I feel as though I’ve been drifting for a while here1 with no real purpose. Part of that I’m going to attribute to seasonal motivational fluctuations (I’m sure that’s a thing), but that can’t be the whole of it. For a (very brief) moment I was considering participating in NaBloPoMo (a post a day, all month – the bloggers’ equivalent to NaNoWriMo2) – a bit of discipline might be handy, even in recreation – but the moment passed. Even as I hovered my mouse over the sign-up button, though, I knew that doing it would result in half a dozen desultory posts of this nature, and then back to random intermittence. That’s defined as lose-lose, whichever way you look at it.
Perhaps that’s why I decided to move the blog – a [virtual] change is as good as a [virtual] holiday? Except that… a [virtual] holiday is about as refreshing as you’d expect it to be.
So, this is all by way of saying: a new address hasn’t magically jump-started my motivation to write. In lieu of being refreshing and original, then, I’m going to rant about Larissa Dubecki’s latest restaurant review to save you the frustration of having to read it.
More, after the jump (which is after the footnotes).
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1. “Here” is a vague concept, of course. I’ve only just come here, but… well, you know what I mean.
2. Unlike NaNoWriMo, however, NaBloPoMo happens every month, so I’ve got a chance to not do it twelve times a year.
This week, Ms Dubecki has gone to The Baths. Fortunately, this information is included in the heading, since most of the first two paragraphs is about the men’s loo (which is, apparently, famous). She struggles to settle to a tone here: “the urinal that wowed Melbourne … the plasma TV screen on to which the gents took aim” in the first paragraph is “the telly in the dunny” showing a “pissed all over Ready Steady Cook” in the second. The tone is disjointed; it’s as though she’s uncomfortable in the milieu of the Brighton set, or wants to project that she is.
You might stop reading before you reach the food, due to the brain explosion you’ll suffer trying to figure out what the Velvet Revolution has to do with a middle-class bayside restaurant reno. Once you do get to her thoughts on the food (it gets its first mention in paragraph seven) you’ll find they are compromised by the uncertainty of identity shown in the first two paras. The “ladies who lunch will simply adore the cold entree of coriander-crusted tuna with a ‘salad’ comprising curling ribbons of cucumber, shiitake and a soy-based dressing with a citrus tang”. Why assess a dish by making assumptions about how somebody else would feel about it? It’s a conceit that obscures meaning. Is she trying to avoid being sued? Is she, in fact, a lady who lunches?
She’s unequivocal about the next dish (“what’s not to like?”) which is handy, because she tries to throw us off the scent by describing the meat as “striated”. The hours spent with the Readers’ Digest increasing her word power pay off again in the description of the risotto’s egg yolk “deliquescing into a generic richness”. WTF, Larissa? Does she use impenetrable language to hide a lack of familiarity with the food, perhaps? She notes that the “smoked haddock risotto and soft poached egg… presents the odd-sounding combination of fish, egg and cheese” but it’s not that strange a combo (apart from the cheese) unless you’ve never heard of kedgeree.
The fish and chips are a triumph… apart from the chips. I, too, would rather have proper chips than these “four railway sleepers”, but her disappointment shows an ignorance for the British driven trend for “chunky chips”, as seen on nearly every British food show in the early noughties. “Raynor’s a Brit; he ought to understand the fundamental importance of the chip to Western civilisation but I guess when you’re charging $32 (which is not at all outrageous for a dish like this), he felt he needed to jazz it up a bit.” Plus, how does “when you’re charging $32″ not imply that the price is a little high?
Clearly after the spending spree earlier, Dubecki was only left with 10c words for the remainder of the review, which is something of a relief. And I do want to try the tarte tatin, but I think I’ll have it as designed (for two), rather than try to share it with three others.
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1. “Here” is a vague concept, of course. I’ve only just come here, but… well, you know what I mean.
2. Unlike NaNoWriMo, however, NaBloPoMo happens every month, so I’ve got a chance to not do it twelve times a year.
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