Text 9012, 80 rader
Skriven 2006-12-18 15:37:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: Kevin's choice 700
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Glen wanted to take us to Pondok Bali, an Indonesian
restaurant that he has bragged about on occasion. We
arranged to meet Kevin and Greg there, so after a quick
run through Rundle Mall (where I bought some cough stuff,
long needed), we trotted over there only to find that
the place is closed Monday and Tuesday for lunch.

So the five of us wandered down - rejecting my suggestion
of a pub called the General Something Hotel, which was
advertising pitchers for $8 - and ended up at a trendy
place (Kevin's choice I think) called Citrus Wine Bar
and Bistro, which looked way too precious, but we needed
to get something to eat. Looked at the menu, and, well,
we didn't need to eat that much - so everyone just had
appetizers, except for me.

Bread was nice little rolls with tubs of extremely hard
butter; this came at an extra charge.

Greg's pork sausages over corn cakes were unexceptionable,
what can you do to sausages and corn cakes?, but a little
precious, the dish rather too subtle given how hearty such
a meal sounds;

duck tortellini looked like a puny portion, but afterwards
Kevin opined that it had been enough food.

Glen ordered a terrine of ossobuco, which was a little
blob bearing little resemblance to the original meat; it
came with a chutney on the side that would have multiplied
the flavor, only Glen didn't like it. He was also mightily
disappointed that there was no garnish of marrow; I figured
that the staff got to eat it in the kitchen.

Substantial dishes were better - Carol had basil gnocchi,
quite light and good, with braised beef (a pretty standard
stufato, but that is almost by definition good) and some
decent Parmesan; my dish, labeled coq au vin, was quite
fine, although made with half a very small chicken, almost
a poussin, and almost certainly with a Shiraz-Cabernet.

We had the minty and delicious Saltram Mamre Brook Cabernet
04, with good oakiness and currants on the palate and a nice
smooth finish. Too costly here - enormous markups - for a
second bottle, though.

After which we walked back downtown to one of Kevin's
haunts, the Crown and Anchor, to fill the interstices in
our bellies and taste buds.

The good thing about this place is that it sells wine
for consumption on premises at $2 to 5 above retail.

The bad thing is that there's no employee who knows how to
maintain the taps. Kevin says that the guy who used to do
this left a week or two ago, having had an altercation with
the new tack-up-its-butt ownership.

I had a West End bitter, a pleasant brew of no character
whatsoever; the rest had Carlton products: a pale ale that
was palatable but very turbid; a sparkling ale that wasn't
so sparkling, being almost as turbid as the other and a bit
heavy in taste; and a molassesy pleasant dark that reminded
me a bit of the Prior that used to be brewed in Philadelphia
I think. Kevin had a pint of jug wine, of which he murders
the taste by putting it over ice. Afterward, Kevin bought an
absinthe for people to try: there was this curious ritual
involving fire and cracking glasses; the result was neither
very intoxicating nor very interesting. Carol thought it
tasted like cough formula. I was unimpressed by the stuff,
having experienced the real pearlescent thing in both legal
Pernod Fils 1920s and illegal unknown still 1990s versions.

Back home for assorted samplings, a trip to Glen's beloved
Lucky Asian market, a dinner of fu ru rou and stir-fried
kangkong with fish sauce, and so on to alcohol and bed.

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