gastronomy domine

We seem to be on a roll after last Monday’s grande bouffe ( Apparently there is a restautant in Sydney called ‘La Grand Bouffe’ if you can believe that: obviously not going for the film buff market) and also more inclined to eat out after a week back at work and it being steamy and wilting.

Frannie has also branched out gastronomically and conquered the chopstick last week at our favourite Japanese (she loves gyoza), so we decided to explore the delights of Preston, which we have somewhat spurned before, and looked in the window of various Chinese and Vietnamese etablissements: until Frannie asked what those things were, the bright red things in the tray: on hearing that they were ducks heads she rather lost heart….

Luckily we found a miraculous little Indian cafe run by a lovely young woman, with her mum in the kitchen lately refreshed after a holiday back to south India: they had a few extra non-curry things on the menu and Frannie had Portuguese chicken which she demolished; both her palate and her cutlery work have come a long way recently. We had the most delicious spinach dahl , really thin and creamy, and the best chicken curry ever. So we are keeping it to ourselves……. we are starting to look kindly on Preston as an alternative domicile: it has the best library, and a fantastic market.

And as we found out last night,after seeing the quirky sweet but utterly forgettable Juno, which did however have the ultimate cinema uberdad, and having a lovely pint of Three Ravens Blonde (brewed not half a mile hence) at the Wesley Anne, it has Pho Hung ( and hey, there’s one in Toronto!), a vietnamese restaurant which was completely packed with the entire Preston demographic from Vietnamese to bogan to punky to us, and we did indeed have Pho: Kate’s had all sorts of gooly bits (lung?liver?) in it, which she gamely ate except for the squares of chicken blood pudding or whatever: I’m not so adventurous; mine had grilled chicken in it. But it’s the plateful of chili, bean shoots and Vietnamese basil that makes it, as well as the never ending thermos of tea….afterwards we promenaded a little and walked past the hall where the Darebin City Brass Band were practising: gorgeous MJQ type jazz noises came out: I skipped around in delight, and we also spotted the New Europe Restaurant and Balkan Grill, with a wistfully defunctish looking roof terrace – we’re going back to check it out. Bouzouki thundered from the Greek cake shop, and the melange made me think of this, just in case you haven’t seen it:

then we walked past a house whose entire front garden was a sea of pumpkin and zucchini plants, and some people plaintively asked if we knew where they could get some food ‘ not Chinese or anything,just good old steak and chips , you know’ but of course there wasn’t….not people from the house starving while waiting for their produce to ripen, in case you were wondering, but passers by….

Of course I wrote the whole post so that I could put this on: hang in there for the interview: Syd is polite, together ,and posh!

And then there’s Robert Robinson:

I grew up watching and listening to untold hours of this kind of thing, which explains a lot: in fact I was founding member of the Wimbledon College Call My Bluff Society………Kate was more of a My Word fan; but we both loved :

~ by bettyslocombe on January 28, 2008.