Oscillate Wildly in Newtown gives Tetsuya’s a run for its money

Yes, it’s a big call to say that a humble 30-seater in a converted terrace just off King Street is even in the same stratospheric league as Australia’s number one restaurant and an establishment regularly voted into the top 10 in the world. But Daniel Puskas’ food did for me on Tuesday night what Tet’s failed to do a month or two ago, that is give me goosebumps and leave me with a Cheshire cat grin at the absolute serendipitous brilliance of what was going on in my mouth; not just with one or two of the 9 degustation courses, but almost all of them. Another major plus was that the whole meal felt somehow more “authentic” than Tetsuya’s.

August was my second visit to that hallowed shrine of fine dining, but it felt a bit like the army of staff there just were going through the motions on that second visit. They’ve been serving many of the same 14 dishes to a hundred-odd punters every night for a long time. There was no personal attention, no engagement between kitchen, waitstaff, food and customer. Dare I say there was a whiff of cynicism in the air that cold August night. Oscillate wildly on the other hand had a true buzz; there was a palpable excitement and passion in the air.

The room is unpretentious and almost cramped. The vibe is comfortable, Inner West-come-as-you-are, without being overly casual. There’s starched, white linen on the bistro tables, but the staff don’t do that silly fine-dining crumb scrape thing between courses. The two floor staff worked hard to ensure diners were comfortable and that the meal was moving at our pace and rhythm. Their tone was spot on. The only other waiter I’ve encountered who struck such a perfect balance between professionalism and friendliness, passion for the food without masturbation, was a Frenchman in Gordon Ramsay’s Tokyo outpost. Right at the beginning of the night we were invited to ask any questions we may have about any of the dishes or ingredients. A tick for avoiding snobbery and making it OK not to know what “Tonka” is! Dishes were explained matter-of-factly when brought to the table and when compliments were given as empty plates were taken away staff seemed genuinely pleased to hear them.

So, what did we eat that was so good? Delicious, warm house sourdough was a promising start. The really emorable dishes were the duck with sassafras, sweet potato and cinnamon, and the “deconstructed” pumpkin pie for dessert. But the absolute crowning highlight was the liquorice-cured salmon with blood grapefruit and beetroot sorbet and lavendar (yes the flower!) foam. I still marvel at the phenomenal combination of flavours on the palate. I quite simply can not think of another dish in my entire life as a foodie that made me that excited. (Though Tetsuya’s sashimi scampi with passionfruit and white miso comes close).

All of that sensational food with a decent espresso and heavenly petit fours at the end came in at just $202 for two – plus $45 spent earlier at the bottle shop for a decent bottle of BYO Eden Valley riesing. That’s pretty much the same price as each person would pay at most other restaurants of this calibre in Sydney.

My only thought as to how this place could improve (and I’ve had to scrape the barrel) would be to put the price up by $20 and concentrate on sourcing local and organic ingredients of the highest quality. Maybe I’m a victim of a food fad, but I almost felt lost not knowing whether the ingredients were locally sourced, biodynamic or somehow special, or whether on the other hand the kitchen hand had just popped around the corner to Franklins to get them.

I’m glad to have dined at Oscillate Wildly while it is perhaps still just on the cusp of fame and greatness and while it is still small and intimate. In fact I wish I’d been there a few years ago in its infancy when it was still doing a-la-carte. I certainly hope it stays small and unpretentious rather than expanding and losing its authenticity.

My own food safari

One of the things I’ll most miss about Sydney when we pack up and move back to Tokyo…is the ability to traverse the world in the space of a couple of suburbs.

Friday night we walked down Victoria Street to Malabar – our all time favourite Indian restaurant – for dinner. They specialise in South Indian food rather than the ubiquitous tandoori cuisine that defines Indian in Sydney. We started with half a dozen spiced pan fried prawns which were sweet, fresh and succulent and cooked to perfection (I’m fussy about prawns that tend to get overcooked and loose that lovely juicy “crunch”. For mains we had three curries: Goan fish (ten out of ten!!! Sooooooo good!!) Lamb Varuthi (the fresh curry leaves infuse the dish with a delicious, authentic Southern flavour. The meat is slow cooked and extremely tender). And a mixed Dal. It was all washed down with a BYO bottle of Penley Estate “Phoenix” Coonawarra 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon. (Predominantly fruit driven but far from one-dimensional).

So to Saturday. I rented a car yesterday afternoon because I had to collect dad from the airport at 6:00 this morning. I was initially going to get the train out to his place yesterday evening to pick up his car ready for this morning, but the whole city’s train system had ground to a halt yet again. (The trains are something I won’t miss!!). Anyway, having a car is always an excuse for Baba and I to find somewhere new for dinner. The initial plan was to go to Haberfield, a predominantly Italian neighbourhood we haven’t explored yet. We arrived on the main restaurant strip around 7:30 and alas couldn’t get a table anywhere. It’s a good thing we had a plan B. It was good bye Italy and hello China – specifically Shanghai.

Back in the car and after five minute’s drive to Ashfield Ciao morphed into Ni Hao. Ashfield has become home to a large Shanghainese population. Whereas 90% of the resaurants in Chinatown serve up the relatively familiar cuisine of Canton, 90% of the restaurants lining Liverpool road serve the rich and vinegar-infused food of Shanghai. We had daikon pancakes (which were actually spherical in shape?!?!?), soy-braised river fish, dumplings that explode and fill the mouth with soup when you bite into their skins, hot and sour soup and fried noodles. All that food for $20 a head. The fish at $16.80 was on of the most expensive dishes on the menu!

One thing I’m afraid to say that the Chinese don’t do as well as some others is dessert. So, we got back in the car and drove another 5-10 minues down the road to Bar Italaia – THE Leichhardt institution. The same guy has been impatiently snatching customers’ money and making brilliant coffees for as long as I’ve been going to Bar Italia – at least 12 years now. The other thing that hasn’t changed in that time is the buzzof anticipation in the gelato queue. I am a creature of habit so always have the same two flavours; chocolate and panacotta.  One more constant at Bar Italia  is the old bloke in the beret who is a permanent fixture in the corner, chattering away in Italian.

Lunch today was a very disappointing serve of fish and chips (an attempt to satisfy a random craving).

Maeve O’Meara, eat your heart out.

The opera…

…on wednesday night was most enjoyable. Met baba down at opera bar a bit after six for a couple of glasses of Wine and dinner. Stonier Mornington Peninsula Chardonnay gets a big thumbs up – I’m loving cool-climate kardy at the moment. Mr riggs McLarenvale Shiraz Viognier was a bit kerosene-y on its own, but after 20 mins in the glass and the slight bitterness of the Asian greens that accompanied my (quite good) Pork Belly, it redeemed its self to a fair extent.

I was lucky to be able to get a couple of A-reserve tickets to La Boheme at the last minute. I’ve seen the opera a couple of times, but this new production was a first for me. The setting was 1980s Paris which was right up baba’s alley, as he’s having a bit of an ’80s obsession at the moment. Things I loved about this production were: Young soprano HyeSeoung Kwong singing the lead of Mimi (saw her last year in Turandot and fell in love with her voice), clever staging, flashes of humour – especially during Musetta’s aria, breakdancing(!!). Things that grated a little: Puccini’s typically clunky plots, coughers throughout the audience, rotton accoustics in the Opera Theatre.

Thankfully there’s talk of huge interior renovations at the opera house over the next few years. What that will do to Opera Australia’s revenue however is a bit of a worry; probably at least 50% of the audience on Wednesday were tourists….tourists who certainly wouldn’t buy tickets to the opera in Sydney if it was held at any other theatre in town. I secretly hope they can strike a deal with the State Theatre during the renovations…it’s such a gorgeous space.

Penfolds Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz 2003

A colleague at work (who I affectionately call crazy Jan…because her name is Jan and she’s positively bonkers) kindly bought me a bottle of the abovementioned wine a few months ago. I finally decided to open it on the weekend. In all honesty it didn’t do much for me.

It’s a “big” Shiraz. 14.5% alcohol and chewy. Red berry fruit is fairly dominant and a fair bit of spice….but not delicate cool-climate Shirz, spice….it unsubtle, slightly questionable, bain maree indian takeaway spice. Perhaps the 2003 is still too young, because I found that the alcohol really dominated the palate. It’s not a heavily oaked style, so there weren’t those secondary, woody characteristics which often help to carry a big wine when it’s young. It wasn’t a bad wine, but i would have expected more from the penfolds Bin range….even from this, one of the most junior members.

Wine appreciation class 2

The theme of tonight’s lesson was the difference betwen cheap and expensive wines. We started on whites where we tasted first a cask wine, second a cheapish bottle ($10-$12) of Lindemans Chardonnay and a more expensive bottle of Chardonnay from Briar Ridge in the Hunter Valley – rather incogruously I thought as the Hunter is far more renowned for its Semillons rather than its Chardonnay. The three wines chosen demonstrated well the improvement one sees in colour, aroma, palate and complexity as price increases. The cask wine really smelt and tasted like the cardboard it was packaged in. The Briar Ridge Chardonnay wasn’t as good in my opinon as the Peppertree Chardonnay from Orange I alluded to in an earlier post, but was still a very pleasant wine and a reminder of why Chardonnay was so popular a couple of years ago before we all jumped on the Sav Blanc bandwagon.

Next we took a similar journey through three reds. My hopes of the quality wine being a bottle of Grange or Grand Cru Bordeaux unfortunately didn’t come to fruition. It was instead a 2004 Barossa Shiraz, Grenache, Mourvedre (i.e. in the style of a French Cotes du Rhone) from Pepperjack. To be honest it didn’t really butter my toast with it’s fairly simple fruity style and short finish. Again however the difference between it and the cask wine was marked. No doubt we were a room full of wine snobs, but the cask wine was truly awful smelling and tasted bad too. There were many screwed up faces.

All this came after a weekend of epicurian delights. It was dad’s 67th birthday, so baba and I took him to The Brasserie, an imaginitely named French…ummm…Brasserie down the road from us on Crown street. There are no mains over $30 and the food and service were of a standard one would normally expect to pay more for in Sydney. My smoekd cod puree and tapenade, Lamb’s stomach and crumbed cutlet with fromage blanc and quince pudding were all washed down with a very drinkable 2003 Cotes du Rhone St Joseph. (The Rhone Valley is totally my flavour of the month – Viognier for whites and Shiraz – or Syrrah – red blends).

Saturday saw a long, indulgent and slightly boozy waterside lunch on the first warm spring-like day we’ve had this year with a fantastic old school chum at a place called Liquidity just under the Anzac Bridge. Steamed snapper and apple and rhubarb crumble with SENSATIONAL marscepone whip were both very good, though a tad overpriced, especially when compared to the quality of the meal I’d had the night before. The Henschke Adelaide Hills Savignon Blanc we had was a more refined version of what can often be lolly water wine. It had pleasant flinty notes which complemented the tart olives and asparagus the fish was served with.

Sunday night we went and hung out at Lounge on Goulburn Street where some people we know were DJing. As the night wore on and we ended up back at someone’s house and the grog and funny smelling tobacco were taking effect, a rather peculiar married man visiting from Osaka seemed to take a somewhat disturbing interest in comparing my hairy legs to his own and pinching my bottom. Those kooky boys from Japan. Alfred Kinsey would have been kept very busy had he visited the Land of the Rising Sun!!!

Wine appreciation classes

I had my first class in my “introduction to wine appreciation” course at WEA on Monday night. I decided that it was time to get out of the house and to get a hobby; hence my decision to part with a couple of hundred dollars and wander into town on each of the next 7 Monday nights to get sloshed and learn something along the way.

There are about 16 or 17 students in the class which is taught by a rotund Kiwi called Don who reminds me a bit of my dad – except that Don tells far better jokes. I’m not entirely convinced I’m going to learn a great deal because Don tends to just ramble a bit and the other students in the class have vastly different levels of background knowledge.

We tasted 8 wines on the first night – four whites, a Rose and three Reds (one of which was corked and a brilliant example of what wine shouldn’t taste like. Interestingly 4 or 5 people in the room put their hands up when Don asked them if they enjoyed that wine).

Next week, week two possibly looks like the most interesting when we will be looking at the difference between cheap wines and expensive ones. Chateau cardboard to Grange (well maybe not quite up to Grange standard but something posh…)

Golden Century…it’s who you know

We went for Chinese at Golden Century last Satuday night. Friends from Japan are in town. One of those friends is actually a Chinese woman who has been a friend of my dad for years and years and who has lived most of the last dozen or so years in Yokohama. She’s the key. The Chinese have a word gaunxi which means “connections” or relationships.

My old man had booked a table for us. The restaurant wanted to seat us upstairs which for Golden Century is a big no no. Downstairs is where all the action is and more importantly, our chinese friend has gaunxi with the floor manager downstairs. This is very important, because no sooner had we arrived than a cancellation magically appeared for a downstairs table. No menus were produced; just a conversation about what was good and fresh that day and what we felt like eating. A big communal bowl of soup and double shot of whisky (“tea”) for our Japanese friend both arrived without mention or fanfare. Then dozens of Tasmanian oysters, abalone, praws, steamed fish, pipis etc etc all washed down with a couple of bottles of rather pleasant Eden Valley Riesling. As smokers stepped outside for a puff, staff suddenly appeared offering European cigarettes and gold lighters. When the bill came it was mysteriously small, but was compensated for by a very generous tip.

Golden Century is very good at the worst of times (I love the fact that every waiter’s name badges always either say “Ken” or “Trainee”), but with connections, it’s a perfect – almost regal – dining experience.

Very yummy wine

Pepper Tree 2005 Grand Reserve Orange Chardonnay.

Purchased from the Pepper Tree Hunter cellar door for around $35 a few months ago on the day trip we took to the Hunter. I still remember my spontaneous reaction and pleasant surprise when I tasted the wine at Pepper Tree. Chardonnay is considered rather passe in wine circles nowadays as people have jumped on the Sav Blanc bandwagon. I’ve often felt a bit kicked in the teeth by cheap Chardonnay, hence my surprise and sheer joy at tasting this wine. On the nose it’s pineapply and summer fruit (nothing unsual there for an Australian chardonnay). The real joy comes on the palate. Orange is a cool climate region and in very simple terms coll climate = complexity and sophisitication. This wine displays a magical integration of tropical fruit and strong buttered toast flavours. Neither one dominates the other. They intertwine absolutely beautifully. I bought two bottles. One and a half left now.

Enjoyed it tonight with homemade moussaka.

Thumbs up for Adelaide…

…but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Friday Morning we arrived to zero degree temperatures and frost thick on the grass next to the runway. The flight on Virgin Blue was typical Low cost Airline tacky “upbeat” service (“good morning ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls…”) and rip-off inflight catering ($3.00 for instant coffee anyone or $5.00 to watch crap american telly??). The irony is that while i got my flight for free as part of a mobile phone promotion, baba could have flown for less on Qantas and got breakfast, coffee and the paper without having to put up with circus performers for flight attendants…not to mention the bogans in the seat in front!!!

We picked up the car and drove confidently to Adelaide street in north adelaide hoping to find somewhere nice and a bit funky for breakfast. No such luck…I’m sure it’s as hip and happening in the evening as the tourist brochures proudly proclaim, but the only place open for breakfast was a little coffee shop which was far more reminiscent of a CWA tearoom than sophisticated urban chic.

We managed to navigate our way to Norwood (no thanks to Baba’s inept, upside down map reading). If we were in Sydney we would have been in snooty Mosman…there were cafes full of ladies all of a certain age, wearing sensible and cleraly expensive clothes and perfect hair dos. We found a great shrine to all things Italian in a place called Bravo. They did an excellent breakfast and also had an interesting tapas-style menu and serious drinks in the evening.

Feeling well fed and caffined up we hot the road for McLaren vale. Adelaide is a very sensibly laid out city and her drivers are awfully courteous and law abiding so it was easy to get on to the main road going south. In no time we were checking into our digs for the night Claddagh Cottage.

It was a really cute Hobbit house of a cottage and a lovely base for our McLaren Vale explorations. If I was writing a review for Claddagh Cottage, the things I would nitpick upon include the fairly unimaginitive breakfast provisions left in the fridge, the lack of real coffee despite there being one of those ’80s drip machine thingys, and the typical cast-off utensils and blunt knives one always finds in such places. The location barely on the edge of town, just up the road from the public school which is in turn next door to the cemetary isn’t really “rural” but with such tiny windows in the historical cottage, it wouldn’t matter if it was next to a nuclear power plant.

To wine:McLaren Vale is a very picturesque region. Recent rain meant that the rolling hills were very green. The vines in the foreground and sea in the background conjured up immages of somewhere vaguely “European” (I was going to say Tuscan, but I doubt that there is much sea to be seen in Tuscany).

Our first vineyard was Coriole. The bloke at the cellar door was a bit standoffish and didn’t go out of his way to talk up the wines or to make any recommendations. Walked out with a bottle of shiraz and a sticky riesling. The bloke was also the first of many many men in that part of the world with very verdant chin growth. Perhaps someone can shed some light on why so many South Austrlaians go in for grey beards…

Next was D’Arenberg where the men and women at the cellar door weren’t sporting bushy cornflake catchers and were far more friendly and interesting to chat to. D’Arenberg’s wines were also a notch up. Yummy Yummy. Particularly impressive was their Viognier. It had me giggling it tasted so good. Had a mixed half dozen sent home.

Baba’s penguin fixation was indulged when we went down to Victor Harbour at sunset to watch the little penguins come ashore. They were a bit shy that night and we only saw a dozen or so, but they were cute waddling along.

After freezing half to death watching smelly birds (and getting fed up with drunk, noisy Brits on the penguin tour) we had dinner in a local organic restaurant (think pleasant brasserie surroundings and good food rather than hippies and brown rice) before retiring to a hot bath and crackling fire as the frost settled outside.

On Saturday morning, the nearby town of Willunga hosts a farmers market. There was lots of fresh fruit and veg, honey, flowers, essential oils, cakes, jams and dairy products. We bought a litre of organic milk and some yoghurt. They were both magnificent and sooooo much more delicious than what we normally get at the supermarket. I’m rather fond of milk. While living in Japan I despaired at how awful the milk tasted – even the expensive stuff which is pasturised in the more typical western style was still somehow bitter and just not very nice. Probably something to do with poor old cows cooped up and being fed chemicals rather than roaming free on green pastures. Coming baack to Australia and drinking the local milk again has been a great relief; this McLarenVale Organic milk took cow juice to a whole new dimension!!

We then took the scenic route back to Adelaide – or rather I enjoyed driving along deserted, winding country roads while baba slept. Once we’d checked into the hotel (Holiday Inn, corner room with a good view, drab decor, too much advertising in the room, personalised message and greeting from manager a nice touch) we took a stroll through the Botanic gardens and down by the River. It’s very nice to be right in the middle of a big city and able to breath clean air and see and hear birds everywhere. However apart from Rundle Mall in the middle of town which could easily be Sydney’s Pitt St or Melbourne’s Bourke St or Brisbane’s Queen(??) Street, the city was dead. What do Adelaide people do on a Saturday afternoon??? There was simply no one about.

After a little R&R (rest and romance) back at the Hotel, we frocked up to go to the Symphony. Adelaide Symphony Orchestra were playing Elgar, Wagner and Tchaikovsky which was very enjoyable – especially Elgar’s violin concerto. We were then right on time for our dinner reservation at The Brasserie, Simon Bryant’s (ABC TV the cook and the chef – BRILLIANT cooking show) restaurant. South Australian chefs and restaurants are proud of sourcing local, good quality ingredients and much less concerened about the sceney showyness of much of the Sydney dining scene. I loved simon’s Kangroo with bush food salad, native berries and quince. Baba accidentally ordered fish and chips – but made from delicius SA whiting and organic potatoes served with balsamic vinegar (from TV co-host’s Maggie Beer’s range perhaps???) My fig pudding dessert was 2007′s best dessert to date by far. In fact the whole meal or me shot straight to the top of the 2007 dining charts.

On Sunday, after again being unsuccessful in finding anywhere decent for breakfast in Adelaide, we gave up and headed straight up to the Barossa. Long story short, the Barossa was a bit of a let down after the natural beauty of McLaren Vale. We made the foodie’s pilgrimage to Maggie Beer’s shop, but realised it was silly to actually buy anything seeing as we can get her full range of condiments, vinegars and the famous ver juice (google it…) down the road at David Jones. The only other good bit about the Barossa was Peter Lehmann wines. I bought just 3 bottles as the credit card is very close to maxed out. With all this fine wine in the house now, I’m just waiting for the dinner party invitations to roll in. It’s a waste to drink it at home by myself.

All in all, Adelaide and surrounds impressed me. It’s such a nice sized city and easy to get around. McLaren Vale, the Adelaide Hills and the Barossa are all very close – one could even “do” all three in a day if you didn’t tarry. The main problem with Adelaide is that it seemed to be a city of old John Howard voters and dissaffected Emo teenagers with nowhere for 20 and 30 somethings to go. It could just be though that we didn’t know where to look. I hope to go back again some day, maybe even retire there…John Howard wil probably still be the bloody Prime Minister then, and I daresay his ability to brainwash the population will be such that maybe even I will be coaxed into voting for him (God forbid).

A far happier thought than ever voting for the Liberal Party is the decidedly pinko left wing McLaren vale vista below, shot while drinking my organic milk and eating my biodynamic yoghurt…

A weekend of good finds

I’m fully mobile again. Stitches came out on Friday and the pain is subsiding. Baba and I struck gold with some great local finds.

First was lunch on Saturday when we tried a new pizza joint that’s just opened a couple of minute’s walk away. Pizza Mario has a tacky name and kind of chain pizza joint logo and imaging, but the pizze that came out of their wood oven were magnificent. Yokohama friends no doubt remember il Gabbiano on Isezaki mall. Mario’s pizze are almost exactly the same as those yummy ones that we had for luch almost every weekend. That kind of napolitan pizza with a soft, thin base, chewy crust and very high quality lumps of mozzarella is a real rarity in Australia. I note that pizza mario belongs to some Italian accreditation scheme – the only such establishment in Australia. Japan, on the other hand, had a couple of dozzen such members. Perhaps that says a lot about the Japanese obession with certificates and “licences” as proof of some kind of authenticity – particulary where exotic European food and wine is concerned.

Our second find was a little courtyrad cafe attached to the back of a cute little flower shop in trendy Paddington that we’ve walked past hundreds of times. (For the life of me I can’t remember the name of the place and it’s not coming up on a google search or in the yellow pages….) The flower shop is quaint and quite European with “softer” colours and flower styles than the typical garish Sydney gerberas and birds of paradise. The cafe is good because they do simple lunches cheaply, fairly good coffee AND dogs are welcome so we can take Chai.

The final good find was a fabulous second hand book in Gould’s Books in Newtown. Gould’s is just a big barn with zillions of dusty books stacked floor to ceiling, vaguely sorted according to category but without so much as a nod to trifles such as alphabetical order. When I was writing my honours thesis on China, I went in asking whether they had an English translation of Mao’s Little Red Book. The grumpy, ruffled, bespecticaled, slighlty smelly man with a nicotine-tinged grey beard behind the raised counter (Mr Gould, presumably) nodded and said that there may be a few copies “upstairs, somewhere in the back left-hand corner”. I spent a good two hours looking over shelves that were stacked two-deep and through boxes of books on the floor in the aisles…to no avail. I learned that day that one should never go to Gould’s looking for a particular book, but rather just go in any time when one has a few hours to kill browsing and exploring. Today, Baba found me a great book on flower arranging written by “artist, writer and socialite” Fleur Cowells. It was published in the mid ’80s but Fleur’s arrangements and philosophy are totally contemporary and the book could be reprinted today with little, if any need of updating. It’s brilliantly written with a rather camp, fluffy tone and will hopefully give me lots of inspiration in my efforts to become the best floral designer in the world.