Prick With A Fork

Here at Stately Prick Manor we no longer describe someone as being drunk, trollied, pissed, or maggot. The new preferred term is, “non-sharia compliant”.

Which pretty much, with all due respect to this site’s Islamic readership (I know you’re out there, the traffic logs say there’s a few people who pop in from Saudi Arabia … though often by way of some fairly esoteric and disturbing search engine requests) described the Pricks’ Sunday afternoon. Restaurant Atelier in Glebe has been pulling out the stops for its tenth birthday, and the final event on the calendar was nothing less than a couple of pigs done over the coals with all the trimmings.

This is not the first time this site has plumped for Atelier, or been to one of their pig roasts, though we did bring the Three Little Pricks along. To say they were keen on the idea would be an understatement. On the morning, they were as excited as if it were Christmas. Hell, it might even have been Hour of Power for all they were bouncing off the walls. And they were well rewarded, with their own plates of trotters, tails – even a nose. You can never get kids started on the good stuff too early.

Nose to tail, with a bit of trotter in the middle …

The point of this is not just to report on a pig roast, as fun as it was to have a feed and catch up with various twitterati and fellow foodies including the brains behind such sites as Local Sprouts and The Adventures of Miss Piggy. Atelier is a restaurant that despite a clearly loyal following deserves wider fame. The food easily holds its own with the one and two-hat joints around town (see here for a previous account of a meal). Great wines too: At Piggy Sunday, I was treated to a splash of an Oregon pinot gris of the sort one never sees out this way (its sails perfectly trimmed to cope with a taught, acidic headwind and not get pushed off-course by creamy crosscurrents). Other meals have brought other treats: a Mont-Redon white Chateauneuf du Pape, for example, stands out in the memory.

Far more important, the business is an honest one. Chef Darren and his partner Bernie have done – are doing – an incredible thing to keep going in the present climate. And they do so without buying into the frippery of the Sydney publicity-industrial complex, that bizarre secret society that needs its own Stonecutter’s Anthem (“Who makes Mexican a trend?/Who wants to be Terry Durack’s friend?/We do! We doooooo!”). They’re just turning out great food and great times.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Do yourself a favour. Book in for a meal. And tell ‘em the Prick sent ya.

Hands up who remembers the old Gowings department store? Somewhere in the back of a cupboard the Prick still has an old shirt from there bought maybe ten years ago, a durable bastard it was if it’s still around, and given the fiscal exigencies of those days, it would have been a cheap bastard, too. When Gowing’s finally shut down in 2006 there was much predictable wailing and gnashing of teeth about the death of an Australian institution … but the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on.

Today, Gowings – the name, at least – lives again at its old George Street HQ, which last year finally emerged from its chrysalis of insolvency writs and builder’s hoardings to reveal a hotel and restaurant and spa a hundred times hipper than anything that had ever been before.

There’s a New York vibe to the place, but also a London one. In the restaurant and the hotel the crew is dressed in a weird sort of hooker-chic by way of a Bob Fosse dance routine as translated through a sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey in which Austin Powers shows up as the protagonist. At any moment it feels like they could start cruising for trade or burst into a dance number: Yeah, baby!

The party continues on the plate, which winds up at the table via a big, open kitchen complete with wood-fired ovens and more shiny brightwork than the A-arm of the Cruising Yacht Club. We had to have a bit of a smash-and-grab meal as a show in the State Theatre next door awaited, but could just as easily have built our own little four-hour feast off the menu, which seems made to encourage sneaking in a few scallops here or a half-dozen oysters there as palate cleansers and appetisers.

Crab cakes came more like croquettes than the big Maryland-style patties of the Prick’s youth, but very meaty yet light nonetheless. A steak tartare of ox and beef was a winner: the Prick is a traditionalist about this dish (and most other things, really), and so was a bit concerned after reading another blogger’s account that suggested it missed the mark. But the meat was rich and properly chopped by hand, with enough zing to cut through and keep it all together. There was just enough Lea & Perrins in there to make its point, but not so much as to clobber you over the palate.

A minute steak stayed rare in the middle when all too often grill stations turn such cuts to shoe leather, and a veal schnitzel was large enough it would not have fit in an economy airline seat without a lap-extender belt. And it came topped with a fried egg and some really lovely anchovies, like a deconstructed anchoiade. Simple and great, this may be the Prick’s new at-home dinner-for-one when Mrs Prick has a work function. An inch-thick Berkshire pork chop was tender in so many ways, and helped along by a sharpish mustard sauce: again, very old school, but very modern, and very good indeed.

In many ways, the meal was just the tonic for a poor Prick who has lately been addled by events and feeling a little low.

At a time when favoured restaurants are shutting down or being converted into cafes, when one of Sydney’s greatest and most unique wine shops has been bought out by a corporate monolith whose marketeers are sure to crowd out the Vieux-Telegraphe with bargain-bin De Bortoli, and when the city is drowning in a sea of South-of-the-Border taqueria barns whose walls groan under the weight of Mexican kitsch picked up in Frida Kahlo’s yard sale, it is hard not to feel the weight of corporatized vulgarity pressing down. Tricky thing when one’s general worldview is basically a tory-ish libertarianism.

But Gowing’s Bar and Grill affirms that change isn’t necessarily bad and that big money corporate fit-outs can also deliver the goods. OK, we don’t have Gowings’ cheap polo shirts and novelty shaving crap anymore, but we do have the internet to solve that problem. And where Gowings once was we now have this damn fine restaurant. Schumpter’s “creative destruction” at its best.

Sighted somewhere in the US, caffeinated cheese:

Some enterprising locals need to import this to Sydney by the boatload.

“So what you’re saying is that we’ll either wind up having the best meal of our lives or spend the next week in hospital with listeria,” said Mrs Prick as our Silver Service snaked its way through the back streets of a nearby artsy suburb that has lately sprung up more high rise construction sites than the Singapore skyline.

“Yep, pretty much,” I replied.

Continue reading →

… when the local free magazine hits your mailbox and the adopt-a-dog page features a pooch named Tumblr:

Seriously, though, congratulations to the folks at The Nest on their launch. It’s got the same look and feel – and may be a creature of the same people – as The Beast, which was always enjoyed back when the Prick lived in the Eastern Suburbs.

Another guest post from the Three Little Pricks, who spent much of the day learning to make pasta – and doing a fine job of it, too! – down at Alexandria’s Salt Meats Cheese…

Today, my brothers Eli, Kip, and I did a pasta making class at Salts Meats Cheese, the best food store I know of in Sydney. The website for this awesome, incredible, gourmet, 5 star food place is here: http://www.saltmeatscheese.com.au/.

When we first arrived we were early so we had a look at some of their awesome products from around the world like escargot, massive duck fat cans, hot sauces, and giant pink salt blocks. Finally the magic began. We sat down and received our aprons and chef hats. We were introduced to the other kids taking the class as well as our instructors, Sarah and Manu, who gave us some pizza as a late breakfast. We were then taught how to make the pasta dough, with 100g of fine flour and 1 egg per serve. We kneaded the dough until smooth before leaving it for about 45 minutes to rest it a little.

To occupy ourselves for this time we went next door to the Grounds of Alexandria to pick some herbs for the pasta sauce that was being made in the kitchen and also looked at some chickens and a pig who was humorously named “Kevin Bacon”. When we got back we were taught how to use the pasta roller, a machine with a hand-crank that rolls dough into thin sheets. When the sheets were as thin as possible we could make them into shapes. We made farfalle “bow ties”, which are made by cutting out squares and pinching the centre, and garganelli (a hand rolled penne). We also rolled the pasta through the machine’s cutters to make angel hair, which is a little like spaghetti but thinner, and tagliatelle, which is a fatter version of spaghetti. When our dad arrived we were eating home made pasta with herbs we picked from the garden at this super cool long table … mmmmmmm. Those flavours were incredible. We each got to take home a container of our own dough so we could practise. Apparently the pasta machines we were using were only $90. Not much else to say apart from, this day was AWESOME!

A great time was had by all, and thankfully no one at the Grounds recognised them from their last visit. Now all we need is a junior sommelier class for the lads and perhaps a two-day sous-vide and sauces workshop and dinner parties will be a breeze at Stately Prick Manor.

Hard to know where to come down on this one. On the one hand, there’s NSW Upper House watermelon (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) Senator Lee Rhiannon, sour-faced Soviet sympathiser, enemy of good times, and commissar of the crazy cat ladies brigade. (She also, reportedly, does a mean Brezhnev impression.) The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Rhiannon’s latest class enemies are the petit bourgeois capitalist roaders who opened up a bar underneath her Surry Hills office, playing loud music that sabotages the quiet she needs to plan the revolution:

The owner of Playbar, a small live music venue in Surry Hills, said it was forced to reduce noise levels to ”about as loud as an iPhone speaker can go” by a City of Sydney Council officer after a complaint from NSW Greens senator Lee Rhiannon, whose electoral office is in the same building.

On the other hand, there’s the bar in question, whose website describes it thusly:

Bringin’ a lil bit of Melbourne style to Sydney…
Raw, street & underground…
Beats, breakin’ & musical excursion…
Turntables & graffiti…
Ales, spirits & vino…

Nestled in the once decrepit & defunkt [sic] lower west-syde of Surry Hills, a new flowering small bar district is emerging.

Excuse me? Defunkt? Ugh. The Prick begins to see the Senator’s point. Apparently the joint is “decorated with skate decks & a fresh graf collab, courtesy Beastman & Numskull”, whatever that means. In short, it’s a hipster-poseurville where six-figure graphic designers can get stupid on craft beer, listen to obscure music, and act out their badass Peter Pan fantasies. But still, it’s a business, and its owners are trying to make an honest living. Verdict: Playbar by a nose. May even have to drop by for “jazz night” and put a few bucks in the till, provided there’s plenty of bebop and Thelonius Monk covers.

For those so inclined, blogger Matthew Shaffer has turned out a brilliant little parable about a government attempt to guarantee universal access to food:

James was not, at first, sure how he would go about using his new agency to guarantee the people of New York food. But one thing was certain: letting people run wild and purchase their own food just could not possibly work. He had learned in his social psychology and cognitive science courses at Yale that individuals — especially individuals who did not go to Yale — were not rational. Left to their own devices they might eat too much of the wrong foods; or they might eat no food at all; or they might spend all of their paychecks right away, wasting all of their money on vacations or video games, and then find, a week later, that they had no money for food; or they might get ripped off in a market in which grocers could charge whatever they wanted. Because individuals are imperfectly rational, James realized, there was an obvious solution — have the government take control of the food supply.

But how?

Read on. The whole thing is very well observed, right down to the Facebook memes generated in the program’s defense.

More posts shortly, including what happens when you tea-smoke duck breasts in a backyard smoker. (Hint: it’s delicious, but the process makes the whole property stink like a Cheech & Chong comeback tour.)

At ease, fast food purveyors, junk food manufacturers, and point-of-sale lolly vendors of all stripes. The Public Health Industry has cracked the childhood obesity code, and the problem is … big plates:

DISHING up your child’s dinner on an adult-sized plate causes portion distortion and could prompt youngsters to over-eat.

Research found 80 per cent of children ate more when serving themselves on full-sized plates

“Portion distortion”. God, that has a ring to it, doesn’t it? It beats even “pester power” as a catchy call for the government to come and solve all our problems. And a problem it is, because heartless ceramics manufacturers keep pushing ever bigger plates on an unsuspecting populace:

Nutritionist Susie Burrell said plates had increased significantly in size over the last two decades, causing portion size confusion.

The Prick would love to see the evidence to back this assertion. Having grown up in the US and returned regularly over the past decade, I can’t recall ever thinking plates were somehow larger than when I was a child. But apparently there’s a Big Plate conspiracy to embiggen our children.

Nat Swan serves son Beau from a toddler-sized bowl. The 11-month-old, who eats healthily, lets his mum know when he has had enough.

Apart from toddler bowls, she has only seen child-sized plates with portion details online: “They are not readily available.”

Let’s see: Mum serves toddler. Toddler indicates fullness. And Ms Swan needs a plate with “portion details” to take the guesswork out of this?

Of course she does. And “nutritionists” like Burrell, and an army of academics, legislators, bureaucrats, and journalists are surely itching to make sure she gets them.

Sad news from the wine retail world, via Huon Hooke and an email which just lobbed in:

One of Sydney’s finest independent wine retailers, Ultimo Wine Centre, has been sold to Coles and will become a Vintage Cellars store.

Ending months of speculation, owner and founder Jon Osbeiston has sold the shop, and the settlement was due to take place on April 8. He has joined the permanent staff of Vintage Cellars. 

However, Sydney wine-lovers have probably seen the last of Osbeiston on a shop floor, as he’ll be working as a broker from an upstairs office at the Vintage Cellars Double Bay store.

He will continue to look after some of his special Ultimo clients. Coles will re-badge the shop, at 99 Jones Street, Ultimo, as a Vintage Cellars and it will continue as an up-market fine wine business, presumably continuing to specialise in boutique Australian and the finest imported wines, especially French and Italian.

Coles spokesman Jim Cooper said: “Obviously there will be some tweaks to the range, but we take the view that you don’t buy these places with their successful and established business, just to tear up what’s there and start again. The focus will remain on fine wine.”

“Tweaks to the range.” Sure. Fine wine? Absolutely, so long as you like Grange and Moet-Chandon. This site has never been a fan of Vintage Cellars, with its marked-up-to-mark-down corporate labels, its lousy “cellar share” scheme which long ago stopped giving credit for gin or giving subscribers anything decent to save up for, and its rude and parsimonious tastings policy. (The Leichhardt outlet lost the Prick’s custom after this site was told off, loudly, for pouring our own nip on a Saturday afternoon. Well, you should have had someone staffing the tasting bar then.)

And now this. One can only expect what “tweaks” are coming. Thumping music. Staff who think a “first growth” is what happens when you hit puberty. Chateau d’Yquem and Vieux Telegraph forced to buy shelf space to jockey with home-brand plonk.

What a low, dishonest decade this is turning out to be.