What Gollum says:

“We hates’es these cooking shows precious. We’ll wait till they’s asleeps and we’ll slit their throatsies!”

‘We cant do that! too many hobbitsies love those showsies, they’ll cry Hobbitsy tears!’

“Shut up, we hates em so much, we want to scratch out the tellie screen and stomps on it!”

We rate the current fads in restos for making life difficult for punters

We’ll declare our hand here and state that we like our dinner to look like dinner, our lunch to be recognizable and our breakfast familiar.

So what is with restaurants these days going out of their way to make it harder and harder for us to eat? Bandwagon marks these current trends out of ten for hardness.

• First try and find the place. It’s usually down an alley, up some stairs, across some roof and don’t bother looking for any signage, there won’t be any 8/10

Harry Potter can suck on this!

• As they don’t take bookings there’ll be a queue. 7/10

Is this the Pink Floyd Reunion queue?

• Then there’ll b the inevitable communal tables. 7/10

It stays cleaner without customers

• These places are usually staffed by people who rotate from one hotspot to another and in the process become dulled to any kind of enthusiasm for the job or the people they serve. 8/10

Those bitches are giving us a bad name on MKR?

• Then there’ll be the drinks list of obscure stuff no ones ever heard of and all the wines are orange-even the reds. 6/10

• They offer bread. Great I hear you say. However it will probably arrive in a box with a lid as it did at an establishment we recently visited AND they are stingy with it! What’s next, a padlock on the box as well? 5/10

How the fuck do I open this?

• The menu will be a fixed price set menu. It’s too bad if you’d hoped to choose your own dinner. 8/10

• Predictably the menu will have a Nordic/Spanish/Japanese undercurrent or whatever the San Pellegrino 50 best restaurant list decrees to be the next new culinary country hotspot. Except, no Antler powder? Det er OK, we’ll just substitute Crocodile fingernails. A lack of native Andalusian sea lettuce, no hay problema, we’ll just bung in some seaweed from Bronte beach. 7/10

We are NOT Reindeer fuckers!

Goooooooooooooooooal!                                                                        

Please dont put me on the Kimodo

• In fact nearly everything on the menu will have been scavenged from night-cart laneways to festering city creeks. 8/10

Excellent! the shit-cart hasn't collected yet!

We search high tide and low tide

• Sadly you’ll probably be served by some grubby, black finger-nailed, lank-haired, unshaven or ridiculously bearded, heavily pierced and/or inked, saggy-pants wearing chef. 7/10

Hi I'm Hansel & I'll be serving youse tonight

• The so-called Restaurant Garden, more accurately described as a nature strip with a tired and woody rosemary shrub will provide the solitary purple petal which adorns the meagre amount of the only protein you’ll be offered this evening, a postage stamp sized shave of -semen score 9, wagyu testicle. 9/10

We're proud of our our kitchen garden, "Wozza, keep the Camira off the strip will ya!"

'You've really got to get in close, you, know, to check freshness'

• The same place is probably already busy trying to locate sizeable quantities of farmed spiders like this one in the hip town of Santa Antonio da Platina in Brazil, rumoured to be the current foodie hotspot but they’ll probably have to make do with Daddy Long Legs. 7/10
• You won’t be able to hear your partners voice as the hens night next one side of you and the Deaf couple on your other side will be competing for aural superiority. 7/10

• Oh and forget about getting any spuds, rice or pasta-these places don’t believe in it. 8/10

• You’ll leave hungry. 8/10

• The whole debacle will cost you an arm and a leg. 9/10

That wasn't so bad?

Another restaurant launches on Flinders Lane

Melbourne news bite

Another chef who worked for both Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay and once attended a masterclass given by Melbourne's Sharon Bennett is opening a contemporary restaurant on Flinders Lane.

"Flinders Lane is the new Lygon Street, " he said and we plan to do nothing different. Called Variations he plans to openly copy and plaguarise some of the most cherished dishes in Australia including sliders, burgers, Asian street food and a mod Oz variation on tacos.

"You'll be able to start with a Golden Fields lobster roll or a mini wagyu burger, nobu Kingfish and Jalapeno or even a variation on Rosa Mitchell's anti-pasta.

Desserts will steal from the likes of the Phillipa Sibley Snickers Bar and Adriano Zumbo desserts he learnt to cook watching Masterchef episodes on the internet.

"Also we've learnt from Andrew McConnell and Chin Chin and will be launching with a  website simultaneoulsy with a social media and press campaign, which will involve posting large parcels of branded merchandize to anyone who is foolish enough to make their mailing address public.

"We'll also bring some lessons I've learnt from dining on Lygon Street,  he said. "We'll have hawkers on the door and use cheap bait to get diners in before surprising them with a menu that has two price tiers, one specially designed for tourists.

Try this at home

Hi Bandwagon, whilst in Rio de Janeiro a few months ago I had some of the most incredible rat-embryo donuts from a street vendor, could you persuade the vendor to give up his recipe please? Lyndon Bradley, Gawler.

Hi Lyndon,

We tracked him down but it was a challenge! Do you know how many men’s hostels there are in the Favela?! Here it is. regards the Bandwagon team

3 cups flour

1 palm sugar

500ml Coke

20g sock yeast

1 cup palm oil

8 to 10 embryos cut up

Mix everything together but save the embryos for the topping. Let it prove in the Favela under barbed wire(so no one steals it) Portion into balls before pushing the portioned embryos into them and fry until golden, dust with sugar or cornflour, whatever’s cheaper.

Restaurant Reviews

Restaurant review:

All you can eat Scavenge Hunt

 

chefs carefully forage whilst you enjoy a drink at the bar

• Where- Double Bay, NSW
• How much- pricey
• Chef- Cedric Ling
• Menu-Eclectic
• Booze-Lots of half bottles
• Vibe-Relaxed if quiet but scary when busy
• Highs-being able to choose
• Lows-Seagulls

The Team from Merseyvale have pulled one straight outta the box for their latest venture in the Emerald city. High hurricane mesh separates the diner from the main rd but not the aroma which entices from the street.

So much thought has gone into this place and the attention to detail is, well it’s astonishing. From the crumpled menu options to the distressed look on the staffs faces, the faint whiff of urine to the halitosis on the waiters breath-everything is pitch perfect. And the food?

How does ‘Rummaged bacon rinds in chip paper’ sound for starters? Followed by ‘Pecks n Nosh’ a tribute of sorts to David and Posh Beckham who the chef once cooked for arrives in the form of a half opened jar of fish paste, some dumpster dived melba toasts served on a discarded Prada high heel. Genius!

We finished with some de-constructed toffee apples. Its early days but the signs are good so dive into this dump before the hungry crowds descend!

What would Amy drink? beverage reviews

What Amy would drink…

Beverage review for the discerning

This week…Dirt Cheap Beer

Cost- $1.00 a can, $7 a six pack or $20 a slab

Where-Roving Beer Sales, check social media like Twitter or Facebook for updates and locations.

Taste-thin, with a kick

Get the job done? Three can buzz. Eight can nightclub fight.

Score-7/11

Ask Auntie

Ask Auntie.

Alvina de Whit has been a long serving member of the Scone NSW branch of the CWA since she was married off to the then Mayor’s son Kelvin de Whit in 1948 in what locals still remember as the best arranged marriage they’ve ever seen. In this column she shares her no nonsense approach to good cooking.

Dear AA,

I find that when I drink milk in milkshakes I feel ‘bloated’ afterwards, am I Lactose Intolerant?

Cheyenne Le Cornu, Coolangatta

AA, No, you’ve just got wind. Harden up.

Dear AA,

My pies sag in the middle, what am I doing wrong?

Bruce Aberfeldy, Acton Park

AA: Don’t be so stingy with the filling.

Dear AA,

Is Nutella a healthy sandwich spread for kids?

Carolyn Quigley, Subiaco

AA: Are you a moron or what?

Overheard at table....Food goss

So Hugh Farty what’s his face has recruited an Australian disciple to feature in a spin-off of his UK show a River Cottage. Well Hughsie-do your homework mate, we’ve already got a River Cottage Show, it’s called the Gourmet Farmer so stop pinching our ideas you speccy twat!

Adelaide’s Penfolds Magill Estate restaurant has yet again lost another head chef-I’ve lost count there’s been so many. Seems management and the chef were growing in different directions-Management grew up.

New feature length movie about the Sydney food scene is being cast and Actors Equity are already up in arms over the rumoured signing of Steven Segal to play, wait for it, Neil Perry!

Ever eager to keep ahead of the food trends, the Melbourne Tub Group has just arrived back from touring the worlds’ slums. ‘Its just so exciting what they’re doing in these primitive and depressing conditions and we can’t wait to translate it for a Melbourne audience’ said newly appointed CEO Brian Wilson. Fit-out to be done by seven degrees.

In what Bandwagon believes to be an emerging trend, many chef owners are quitting their businesses for the comfort and stability of drawing a wage within large restaurant groups. In what appears to be a win/win situation, the group gets an injection of cred whilst the chef get to do what they do best-get more media exposure.

A new Easter chocolate treat with from left-field has hit the shelves. Stephen Shanabrook who made worldwide headlines with his ‘Suicide Bomber remains cast in chocolate’ which was acquired by David Walsh of Hobart’s much lauded MONA museum, has released a range of chocolate body parts and judging by the sales we’d say it’s a hit!

‘I can’t keep up with making the male genitalia though’, Stephen joked, ‘everyone likes that little bit extra chocolate’.

Tour dates have yet to be announced for the comeback of sorts for some of the notable foodies from the 70’s and 80’s to the present day. Graham Kerr, Keith Floyd, Peter Russell Clark, Aristos, Ian Parmenter, James Reeson, Ken Hom, Ainsley Harriot, Paul Mecurio, Huey and the entire cast of Lifestyle Café. Organisers haven’t yet settled on a venue small enough.

Want to be a kitchen star? Are you the next Jamie, Nigella or Bill? BottomFeederMedia are searching for the next cooking TV Reality star with a twist.

‘The Wheelchair Rambling Cook’, is searching for a wheelchair bound foodie for its new series based on changing perceptions of people cooking with disabilities. Please note, you must be able to speak clearly-no deafs, mutes or other deformities will be accepted.