Capital food

Returned from our freezing cold capital Canberra late last night. I don't intend boring the pants off you talking about restaurants that none of us are likely to know, or go to, but I just want to make a few comments.

I ate out at every meal I was there for (4 days) so I had a lot of cafe and restaurant meals.

I breakfasted at a mega-trendy place called Silo, which seems to be a Jackman & McRoss-type establishment but with way better pastry products, and bread choice. I also breakfasted at another place called Cafe Essen, where the service was actually pretty damned ordinary, but the food good.

I hot chocolated at a GREAT place called Koko Black, which is the first ACT outlet of the same establishment that has 5 outlets already in Victoria, and doing very nicely thank you, judging by the way this new place has been decked out. No scrimping on any of the decor here. It is primarily a chocolate shop not unlike Norman & Dann in Salamanca, that also does hot chocolates made in style with beautiful real chocolate, cream etc. None of your shitty "Do you want marshmallows with that?". That would be anathema to these producers of the most fine hot chokkies I have ever partaken of.

They do also cater for your trendy coffee set as well, but chocolate is the focus here. I loved it. At last a blow is struck for the hot chocolate drinkers of the world! We are SO left out with all you coffee drinkers round. When you don't drink coffee, you feel like a leper when everyone else orders their latte or cappa or short black or whatever. Or how it used to feel 30 years ago to be the only person at a gathering who didn't smoke!

I dinnered at two interesting places which I want to mention here. Firstly at a place called Pangaea - which is a place that specialises in serving only entrees rather than the standard entree, then main.

The idea there is that you order 3 or 4 entrees, then if you still feel hungry, you order more. It is an interesting concept, but unfortunately the standard of food didn't match the promise of the glitz and glam appearance of the restaurant. Don't ask me the difference between entree-sized portions and tapas, but this is the way they declared themselves in the blurb on the menu.

The other place I want to mention is an Italian restaurant called Beluccis. This was very interesting. The food - pretty average Italian. Not great, just OK. BUT THE SERVICE.....!!

You all know my feelings on customer service by now. I am boring myself with talking about it now, but the service in this restaurant was SPECTACULAR.

These guys kicked bigtime arse, service-wise. Imagine a room the size of the IXL atrium, with the shops knocked out - that whole area is a modern, chrome-looking restaurant with high ceilings, lots of activity, about 25 staff, open kitchen right there next to us, very noisy.
At the busiest peak serving time, with all 15-odd serving staff scurrying round like blue-arsed flies, the lights suddenly dimmed. I thought for a minute there was a power blackout. Nope.

They'd lowered the lights in the whole establishment deliberately. One of the waiters was trying to shout something over all the din. Eventually everyone quietened down enough for us to hear that it was someone on Table 14's birthday, and inviting us all to sing happy birthday.

Now I realise fully that is not a novel concept - BUT in that establishment, at that time of the evening, with the level of patronage they obviously get (hence don't really need to pander to the punters at all), I was impressed. The staff appeared to be genuinely having a good time at work, and serving us all our meals was definitely NOT a chore for them. Such a delight after so many of my service experiences.

And they came around with the fresh parmesan grater, as well as the usual enormous pepper grinder we all know and hate so much!

Enough of Canberra. It was great to experience the small amount of dining scene there that I did, but it's better to be back home.

Besides, I managed to part with about $600 in a days shopping, never mind the rest.

Remind me not to leave the state again till that credit card is fully paid off!