Au Lac

Dickson is somewhat locally well-known as being Canberra's "Chinatown", although there are very few dragons or pandas lurking around. Apart from a few importer-grocery shops, and the legend of a young Jackie Chan having walked its streets, there isn't really much, at least from a superficial glancing, to support this imagination of place. It could be equally argued that American fast-food chains appear to be just as prominent in the commercial area's streetscape.

However, what Dickson does have is Au Lac - one of the city's better fake meat places (along with the nearby Kingsland). Fake meat, for the unacquainted, is a textured soy-based product that can be made into meat-ish dishes, typically by South-East Asian Buddhists. White meats (i.e. fake chicken, duck, or fish) are typically far more convincing than attempts at imitating red meat, and when done well, can even be tasty.

Accompanied by a soothing indoor waterfall (more restaurants should have one), guests at Au Lac ought to order the "Noodle Laksa" for $10 - and within 5-10 minutes they will be presented with a delicious spicy bowl of coconut milk, spice, veges, and radically tranformed soy. Most of the other dishes are OK, but the laksa really is the stand-out.

Asian Noodle House (Northbourne Ave)

The Asian Noodle House in the Sydney Building in Civic is a bit of a mixed bag. It has a few quirks that detract from it, but at the same time it excels in providing what its name suggests - noodles cooked in an Asian tradition.

Although many places offer meals associated with perhaps one or two countries, the Asian Noodle House is a little unusual in being explicitly pan-South-East Asian and doing a good job of it (i.e. on the menu are Thai, Malaysian/Singaporean, Vietnamese, Lao, and Chinese dishes). One of us had the Kwangtong noodles, the other a Laksa - and both were very tasty (although I would have felt the noodles would be a small serve if one was reasonably hungry).

However, the service was a little slow for a quiet Sunday evening, and some apparent simmering mother/daughter front-of-house tension made for a bit of a weird tone. Also, we had differing views on the entrees, with the quality of the tofu blocks and spring rolls being debatable.

Overall, as a parting thought, we would suggest that the place is possibly not called the Asian Entree House for a reason - stick to the noodles.

Turkish Delight

We've been to Turkish Delight in Belconnen a few times now and generally leave feeling satisfied.

Tucked away off Weedon Court in the town centre's light industrial area, the restaurant's interior decorators have managed to make what would otherwise be a stark commercial unit, in a relatively desolate area, feel kind of cosy. Rugs, orientalist prints, and an obligatory portrait of Ataturk all make you feel that you are at least partially sheltered from the barrenness of the concrete-and-low-rise landscape outside on a cold May evening.

On Saturday nights belly-dancers are put on, and which are, I think we are in consensus, a mixed blessing. Done well, with an enthusiastic crowd, it a reasonably interesting form of entertainment. If either of these elements are missing (and particularly the latter), it gets pretty sad very quickly. Also, we query if the dancers asking guests to dance with them is a good thing - generally we think it makes most people feel awkward, and detracts from the performance, as the shy sit in fear of immanent mortification.

Anyway, the food. On the whole it's pretty good, and reasonably priced, although we would recommend staying away from the baked dishes and sticking to the grilled meats and pide as mains. The dips and bread are strong points (notably in comparison to our experiences of the Turkish Pide House in Civic), and the Turkish wine is worth trying. And, of course, the namesake dessert is fine.

Coopers Extra Stout

It is more or less redundant to note that the Coopers brewery is (along with the Little Creatures crowd) one of the two best makers of mass market beer in Australia, or for that matter, Australasia (although we do think the "family brewed" tag is stretching it a little - what proportion of the Coopers workforce can really be family members?)

However, while being well familiarised with most of their other products we hadn't though previously come across their Extra Stout. In short, this is probably the best (mass market) stout we can think of this side of Ireland (along with perhaps New Zealand's classic Vita Stout). While not as rich and thick as Guiness (obviously the benchmark for the style) Coopers have actually managed to create a complex, textured drink. This unfortunately has been all-too-rare among the attempts of most brewers in this part of the world's attempts at making stouts, porters, and other darker beers.

Definitely worth a try for the uninitiated.

Pub Lunch: All Bar Nun

We like O'Connor. If we had been born ten years earlier, we might have even been able to buy a nice little cottage there. Alas, the baby boomers with their property speculation, dreaming up of the HECS program, and other little schemes to more or less squeeze Generation X, have made sure that plan is not likely to happen anytime soon. We can still occasionally, though, seek comfort from a glass of beer and a pub lunch.

One place we have done this a couple times recently is All Bar Nun (ABN hereafter), a sprawling complex that seems to be possibly, if slowly, taking over the O'Connor shops. We're not quite sure what the appropriate label for ABN is - pub, cafe, restaurant - it's kinda none and all of the above. Luckily, the place is so well known, we needn't bother...

So, what are its most appealing features? Well, first and foremost, at least (and somewhat paradoxically) for the Always Hungry team, it's Little Creatures (Bright Ale) ON TAP! We absolutely love this beer - a choice that recently receved the stamp of approval from one of the Braddon Cellars staff (see earlier post about Braddon booze shopping alternatives). ABN seems to be one of the few places that has it on tap - ON TAP! Anyway...

ABN has a few other things going for it - namely the food and the space. The food is really good pub grub I guess - some of our favourites include the fungi pizza (with blue cheese and red onion - yum!), bean tortilla, and possibly the best beer battered fries in town (served, predictably, with garlic aioli and sweet chilli sour cream). The falafel burger is also good. As you can perhaps tell from our choices, we've stuck to the vegetarian options - we like to share - so can't really say much about the meat stuff.

Finally, the space then. It's handy to our key haunts (home and work) and has lots of seating (inside and out) and much of it rather satisfactory - unless you're determined to have your spot in the sun on a Sunday afternoon. The outside seating is a little cramped - something that becomes particularly salient when you find yourself next to a tableful of 18-22 year olds discussing their inevitably thoughtless, inconsiderate, disloyal, etc. significant others.

All in all, All Bar Nun - a job well done!

Rama's

Rama's is a (Fijian-)Indian restaurant in the Woden suburb of Pearce, set along with an Ethiopian and a Vietnamese place in an archetypal National Capital Development Commission concrete 1960s local centre.

Perhaps due to a perception of being a "hidden gem" given its somewhat out of the way location Rama's has quite a reputation - to the extent that reasonable people talk of it as being Canberra's best Indian joint. Correspondingly, every time we've been there it has been very full (and very noisy), with patrons stuffed into a large number of small booths in a not very large space.

So, how does it stack up in May 2008? Lest there be no mistake, we will say right now that Rama's is competent. However, while Rama's is OK, we would have to question the reputation of it being "The Best Indian in Canberra". Specifically, (along with the noise) the menu was rather unremarkable (i.e. it featured the standards, and only the standards of Indian restaurants in Australia), and the food, while fine, was not particularly memorable (with the possible exception of the Palak Paneer).

Costwise, meals were a couple of dollars more than you might expect for equivalent dishes in other Canberra Indian restaurants, but this was in part offset by generous servings of rice, complementary poppadoms, and no corkage charge. The service was also friendly, efficient, and generally excellent.

In sum, we would probably lean towards one of the Blue Elephant (Braddon), Flavours of India (Garema Place) or the Taj Mahal (Melbourne Building) if we were to make a judgement of "The Best Indian in Canberra" (if it were possible to be so unequivocal), but if you were to go to Rama's on a quiet night with a freshened menu, it would probably be comparable.

Notes on the Bottle Shops of Braddon

Here at Always Hungry - in Canberra, we are sometimes also a bit thirsty. This thirst therefore necessitates us visiting the bottle shops of Braddon, of which there are three.

The first of these is the Braddon Cellars, who style themselves as the "The Friendly Sellers". On this they are not wrong, with always friendly staff, in opposition to their name proper given that the shop is clearly not situated in a cellar. The place is bright and functional, if also catering to booze-hounds stumbling over from The Civic Pub or wherever. Prices are low and the selection is satisfactory for the likes of us, and so we thoroughly recommend it.

Further up Lonsdale Street is The Bottle-O, apparently formerly run by the owners of Debacle but now sold-on to a local chain of booze shops. While it was run by the Debacle crowd there was clearly an emphasis on an uncluttered aesthetic, but which has now been replaced by more hustle. The prices are notably up a notch from The Friendly Sellers, but rather than working class men and male students doing serving, customers are presented with middle-aged middle class men who affect knowledge on things boozy, along with female students behind the counter. One bonus is their stocking of the Rewined range of very drinkable local Canberra Region wines sold on a deposit basis (i.e. customers receive a $3 discount on the return of a bottle).

Finally, over on Mort Street is a bulk chain whose actual name currently escapes us, but possibly contains the words "Discount" or "A-1" or something. Anyway, it's a bit scary in that its staff are apparently strictly obliged to great you in an over-friendly manner (another tyranny of the age), but has an extensive and very cheap range of cheap own-label wines.

All in all, given the more or less equivalence of choice and pricing we would recommend the slightly edgy and untamed feel of the "Friendly Sellers", but of course, the choice is yours.

Canberra 1989

One of the major critiques made of the enlightenment, and subsequently modernity, is that "progress" can be a funny thing. What may seem to be liberatory may simply turn out to be a new prison. What does this have to with eating in Canberra - we can't quite put our fingers on it, but maybe call it a vibe...

We've been recently reading through an old Lonely Planet guide to Australia from 1989, back when Hawke was PM, and locally, the Raiders used to win things. Heady times indeed.

Anyway, along with suggesting that you might go see a cultural institution or two, the book inevitably also recommends places to eat and drink - and on the whole, Canberra doesn't sound all that bad, especially in the context of the frequent contention made in food pages and food shows that we - middle-class consumers - are now all so much more sophisticated these days. To oversimplify the stock story, over the last two or three decades, middle Australia has been allegedly led, by courageous pioneer figures (usually with non Anglo-Celtic surnames), through the initiation rites of espresso and outdoor dining, to a nirvana of mass taste, discernment, and connoisseurship.

Being too young to know better, we wonder if it ever really was that bad, and observing the frequent, if glossily packaged, mediocrity we see around us now in the hospitality industry, with apparently willing consumers, it does make us wonder how far Canberra has come.

Reading the Lonely Planet, a few things are striking. First, is the turnover of places - only Mama's in Garema Place, the Pancake Parlour in Civic, Gus's, and Rasa Sayang in Dickson seem to have survived the last 20 or so years. Gone are the other dozen or so places suggested, some of which sounded ok.

Second, perhaps unsurprisingly given the period, is the paucity of Asian food places. Also interesting is their generally very straightforward naming. The Vietnamese place is Canberra Vietnamese Restaurant, the Malaysian place in Civic is the Malaysian Restaurant.

Third, is the decline of live music and particularly jazz venues. It may be arguable, but the replacement of live jazz venues with the doof-doof music, could perhaps be seen as precisely the sort of uncertain progress of modernity we began with.

Aldi - Less Choice is Sometimes More

As the discussants at the fellow Canberra blog Crazybrave point out, there is less choice at Aldi. We, the Always Hungrys, believe that this is its charm.

Aldi, in contrast to other supermarkets, is premised on the idea that at least some consumers actually want less - what we contend are more or less pointless - choices for certain products. These consumers, in our understanding, want a certain level of comparative quality in combination with low prices. This, of course, contrasts with a certain unqualified rhetoric often found in advertising asserting that consumers want more choices.

This call-for-choice is usually predicated on two grounds: that competition engenders quality, or that choice allows the consumer to express their own unique-as-a-snowflake identity. Although consumption may indeed be a manifestation of one's social identity as sophisticated, Australian, or young-at-heart or whatever, the idea that more or less mass-marketed goods make an individual can scarcely be considered as much more than, at best, problematic. We find it hard to see how being able to choose between 20 types of widely-available, say, toothpaste or bottled water produces individuality. Rather, Aldi's less choice of essentially generic products of a comparable quality to its competitors at usually much lower prices provides greater value, and leaves identity to more substantive aspects of life.

We grant that Aldi is not perfect - for example, we are skeptical of the value of its bulk packaging to facilitate faster scanning against environmental impacts. We are glad that we have choices elsewhere in purchasing certain food and drink products. However, within many aspects of cooking and eating, we like it that Aldi is orientated to an alternative model of the consumer and provides an alternative to choices not worth making.

Pizza = La Posada (Not La Porchetta)

I really like pizza. It's not only yummy, it's also super easy to make - and to make it well. This is especially true if you stay away from apricots, tandoori chicken, and pineapple (sorry all you Hawaiian fans out there) and stick to the few basic ingredients, such as good quality bocconcini, some basil, and a tomato base with plenty of garlic, pepper and olive oil. Although I make my own pizza bases (using spelt flour - you may cringe at its hippy connotations, but it tastes delicious), even store bought bases can be OK if treated with some forethought (i.e. a really hot oven).

Anyway, the point of all this is that if I'm going to pay someone else to make a pizza for me then I expect, well, awesomeness. At La Posada (Civic), awesome pizza it is. This cute and cozy restaurant may also do a good job of pasta, risotto, etc. - but we wouldn't know. Having received some insider advice early on to stick with pizza, that's exactly what we've done. Some of our favourites are gorgonzola (I know I made a rather 'purist' pizza statement only a paragraph ago, but blue cheese really works on this one), veggie deluxe and chorizo. I won't go into the whole thick crust/thin crust thing - suffice it to say, the crust is just as it should be. Also, we highly recommend the chilli bread (a spicy alternative to the usual garlic/herb varieties) and the orange pudding for dessert, if there's any space left. Speaking of space, one large pizza ($20) should be plenty for two adults - it is, as the name suggests, large.

Not that this should be seen as something unusual and therefore worth mentioning, but the staff there are just so damn good - it's kinda hard to explain, but I think we've decided that they treat us like people, rather than customers, if you know what I mean.

Oh, and it's not that I have anything against La Porchetta, but you can do so much better...

Gus's

Gus's is something of a celebrity among cafes in the Canberra hospitality cosmos. It's reputation as fashionable and superior is often quickly communicated to newcomers and visitors to the city. It even has its own Wikipedia page, repeating the locally well-known battles of the original Gus-from-Vienna in establishing outdoor eating at his venue (the page also suggests that the original Gus has long moved on (presumably) to al fresco dining in the sky). However, it is the contention of the Always Hungrys that like most celebrities, it is usually a disappointing experience when they are encountered in person.

Whatever the merits of Gus's in the past, it is clearly now no longer a leader among Canberra's cafes. This decline is both relative - i.e. in part due to the existance of many superior alternatives - as well when simply compared to the Gus's of a couple years ago.

An analogy with major fast food chains might be fruitfully made. The menu is predictable - in this case, stock-in-trade Australasian cafe food (mushrooms on toast, wedges with sour cream and sweet chili sauce, generic pasta dishes, and so on). Often, it would appear that they are prepared without a noticebly high level of care. Further, to stretch Haywood's observation below that the only acceptable substitute for good beer is very cheap beer, the food is not particuarly cheap - being priced at standard Canberra cafe levels (i.e. you could eat at the apex of local daytime eating, Silo, in Kingston, for around the same money). In sum, as with major fast food chains, one is probably going to be served food that only the young and callow are likely to be uncritically satisfied with.

To be clear, this is not to suggest the current Gus's is any worse than an all-too-large number of Canberra cafes, rather, that you can probably do better.

The Wig and Pen Assessed against the Haywood Framework

From Christchurch, the author David Haywood has recently put forth a five-point framework of the key characteristics of the all-too-infrequently found "good pub". The original piece is worth reading in its entirety, containing compelling insights including, "The only acceptable substitute for good beer, in my opinion, is very, very cheap beer" and, in setting an appropriate atmosphere, "A stuffed fish is a welcome addition to any pub".

In short, the five essential components of the good pub can be summarised as:

1. Good beer (i.e naturally fizzy, non-sweet, well-headed, hand pumped beer).
2. A total absence of recorded music, with live music allowable in very restricted circumstances.
3. The absence of activities requiring physical exertion. Darts and dominoes are fine, pool is out.
4. Bar staff with gravitas appropriate to serving good beer. Trivial bonhomie is dimly viewed.
5. Dark, sombre, yet comfortable decor.

With only minor qualifications, we are willing to accept Haywood's criteria as being of value. This of course leads to the further question of which pubs in one's own place of residence fulfil them. Haywood himself notes that no one venue in Christchurch meets all of his criteria, with various otherwise meritous establishments each having significant flaws. Drawing on our collective experience of drinking in Canberra, it is clear only one pub comes close to clearing the high bar set. This, of course, is the Wig and Pen, whose beer in taste and its service is well above the offerings of any and everywhere else, and lacks only for seating comfortable for extended visits.

Unlike Haywood, we are willing to entertain arguments for pubs other than those that tend towards his archetype clearly derived from a very particular understanding of the United Kingdom and Ireland. We are willing to acknowledge, for example, the pleasures of the Civic Pub, or the Phoenix as an occasional corrective. However, in most circumstances the discerning, reflective, adult Canberran cannot venture past the W and P.