the pancakes are so good. The mother replied, “I add cold tea to the batter.” “Why?” Asked the daughter. “Granny always did.” Replied mum. The daughter then asks her grandmother why she always added cold tea to the mix. “Because my mother did.” Said the octogenarian. “And why did she do that?” Probed the girl. “Well, once, she was all out of milk.”
Publishing the unpublishable while growing up and finding complacency
- Jimmy Olsen
- Sydney, Australia
- So far, much of the content here started life as a rather embarrassing personal journal, but it's now something I can begin to be proud of. In a warped way, both my sites are the growing inbred children of the now defunct parental site: www.butterboxmedia.com and characteristically (if not genetically) remain under construction. So for that I will apologize, but I won't ever say sorry for my inability to deal with the everyday, the trashy, the crappy, the dismissive, mass stupidity, the bland and the empty. Below are a few reviews from long ago that I exhumed from www.landofsurfandbeer.com.au, a site where I once occasionally posted under the screen name of hed. I have not changed the content of the reviews, however I have corrected my naff punctuation, incorrect spelling and frequent inability to use grammar correctly. Who knows? Perhaps one day this too will be corrected. In the meantime, the best hope you have at getting me to post anything about anything is by virtue of either being really terrible or really wonderful. Roll the dice.
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