Prick With A Fork

America’s culinary take-over of Australia is officially complete. It’s getting so you can’t swing a cat in any self-respecting semi-hip suburb without hitting a cowboy-themed bourbon bar. (In the old days all you’d get was reported to the RSPCA). Banks won’t give finance to a chef who doesn’t propose to put “sliders” on the menu.

Even the venerable David Jones Food Hall with its caviar and $100 Kobe sirloins has succumbed:

Anyone up for a bit of Whoopie-Do?

Not only is this American food, it’s some of the most white-bread American food you can imagine. All that’s missing is the loaves of Wonder. I know some Americans here, but the stuff we tend to pine for is all proper bagels and New York pizza and, in my case at least, fresh Hudson Valley foie gras, which the philistines at Quarantine still won’t let in. With the exception of the Whoopie-Dos, which might just be a bit “out there”, it’s not hard to imagine Mitt Romney’s pantry looking something like this. Perhaps this is an early market indicator that Americans – and America’s allies – everywhere are sick of the faux-gourmet eat-your-greens food stylings of the present First Lady?

Ten years ago America was seen in many quarters of Australia as vulgar and violent and her food was not to be rated (this from a country that smears yeast poo on toast and gives it to children, but whatever). Those who complain about Julia Gillard’s treatment by her critics should go back and see how John Howard’s relationship with George W. Bush was dealt with by the bien-pensant. An American accent at a bar could lead to some … lively … discussions, and my first media engagement in this country involved staying up past my bedtime to be harangued for an hour about Washington’s pernicious influence by Philip Adams. We haven’t crossed paths since, but I suspect as a man who’s never shied away from dessert, the man is secretly glad that pancake mix and Pop-Tarts are now so easily available in Australia.

Regular readers of this space know that there are few things that warm (and, perhaps, clog) a Prick’s heart like a really good Reuben sandwich – creditable versions of which are now happily popping up all over Sydney. Regulars also know that there are few things more annoying to a Prick than a fake Reuben. It’s why I have never bothered checking out Reuben Hills of a lunchtime: they serve something called a Reuben, but it’s not. So much so that they even caveat the menu item by calling it a “not Reuben”, presumably in a bid to head off action by the ACCC for false and deceptive practices. I reckon with American food quickly becoming to the 21^st century what blue jeans were to the 20^th, we need to get some sort of DOC-type system like the French and Italians have to prevent bastardisation of these sorts of classics.

The dislike of the fake Reuben is also why I have never had much time for chef Michael Moore’s “Reuben & Moore” outlet in the Pitt Street Westfield. It seems like a promising sort of joint, all slabs of corned beef and crusty countermen, but when you ask for a Reuben what you get is instead a bastardisation of the sandwich. But never say I am closed-minded about these things: Last week, I wandered through looking for a quick feed and was drawn to their new offering: the Reuben burger.

I’m not sure what twisted genius came up with this, but in broad terms, think of a bacon cheeseburger, but in place of bacon put a big handful of pastrami. And add some spicy mayo. And some greens. And a really big, thick bun that’s still tender, doughy, and more-or-less keeps the whole thing together, though you are forgiven for abandoning ship for a knife and fork half-way through. Given Sydney prices, the $13.50 is still kinda-sorta reasonable (the upside is you won’t want much for dinner) even if the $4.50 they hit you up for a takeaway Coke is extortionate. It’s not quote $5 for a pretzel at the Duff Brewery, but still.

I’ve had three of these babies in the last fortnight, and each one was as good as the last. I know it involves a visit to Level 5 Westfield, but it is worth the aggravation. If not the $4.50 for a Coke.

It’s getting so a man can’t go out for dinner at some hip new inner-city eatery without running into Sydney Morning Herald food critic Terry Durack. A few months ago we wandered down the road to that little gem of a restaurant, Sixpenny, and who was sitting down the back? Mister 14-out-of-20 himself. Granted, he’d already reviewed the joint, giving it a hat in the process, so his presence was pretty unobtrusive and the service and food deserving of every bit of the accolades given in the press.

“Bone marrow dumplings”

Last night, however, it happened again, and with far less happy result. It was Mrs Prick’s birthday, so a small contingent of us wandered up the decidedly non-Paris end of Crown Street, Surry Hills (Paris banlieue-end is more like it) to the new Crown Street Assembly in the spot where Tabou finally gave up the ghost. And whose faces did we spy two tables down, studying the menu under their heads of unkempt sheepdog hair? Why none other than Durack and his missus, Jill Dupleix. Not that we were the only ones to notice their presence, no sir, not by a longshot.

I once read an online chat with the editor of the Herald in which it was claimed that critics don’t get special treatment when they go out a-reviewing, to which I can only say, bollocks. Fawning would be one word for the service they received; fellating would be more accurate. The Duracks weree first given a choice table up the front then spent some time at the bar, before being ushered to the quieter upstairs dining room (would some discrete sound baffling have been too hard to engineer?).

They were in and out in a little over two hours; it took over three for the kitchen to organise our not-particularly-complex meal.

These scallops were more exciting on the ocean floor

As we left, we got a “ciao”, and fair enough; as Durack left the manager stuck to him like a terrier desperate to be taken for a walk, even to the point of stopping to ensure the critic understood that the restaurant’s feature artwork, sort of a big circuit board on a blurry photo type of affair, represented, as I overheard it, “social media and how we connect with each other”. Or maybe it was supposed to symbolise man’s inhumanity to man. Either way, ugh.

So how was the food? Well, honestly, not great: The menu sort of fish-tails off the start line before straightening up and quickly running through the gears of what looks to be very promising, very meat-based menu. Courses are out, nibbles organised under various rubrics  – “dumplings”, “pasta”, “charcuterie” (“at least they don’t insist on calling it ‘salumi’”, noted one of our number) – are in, with diners left to work things out for themselves. Chef Paul Cooper has teamed up with “restaurant consultant” (if there’s a more unpromising pairing of words in the food industry, I have yet to encounter it) Erez Gordon to capitalise on the Americanised “dude food” trend, which in this case means lobster rolls and the obligatory “slider”. Though what a mini-burger is doing in the “dumplings” category is anybody’s guess.

You don’t win friends with salad…

None of this was helped by the service or the kitchen, neither of which seemed to recover from their efforts to win their very own 14/20 and mention in the Herald, not that many people are reading the paper any more. Our waitress was well-meaning but distracted; the kitchen’s timings gave the evening the feel of an episode of Come Dine With Me where the ambitious yet clueless host forgets to chill the wine and doesn’t pre-heat the oven until it’s time to plate the mains. Bone marrow dumplings were more of a short rib ravioli, which is fine, but they had none of that salty, umami, molten more-ishness that I have heard even committed atheists ascribe to other versions of the dish as proof of a loving God who wants us to be happy. An assortment of charcuterie was a mixed bag; rabbit rillettes were gorgeous with subtle hints of juniper and aromatics, though the table was divided by a runny chicken liver parfait that tasted right but had all the wrong texture. Mrs Prick declared her lobster roll “delicious”, however.

Oink.

Entrees, comprising a sort of intermezzo between share plates and mains, were promising on the menu but failed to deliver. A plate of scallops “preserved and poached” (huh?) was flaccid with desiccated bits of dehydrated artichoke; though they spend their life sitting around on the ocean floor, scallops can be really exciting when either seared properly (Prick’s tip: score and salt for ten minutes before hitting them in a hot pan for an extra-crispy crunch) or sashimi’ed. Having run out of prawns, the kitchen also paired similarly limp scallops with pork belly in a salad that, despite being a classic flavour combination, was pronounced “weird” by some at the table and “dried out” by everyone who had a forkful. Thin discs of radish appeared variously not so much for flavour but to make the plates look “cheffy”.

Winner, winner, barra dinner!

Mrs. Prick’s Cone Bay Barramundi was perfectly cooked, but a plate of suckling pig done a number of ways was, again, dry and disappointing, not sweet, light and bright like it should be. Somewhere under a slab of meat hid a first coat of celeriac paint, I mean puree. Really, if a baby pig is going to get it in the neck, the least you can do is treat it right. Across the table, another of our number struggled with her duck (“I should not have to be sawing this!”) Desserts were, however, unreservedly great, and an extra point for the birthday girl’s candle. But having shown up at 7pm, we didn’t get to order sweets until nearly ten o’clock … at which point, on a school night, we weren’t really in the mood to wait nearly half an hour for them to hit the table.

So what to take away from all this? Well, Mrs Prick got lucky with her selections, which is good, because it was her birthday. Everyone had a good time, thanks to the company. The wine list is short but really nice, and surprisingly reasonable with little gouging on the mark-up: nothing over $100, and few bottles even approach that price point. But beyond that, as the kids say, meh. It may be that the food is normally spectacular and the service otherwise attentively divine and we were just unlucky to go on a night when the restaurant was otherwise occupied, not that it matters at this point.   Certainly some of the wobbles could be put down to teething pains. But desperation isn’t sexy, nor is being so blatantly hierarchical to customers paying full whack for a special occasion. The Pricks will be keeping an eye on the Herald; it will be interesting to see if the Duracks saw through the ruse.

UPDATE: Durack’s review is in, and it looks like we’re largely on the same page.

Been a busy few days, but keep your bookmarks set here for lots of hot Prick With a Fork action coming up soon!

In Australia? Got a TV? Tune into Sky News (ch. 601) at 1:30pm AEDT – I’ll talking politics. US politics, that is.

Don’t got a TV? Good on you for avoiding the slum of popular culture. But you should still pick up the latest edition of the Spectator Australia and read what is I think a pretty cracking rant against the “gang of schoolmarm radicals, Helen Lovejoys in Doc Martens” in charge of this country and their loud but ineffective campaign against cigarettes. As a bonus, there’s great advice on how to keep your kids from smoking. Hint: It doesn’t involve making sure they never see the Lucky Strikes logo.

Having lived in Sydney’s Inner West for over two years now, I can say that this quote from local early-middle-aged white boy “rapper” and family man Paul Knight, a.k.a. Pee Kay, captures the essence of the place better than I ever could:

“People are always like, Newtown is so cool, but nobody ever gives props to Enmore,” he said. “They’ve got cool bars but we’ve got the Cat Protection (Society) op shop.”

Pee Kay and his family will be competing in the SydneyVision song contest this evening. Commenters are invited to share their own hipster raps in comments.

There are two things you are not allowed to call Michelle Obama. One is “angry black woman”. The other is “generous host”, at least when the guests for the White House’s “kids’ state dinner” (well, lunch, actually) are concerned:

The menu:  Kale Chips from the New York winner were placed on each table ahead of the appetizer, which was Quinoa Black Bean and Corn Salad from the Arizona winner.  The entree was “Yummy Cabbage Sloppy Joes” from the Kansas winner, accompanied by Baked Zucchini Fries from the North Carolina winner. Dessert was two recipes:  A Strawberryana Smoothie from the Hawaii winner; and a “Summer Fruit Garland” from the South Dakota winner, which was chunks of fruit on a wooden skewer.

I’m sure it was lovely. Really. But even the Three Little Pricks, with their very sophisticated tastes, would have turned their noses up at this condescending nonsense. Forgetting the First Lady’s own Clintonesque fondness for junk food, this is sending all the wrong messages to kids. For one thing, where’s the beef? Or any other sort of animal protein? Yes, there was something called “Scrumptious Salmon Salad” on offer, but that sounds like the latest offering from Whiskas.

For another, “baked zucchini fries” is a tri-partite oxymoron.

But the most annoying bit is how the old lefty doctrine that the personal is political has invaded even lunch. It’s as if the whole menu were run through a propaganda office to ensure everything was not just “healthy” but also not seen to be counter-revolutionary. Quinoa good, wagyu bad perhaps? The commies of old used to talk about breaking eggs to make omelettes, even if they never delivered any. Under the new regime, omlettes are strictly verboten.

Just as with the whole kerfuffle about the wine list at grown-up state dinners, it’s all about the triumph of power and politics over taste.

It’s enough to make one miss the Kennedys.

Random thoughts on a recent lunch:

1. I’ve walked past the Sydney Mint Café probably a hundred times over the years, but I never knew it existed until a friend suggested we dine there last week. Tucked up on a balcony on the sandstone end of Macquarie Street, however, it provides an excellent people- and car-watching venue.
2. One thing one quickly realises is that Sydney drivers are either really, really good, or really, really bad. Over the course of an hour’s lunch overlooking Macquarie Street, we see three very near-misses. Of course, they were near-misses, not actual smashes, so instead of a nation of drivers who don’t signal when changing lanes or check their mirrors before entering traffic, Australians may be a nation of Sennas. Depends how you look at it.
3. The menu, and portion sizes, are a bit ladies-who-lunch, perhaps pitched at the older, reasonably well-off tourist market.
4. While there is something to be said for caution, I think doing a confit of chicken Maryland is a bit too cautious. Why not confit duck instead? Come on, chef, it’s easy.
5. Nevertheless, a filet of salmon is lovely, and the skin paper-thin and crunchy. When they know what they’re doing, they do it. A dessert of almond cake is perfectly balanced, but my companion reported that the accompanying poached apricots were diabetically sweet.
6. The other thing about Macquarie Street, besides being a minor amateur rally car circuit, is that it is a wind tunnel. Over the course of an hour the temperature dropped by ten degrees, and the sun disappeared behind clouds.
7. Walking back to the office through Hyde Park, I was of course without an umbrella, not having anticipated the rain.
8. My glumness disappeared when I noticed that the rain was also falling on a small but angry rally of Palestinians, who amidst a heavy police presence were screaming into microphones in Arabic about Yahud.
9. Yahud is apparently an Arabic term for members of the Jewish faith, and given the tone of the speakers, I don’t think they were looking to hold an interfaith jamboree any time soon.

Are the barbarians at the gate? Heavens, no. They’re already inside, sacking and looting their asses off and making a buck, or at least trying to, in the process.

I had never heard of Lauren Conrad until yesterday, when I ran across what Buzzfeed called, rightly, “the worst craft idea ever”: the Martha Stewart-wannabe published a video in which she cleverly “repurposed” books by slicing their spines off (discarding the contents, of course) and glued them onto storage boxes. A great project with too much crap to store and too little in their heads, one supposes.

I’d never heard of “eye-writing” either, until I ran across this, which I thought was a joke until I realised the woman in question, a Brooklyn hipster going by the name Polly Duff Bresnick, was entirely serious. One does not need to be a reality TV slapper, nor does one even need an exacto knife, to destroy literature, it seems:

This chapbook contains stanzas fourteen through twenty-three of the The Odyssey by Homer, mistranslated visually from the ancient Greek. Polly Duff Bresnick’s process involves looking at the foreign shapes and symbols of the Greek in search of familiar, English words. This has been termed eye-rhyming, bad lip reading, or Rorschach writing. Here, the Greek and English are placed side-by-side so that the reader can judge the visual translations.

Stanza 14 opens as one would expect, i.e., as a post-modern pile of dung that makes Jim Morrison’s poetry sound like T.S. Eliot:

The navy or, “Team Max’s Tetanus Huevos,” avoid nudes.

Totally ape water velvet mans a peak weed pow wow:

“Unite men! The menopause emory values what we pay to

look old. You yearn to talk over your involved auto’s Ayurvedic

wisdom,” Eyes yelped on: “Make pussy votes imperative views!”

“Every pog of cretin value!” oinked Nettle. Yawn packs attune me.

Vulva of hippopotamus, very omnivorous. Avenue of water

tombs. Elk pout and evaluate. Tutu me: tour a pelvis.

Some people say the bubble has burst and that liberal arts grads are doing it tough in the US. Not tough enough, if this is what they’re getting up to.

Someone, somewhere – I can’t remember whom nor can I find the quote – once said that our lives are like novels, and while we may experience them intensely in the moment, as time passes we just remember flashes of characters and events and scenes. This depressed me when I first heard it, but ultimately forgetting is as much of a survival mechanism as anything else, for individuals as much as for cultures: those who remain bogged down in the past, whether past successes or previous traumas, can never live in the long now. Like certain medical conditions, perfect memory is less fun than it’s cracked up to be.

Higashi Takoyaki: Y Umami Tambien

I was thinking about this the other day: I was walking down Pitt Street in the city and for reasons known only to my subconscious I was reminded of a story I’d been made to read by a teacher when I was no more than seven. In an early feint towards official multiculturalism, it told the story of a girl who’s invited to dinner at her Japanese friend’s house, has no idea what she’s eating but loves every bite, and has her mind both blown and broadened when she finds out it was octopus!

Well, fast forward three decades, the novel life of the Prick is no longer set in Manhattan but Sydney, and here we are with three boys aged 5, 7, and 10 fighting over the last bit of takoyaki – deep-fried octopus balls – at our new favourite neighbourhood Japanese, Higashi. Octopus? Exotic? Forget it, Dad, bring on the sea urchin and fugu!

Six of the best

Every suburb should have a restaurant like Higashi, and our only disappointment is that it took us two years to discover the place. For a while we had been going to Sushi Bar Rashai, but found it dingy – dingier than a sushi restaurant should be, though perhaps its location nestled amongst the brothels and bridal boutiques of Parramatta Road should be taken into account – to say nothing of startlingly pricey for what we got.

Higashi is another kettle of fish – or should I say slab of sashimi? – entirely. We teed off with some starters, learning quickly that the chef in that big open kitchen has a deft touch with the deep fryer. The aforementioned takoyaki, sprinkled liberally with bonito flakes, were pure umami in the best way. Fried calamari wee light, clean, and most of all, tender. Gyoza, served with a gently sweet and spicy dressing, were simple joys.

Eat your veggies!

Mrs Prick didn’t feel like sushi, so went the chicken katsu and udon noodles, which were served in a broth that was as subtle as it was multi-layered, a far cry and an unexpected but nice change from the heavy-hitting tonkotsu broths one normally encounters.

Oh, and did I mention sushi? The Little Pricks and myself ordered two of the twenty-piece planks to start and came back for more. Again, the light touch, the balance: these were not the massive nigiri one too often receives in restaurants, a product of (sorry to say) the Americanisation of sushi where everything is up-sized and each piece is a negotiation. Each morsel fit the rule that it should be small enough to be consumed easily in one bite, without a fist-sized ball of rice to get in the way. Most were raw, but many were gently torched and dressed with a bit of sauce and roe. Lovely.

Something fishy…

Almost as lovely, in fact, as the bill, which without tempting the owners into raising prices, was very affordable indeed. If they were to change anything, the Prick would like to see Higashi get a beer and wine license: the green tea was lovely, but as summer approaches a cool glass of otokoyama would be lovelier.  One hopes the authorities responsible don’t knock them back for fear of over-served patrons masu-ing one another.