"I'm in pieces, bits and pieces" (Dave Clark 5 song 1965)

YAY! Rita is back online! Thank god! Mr Nellie has solved all my computer issues, and all is well with the world!

A few odd bits to say today:

***I recently heard the first person ever saying something relatively negative about Monty's. A workmate went there Tuesday night as one of a party of 10. Reports the service was REALLY slow, food took ages to come out and waitress tried SO hard to upsell menu items, that it got quite OTT.

That's sad because I've only ever heard people really raving about how great it is there. This guy said the food itself was great, when it arrived, but the waiting, and hard sell for other menu items was really off-putting.

It hasn't put me off, and I'm still really looking forward to my meal there next month.

***Another item for today is that I followed up on behalf of Gobbler and others the question about how the Department of Economic Development (DED) selects which producers and places will be visited at any time by visiting delegates from overseas.

I spoke to a very obliging man named George Chambers. George is the guy who plans these activities. With the trip which Gobbler asked about, it was a visit by 5 Executive Chefs from Hong Kong, who had been invited specially by DED to come over here and see some producers and their products in person.

There were some specific criteria involved here. Because these chefs were from Hong Kong, the products DED showcased to them had to be items that were already being exported, and that obviously they could obtain for their restaurant's use.

DED are looking at developing international trade, so they are undertaking events that assist this - hence bringing these chefs over. This trip was a followup to a food and bev trade show held last year in Hong Kong, called HOFEX, where DED took many local products over for that, including Ashgrove products.

For the dinners that were held here in Hobart over the period the chefs were here, they invited as many people as they knew of that it would benefit the chefs to meet. Obviously they couldn't encompass everyone that it probably would have been smarter or better to invite along, but as George said, you can't please all the people all the time.

They went to a lot of places including Strahan, Spring Bay, etc, and looked at lamb products, ocean trout, abalone, salmon, wines, cheeses etc.

George told me that one of the chefs actually asked prior to coming over here if he could go to Elgaar Cheese, as he uses their product, and wanted to ask them if they could reserve a small amount of their output especially for him so he would know he could rely on having it - but when George called Elgaar, they were too busy to come to Hobart and talk to the chefs. That's a shame.

So - the people who were visited by the group were producers who have distribution in Hong Kong.

Hope that explanation goes some way towards solving that query.

***My meal at Anatolia the other night was good. I chose the Salmon, with salad and potatoes. It was meant have been marinated in something, according to the menu, but if it was, I sure couldn't taste it! It was simply a piece of grilled salmon. It wasn't the most fabulous bit of salmon I ever ate in my life. It was just OK.

I've been given some fabulous books by DYMOCKS in Centrepoint. They are a few new cookbooks, and Dymocks have asked Rita to take a look and write about them, so that's exactly what Rita is going to do. Mmmmmmm! My favourite past time, after eating - reading cookbooks!

Watch this space.........