Long days of summer
In the last few weeks I experienced some of the best summer days in this side of the world so far. Hardly a cloud in the sky for days at a time and I managed to get a tan while bumming around in the various parks scattered in central London. It’s amazing how much happier Londoners are when the sun is out, rather like Snow Day though not as inconvenient.
The weather held for both days of Blur’s concerts at Hyde Park. Although we were too far away to see them on stage, the screens made up for the lack of visual. It was a rather amazing concert in terms of atmosphere than anything else with possibly the most efficient beer tent in a gig. You were ushered into line, yelled to come and order your beer or cider and ushered out within minutes. Quite inspiring really. I was a little disappointed that Vampire Weekend was not part of the support line up for Thursday, but blur was in fine form that night.
Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera thinking that it is likely to be confiscated, but by now there should be plenty of photos flooding the web.
A taste of London
Third week in London and all the moving around between different states of limbo made me forget about blogging. Take Taste Festival for example I went two weekends ago and barely had time to sit down and cull the photos let alone write about it properly. Strangely enough the weather remained sunny two weeks ago and if the weather channel can be believed London is in a middle of a HEAT WAVE (!!) for the next glorious week. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the rest of July will be as clear and the Blur concert this Thursday will not be an excercise in mass shower.
Anyway back to Taste London 2009 at Regents Park where the number of people crowded in small sectioned area has to be seen to be believed. It was X’s birthday and going to taste was part of the celebration. I waited for X and J before we ventured in with out wad of crowns. I didn’t know what to expect, only with a very vague idea that it was similar to the Food and Wine Fair back home with the added pleasure of an entry fee. At around £20 for a general entry it was not the cheapest food event I have been to, particularly with all the added crown vouchers you will still need to purchase in order to buy the meals from the various stalls. The price didn’t stop me from trying it once, particularly as a number of the restaurants do have their iconic dishes on order and the idea of having access to a smorgabord of the best London can provide was too tempting to miss.
We first wandered to Benares and ordered their Tandoor smoked lamb chops with mint chutney, recommended by my housemate as the value for money buy. Somehow our nose led us to another lamb dish straight away with a cool cocktail of strawberry and rum being a welcome break in the middle.
The second lamb dish wa from Benja a 10 hour low cooked Lamb in Yellow Curry accompanied with cucumber relish. The meat was so tender that it melted the moment it toucher our mouth and much to our delight we notice that we ended up with a bigger portion that expected. That was when we realised that travelling as a pack of three girls had its benefits, all shared dishes we ordered onwards were big enough to feed all three of us.
There were quite a number highlights that day that it’s actually really difficult to blog about it from memory without salivating. The Ledbury’s celeriac baked in Ash with Hazelnuts, Summer Truffle and a Kromeski of Wild Boar was amazing. There was so much flavour packed in this humble root that it made me look at it in a completely different way.
L’Anima’s fettuccine with wild mushrooms and summer truffle deserved a mention as it was more truffle than fettuccine. The lady who was shaving the truffle started laughing as I took a number of photos while she was measuring out the truffle and as a result we ended up with a little mound of the stuff. 
From ALAIN DUCASSE AT THE DORCHESTER we had the Chilled pea velouté and ricotta scoop, crispy hazelnut bread, which was a lovely entree dish for a summer day. 
As for most expensive dish of the day, nothing beats Launceston Place’s iconic ossetra caviar and parsley lolly at 10 crowns per gram. We were down to our last 8 crowns for the day and perhaps because they felt sorry for us, combined with the fact that it was half an hour to closing we managed to nab a rather heftier serving of 3 grams at the bargain basement price of 8 crowns. 
After four hours of continuos eating in the sun, avoiding elbows and over eager gourmettes we found a cuban bar serving martinis playing the entire Flight of the Conchords album. It can’t be a more perfect day…
Auditing for the masses
It’s Sunday evening, you had a fun filled day eating all the best bits at the Taste Festival, ideally this would be the best time for you to wind down the rest of the day.
Right?
Somehow I managed to bump into the Guardian’s rather brilliant idea to outsource looking at just under half a million expense and claims documents, by asking the public to do it. The idea is rather ingenous really, all documents are scanned and the reviewer is asked to categorise the document into 4 types, note any items of interest and enter line items. Being nosy for the good of the community, and sad person that I am, I am rather mesmerised by the whole thing. The majority of the documents are dull and straight forward, but being able to pull out any pages requiring investigation turns the entire excercise into a quest for possible corruption.
Fun for the whole family, and it’s just not me who’s doing it either looking at the number of pages reviewed in the past few days.
All packed up and nowhere to go
The longest day of the year is today and I can believe it. I’m typing at half past ten at night and even now, the sky is still a dusky purple. It’s hard to believe that a week ago I was still recovering from jet lag and a week before, I was back in Australia. Even more difficult to believe that 12 months ago I first moved into this apartment with a group of strangers, armed with nothing more than two bags and wide-eyed optimism.
Perhaps it’s true that luck is a frame of mind. I felt lucky when I landed in London a year ago, hopeful in finding new experiences, faces and adventures. Since then, Recession 2.0 smashed the economy and I somehow managed to exile myself in Sydney for no good reason. I don’t know what the second year in London will bring, it’s still undecided whether I can spend the year in the country past August, so many things are beyond my control at the moment.
So today felt a little surreal…packing up all my belongings into 7 boxes, a far cry from the backpack I had in the beginning. Even more disturbing was the nagging thought that I will be homeless for the next few weeks, while waiting to see whether I will be going back home to Australia or stay in the UK. Regardless of the outcome, it is uncomfortable to be reminded that my time here is finite. To that end I should just make the most of this short, but significant part in my life and experience as many different things as I can.
Small pleasures such as sitting in Regent’s Park after finding the most decent cheap coffee I had at Markus Coffee for £1.50 and a plate of the most buttery baklavas from Ranoush Juice for £1.00. An absolute bargain during these oh so lean times and the sun was complimentary too…
London yarn bombing
If you are walking to work in London today and happen to see something resembling the wooly creation above, you might wonder what it is and who did it and why.
The following clip provides a hint to unravel the mystery, but for more details go here.
World Wide Knit In Public Day 2009 with moustaches
In just under a 24 hours I was back in London.
(Aching, grumpy and so jet lagged, the concept of time had magically transformed into a beautiful abstract work of science fiction in my head, but at least I was in one piece, more or less).
It feels a little surreal to be back when the sun is out and the day stretches lazily from dawn to dusk. I am not sure how long I will be here. Things didn’t eventuate the way I thought it would, so I am on currently on standby to leave the country in a couple of weeks unless something else happens otherwise
On the flip side I intend to make the most of this summer, starting with running off to join the London Stitch N Bitch crew on that most sacred of days for knitters - World Wide Knit In Public Day. The sun was in full force, when I finally headed out to join the group at Tate Modern. For some reason I thought that the meeting point was outside, it was only after about a half hour of wondering whether it was possible to miss a group of knitters wearing moustaches that I figured out I must be in the wrong location and entered the Tate.
Why the knitted moustaches, you might ask? It was part of the fund raising effort by the lovely ladies at Stitch N Bitch London. This year all proceed will go to Prostrate UK Charity. We wandered from the Tate to Trafalgar Square, moustaches firmly in place despite the heat and the puzzled look from some onlookers before ending in a pub closeby where I met a travelling knitted Hedgehog with his own knitted post box on his way to Cornwall.
I was absolutely knackered by this point and can barely think straight let alone knit a number of stitches without dropping the whole lot. Not quite sure how the organisors managed to stay on without being carried home, though I am more than a little grateful their stamina was a lot stronger than mine.
Creative Sydney
The last 10 weeks of enforced waiting in Sydney reminded me of how much I love Sydney. I love the way the sun is always out, its beautiful harbour, its amazing food, the unholy mess of urban planning and best of all for the friends and family that will always make it home for me. The crazy thing is, I needed to be away from it to appreciate it fully, it took this ridicilous sin bin for the city to enchant me with its siren song.
This week will mark the end of Creative Sydney, which as they put it:
Creative Sydney is part of Vivid Sydney, a unique new public festival featuring Luminous music festival at Sydney Opera House, Smart Light Sydney and Fire Water. Vivid Sydney is one of five anchor events in the first ever NSW Master Events Calendar created by Events NSW on behalf of the NSW Government. For the full Vivid Sydney program visit www.vividsydney.com.au
It ran just after the writer’s festival which included the MCA Zine Fair, concurrent with the Sydney Film Festival and to think that I used to moan that the middle of the year was the start of the hibernation period for Sydney!
So where to begin…I wandered down to the Roxy to catch the Telling Stories and Telling It Like It Is pannel at the Roxy with Pirochan early last week to catch a panel of writers and directors present their movies, the motivation behind each story. The panelist included Peter Gawler (co-creator and writer Underbelly), Paula Abood (Race and the City), Michaela Perske (Red Ithaka), Alicia Talbot (Urban Theatre Projects), Bill Kokkaris (Take Away Theatre), Antoinette Chiha (The Combination, Triple J, Serhat Caradee (Cedar Boys) and Shortcuts Filmmakers Maria Tran, Vinh Nguyen, Sally Struhters, Ali Kadhim and Tresa Ponnor.
I was a little disappointed that there was very little discussion amongst the speakers, with such a diverse group it seemed like a bit of a wasted opportunity.
Going back in time, the MCA Zine Fair was a lot of fun. I met up with Y for an enjoyable Sunday out. I was told that it was even bigger last year, but it was definitely big enough for me. A few brave souls from the National Library approached a number of us asking for zines to be donated and archived. It tickled me to think that I might be noted down as an author of a knitting zine. Still a little surprised to note that copies of Sharp and Pointy sold out pretty quickly, I need to print out more and get ready for issue 4 for TINA later on in the year. Oh the pressure! Other notable zines/zinesters I saw were Vanessa Berry , Mix Tape and the ever so crafty Talk To The Sun.
Contemplating my stomach – Fratelli Fresh
Almost ten weeks of waiting, the good news is I know of more fantastic places to eat than I have ever before. The not so brilliant news is this state of limbo is not coming to an end anytime soon. Speaking of the former and not the latter, a good friend of mine brought my attention to Fratelli Fresh. Specialising in Italian produce both local and imported they also have a cafe attached to their retail store called Cafe Sopra. It was here that I took A for a belated birthday lunch. Why lunch you might ask? It’s for the simple reason that Cafe Sopra was only open for lunch.
We went to their Waterloo branch, where the retail store was located downstairs in their warehouse and the cafe upstairs. A large black board dominated one side of the wall listing today’s menu and from the diner’s concentrated gaze it might as well be a rather scrumptious work of art. Not surprisingly, all their dishes used ingredients sold in their store. Everything from bread, pesto and the most gorgeous balsamic vinegar imported from Italy.
A ordered their lamb ragu, which was decent but the tomato sauce was a little overpowering. My carbonara on the other hand was delicious. The pesto was light, the bacon crisp and the cream was sparing, allowing the pasta’s flavour to still shine through.
I couldn’t help, but taste their dessert and though banoffee pie was sold out their lemon souffle was hard to miss. The light yellow layer was pure lemon froth and as you dig down, the lemon base was a marriage between lemon and cream. All this offset by the lovely fig cube to the side.
Fratelli Fresh hold free cooking class during the week, but unfortunately June was completely booked solid by 10 am on the first day they took booking for the month of June. A little disappointed, but I will probably come back to pick up their balsamic vinegar, their bread, their pasta, their cheese…you get the drift.
7 Danks Street
Waterloo, 2017
The Cafe: Sopra Waterloo
ph. 02 9699 3174
Monday – Friday 10am – 3pm
Saturday 8am – 3pm
Sunday 10am – 3pm
No bookings taken
Nippon Club
I had a rather brilliant weekend with the MCA zine fair on Sunday and catching up with a good friend on Saturday. The zine fair was a lot of fun and I picked up a number of zines and walked away feeling rather inspired. I’ll blog about in a while once I finish downloading some of the images. Gigantic thank you to Pirochan for printing and table space and the continued “where’s your zine?” nagging. Issue 1 and 2 sold out on the day as well as a healthy number of issue 3 as well!
Going back through some old photo I just remembered that I haven’t talked about Nippon Club. I first heard of it from Helen’s blog and the idea of visiting this hidden gem on Macquarie Street piqued my interest. It surprised me to realise that I had walked past this little underground restaurant without realising that it served food. There was only a sign with “International Nippon Australia New Zealand Club Limited” posted outside and until you wander down the stairs it would be easy to dismiss it as a private club exclusive to Japanese expats.
We signed ourselves in after being greeted by two surprised elderly Japanese gentlemen enjoying their Sapporo beer on a Tuesday evening. The atmosphere felt a little like your typical RSL with pokies hidden away in a corner, furniture popular in the 80’s (those wicker chair, that beige colour scheme that was in when Dynasty was on TV).
Apparently their usualy chef was off and they have a new chef starting that week. Unless we were willing to wait until 7:30pm, the only option was the lunch menu until then. With sapporo on tap and a decent sake menu we decided to wait and ordered from the dinner menu. The sashimi and sushi selection was decent, but the value came from the bento box sets. We ordered salmon skin sushi, chirashi sushi special (second photo) brimming with more sashimi than rice, beef tataki, finishing off with the most the most radio active looking green tea ice cream I had ever seen.
It was a surprising experience from start to finish, unlike the typical Japenese restaurant, but thoroughly authentic, affordable and highly recommended.
