Prick With A Fork

So with the Little Pricks sweeping the prizes at their primary school’s presentation day, it was time to celebrate. And by complete accident (we were stopped at the lights on Glebe Point Road and someone said, “Hey! That place looks good!”) we wound up at Tommy’s, because, hey, you can’t go wrong with piles of schnitzel, can you? Occasional guest blogger and newly-elected school captain Nick With a Fork took time out from writing his reform agenda for next year’s Student Representative Council to kick in a brief write-up of the evening:

Yesterday me and my family (a.k.a. “The Pricks”) went to Tommy’s in Glebe and which had a very German/Czech feel to it. For starters we ordered these crumbed mushrooms that tasted like someone got KFC and made it taste good, get slightly healthy, and more German. Along with this, we had pork crackling chips, which were chewy and salty, some duck sausages which were rather fennel-ey, and some marinated Camembert. For mains I ordered a roast duck, it was so crispy and flavoursome: Mmmmm, how clearly I can remember that taste, it makes me hungry just thinking about it. My brothers meanwhile had this: For Christopher, a crumbed veal schnitzel with ham and cheese. He let me taste it, and I did not regret doing so. Elijah had a sausage platter, he would not let me touch it, so it must have been pretty good. For dessert we all had crisp apple strudels (which reminded me a bit of The Sound Of Music’s “Favourite things”, as did “schnitzel with noodles”). I could go on but nevermind that. The strudels were served with little cups of ice cream and topped with cinnamon to stop them from being too sweet, which I think worked quite well. After we had eaten this we paid our compliments to the chef and left. Oh, and also, there was a “beer prayer” on the wall of the men’s room that had me in fits of laughter, but I’m not telling you what it says, to see it you’ll have to go read it for yourself!

Photos below the fold. And in the interest of equity and equal opportunity for those who can’t get to Glebe or get into the men’s, the “prayer” was something like this old classic.

Continue reading →

The whole tragic farce of the 2DayFM radio prank seems a bit distant now, but I’ve got some thoughts on the matter in the new Spectator Australia. In short, as dumb as the prank and the pranksters were, we should do our best to head off the collective punishment – in the form of further attacks on freedom of speech – likely to follow:

It is a bizarre world we live in where Julian Assange can be hailed as a hero for exposing military secrets and putting Western soldiers in danger, but a couple of dim-bulb radio presenters are all but run out of town on a rail for calling up a hospital and finding out the last time a pregnant woman puked. Yet here we are.

Without fear of hyperbole it can pretty safely be said that Mel Greig and Michael Christian, the two radio DJs who infamously rang King Edward VII Hospital pretending to be the Queen, Prince Charles and a pack of corgis, are never going to win a Walkley for investigative journalism. The same goes for all the other hosts, DJs and shock jocks who fill the commercial FM airwaves with gossip about B-list ‘celebrities’, goofy phone calls and thumping ‘music’ to simulate sex at house parties by.

But it must be said that the two have also been blamed, completely unfairly and wholly prematurely, for the death of a nurse in England who had the misfortune to transfer their telephone call when the pair rang up pretending to be the royals. The fact is we may never know why Jacintha Saldanha took her own life; suicide is intensely personal, she only put the call through and did not ‘fall’ for the gag, and any number of other things may have been going on in her life.

No, Greig, Christian and the rest of the Austereo crew — some of whom have done some truly shocking and legitimately inexcusable things in the past — are being utterly and unfairly pilloried by a mob whose outrage has been whipped up by scolds with outsized megaphones who would make life as drab and colourless as one of those new cigarette packets they have lately foisted on society.

The hysteria mounted against Greig and Christian this week is only a small stage of a bigger trip down the road to dreary humourlessness where everyone makes for the exit at the first sign of a gag lest they be accused of tacitly supporting something that gave someone, somewhere cause to take offence.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Where are all the hip Sydneysiders eating these days? Why, according to the Sydney Morning Herald’s Brittany Ruppert, it’s George Street:

For years George Street epitomised grungy downtown dining. Seedy bars lined the windy street and fast food restaurants more or less held the monopoly on eateries.

Skip forward to 2012 and locals are looking at a brand new dining hot spot.

Over the past year several new eateries have been established along George Street, with more than 1000 new seats opening up around the main strip. Among some of the most notable new additions are China Lane, O Bar & Dining and Gowings Bar & Grill in the new QT hotel.

”George Street used to be a no-go zone when it came to serious dining,” writes food critic Terry Durack, ”But all that’s changed”.

”I’m a big believer in the more people around you, the better,” says Luke Mangan, owner and head chef at the elegant Glass Brasserie at the Hilton, where they are celebrating the restaurant’s most successful November in seven years.

”All these new restaurants opening up aren’t taking customers away from us they’re just bringing more great people in to the area.”

One is tempted to say “half their luck” and leave it at that, but the Prick senses this story being part of a greater editorial narrative. The SMH has been nothing if not positively boosterish about plans to run light rail up George Street, especially now that it will run straight up into Surry Hills, thus allowing Terry Durack and the rest of the remaining Herald staff to tread that much more gently on this fragile planet as they make their way from the office to Crown Street to sip jelly-jar cocktails and pick over the latest peasant food fad of the month. But for the plan to come off, it will require some shoring up of George Street’s rather, shall we say, dubious position in the consciousness of Sydneysiders. Thus last week the paper even ran, with a straight face and without rebuttal, Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s claim that “World-class retailers such as Apple, Louis Vuitton and Topshop have recently established flagship stores on George Street in anticipation of light rail.”

Ahem. This sort of statement makes Moore look like the Iraqi Information Minister of urban planning.

But hey, since we are now in the business of inverting history and demographics (the Apple shop has been open for years and years and Louis Vuitton’s customers aren’t going to arrive by light rail, unless it is via some as-yet-unplanned stop at the Cathay Pacific first class arrivals lounge), why not mess with geography as well? Without being persnickity, it is a slightly long bow to say all the various restaurants mentioned by Ruppert are on George Street: plenty sit on tributaries like Market Street, and Pendolino and La Rosa, anchoring as they do opposite poles of the Strand Arcade, can’t both be on George.

And whether on George or a side street, all of the above are concentrated along a very narrow band of the strip. The rest of the street remains a seedy dump dominated by bridge-and-tunnel bloodhouses like the Three Wise Monkeys and Scruffy Murphy’s and their associated businesses, from seedy sex shops to KFC. Mrs Prick and I were recently ejected onto George Street at around 11pm on a recent Saturday following a wedding reception; it was all stumbling slatterns and amped-up bogans crossing their forearms in front of their chests, yelling EX-TREME! at one another in some form of tribal greeting. Light rail, it can pretty safely be said, won’t solve this problem.

No wonder the Pricks are so much more keen to entertain at home, and so defensive of attempts to make that a more expensive business.  

Incidentally Brittany Ruppert, alert Herald readers will recall, is the young intern who a couple of weeks ago was given several hundred words in the paper to complain that young people totally worry about the economy and the environment but, like, totally sit there apathetic instead of getting out the on the streets and protesting like their parents. Ah well, Brittany, with so many fine and fine-ish diners opening on George, at least the economy can’t be that bad. Can it?

When was the last time you heard someone use the phrase “it’s a free country” un-ironically? Years, most likely. Because no matter where one turns in what was once called the “free world”, one runs into stories like this one, this time out of London:

Council officials are cracking down on the freedom to choose how your burger is done, warning restaurants not to offer them rare or even medium-rare.

A number of celebrity chefs are affected by the move, including Gordon Ramsay, whose Maze Grill restaurant sells a burger for £12, Angela Hartnett, whose York and Albany’s bar menu includes burgers, and the Soho House chain, run by Nick Jones, the husband of broadcaster Kirsty Young.

All face being asked at their next routine inspection how they offer their burgers after the decision by Westminster city council, which regulates food safety in more restaurants than any other local authority.

The decision is expected to be followed by other councils, but critics fear it could lead to questions over the safety of rare steaks and raw meat dishes such as steak tartare ….

After routine inspections by environmental health officers, Westminster council challenged the way Davy’s was serving its £13.95 burgers at one of its restaurants in central London. Davy’s has taken the case to the High Court, which experts say could set a legal precedent as to whether or not diners will be able to order meat rare.

Easier said than done, but were the Prick in Davy’s shoes, he would have been sorely tempted to tell those “environmental health officers” where they could stick their legal precedent. Burgers should be cooked rare, unless stuffed with Stilton or Roquefort, in which case they should be well-done to allow the cheese to melt through.

But more importantly, who the hell is Westminster Council – or any other agency – to stand in the way of a contract between diner and chef? I mean, this is England we’re talking about. Birthplace of the Magna Carta. Font of liberty. Home of parliamentary democracy. And the government there now thinks how rational adults order their meat is any of their business? Were Churchill alive today he’d surely be saying, We defeated the Nazis for this?

Of course officials say that the regulations are about safety. But then again they always say that – and it is a wonder that Westminster Council officials haven’t yet found a compliant public health academic to claim that so many billions of dollars are lost due to people missing work and burdening hospitals because they are puking up their gourmet burgers and steak tartare. Do we need to rehearse the various assaults on freedom, personal liberty and good taste in cities like New York or Sydney? Or mention the pincer assault by Barack and Michelle Obama on the restaurant industry in the US where between health care regulations, demonization campaigns, and fretting about obesity, simply trying to fill peoples’ bellies and make a buck at the same time has become a very fraught business indeed? Not even lemonade stands are safe.

No, this sort of thing is not – and never really is – about health and safety. It is about control, which is what for-your-own-good fascism is at its heart all about.

For-your-own-good fascists have much in common with other sorts of totalitarians and statists who have always had it in for restaurants because they represent enterprise and innovation and allow people to enjoy the fruits of their labour by decadently letting someone else do the cooking. Restaurants, cafés, and pubs have traditionally been pillars of civil society and hotbeds for people to come together without the endorsement or supervision of the state, something that makes certain types very nervous indeed.  

 Leftie statists also harbour misapprehensions that the mere act of “service” means restaurants are necessarily havens of exploitation and elitism. (Here Orwell had it right in Down and Out in Paris and London: “The moral is, never be sorry for a waiter. Sometimes when you sit in a restaurant, still stuffing yourself half an hour after closing time, you feel that the tired waiter at your side must surely be despising you. But he is not … he is ministering to a kind of pleasure he thoroughly understands and admires. And that is why waiters are seldom Socialists.”)

Lately I’ve been reading Anne Applebaum’s superb Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956, and while the secret police is hardly bundling people off in the night (much….yet), it came as no surprise to read that the demonization and shuttering of restaurants was an early priority of the Soviet puppet regimes after World War II. In late-‘40s Budapest, Applebaum writes that “over time, nearly all private restaurants in Budapest became ‘people’s’ cafeterias or state-owned proletarian pubs … waiters and tips disappeared. Queues replaced good service. In a city which had fuelled itself on espresso and cream cakes for decades, these were truly revolutionary changes.”

Changes which were surely made with the good of the people in mind, surely.

Breaking news in this morning’s Herald as reported by Melissa Davey under the not-at-all emotive headline, “High-risk drinking out of control in NSW”:

A CULTURE of ”pre-loading” on alcohol before going to pubs and clubs is causing alcohol-related crime, violence, hospital admissions, assault and death.

Australia’s largest study into alcohol-related night-time crime has found people are increasingly drinking before they go out to avoid high alcohol prices in venues, prompting experts to call for reform of pricing in liquor shops.

Well, of course. Quite naturally, people increasingly find the price of drinks in pubs prohibitive and many of them are responding by getting on it – in some cases very hard – before heading out. Presumably, then, if booze was cheaper in licensed venues where there is not just security and RSA regulations and the rest but also, crucially, conviviality and sociability, drinkers would be less likely to consume to risky levels of the let’s-go-punch-someone’s-lights-out variety. Right?

Wrong:

Police and public health experts say the drinking culture is out of control and laws must be changed to stop risky drinking.

Increasing the price of alcohol in bottle shops by introducing a levy on packaged drinks would help, said Peter Miller, a researcher at Deakin University and the lead author of the study.

Back in the old hometown, alcohol is cheap and free-flowing and a six-pack can be found at any corner bodega. By the logic of Deakin University’s Peter Miller, Melissa Davey, and the rest of the public health experts quoted approvingly in the article, New York’s streets should be running red and foamy with rivers of beer and blood. They are not, for reasons soft (a far better pub-and-bar culture than Sydney) and hard (cops who are always visibly on the beat and not just trotted out en masse for the occasional “anti-social behaviour” blitz).  Yet for all their degrees and “expert” status, Australia’s would-be Cromwells have only very blunt tools in their kits: higher prices, more regulation, less freedom. Which one supposes is the point, really: no one really goes into “public health” thinking it is a good idea to let people make their own decisions, do they?

As an aside, the Prick and reporter Melissa Davey (who tweets at @MelissaLDavey) once had a brief and not-unpleasant exchange on Twitter over the issue of regulating salt content in food, an issue the respective framers of the American and Australian constitutions surely had in mind when they set down their visions for these two great nations.

Davey’s response? Block that Prick!

So much for Fairfax journalists using social media to engage with their remaining readers and perhaps pick up an alternate idea or two.

Regarding the whole 2DayFM prank-gone-wrong imbroglio, it is a bizarre world we live in where Julian Assange can be hailed as a hero for exposing military secrets and putting Western soldiers in danger but a couple of dim-bulb radio presenters are all but run out of town on a rail for calling up a hospital and finding out the last time a pregnant woman puked. Yet here we are.

That’s just a sneak preview; further thoughts on the whole sorry affair in the next issue of the Spectator Australia, available at fine newsagents across the Antipodes from next Friday.

Speaking of the Speccie, better late than never here’s a link to my argument that Australians really ought to forget mucking about with Halloween and embrace American Thanksgiving as their own.

Having recently read Jonathan Fenby’s really excellent biography of Charles De Gaulle, the Prick is now thoroughly convinced that the memory of Le Général not only stands at the heart of the French national character forms the foundation of our Anglo-Saxon stereotypes of the French as well.

Duck-infused whiskey: Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong!

De Gaulle’s vision of French national greatness, and his perhaps out-sized view of the nation’s geopolitical role as a counterbalance to American power, lives on long after his death: Remember the French refusal to allow Reagan to fly jets over metropolitan France to smack Qaddafi around in 1986, or the stand-off over the invasion of Iraq which led to that low-water mark in gastro-diplomatic history, “Freedom Fries”? These are all echoes of the legacy of a man who was in exile so difficult and temperamental that more than once Churchill and Roosevelt tried to engineer his ouster as leader of the Free French. Such was De Gaulle’s character, which was borne out by an incredible self-mastery and confidence in his own authority: capable of tenderness in private, his public face was one of a haughty aloofness. In other words, the classic French stereotype.

None of this means that De Gaulle was not a great man: he was. But his outsized presence in history means that of all the shorthands we use for various nationalities – which, if we’re honest about it, usually have a grain of truth to them – images of the French can most profoundly miss the mark. In the Prick’s 38 years, both in France and out, French people have proven to be friendly, warm, and thrilled to indulge this Australiomerican’s crummy but enthusiastic high school-level efforts to communicate in their native tonguee.

Cheese souffle: This is not health food. But do you want to live forever?

Thus it was Friday night when Mrs Prick and I joined the Vodka Mogul (or VM for short – we’ll be hearing more about her in future posts) for dinner at Claire’s Kitchen at Le Salon which opened up at the start of 2012 down at the business end of Hyde Park. Claire, or Claire de Lune, is the soubriquet for nightclub impresario turned chef Marc Kuzma, and the whole joint reflects a very French (and, it must be said, rather camp) sensibility. Downstairs sees more black and white contrasts than a bag full of brain-stimulating baby toys; upstairs is more of a comfy antiques-stuffed lounge with some very French twists.

Our trio turned up at 7 on a Friday night, which for that part of town is like turning up for the early bird special in Florida. It didn’t matter, we were welcomed with all the enthusiasm and twice the genuineness of one of those sushi bars where the entire staff screams irraishaimase! every time someone walks in the door. The vibe was a bit like visiting relatives, particularly that rare trifecta that occurs with relatives who have money whom you are glad to see and who are glad to see you.

First up: Cocktails, and these guys are clever ducks. Literally. No way could the Prick go past a canardiere, which involves a martini glass filled with cold duck-infused whiskey mixed up with Dubonnet, Grand Marnier, and Peychaud’s Bitters. I mean, we’ve all seen bacon-infused whiskey, but using duck is a stroke of genius.

Salmon terrine

To start, the three of us attacked a cheese soufflé. Light but with a bit of béchamel on top (this is not health food, but it is oh so good), the dish was not overpowering, but just right. Mrs Prick, who’s dubious about strong cheese flavours, pronounced it a winner, and that’s saying a lot.  An asked-for Hugel Pinot Blanc (rare in these parts) was unavailable so we went with a William Fèvre Premier Cru Chablis to wash things down – a consistently nice drop with a lot of complexity ranging from banana on the mid-palate to a slight and lovely tobacco funk.

Moving right along to “second starters” – the Vodka Mogul was happy to indulge the Pricks’ habit of building mini-degustations off a la carte menus – it was salmon terrines for the ladies and, pour moi, a steak tartare, done right and done big. In these days when health and healthiness is the new state religion, ordering a big hunk of raw mince with an even more raw egg yolk plonked on top feels like a minor act of freethinking rebellion. This did not disappoint, coming as it did with all the trimmings: mustard, capers, gherkins, onions.

Steak tartare: Every time you eat this, Nicola Roxon and Tanya Plibersek cry

The Vodka Mogul moved on to a John Dory with grilled veg offset by a tangy citrus salad: the Pricks didn’t get a bite, but it was pronounced good. Instead, the Pricks shared a Chateaubriand pour deux washed down with a nice Medoc (we were tempted by a very pricey off-menu Chateau Neuf-du-Pape but have, for better or worse, reached the age where the phrase “Ah, hell, it’s Christmas!” is a warning against, rather than an injunction to, spend too much money). Here we had one slight criticism: Why not bring such a beautiful piece of meat – and beautiful it was – to the table whole, rather than carving it off stage? It would have looked far more impressive that way. Nevermind: Chef Claire dropped by for a visit and a chat about food and wine, and it was smiles and tres biens, chef! all around.

Chateaubriand: Make mine meat

Not knowing whether to round out the meal with dessert or les fromages, we did both: Cheese platters for the Vodka Mogul and myself, a rhubarb crème brûlée for Mrs Prick. The cheeses could have been a bit more adventurous, but we didn’t care (the chevre was a winner). The brûlée was a winner, all creamy middle and crackling crust. The muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise didn’t hurt either.

Don’t be put off by the neighbourhood or decor, which might suggest something much more of the moment. Chef Claire is turning out classic French food, pitched a bit more haute than plain old cuisine bourgeoise but without all the fussiness of modern Michelin-starred cooking. This is a good thing. Classics – terrines, Coquilles St Jacques, and the like – are classics for a reason, and don’t need to be messed with so much as they need to be preserved and Claire’s Kitchen is doing the work of the angels here.

What more can a Prick say but “Vive la République! Vive Le Claire’s Kitchen!”

Some things never go out of style

‘Tis the season … for evergreen articles about what Australia’s inner-suburban bourgeois bohemians will supposedly be eating over the coming twelve months. This year, Fairfax’s Good Food supplement is tipping 2013 as the year of Mexican and Asian food, “artisanal shopping”, “novelty dining” (“food trucks, children’s food for grown-ups and the ‘casualisation’ of menus are the restaurant trends for 2013”), and “back to basics” with a focus on vegetables.

It’s not necessarily fair to pick on Fairfax – these stories run everywhere this time of year, and even this site has been known to opine on trends from time to time – but really. This story could have easily run in 2010. Or 2008. Or any December over the past ten years. Such articles are a rough admixture of randomly selected press releases and the dopey aspirationalism of young middle-class trendies (“Like, we should all eat more vegetables? ‘Cause meat’s like bad and stuff? But it’d be cool if we could have, like, food trucks? Like in LA?”).

“And you may find yourself in a beautiful kitchen … with artisinal bacon … same as it ever was!”

Last year Fairfax predicted that 2012 would be the year we, among other things, “connected with food communities” (whatever that means), shot our own dinner (I wish), and ate a lot of high-end bacon and other porky products (done and done!). It was also supposed to be the year fine dining went died (they always say that) and everyone did their kitchens up to look “retro” (which always sounds like a great idea until you realise you’re going to have to sell the joint some day). And of course, ate more vegetables. Even as we ate all that bacon and freshly-shot elk.

Way back in 2007 the word was that we clever foodie types would all be obsessed with probiotics, chemical-free food, fair trade, and fancy salt. Plus ca change, eh?

Honestly, Fairfax could run the same damn piece every year and no one would be the wiser.

Except, of course, the Prick.

The Prick notes Instapundit’s recent link to a story about the ultimate cheapskate DIY sous-vide setup: a beer cooler/esky (or, as our New Zealand friends hilariously call them, “chilly bins”), plastic bags, and a thermometer. The idea being for a relative pittance one can achieve the same sort of result – slow, even cooking in a water bath – as one might with more expensive equipment.

Well, yes. Up to a point, Lord Copper. Beer cooler sous-vide is a good idea but the Prick doubts that anyone who tries and likes this method won’t soon start exploring more technical, precise options. This has gateway drug written all over it: Sous-vide cooking has been making a slow march into the kitchens of serious and semi-serious home cooks for a number of years, and for good reason. Sous-vide is no dopey middle-class cooking fad of the moment that will saddle millions with the question “Do we really need to keep that Mexican tortilla press?” every time they move house. It is, at its heart, a really uncomplicated near-foolproof way to achieve consistent results time after time. Why else would restaurants have been the first to take it up?

8+ Kobe sirloins, waiting for the water to be just right …

Sous-vide is precise, done right it creates spectacular results (and does things no oven or stove-top pan can do, like cook meats evenly all the way through while intensifying flavours). From anecdotal experience its technical geekery appeals to the new generations of men in their 20s to 40s for whom spending time and money on cooking and cooking equipment has replaced messing around with tools in their shed or under the hood of their cars.

Sous-vide sirloins … like buttah, I tells ya!

Certainly that’s been the experience here at Stately Prick Manor. The early feints at sous-vide around these parts a few years ago were nearly as primitive as those described in the article above. It wasn’t long before it was time to organise something more advanced, and for a couple of hundred bucks – still less than the Sous-Vide supreme – we organised ourselves an old slow-cooker and an off-the-shelf temperature controller. This has produced some great results, such as when we did a massive rack of venison for a dinner party a couple of years ago, or the time a dear friend and extremely generous houseguest contributed a giant block of 8+ marble score Kobe beef to the larder. Sous-vide is a perfect way to cook this sort of thing, as it lets the fat slowly melt. The steaks, plus some other dishes we made (steak tartare; beef “ravioli” with thinly-shaved sirloin substituting for the pasta … you get the idea), were phenomenal. That plus a couple of bottles of Ben Glaetzer’s finest put us on the sort of protein high normally only achieved by Masai tribesmen when they take themselves off to eat meat for a week in preparation for battle.

Still, I’m seeing this set-up’s limitations and the next steps are looking clear. Though considering a Sous-Vide Supreme, I think something from the PolyScience line may be more the go. It looks more versatile and precise: the other day as an experiment I did some sous-vide eggs for the Little Pricks, and they came out well, but they suffered for the longish refraction period the current set-up suffers from when ingredients, even room-temperature ones, bring the temperature in the bowl down. Things like eggs require precision, as do quicker-cooking proteins like fish. It’s one thign if the temperature’s a bit up and down when you are doing short ribs for 72 hours, quite another for a 20-minute cook. Half of that time can’t be spent getting the water back up to temperature.

Sous-vide barramundi with all the trimmings … this way, you don’t lose any of the sweetness or the moisture

Something like the PolyScience would also better for travel. Last weekend we were up the coast and I was pressed into service to cook for a crowd, and this would have been an easy and far better alternative than trying to do a block of filet in the dodgy oven of a cabin at a “holiday park” (don’t ask).

And then of course there’s the whole question of chamber sealers … but I digress.

The moral of the story is, by all means try the beer cooler sous-vide “hack”. But just as youthful experiences with cheap Spanish cava lead to later investments in vintage French champagne, anyone who gets a decent result out of a chilly-bin and some baggies will not be satisfied but quickly want to go further. In both cases, it’s worth it.

Never eat at chain restaurants. Avoid food courts. Give new restaurants a few weeks to settle in and find their feet before trying them, much less writing about them. Sensible rules the lot of them, and each and every one of them broken by the Prick today. You should do likewise by visiting the brand-new Ippudo on Level 5 of the Sydney CBD Westfield. Because hey, who wants to colour inside the lines their whole life?

Yes, it is a chain: But Ippudo comes to us from Tokyo via a chain of outlets everywhere from downtown Manhattan to the Mandarin Oriental in Singapore, so the pedigree is good. It is also in the Westfield, but it has its own restaurant space (avoid the tables they are setting up outside; that would defeat the point). And yes, it is brand new. But these people seem to know what they are doing.

Because this is the real deal. To be honest I have never seen tonkatsu – the wonderful, traditional pork broth that accompanies, or should accompany, ramen noodles – like this outside the home islands. This broth is thick, opaque, redolent with melted cartilage and sinew, the opposite of what Westerners who put such a premium on clarity think of as great stock (and an excellent discussion of the difference between the two, including recipes, can be found here). But what flavour we gaijin cooks risk losing with our obsessive straining and sieving!

Get outta here with your Cup Noodles!

The first thing that hits you is the texture: unctuous and creamy, and then the porkiness.  You nick a bit of red miso into the soup with the end of your chopstick and catch some in the well of your spoon. Suddenly these deep, velvety notes of umami roll in, like the basso profundo in a Bach organ fugue. You don’t even notice the noodles at first, but they are there, and perfectly al dente. So is the pork: shaved thin, not like the thick grey slabs of inferior take-aways, and it melts on your tongue. Other stuff is there too. What is that? Cabbage? Black fungi? Who cares, it’s all good. Hey, is that the garlic oil coming in over the top? Oh yes it is. You realise that even though you are normally your own worst company it is actually a good thing you have been parked in a little nook with nothing to look at and where smartphone reception is at its worst. You are barely aware of the presence of those performing their own similar rituals adjacent, not quite at prayer, but not far from it either. All you really need is water to clear the palate, and happily it is regularly and unobtrusively topped up. This is transcendent stuff.

There’s more than ramen on the menu – I had the number four, but naughty Prick that I am I forgot to write down its proper name. I will try them all, as well as the various dumplings and bar snacks, though given that the noodles are so amazing it will be hard to be tempted to go off-piste. That said, Mademoiselle Mange in Sydney has had a look at some of the other offerings. Those pork buns, perhaps a bit of a nod to Momofuku’s signature dish, look great, and might be just the thing for a happy hour snack (one also wonders if the facial hair and extra kilos on many of the Asian chefs at Ippudo have also been inspired by David Chang). The cocktails look good, and there are a few sakes, though not as many as one might like or expect and all in ambitiously large formats.

The Prick has it on good authority that there are readers of this blog who are lucky enough to work in office towers whose lifts open up practically on Ippudo’s doorstep. Even for those not so fortunate, this is worth a trip. It’s so good the Prick would even queue for this one. Damn, there’s four rules broken.