by John Newton Mama food:
Those of you old enough to vote will probably remember La Colonna in Stanley Street. It was a great era for Stanley Street — Mario’s was just up the road and Bar Reggio was — and still is — just around the corner in Crown Street. But La Colonna had a couple of secrets. One was a beautiful woman called Rosella as front-of-house. Even if the other secret wasn’t Maria Latini in the kitchen, we would have come to swoon over Rosella. Now Marina has turned up in the kitchen at Tonino and Anna la Iacona’s little Café 2000 in Rozelle. Locals will know it as the place that sells what may well be the best gelato in Sydney (made by Tonino). But now with Marina and Anna in the kitchen, every Thursday and Friday night and Monday to Wednesday for lunch, you can eat sensational homestyle Italian food: tongue with salsa verde; osso buco with risotto Milanese; oxtail ragu with rigatoni. The kind of food your mother would serve if your mother was named Marina. We sent a friend and his family and he said they all thought it was “the best Italian we’ve had for a long time”. 650 Darling Street, Rozelle, Ph 9555 0632. Moroccan home cooking:
Are we picking up on a couple of trends here? Home cooking being one, the other Middle Eastern/North African. We’ve just had the opening of Ottoman down in Woolloomooloo and now comes Moroccan Feast in Randwick, run by Yariv Rozen with chef Zeavit Alkobi. Zeavit was born in Israel, so among the dishes she’ll be cooking are those of her Moroccan Jewish mother and grandmother. (Jewish Moroccan food has a long and distinguished history. Half the Jewish population of North Africa was in Morocco. See Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food.) There’ll be a lot of slow-cooked lamb tajine dishes on the menu with caramelised onion and cinnamon and raisins; ahamar, described by Yariv as being a Moroccan frittata; fish cooked with chilli and garlic; and salads — beetroot and carrot, for example. At the moment, it’s BYO. Dinner 7 nights at 127 Avoca Street, Randwick, Ph 9399 9882. Mountain fair: The 9th annual Blue Mountains Food & Wine Festival kicks off on Saturday 20th in the grounds of the New Ivanhoe Hotel. One good reason for going will be the good showing from Mudgee, Orange, Cowra and Bathurst wineries, which front up every year with the best of the their drops. Or, if you prefer, there’s the famous Loganbrae Apple Juice from out on the Shipley Plateau. There’ll be food stalls, live entertainment and all that sweet, fresh, autumn mountain air. Here’s a thought. Make a weekend of it and book into Vulcans on the Saturday night (better ring now, Ph 4787 6899). It’s the best time of the year in the mountains. Call the Blue Mountains Accommodation Booking Service on 4782 2857 or email ff@clairvaux.com.au for more information. Macro Cafe sprouts in Newtown:It’s the first stand-alone cafe for Pierce Cody’s fast-growing Macro Organic empire — but if it does well as a cafe, just you wait for the full Macro treatment. There’ll be Toby’s Organic coffee and all the goodies you can get at Macro in Crows Nest and Bondi Junction — and we’re promised a big selection of cooked breakfasts complete with organic OJ. Mon-Wed 7am-9pm, Thurs-Sat 7am-10pm, Sun 9am-9pm, 146 King Street (Cnr Missenden Road), Ph 9550 5747. | | Sourdough dynasty: Many of you will own the Natural Tucker Bread Book by John Downes, the father of Australian sourdough bread, first published in 1978. And if you don’t, you can still buy it (Hyland House $16.95) because it’s still in print. Is that a record for an Australian food book? John is still baking down in the McLaren Vale in South Australia. And now his son Jesse is opening his own bakery in Southport. Now, I know it’s a long way to schlep for a loaf, but it’s worth noting because John has given his son a family heirloom: a piece of his original 28-year-old starter. Jesse tells us it’s “bubbling away at an extreme rate of knots — it’s so warm up here it’s gone frantic”. He’ll be making a wide range of breads: classic French, classic Italian, Australian tropical fruit and a South Pacific kumera and coconut bread. “I’m working with an absolutely brilliant Japanese pastry chef with French training — Nobuki Matsunara. He’ll be doing everything from petits fours to buttery croissants.” Flour Bakery T3/107 Ferry Road Markets, The Brickworks Centre, Southport, Ph 07 5532 4749. Four cheeses: That’s how you translate Quattro Formaggi, the very fine Italian deli run by Pino Iaccobi in the Warringah Mall. If you live up that way and don’t know this place, check it out for seriously good products, including both Italian prosciutto and Spanish jamón — two of each — and a lot more than four cheeses. Anyway, the news is they’ve recently opened a cafe next to the deli serving a lot of the produce from the shop and then some. Homemade pasta, Italian sausages, scrambled eggs with prosciutto — tutti. And I’d be willing to bet the coffee would be pretty good, too. Warringah Mall, Brookvale (opposite Bunnings), Ph 9907 1225. Very fishy: Fishmonger Anrew Boyd has teamed up with Martin Boyd (previously of Fishface in Darlinghurst) to open a very fine establishment - Fine Fish. Fine Fish is billed as serving wet fish, cooked fish, served fish — it’s a fish cafe, fish and chippery and a wet fish shop. It’s in a long and narrow two-storey building with the kitchen and wet fish shop downstairs and the café upstairs, in Neutral Bay next to The Natural Food Market. Martin will be serving the very best of local and sustainable fish and seafood. He’s that kind of fishmonger. 75 Grosvenor Lane, Neutral Bay, Ph 9908 4448. 
PR Watch:Public relations gaffe of the month: the gushing princess who told us her chef had worked with Paul Bucose. Just bucose he could, I soppuse. |
