Stanley’s Fish Café

Present: Sam, Mele, Tallora and Cristi.

Mele

I’ve got to admit, Sam and I have been avoiding Stanley’s for a few weeks. Here are just a few of the reasons:

a) It's expensive
b) It's the unofficial quarters of the South Australian branch of ‘Grey Power’
c) It exists in a time warp (circa 1985) in which deep frying and heavily crumbling delicate, juicy fresh fish fillets is still in vogue (the words ‘tempura’ or ‘fritto misto’ are not on the menu)
d) Grilling your fish costs an extra two dollars!

As complaining is my forte (yes, I do enjoy it), I will say that the sign of a bad restaurant can be found in the house salad. The salad was iceberg. It came with a light vinegar dressing one could barely taste. All that was missing was the sprig of parsley to garnish.
As for the fish part, one can only puzzle over the specials board which had “Greek Prawns” listed, a dish which included sherry, cream and capsicum.
What the bejeezus is Greek about that?
Or good, one might add?

One might ask the same thing about Greg Norman.
Wait a minute ... oh, I get it: "The Shark". In a place that serves fish. Very nice. Put that gag on the specials board, it's about to go off!
Further thought: a large portrait of a sportman known for choking hanging in a restaurant ... excellent.

Tallora took one for the team and ordered the ultimate in 1950s dining, the ‘Seafood mornay’. I’ve got to say that the words “DISGUSTING” flashed across my drunken mind like the tiny lights in the Rio Di Janeiro picture, but it was actually pretty good.

Unlike the picture of Rio

Probably the best I’ve ever had, but I prefer to think of Tuna Mornay as an abomination that belongs to the past, like Apricot Chicken or sausages in Keen’s curry powder.

Dear friends, do not go to Stanley’s. It’s an expensive RSL.

However, the fish was extremely well cooked, for which I award Stanley’s 45/100.

Sam

Mele's not wrong. When we conceived of the Gouger Street Epic, we imagined ourselves unearthing gem after undiscovered gem of Asian cuisine. Not, as it has turned out so far, chicken sandwiches, meatball-and-seafood subs and sneakily-disguised chops.

But nothing, nothing could have prepared us (more specifically: me) for ... BARRA GRENADA. Take a tender, delicate piece of fried barramundi ...

AND SMOTHER IT IN BACON BITS.

This isn't even some gag photo we made up by sneaking some bacon sprinklin's from someone else's plate. I paid 29.9 of my excellent dollars for salty bacon and fresh-water fish. I'm obviously the dope in this situation – the buffoon, the fall guy - but I still feel like someone should get a wet fish in the moosh.
I can't even complain about it! It was the nicest fish'n'bacon dish I've ever eaten. And it's going straight into the Weirdest of the Weird Hall of Fame over there on your right, because: pesce e porco, Sam says NO.

Honorable mention: Tallora didn't only take one for the team, coming out a winner with the seafood mornay, but she was also broad-minded enough to try the luminous dipping sauce.

And after I eat this, you will give me the five bucks, right?

We only found out later from the forgetful waitress that it was mustard and lemon salad dressing she was spreading on her bread.

But, as always with these things, the important thing is that it's now behind us and we never have to go back.
What?
You think we're doing this to broaden our horizons?
Expand our minds to new definitions of flavour?
Screw that! The motto of the Epic may well turn out to be "We Ate There So You Don't Have To"

Subtitle: "Iceberg and all, motherfucker"

We can now move on to cities of barbeque and great rivers of *ahem* barbeque and other things which may or may not have barbeque.

Next stop: Ba Guo Bu Yi

On the upside, the technician said it was the cleanest motherboard he'd ever seen.

No, we're not starving to death.

We are, however, on a slight hiatus because the millions, one could even stretch so far as to say billions, or even trillions of dollars spent on developing the microprocessor and all its attendant uses and attachments were still not nearly enough to solve the problem of water-proofing.

A lovely little water-bottle with Charlie's name joyously stamped on the side obviously was not the beneficiary of the millennia-old global research cloud which has developed and made available the knowledge which allows us to contain water over a period of time. Instead, this poor third-cousin, this unlicensed knock-off, this pretender vessel only revealed the depth of its true deficiency when it was provided with the opportunity to snuggle up with my computer in the seclusion of my backpack.

I can't recall another occasion when a single drip of moisture has caused me such anguish, falling as it did from the cooling vent in the side of my laptop.

The PhD is safe. The photos have been salvaged and recovered. The music is safe, the playcounts are not.

The Epic shall continue, but you may have to be a little patient.

He likes to move it

NOT T-Bar! T-Chow!

Scandal!
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love child does NOT serve dinner at the T-Bar!

Nor does anyone else for that matter. We four arrived, starving, to find empty fridges and to match our empty stomachs. It turns out all our snobbish friends (you know who you are) were *ahem* right. T-Bar is not a dinner venue and is thusly STRUCK OFF the Gouger Street Epic(urean) Adventure.

However, let it not be said that we are planless gimps for we are not. We carried the T-theme through and ended up at T-Chow. All right – fine, we bloody know it’s not a Gouger Street restaurant as per The Rules, but the next stop is Stanley’s Fish Café and we’ll be dining on the forty-buck fish alone.This time, we’re reviewing T-Chow, not as part of the Epic, but as a service to food lovers.

You've seen T-Chow, you've walked past it. You've even been inside and eaten there. 'Classy place' you thought. You were right. It's the kind of classy which has the word 'Classy' Bedazzled on its pleather jacket. From the glitter fish tanks to the white table-cloths covered in butcher's paper, T-Chow isn't just a place, it's a venue. Things happen here.

Food also happens here. Unfortunately, this is not the Austin Powers kind of 'happens', this is the other kind of happens. The kind referred to on Holden bumper-stickers Australia-wide.

Shallot pancakes.

All our sloth turds are served with soy vinegar and parsley!

These could have been the best things I've ever eaten. They could have been mislaid sloth turds. I wouldn't have known because by the time they turned up, I was so hungry, it's a miracle I stopped at the plate.
Mele: They were actually really undercooked.

Green peppercorn chicken.

Supposedly the flagship. If so, the T-Chow armada would have trouble taking over Marion Swimming Pool. Their A-game was C+. It had flavour, but so does lots of Chicken Tonight. But, in keeping with the flagship concept, that is deep-fried seaweed around the edges.
Mele: The chicken was beautifully tender. Alas, nothing else was.

Salt'n'Pepper Squid.

Now with lettuce!

Should probably just be called 'Squid'. Or I didn't get any bits with the world's most common seasoning.
Mele: It was overcooked. If salt and pepper squid can be viewed as the barometer of a good restaurant, a death knell is ringing in my ears.

T-chow is behind the times. This restaurant is coasting on an old, undeserved reputation. If you thought sweet'n'sour chicken was the height of Chinese cuisine in the 1980s, and still believe it is, you are a bogan or the owner of this joint. STRAIGHT UP.

Good good, there were so many relics from the past here it was like going back to highschool. Even Axl Rose turned up.

Nothing lasts forever, man. Even cold November Rain.
*sniff*
*Cue rain-soaked coffin*

Peking Ribs.

Even slanty photography can't save it.

Should probably just be called 'Peking', because I was hard pressed to find any actual evidence that I was eating intercostals.
Big call? Maybe. That photo doesn't really do it justice. I'm also not a butcher, but I like to think I understand what I'm pointing at when I go to the local meat vendor and say:

'OI. THOSE RIBS ARE FUCKING CHUMP CHOPS.'

Guest reviewer: Charlie.

"The milk was INTENSE."

Bean Bar

In order to make this stop on our Epicurean Adventure more palatable and less mind-fuckingly tedious, we have replaced our regular food and venue photos with portraits of one another appearing as simpletons.
Bon appetit!

The Bean Bar
Attendance: Mele, Sam

Sam

“It wasn’t as bad as you would probably imagine”

Not the exact phrase an eatery wants to begin its one chance at review-based fame. The Bean Bar found us quite alone on Friday night. The enthusiastic crowds who had mobbed us at The Sushi Train (I’m sure they were there for us), were suddenly quite absent among the small tables and modest selection of decidedly not-that-out-there sandwiches.

My word! What big sangers you 'ave, Guvna!

The sandwiches were pretty good. I’ve had to choke down worse chicken.

BookAAK!!

It was probably accidental, but The Bean Bar does have a certain low-key “vibe” to it. You imagine the franchise owner is convinced that having a selection of toasted sandwiches is probably about as icy cool as a coffee shop can get. Sort of like your mum steadfastly refusing to throw out those high-waisted cream slacks because you can’t improve on perfection. And, like I respect your mum for rocking those acres of waistband year after perfect year, I respect The Bean Bar for sticking with the doorstops and toasted rolls, flying in the face of fashion and popular favour. The rest of the café+food joints are probably branching out past sushi and on into … I dunno … goulash or haggis or something equally fashionable, but The Bean Bar is still there in the early-to-mid nineties, gloating over its sandwich press and its milkshakes in glasses. Charming.

Mele

Okay kids, it’s time for Mel’s rant:

T-bean is a perplexing little place that is next to the T-bar (a much more established venue that no doubt gets the lion’s share of business).
Whooops.
It’s actually ‘Bean Bar’, but this place was so forgettable….
The sandwiches were very, very average. I’m not keen on toasted avocado and chicken sandwiches that have huge pieces of baby spinach and basil wilted in them. One should, never, never cook lettuce. For god’s sake, even the Americans are suspicious of this practice.
Seriously, dudes, not a good idea. Even hot avocado is a no go.

Obviously hot spinach is fine.

The ‘hot snow chocolate’ is the closest thing to breast milk I’ve ever tasted (other than breast milk). It sounded like the weirdest thing on the menu, ‘hot’ and ‘snow’ being opposing signifiers and all.

Magic beans, you say? Sounds lovely!

The drink they served was simple enough, a combination of milk, water and white chocolate that tasted like –you guessed it—watery milk and sugar. The drink had no flair at all. A dash of vanilla bean, nutmeg, cinnamon, strawberry Quik, anything was desperately needed.
I can’t imagine anyone but a lactose tolerant infant enjoying this drink (or maybe our friend Dordy, whose health fanatic mother once caught her stirring spoons of sugar into milk, a desperate act of a sugar-deprived childhood).
This place was so boring and dull that only the décor pleased me. Skip it. If you’re going to run a coffee or tea place in Adelaide, that place needs to be tied to a nationality where the product can be identified from.

I am a food racist. So are you. When was the last time you went to a place called Spinelli’s Authentic Chinese Cuisine? Or Wang Pham Pizza and Pasta? Never. That’s when. It’s for the same reason you would avoid espresso from Boring Old Mr Smith’s Boring Coffee Shop For Safe Boring People Who Don’t Like Flavour.

Yeeargh! Caffeine!

It makes sense to steer away from coffee and tea places that aren’t run by people from Devonshire, Sri Lankans, and/or various Middle-Eastern and European countries. These places have a history of brewing brown drinks that actually began more than 20 years ago. There’s a reason Starbucks doesn’t sell in Australia, and that’s because the wogs and the Asians got here first. Franchises are shit. Chances are you will get a cup of hot milk.

Score: ZERO out of 100. Good God—even Subway got 0.5/100.

Tune in next time when we take Charlie to T-Bar!

Sushi Train

Attendees: Mele, Sam, Triton, Tess, Dougie, Cristi

Mele - The Gouger Street Sushi Train takes no bookings and no prisoners. It does give numbers, though. Our quick-thinking, clever friend Tess took one (number 96!) and we popped around the corner to a bar instead of waiting it out with the 20 (yes, twenty) people in front of The Train. Sam and I joined our fellow diners Dougie, Triton and Tess at the Hilton lounge, a venue that provided much entertainment:

The Hilltop Hoods being incredibly un-Hilltop and being at the Hilton. I stared at them for ages, thinking they were the Beastie Boys. I mean, come on, there’s only so many ‘Old white rappers’ I can remember. Sam and Triton papped them for the blog.

They were so upset when we asked them for a chorus of 'Sabotage'.

A school formal with hordes of teenage girls posing endlessly for photos. Dougie and Tess did a Statler and Waldorf with a running commentary from the balcony seats.

The Hilton is supposed to be fancy, but it is daggy and outdated; a little like Adelaide itself. The foyer is a time-capsule from the mid-eighties. Most of the clientele are the flotsam and jetsam of the night, stragglers whiling away the time (like us). There’s no old money in the bar; it’s even a bit of stretch to say that the clientele are new money (come on, it’s The Hoods).

Right, back to the business of Sushi Train, which is so rock star popular that The Hoods don’t even know about it. An hour after being issued a ticket, Tess hustled her way in and we crammed into a small booth. It was so small that I was literally forced to hug Dougie to stay in it.

Stupid hordes.

Dearest blog readers, l pose a controversial question: is the Sushi Train a novelty restaurant? Should it go (excellent food notwithstanding) the daggy way of apricot chicken and the Hilton? While I loved the food, I didn’t feel comfortable or relaxed in its claustrophobic environment; it was like eating in a mosh pit, with everyone trying to push closer to the stage.

Is Sushi Train worth waiting hours for?
I’d say yes, but just barely. I know that Sam’s review will be much more glowing, but when he hears the word ‘sushi’ he throws the ‘critique’ part of reviewing out the window, much like David Stratton reviewing animation. I can’t be a saucy-minx like Margaret Pomerantz on this one and chuckle huskily that it was ‘a bit of fun’. I’m going to be David savaging a Kate Hudson rom-com and mark the place down on atmosphere.


Sam

Say it with me now: Su-shi! Su-shi! Su-shi! You’re a great crowd. Thanks for coming out.

Mele is right. There is nothing bad I can say about sushi.
When it’s slowly coasting past me on enticing little platters, there’s nothing I can do to resist. I’ll even go so far as to say that I’ve actually had better sushi, but not so far as to claim that I know what makes good sushi good and so-so sushi so so-so.
Still with me? No? Maybe I’m a little high on iodine.

Or tentacles.

I’ll carry on the Movie Show vibe and put my best Margaret growl for the rest of this review:

Oh David! Atmosphere is what The Train is all about! You’re supposed to stand at the door with an elbow ready for queue-jumper’s ribcage*! The bright lights and fire and Engrish is why people go to sushi restaurants! Nobody expects to go to an eatery with the words ‘sushi’ and ‘train’ in the title to experience something quiet and intimate**!
*Cue equine cackle*

But enough of Margaret.

Sushi Train is, however, mostly atmosphere. Once the last slice of swordfish had been devoured (by me) and the waitress was tallying up our plates, there were no lasting loves. Everything was good, nothing was great. Nothing induced fugu poisoning either, so the place was a resounding success measured on those levels.

The Sushi Train is a great place to go if you want a cheery night, good times and questionable photos of your friends.

On another site, this photo would pay for our meal.

Good god, the photos of the bar we went to afterwards is another thing altogether. In Tess’s words, this monostrosity was so uncool it was ‘the pure opposite of Melbourne’.

I'd want to choke a Treasurer here too.

* This was one of the available dishes.
** Except for Dougie and Mele.

Subway

Subway - 29th April, 2011


Attendance: Mele, Sam, Trent, Em

Sam - I think the stripper getting a pre-dance tuna melt summed it up best: ‘Are you going to eat that?’

I had made it through the first and second courses and was working on dessert, while getting another sandwich to take away for our kind chauffeur. I put the half-eaten raspberry cheesecake cookie on the counter to get my wallet out. The upside to Subway is that you can front up with nothing more than a twenty and leave with a full stomach, but you do end up with a lot of spare change and I needed two hands.
My first reaction was instinctively protective. This was a lady who looked as though she just might grab half a cookie at the first sign of ambivalence.
‘I sure am,’ I answered confidently, ready to shield it like a non-answer-sharing nerd.

Mine!

‘You know people put their hands on this counter?’
‘Yes.’
‘I just went to the toilet, and didn’t wash my hands! Raaarrgh!’ went the stripper, shaking her hair extensions at me. ‘Just kidding.’
‘Oh good,’ I said, paying for my take away and returning to our primo table.
‘He’s actually going to eat it!’ cried the stripper to her stripper friend. I’ve never been watched so intently while eating. I ate the cookie.
‘Aaww!’ they both cried. ‘He ate it!’
They laughed, pointed and left.

This can probably encompass the complete experience of eating at the Gouger Street branch of Subway: were we really really going to eat that?
Yes. Yes, we were.
‘What’s the weirdest thing on the menu?’ asked Mele, executing our casual sting of the Sandwich Artiste on duty with classic elegance. I will leave it to Mele to talk you through the visceral, emotional, physical experience of eating the food. Suffice it to say that, after questioning us (‘Are you doing this for a bet or something?’) and having the Gouger Street Epic(cure) explained to him, our Artiste took on board the concept of necessary weirdness in our menu choices and offered this little tip: leaning in close as he handed me my change (which I would later use on cookies) he said sotto voce ‘You know, it’s the Asians who have the really weird sandwiches.’
‘Ah.’ I nodded encouragingly.
‘Yes. This salad with that, all sorts of stuff!’
‘Amazing.’
The sharp-minded among you may have already deduced that, since he was telling me this while I was paying, we may not have actually received the most unusual menu item or combination of items available that evening.
Wrong.
What we were handed was a protein-packed combo dreamt up by some free-thinking gourmand and assembled by Dr Moreau – the Meatball Seafood Sensation Deluxe. With Bacon. The first thing that struck me about the Seafood Sensation (an independent menu item, complete with salad and an Artiste-recommend mayonnaise) was the fact that ‘Sensation’ is less often a happy superlative than a worrisome pejorative. For every time it is prefaced by ‘Dancing’, ‘Singing’ or even ‘Banjo Playing’ there is the other kind of sensation. Three examples which spring readily to mind are ‘sinking’, ‘gurgling’ and ‘burning’. These are not the sensations which sell sandwiches. These are the sensations which sell pharmaceuticals. Opening the wrapper on our Meatball Seafood Sensation Deluxe (With Bacon) I definitely experienced more of the latter kinds of sensations, rather than the former. It looked like a shotgun wound to the butt hole. With Bacon.

KA-BLAMMO! DINNER!

At this point, you're probably picturing Barnacle Bill-style crumbed butterfish or even the odd bit of prawn cocktail. Nuh-uh. The Looming Seafood Sensation of Dread was made entirely of seafood extender. This is a mock-fish substance composed of chicken offcuts, rodents which are no longer classed as vermin and some kelp (which is technically seafood). The meatballs are indeed that: balls of meat, slathered in a thick, read sauce and composed of the same ingredients as the seafood extender, but in different ratios. The Bacon? Well, they can’t mess around with that too much, can they? Nope, the Bacon was good old, vat-grown, sterilised, homogenised, freeze-dried, re-constituted Bacon-brand meat with Bacon flavouring. I hear it’s the first mass-produced vegan bacon on the market. This was a sandwich for the ages, it’s Surf’n’Turf’n’Laboratory and it is definitely edible.

As long as you clamp your lips shut.

Mele

When people ask me ‘where were you when William married Kate?', I will, without hesitation, declare that I was in a Subway with some random degenerates calling for a republic.

Subway customer holds ciggie for his son.

The monarchy is all well and good for those who are born into it. Those of us languishing in the backwater colony of Australia must celebrate our criminality, drink beer and eat at Subway, a franchise I’m sure no royal has ever set foot in.

They shall never take ... our cookies!

Subway is a mystery to me. The bread isn’t quite real: it smells bad, it’s pumped out of a tube and when heated, the chemical sludge converts to something like a rehydrated biscuit (like spacefood for astronauts, or an army ration perhaps). The fillings are benign (lettuce, beetroot) or weirdly American and out of context (some jalapeno pickle thing, tuna melt mix, meatball).Where are the sundried tomatoes, fetta cheese, artichokes, and tomato chutney?

Where was anything?

The Earl of Sandwich would not approve of Subway’s ‘sandwich artist’ claims, but to be fair, the kids working there were very nice. They were polite, cleaned constantly, engaged us in conversation, gave us informed food choices and manned the front with neither a manager nor an adult in sight. I’d hire them in a minute. The best service on Gouger Street I’ve ever had.

They were also kids who had been drummed with Australia’s food hygiene standards, something possibly at conflict with the ‘Subway Seafood Sensation’ crossed with meatball and bacon. In the words of Subway Artiste number one, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. That’s mixing cold food with hot food’. Like, WTF.

In the left hand, surf; in the right, turf; in the middle ... Bacon.

Our companions, Trent and Em, stuck to the cookies; Em wisely decided not to risk the future of her unborn child by eating any of the cold sandwich fillings. I took a bite from the triple meat monstrosity with great reluctance: eating here for our epicurean adventure was bad enough, food poisoning would be taking things too far.

Pictured: too far.

The surprise of the night was that the meat sanger was actually more edible than Subway’s most popular sandwich, the chicken parmie. There were so many chemicals floating about in the strange seafood and tomato meatball sauces that it tasted flavoursome and much more palatable than the combination of items suggest. The chicken parmie was dry, processed and tasted like a manky biscuit.

Subway had neither the lows of Ding Hao (chicken and jellyfish) nor the highs (the ribs). It was just crap in general. I don’t really get the point. McDonalds may destroy rainforests and exploit fourteen-year-olds but the French fries are awesome. I could make a sandwich at home that would out do Subway in a minute. The
strange, slightly astringent but sugary bread can be outdone by a slice of bleached white Tip Top.

Yes, I am a fancy bread person. I eat bread that comes from an Italian bakery and often has no English name. I eat Ciabattini. I have pane burro. Last week I read an article on The Age about the classification of wholegrain bread in Australia. Yes, because I was actually interested in our food labelling laws (I realise someone interested in fibre content is showing their age). I’ll eat rye, sourdough, pumpkins seeds, whatever’s actually made with some knowledge of what bread is.

What am I really saying? Well, just in case you missed it, don’t go to Subway, the bread sucks. In Em’s words, the presentation of it was no better:

‘Looks like a dirty nappy’.