Beef and Barley, Kingston Foreshore, January, 2017

The Kingston Foreshore now has a range of restaurants available.  It can be a pleasant place to dine but parking can be a little difficult.

iPho, Garema Place, Civic, November, 2016

This restaurant is situated in Garema Place, Civic.  It serves Vietnamese food, primarily Pho.  All the seating is outside but is covered.  For budget eaters, iPho is on the higher side of the brief as the food costs between $10.00 to $15.00

Cobblestone Lane, Bathurst. September, 2016

Jamie

This is another unplanned review.  Possibly more unplanned reviews should be included but then more consistent timing etc. would also be nice.

For a place the size of Bathurst, it saddens me to report that many of the places we’ve tried have been okay or immediately delegated to the ‘do not return’ category.

We went to Cobblestone Lane not long after it first opened.  At the time the food was okay but the service was off-putting, in that we did not feel welcome.

Visiting Bathurst, I decided to try it again, especially as the lunch was $40.00 for two courses and $45.00 for three courses.

Onion Bread, Beef with Broccoli and Maggie’s Special Recipe No. 3 Lemon Chicken Fillet from “New Idea’s: Let’s Cook Chinese.” by Maggie Han Hawthorne

In the past I have tried to cook Chinese recipes and failed each time.  It seemed that the skill set and abilities to cook this type of cuisine was beyond my ability.  (Yes, I know there are many different types including Hunan, Cantonese, Sichuan etc.  I don’t wish to detail all the failures.) Any time an attempt was made, the food was edible but failed to taste anything like the food I enjoyed from skilled Chinese cooks.  Eventually I gave up.

Despite this there are at least 5 ‘Chinese’ cook books on the shelf.  This one was chosen randomly and any attempt to replace this book and choose another led to a reminder that we are reviewing all the cook books.  No one stepped forward to volunteer for this cooking adventure so, after lots of sighing and threats of edible but bad food, the agreement was made.

Como Restaurant, Blaxland. July, 2016.

In our last review we stated we would review kebab restaurants but then tragedy struck and we went to a fantastic restaurant at Blaxland in the Blue Mountains with some family members.

Lindsay took pictures in order to remember the meal and Alexi took pictures to show off the food to friends.  We did not plan to write a blog about this restaurant but the food was so good we decided to share the pictures with the world.

Como has two menus and we chose the one which had three snacks, two entrees, two mains and two desserts, plus petit fours.  ($130.00 pp)

If you plan to go to Como, make certain you have ample time to enjoy the food.

When we arrived we were warmly greeted and quickly seated.  Como is situated at Blaxland shops and has a comfortable ambience. The menu was explained and it took whole seconds for all of us to agree to the same menu.  With one of us abstaining from fish/seafood we were assured that this could be easily accommodated.

Bad Temper Curry

This is a bit different from our usual entries.  This recipe is based on an actual recipe created when it was impossible to find a recipe that provided a slow cooked beef curry without coriander, yogurt and most important store-bought curry sauce or paste.  And, yes, one of us was in a bad temper when they prepared this curry.

Important Preparation

To begin this meal you must wake up in a reasonable mood.  This is important.  It helps if the last 6 months have been extremely stressful and you have decided to put this behind you and have a pleasant, productive day.

The next really important thing is to go to some appliance/piece of technology you use regularly, like a computer, car, drill or microwave.  When you attempt to use it, it must fail for some stupid reason.  Please note: it cannot be broken but will require at least half an hour to an hours effort to restore it to working order and it should have done the same thing in the last week.

To complete the setup you now need to go shopping for fruit and vegetables on a busy Saturday morning at a popular place where most people own 4 wheel drives and know the right fashion items to wear to this exclusive event.  You are dressed to keep warm from the biting wind.  Make certain while there to let people push in front of you and trap you near the broccoli while they chatter about sport or a party they attended.  Do not try to ask them to move.  You are wearing the wrong clothes.  You will be ignored.

On arriving home unpack and wrestle with the limited space in the vegetable bin in the fridge while others stand around watching.  Sigh and leave some of the vegetables in the other part of the already crowded fridge.  Place ‘Cleaning the fridge’ on your mental list of things to do.  Do not try to locate the top of the mental list.  Place make a written list of the mental list on the mental list.  That will solve everything (in an alternate universe perhaps).