Prick With A Fork

When you go to a restaurant like Sydney’s Quay – regularly ranked among the world’s best – you expect a peacable environment and top-class food, right? A friend of the Prick reports that on a recent evening, he and his guest got the latter in spades. But the former? Not so much, as his letter to the restaurant’s manager — shared with this site as three weeks later it has not yet garnered a response — demonstrates. As he writes, “How extraordinary not to receive a reply to this”:

Dear Sharon:

On Friday evening [4 January], I dined at Quay with a visitor from the United States. I chose your restaurant because I regard it as one of the iconic Sydney establishments; perhaps the best from which to enjoy a panoramic view of Sydney’s jewels while dining on first class cuisine.

In these respects, I am pleased to say the restaurant lived up to the high standard I recall from my previous visit. However, there was one glaring problem – indeed, I imagine you already know what I am referring to, as I suspect I am not the only guest from that evening to write.

We were initially seated downstairs on the bridge side, near a function room. Within minutes of our arrival, loud Middle Eastern dance music began blaring from the room. I ignored it for a few minutes, hoping that it might be the equivalent of a ‘happy birthday’ or some other tradition which would be over in a couple of minutes. Alas, it continued. Eventually, I asked the waitress to move us. She said that no other tables were yet available, but she would move us when possible. After a few minutes more, I decided the situation was intolerable, and walked over to complain to another staff member who promised to send over the maitre d’. This prompted a move to the upstairs room, which was somewhat more quiet for a brief period, although music was still audible from the wedding. But soon the music upstairs took on a new level of frenzy, and I could see through the window a man banging frantically on a large drum. This appalling racket continued almost until the end of the night.

The staff on the night were unfailingly professional and apologetic, and the maitre d’ informed us that they had no idea that the wedding would involve such a barbaric cacophony. However, while I understand the reluctance to intervene to curtail the festivities of a wedding reception, the impact on diners such as myself was substantial – as evidenced by the number of other diners I heard complaining to your staff. I paid well over $600 to provide a foreign guest with an impressive experience, only to be embarrassed when the restaurant I advised her was one of the best in Sydney was unable to provide anything resembling a pleasant dining environment. The whole experience was surprising from Quay, very disappointing and, frankly, unacceptable.

The Prick knows the correspondent well and has no doubt that his account is genuine. What do the folk at Quay have to say about this? I know they do weddings all the time, and to be fair, they likely didn’t know what this particular party would entail.

But it also does not seem fair to all the other (heavily) paying customers to subject them to someone else’s racket.

The Pricks are off to the Yarra and surrounds then heading up Avenel way – aside from the obvious picks, any cellar doors we ought to be dropping into?

From the BBC, entertaining tales of vegetarians going abroad only to find out that much of the rest of the world thinks they’re nuts.

While the Prick is about as firm a supporter of personal liberty and individual choice – de gustibus non disputandum est, and all that – as can be, it seems a bit silly to travel while closing one’s self off to one of the activity’s (potentially) great delights and instead eat plain white rice three meals a day. Happily a number of those quoted manage to make their peace with meat while on the road – though many more seem to have no trouble with turning up in Cuba or Africa or such places and demanding that their first world ascetisism.

Sad news that Danks Street Depot is to close, and interesting to note the reasons given by co-owner Jared Ingersoll for the decision:

“The environment is much more demanding than when we opened 11 years ago. Compliancy costs have gone up, running costs have gone crazy, and there is much more competition than there used to be. The carbon tax means it costs me seven times what it did to gas my fridges,” Ingersoll says..

Danks Street Depot was at the pointy end of the vanguard movement that turned Waterloo into an inner-urban yuppie paradise. Safe bet that 95 per cent of the restaurant’s very trendy cashed-up greenie patrons thought the carbon tax a swell ideal when it came into force. Whoops.

UPDATE: When it came to trading on greenie principles, Ingersoll certainly talked the talk: “Founded on the principles of the Slow Food movement, Danks Street Depot, vibrant café and bar, continues to showcase sustainable and ethical principles; championing local producers, seasonal produce and low food miles where possible.”

Ultimately, though, the only “eco” that matters is “economics”.

The Prick’s not askin’ too many questions, if ya know what I’m sayin’, but apparently it’s still possible to get Japanese kombu in Australia despite reports of a general ban on the stuff. It seems the good folks down at Chef’s Armoury have got a hook-up — I’ve just ordered a couple of packs myself with an eye towards some Japanese soups and trying my hand at some of those yummy smoked eel parfait-and-kombu gelee cylinders they do down at Bentley. Check it out.

In The Australian today, an excellent dissection of the lunatic over-reaching of the Australian public health industry:

THE cigarette companies, public health activists believe, will slowly bleed to death thanks to tobacco plain packaging. Now they are going in search of other beasts to slay. But threats may not be as fearsome as they say …

Why do the activists play this game? There is considerable public funding and academic prestige at stake. Small and often overlapping teams of researchers at the University of Sydney received well over $2 million for projects beginning between 2009 and last year looking at smoking, “What is influential public health research” and “Corporate influences on media reporting of health”.

Sydney and two other unnamed institutions were awarded just under $2m for a project not only aiming to improve “media literacy” but also “the potency of policy advocacy among health professionals”. Industry also charges an ideological element is involved.

“The Australian preventative health industry regards itself as the medical wing of the progressive left movement,” one long-serving industry figure says.

“The most high-profile members are open about regarding their goal to be advocates for social justice and policies for greater equity in incomes, housing and education — the so-called social determinants of health.

“The more radical loathe what they regard as unchecked markets and neo-liberalism. They take a hard line on trade agreements. And they white-ant the careers of anyone in health research who does not take the same hardcore line. Preventative health is a movement, almost a calling.”

The industry figure says the activists’ ideological starting position is a belief that individuals are helpless in the face of corporations and so individuals’ decision-making must be disregarded.

Read the whole thing.

Ah, the perils of being an “ethical eater”. One minute you’re patting yourself on the back for not eating Babe, the next you’re starving Peruvian peasants and deforesting South America:

There is an unpalatable truth to face for those of us with a bag of quinoa in the larder. The appetite of countries such as ours for this grain has pushed up prices to such an extent that poorer people in Peru and Bolivia, for whom it was once a nourishing staple food, can no longer afford to eat it. Imported junk food is cheaper. In Lima, quinoa now costs more than chicken. Outside the cities, and fuelled by overseas demand, the pressure is on to turn land that once produced a portfolio of diverse crops into quinoa monoculture.

In fact, the quinoa trade is yet another troubling example of a damaging north-south exchange, with well-intentioned health and ethics-led consumers here unwittingly driving poverty there. It’s beginning to look like a cautionary tale of how a focus on exporting premium foods can damage the producer country’s food security…

Soya, a foodstuff beloved of the vegan lobby as an alternative to dairy products, is another problematic import, one that drives environmental destruction. Embarrassingly, for those who portray it as a progressive alternative to planet-destroying meat, soya production is now one of the two main causes of deforestation in South America, along with cattle ranching, where vast expanses of forest and grassland have been felled to make way for huge plantations.

When guilty first-world types try to turn their every meal into an expression of their moral vanity, this sort of thing tends to happen. Further on the unintended consequences of “ethical eating” here.

It’s stock-making Sunday! On the agenda: A gallon of brown chicken stock, which is one of the most useful things one can have around to make sauces and soups and enrichen dishes where plain old white chicken stock won’t do…so what makes it “brown”? Well, browning … or caramelisation … or for the tech-heads, the Maillard Reaction. Thus caramelised vegetables…

And roasted chicken wings …

To be continued as the afternoon progresses …

UPDATE: Aaaaaand…we’re back! Sorry, that turned into helluva little week there, and posting got overtaken by events.

So where were we? Well, in the bottom of a really big pressure cooker, four or five onions had been thinly sliced and gently caramelised, joined after about forty minutes by a couple hundred grams (about half a pound’s worth) of sliced button mushrooms and a couple of peeled, sliced carrots. Meanwhile the chicken wings were roasting, being turned every twenty minutes or so, in a hot (2ooc) oven. The key in these steps is getting everything brown. That’s where the flavour is.

That’s the complicated bit over. After that, the wings go in – and I deglased the bottom of the roasting pans with a bit of water to get everything up – and about 3.5 litres of water (nearly a gallon). The liquid is brought to a boil, any scum that rises to the surface is skimmed, the lid is sealed, and the pot brought up to pressure …

And after a couple of hours burbling away, here’s what we get (after, of course, letting the whole device slowly cool down of its own accord; the pressure cooker, along with the angle grinder, is one of the only things Mrs Prick doesn’t like to be around when its in action):

And after a bit of straining (wet muslin and a fine sieve), all that’s left is to let it settle in the fridge so any remaining fat rises to the top for easy skimming. It’s hard to describe the final result, which is dark and brown and powerful, as well as gelatinous, a product of all the cartilege and other material that’s broken down and something which will make sauces and soups that much richer. After a final strain, it was into the freezer, in containers ranging from 1 litre to 100mls, ready for easy access no matter whether what’s contemplated is just finishing off a quick pan sauce or making a big, rich, mushroom risotto. After all, it may be infernal in Sydney at the moment, but it will be winter soon enough. Be prepared, as they say.

And I mean, I love this town, but the hell you can’t get a bite to eat at this hour? It’s like a nursing home! Back in New York we’d go out to dinner, then hit a bunch of bars and then at midnight go to Pastis for a second dinner! God, those steak-frites­ were awesome …

Ah, the call of the exiled New Yorker who finds himself in Sydney’s Rocks district after ten on a Friday night. Is there anything more tedious? Probably not, so sorry to Mrs Prick and the friends who had to endure that little speech as we wandered around after a cocktail party (another thing people do in New York that’s far less popular here … but that’s a rant for another day) looking for something to eat and soak up the Ruinart.

Dinner of champions … and Pricks

But the Prick may not be able to thusly bore his companions much longer as more dining options arise downtown, and after a few misfires (the wine bar whose kitchen closed at nine; the tourist trap advertising “kangaroo sliders”) we found ourselves at Grain, the new bar at the Four Seasons which recently opened for business as part of a broader tart-up of the venerable old hotel. Grain’s décor is woody, but not in an old panelled clubby sort of way: think more Eero Saarinen by way of IKEA.

Grain’s website boasts of its “fine art of drinking” philosophy (which sounds like something ripped off from Kingsley Amis) and the bar makes a helluva good martini, served in coupe glasses which were beautiful but a little hard for this cocktail glass traditionalist to get used to. They also, apparently, do a very good trade in whiskeys. The cocktail menu, with old favourites like the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, is reminiscent of the list at the gone but certainly not forgotten Bayswater Brasserie.

The food’s also pretty good and just the thing for a late dinner: oysters, “lardo” on toast (which was sold out, much to everyone’s disappointment), tarted up burgers and steaks. A Coorong hangar steak was as lovely an example of that cut of meat the Prick has seen this side of Sixpenny, though it was let down by the sides: we could see where they were going with the chunks of pumpkin fried in some sort of salt-and-vinegar crust were good but slightly confused. A hunk of baby iceberg lettuce was pointless and drizzled on the cut side with what appeared to be a sort of salsa verde vinaigrette: Presumably the point was to elevate the much-maligned leaf to a higher, hipper level (a la the aforementioned slider revolution) but it just did not work. Far be it from the Prick to tell the kitchen how to do its job, but something as insipid as iceberg needs a lot more to back it up: perhaps a nice classic blue cheese dressing? Meanwhile a fish burger was, despite at first glance looking worryingly like a Filet-o-Fish, hit the brief, deep fried, crunch, and on a tasty bun.

The Prick’s verdict: A solid effort and a good addition to the area. Worth dropping by if you’re in need of a feed downtown.

Well the show’s had a couple of airings on Lifestyle and by now the secret is out: The Prick’s menu was beaten, coming second to Danielle, her mechanical bull, and her plate of (I can’t believe I’m typing these words) chicken chasseur.

“Boeuf a la Prick”: Wagyu sirloin, Cape Grimm beef cheeks, oxtail cigars.

But all is not lost. There’s a second phase to the game, and if you’re of a mind to do so please pop over to the show’s “Fan Favourite” competition. If you tweet a vote my way through the site or via the hashtag #jamescdwma, you’ll go in a draw to win $1,000 off Foxtel. (If you’ve got Foxtel and missed the earlier airings, you can see all the carnage when they replay the episode this weekend on Saturday at 5:30pm and Sunday at 12:30pm and 9:30pm. It should also be up online soon.)

Blogger Reality Ravings has a pretty good round-up of the episode, and kudos to whomever is writing Foxtel’s TV listings for capturing the spirit of the week:

These self confessed foodies are as obsessed with themselves as with cooking – they’re also ultra-competitive – and take each other down at every opportunity. Mike has no qualms pointing out the faults in the food of others. For Kiri, every night is an opportunity to market herself as one accustomed to the finer things in life. Danielle is super competitive and rivals Kiri and Mike in the slag off stakes and poor James, the talkative American can’t get a word in most of the week. His food was really good, but his guests didn’t see it that way and were out to take him down.

Hang on, I’m not sure we were all obsessed with ourselves! Still, it is hard to reconcile Danielle’s rhapsodising about the beef and the ice cream on the one hand and her marking the meal a “6” on the other, but what can you do? All in all, it was a fun experience even if it was a hell of a lot of work. The number of hours and size of the crew required to make an hour of television is mind-boggling, and the shooting schedule required us contestants to be up and “on” every night after a full day, at least in my case, at the office.

Hosting on the last night was a definite handicap as well. If I’d had more energy I may have been a bit more assertive about leaving my soufflé in for a couple of more minutes (the director was calling for dessert) until it was more fully done.  (Soufflé is one of those dishes one should never attempt under pressure; the nerves come right through in the dish. Hand-rolled gnocchi is another.) With a moment’s more time I may have also espied the multi-legged intruder who caused such a ruckus; blame it on the crew who rearranged all the downstairs furniture at Stately Prick Manor and perhaps dislodged the fellow.

Cooking in front of the cameras was also an entirely different experience than cooking alone, though it was also great fun, addictively so. The only problem was that the demands of the camera meant that I had to undertake a sort of “tantric cooking”: Every time I would put something into the oven, they’d tell me to take it out again so they could shoot the action from another angle, which was frustrating when the clock was ticking and I all I wanted to do was stick the damn thing in and leave it there!

Finally, the big question: Would I do it all again?

The wise answer would probably be, “Hell no.”

But who am I kidding?