Naked breasts on display
Over in cleavage corner the posse have a problem. While I’m away peeing into a bowl (in the loo), a urinal of food arrives at the table.
I have a problem that my tropical issue trousers have splash back. None of us are happy.
And that’s just the start of it at Rice Spice Road, a cavernous business at the pointy end of town – 27 McKillop Street, which really is a lane.
A urinal shaped bowl. Note how the lip is much higher on one side. If this bowl was tipped on its side it would look exactly like a urinal. What is it with this trend oif using these shaped bowls?
The idea of this place is quite simple. Crowd in on Friday night with all your mates from work. Quaff cocktails and bitch about your boss.
Later break your new years resolution and smoke in the courtyard. If you are lucky Kyle from the mail room will have a joint.
But beware Brian from sales. He has a fresh supply of the date rape drug. And he is molesting Myfanwy in the corridor leading to the loos. Her voice sounds like a howling dog, which is quite normal for her. She isn’t complaining – yet.
Red Spice Road is a flash Asian themed space where the head chef (John McLeay) is Anglo and they’ve managed to drag in some helpful but language challenged Asian waiters. Presumably, somebody has done the responsible serving of alcohol course.
Of course, the aim is to guide you to the round table in the square room with the round sky light to eat. But really the food, Asian, is clumsy in its combinations of sweet/salty/sour and hot. Or too sticky/chewy/runny. And to boot some of it arrives in urinal-shaped bowls.
In the loo the urinal is a bowl with an upturned plate inside that depicts what is possibly the owner of another restaurant or a well known restaurant critic.
But it doesn’t matter because the food is incidental. What the restaurant and it’s wealthy Honk Kong owners, Apples and Pears, have created is a package that will generate lots of money. That will support a very expensive operation, Interlude, which will move from Brunswick St to around the corner around mid-year – reopening on Shannon Bennett’s doorstep.
Red Spice Road is very much like Longrain but in the business end of town. And though Longrain has its annoying cash cow wait-in-the-bar-and-drink-yourself-silly-until-you-can-get-a-seat-at-the-ridiculously-wide-table element to it, the food is good. The food at Longrain is very good. Brilliant and fanatical in its attention to detail down to the poor bugger in a small cupboard who is forced to grate coconuts into milk day and night.
So full marks to Longrain for getting us drunk, mugging us and making the effort. Full marks to Red Spice Road for getting the width of their tables just right. But five out of ten for making a poor facsimile of something that is excellent.
The “Shit Bar”.
By now the posse are ready for some city bar action. It’s on to the Shit bar (I kid you not), an annex to St Jeromes and more of an exercise in crowd control, plastic cups of beer, corrugated iron and scaffolding. We don’t stay to check the urinals. The posse are happy for a few moments at least.
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Odd bowls indeed, though sounds like worth having a peek, if only for the cleavage and perfect-width tables.
If only all reviews were this entertaining to read, I can’t be bothered giving other blog written reviews more than a cursory glance, but yours always give me at least one or two chuckles.
Ellie, Glad to have entertained which is part of the aim and i know I’m guilty of just a straight review sometimes – although people are interested in the pictures of new dishes in a new restaurant. You know on reflection some of the bowls are a bit like bedpans.
Shittown and all of that Jeromes business is so depressing. Read what has happened to the Rob Roy on my blog. It is too sad to even type again, though, I am not sure how into it you’d be.
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