Reliable Indonesian

REVIEW: RATU SARI

When deciding what to have on Friday night I had only one request, good Indonesian food. Not being in the mind set to experiment with somewhere new, there was only one answer – Ratu Sari in Kingsford.

The decor of the restaurant is simple – it is much more impressive than many of the other restaurants in Kingsford but still retains the uni-student feel.

The entrée was a plate of the Ngo Hiong. A fat pork spring roll that isn’t like any spring roll you have had before. Instead of crispy pastry, the pork filling is wrapped in tofu skin before being boiled than shallow fried. My description is doing it no justice, and I highly recommend it (I note that my attempts to introduce some friends to it have had mixed reviews).

Mains were the Udang Bali and the Ikan Kare. The Udang Bali (hot chilli prawns) were good but not as great as I have had there in the past. The prawns were fresh but not abundantly fleshy. The Ikan Kare (deep fried snapper in curry) was our experiment for the night and we were pleasantly surprised. The sweetness of the curry was balanced by the bite of the tumeric flavours and there was just enough spiciness to have me wanting more. It was a large snapper for two people, but the curry awoke our gluttonous sides and we polished it off with ease.

One of One Princess’ favourite desserts is chendol, and we couldn’t pass it up on this occasion. Admittedly, the size of the serving is far smaller than what is usual in Indonesia and Malaysia (and the price far higher, relatively), but the chendol at Ratu Sari is good by local standards. Chendol is best on a hot day – shaved ice over pandan jelly and red beans, all swimming in coconut milk and sugar syrup. It is probably a good thing that the serving sizes are smaller!

Ratu Sari has been a favourite of One Princess and me ever since we first visiting many moons ago when you didn’t need a reservation on a Friday night. What is it that we like about Ratu Sari? It’s a bit more upmarket than the rest of the Indonesian restaurants along the Anzac Parade strip in Kingsford, and the service is some of the best we’ve found in an Asian restaurant. The food mostly hits the right notes without the pretentiousness of many other Indonesian/Malay restaurants in Sydney.

Until we find a better place, Ratu Sari will be first in our minds when we crave reliable Indonesian food.

Details:

The Place: Ratu Sari

Where: 470 Anzac Parade, Kingsford (Ph: 9662 8788)

Food: Indonesian

Tip: Beef rendang and the kapitan chicken are another two of my favourites

Butcher’s Bill: $78 for two (a starter, 2 mains – fish alone was $33, dessert and drinks)

Who should go: those looking for an authentic Indonesian experience, without authentic Sydney prices

 

One Man’s Code to Dining Out – Part II

I should have said in Part I, that like all rules of etiquette, the closer you are to your dinner companions, the less likely you are to offend (so there rules shrink in importance). That does not mean that rule 10 can be broken in any circumstance.

6. Handling the food

DO: use the utensils provided for serving the food.

DON’T: use the cutlery you have put into your mouth to serve yourself.

NOTES: there is a reason why additional cutlery is provided with food that is being shared. There are exceptions to this rule (for example, certain family and close friends). If you are not sure, ask yourself this: would my friend/guest object to having my saliva on their food?

7. Tasting other people’s food

DO: ask if you want to try what someone else is having.

DON’T: lead with your fork, or even worse, cut off a piece for yourself.

NOTES: even after you have been granted permission, don’t go for the juiciest, most succulent looking mushroom. We all remember how we felt as kids when a friend asked if they could have a potato chip then proceeded to sample the largest one in the packet.

8. Finishing your food

DO: if you have ordered the food, then at the very least try to eat it.

DON’T: order food because you “absolutely crave [insert food]“, then not eat any of it.

NOTES: On the same lines, don’t be the person who orders desserts for the sole pleasure of seeing what they look like. Unless you are paying for the whole meal – but even then excessive wastefulness is still rather ugly. I am paying for part of it after all (see the next rule).

9. Splitting the bill

DO: divide the bill (plus tip) equally between everyone.

DON’T: attempt to calculate each person’s share according to who ate or drank what.

NOTES: there are few things worst than being known as the person who is tight with their friends. There are exceptions to this rule:

First, if there are only 2 of you.

Secondly, if one person didn’t eat anything, or one person ordered something extravagantly expensive (let that person pay their share, then divide the remainder between everyone else).

And lastly, uni students.

10. Keeping the tip

DON’T: in any circumstance, keep the tip which everyone else has contributed to.

NOTES: this borders on stealing. I have only experienced this once, which is why it is included here. The offending person has been black-listed – if they don’t know what they did wrong, then I am not going to waste my time.

One Man’s Code to Dining Out – Part I

I don’t want to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but manners and etiquette still have a place in modern dining. Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to dining out, but there are a few golden rules which nobody should break. I am not talking about which spoon is used for which course, or whether it is better to use a knife or only your hands to break bread, but rather how you should conduct yourself in the company of others – be they strangers or friends.

To me, these rules merely reflect common courtesy and respect. However, that they are so often broken by people, whom I consider to be otherwise thoughtful and considerate, that I thought I should summarise what I consider to be my top 10 golden rules.

Here are rules 1 to 5:

1. Picking a place

DO: take into account where everyone lives, and how everyone might get home/kick on afterwards.

DON’T: insist on only eating at places which are close to you.

NOTES: I have friends who only eat in certain areas of Sydney which are convenient to them. This is fine if your only friends live/work near you. But if it takes your friends a significant time to get there (20+ minutes), or requires them to catch multiple forms of public transport at inconvenient times, then you are just being selfish.

2. Arriving late

DO: call someone if you are running late, and let them know to start without you.

DON’T: arrive late to a table-full of hungry friends.

NOTES: we all know people who are notoriously late. Aware of their reputation, their friends will often start dinner without them. And the habitual late-comers usually don’t mind and are quite comfortable with this arrangement. For the rest of us, it is polite to ring a friend, let them know you are late, give an ETA and insist that they start without you.

Of course, if dinner is only between 2-3 people, then you should really say sorry with a round of drinks.

3. Attitude to wait staff

DO: treat the wait staff with respect.

NOTES: how you treat service staff says a lot about you. If you pride yourself on having a reputation as an offensive human being, then you can ignore this rule.

4. Ordering

DO: take into account the eating habits of your dining companions.

DON’T: insist on only ordering something which suits your tastes.

NOTES: this rule only applies where food is being shared. There is nothing worse than the person at yum cha who insists they we only eat things that are not fried, or the person at an Indian restaurant who demands that only “mild” food be ordered. Perhaps our 7 other dining companions like eating whatever you have an objection to?

The reverse is also true. It is rude to order a table full of slaughtered animals when you know a friend is a vegetarian. Habitually breaking this rule says a lot about how thoughtful a person you are. (On a related note, if you knew your friend was a vegan, then why did you suggest you go to a steak restaurant?)

5. Mobile phones

DO: let people know beforehand if you are expecting a call.

DON’T: answer a mobile call, especially if it means that your dining companions will be forced to listen to a one-side of a conversation.

NOTES: there are so many exceptions to this rule and it really depends on who you are eating with. But as a general rule, if you mobile phone call will stymie your friends from talking to one another, then you shouldn’t take it. This includes people who have a “phone-voice” several decibels above their “indoor-voice”, and when you only have a couple of dinner companions. Blackberries fall under this rule.

Rules 6-10 are here.

Steak and red wine pie

This is a really great dish for a cold winter’s day. I added bolded CAPS to the recipe because the number of steps suggests that it is complicated. It is not. The most time is taken cutting things up, and letting the filling stew.

I use sweet potatoes but you can use carrots or celery instead. I find sweet potatoes are better than ordinary potatoes as they hold their shape and don’t go all mushy after a couple of hours on the stove. Peas are also a very good addition.

If you have time, use shortcrust pastry to line the pie dish (and bake blind – that is, without any filling in it) .If you do this, let the pie filling cool in the pan, and not it the pie dish, otherwise the pastry gets all soggy.

The amount here is for a deep 30cm dish.

Ingredients:

1kg of steak, cubed (I usually opt for blade steak)
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cracked pepper
About 50g of butter
2 cloves of garlic, diced
2 largish onions
1 medium sized sweet potato, cubed
250g of button mushrooms, halved or quartered
1.5-2 cups of dry red wine
1.5-2 cups of beef or vegetable stock
(the wine and stock should be in a 1:1 ratio. You can decide how much to use based on whether you like a lot of gravy or not – 2 cups is very soup like)
A couple of sprigs of rosemary and some thyme
Puff pastry sheets

What to do:

COOK THE STEAK

1. Combine the flour, salt and pepper and toss through the steak making sure they are well coated.

COOK THE REST

1. Heat half the butter in a pan, then fry the steak until browned, then remove from heat.
2. In a deep pan or wide pot, heat the rest of the butter then add garlic and onions.
3. Once the garlic and onions have browned, add the mushrooms and sweet potatoes.
4. Cook for about 10 minutes, then add the red wine and the stock.
5. Tip in the steak and any juices.

LET IT STEW

1. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and let sit on the stove for about 2 hours
2. Taste the mixture every 20-30 minutes – the wine taste should soften the longer you cook it for. At about the 1.5 hour mark, add the rosemary and thyme.
3. Decide whether the mixture is too runny or not runny enough. Add a tablespoon of cornflour mixed with the minimum amount of cold water to thicken, or more stock (or water) to get a more soupy texture.

MAKE THE PIE

1. Scoop out the mixture into a large pie dish, or individual dishes, and let cool (about 30 minutes).
2. Once it is largely cooled, place the puff pastry on top of the dish (wet the pastry a bit to get it to stick to the dish). If you don’t let it cool, the pastry will go soggy from the steam coming off the pie filling – it will still cook properly so you put it straight in the oven if you are short on time.
3. Brush the pastry with some milk (brushing with a beaten egg is even better). Poke holes in the pastry with a fork, or cut a shape with a knife so that the steam is able to escape.
4. Place in a pre-heated oven at about 200°C for about 20 minutes to get it golden brown.
5. Serve with mash potatoes and steamed beans.

If you made too much filling, just put it in the fridge and make another pie later in the week – or eat the filling on its own!

Silencing the critic

The High Court of Australia handed down a decision on Thursday (John Fairfax Publications Pty Ltd v Gacic) which has been reported in the press as “lowering the curtain on age of the fearless restaurant critic”. See here and here.

The story is that Coco Roco, a now defunct Sydney CBD restaurant, sued Matthew Evans and the Sydney Morning Herald after they published a scathing review shortly after the restaurant opened. The restaurant promoted itself as “Sydney’s most glamorous restaurant”. The review is here.

A jury decided that the implications in the review that the “food was unpalatable” and that the “restaurant provided some bad service” were not defamatory.

The NSW Court of Appeal overruled this, saying that no reasonable jury properly directed would have come to this decision. The newspaper then appealed to the High Court.

If you read the judgment you will see that the High Court was more concerned with whether an appeal court could override a jury decision, although the Court accepted that Coco Roco was defamed by Matthew Evans’ review. It was also concerned with whether community standards should be imported into the decision whether something is defamatory (the answer was that community standards do not matter. So why have juries?)

So what is the consequence of all this?

Well, it does mean that a restauranteur who is unhappy with a review they have received can sue for defamation. If restaurant reviews are not able to be critical, then they merely become marketing tools for restauranteurs.

As the court proceeding’s head into the next stage, where the SMH will no doubt attempt to show that Evan’s review was based on the truth, one problem for the SMH (and restaurant reviewers in general) is that the evidence is consumed in the reviewing process. So to use the Chief Justice’s example, one can show that a leading surgeon has bad eyesight or shaky hands by testing them in Court. But how can the critic provide that the oysters were not fresh, or that the desserts were too sweet?

If I were setting up a fine-dining restaurant today, I would promote myself as being better than the best and worthy of every hat available (thereby building the business reputation). And as soon as someone said otherwise (that is, damaging the reputation I built), I would go hell for leather and sue.

I myself take no pleasure in criticising in general, and what I say in this blog always aims to be fair, not just to the prospective diner, but to owners and the floor and kitchen staff. So does this mean that blogs like this should be silenced? No it doesn’t. Otherwise the only source of information for consumers will come from the restaurants themselves. And who will then hold restaurants to the promises they make? Nobody – not even the courts.

Not just for the theatre crowd

REVIEW: VENTUNO

Because of the lack of street parking around Walsh Bay, One Princess and I decided to park outside the Sydney Theatre (we saw The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), then look for somewhere to eat.  At first we walked back toward the Rocks, passing Ottoman and the Sebel, before deciding to turn around and check out what was at the other end of the pier.

Ventuno sits almost opposite the Sydney Theatre and is unimposing from the street.  An enormous machine tool sits at the front of the restaurant and occupies a good portion of the room.  The decor of Ventuno really brings out the wharf/warehouse history of the location, although it did feel a little cold despite the warm colours and low lighting.

Ventuno holds itself out as specialising in enoteca (wine), pizzeria and birreria (beer).  The menu definitely gives you a wide selection of each, and if I knew more about my wines, I would wax lyrical about all the European sounding names.

The prosciutto and mushroom pizza was excellent, although the prosciutto bordered on being too subtle for a pizza.  Can I suggest that as well as cracked pepper, patrons be offered chilli oil with their pizzas?  The pizza crust was amazingly thin and pappadum like in its crispiness (I don’t think I have tried crust as good!).

The pesto linguine with green beans and potato tastes so much better than it sounds.  Unlike so many other places that serve pesto, the pesto at Ventuno was not overbearing yet was strong enough to give flavour to otherwise mundane vegetables.   The “homemade” pasta was bitey and tasty, unlike the pasta most of us use at home (and which a lot of restaurants serve).
The semifreddo del Genoa (My bad memory means I am not sure about whether it was from Genoa) was wonderfully creamy and rich.  It was accompanied with a prickly pear syrup (we didn’t know about this until it arrived), which absolutely made the dessert.  Sweet but not too sweet with hints of passion fruit-like sourness.  Perhaps one way to stop the spread of prickly pear is to eat it all!  If only cane toads were so delicious!

Another thing to note about Ventuno is the excellent service for the price being charged (no main exceeded $25).  They must be well rehearsed in dealing with the pre-theatre crowd, as the waitstaff appeared to handle it all with relaxed ease.

I am surprised I haven’t heard of Ventuno until now.   Perhaps I live a sheltered life.  Or perhaps it is a secret only shared between Walsh Bay trendoids and regular theatre-goers.  In any case, Ventuno is too good a restaurant to be the reserve of a select few.

Details:

The Place: Ventuno

Where: 21 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay (Ph: 9247 4444)

Food: Italian

Tip: Indulge in good handmade pasta, share a pizza and try the semifreddo in prickly pear syrup

Butcher’s Bill: $75 for two (a starter, 2 mains, dessert and drinks)

Who should go: not just the pre-dinner crowd but also pizza and pasta lovers looking for an authentic Italian experience by the Harbour.