Three Mothers

Having been somewhat disappointed with Zen Yai lately - our former favourite - we've been looking for a new Thai place in Civic. Last week, having quickly downed a gin and tonic at a clearly private-school-graduate establishment a.k.a. the Hippo, we got hungry, as always (ha ha ha), and decided to try our luck at the Three Mothers.

So, we walked across Garema Place and into a busy and noisy little restaurant, bustling, shall we say, with reasonably happy-looking customers and staff. Blocks of bright fuschia, yellow and green silk (some with the King of Thailand meets Andy Warhol-esque prints) lining the walls grab your attention before anything else - and keep grabbing it throughout the evening.

We were after something quick and straightforward - so had a tofu larb as the veggie option and the panang nua for the carnivore. The menu is extensive (and dishes seem at least a couple of dollars cheaper than the more up-market Thai options in Civic - i.e. Zen Yai and Lemongrass) although somewhat repetitive. What we mean here is that the same sauces, combinations of veggies and herbs make an appearance under different subheadings of 'chicken', 'beef', 'vegetables' - not that there is anything wrong with that... Nonetheless, what we ordered was fragrant and delicious. The presentation could have been more snazzy, although we did appreciate the hand-carved piece of radish in the shape of a rose. For a quick Thai meal before catching a movie, Three Mothers is a good option.

Bollywood Masala

"How were your meals?", asked the waiter.

We, the Always Hungrys, glanced at one another. A brief silence, then perhaps emboldened by that VB;

"The entrees were a bit average...but the mains were fantastic".

Having asked a routine question, but having received an apparently non-routine answer, the waiter was visibly taken aback by our candour, but retained his composure, if not his previous smile. The presence of another customer at the counter perhaps upped the ante somewhat...

Overall, we enjoyed our recent visit to Bollywood Masala in Dickson (on the corner of Challis and Cape streets, by the always-busy and well-lit Domino's and Pizza Hut outlets), as we have on all of our previous visits. This time though the entrees - stuffed mushrooms and paneer kebabs - were just a little dry and sad, especially in context of the general excellence of the rest of our experience, from the food to the service (including being volunteered the details of how they get their lamb to be oh-so-delicious). The eggplant main we had was particularly delicious.

With the unfortunate, apparently generational, closure of the Blue Elephant, we are now fairly comfortable in putting Bollywood Masala as the best Indian restaurant north of the lake (with only Taj Mahal coming close). Just keep to the mains...

Charcoal Rooster

Thoughtful planning can make a big difference to people's lives, with a case in point being whenever (or possibly after) they decided to build what is now Fenner Hall, someone thought it would be good to put in a couple of small shops nearby. Sitting on Ipima Street, the pair are seemingly isolated, but are close enough so that the residents of the said institutional accommodation wouldn't have to spend too much time and/or money going into Civic for a block of butter or a slab of VB. Instead, there is now a seemingly constantly busy liquor shop/mini-supermarket, and a similarly well-patronised fast food place - Charcoal Rooster.

Along with its evocative, and possibly (undeservedly) off-putting name, Charcoal Rooster, as we've recently discovered, also offers really-quite-good pide. The bread is moist and fresh, the fillings are superior, and overall its just much tastier than our recent experiences with the Turkish Pide House. Plus, the booze next door is some of the cheapest in the Inner North.

Recommended.

Zen Yai

Unfortunately sometimes good restaurants good bad. Chefs or other key staff move on, ownerships change and production values go downhill. This is even more unfortunate when this happens to one of your favourite places - like for us, Zen Yai.

Whenever we were hungry in and around Civic we used to know that Zen Yai was always there for us with its delicious, moderately-priced Thai food, served by always-friendly staff. Sure, it can be popular and difficult to get a table without booking on a Friday night, but that is saying a lot if that is the worst that can be said about a restaurant.

Basically, the food has suddenly and emphatically gone to rubbish on our two most recent visits, within a few weeks of each other. There had been some rough patches in the past, that later corrected, but they seem in retrospect to be relatively moderate, and there really seems to be a problem now. On our last visit we both ordered Pad Thais - the comparative benchmark for Thai restaurants. Both dishes were 1) thoroughly bland, and 2) short on ingredients, particuarly vegetables, beyond a few sprouts. We mentioned this to the front-of-house staff and asked if there had been changes in the kitchen staff, but were told that the same chef was still there.

Given this quite bizarre turn for the worse, we think we may have to defect to Lemongrass next time around.

Wasabi

Japanese restaurants aren't usually happy places for vegetarians - which is a shame as our vegetarian half used to quite like eating in them in their pre-vegetarian days. Akin to the loathsome vegetable stack found all-too-frequently elsewhere, the standard sole option available is usually a similarly undesirable tempura vegetable dish. Wasabi though, a tepanyaki place in Dickson, has put a little more thought and care into the feeding of non-meat eaters, and presented us with a number of delicious treats on visiting last week.

Order the Vegetarian Banquet for a sequence of treats, beginning with miso soup, through sushi, and other dishes of seasoned tofu, baked eggplant, rice, soba noodles (and a desert we didn't stick around for). Usefully, they were also happy to serve this option for one, rather a usual minimum of two diners for the rest of the banquets. We were also told that a tepanyaki variation could also be served. Our meat-eating half also ate well with a scallops and salmon dish as a main, preceded by tempura prawns.

The place was full early on a Friday evening, and we were very lucky to get a table without a reservation, with a number of people arriving after us being turned away, although it did empty out a bit after 8:00.

Overall, tasty, not too expensive, and recommended.

The East Kitchen

Good bakeries are very good things to find, particularly if they are near one's place of employment and one is not very good at making lunch for oneself on weekday mornings. The bakery in the Student Union building at the ANU, for example, provided us with reasonable sustenance (try the garlic butter scrolls) for not much money when we needed it. Perhaps, at the other end of the sophistication spectrum, we have also enjoyed Silo and Cornucopia's breads and other goodies from time to time (when we are game enough to brave their eternal busyness).

Recently however we discovered that The East Kitchen in Dickson, which appears to be a fairly standard Chinese restaurant by night, also offers self-service Chinese bakery food at lunchtime on Tuesdays and Fridays. All your glazed, Chinese-style, white-bread bun favourites are there, including the ubiquitous BBQ pork bun. The red bean paste variant isn't that flash (the paste is too gluggy), but we do like the coconut and custard filled ones. While certainly not the best bakery experience you're likely to have - although you do get to play with tongs - it is cheap and fairly yummy for a quick lunch. It's next to Sfoglia.

Cafe Altenberg

We like most of the inland country towns near Canberra - like Bungendore, Cobargo, Milton, and, of course, Braidwood. They try that much harder than their coastal cousins and seem to attract a different type of resident than the seachangers of the South Coast. Instead of bland suburbia-upon-sea, punctuated by the gin palaces of successful mobile phone store owners and quantity surveyors, the stores and houses inland towns are generally older and evocative of the unknown country of the past. Similarly, more frequently among their residents are those who have sought to escape from Babylon rather than desiring to reproduce it.

Long a favourite stop for pies and ice creams for Canberrans on their ways to the coast, Braidwood seems to be going through a gentrification process, as various members of the monied classes follow one another in setting up homeware, antique, and 2nd-hand book shops and cafes along its main drag. Among this milleu, Cafe Altenberg can be found in a pleasantly shaded courtyard behind a gallery selling fairly generic contemporary art. When we visited on a somewhat busy on a Saturday afternoon, we were confronted with a friendly front of house waitress, and a clearly agitated cook mumbling to herself and purposefully slamming and rattling various kitchen implements. We thought we heard something about the flyscreen not being shut properly... Anyway, undeterred, we ordered and generally enjoyed a falafel salad and a Moroccan lamb pie. At $17, the latter was on the expensive side, and a little average, but the salad was OK at $12 and enormous. Both dishes were treated with a tasty, if slightly sickly sweet, dressing.

Overall, good if not great.