Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [32]
“I suspect it’ll be the most expensive meal of the trip,” he says hopefully, “but it was worth the splurge.”
Still satiated in the morning, we have a simple breakfast at our hotel before boarding the Bondi Explorer sightseeing bus for a tour of Sydney’s shoreline. The route affords good, close-up views of coastal residential neighborhoods, which strike us as a Southern Hemisphere translation of British suburbia, with lots of solid brick homes as fully landscaped as similar ones in England except in a totally different, subtropical mode. The commercial strips along the way suggest much greater internationalism. A single block of two-story business buildings contains a Vietnamese restaurant, a pizza-to-go place, a Portuguese chicken diner, an Italian-style coffee shop, a Chinese acupuncture clinic, and a dental office. Our intention was to get off at famed Bondi Beach for a walk, but the day turns out cool and windy and Cheryl now has the sniffles, which develop into a full-blown cold by late afternoon.
Lunch is at Sailors Thai Canteen, back in The Rocks almost directly across the street from the Russell. David Thompson, a renowned chef, still owns this and its sister restaurant downstairs, though he no longer does the cooking. The hostess escorts us through the main dining room, a long, dark space just wide enough to hold a single galvanized-metal communal table, and seats us on a small balcony overlooking the harbor. “A beautiful view again,” Bill says. “I wonder if Sydney residents get jaded about it?”
The menu includes a range of Thai favorites, such as green papaya salad studded with peanuts and prawns, pad thai, and beef and chicken curries, but we choose two deep-fried dishes—salmon with lime, mint, and chile; and chicken with rice, chopped peanut balls, and an herb salad. “That sure cleared some nasal passages,” Cheryl says in one of her favorite compliments.
“Are you up for a walk around The Rocks, then?” Bill wants to check out three pubs that each claim the honor of being the oldest in Australia. The Fortune of War Hotel authenticates its position with a framed license dating to 1830. “The document looks official to me,” Bill says, “but the best proof of seniority may be this carpet we’re standing on, at least as old as the country itself.” Contrary to his careful scholarship, historical purists point out that the pub went out of business for a year and only moved to its present location in 1921. The Lord Nelson Hotel avoids those embarrassments but didn’t open until 1841. The Hero of Waterloo Hotel, which appears to be the most ancient, was founded by a man who got a license in 1831 and then opened a pub at the current site at a later disputed date. Our sleuthing yields no ultimate answers, but our votes go to the Fortune of War because it’s the closest to our hotel, where Cheryl needs a nap.
By the time of our dinner reservation at est., Peter Doyle’s restaurant in the stylish Establishment Hotel, Cheryl is feeling worse than Bill, sinking fast into a deep chest cold. “I don’t think we should cancel,” she says, “but let’s not linger late over the meal.” Even skipping an intriguing tasting menu and dessert, we still spend well over two hours savoring various specialties, including an icy platter of juicy oysters, garlic-infused sweetbreads, juniper-crusted venison saddle, a comforting side of creamy mashed potatoes to soothe our sore bodies, and—the highlight of the evening—pork belly and scallops with a salad of jicama, apples, walnuts, and cress.
On our last full day, Liz wants to take us to her favorite breakfast spot, Bathers’ Pavilion Café, the casual half of Serge Dansereau’s Bathers’ Pavilion Restaurant, both lodged in a renovated seaside swimmer’s bathhouse directly on pretty Balmoral Beach. Everything on the menu sounds good,