Prick With A Fork

UPDATE: Mike Cockburn has responded in comments, and in answer to his question, yes, the Prick does support “INFINITY” as the legal limit for pedestrians. It’s only when one starts causing trouble that we have a problem, and there are already plenty of laws to handle that. Several readers have tipped this site off to the fact that Cockburn is a crank of long-standing, having pushed this campaign at least as far back as 2010 when he ran in the Victorian state election and won a grand total of 216 votes. Better luck next time, champ.

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Anyone who’s lived in Australia knows that, contrary to the country’s overseas reputation, ours is one of the most highly-regulated democracies on Earth, a place where three whole layers of government conspire to boss a scant 22 million people around and generally ensure no one is having too good a time. And if Victorian man Mike Cockburn has his way, things are about to get a whole lot worse:

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It is not surprising that someone whose CV’s bright spots include a taking a role as “communications coordinator” for an outfit called the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and penning a soft-shoe biography of Bob Brown (“Gentle Revolutionary”) might have trouble with the real world of market forces. Hence one James Norman’s rant in The Punch that the aforementioned career trajectory has not put him on the Melbourne property ladder. Bizarrely, he even argues that property ownership is bad for community, because renters generally move more often. Huh?

Anyway, so far so predictable. What is surprising, however, is that someone who’s attempted to make something of a living off his skills with the written word writes so … well, take a look at his first paragraph:

On any weekend in one of Australia’s cities, in what has become something of a ritualistic right of passage for aspiring home-owners, crowds of eagle-eyed punters gather on suburban curb sides hoping to secure themselves a slice of residential security, or at least to get a whiff of which way the fickle winds of the housing market are blowing.

If clichés were gold, mate, you’d be living in Toorak.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Tapas in Australia. Mid-noughties date night in the Eastern Suburbs. Paying $20 for a little plate with four pieces of fish and a drizzle of olive oil. Over-priced Rioja that’s been cooked in a shipping container down in Botany for far too long. Or maybe the word calls to mind the depressing little reliction of Spanish restaurants down around Liverpool Street. Either way, forget all that. Tapas – proper Spanish tapas – is once again to be found in Sydney, and in a part of town that’s been crying out for some life for years.

The place is Barrafina, down at the corner of Bent and Bligh Streets, right by the Governor Macquarie Tower and that new eco-tower everyone’s in a lather about. In other words, a location that is underserved by good restaurants and cafes, and where a critical mass of lawyers and senior public servants exists to throw around hard-earned client and taxpayer dollars. A mate who works nearby suggested we give it a go for lunch, and if I didn’t need to pick up the Little Pricks later that afternoon, I could have sat their all afternoon happily noshing and swilling Estrellas. The menu is comprehensive and delicious, and the owner told us that come happy hour, little nibbles come free with drinks. The Pricks have already put this on the list of “100 things to do before this summer does”.

The food is great too: Crispy whitebait fritters with a zingy dipping sauce. Perfectly-cooked, plump, buttery Queensland scallops with chorizo. A beef rib straight out of the Flintstones that we were told had been braising since 8am the previous morning. A lovely hunk of pork belly. And in a concession to the “dude food” trend (feminism may have pushed men into the kitchen, but we’ll be damned if we won’t have a good time with it!) deep-fried soft shell crab sliders. Happily, we noticed that even with this concession to hipness, the staff was mercifully free of the tatts, tramp stamps, and tough stickers so ubiquitous in the restaurant trade (haven’t these youngsters ever heard of gravity?). Even more happily, having stuck to the sparkling waters, we got out of there for about $50 a person. Not cheap eats, but not too dear either, and I barely needed dinner.

Regular readers of this page know the Prick is always happy to point out where a restaurant has gone astray, but not in this case. It may be that a few too many menu items, or one too few kitchen or floor staff, makes it a bit tough to get business customers in and out in less than an hour, but who cares? Cancel the afternoon’s meetings and camp out for the afternoon, or show up after work for an evening. Muy bueno indeed.

The Conversation reports:

Drinking enough water is very important during long periods of physical activity or recreational pursuits. But there are rare instances when too much fluid intake can be harmful, and even lead to death.

Earlier this week, the ABC reported on the unfortunate death of a bushwalker in Tasmania’s north western ranges. The coroner’s report said the most likely cause of death was an “exercise-related medical condition caused by drinking too much water during prolonged exertion.”

There you have it. Drinking kills. And finally, the anti-bottled water brigade have their health angle: all those fancy Evian and San Pellegrino labels are luring kids into the deadly habit of watering. Nicola Roxon, Tanya Plibersek, call your office!

This is only the latest piece of evidence that water, the warm and fuzzy name for dihydrogen monoxide, kills. Won’t somebody think of the children?

There’s a lot of talk about rights around the traps these days. Gays should have the right to marry. Americans should have the right to free health care. Islamic radicals should have the right to decide what is and isn’t funny (and if you have to ask, it isn’t). To the Prick’s way of thinking, the only true “rights” are universal ones, ones that don’t cost anyone else a cent: that’s why America’s Bill of Rights is such genius. Freedom of speech, assembly, and religion don’t need anyone else to foot the bill; the point is not that something’s being given to the people, but rather that the government is committed to staying out of the way. A right to free medical care, a job, a place to live? That’s when things get messy.

Stil, there is one “positive right”, as the political philosophers call them, which really ought to be enshrined in the Constitution of any civilised nation, if not bedded down in one or another UN convention. That is the right to a good local Italian joint. Especially when like the Pricks, one lives just over the road from Leichhardt, one of Sydney’s great Italian neighbourhoods.

Yet as so often is the case with “Little Italys” around the world, in such a place actually good Italian food is hard to come by. It is as if a local Catherine de Medici married some spiv from the city thirty years ago and took all the good Italian food to the CBD and points east. Nevertheless, the Pricks keep trying. Recently we liked Aperitivo’s starters and pizzas, but not enough in the way of pasta. So too tired to cook the other night, Mrs Prick and myself made our way over to Norton Street to check out Portofino which, by the looks of its menu and other reviews looked promising.

‘Shrooming

Given that the place was heaving with people, indeed turning would-be diners away at the door this particular Saturday, they do seem to have a commercially-winning formula, even if what is ultimately turned out is uninspiring. What you see is what you get: Pizzas done up the front, dough worked into those depressing little tins rather than slid straight onto the stone; pastas put together in the kitchen out the back. To their credit, Portofino offers a really reasonable – barely marked-up over bottle shop prices – little wine list as well as proper Italian beers including real Peroni and the Prick’s favourite, Menabrea. Sadly, against these charms and authenticities sits a flip-top bowl of sawdust cheese in the middle of the table. And on the night we visited, to what I would hope is the chef’s everlasting shame, a “special” everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink risotto. Here I cannot imagine what the chef was thinking: sautéed shallots, smoked salmon, roasted butternut squash, herbs, and avocado. WTF? Few of these things go together, fewer belong in a risotto.

Duck pasta, even if I felt like a bit of a goose

Anyway, we were already seated, and what could we do except brace ourselves every time the waitress came barrelling down the stairs behind us with all the force of Aunt Bunny on the Fourth of July? For Mrs Prick, it was a surprisingly vegetarian evening: penne ai funghi. Fine, nice, but something that anyone with a box of Barilla, a jug of cream, and some dried mushrooms could knock up in fifteen minutes (though, admittedly, this was the point of the evening: as Homer Simpson famously asked, “Can’t someone else do it?”).  For the Prick, duck ravioli, an old favourite from back when Carpaccio (later La Fontana) was still open down towards the Parramatta Road end of things. There wasn’t much filling to be found in between the thick pasta sheets – these parcels were more likely made by machine than around a table by a bunch of kerchief ‘ed nonnas out the back – swimming in a ragu that had some nice ducky chunks but which was also too sweet and shallow in flavour for my taste.

None of this disqualifies Portofino as the sort of place to take the family for pasta and pizza; think of it as fast food, still decent value for money even if it doesn’t rise to the level of great local trattoria.

So last night the latest edition of Wine Selector magazine hit the doorstep of Stately Prick Manor. On the cover: Anthony Bourdain, the self-styled hard-living, heavy-drinking, smokes-like-a-chimney bad boy of food. Like any good cook Bourdain loves his food and hates the big fast food chains. Fair enough. He’s also, over the past decade, made a small fortune by casting himself as the Christopher Hitchens of the kitchen, enjoying life to the full and skewering those who would stand in the way with an elegant flick of the pen.

Which is why it was so disappointing to read him tell Wine Selector his views on fast food.

“I don’t think this is an argument that can be won on facts. We’ve been publishing the nutritional ingredient list for years. Has it affected waistlines? Not at all…

“If people eat at those places, marginalise them, tax them. A fat tax is inevitable. Treat fast food like cigarettes. On every McDonald’s hamburger packet there should be a picture of some 700 pound guy wedged into his bathtub trying to wash himself with a sponge on the end of a stick, with some abscess where a chicken bone got stuck in a fold. That would be pretty cool.”

Ironically, or perhaps without any sense of irony, he goes on to lament that Australia’s street food culture is hampered by a culture of over-regulation.

Bourdain’s got quite a turn of phrase, and this may be nothing but a bit of “look at me!” hyperbole. It could be he’s channelled his ex-junkie’s zeal in another direction. Or it could be that as a celebrity he’s read the wind and figures that if you can’t beat the statists, join them. In any case, it’s disappointing to see that even food heroes can have feet of clay.

Or perhaps in this case, pigeons baked in clay.

So there’s been a bit of talk on the Twitters about Sydney’s current crop of restaurant critics, their profile, and whether or not it is possible to, as a well-known identity, deliver a reliable review of a restaurant after just one visit only a few weeks after it has opened its doors. Certainly the present situation is a far cry from the old days. Fifty years ago in New York, Craig Claiborne set the gold standard for broadsheet restaurant criticism, a bar which in this age of celebrity critics  has long since been discarded – especially in Sydney:

Most influential of all were the rules Claiborne set for himself, which became the industry ideal. He was independent of advertising, tried to dine anonymously, and before passing judgment would eat at least two meals (later three) that were paid for by The Times, not the restaurants. Claiborne’s guidelines sent a message that he wasn’t an overprivileged and overfed man about town. He was a critic with a job to do.

There’s something to be said about these rules even for humble food bloggers like the Prick. Certainly there are some bloggers out there who are happy to take freebies, which is fine so long as they are disclosed, but I have yet to run across a post that’s said anything remotely critical of a meal arranged by some eager PR chick. And having in former lives written slabs of advertorial copy to make ends meet, I can tell you it should pay more than a free steak. As when critics life the veil, freebies change the three-way tension between chef, author, and reader and distorts the whole equation in favour of first two against the last.

I also like Claiborne’s idea that a restaurant should be visited more than once. An occupational (avocational?) hazard of food blogging is a prejudice in favour of the new against old loves; it cuts against becoming a regular anywhere. Which brings us to Nino Zocali’s La Rosa Bar & Pizza. Situated at the eastern end of the top floor of the Strand Arcade, it’s the southern Italian yin to the northern yang of its older, more formal sister restaurant Pendolino which lives at the western end of the building.

Anyway, enough geography. In the spirit of multiple visits, consider this a first look, preliminary review in anticipation of a bigger meal down the track. La Rosa’s been on the to-try list since Mrs Prick went there for lunch with her team from work and came back raving about the lasagne and the mushroom pizza, which is apparently so much more than it sounds like, involving as it does porcini puree, Portobello mushrooms, and – wait for it – béchamel sauce. Having a bit of an opportunity to go out with colleagues today, I snapped it up, and was not disappointed: like Pendolino, it’s dark, but more casual, almost Moorish, in the pre-1492 Iberian, rather than gimme-gimme, sense of the homonym. Slightly dissonant were the kitschy tunes (lots of Dino Martino, tarantella, and Mambo Italiano-type stuff; I thought Mamma Corleone was going to come out of the woodwork and sing) and the luxurious hit of truffle that ran up my sinuses. Someone had clearly ordered the cavolfiore al tartufo.

No pizza for the Prick, though. Instead, on what might be the last blustery day of spring for the year, braised pig’s trotter: cooked, shredded, and wrapped around pine nuts and raisins. A bit of tomato sugo, some pureed cannellini beans … bliss.

Of course, I wanted to order everything on the menu, and look forward to going with a bit of a group next time to try a lot more. After which, of course, a full report. But this first look was very promising indeed.

In the meantime, stay tuned. Tomorrow on Prick With a Fork: The worst risotto in the world!

Regular readers of this site will recall Mr and Mrs Prick’s less-than-satisfactory meal at Crown Street Assembly, made all the more shambolic by the very large presence of Sydney Morning Herald restaurant critic Terry Durack.

Durack’s review of the evening hit newsstands this morning, and despite the staff and managers’ over-the-top fawning, it seems he and his missus didn’t have much of a better time of it. End result: 13/20, which sounds about right. And while both the Duracks and the Pricks didn’t like the noise, I’m afraid we may have half-caused Durack’s discomfort:

On the ground floor, designer Debbie Grant* has installed an over-sized bar lined with streamlined stools, leaving only enough room for half-a-dozen tables. Lighting is dim and noise levels are high. Seriously high. When a rowdy, happy-birthday table for eight gets into full swing, we have to decamp, first to stools at the bar, then upstairs to the large dining room.

Yeah, that was us. Sorry, mate. Still though, it’s all about the food, right? While we both liked the wine list, we were also both iffy about the suckling pig, about which he notes, “a lot of work has gone into it but that’s not really the point of eating, is it?” A lot of work – too much – also was required to eat it, and other dishes, we found. His conclusion that “there are some good ideas – possibly too many – and a raft of good intentions but it all feels a bit of a muddle” is a fair summation of the Crown Street Assembly experience.

Durack, to his credit, also calls the restaurant out for sucking up:

A dish of rich, fried potato gnocchi tossed with broccoli, spinach and quite strong blue cheese ($18) arrives, unsolicited, proving yet again that restaurants should not send out comped dishes to restaurant critics. It upsets the balance, throws out the timing and, instead of being a kindness, is just a little insulting. I’m not that easy.

This sort of thing must happen all the time, which is all the more reason for major broadsheet critics to be anonymous. But hey, that’s just one Pricks’ opinion. And Terry, when the bottom finally falls out at Fairfax, you’re always welcome here as a guest blogger.

* UPDATE: In comments, Debbie Grant says Durack’s got his facts wrong.

…don’t make Prick With a Fork’s veal chop and langoustine surf-and-turf:

This morning was one of those glorious early-spring mornings in Sydney when the air is clean and just a little crisp and the entire day sits brightly before you ready for the taking. Mrs Prick and I, being sans Little Pricks this weekend, slept in, pottered about, read papers, and contemplated our options. As we saw it there were only two real choices: On the one hand we could scoot around the neighbourhood to a couple of open houses to check out properties we’d lately been perving on and then go have a lovely lunch someplace near water.

Or we could head into the city with signs threating to “behead those who insult the prophet”, get tear-gassed by the cops, and try to storm the American Consulate.

It was a close run thing, but we went with Option A. Today’s riot was a family affair, and it would not have felt right not bringing the kids (note the proud mother taking a happy-snap, presumably to be shared on some sharia-compliant social media).  Which meant heading east to check out The Sailor’s Club, Greg Doyle’s new venture on the site of the old Pier on – or rather, over – Rose Bay, which he ran for 21 years.

Trout on toast on … melamine.

Now I never made it to the old Pier, which is a shame, though I have the cookbook which, like so many other volumes put out by now-deceased restaurants sit on the shelves like travel guides to no longer extant cities long since over-run by changing tastes and fortunes. The new Pier – er, Sailor’s Club – is a far more casual affair. The new fit-out is bright, with lots of whites and yellows, even on the paper (!) napkins. Some, though not all – and there’ll be more to say about this later – dishes come served on speckled melamine picnic plates. It’s all-day dining, and there’s a bit of a lounge that serves snacks into the night as well, though it is disappointing that in the main room one can’t order, say, the beef tartare or Rangers Valley meat balls. Nothing on the menu comes in over $30. Economically, this sounds smart: Get as many hours of the day as possible out of the place, cut prices, and make it up in volume.

Crudo … but not so crude it didn’t get a real plate

But does it make sense? Yes, up to a point. The place was well full when we showed up, loaded with the full complement of Eastern Suburbs archetypes, from the long table of gazelle-like girls celebrating a birthday to older gents with their second wives and babies, fellows who no matter how much money they have never shake that expression that seems to say, “No way prams were this complicated and expensive first time around …”. At one point I overheard the fifty-something year old woman at the next table say something about “having to have lunch with my stockbroker”. Who has stockbrokers any more?

Anyway, it being a bright Saturday afternoon we teed off with Sailors’ Club’s  own “Cucumber Mary”, billed on the menu as a concoction of “Organic Square One Cucumber, roasted mary mix, crispy tomato waffles”, a great take on the traditional drink made with, as horrifyingly wanky as it sounds, organic cucumber vodka. The cucumber was a great balance with the bartender’s spice, coming in over the top to rescue the palate in the same way a hit of raita saves the day after a hot vindaloo. Not sure about the “crispy tomato waffles”, though; more like a bit of limp tomato peel.

The menu said flathead, but the colour says “orange roughy”

We started with a couple of raw fish dishes, and here we saw the ghosts of the old Pier really come through. A sugar-cured ocean trout for Mrs Prick with dill and brioche could have been plucked from the old cookbook, as could have my crudo of John Dory – which turned out to be snapper as they’d run out of Dory – with char-grilled chilis and blood orange (page 97’s “carpaccio of John Dory with ruby grapefruit, baby fennel and extra virgin olive oil may or may not have been the inspiration for this dish). Both were bright and fresh, exactly what they should have been, though despite otherwise similar presentations, the crudo came on a proper plate while the ocean trout was on melamine. Odd.

Mains: Mrs Prick had fish and chips, again on melamine, while I had the “brick chicken”, again served on a proper plate. (“Do they not trust me with grown-up plates?”, wondered Mrs Prick). Fish and chips are hard to screw up in a proper kitchen, but there was something not quite right. The batter was a lurid orange, and the dish itself was a bit limp and flaccid. The chicken was, well, as the saying goes, “winner, winner, chicken dinner!”.  Half a bird deboned, given a light treatment with salt, oil, and herbs, and cooked pressed under a brick. Simply presented, with perhaps a bit too much of a final splash of EVOO, this tasted like chicken, and in the best way: robust and rich, and I’d be interested to know where they get their chooks.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

So what’s the verdict? Well, on the face of it, pretty good. If we lived in parts east we’d be regulars, as so much of the crowd clearly already is, despite its only having been open a month or two. But the kitchen feels like it’s driving a sports car across the ANZAC Bridge with only a couple of points left on its license: it wants to let loose and go hard, but at the same time has to keep it to 60km/h. Granted this is based on one visit and a few dishes, but there seems an internal contradiction whereby casual neighbourhood grub shares a menu (though not a crockery cabinet) with fancier stuff. The fancier stuff wants to win the race, but the demands of turnover handicap this impulse. With a little fine-tuning and perhaps a more adult dinner menu, neither side would have to lose.