Tudo

In thinking about how to write up our lunch at Tudo this weekend we struggled. There just didn't seem to be an obvious angle - until - we decided that this absence of an angle would become the story. Thus, in sum, we have decided to pronounce Tudo, a little Vietnamese restaurant in the O'Connor shops, as average, ordinary, and unremarkable, in the true, non-pejorative senses of those words.

Tudo doesn't really do anything wrong (or at least didn't on this visit) while at the same time, its food (in both quality and price), service, atmosphere, and so on are just not really that distinctive. It is perhaps an archetypal Vietnamese-restaurant-in-Australia. Within Canberra, it compares neither favourably or unfavourably with Rice Paper (Civic), Au Lac, the Asian Noodle House, or the place in Erindale we reviewed a while ago.

On our last visit we had the Red Cooked Tofu and the Lemongrass and Chile Beef, both of which were aromatic and tasty. On a previous visit one of us greatly enjoyed the Special Beef Soup with Rice Noodles. Generally, the soups seems to be the strengths (and most popular items) of the menu. While this time the service was fine, on other occasions one of us dining alone felt that they were treated with rudeness and disdain for taking up table-space as sole diner on a busy weekday lunch. Overall, we're a bit ambivalent about Tudo.

Flatheads Cafe

The inclusion of "cafe" in Flatheads' name is perhaps something of a misnomer - the place is a fish and chip shop, if with a few frills in the decor and the menu. Located next door to All Bar Nun in the O'Connor shops - it seemed to attract a reasonable cross sample of the suburb's population on our visit on a Saturday afternoon. Sitting next to us in its pleasantly sunny, warmly painted interior were a baby boomer threesome talking property speculation, over from them were a couple of fashionable 20-somethings, behind us was a parent with a couple of kids apres-Saturday morning sport, and outside was an art-student-looking type reading Camus.

Being a fish and chip shop, I imagine that the owners of the place could expect that there would be customer resistance to them charging real-cafe prices, but they seem to get away with it. Quality-wise it was a bit of a mixed bag. The vege burger we ordered was quite possibly the best vege burger either of us has eaten - with an excellent lightly fried patty, crisp salad and buns, and delicious tatare sauce. However, the fish was a bit of a disappointment and the chips were average (and only warm, rather than hot). Specifically, our complaints with the fish were waaaaaay to much batter and the use of fillets teeming with sharp and nasty bones that seriously detracted from the experience. It's a bit of a tough one in terms of making a judgement, but fish issues aside, that burger would probably tempting enough for a future visit sometime.

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!

Borsch i Vodka

Recently the Polish Club in O'Connor decided that its future did not lie with problem gamblers. So, breaking with standard club practice, it cleaned out the pokies and turned the place over to a restaurant serving Polish cuisine - Borsch i Vodka.

The exterior of the Club building housing the restaurant itself is, to at least one pair of our untrained eyes, quite attractive - typical Canberra 70s brutalism-meets-Frank Lloyd Wright, and opened by Pope John Paul II before he was Pope John Paul II. Upon entering, you are presented with a view straight into the kitchen, with the back-of-house staff looking believably Polish. The dining room itself is off to one side, and feels appropriately enough, perhaps how you might imagine a 1970s-80s Polish restaurant open to people with hard currency might look like.

The Always Hungrys have been to the Club three times in the past few months. Once on our own, once with a couple of friends, and once on a Saturday afternoon when after lunch across the road we chanced upon markets in the main hall selling fresh pork products, sausages, and canned and sachet goods imported direct from Gdansk or wherever.

The food at the restaurant proper has generally been excellent and reasonably priced ($15-20 mains). Just keep away from the deserts - which on both occasions were not that flash. Otherwise, as you would hope, the borsch was delicious (and bright pink), as were the cheese pierogi (dumplings), meat pierogi, and cabbage rolls. These, of course, were well accompanied by freshly pickled, but not-too-sauer, sauerkraut.

Funnily enough, we haven't actually had vodka there, but the various Polish beers we have tried from the bar were also tasty. With a few families, and far fewer young APS-types and graduate accountants, All Bar Nun it is not, the merits of which or otherwise will not be discussed here. However, if you are looking for something different, we would definitely recommend it.