The Royal Motor Yacht Club

21 Wunulla Road POINT PIPER
Phone:93276828

Review originally posted on the 19 January 2003


Water obviously finds it’s own level. Now I’m about 80% fluid, and I’m at the Royal Motor Yacht Club of NSW, and, I'm not here to carry plates either.

I’ve found my billabong. It’s damn good.

People often despise regal shacks like this until they actually go inside and enjoy some camaraderie.

I doubt whether the “celebrity culture” holds much sway here. Although, its currency of accomplishment whispers like lovers do.

Inside I was amongst several invited guests celebrating the union of marriage.

Breathtaking nautical outlooks were no match for the gorgeous bride and her groom, heralded into their future happiness with O Mio Babbino, Mozart Clarinet Concerto in G, and Crazy Love by V. Morrison. Strengthening a commitment shared already.

And didn’t the bridesmaids look lovely? Yes, but it was the food that filled my heart.

Salmon was with soba noodles, or, “perhaps sir” an anti-pasto stack to start. Nicer than goopy vol-au-vents or hazardously smoked chicken. Banged down in front of you by some chinless specimen. Here the youngsters are civilized. Not the listless progeny of some arduous committee member.

Mains brought a rack of lamb, otherwise, 'a wild barramundi fillet.'

Well anyway, I’d traded away my salmon earlier and sorely required something in possession of fins. A roma tomato escort of immense sweetness outfitted my fish, as did smashed, (almost crushed, nowhere near mashed) potatoes sidle alongside the rack.

An error of judgment on my part resulted in absconding before desert.

I’ll never live it down.

These things remain silent in polite society.

You can dress me up, but you can’t take me out.

I am sorry Justin and Nicky.

- Peter Thornton January, 2003

Una's

340 Victoria Street DARLINGHURST
Phone 93606885

Review originally posted on the 28th of December 2002


Hans Mohr crystallized the tiny space in Sydney. An old butcher shop on the inner-city fringe became a fish cafe with a dozen chairs at the counter plus four tables. The pub next-door improved delays encountered as Mohr's wait staff maneuvered punters through the door, menu and then out the door again. I read Mohr was expanding into meat and thought I'd investigate. However the fish cafe was closed and extensions were still builder's rubble so I kept walking towards Victoria Street, Darlinghurst.

I always feel sartorially clumsy in these frostily cool city precincts. I may wear the new black, but it usually looks too black, and my shoes also seem to shine with surplus obligation. Whereas on me, the studied look of nonchalance suggests hobo.

Una's replenished my jaded spirit. It's been around for thirty-two years. Ancient by our standards. Serving Central "continental" food, there's goulash, schnitzel etc., plus pasta for that metropolitan touch. Considering two out of four reviews recount this style of cuisine, maybe it's the new black.

I then planned a coffee at Latteria just a few doors up. Where one couldn't swing a slender cat without hitting a model, or somebody in broadcasting or something. But it was also under renovation. So instead I hit Coluzzi, est. 1957, where they pour superior coffee and are deservedly famous for just being there, too.

The Inner-harbor ferry back to Greenwich, where I'd parked the '82NV (non-vintage) Mitsubishi, corrected to the last notch the woozy fatigue I always feel after spending a day amongst the sophisticates.

The sainted creators of LoSaB have installed a star system of ratings. In addition, I will contribute a lateral assessment of locations visited:

Mohr: Proximity to pub: Next-door
202 Devonshire St. SURRY HILLS
Phone; 93181326

Una's: Proximity to "the life": Next-door.

Latteria: Proximity to Una's: Next-door.

Coluzzi: Proximity to pioneering prominence: The buck started here.
323 Victoria St. DARLINGHURST
Phone; 93805420

All inference is as broad as a brewery horses bum.

- Peter Thornton December, 2002

Stella Blue

18 The Strand DEE WHY BEACH
Phone 99827931

Review originally posted on the 1st of January 2003


My family schlepped across town from Belmore to Harbord back in the 60s. Dear old dad had brought himself a milk run.

An older sister and her MG'n'Malibu crowd lodged the rogue surfer seed in me and recreation always meant the beach at Dee Why.

During the 70s i defected to Long Reef. Northernmost point on the same stretch of sand. The Strand at Dee Why had very few restaurateurs back then. The "hood" in neighborhood probably discouraged them. Nowadays you couldn't fill up another eatery.
Memories still flood back whenever i'm on the promenade at DY.

OK so it's the first day of twenty zero three and the midsummer's rain is well dispatched. The staff at Stella Blu act like staff. Consequently, the owners behave as only owners should. It has tables across from the beach, where no loony's edge too close threatening death with concealed incendiary devices. The interior tables look exceptionally civilized. And the menu is determinedly well mannered rather than strenuously polite.

Hearty, aromatic and Calabrian inclined melanzane parmegiana and about eight other possibilities worked backward to delicate. Bresaola, oysters or nannata, otherwise asparagus came with marinated capsicum and goat cheese.

Robust mains come free of chichi. A cornucopia of garnish wedded prudently with ocean trout. Lamb, scotch fillet and non-factory bird are all beautifully sourced in-laws to game. Prosaic side dishes, yes, though daily, an extraordinary contemporary regard for cooking struts a sincere integrity.

Deserts were declined in favor of napoli and Illy coffee.

A panorama of activity - and it rained on my visit - make Stella Blu an ideal first date place. If prices are considered an indication of your intention by the squeakier sex, the bright sunbeams of your future should quicken to illuminate your path.

Pino Pizzeria

49 Willoughby Road CROWS NEST
Phone 94392081

Review originally posted on the 26th December 2002

I nearly ran a spot the mistakes in my reviews contest with some prize thingy for the winner. Ahh! And what, you may ask, was the prize? Not much. I'm not a real journalist, you know. So the Golden Century review needed "here there eaten," to read, "here they're eaten," and "taste and bujet," spelled correctly. A clandestine ring would've infiltrated the field anyway and... Oh the humanity!

Pino's Pizzeria sells pasta fresh from a factory above itself, which is also operated by the benign, nurturing and twinkly-eyed Pino. A continuing joy of generations has passed through the front door since 1973.

I find most suburban interpretations on Italian food entirely resistible. Pino's possesses a deftness that is rare in Crows Nest, where the indistinguishable sameness of the Italian restaurants is underwritten by the kitchen-hands shopping for ingredients at the local Woolworths. And that's after they graduate from the wash-up to the burners. That's not to say it's a bad area to eat Italian or Indian, but Pino's serves straightfoward, fresh, authentic dishes at admirably low prices.

Have some pasta. It is luxury on the cheap. Celebrating prosperity but not pretension. Ravioli filled with mushrooms or fettucine capriciosa with prawns and clams. Tortellini, tagiatelle, rigatoni et al.

Pizza is obtainable in sixteen types, small or large. You may create your own. Starters include garlic calamari or prawns. With bbq'd octopus, scampi or prawns essaying proudly the essential tenets of flavor over fashion native to Pino's. Specials of lamb rack, quail, veal shanks or risotto are less chancy than similar offerings made jaundiced by bleak competitors.

My phone inquiry returned a twelve-page fax describing set-menu options for groups within a comprehensive, albeit, mammoth document.

No drizzling or other scrupulously contrived artifice occurs here. I've seen Angry from the Tatts, Andrew from INXS, or the common type of boofhead i knockabout with eating at Pino's over the years. The experience remains remarkable and just.

The Golden Century Seafood Restaurant

393-399 Sussex Street HAYMARKET
Phone 2123901,2811598

Review originally posted on the 22nd of December 2003

Any joy that accompanied freedom from editorial intrusion lessened minutes after hitting the post button for that Kaiser Stub'n review. The sentence: "The Terrey Hillbilly crew was bussed in during my formative years," omitted one important word. Well one and a half really. It should have read, "were bussed into school." Obligatory apologies are required, although I'm too impatient to footnote. It's not the same i know, but then what is?

Never mind, I'm a sentimentalist at heart. Usually in the twilight hours too, and after strutting around a dining room half the night for wages i need sustenance.

Pertinent fact#1: The Golden closes at 4am.

PF#2: Twenty four tanks hold a variety of those soon to be comatose sea creatures one generally avoids. Here, they're eaten well before oxygen deprivation gives them more screws loose than an Ikea wardrobe.

PF#3: The Golden takes all comers. The row of deuces against a wall where i sat overlooked five tables occupied by large groups.

PF#4: Go Bo tea is available, (infinitely superior blend of Chrysanthemum based tea) ask for it and watch the waiters dial light up.

PF#5: Excellent value. My congee, fried bread, cha and fruit to finish came to fifteen bucks with tip.

Warp-factor cooking far removed from self-conscience, 'burban-bland is crafted here nightly by master chefs. To highlight a mere bagatelle: Pippi's in XO sauce, or anything from the tanks. It'll run to money, though not grandly so. Unctuous, slow roasted meats, or communicate your taste and budget. A repertoire of over one thousand dishes is acquired during any half decent Chinese cook's formative years. Sit back and watch the miracle of timing and organization required to serve the passing throng.

Saturdays are packed to the gunwales, and i arrived at 12:45am, but busy always.

This is the circus i was never taken to as a child.

As i left some tanked-up fish tried to lay a guilt trip on me. I silently mouthed the word dominion and fled.

J&L Catering at Gore Hill TAFE College

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.”

Kam Fook

LEVEL 6 SHOP 600 WESTFIELD SHOPPING TOWN CHATSWOOD
Phone 94139388

Review originally posted the 7th of January 2003


Two visits to Newtown last week included some research for yet another pithy review:

"Frenetically paced urban ecosystem located next to a university with blow-in youth who fallaciously presume eternal uniqueness."

But generally, one can find this same streetscape anywhere. The laughs double already. Bloody students eh?

However, in silence comes God's meaning to the heart. So the smouldering tyre-rubber, burnt cooking oil and stale vomit remain the only facts checked with any thoroughness.

Kam Fook Shark Fin, on level 6 of Westfield Chatswood, soothes the shopping mall angst. This hayloft of a place serves yum cha daily and dinner at night. It's usually necessary to bivouac around the entrance after announcing your own arrival, but only briefly. Then the clever staff will allow you to hover over a table like a trainee waiter while the-soon-to-be-previous occupants settle-up. Inside there's tables of elderly Chinese, all sentient calmness. And suited senior waiters are all maximum correctness. Some thrillingly pleasurable offerings roll-by aboard the dim sum trolley. And the bloke who looks like a dish-pig (but is probably one of the owners) industriously re-fills the tea pots. All this is interspersed by tables of visiting western chefs trying to surpass each other in knowledge of the cuisine, or discussing the latest exchange of pornographic videos.

I embrace yum cha often. I once earned wages in Chinatown for a year. Plus I lived with a Chinese girl for six. I disclaim any conclusive comprehension of Chinese culture. And view skeptically any non-Chinese who do so.

Baby calamari was cautiously poached, and prawn and vegetable har gau were in gummy rice flour skins. Some braised tripe tasted gelatinously sticky and the pork-filled northern dumplings were harmoniously honorable.

All the egg tarts had vanished before we could have a crack at them. But an offer to prepare more showed remarkable willing.

Twenty-five bucks included the customary Go Bo tea. Bargain!

Kaiser Stub'n

205 Mona Vale Road, TERREY HILLS (Corner McCarrs Creek Road and Mona Vale Road.)

Phone 94500300

Review originally posted on the 21st of December 2002

Kaiser Stub'n means emperors living room. Franz Josef, the Austrohungarian ruler, served the people well by remaining one of them. This Terrey Hills restaurant celebrates in decor and spirit his reign, love of hunting and his love for drinking beer. Should you be seeking land - remembering this sites name - it's spread out far and wide in this North Shore suburb made famous when Hoges and Dick Smith added value with Helipads and cee-ment ponds.

The Terrey Hillbilly crew were bussed into school during my formative years spent in French's - rather than The Black - Forest. But a sprinkling of Austrians immigrants back then has grown to support an enthusiastic following of Germans, Central Europeans and Hungarians nowadays.

This is not peasant cooking. That's for people like me: blunt-edged amateurs avoiding inedible fast food. Hunks of pork knuckle, halves of roasted duck, sliced veal and beef fillet all may appear elemental until tasted. The skills deployed in cooking these meats almost earn a wink from the mounted boars head on the wall and are accompanied by things such as bread dumplings, red cabbage, spaetzle and a sauerkraut of galactic & bona fide lightness. Two dishes served tableside also show warmth rather than retro kitsch, and a schnitzel overlaps its plate.

There are Austrian wheat beers ranging from fine yeast to dark, crystal clear and Pikantus dark bock beer from Erdinger. Served in timelessly tall glasses that preside euphorically like the totem of a friendly higher civilization. Senior, (and junior) staff who appear to actually like people, and a value for money many gastro-pubs of secondary importance would crawl over themselves to obtain.

The effortless grace all this occurs with may not always suggest a better age, though it certainly does indicate a more dignified one and merits a stop going to or returning from the Palm Beach Road.

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.

Bill and Toni's Restaurant

74 Stanley Street EAST SYDNEY 2000
PHONE 93604702

Review originally posted on the 21st of January 2003

I sat inside Bill 'n Toni’s restaurant and looked along Stanley Street. The inheritance of bistro warmth has evolved comprehensively from Italian immigrants and boarding-house accommodation. The former reinvented the later with amiable savvy, and have stuck around to keep an eye on their work.

The vibrancy of the precinct remains, and the youthful fusion is co-dependent with the graceful Neapolitans. It’s kind of like that friend’s place you always hang around on Sundays. All black tee shirts, studded-belts, and low-slung bass guitars. Then the landlord comes around to collect the rent and joins you in a beer.

I’d nabbed a balcony table and received the reverential bread and supplementary flagon of cordial. Today it’s pineapple.

The dishes tend towards simplicity and prices are on the side of the customer. An assembled medley of pasta or meat cuts satisfies local devotees. The straightforwardness of napolitana or bolognaise stay unembellished save for your choice of spaghetti or penne. Schnitzel comes with cheese and there’s scaloppini pizzaola or else meatballs. Otherwise roast chicken or veal grills including fish, sausages, beef fillet and a pork chop. An ensemble of pasta and any main costs fourteen dollars. A starter of pasta followed by a main is eighteen. Pasta or soup alone is only eight. Seven day trading of lunch and dinner and a brief hiatus between resets indicate enough flow to keep things unsullied.

Aww shucksie service, like '80s stadium rock, is altogether avoided. Mr. Caesar downstairs pulls majestic coffee for the mix of gym heads, suits and young icehouse flowers that have probably just rolled out of bed. They all troop in, so after eating submerge and absorb yourself into the atmosphere.

The street’s manifold kitchens - and I’ve worked out front of three of 'em - suggest a renaissance designed to please the customer and not guide books or egomaniacal chefs. Food described as courteous must therefore uphold a notion that customers are not unwitting exhibits in an impromptu performance. Do I have to write the next line?

The Upper Crust

1003 Pittwater Road COLLOROY
Phone 99715182

Review originally posted on the 19th of August 2003


Mentioning the Upper Crust’s alfresco eating areas might ingenuously calm any hostile sentiment felt by hearing that it’s merely a pie shop. For those of you affected with such an inflated view of things, certainly, there are cast-iron tables and chairs sitting upon the paved entrance, plus trestle seating and cross-sections of logs that are used for tables on the front lawn. I sat there recently, dreamily remembering my past summers. If I subtract both the garden furniture and about thirty years, then add a creaking fly-screen door for atmosphere, I’m transported back to my debonair youth, circa 1973. It was here on the grass, so to speak, that I spent several miscalculated moments.

Regularly back then, there’d be a morning’s surf followed by the indispensable pre-lunch debriefing session in the office – a purpose-built cubbyhole within the Mangrove swamps surrounding Dee Why lagoon - Next, inspired by the munchies, several grommets and myself would set off to bridge the gap between hunger and nourishment, while at the same time narrowly avoiding golfer’s badly aimed balls as we crossed the Long Reef golf links. Triumphantly, we’d spill across Pittwater Road where our trek culminated in an encounter of the sumptuous kind always found when arriving at this baking oasis. Mesmerized by our good fortune we’d then glibly order the elegant trinity of meat, pastry and gravy. My lifelong admiration for the humble pie began on this very same council nature strip where I sat most recently. These days, my palette no longer being the anesthetized organ of taste it once was, I didn’t eat my fill of pies, sausage rolls, apple pies and cream horns. That, however, left a tendency afterwards to wander down Anzac Avenue for a stroll along Fisherman’s beach. With a smidgen of extra energy, or about half a chocolate éclair’s worth of kilojoules, one could easily ascend Long Reef headland for a spectacular view of the coast.

This shop, once known as Kerslakes, still radiated warmth and doting from the moment it appeared in my cross hairs. Mrs. Kerslake is still around, although the enterprising next generation of bakers now serve the patisserie’s evolution. Pies are categorized into chunky meat, beef or lamb. And ground beef or chicken’s breast or thigh. A vegetarian selection is also included. Each section has at least seven different types. The sausage roll, formidable during the Kerslakes epoch, now comes in two styles that have developed a refinement in their maturity. The outstanding pastry extends to apple pies and the chocolate éclair features the airiest choux imaginable. The unassuming vanilla slice unites ingredients into what is potentially one of the world’s great, though elusive, pastry combos. In lesser establishments this delicacy alternates between brightly-yellowed congealed travesties to saccharine sweet dross. The Upper Crust’s version displays a prowess and subtlety that is characteristic of every bakery item exiting from this popular Northern Beaches landmark. On one interior wall there are felt-tip marker pen endorsements from celebrities and pie loving folk the world over. Even a dog riding shotgun on the back of a builder’s truck barked as it swung by.