On Saturday, after the work Christmas party, I journeyed into South Brisbane in search of food.

I’d eaten an ok lunch at the golf club that the party was at. Not the greatest, and not go back for more worthy, but it was good.

I originally wanted to go to Wandering Cooks, but when I got there it wasn’t quite ready. I went and got some gelati from Messina.

I should probably point out, while I prefer La Marcellaria for gelato, Messina isn’t too bad, and I do like the experimental flavours.

After this I wandered back to Wandering Cooks. It was about ten minutes before the kitchens started up and the place was filling up fast. Any table that wasn’t occupied was booked. I checked google maps and saw that Gauge was open in ten minutes too.

I have wanted to try Gauge for a while. Mainly for breakfast, but it is usually packed. Now I know why.

After waiting for 10 minutes, the door opened and I strolled in.

“Do you need a booking to eat here?” I asked. No. You do not.

I sat at the counter looking at the window, at the Museum across the road. Then the menu was placed in front of me.

If it hadn’t have been for the gelati from earlier, I may have ordered more food than I did. As it is, I only ordered five things.

They were all glorious. Now let’s see how good my memory is.

Let’s start with the Nori tart, almond, spanner crab and apple salad. This was my favourite of the dishes. Including the kangaroo tartare to come. The flavour was incredible and the umami from the nori and spanner crab, mixed beautifully with the tartness of the apple salad. It was tiny but full of flavour. Ok it was tart sized, I am not good with size when it comes to cakes and things like that. Tiny means it fits on a saucer, and now that I think about it, it was the same size as a lot of tarts I have eaten, but I usually have more than one.

Next was the Blood taco, with mushroom and bone marrow duxelles. I just had to quickly find out what duxelles were, they’re finally chopped mushrooms(or mushroom parts) sauteed in butter with a few herbs, and in this case bone marrow, and reduced to a paste. I like bone marrow and on its own, to me anyway, it has a really nice flavour. As I discovered, like the time I had bone marrow ice cream, all it takes is one slightly stronger flavour and you essentially just have meat cream (minds out of the gutter people). So while this was nice, blood and mushroom is a great combination, there wasn’t a lot of bone marrow flavour to it. However, like the ice cream, you could definitely feel it in the texture.

Lost any one yet?

No?

Cool.

Next was Kangaroo tartare. The ingredients on the menu online were different to the one I had, but the key part was the same. Add another thing to the list of stuff I have eaten in tartare form. This had mackerel XO, and roe. It was really nice, but the kangaroo was mild as far as kangaroo goes. I think you would only realise this if you have eaten kangaroo before. I love kangaroo, especially the gamy quality. This was not as gamy as most, and would probably be a good introduction to kangaroo, and tartare.

Ok, after this I had a two cheese platter that had a Charltons Blue (buffalo milk) and a Tintenbar Brie (cow milk). This had brined onions and candied hibiscus with it, and some sort of sesame cracker that I think they made there. Brie is milder than blue, as almost everyone is away. But this one was really mild, and buttery. It was really pleasant, but I prerferred the blue. The blue mixed with the candied hibiscuc was beautiful. My mouth sang, and I think it kicked the nori tart flavour out.

The final thing I ate was garlic bread with brown butter and burnt vanilla. The garlic bread was black (intentionally, not burnt) and had a mild garlic flavour that gently carried the brown butter and burnt vanilla flavours. This dish was far more delicate than I was expecting. It was a really lovely way to finish off the meal. At first I thought it was going to be a lot more bready than it was, it was more like a cake but not quite. But after a couple of bites I was hooked.

Speaking of hooked, I have written myself hungry. Off to find a snack.

Eat well all.

Ok, bear with me on this one…

Also, no I wasn’t it hospital.

I was at a high tea though. While the company was great, the food was ok. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t worth raving about either. The reason for this, it was a high tea on a river boat. I think there would have been about one hundred towers of food, with three tiers each. All of them had the same dishes.

The same sandwiches. The same sausage rolls. The same scones.

This is what made me think of hospital food.

In case you hadn’t guessed already, this one isn’t about the high tea itself. I have had better and none of the food was particularly worth raving about.

Instead, this is about the feeding of a lot of people at once, with limited options.

The reason I have compared this to hospital food, as opposed to a food festival or eat street or even eight street, is that these were all prepared before hand and then laid out at the start of the cruise. Hospital meals are prepared in advance and wheeled out to hundreds of patients. Public hospital meals, I have never been to a private hospital and can’t comment on the food there. Also in both situations, you can’t just up and opt for something else. While technically you can in hospital, most people don’t.

In both situations, the food tastes like it is designed to be the least offensive. In a hospital, you can easily add salt or pepper, but you can’t take it away.  In the high tea, most of the food was a bit bland, some of it suffered from being eaten a while after it was cooked. There was no salt and pepper to add, but I doubt that would have improved anything. Like I said though, it wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t great. I have had some hospital meals in the same boat. In both situations, most of the people were doing what they could with what they had. You couldn’t complain that the guy next to you got anything any different to the other guy, but you could wonder at the other guy enjoying the boring meal as much as they are. I have received that look of curiosity, but never given it.

Ok, it occurs to me that there was one surprisingly good thing in the High Tea. The scone. How ever you want to pronounce it, this was actually pretty good. The outside was hard, and lead me to believe that the inside was going to be similar to the rock cakes my mum made once. You could have broken a window with them. It wasn’t, it was actually pretty light and fluffy. The exterior was also a surprise, pleasantly crunchy as opposed to plate smashingly hard. With the jam and cream on top they were really good.

To balance this out…

This one time in hospital I picked the seafood mornay off the menu. I loved seafood mornay, especially the way Aunty Margie made it. It was creamy and thick and coated everything in a beautiful, simple white sauce. The hospital one was a cube. A cube of mornay. It remained a cube when I poked it with a fork. It remained upright as I removed chunks of it to eat it (I never said I didn’t eat, and I doubt anyone reading this is surprised by that revelation). I am pretty sure it moved at one point, but I was in hospital for asthma so that could have been the lack of oxygen.

Anyway, the point of this ramble is to say thank you for trying. To all the people who make a hundred High Teas for a three our trip, to the handful of people trying to feed hundreds of people on shrinking budgets (I have not researched this, I am not sure if this is true…but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is). Thank you to all of you.

Thanks to Aunty Margie. Who made me a lot of food I loved.

And Mum who made my favourite biscuits.

And tomorrow is my Birthday.

Good night.

Last Tuesday i went to Malaysia for a few days. Predominantly to eat, but also to have a look around. Aside from the tour on the first day I was there, most of the exploring I did was in the biggest mall I have ever been in, and it wasn’t even the biggest there. I did wind up eating a little bit of street food, but for the most part I ate food from stalls in the malls, or from the few food courts I went to. There is a lot of Malaysia I didn’t see, hell there is a lot of Kuala Lumpur I didn’t see. That being said, I wasn’t bored. There is a lot to do, even in a couple of built up blocks.

But you’re here for the food.

On the first night I got in, I was tired and decided to eat dinner at the hotel. The menu was split into a few different sections, including Malaysian, Asian and Western. On the first night I had Hivana and Pad Kway Teow from the restaurant. It  was really good. Hivana is marinated raw fish, and a few other things in a pile. The Pad Kway Teow was also pretty good.

The next morning I had my first free breakfast buffet in the hotel. This was pretty awesome. I had this everyday, but I am only going to mention it here. It was the most diverse buffet I have ever seen. It had food to cater to almost everyone, and a fleet of fantastic staff who would replace things as soon as they required it. Every morning I had congee, like porridge except occasionally more savoury, with shallots, soy sauce, and a few other bits and pieces. This was followed by a plateful of the plethora of other food. Puffs, dahl curry, rendang, samosas, beef sausages, turkey strips, hokkien chicken noodles, chocolate croissants, doughnuts, the list was pretty big. I finished this off with fruit, mostly melons but occasionally pawpaws and a few other things.

After breakfast on the first day was the food tour. I found it very quickly i love tours with a tour guide, especially this sort. Geoff, the tour guide, led us through Little India to start with. The other two people on the tour, Vicky and Lana, took more photos than I did as we walked. And it was about half an hour before our first food stop. This was at a small tent with a tiny, mobile kitchen in it, that Geoff told us was their version of a hipster cafe. We had tea in a bag, which was really good, and nasi lemak. Much to Geoff’s surprise I have eaten this before (there is a Malaysian restaurant in Buranda, that does genuinely do authentic Malaysian food, it’s really good). We had another drink, before continuing our trek through Little India, and more lessons on the history of Little India. We walked through a walkway full of flowers, garlands being made for all sorts of purposes, before being led to a fruit shop and told all about the different types of things used in traditional cooking, I had never seen pandan leaves before. Then we wound up at a small, open kitchen that makes street food for tea time, mid afternoon. As we were part of a tour we got to eat some when we were there. It was pretty good, and fantastic to have just cooked. This was followed by a visit to a kitchen in a place where all of the vendors were once using street carts, but had to move somewhere (there was a reason for this but I have forgotten). As Geoff had known this guy  before hand, he had become part of the tour. The food here was some chicken cooked in a special sauce, and then seven different curries poured over some rice. Most people only got two or three, but as we were on the tour we got all seven. from there we wandered through more of Little India, to an Ashram, and then from the serenity of the outside of the Ashram we went to the train station, to head to China town. We wandered off the ordinary path briefly and found a lane that is slowly being turned into a collection of interesting food places. The one that we went to was a little ice cream place that had two flavours. Pandan ice cream and chocolate ice cream. We all got pandan. It was fantastic. After spending some time in the alley looking at the art, which was also incredible, we wandered through the china town markets, past the watch sellers, and all of the other stalls, turning down a dark alley we wound up at a noodle place, where they made the noodles in the building next door. They looked like ramen noodles but tasted incredible. This was where we parted ways and I went back to my hotel.

There was a lot more food, but none of it was anything I hadn’t eaten before. Some of it was just a better version, such as the roti and the beef rendang, some of it was an interesting version, such as the gelati I had (I am not sure how they managed it, but the plaza I got it from was this fantastically dodgy place and the gelati tasted like no one gave a shit when they made it).

I also did manage to have some durian pancakes before I left. I had them after I checked out of the hotel. I hunted down the vending machine cafe and got a can of coffee and sat down to eat my durian pancakes. The pancakes looked like they were past their used by date, the good thing about durian is that this does not alter the flavour. Maybe I should be careful, I thought as I ate the first one. Maybe I should only eat two, as I finished off the fourth one of six. They went. And then I went to Torikin for some yaki tori for some hatsu before I left.

My favourite part of the whole trip though was when I was five Malaysian ringgits short of a meal, and their card machine wasn’t working. I asked could I race to the hotel and get it and the guy very pleasantly said yes. I raced back to my room, got five ringgits and then raced back down to give him the money. I don’t think he expected to see me again and the look of surprise on his face was great. He waved to me every time he saw me after that.

I would also like to say that the cleaning lady in the hotel was amazing. Every time I saw here, she asked how I was doing and if I’d called home and was everything ok there. We would chat for a minute or two every time we saw each other. Not about anything specific, she was just making sure I was ok. It was great.

Eat well, I am glad to be home.

Even though you are reading this first, this is a warning I decided to put in, after writing about intestine a little way down. WARNING, contains descriptions of me eating offal. For the handful of you that don’t know – the dictionary definition on google is ” The entrails and internal organs of an animal used as food”. If you have a weak stomach, you may want to read a different entry.

Last Monday I went to an offal degustation at Mongrel, in Milton. My friend and I were the only two at the table who had eaten almost everything on the menu before, not necessarily prepared the same way, but definitely eaten the same ingredients. This was mostly inspired by Peruvian street food. So before any of you have a chance to opt out…

It started with pickled chickens feet.  Cold pickled chickens feet. If you have ever had pickled pigs trotters, these aren’t much different. If you haven’t. Erm. Imagine an edible rubbery substance that tastes of chicken and a little vinegar (salt and vinegar chip level I think), with little bones all of the way through it. If that didn’t sell it to you, eating it probably won’t either, but I love it. While most of the table had tried a few bites, some barely one while others went to town as best they could, the more experienced of us with picked feet wound up with nothing but a small plate of bones in front of us.

This was followed by beef heart and small intestine, with some sort of potato and sauce thing going on on the side. I love heart, especially if done well. This was done beautifully. Soft, tender bits of heart. Dipped in the green sauce, they were divine. The small intestine was grilled to be crispy on the outside and soft and squishy in the middle. This is one of my favourite ways to eat intestine. This whole dish was really tasty and I wish there was more offal in it. That, alas, is not the point of a degustation.

This was followed by pate. I think. There may have been another dish between these that I have forgotten. The pate was made out of liver, kidney and other giblets of the chicken, mixed with black pudding and with crispy chicken skin to use as chips. As well as bread. It was delicious. A smooth, creamy texture, almost like a meat mousse. I had run out of bread and chicken skin, so I finished off eating it using a butter knife. So tasty.

The next dish was my favourite. It was tripe and pigs blood. I love both of these things. The tripe was so soft and tender, and the soup/gravy it was in was amazing. It was topped of with little bits of pigs blood jellied. Mixed together was awesome. Every body at the table gave this a shot, until the texture of the tripe grossed them out. I finished every last skerrick in my bowl. My only hassle with this dish, the blood wasn’t blood tasting enough for me. It was perfect for people being introduced to eating offal though.

After this came the head meat croquette. Not to be confused with a head cheese croquette, which would have been awesome. The croquette was made using the jowl and cheek of a pig. These were finely diced, and then crumbed and fried and served with a mildish blue cheese, and some rum soaked cherries. The croquette was nice, the cheese was nice, and the cherries were nice. All together. Pretty damn nice. I am damn sure I am missing a dish here.

The final dish was marrow in ice cream. The marrow simply made the ice cream creamier. It gave it, to me anyway, a slightly weird texture (not unpleasant just unexpected) and left a very mild pleasant after taste of marrow in my mouth.

Each one of these dishes was really well made, and I would happily eat a whole plate of any of them. Including the pickled chickens feet.

Eat well if you made it this far.

Sometimes there is no contest.

I think this is one of them. I was going to compare ‘Ben’s Burgers’ in the valley to ‘Betty’s Burgers and Concrete Co’ in Indooroopilly, but I don’t think I can.

I should be able to. They’re both burger places, they’re around the same price, and they have a similar range of soft drinks.

They are not the same though.

Ben’s Burgers is the better place. I will admit I should probably have the same burger at both places, but I don’t think that would help.

If you are not near Ben’s Burgers, and there is a Betty’s Burgers near you, by all means go. The service is great, the venue is nice, and the food is good. The pork belly burger, had two pieces of pork belly in it pretending to be a patty. The fries were fries. A little cold by the time i got to them, but not bad.  The only real complaint was that the whole thing, burger included was a little small. Not tiny and would probably easily quell your average person’s hunger beast, but was a touch smaller than what I normally eat.

The staff made Betty’s Burgers more enjoyable than it probably would have been. Everyone smiling, and genuinely seemed pleased to work there. If they weren’t they faked it well. The guy who served me clearly took a lot of pride in his work. I feel like if I had have said I wasn’t impressed with the food he would have tried to figure out how to make it up to me.

The more I think about it the more I realise how much of an impact he had on my whole experience there. If it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have been at a point where I would want to compare them.

Ben’s Burgers is better. That felt really weird to write.

They only have four burgers to choose from, and maybe three different sides. Definitely at least two.

Three of the burgers are standard. A cheese burger, a vegetarian burger, and one with salad. The fourth changes monthly.

The patties of the meat ones are all thick and taste great, without tasting salty. The buns, while I am pretty sure are similar to the ones from Betty’s Burgers, seem to be fluffy and tasty in their own right. The remaining contents of the burger is well selected to present a unique, tasty flavour.

The chips from Ben’s Burgers are thick. I think they call them fries, but they are not thin, or shoe stringy.  They are normally crisp on the outside and fluffy in the middle, with enough salt to make them really tasty. The chilli fries are also really good, not very spicy but still pretty tasty. They are also still usually warm when I get them.

Coke and Pepsi are coke and pepsi no matter where you go, so I will have to take someone to Betty’s Burgers for a shake test, as I am not able to drink that much milk anymore.

The staff here are friendly, but not as good as the guy from Betty’s Burgers. This is out weighed by the quality of their food…

and their proximity to both ‘Bird’s nest’ and ‘Cakes and Shit’. This means that burgers followed by chicken hearts followed by cheesecake, was a thing. It will also be a thing many times I think, as it was a pretty awesome combo.

Snack time…eat well everyone.

So I’m covering two things tonight. One is a Japanese restaurant and one is an Italian restaurant.

First, to Perth.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I went to Perth for work. Before I left, I found out about a place called Nobu, a Japanese restaurant in the hotel I was staying in.

In the more expensive part of the hotel that I was staying in.

I walked past the theatre, and through the doors of the more expensive part of the hotel, and waited to be asked what i was doing there. No one cared. Okay, now to find Nobu. After a brief look around, I saw the sign for Nobu. Next to the desk under the sign, there were a lot of tables with people eating. That doesn’t look too bad, not as swanky as I expected.

I was looking at the wrong bit.

I approached the desk, and asked if I needed a booking. For one. No you don’t.

They led me through these big doors, through a small hall, with the wine off to one side, and then to the swanky restaurant I was expecting.

This place was nice. There was a sculpture on the wall opposite me that consisted of a whole bunch of small pieces of metal, that were bent to be fish like, in a big school of fish. I kept getting lost in it between courses. Speaking of which.

I ordered three things, and the first one to come out was the special.

Semi char-grilled octopus with truffle. It was really good, the octopus especially. Every bit of the dish. Except the truffle. Sorry WA, but the truffles I have had over here were a lot better. There was very little umami in the flavour. It was definitely a truffle, just not as strong as I like. The octopus was pretty good though.

This was followed by duck sashimi. I loved this one best. It was thin slivers of duck covered in a soy/vinegar sauce, that meant you weren’t quite eating raw. The duck was very tasty, and the sauce combined with the duck was like a few great flavours having a wild dance off on my tongue, where each flavour kept reappearing in succession with each mouthful. The sharp,acidic vinegar burst out first, followed quickly by the soy. The two tangoed sweetly together for a bit, before bowing out to let let the duck shake its tail feathers on the centre stage. There were other flavours there too, but they were standing on the side clapping. The dancers soon had to leave the stage, and left me to get lost in the wall of metal fish shapes.

The final dish was duck breast, covered in some sort of crumb, with yuzu mixed through it.  While it was delectable, it was hardly a dance. More like the long walk you take to help a meal go down, when you haven’t had too much (or as I like to think of it, haven’t achieved the shape of a python eating a goat). It was pleasant, and by  the time I had finished the mastication ambulation, I was ready to head off.

I was not ready for dessert, but I was ready to have a bit of a rest.

Back in Brisbane now.

Last weekend, I went to a place called “What’s in the Pot? Osteria.”. It is a lovely little Italian place in Redcliffe.

Here I had an entree, a main and a dessert.

For the entree, I had chicken liver pate on toasted bread, and stole some of my culinary companions’ entree too. She had mixed bruschetta. One with oil, one with pear and one with tomato. The pear one was best.

For my main I had spatchcock. Spatchcock. Apparently, spatchcock is a chicken or game bird split open and grilled. I liked spatchcock. I am pretty sure it was chicken, but wasn’t a hundred percent certain. It was served in some sort of red wine jus, with broccolini and small cubes of fried potato. The whole thing was very tasty and I would happily eat it again.

For dessert I had Limoncello and some sort of biscuit. At the time I had forgotten what Limoncello was, and had no idea what the biscuit was. I had thought maybe it was gelato and a biscuit. I asked one of the staff. She said it was a shot of limoncello and a biscuit, I can’t remember the name and am now regretting not taking a photo of the menu. Ok, I ordered it and, even though I don’t normally drink alcohol anymore, I was going to have it. I poured a little on the biscuit in case it was like a sauce in a shot glass. Not a sauce. I don’t mind Limoncello, and the biscuit was good, but next time I will get the tiramisu.

OK, that is enough about these adventures. In a month and a half, I am sure I will write more before then, I am heading to Malaysia for 5 days. I am pretty sure I will wind up with lots to write about, and even pictures.

Eat well.

Last week I went to Aria Brisbane, which sadly closed its doors on Saturday. The only regret I have is not going there sooner, so I could have gone multiple times.

Alas, i did not. C’est la vie.

On Wednesday night last week, three of us walked into the restaurant, half an hour early. We were seated in the bar while we were waiting for the table.

The coffee was good.

We chatted, and were still curious what to expect at this stage. We had all heard good things about Aria.

Ok, before I continue and get to us being seated, GOMA did it better as far as food goes. The reason I am saying it here is to get it out of the way because Aria was still pretty good, and I don’t want you to think I thought poorly of it while I was reminiscing about eating it.

Someone came and got us at 8:26pm, we were booked in for 8:15pm and, before anything was said by the staff, I joked about us being punished for being too early. We were very politely informed they had upgraded the position of our table, and apologised for the wait. Ok, not being punished then.

We were seated by the window, looking out over the river. It was a pretty nice view. Especially all of the lights on the Story Bridge.

The waitress smiled. She introduced herself, but spoke so quietly I didn’t here her name. We just smiled and nodded.

While we were looking at the menu, she asked us if there was a special occasion for being there. I was honest.

“I heard your restaurant was closing down on Saturday and I didn’t want to miss out.” It looked like she almost cried. Whether it was because we were heathens or she was reminded of the sad fact this wonderful place was closing, I am not sure. She took a deep breath and asked what we wanted.

We asked for the ten year tasting menu. Her smile returned.

As described by one of the trio, this was a degustation of nostalgia.

Each dish was a highlight from each year it was open. Ten years, ten dishes.

I am not going to run through all ten, just the highlights for me.

I am also not sure of the order, except for 2 dishes. I know the duck came before the steak. I will get to this and the story surrounding it soon.

The first dish that comes to mind though was the scampi. The scampi, which seems to be somewhere between a prawn and a lobster (shrugs), was wrapped in ribbons of batter/pastry and deep fried, with 2 halves of a quail egg accompanying it. The flavour was pretty good, and for something clearly deep fried it wasn’t very greasy. The quail egg was nice, but the flavour of the quail egg barely added to the scampi.

The next dish I remember was a brussels sprout dish. It tasted a little like french onion broth and bacon, with the bitterness of the brussels sprout bursting through at the end, in a good way. I really liked this dish. I don’t think there was any meat in it, even though it tasted like there was.

Now for the duck/steak dishes and story.

The duck pastry with  pea puree came out. I have now eaten enough duck, that I could tell this was duck breast in the pastry. It was not as gamy as I like my duck, but it was nice. Especially when mixed with the pea puree. It was wonderfully delicate though, and I was impressed by that.

The waitress came out (this is the story part) and asked us how we were going, I said I loved duck, and she smiled and said she did too, but the next bit was her favourite. She then proceeded to tell us about the steak dish, and she was very enthusiastic, but sooo quiet. None of us knew what she had said, aside from the next dish is steak. We spent a few minutes trying to figure it out, when the sommelier came over and started explaining the next wine, to go with the steak dish. Incidentally I was not drinking, but as my companions were I finally got to see a sommelier in action. It was amazing. I am wondering if I could ever get someone just to tell me what the wine pairing should be, next time I am at  a degustation.

The steak came out, I don’t actually remember much of this dish, as I spent more time looking at it going “Oh, that is what she meant”. It was one of my favourite dishes though. Oh yeah it was carpaccio. That was what she had said, I think that was the only bit we heard. There was more to it, and I could see why it was her favourite, even if I had no idea what she had said about it.

This all lead into a palette cleanser and dessert, plus petit fours. The only thing I want to say about this is that the petit fours were pretty tasty.

It was 11:30pm by the time we finished, and had it not been so late I was still keen to keep eating. I got home about midnight and went to bed.

Night all.

Some places tell you they have hot burgers.

For those not use to chilli, they probably do.

I am not use to eating super hot chilli yet. I am used to chilli enough that certain food chains have burgers that taste tangy at best. In one particular case, just tasted like a cheeseburger to me.

That being said, my eyes still water at ghost peppers and I will get the hiccups something fierce. The only other time I had a Carolina Reaper, it was a small drop and it burnt my tongue.

…

I stood at Burger Urge.

On the board there were two burgers. The burgers of the month were the Lady MacDeath and the Double Decker Death Wish. Both of them boasted having the 4 hottest chillis in their sauce. For a few dollars more you could go nuclear, and get more of the sauce.

I had the Lady MacDeath. The chicken burger.

I should have guessed that, unlike certain other chains (whose fowls, clowns, kings and colonels shall remain nameless), Burger Urge does what it says. When it had the alpaca burger, it was made from alpaca. Not some lamb disguised with soy sauce (I don’t know how to make fake alpaca ok, maybe lamb mixed with wallaby? I don’t know, until I have eaten wallaby cooked, then I might be able to guess better).

Of course I went nuclear. I had to sign a waiver and then they gave me gloves and safety glasses. I was very excited. I was looking forward to this.

The burger arrived.

It didn’t look that intimidating.

I could see the sauce. I figured it had to be at least hotter than Australian hot hot. I’d signed a waiver.

I still wasn’t prepared.

There are some chillies referred to as ninja chillies. Where you don’t feel anything at first. Then you feel a tingle, like the heat gentle creeping across your tongue. Gradually the plie of pain becomes the tap dance of torment, as you realise that you are being burnt from the inside.

If you are lucky, the tap dance is where it stays. Burning, not completely unbearably, but still painful.

The first bite was like that. Except the tap dance of torment became the mosh pit of molten lava, very quickly. This was followed by the hiccups. The painful chilli hiccups that soon make you think licking a battery would have been less painful.

Second bite, added fuel to the fire, the whole of my tongue at this point was throbbing, pulsing in a single burst of pain every half a second or so. Surely a third bite couldn’t be as bad.

Milk please.

One tankard of milk and one more bite and I was defeated.

I had to have ice cream to calm my tongue down to a level where it was just burning. Where the intense burst of pain pulses gave way to a single burning sensation in my mouth and on my lips (and later on, because I must have gotten some oil on my fingers, my eyes. Luckily I know what to do in that situation).

Within an hour I was ok, a bit sore but ok.

If you like your food hot, and I mean Korean Spicy Noodles hot, give it a bash. Aside from the burning it is a pretty good burger.

You get a key ring if you finish it, I do not have a key ring.

I have to explain this a lot since it happened.

There is a story behind it, but I’m guessing you already figured that bit.

It starts, as most of my adventures do, with an impulsive mood and the internet (that sounds far worse when I read it than it did in my head).

I was wondering if Deer Duck Bistro was open. It was a Tuesday, I was on a computer at the time, and one quick Google search led me to the answer. That answer was “Yes”. Of course this led to the follow up question, how easy is it to book a table.

Very, as it turns out. Next thing I knew I had booked a table for 5:30 that afternoon. I knew I had a limited amount of time, so I quickly searched the menu so I could order as soon as I sat down.

I managed top get there a minute or two after 5:30 due to traffic. I walked in, was happily greeted and led to my table.

Then I was told the menu options.

On the website, it does not say Tuesday is limited to degustation. If it did I missed it.

“Here are your menu options. The Chef’s Special, A Short Degustation or A Long Degustation.”

Oh. This is how you accidentally have a degustation.

I was  pressed for for time. The Chef’s Special was the shortest by the look of it. It didn’t have venison tartare. The Short Degustation apparently took an hour and a half to two hours. The Long, I assume, took half an hour to an hour longer. Both of these had venison tartare.

I only had one choice I could go with.

It took me a little over an hour and a half to have the Short Degustation.  Of course I was going to get the one with the venison tartare.

I shall tell you the dishes I remember.

It started with bread made with activated charcoal, butter and a small risotto with crab. This was actually a pretty tasty aperitif. The bread was black, and a lot tastier than I thought it was going to be. I am pretty sure the role of the aperitif is to get you excited for the rest of the meal. This was succeeding in this case. Appearance wise, I have seen better, but the taste of this was pretty good. The bread was delicious. The butter was beautiful. The risotto was ok, but the bread was what made the appetiser do its work.

Peppered Venison Tartare came next. This was my second favourite dish. It was beautifully presented. Peppered venison on top of pickled red cabbage. I could have eaten a whole plate of this. It was just as tasty as the Emu tartare from Detour but for different reasons. The peppered venison was really strong and combined with the cabbage made it this beautiful mix of flavours and textures. This was definitely over too quickly.

There was a salad next, it had salad ingredients. The bit that stood out most about this though was the raspberry balsamic mixed with truffle pearls. Whatever else was in the dish was pushed to the side by these two pairing. I am aware this is not everyone’s idea of a wonderful paring but if you ever get the chance it is worth a try. As this was a palette cleanser, it did its job admirably.

I remember the next bit as a little pie type thing with some sort of green vegetable strips on top. While this was still nice, it was my least favourite of the courses. The green stuff was good, but I was warned it may be a bit spicy. I didn’t find it spicy at all. I may need to take a friend who can’t eat chilli to let me know if there is any chilli in it. The rest of the dish was tasty. It had smoked salmon in it, and this was beautifully blended in with the rest of the flavours, but it wasn’t spicy.

Pasta came next, with smoked king oyster mushrooms, speck and some sort of truffle sauce. The whole thing was really tasty. I know I liked it but it is too close to my favourite to remember much about it. Aside from the truffle sauce was pretty good.

Now, some of you probably already know what my favourite dish would be. There is one thing I love to eat when I go out. I have had it roasted, fried, steamed (I love triple cooked) and with a whole range of sauces. I am talking about duck. This was sous vide duck, with a pear puree and a salted plum. It leapt like a rabid grasshopper into my top three duck dishes. The duck tasted beautiful, it was delicate and delectable. Every bite was incredible. I loved it. I would have happily stopped there. I was tempted to see if I could follow this degustation with another degustation, but I was running out of time by this stage, and it would have been ludicrously expensive.

Finally came the dessert. This was a deconstructed cheese cake, with mango pulp, mango pearls and pickled strawberry. Should you find yourself in this situation, leave the mango puree and the pearls until last. Take a mouthful of puree with the pearls in it and pop the pearls with  your tongue. The most intense mango flavour I have had in a while. It was amazing.

Right, I now need to go and find something to dessert like. Luckily I have halva. Night all, eat well.

Occasionally people ask me what the worst food I have ever eaten is. I don’t really know what the answer to this question is.

Aside from one incident.

I was once hungry and bored in my Aunty Margie’s house. I looked for something to eat in the fridge and saw a tub of yoghurt.

Previously there had been a variety of fruity type yoghurts in the fridge, so when I saw this one I was delighted.

I opened it and grabbed a spoon. Then I had a mouthful.

There is a sensation I don’t normally get from food unless it is genuinely rotten. Not nausea, but more to spit the food out as quick as possible. There have been a few pieces of fruit that I have spat out when I have discovered that they were rotten and infested. The odd piece of meat, that had been in the fridge way too long. Once, after much deliberation, a piece of cheese.

In this instance, it took me about a third of the tub before I realised what I was eating didn’t taste right. It wasn’t a big tub, and a third was only a few spoon fulls.

It was also at this point I decided I should probably make sure that the tub was what I thought it was. I had noticed the word Yoghurt and not paid attention to the rest. The rest were the words “Low fat, natural, diet”.

It had more tang then yoghurt should.

It wasn’t smooth, which given that it was plain yoghurt it should have been.

I thought I may have just been being picky, as it was meant to be healthy.

Nope, one more spoonful determined that I was right and it was revolting.

I got rid of it.

I found something else to eat.

Many years later, my cousin pointed out that the yoghurt could have been out of date when I ate it, by a lot. It may have been one of the fridge dwelling items that you put in the fridge with the intention of eating and it slowly migrates towards the back. To be forgotten.

Until you clean out the fridge, or some unsuspecting individual finds it and eats it. Part of it.

I have since tried similar yoghurt and, while it has been more palatable, I still don’t like the taste.

Keeping it short tonight, eat well.

PS there are probably others, but this is the one that sticks in my head.