Holidayfoodisthebestshitever (part 1)

It’s been way too long since I’ve been on a proper holiday… proper holiday? You ask, what is this proper holiday you speak of. Well for me it’s not a real holiday if you’re going somewhere to catch up with heaps of people you already know, it’s the anonymity that I love on a holiday, and of course it the food that you eat, that can make or break your experience. Lack of sex, bad accommodation and being locked in a foreign jail are also things that can effect a holiday, but I still think food is at the top.

As I’m extremely lucky to have a girl that love’s food as much as me (by that I literally mean that she love’s food as much or more then actually loving me J ), our holiday pretty much revolves around our next meal. Lauren (this is what I call her, as it is her name) and I packed our car on Friday morning, well I packed it as she did… to be honest I have no idea what she achieved whilst I loaded bag after bag into my car. But regardless of who did what, I looked at my car that resembled a car that was about to make a trip across Australia, when in fact we where only driving 3 hours to a 5 star resort in Bunker Bay.

But I had a plan and in the words of Baldrick “a VERY cunning plan indeed” my idea was to bring lots of food down with me, as well as my latest buy a brand new Webber Q (a beautiful bit of equipment I’ve named Suzie) so being the anal chef that I am (lets all get our minds out of the gutter) I obviously had to bring my own salt, oil, t-towels, tongs, fish slice, two eskies full of meats and seafood… we’re talking sausages from two different butchers, kranski, Cumberland, black pudding and chorizo from Dubrovnik’s and hot Italian from princi’s, t-bones, lamb chops, scallops, prawns and free range bacon. The concept was to cook a grand breaky in our studio apartment every morning then go visit the local wineries and restaurants for opulent lunches then get back to the serenity of our resort to drink much wine, eat grilled goodness and well the rest isn’t for public consumption.

Good plan, nay great plan but then of course me being me thought I’d better include coffee making into my arrangements, so I packed coffee grinder and cafeteria and foolishly sent Lauren over the road to get coffee. What happened next is one of the worst things to happen on this holiday so far, if I wasn’t such a fair and reasonable man then young Lauren would be walking home. Long story short she bought decaf beans and we didn’t realise till I went to make a coffee, which at the time was very well needed. I know it was a terrible as it sounds, who on earth wants decaf coffee? fkn weirdos that’s who! And I am certainly not one of them.

But this crisis averted we have already managed to eat out 3 times in two days, the first was a nice organic café (liars) in Dunsborough where they did produce tasty food but insisted on lying about the organic nature of their food and the homemadeness of their hollandaise, but they where hippies so my fault I guess for trusting them.

The next meal was a 3 course meal at the Bunker Bay resort, the menu read extremely well and the food was cooked reasonably well, but it was lacking a certain something and although Laurens ‘cauli & blue cheese gnocchi’ was alright it was not suberb and  the same goes for my ‘pork belly with eggplant 3 ways’ could of definitely made some thing rude out of the name 😉 , then mains where ‘venison on a beetroot and barley risotto, brussel sprouts’ and my ‘4day marinaded beef cheeks, truffle mash, baby veg’ now for fuck sakes people and by people I mean chef’s, please just engage your imagination just a little and put on a twist on these magnificent classic’s instead of leaving me feel like I have either just eaten in a tafe restaurant or stepped foot out a a tardis or delorian. Dessert had one saving grace a stunning basil and raspberry parfait served with a choc fondant… which was the polar opposite to the flavourless almond tart with dates that I foolishly ordered. All in all I had a great dinner but nothing special when all the ingredients where there

Then after a 2 hour hike on Saturday morning we walked into a small café called ‘Bunkers’ I had been here many years ago and had heard good things about it since, but I have a sneaky suspicion they have heard good things about them selves and act like they are exceptional, and well they just ain’t… I had a taste plate which read really well (hence me ordering it) but when you think so highly of a blue cheese that you place in by its self on an entree taste plate then at least get it to room temp so people can taste it, but their ‘dates stuffed with ricotta, white anchovy and stewed rhubarb’ was surprisly good, it reads like a god damn train wreck of a dish but it worked (rhubarb most likely didn’t need to be there) and Lauren had the best fish and chips she’d had in ages ‘battered garfish & chips with aioli’… chuck in a couple of poorly made long mac’s and that was Saturday lunch.

It’s now Sunday morning and I’m about to go for a walk whilst Lauren is going for a long horse ride along the beach (sounds awful but she seems to like it) and tonight its going to be t-bones with broccolini, local cheese and a bottle of Hensche Hill Of Grace to drink… good times me thinks J

That’s Suzie-Q and the other pic is Pauly looking good in the pool. You pick which is which… G