I’ve had a series of bad events for the apartment I rent out, so I felt that I wanted to show some appreciation for my property manager, who has had to do a LOT more work than usual, and send apologies to the tenants, who are new and have had to put up with works and repairs ever since they moved in.
As I was preparing the cards to go with the wine, I had a flashback to the Christmas Booze Delivery Run that I used to do with my Dad when I was a kid, maybe ten years old? I can never remember my exact age in memories from that time. I had Christmas holidays from school, and would hang out at my Dad’s office in Vancouver’s downtown and pretend to help out.
But this task was really fun. Dad would order in a dozen or so bottles of alcohol. Most were scotch, Crown Royal, a Canadian brand, though there were a few other brands too. Some bottles of rye. The unusual bottles were liqueurs: Kahlua, I’d guess, and maybe Tia Maria. He had shining metallic gift boxes to fit the bottles into, and then they were all neatly labeled with the recipient. Dad had a list in one of his many tiny notebooks, written in his nearly illegible handwriting (it runs in the family), of the person and their preference.
The infamous Crown Royal. Also my Dad’s favourite whiskey. So we had these purple bags around our house for years… everywhere.
We would then drive around on a day sometime before Christmas: the main destinations were the two banks in Chinatown that Dad did all of his business at, Canada Trust and the Royal Bank of Canada, although I believe gifts were also destined for his lawyer and accountant and a few others. But various bank managers and favourite tellers were the recipients of these gifts.
We probably parked in the alleyways of Vancouver in commercial loading zones. Dad always had many companies registered to him. He explained that they could be used for various reasons but also hinted that they were useful in amusing ways. Debt could be transferred from one company to another; bankruptcy could be declared as a way to avoid debt; various advantages could be accrued by using different companies for different purposes. One advantage was declaring one’s car a commercial vehicle, paying a fee for it, and being able to park in these special places, when no one else could, and it was hard to find parking anywhere in the downtown (and you had to pay for it!). It required a magnetic sign that he would affix to a steel plate and then put in the side window of the back of his station wagon when he needed to park (they were always station wagons).
I remember the warm feeling of knowing we would do something that was appreciated, and we were always greeted with such warmth and cheer. My brother reminds me that because it was the Christmas season, there was excellent snacking along the way, as each person had something open to share with you, especially if you were Joe Quan’s son, or so it seemed.
I also liked that it was a tradition that Dad had created. And it was a lesson: for how to make the world work better. You created good relationships with the people that you needed to work with; you showed them appreciation for their work and the relationship they had with you. It could be seen as calculated, but there was real goodwill behind it. And why not be generous? Why not give gifts? Why not make the wheels turn a little more smoothly? I’m happy to have learned these lessons from my father. I didn’t even realise I was consciously doing it, until I was reminded by the wine boxes of this tradition. Perhaps, it’s one way that I’m keeping his memory alive.
Since I’m from Vancouver, Canada, which is not so far from Bowen Island, the name Bowan Island caused me to do a double-take. But internet research is offering no illumination. Aside from the name of a bakery that has become renowned for sourdough, is there actually an island named Bowan in Australia? We stopped here for coffee, trying out East Village for groceries (partly because it’s near Peter’s of Kensington where I wanted to pick up something). In fact, we found the Taste Growers Market very appealing indeed with their fresh fruit and vegetables and other high-quality groceries, but I suppose that’s a review for Yelp rather than Zomato, isn’t it?
In any case, Bowan Island Bakery seems to be THE place to get coffee (there were one or two other casual, tiny stands). This one is big and well-lit and was busy and is very, very appealing in terms of the visuals: pies, bread, pastries. All looking very yummy. But I’m trying the keto diet at the moment so opted just for coffee. And…
Wow, was this a nice meal. Invited along for a business lunch, we had a whole selection of dishes: edamame with a spicy salt for dipping, gyoza, vegetarian sushi, and popcorn shrimp. A sashimi selection was beautifully presented and appropriately tasty and fresh. This dish above was my favourite, two types of sashimi cubes in a light mayonnaise on top of a deep-fried seaweed cracker. Delectable.
Now, if I was hungry, and it was lunchtime, I would have loved to try this place. I loved the contrast. A sign that makes it look like the place has been around for a long, long time, yet a fairly newly refurbished interior, as it was a cosy and stylish space, bright and light and open to the street. The menu, and items behind the counter, though made it look like very much a family-run operation, serving casual Vietnamese food. I also found it quite sweet to observe regulars dropping by for their coffee.
But I was just looking for a place for coffee, on Kent Street where I had to drop off something to be FedExed at Mailboxes Etc. I was glad for a comfy place to prepare the papers, and sip a delicious large latte. Having just come back from a trip to Italy where I didn’t like their lattes and ended up drinking caffè machiatto instead, I found this a perfect combination of milk and strong espresso and as a bonus: latte art!
I confess: I passed up eating here previously because… of the sign. I couldn’t read it at first, and it looks more like Pott’Spat than Spot, which is an even more terrible name for a restaurant. The childish lettering, the bad rhyme. Agh. But please try to get by that, as I did. For once I did, as my friends R & F encouraged us, the food was not just surprisingly good, but really very good.
I had slow-cooked lamb with melted scamorza (a cheese) and a poached egg on a crispy brioche, and it was an elegant and delicious order, plated beautifully, and just the right size. Two of our party had a breakfast bowl with kale and quinoa and falafel and an egg and again, it was lovely to look at, and well-received. R & F think this is some of the best brunch in all of Potts Point, and who am I to argue with the locals. Really, a very good meal. Now, can we do something about that name and sign?
Il Duomo was everything I’d hoped for and more: an exquisite fine dining experience, rooted in Sicilian culture, food and ingredients that would be unrepeatable elsewhere. An elegant atmosphere, a chance to try a range of interesting Sicilian wines, and treated like kings by the wonderful staff: it was all very happy-making.
We arrived when they opened, at 7:30pm. The décor is classy and quiet; there are only a few tables in each room, and multiple rooms. We sat as a table of two with another table of two across from us (but not too near). There was a window with a partial, leafy view outside, and some nice artwork. The waiters had fabulous silk ties and matching pocket squares.
Our menu was focused on seafood, and as explained with local flavours and flourish. There were some pretty fantastic techniques used, but mainly as an element of surprise. The food wasn’t too tricky. Appetizers were awfully fun. A spoonful of raw tuna with a thin layer of watermelon over it and bottarga. From an olive, they’d somehow extracted the pit, and stuffed it with something that had the crunch of a pit but was edible.
The artfully displayed tower of other appetizers, three each, was fun. A tiny delicate rice ball, a pastry with cream and blue roe on top of a raw shrimp, something that looked like an olive on top of a rice cracker.
I’ve never had oysters matched with pistachio cream (delectable).
And tiny pieces of a fine dining version of the local pizza… A thick, moist Sicilian pizza called Sfincione.
And on the side, a spoonful of sea urchin with cream (I can’t remember exactly what it was).
Of course, there would be pasta served in Italy. This was handmade angel hair pasta, with clams and an intense saffron cream. Yum.
The next dish was a delight. A sort of pumpkin ‘cake’, with sardines layered into it, a bit of bottarga and cubes of basil. A fun mix of textures and flavours.
The tiny fillets were red mullet, I believe, served with a complicated molecular sauce, so wonderful and buttery and rich; I think it was perhaps a lobster butter, with that yellow round sitting in the middle of a clear circle. Sort of like an egg yolk surrounded by its white. Plus a piece of perfectly charred and crispy green onion, and a crisp sage leaf.
But my favourite was this tiny individual lasagna ‘Lasagna of the Queen’, with pillowy delicate pasta wrapped around ricotta and on top three pieces of the most intensely flavourful treasures of the sea: blue lobster, calamari and shrimp. And sitting in a bed of Sicilian bisque.
The tuna was an intense, steak-y piece of tuna, full of flavour and texture, and served in a really rich sauce (‘a sauce of itself’ the menu said) along with a caper sauce and a little onion that looked like it was whole, but then you slid the top layer off and it was filled with an onion confit.
As a palate-cleanser (how I love the idea of a small course in the middle of the meal to allow you to take a break…), a mouthful of truffle gelato. Seriously.
The catch of the day, grouper, was brought over in a pan, and then dished out by the waiter into each plate with vegetables on the side.
I loved, coming to the conclusion of the savoury dishes that the chef had decided to focus on seafood completely and not bother with red meat, which also meant I got to try a really interesting variety of white Sicilian (and one Slovenian) wine. I’ve had great seafood, in many places, so what made the dishes different were what was on the side, as the fish was cooked perfectly and simply and allowed to shine that way.
This was the best cannoli I have ever had and no doubt will ever have. Every component just tasted somehow better and more fine dining than anything I’ve tasted before. On the menu, it’s described as ‘Ragusa’s cow’s milk ricotta cannoli with warm San Cono prickly pear soup and Pizzuta almond sorbet. I was really intrigued by all the prickly pears we saw in Sicily, so I’m glad we got to try some!
We then had fresh cherries, tiny ice cream cones dipped in chocolate, a jelly and some chocolate… and thought that was the last dessert.
And then comes a gorgeous piece of pannetone, which apparently they sell as well, not just for Christmas but year round. As a side note, in Canada, growing up, my family would receive these cakes at Christmas from friends or acquaintances, and I never understood their appeal, as they were pretty dry. I think that not only had they taken rather a long time to get to Canada, but they weren’t the high-quality ones. When our friend Sina in Sydney gave us a first proper pannetone, it was a revelation: soft, pillowy, delicately sweet. Having a special piece of this cake at Il Duomo was fun.
I loved that there were so many traditional Sicilian desserts, humble desserts, amped up to fine dining. The wines, by the way, were delicious. I’m not such an expert, so won’t try to describe them except that I appreciated how they matched up with the food, and how they changed flavour with the food! Among the wines were:
As a final note, I’m always surprised on the food review sites that amidst the rave reviews of top restaurants, it seems like some people, because of the good reviews and reputation of a restaurant, are ready to give the opposite reaction, just to beat it down, as if a restaurant could never live up to a reputation lifted by so much praise. Then again, my husband and I see a lot of musicals and I’ve found that for the opening nights, or expensive shows, that people seem to give a standing ovation regardless of the quality (which is usually pretty good… but a standing ovation?) It’s almost as if because they’ve paid a lot of money, they’re determined to enjoy themselves and that what they paid for is worth it (husband thinks it’s about peer pressure and cultural norms though). If I think about it, I’m like this for fine restaurants. If I’ve chosen a restaurant based on its reputation and reviews, and if it’s going to be really expensive, I’m going to expect it to be really good AND I’m going to be rooting for it to do as well as it can.
In Rome, however, Zomato is not very popular. In Italy, they’re only available in Rome, so it seems like an experiment as a business decision. The bad thing is there are not so many reviews up. The good thing, for me, is that after four days of blogs and reviews, I’m the number one blogger in Rome, the #15 reviewer and the #13 photographer. This won’t last that long I suspect (and after six months, the “points” expire) but for now, it amuses me.
