Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [29]
Each of us orders South Australian oysters to start, since it’s their high season. Some come on the half shell and others are baked briefly in the locally popular Kilpatrick style, topped with bits of crispy bacon and a light brush of Worcestershire sauce. The oysters are plump and tasty—and briny enough to stand up to the Kilpatrick kick. Our main course, fresh whiting fillets fried in a tempura batter, shines as well. “Even better than the whiting I had on Kangaroo Island,” Cheryl says.
“This may be more amazing than your three koalas. Here in a small, provincial city in rural Australia, a business-hotel kitchen wows us!”
The next day, with Bill tanked up to his hair roots in decongestants, we fly on to Sydney and check into the Russell Hotel. Despite being too much like a B&B in interminable quaintness and inadequate storage space, the inn claims a prime location in The Rocks historic district just across a small park from Circular Quay, the transportation hub for the city, and provides grand views from a rooftop garden encompassing the harbor, Harbour Bridge, and the Opera House. Even acerbic Bill finally says, “The advantages probably outweigh the dangers of choking on the Victorian charm.”
Our friend Liz Gray picks us up out front when she gets off work. The three of us met in France a year earlier, when she attended a culinary-adventure week that we lead annually in the Dordogne at a wonderful country retreat called La Combe en Périgord. Our planning for this trip by then already called for a definite stop in Sydney, and Liz volunteered to advise us on our visit and make restaurant reservations for us. This evening she’s taking us to a couple of her favorite places in town and showing us, at our request, a Sydney institution known as Harry’s Cafe de Wheels.
Harry’s opened at the end of World War II, originally as a street-food cart pushed into place every day to serve sailors working on the nearby wharfs. After it gained some fame among celebrities visiting Sydney and eventually acquired historic status, the café gave up its wheels and became a permanent fixture. It stays busy now eighteen hours a day, selling meat pies—such as the beefy “Tiger,” the nickname of the founder, complete with mushy peas, mashed potatoes, and gravy—and chili hot dogs, the biggest of which contains the namesake ingredient along with garlic, onions, mushy peas, and cheese. It looks fun, but we pass on the chow.
Liz escorts us down the same block to the more posh surroundings of the lobby bar in the W Hotel, part of a sleek new residential development. After we’ve taken seats in cushy chairs around a low table and ordered wine, Liz leans over to Cheryl and whispers, “I’ve heard Russell Crowe and Tom Cruise maintain flats upstairs in the private wings.”
“No kidding,” Cheryl says, almost knocking over her glass trying to look in every direction at once.
The sightseeing turns out to be more successful on the drive to dinner. “I’ll take you on a detour across the Harbour Bridge,” Liz tells us, and accidentally makes the round-trip twice, giving us magnificent nighttime views of the city around us and the boats below, both aglow. “A lot of tourists,” our guide mentions, “join organized groups to climb the built-in ladders to the very top of the structure.”
“Good thing we’re not joiners,” Bill says.
Liz eventually parks on the waterfront near the end of the bridge and leads us into The Wharf, a restaurant operated by the Sydney Theatre Company, with spectacular harbor views from the end of the same pier that houses