Stuart and Audrey Magee at Circular Quay
Stuart Magee finds the perfect freedom of a choice – in a private hideaway
It must be said
that the menu at the Café Carstensz, in Carstensz St, Griffith, is distinctly
limited. There are no entrees. At first reading, the list of mains seems to
offer a choice of two plates, but it turns out to be only one. There is no sign
of any dessert, but those in the know are aware that later in the evening the
cook’s heart thaws a little and there will be a most passable sweet of one sort
or another.
The absence of entrees
is offset by the fact that when one has placed an order for the main course,
the establishment provides, for free – but it should be remembered at tipping
time - a plate of crackers with cottage cheese, accompanied by sliced pickled
onions and slivered stuffed olives. The plate is served with a scotch and soda –
again no charge.
Among the stronger
cards in the café’s hand are the seating arrangements. Preserve me from restaurants
where the tables are so close together that the conversation from neighbours is
inescapable. At this café there is the lovely table by the window. It is big
and comfortable, beautifully set, sometimes a candle, and it is difficult to
hear any intruding noise from nearby tables.
When my wife and I
dined there recently, we were debating whether to have the chops or the
sausages, but as it turned out the two were served together. Much simpler
really – many of Canberra’s eateries would do well to limit their choice of
main. The lamb chops and beef sausages had been dusted in flour and fried in a
hot pan to get very well browned. We had ordered the bangers well done and the
chops a little pink, and they came to the table done precisely that way. They arrived
with a mighty mound of fluffy potato mashed with chives, a lesser mound of
buttery mashed pumpkin and a large serve of fresh, flawless green beans with a
shake of nutmeg. There was onion gravy. Not drizzled in a line around the edge
of a largely unoccupied plate, but ladled over. Indeed there was no vacant
space on the plate to permit drizzling, just a small gap beside the sausage to
allow a good splurt of tomato sauce.
The wine waiter is
a crusty old codger. I happen to know he has a reasonably extensive cellar, but
each night he brings up only what he sees as fitting, and you like it or leave
it.
This night, he had
a Jacob’s Creek Shiraz at $5.80 for the bottle and a Wynns Coonawarra Riesling
at $12.
Conversation
lagged a little as we applied our full attention to the excellent dinner,
together with the adroitly chosen wines. Dessert did arrive later: cups of tea –
bottomless – with a large slice of iced ginger cake.
Our home café scores
one out of four for its menu, and that’s being kind. But four out of four for
ambience, and the same for quality, quantity and very good value. A final score
of 21 out of 20.
It’s open seven nights, but we’ve booked it out for
the foreseeable future – though there are occasional cancelations.
Note
from site administrator Tony Magee: My father wrote this article in July 2007 and it
was published in The Canberra Times on the 18th of that month. All is
revealed in the second last paragraph: “Our home café…” !!! Astonishingly, a
staff member from that paper called my Dad and said “Stuart we love your story
and we’ll publish it, but I’m curious – I can find no reference to a restaurant
in Carstensz Street, Griffith.” The poor lad had failed to grasp the ending of
the story. My Dad soon set him straight!
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