While the retired lifestyle is supposed to deliver plenty of time to do things it doesn't take much to throw a spanner in the works and disrupt the old blogging schedule.
Now, the reader who's familiar with Hughesy's habits will probably leap to a totally unwarranted conclusion when I remark that a recent hiatus in blog activity coincided with a milestone birthday, but the arrival of my brother on the doorstep to assist with the celebrations associated with the milestone had a considerable impact on the publishing schedule.
We collected him from Whitsunday Coast Airport around Friday lunchtime, took a leisurely lap through Airlie Beach and Shute Harbour on the way back, entertained Mr & Mrs Actor over pizzas on Friday night, spent much of Saturday chatting and catching up, took another drive to Airlie for the long lunch on Sunday, took things fairly easy through the actual birthday on Monday and lost a fair chunk of Tuesday dropping him off at Whitsunday Coast, so there was a fair quantity of what might have been writing time gone….
Add to that the decision to acquire littlehouseofconcrete.net and a need to generate some content to start filling it, the start of the process of migrating content from MobileMe to the new site, and you'll see why we've got this backlog of data that needs to be delivered to the various LHoC sites.
There are these two little numbers from the Sunday Long Lunch at Déjà Vu, for example. After some recent experiences I was mildly apprehensive about what I was likely to find on the wine list, since there's nothing about it on the Déjà Vu website, and I suspected we might be finding ourselves in the land of the usual suspects once again.
It only took a brief glance to reassure me, however, and I was in the process of tossing up between a couple of options in the white department before settling on a Tasmanian sauvignon blanc.
Decisions in the rose/red section of the list were a bit more straightforward, since I'd spotted something that had attracted favourable attention during the Rose Revolution promotion earlier in the month and I had suspicions I'd sighted it in Halliday's Hundred the day before.
As far as the Long Lunch was concerned, at $44 for around half a dozen courses it's reasonably good value with one major reservation.
There were three of us at the table, and we found great difficulty demolishing everything on offer. It appears they've catered on the basis of tables of four, since I couldn't detect much difference between what arrived in front of us and what appeared on nearby tables with two and four customers.
Either arrive in a foursome or, if you can't quite muster the numbers, book yourself into overnight accommodation so you can do a carpet snake routine after a big feed rather than climbing back into the car for the homeward journey. I'm not sure whether five or six diners triggers a double helping, but if five doesn't you might find yourself slightly peckish at the end of proceedings.
As far as the food is concerned, the opening antipasto platter was excellent, the calamari that followed it some of the best I'd tried, the mussel dish superfluous and padded out with far more pasta than necessary, the pizza good but not great, the lamb quite excellent and the dessert excellent, though I wasn't able to finish mine (Madam looked after it, however).
And as far as the wine was concerned:
Dalrymple Vineyards 2010 Sauvignon Blanc (4.5* $25) Pale straw in the glass, and from the first whiff of the aromatic herbaceous nose I was firmly on side. Well balanced citrus and passionfruit across the palate, zingy acidity, and a lengthy finish here's a reminder that you don't need to go to New Zealand for high quality cool climate Sauvignon Blanc. One to look for on restaurant wine lists since it doesn't turn up in the local bottle shops (I looked).
Turkey Flat 2011 Barossa Valley Rose (5* $18) Grenache, shiraz, cabernet sauvignon, dolcetto blend that's salmon pink in the glass (looked great from the time the bottle arrived) fragrant aromas through the nose, watermelon and berry fruits on the palate and a well-defined balanced finish summer drinking doesn't get much better than this. Consistently at the very top of Australian roses says Mr Halliday, and there won't be any dissent from this quarter..
