Where to Eat when in Brisbane...

.....or what Shauna and Sheelagh ate in Brisbane.

Pie Face. 

The name says it all. Australians love their pies. I prefer the buttery, flakey pastry rolls, but the pies are pretty good too - especially when they have little faces on them, distinctly different for each of the assorted fillings. Both the pastry rolls and pies come in regular and mini sizes so you can have a wee taste of all the faces before you fully commit to your favourite pie personality. I wouldn't say Pie Face has the best pies in Australia, but it's hard to resist it's gimicky store signs to go in and check them out. There was a Pie Face just about to open in Perth before I left, there's a multitude in Brisbane, and I recently just learned that there's a 24 hour one in Melbourne: just another example of how Perth is just a bit slow, a bit behind the times, a bit far away but slowly, slowly catching up with the rest of Australia :)

Apparently there is now a Pie Face in New York that just opened in January! 

Carlton XXX Brewery & Tour

On a rainy, windy day we decided to go on the Carlton Brewery Tour for a little taste of Queensland. Our tour guy was a friendly, chatty old man who must've been giving tours at the brewery for years and years. Besides mum and myself, the rest of the tour consisted of five Asians, of which one definitely didn't know much English, and all of the tour guide's jokes went way over her head. We were fitted with hi-vis vests, safety goggles and made sure that we all had close-toed shoes before we were lead through the history, rooms describing the ingredients, and the production facilities for about an hour and a half. Maybe about an hour too long. The reward at the end: 4 beverages or beers of your choice - four!! That's quite a lot for anyone to drink. The result: Mum saying, "I might actually start drinking beer! I like this."

Although it is a much larger scale, I couldn't help but think about my time at Frankland Estate while viewing the production and bottling of the beer. There were a couple supervisors on the floor, but the machines and conveyor belts did all the work. There was no WWOOFer folding all the boxes for the cases. Nobody with numb fingers lifting the bottles individually into the boxes. Nobody lifting case after case onto pallet after pallet. I suppose that's why Frankland Estate wines are only found in specialty stores and it means so much more when I can say, "I put that label on that bottle."

Damper

"Damper and Dip" is on a lot of Australian menu's under the entree options (re: entree is not a main course; entree is a starter, an appetiser.) Traditionally, it was a simple bread brought into the Outback, but from what I've seen, it means different variations of the house bread served with dips. And if it's not damper on the menu, then it's bread with dukkah. Dukkah, a dry condiment mixture of herbs, nuts, and spices is usually served with olive oil to be dipped into by bread.

In Brisbane, you can have a "real" taste of Australian cuisine at Tukka. Although it may not be what the average Australian eats day to day, the menu showcases native foods from local farmers in a modern, innovative way. The menu has two degustation choices as well as a la carte. Luckily, we were able to experience on of the Discovery menu which consisted of 5 courses. 

Amuse Busche of Tasmanian possum. 

yes, possum.

Native Plate: selection of wild game such as kangaroo, smoked kangaroo, emu, crocodile with native berries and damper with dukkah.

Mum hasn't a clue what she's eating! 

Palate Cleanser after the Pepperberry and lime cured crocodile fillet cooked sous vide with cider braised pears 

yum yum.

Seared Queensland kangaroo fillet with with roasted winter vegs and a rhubarb lemon myrtle jus.

The Great Escape Menu consisted of seven courses of which we missed out on the Confit of Tasmanian possum and pork belly pie with sauteed brussel sprouts tossed with pepperberry pancetta and a davidson plum jus as well as Seared Marburg emu fillet with anisata onied dutch carrots, braised du puy lentils and a port jus. That was definitely our fill of meat for the week, and interesting exotic meat for the year!! 

Now, if you don't want pie, you don't want to go on a tour just to get 4 beers, and you're not into weird exotic meats, then I highly recommend two neighbouring restaurants on Mollison Street in Brisbane's West End. The first one, The Gun Shop Cafe, we went to for breakfast but would have been happy to go back for lunch and dinner if we hadn't stopped by The Burrow instead to try somewhere different. The article in which we had read about The Gun Shop cafe had talked up the potato and feta hash browns, so much so it seemed, that they were already sold out by the time we sat down. Instead, mum got the sweet potato hash browns with Toulouse sausages, tomato jam and rocket with a poached egg on top. I had a puff pastry tart with Persian feta, rocket and mixed wild mushrooms. It was more of a brunch option, but would have been perfect with a poached egg, but got my morning fix by going halfsies with mum. The breakfast menu offers something light, classics, and new dishes with an asterix proclaiming the menu is subject to change daily. The lunch and dinner menus seem a bit more substantial and enticing in a peculiar but trustworthy way. I would highly recommend going for breakfast. 

 The Burrow, also open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, was just as basic as Tukkah and The Gun Shop: beams and exposed wood, stairs leading up to another dining area with a balcony that looked as though it used to be a house, but just expanded the front of it with an additional tin roof and big open window seats. Both are casual and inviting with the types of menus that everything sounds so good, so appetising, so wonderfully odd the combinations of flavours and ingredients that you just want to order everything. Oh wait, that's usually just indecisive letsordereverythingtotaste me. I could've ordered all of the $10 pizzas: PNG: prosciutto, nashi pear, and gorgonzola; The Lucky Chick: harissa spiced with chickpeas; Mr Potato Head with rosemary potatoes; the one we ordered had silverbeet (chard). The crispy beer battered chips come with a herbed mayo and homemade tomato salsa. They specialise in craft beers and ciders. Every table had a different salt and pepper set you could imagine were collected over the years with stories to tell rather than just bought at a flea market. MMM just thinking about it makes me want to go back again!

If I were to go back to Brisbane, I would definitely want to try their local specialty: Moreton Bay bugs. Bugs are not bugs, but kinda like a cross between a lobster and a crayfish in which you eat the meat from the tail and hence quite expensive.

I would also go to Jo Jo's....

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. Peter Piper must have been a Masochist.

442. That's the number of pepper varieties that are grown just down the road from us in Parma, at Azienda Agraria Sperimentale Stuard. Only 20% of them are original species, the rest have been cross-bred by Mario Dadomo, making it Italy's, or I think possibly the world's, largest collection of peppers. It is wonderful to see that although many veggies are becoming less diverse and standardized, it is not true for Parma's peppers. Although Italian spicy food may be more associated with Calabria, and hot chili peppers are often associated with India or South America, Parma has the right climatic conditions to grow such diverse varieties of peppers. 

Rows and rows of peppers grow in alphabetical order, with appropriately heated names like Apologize, Ciao, Bodyguard, and Sahara. Red, orange, yellow, purple, green, chocolate-brown, black splattered across the rows of plants like a Jackson Pollock painting. Long, round, fat, wrinkled, split, squat, berry-like, phallic, olive-shaped, and bulbs of strung Christmas tree lights are only a few adjectives to describe the shapes. I especially liked the topepo - a pepper that looks like a tomato - hence tomato + peperoncino. The diversity was overwhelming and fascinating. Some pointed vertically like reprimanding witches fingers. Some sprouted spiky red tubes with a sparse amount of leaves. Some had nearly-black dark purple leaves with green undertones that looked identical to basilico rosso. Some dangled sadly, rotting from the season's cold and dropping easily to the ground. Some were like an open box of Crayola - red, orange, yellow, green and purple begging to be picked. Some looked like marbles or Christmas ornaments, bunched together.

Twinkled like a starry night.

Peter Pepper. mmhmm.

basilico rosso?

grapes? berries? ornaments? peppers?

We followed Mario through the field, stepping over the low rows of plants and burying our feet into the mud saturated by the weekend's rain. Our tongue's burned as we tasted different peppers and we tried desperately to remember not to touch our eyes with our spice-stained finger tips. Despite the balmy autumn weather, Arina's nose is still glowing like rudolph since she touched it yesterday morning. 

taste the habanero's burn.

Mario started growing peppers 15 years ago as a hobby and could tell a story, and/or history, behind every pepper. SiQuiero was grown to mark his wedding with his Spanish wife. Habanero Chocolate is not named brown because that sounds less appetizing. One pepper from Bolivia only grows in the early spring, typical to the weather of the Bolivian Andes. Many people think that it is the seeds that give out the spice in the bite, but it is in fact the membrane - but the seeds are attached to the membrane so the association, although wrong, makes sense. Birds cannot detect the heat from peppers and in this way as they prefer to nibble on the little peppers, the ''shit'' of the birds, as Mario so awkwardly explained, will spread the seeds and create new pepper plants. And of course, the smaller the pepper, the spicier in general.

Mario and his pepper catalogue-bible.

It awe-astounding to see such a field of peppers - really just beautiful against the dreary Saturday morning fog. It is also a pity that it costs about 2,000 euro to register a new variety, so that the majority of his peppers are not protected. He is trying to promote his e-commerce business online and needs help with translating the Italian catalogue into English so that more people internationally can buy the seeds. Arina and I offered to help translate in our spare time, for our own interest in peppers and all that is spicy - tutti piccante - and in exchange, he gave us two plastic bags to fill with our hearts desire from his pepper collection. It reminded me of going apple-picking in the fall, but instead of baking pies, we'll be making hot hot hot sauce. 

and this what's left, even after we gave
handfuls away at Caro's brunch.

"You always hear a headline like this, 'Man Killed By Shark', you never hear it from the other perspective, 'Man Swims in Shark Infested Waters, Forgets He's Shark Food'." — Gary Larson

welcome our newest member to zinzani.

"Tutti Piaccante"

we have been told it is not correct italian. 

but it fits perfectly. 

and it's the suitably perfect addition for our love of spice. 

there is very little i will not add dried chili pods, sriracha and now fresh chilis to.

pleasure is pain. pain is pleasure. 

“It felt so good to hurt so bad.”

we even found a babysitter for it while we're in spain. grazie mille mauro.

John & Sheelagh come to Italy! Bra & Pollenzo.

we had a lunch reservation and i was pretty certain that the restaurant closed at 2 so we zipped our way through the vineyards and down the hills heading to Bra - hometown of Carlo Petrini and home to the Slow Food headquarters. so appropriately enough, and being a loyal student, we ate at Osteria del Boccondivino - the first Slow Food restaurant. the courtyard which the restaurant looks over is where the Slow Food headquarters is.Much to my surprise, they were still open - packed actually - and still honoured our late arrival. the menu is not only based on locally sourced and seasonal foods, it is full of Slow Food Presidia products - small quality and tradition-based producers that Slow Food works to protect. we had lardo, salsiccia di Bra e carne curda battuta al coltello (more cured meat), fagottino di melanzane e roccaverano, gnocchi di patate con pomodoro e olive taggiasche, coniglio "grigio di carmagnola" all 'arneis and of course the cheese selection.

we didn't wander around Bra too much and headed straight to nearby Pollenzo where the other University of Gastronomic Sciences campus is. Like our campus in Colorno is an old regal palace, the Pollenzo campus used to be the home to King Carlo Alberto. Since the Slow Food Int'l Assoc. restored it to make it an international center for food, wine and culture, it is now not only a UNESCO World Heritage Site but home to La Banca del Vino, Guido Ristorante and the Albergo dell'Agenzia.

I gave my parents the brief tour of the campus from what i remembered when we visited previously with the class and then had our own self guided tour of the wine bank. they seemed a little busy with a ferrari-touring crowd and being a student, i think the woman assumed i knew what to tell my parents. but she was wrong. so, we wondered around the cellar amongst the boxes and boxes of kept wines going from one region of italy to another. La  Banca del Vino is not only a museum showing off Italy's best wineries but is a place where these wineries can store their wine during the aging process. usually you can have a tasting afterwards but we didn't have a real tour and we were wined out anyways. 

wedding destination #4

cocktails before dinner in the pretty hotel's courtyard.

pretty azienda at night.

for dinner, keeping it local, we dined at Guido. it was a formal but very simple setting. a huge room with tall ceilings and big windows looking onto the dark night. again, we were one of the first to arrive, minus one other table of young men but slowly the entire restaurant filled up with well dressed people - some with a curiously-sniffing dog, some seeming on an anniversary date and others hogging the waiters and sommeliers with questions. the italian-speaking waiters (were they UNISG students?) appeared on their best behaviour and we were handed a huge leather bound book of wines to choose from. i don't exactly remember what we ate, but it was tasty, interesting combinations, and nicely presented like they were works of art. 

chicken with courgette.

stuffed onion.

pork with some gelatin

tortelli with foie gras.

courgette soup.

slow cooked tradition-based meat ravioli

offal bits.

and i have no idea. mum thinks it was guinea hen that was brought to us but we didn't order.

it's a really beautiful place for a campus although my heart belongs in Colorno. i probably would say otherwise if i was accepted in the May program, but as sad as it is that this is the last UNISG year for Colorno, Pollenzo is not a bad place to be. the Azienda is full of food, wine and cultural information - they have restored it beautifully and keep it run very well. 

John & Sheelagh come to Italy! Emilia Romagna.

so after 6 weeks of summer holidays and 2 days of school learning all about parmigiano reggiano and one morning learning about food economics, came the much anticipated arrival of my parents. i couldn't wait to show them around my life in Colorno - in three minutes flat - "well, this is all of it," - to reintroduce mum to team zinzani after the initial awkwardness back in March when none of us knew each other, to see Dad again as there was a slight possibility work would hold him up, and for the itinerary I planned over the summer as tour guide extraordinaire to finally come to fruition. unfortunately i had forgotten all of my italian over the summer holidays but hopefully they wouldn't mind.

first stop: a quick tour around the University and gardens, an introduction to friends, a hello to the tutors, and then lunch in piazza garibaldi. obligatory: the cured meat plate. pasta. and wine. unfortunately, our favourite local friend and waiter, san daniele, had moved to parma and there was a new guy. how was i supposed to impress my parents know with knowing the locals and speaking the language? so instead of one cured meat plate enough for 3 - we got 3 cured meat plates. i looked at it in horror, having had enough cured meat over the last seven months, but then, of course, ate it anyways. my wonderful italian skills and lack of communication with the new guy also lead us to only having one pasta dish instead of the two regional dishes I wanted my parents to try, but that turned out in our favour as it was way too much food anyways. typical. a perfect introduction for john and sheelagh to life in italy!

a walk around beautiful parma filled the sunny afternoon and then we rushed back in the bigger than an-IQ rental car to Colorno to meet some of the students at where else, but the pub! it was so nice for everyone to come and meet my parents although i'm sure when drinks are involved it doesn't take much convincing. we sat outside drinking bubbly prosecco's and bright orange spritz's while mauro spoiled us with large platters of more cured meat. a typical wednesday afternoon in Colorno. bliss.

then it was off to Antica Corte Pallavicina to show my parents where we all fell in love on our first stage. it's a beautiful old castle estate and farm in the countryside - found only by taking the windy yet extremely flat scenic route of emilia romagna - complete with its own large garden of vegetables and a courtyard fluttered with peacocks. we had a lovely apartment-style room that I could have easily moved into with views of the cows munching on muddy grass outside and the roosters that would wake us up in the morning. 

wedding destination #1

dressed up and ready for dinner, we started with some aged parmesan cheese ("how old is this parmigiano reggiano? 32 months. and where is it from? from our mountain cows' milk.") along with some extremely soft melt in your mouth homemade sausage, freshly made bread, and fizzy house lambrusco. we then had a tour of Massimo Spigaroli's famous culatello-curing cellar where I'm not sure if Arina and I impressed or embarrassed the tour guide with our extensive knowledge of cured meats when she wasn't able to answer the other guests' questions. future cured meat tour-guide job? possibly. my parents gasped, breathed in the intoxicating meaty smell, and laughed in amazement at all the round cured meat wrapped in bladder, tied in twine, and individually labeled, which hung from the ceiling and along the walls but by now, this was a pretty standard sight for us.

the dampness (from the proximity of the po river) of the cellar is crucial for the culatello curing process and the Spigaroli's know exactly when to open and close the windows - unlike many climate-controlled prosciutto di parma facilities. it keeps the meat soft and ensures it's unique characteristic. culatello is a boneless chunk of meat from the largest muscle from the rear of the pig. it is a PDO product made only in 8 villages within a restricted area as anywhere else doesn't have the knowledge or the specific terroir-ic conditions to make it. it is cured only in the winter months, from october to march, for a minimum of 12 months in which the winter humidity and the po river-low valley fog ensure a long and slow drying process. 

breathing in the damp cellar's lovely yet unforgettable aromas of cured meats and the nearby po river humid winds blowing through the windows.

"no, you can't make prosciutto di parma and culatello because culatello comes from this upper part but with all the leftover meat you can make finocco and salami's......"

"and over here is prince charles' culatello, and here is armani's and marchesi over here"

the tour ended with seeing the parmigiano reggiano storage and where they used to pack ice outside. dinner then followed as we entered into the dimly-lit restaurant built with two large glass walls on either side - one overlooking the vine-draped courtyard and the other into the dark countryside which was occasionally being lit up by a fantastic lightening storm in the distance. the restaurant uses local and home grown fruits, vegetables and animals. Arina and I chose the two different eight-course tasting menus, recommended by friends, while my parents chose two dishes each, overwhelmed by the amount of food they had already eaten that day.

?

Il Podio dei Culatelli di suino bianco 18 mesi e 27
del presidio Slow Food, di "Nera Parmigiana" di 37 mesi e giardiniera di Corte

Gli gnocchi di rana con ortaggi verdi e fiori di zucchine

I tortelli di erbette alla parmigiana

I ravioli di lumache fondenti in sfoglia di granoturco
con foglie di rapa rossa e fiori 

I soffici ai tre parmigiani in minestra tiepida di verdure

Il filetto di rombo in ristretto di gamberi rossi,
tortino di fagiolini e acciughette

La faraona ricoperta di culatello cotta nella creta del Po
accompagnata dai nostri ortaggi

Il petto d'anatra pezzata nera in crosta di aromatiche e le sue verdure 

La selezione dei Parmigiani: dalle cantine: i parmigiani di pianura , collina, montagna, 

vacche rosse, vacche brune, vacche bianche

lesson learned, years later repeated from a bad reaction in paris, i am still allergic to frog legs.