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Category Archives: around town

we don’t get to ballast point park often enough; it’s just that bit further than a regular after-school jaunt. also, it’s not quite your regular park in the traditional sense of the word, with trees and grass and playground. what there is, on the site of the former caltex fuel depot, is a lot of architectural history — isolated walls from where buildings used to be; enormous tanks still standing proud like monuments to fuel storage; boundary walls made of broken-down rock and tile from the old structures, contained within a frame of thick steel wire…

i don’t know how or when it began, but those of the romantic persuasion have been attaching engraved padlocks to the metalwork. two of the ones i found yesterday must have been added only minutes (or y’know, hours) before we got there, their dates freshly etched. the one from last year has already corroded in the salty air.

we picnicked up on the hill overlooking the harbour — an apple and an orange to share, and an iced donut each from the discounted supermarket selection we had bought earlier in the day. and we explored the many complex levels and hidden pockets of grass that make up the site. the kid had dressed up as supergirl for the occasion, and valiantly defended us against the gulls.

there’s a little bunker built over the edge of the water, with three tiny portholes addressing various vistas. just shy of sunset, the sky over the bridge was the softest pink. all this i will miss, one day.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 June 2010 at 11:52 pm

permalink | filed under around town, kid, snacks

last friday, i thought i’d partake of an experiment in which i try to ascertain if it is possible to have lunch across town in the few short hours when the kid is at school. i’d been interested in the modern british food at bistrode for a while, and they launched a $30 two-course lunch deal a short time ago, and deborah‘s clever sister had recently been appointed head chef, hurrah, so that’s where we went.

walking up the leafy back avenues of surry hills reminded me how much i miss this part of sydney. back in the day, i walked these streets for treats: a greek biscuit here, a plate of 30c pastizzi there, a bit of sauce on the side, a magazine at the taylor square newsagents, a mosey in the pop shop on oxford street —

say! did you know that the pop shop, which closed down a few years ago, has reopened on crown street? it was totally my favourite shop on the oxford drag back in — sigh, the 90s — and my heart sang like the rainbow flag out front when i got off the bus last friday and saw it right there in front of me. it is a smidgen smaller than the original shop, but still chock full of tchotchkes, pop cultural references galore, bacon-flavoured mints and bandaids… i picked a constructible drinking straw set for the kid, and when i got to the counter i asked the counterman how long they’d been open there. “almost a year,” he said. “wow,” i said, “that means i haven’t been this way in at least a year.” “well,” he said, “then you should get out more.”

quite. treats were still here for the taking.

we were seated just a whisper before noon, at a table by the front windows. we were offered a smile, a bottle of water, and warm bread and butter. the restaurant is a small, welcoming space, elegant yet utilitarian, all dark wood and white tiles befitting the old butcher shop it once was. as the room filled up over the next hour, the shiny surfaces threw the sounds of lunchtime back in a most cacophonous manner. we took advantage of the early calm to consider the menu.

“i think,” said deborah, “that i need to try the brains.”

a suggestion that i approached with an open mind.

my first ever experience with a brain — we had a hemisphere each; that’s them up top — was… surprising. i was surprised by how creamy it was, and what a mild flavour it had. i was surprised too, when i cut it open, and there, almost imperceptibly white on pale grey, were the perfect petals of the cerebral structure. i wasn’t quite grossed out, but the sturdy shell of tasty crumbs and a good smear of the luscious tartare sauce certainly made it more of a treat. the furthering of my food education, courtesy of the chef.

next out was a portion of hot-smoked eel perched daintily on a bed of thick-sliced beetroot. oh it was delicious: all at once salty-fishy-sticky-smoky, perfectly balanced and well served by the barely dressed salad and the knob of sour cream.

we moved effortlessly into the set lunch proper. there were two choices of starters: a salad of roasted jerusalem artichokes and oranges, and a rabbit and pancetta terrine. so we ordered one of each to share. both were some kind of wonderful, but the terrine was perhaps more wonderful, with its tender chunks of meat interspersed with whole hazelnuts.

at this point we were four courses into our two-course lunch, and although everything was light fantastic, we were starting to feel the tinges of satiety. so we were thankful for the pause in the service before the main courses arrived. but then i checked my watch, and discovered — horrors! — that it was five minutes to two. i wondered how quickly i could eat a plate of food.

i must admit that when i read the menu, i was somewhat underwhelmed by the options for mains: sausages and mash, and fish and chips with mushy peas. good winter grub, sure, but darned our luck that day was sunny and warm. we picked one of each anyway, and were pleased to discover that the two fat sausages were herbed and meaty, and the mash was velvety.

the fish — a generous serve of three fat fingers — was firm and meaty beneath the crunchy crumb, and the chips were a large potato cut into four. i wish i could have eaten much much more of the mushy peas — their verdancy belies the amount of butter i’m sure must have been whipped into them, albeit with a light and skillful hand.

in fact, i wish i could have eaten much more of everything, but the combination of too many appetisers and rather a lot of meat and — crucially — the fact that when i next checked the time it was twenty past two (!) meant that i was suddenly saying goodbye in a great hurry, and slipping out the door, and running up to the main street to hail a cab that would take me through the city and across the bridge (anzac, not harbour) to the school gate to retrieve the kid, phew.

so, um, yeah. i guess my experiment was… not exactly a failure, but i’m kicking myself for missing out on the flourless chocolate fondant with dark chocolate sorbet (i think the other dessert option might have been gruyere and oat biscuits). well fine, i doubt i could have fit it in anyway.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 June 2010 at 12:11 am

permalink | filed under around town, lunch

that last sunday before the rains came, we slathered up with sunscreen and walked into rozelle to meet family for brunch. i’d been curious about rosebud since before it opened months and months ago — a year? two? i’d watched its evolution from big empty space to slick cafe, but somehow had not made it past admiring the french aluminium stools on the footpath, and the big red mural above the pass.

inside is a big, open, sunlit space with bare lightbulbs on languid wires strung from the ceiling. inside is a big white plate with golden slabs of french toast, hewn from a brioche loaf, all soft and moist inside its caramelised crust. there are flaked almonds, sour cherries and a generous dollop of mascarpone. there is an artful pouring of maple syrup. it may be the most delicious thing you will eat all week.

i stopped short of licking my plate clean. accompanied by a tall glass of sweet, rose-infused egyptian tea, it was all the energy i needed for an afternoon on cockatoo island.

yes, the sydney biennale is on again. two years sure went by quickly! i don’t know what it says about me, but the attraction in heading out to cockatoo is the return trip through the harbour on the vintage ferries, and the island itself with its collection of old buildings and industrial relics.

the art, i found to be a bit hit and miss — in fact, there is a whole cluster of buildings on the south west end of the island that i missed on purpose, because every room housed a video installation. much too tedious for this philistine.

the turbine hall held most of the big statement pieces, though i didn’t photograph my most favourite of the lot because i didn’t think i could do it justice. french artist kader attia filled a hall with a recreation of a shanty town — actually, the roofs of a shanty town — with corrugated iron sheets going every which way, and tv aeriels and satellite dishes protruding haphazardly. walking across it was inexplicably moving and humbling.

another of my favourites was robert macpherson’s “chitters: a wheelbarrow for richard, 156 paintings, 156 signs”, which is just what it was. a larger-than-life celebration of the vernacular of roadside signs the artist encountered around australia. yes, yes, hand-lettering — i cannot go past it.

i was impressed by the spectacle of cai guo-qiang’s “inopportune: stage one”, which filled an entire cavernous warehouse space with a series of cars, in suspended animation, exploding with light. totally like watching a john woo movie.

there was whimsy, too, amidst the aging machinery. for example, the ornate dr moreau robot sculptures by rohan wealleans. they were fenced off from the public, so i never resolved the question of whether they commanded hugs, or fear.

i remember feeling a rare squeamishness in encountering the room of dead communist leaders, life-sized and waxen, lying in state. i may have whimpered and recoiled when i realised that fidel castro was still “alive”, his chest rising and falling with each mechanical breath.

and i could go on about the life-sized model of the hubble telescope, crafted by one peter hennessey out of nothing but sheets of plywood… but i won’t. instead, i will show you this sign with its jarring punctuation.

now that raises a shudder.

but it’s true: there were lots of plugs.

used to light up artwork like this:

oh wait, like this:

hm.

let us pause, and take ourselves outside, where we can tread on the grounds that have seen the footsteps of convicts, labourers and shipbuilders over 150 years. let us picnic on bagels and hommous. let us wonder at the state-of-the-art shower block — all polished concrete and stainless steel and the most elegant of utilitarian ceramic toiletware — that now services the well-appointed campsite. let us admire the jaunty stripes of this bench that looks over the historic tennis court by the caretaker’s residence up on the hill.

ahhh… all better.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 June 2010 at 9:42 am

permalink | filed under around town, art, breakfast

i’ve been juggling projects, and the fairground music (metaphoric) in the background is at a pace that is at the same time jaunty and unsettling, rather than frantic and horrifying. i have new spectacles, with a new — lower! — prescription, which has made it such that my left eye no longer feels like it’s being wrenched out of its socket after a not unreasonable amount of time in front of the computer. the constant rain has also been a help, keeping me inside, hunched beneath my mossy green poncho, with my trusty oil heater close by. really, i can’t complain; it’s all good.

it’s been raining for just over a week now. last sunday, we stepped into the grey and wet, and onto the slick deck of a sydney ferry bound for circular quay. we were there mostly to go to the MCA zine fair, and indeed we must’ve done four or five laps of the trestle table maze, because the kid has a girl crush on sonya gee and spent much of her time at the fair nestled in sonya’s lap behind her stand of ‘kind of like a party bag for the unwell’ — “zomg you’re sick”.

in between, we delved into the MCA proper and made a half-hearted attempt at appreciating the biennale, and headed out across the road for lunch and pastry in the drizzly courtyard at la renaissance patisserie.

we started off sharing a baguette filled with poached chicken and aioli, and it was pleasant and all, but we knew we were just passing the time until dessert. unfortunately, there were no rose cream macarons on offer that day (my number one favourite, you may remember from before), so we made do with a trio of jasmin (number two favourite), passionfruit-chocolate, and cassis. the la renaissance macaron is consistently perfect: i have never encountered a brittle hollow shell, and the plump, moist biscuits hold a good amount of well-flavoured filling.

at the counter, the kid had also requested this sunny dome of a gateau — the mango-jasmin mousse cake. beneath the golden jelly skin, it was lush and light, and the two separate mousses atop a thin sponge base burst with fruitiness. not quite halfway through though, the kid stopped, quite bewildered, and whispered urgently, “there are strange beans in here.” upon investigation, i uncovered an entire nest of pinenuts hidden in the mousse, which is all fine and good if you like pinenuts… but we don’t. here’s a fun rainy day activity: pick all the covert pinenuts out of your otherwise enjoyable mango-jasmin mousse cake.

the rainy day fun continued once i got home with my bundle of swag:

two issues of vanessa berry‘s “disposable camera”, each one a rambling little freeform narrative. one has an intriguing recipe for red rice involving a whole tomato, and i will surely give it a try. the other has an amazing fold-out thought map and a reference to the one bit of “microserfs” that i remember: where one of the characters has a meltdown and locks himself in his office, and his colleagues, concerned, slip flat foods like cheese slices under the door to him. i also got some sweet mini comics from miss helen, to whom we were recently formally introduced and with whom we shared pizza and table-top drawings of kawaii cupcakes.

a couple of aisles down, i got a tiny and adorable japan guide from dudley redhead, and the heartfelt memoirs of one girl’s relationship with tamagotchis. (the girl’s name is zombetty.)

from the table of georgia perry and my candy castle, i procured “nu yoik”, a dazzling technicolor tribute to new york, in photographs and hand-drawn type. the kid picked the hilarious “kitten club”, full of cheesy cat pictures improved through the power of collage.

from the same table, i got a two-pack of mini posters: “things to know”, containing such hand-lettered gems as fetes are fun, and absolutely everyone should own a yellow + white striped beach towel, and everyone has two stomachs. one is solely for dessert. so true.

and then, from, uh, the same table, i could not go past the little compendium of illustrated junk food, nor the “save room for cake” colouring book, whose page of macaroons (sic) you would have seen beneath the macarons i told you about earlier.

i found a bunch of typewritten stories from maddy phelan, of which “ladybeard” — about her physical and psychological struggles with, and eventual embracing of, her hirsuteness — was particularly engaging; i still don’t know quite what to do with my hair. i also really liked “POTATOES” (much the same way i like potatoes), with its quirky little drawings and its potted history of… potatoes:

back in my day, everything was made out of potatoes.

we had to walk 15 miles to buy a sack of potatoes and they only cost 5c. or perhaps it was 5 shillings. i can’t remember. and i’ll have you know, our shoes were made out of potatoes.

and so on.

the bumper zine of the collection is lee tran lam‘s sold-out “speak-easy #11: the french issue”, really a magazine of interviews and recollections interspersed with photographs stuck down using ribbon and decorative masking tape. i’m still savouring my way through it, but i especially liked the list of memorable food experiences over lee tran’s four visits to france. the aisle of decorative sugar in the bon marché food hall in paris holds a special place in my heart too!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 May 2010 at 2:17 am

permalink | filed under around town, art, bookshelf, cake, kid

back in sydney, i wasted no time in recapturing a little bit of european je ne sais quoi. a week after touching down i talked singapore girl into a spot of luncheon at le grand cafe. we have figured out by now, that the best time for lunch at le grande cafe is “early”. just before noon, there are no queues, several empty tables, and a glass case full of options.

all morning, i’d been thinking of the terrine and cornichons that i’d enjoyed on a previous occasion. i considered maybe branching out and trying the duck liver parfait with brioche. however, once i discovered that the baguette on offer that day was filled with duck confit, my choice was made.

they showed up at the table a little while later, one for each of us. the sandwich had been freshly toasted, and there was a satisfying crunch to the baguette before it gave way to succulence: i was pleased to find that the bread was generously buttered, and the filling dressed with mayonnaise, and of course, to start with, there was a good amount of naturally occurring duck fat. it all made for a very moist and tasty mouthful. the slices of crisp, sweet onion provided a good foil to the fat, as did a little dimpled bottle of orangina.

we had planned ahead and picked our desserts when we ordered our sandwiches at the counter, to save us from rejoining the queue when the lunch crowd eventually swept into the cafe around 1. the attentive waitstaff brought them to the table as soon as we were done with the baguettes.

for me: the caramel tart, which turned out to be more of a very nice pastry shell filled with a sort-of creme brulee. the surface of it lacked the crackly, sugary shell of a proper creme brulee, but the mild caramel flavour and light custardy texture was pleasing all the same. the jaunty little beret of a biscuit bore a striking resemblance to a cookie from famous amos.

singapore girl had the petit pot au chocolat, which turned out to be too much chocolat for a girl who had just eaten a baguette filled with three kinds of fat. beneath the nutty crumble topping was a deep expanse of rich, dark, chocolate. at the bottom of that, was a puddle of thick caramel. perhaps she should not have also ordered a hot chocolate as a postprandial bevvie; there was still a good amount of pudding left when the waitress came to clear the table. (by contrast, the caramel tart was completely gone.)

we rolled out the door then, and had barely gone ten metres when we came across gaffa, three floors of art space / shop / cafe housed in a handsome pink heritage building. downstairs it’s little rooms of covetable and affordable contemporary jewelry and objet d’art; upstairs it’s galleries (and studios) around a central sunlit airwell.

one of the exhibitions we perused most appreciatively was food&company, an unprecious curation of food-related stuff: photographs, drawings, tiny interactive installations, and some lovely crockery. here’s the flourishing, by gemma o’brien.

ahh… so nice to see the flourishing of unstuffy, inspiring art space in the heart of this grimy city.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 May 2010 at 12:21 am

permalink | filed under around town, art, cake, lunch

for ten days, i’d had it in the back of my head that i had to make a visit to peyton and byrne. there are four locations within a small area of central london, but all of them were just a little too out of the way on any given day. so when we were given three extra days of london, i took it as a sign, and made a special stop at the kings cross tube station on day number two, so that we could walk over to the st pancras train station, and lunch at P&B.

it’s like walking back in time, entering this large room with all the cakes and slices in the window. against the gleaming white-tiled walls, the wooden shelves are filled with colourful cartons of store brand tea, and jars of jam. and chocolate bars wrapped in plain white paper, in flavours such as orange marmalade, or caramel.

there are artisanal potato crisps and fruit juices and ready-made sandwiches in the back, and hot pies and sausage rolls behind the counter; the choice was quite overwhelming. but i was mindful of my sister’s observation that we had barely eaten any british cuisine in our time in london, and ended up with a cold pork pie from the refrigerated shelves. the kid gamely picked a sausage roll as big as her head.

it was a very pleasant lunch, sitting in the wire chairs outside the shop, within the sunlit atrium of the train station. the solid puck of a pie was filled with great meaty chunks and a herby bouquet. the pickle was bright yellow and bitey, and full of still-crunchy vegetables. i wish there’d been more of it.

when we were done, we went back into the shop and stocked up on a few comestibles: chocolate bars, a jar of chocolate-pear spread, and a cupcake. (back in sydney, i would submit the receipt to the travel insurance company, to be compensated for meals during our volcano-related delay. they would graciously accept it, and categorise the expenditure as “snacks”.)

and then we went back underground, and resurfaced at covent garden, where we spent not quite four hours at the excellent transport museum. interactive displays of centuries of public transport. some quite lovely historic posters advertising tubes and trains. lovingly restored vintage buses! stuff you could sit in! they really don’t make stuff like they used to… but the life-sized model of the contemporary bus was quite the win.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 May 2010 at 11:11 am

permalink | filed under around town, kid, lunch, trip

in the days leading up to easter, the cupcake bakery made me an offer i couldn’t refuse. from their gleaming little outpost in the myer-to-QVB walkway, rows of festive cupcakes beckoned. this one, a chocolate cupcake with tiny speckled chocolate eggs nestled in an enormous swirl of pink frosting, pretty much grabbed me by the face and told me i should take it home.

so i did, and the kid enjoyed it very much. she was kind enough to allow me a small bite of the cake, as well as one of the eggs, so i can tell you that the cake was light, and not as dry as it has been on occasion, but the egg, alas, was compound. still, it was all the fuel she needed to put the finishing touches on her hat for the school easter bonnet parade to be held the following day.

and would the rains hold? would sodden papier mache crises be diverted? yes.

and now, some days later, we find ourselves at the mercy of this fickle singaporean weather. it was hovering around 30 when we arrived a couple of night ago. yesterday it was rainy, and almost refreshing. today it’s back up to 34. there is most of a big, fat rava masala dosai under my belt — it cost all of $3 — and i’m struggling against the urge to have a big, fat afternoon nap. the battle could go either way.

next stop: old blighty.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 5 April 2010 at 6:10 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, kid, lunch, trip

they’ve changed the tables (and chairs) since i was last at messina. the stools are now handsome bentwood affairs, and the tables are shiny oversized metal trays set precariously on spindly tripods (all the better, i suppose, to see how you look as you gorge yourself on the product).

the gelati, of course, is as delicious as ever. i still think about the triple chocolate extravaganza i had on my birthday last year. sigh… there are always more flavours on display than i know what to do with, and late this afternoon, barely two hours after weed strudel and exotic cream cake, i thought it might be unwise to have more than, ahem, two.

we were meeting with the artist formally known as “the little matchboxgirl” for a gelato date, and by coincidence found ourselves on the same bus hurtling out of the city towards darlinghurst. the kid rummaged in her handbag for a comic she had made specially for the occasion, and was quite matter-of-fact when sonya immediately handed her a baggie full of tiny tchotkes in exchange. a little later at the shop, maeve sidled up to me and offered, sotto voce, “i like sonya.”

the kid is mostly guided by colour when it comes to icy desserts. sometimes she will surprise me with a left-of-field request for passionfruit or green tea, or — once, confoundingly — mint-chip, but more often than not, it’s a choice between this pink one or the other. this time she picked the only pink available: raspberry.

i always want a scoop of coconut and lychee at messina, but there is always something new i want to try that won’t match, and so i have spent the last few years coconut-and-lychee-less. this time i picked burnt fig jam, walnut and mascarpone because i thought i ought to, for research, and pavlova because it looked so cheery. you may argue that those two flavours do not match, but anyway.

it wasn’t surprising that the fig, walnut and mascarpone gelato was figgy, and walnutty, and extremely rich and creamy from the mascarpone… truly it was a proper grown-up flavour with undertones of seriousness. by comparison, the pavlova gelato was light and charming, milky with highlights of tart berries and tangy passionfruit.

in a cruel twist of fate, sonya did choose the coconut-lychee, but began by eating the chocolate fondant. i’ve had that chocolate fondant gelato; it means business! it fills your mouth with a voluptuous chocolatiness, and once you eat it, you can’t really have anything else in the same sitting. and so it came to pass that the scoop of coconut-lychee sat forlorn in the paper cup as the kid and sonya merrily swapped ballet stories in the balmy breeze.

next time, coconut-lychee, i promise i’ll choose you.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 March 2010 at 9:26 pm

permalink | filed under around town, ice cream, kid

quick! before i disappear down another warren of werk…

the next day, i finally made it to black star pastry. i’d known about this pastry shop for almost 18 months, but never felt compelled to make the trek to newtown. clearly my devotion to grunge only extends as far as listening to 20-year-old pearl jam records and harboring a secret penchant for plaid flannel shirts. the main drag is such… a drag, but a little way down australia street this comforting little nook welcomed us with aircon and neat rows (and bounteous jumbles) of sweet and savoury treats.

the kid made her choice — “sausage roll!” — within seconds of eyeing the pie cabinet in the back before whisking herself back out onto the footpath. meanwhile, there i was, nose to glass case while she sat almost patiently outside pondering the philippe starck gnome stool. my gaze hovered between the black olive baguette stuffed with streaky serrano ham and parmesan, and the golden brown wheel of pastry by the cash register.

you will see that the pastry won, an intriguing wedge of organic weed strudel served with a slab of fresh ricotta and a dollop of plum relish. (i did not enquire about the provenance of the weeds, but i trust they were not related to the scrabbly shoots at our feet.) despite being served at room temperature, the thin pastry still delivered a compelling crunch. the dense and tangled filling, eaten alone, tasted dark green and pleasantly bitter. smeared with ricotta and the sticky sweet and tangy relish, it took on a whole range of complex and happy flavours and textures in my mouth.

by this stage, deborah and LJ had shown up, weak and exhausted from their encounter with the predatory car salespeople of parramatta road, and clearly in need of sustenance. they ended up with a lamb pie each, because deb felt that it might be something they wouldn’t want to share. quite. what showed up was a sturdy-looking puck of a pie, all puffy and golden, filled with tender shredded lamb and vegetables in a light sauce. no gummy meat adhesive here!

it was with regret that i scraped the last strand of bitter green weed from my plate; the silver lining was dessert! my mind was set on the strawberry, watermelon and rose cake, for i had been thinking about it since seeing it over at the unbearable lightness of being hungry many months ago. it was every bit as dreamy as i had imagined: layers of light, nutty dacquoise sandwiching cream and thin slices of fresh watermelon. the combination of creamy and crisp and juicy and sweet was most agreeable, though i failed to detect any discernible rose flavour. the kid began a stealthy attack on the top of the cake, poaching a strawberry, then a half blueberry, then a pistachio, then — brazenly — another strawberry; i had to fend her off with a fork.

she had ordered the vanilla pannacotta topped with a delicate lime jelly into which slices of papaya and slivers of fresh ginger had been set. alas, it proved too gingery for her, and she abandoned it a little way in. i wasn’t quite willing to do an outright trade, but sampled enough of it to report that it tasted fruity and fresh, with a definite bite from the ginger — a perfect treat for a hot afternoon, until the pannacotta liquified beneath the autumnal sun.

when the kid had eaten as much of my cake as i’d let her, she turned her attention to deb’s tarte tatin. again, the pastry was golden brown delicious, and the enormous chunks of soft, caramelised apple most divine.

i may have to rethink my aversion to newtown. perhaps it will not seem quite so out of the way if i make it the destination. black star is surely worth the buses and trains, the grit and the smoke, the draining crush of humanity.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 March 2010 at 2:52 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, lunch

the kid goes to ballet now, in pink: leotard, wrap skirt, socks, shoes, hair band, pink. her ballet bag, a hello kitty tote, is also pink. i am happy to play along, partly because i actually like pink, but mainly because the classes are on saturday mornings in haberfield.

it’s not too far away i suppose, only three suburbs and two buses with efficient, pain-free connections, but i’d never felt like we had to go, and consequently, we rarely did. now we’re there every weekend, taking full advantage of the cannoli, or the panini filled with all manner of cured meats. or both.

after class this past saturday we met cousin sharon for cannoli at pasticceria papa. that was the plan, anyway. the original idea had been to pop in for a quick cannoli, and then move on to a neighbouring suburb for dumplings or duck soup. but our table was right next to the hot food counter, and said counter had never appeared so bursting with bounty. heat-lamped, gold-tinted beauty.

we took our place at the end of the queue, and inched our way down the line. golly gee whizz, the italians here are that much surlier than the ones at a&p sulfaro half a block up the road. over the last few weeks we had become accustomed to the friendly and smiley — though slowish — service at sulfaro. at papa’s, we wavered a little under the glare of our stern countergirl, but we pretended as if our ordering food was not actually imposing upon her, and asked for sour cherry gelato, and ricotta cannoli, and a miniature custard tart topped with a strawberry, a wedge of kiwifruit, a slice of nectarine, a sliver of plum, and half a dewy little fig. at this point the thought of dumplings lingered only the shortest moment before jumping out the window, and we ordered a couple of slices of pizza for the table.

one, a quite straightforward prosciutto and rocket pizza, and the other, a monstrous beast covered in crumbled-up minced meat, spinach, whole button mushrooms roasted succulent, slices of hard boiled eggs — yolks strewn about with gay gold abandon, eggplant, capsicum and tomatoes…

you read all this stuff about pizza purists, and how toppings should be sparse and restrained, but this specimen of crazy ass overblowness is clearly proof of how the other end of the spectrum can be just as wonderful.

we ate the pizza, and then the sweets (except for the kid, who started off with the gelato), and then i cast my head towards the gelato counter with its tubs of milo gelato, and a mystery flavour that involved ribbons of caramel and broken-up cookies. and i thought that maybe, just maybe i could be bothered joining the queue again.

but nah, maybe next week.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 March 2010 at 12:28 am

permalink | filed under around town, lunch

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