Alistair Lattimore » Food

Hogs Breath Cafe

Al — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 22:52:02 +0000

Another thing that was a happy coincidence after eating dinner at Hogs Breath Cafe last night was they have their 21st birthday celebration on until the 21st August.

The 21st birthday celebration means if you eat at Hogs Breath and order one of their signature steaks, they’ll give you a frequent diners card for free that entitles you to 21% off your next meal at Hogs Breath. If you’re a current frequent diners card holder, you’re entitled to your normal frequent diners card discount and they’ll give you a Hogs Breath steak knife for each prime rib meal as well.

Since Claire and I have had Hogs Breath cards for a long time, they were still happy to give them to us so we signed up Lorraine & Sterle – fantastic. I’m now thinking we should go back before the end of the month, get a couple more frequent diners cards for some other friends that don’t have them and get another pair of steak knives!

Bumbles Cafe Surfers Paradise

Al — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:11:48 +0000

This evening I was lucky enough to have dinner at a small, quirky Surfers Paradise restaurant named Bumbles Cafe. It is located on River Drive at Budds Beach and has a great outlook over the famous Gold Coast canals with their luxurious mega mansions and super sized cruiser style boats. The site was originally a convenience store and in January 2000 was converted into a small cafe with a handful of tables and a bench seat. Over the years, that has grown to now seat sixty inside spread across a split level floor and four general dining spaces, coupled with alfresco dining for forty.

By the look of it, Bumbles take a lot of pride in their menu and keeping it seasonal and fresh. We were eating from the menu of the month, which had three courses with 4-6 dishes in each section. I chose a lemon risotto with Morten Bay bugs for an entre, snapper on a bed of beans and a sticky date putting for dessert. All of the meals I had for dinner were excellent, well cooked and flavoursome. With so many other delicious options on this months menu alone, I can see why people return to Bumbles restaurant for dinner.

I’ve known about Bumbles as a cafe from 2004 when I first moved to the Gold Coast as it is walking distance from one of our offices, however didn’t realise that they had such an excellent dinner service as well. I would absolutely love to go back and sample some of the other items on the menu at some point, which will no doubt be different but equally as scrumptious.

Dark Chocolate Tim Tams

Al — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:11:01 +0000

Arnott’s Tim Tams are probably the most popular chocolate biscuit in Australia, so popular in fact that one in two households throughout the country have a packet of Tim Tams.

Over the illustrious life of the trusty Tim Tam, they have undergone a number of transformations – none more popular than the original classic flavour and backed up by double coated Tim Tams and chewy caramel Tim Tams. Recently Arnott’s have added another flavour to the Tim Tam stables, Tim Tam Classic Dark.

I’ll eat just about any chocolate, white, milk, dark and everything in between but white and dark I have to eat in measured quantities. I wasn’t sure about a dark chocolate Tim Tam but decided I needed to experience it first hand and I have to say, I really like it. They’ve still got that familiar taste, which is enriched by a luscious dark chocolate however there are hints of an old school favourite in there, the moreish Arnott’s TeeVee Snack.

I don’t buy Tim Tam’s very often, I’m generally more of a Mint Slice type of guy but next time I do buy a Tim Tam – I think it might very well be a dark chocolate version!

Christmas

Al — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 13:55:12 +0000

Christmas for 2008 is nearly over and it has been magnificent.

The day started a smidgen before 5AM due to the heat and by 5.30AM I had to get up. We were aiming to be over at George & Jude’s by 6:30AM to begin the present opening festivities – however we ended up getting there a little late by the time Hugo awoke and we organised him. As it turns out, when we arrived the house was still basically asleep and Cam, Tina & their kids hadn’t arrived yet either so we didn’t feel so bad. Once the kids arrived and we started opening presents, it was pandemonium – so much excitement and they were buzzing! We packed up some of our stuff and headed home at around 9AM.

Hugo went down for his nap when we arrived and as soon as that was sorted, the second of the ceremonies began. I munched down some cereal and savored a ham & cheese crassoint. It seems to be a bit of a tradition that the present session with the Buchanan clan goes off; every year the intention is to make it a little smaller than the last and a more metered but it never seems to pan out that way!

We worked our way back over the George & Jude’s for lunch with Andrew, Belinda, Ben, George and Jude and it was fantastic. Mum has been making the same style Christmas ham for a long time now and every time I eat it – it is positively delicious. Not wanting to go hungry, Jude had also prepared a collection of superb desserts – fair to say that we probably all ate too much but it is just so hard to say no to great food! Emily, Will, Anita and Oliver came over not long after we’d finished lunch to pass on well wishes for Christmas and we talked and caught up for the next few hours.

At 3PM, we made our way back over the Sterle, Lorraine & Grandma’s place where we chilled out for an hour or two. Conveniently, while the Lattimore family traditionally does a Christmas lunch, the Buchanan clan does a Christmas dinner. So with a couple of hours of recuperation from lunch, we got stuck into another excellent Christmas meal – which was followed by more scrumptious desserts.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised yet again by how tolerant Hugo has been with us today. We dragged him with us over to George & Jude’s early this morning for breakfast and he was presented with a mad house. We came back home to more people and then back over to George and Jude’s for lunch. He had his lunch time nap over there in a strange house, strange room, strange smell and didn’t seem to care one bit – which we’re obviously very happy about.

As an aside, one thing that you can’t take away from a small country town like Chinchilla, is that it doesn’t ever take long to get from anywhere to anywhere. While we were tripping about a little bit today between the two homes, which are on opposite sides of the town – we’re talking about less than 10 minutes of drive time. That is certainly something I miss about living in a city like the Gold Coast.

It has been a great day, lots of family, friends and plenty of decadent food. A bonus from Christmas day is that there is always left over everything, which makes for at least one day of excellent lunches and dinners. Bring on Christmas 2009 I say.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

Continental Three Thirtyitus TV Advertisements

Al — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:21:48 +0000

Continental started airing TV advertisements last year for their soup range and the theme of the ads was something they termed three thirtyitus. According to Continental, three thirtyitus kicks in at about 3:30PM when your brain starts to slow down, you start thinking less clearly and silly things happen.

So far I’ve found three of their advertisements on YouTube:

In the latest creation, a customs officer is searching a users baggage and is pulling out all sorts of interesting stuff from the bag like numerous bricks of cocaine. Paying absolutely no attention to the bricks of cocaine, the customs officer finally pulls up the user because he is carrying a multi-purpose utility; he flicks open the knife on it – which of course is tiny, and informs the user that this is unacceptable and he’ll need to confiscate it.

I’ve been unable to find a copy of it on YouTube so far, so if someone happens to find it – let me know and I’ll add it to the list.

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Jotted

Al — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:28:34 +0000

Entertainment

Iron Man was awesome, in fact I may need to see it again in the cinema.

Food

Cafe Campanile in the Robina Town Centre square does a wicked big breakfast, well worth the effort.

Nonna’s Italian Cuisine at Harbour Town (just up from the cinema) serves some great food, we’ll be going there again. Bonus, if you order a main you can buy your cinema tickets for $10 each.

Tuk Tuk Thai Bistro, which is located in the little collection of shops near the main Pacific Pines round about has reasonably priced dinners; two curries and two large rice for about $35.

Purchases

We bought another bookshelf, it’s the same as two others we have but white. It’s in the nursery and acting more as storage than a bookshelf.

After a lot of looking and what I’d personally consider quite an amount of pain, we’ve purchased a cot, change table and related odds and sods. We’ve had a bit of an issue finding something that met our criteria but in the end the fine folk at The Baby Superstore in the Robina Town Centre provided the goods.

Slow Fast Food

Carnivore

Al — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:24:42 +0000

Tonight a bunch of my extended family and I visited the Hogs Breath Cafe at the Q Super Centre in Mermaid Waters on the Gold Coast for dinner.

After working at a Hogs Breath for a number of years, I hold them in pretty high regard and also have pretty solid expectations of them too. We had a great waiter, who was more than happy to play and make jokes with Oliver (the toddler dining with us) and prompt service to boot.

I ordered a medium-rare Blackened Prime Rib with pepper sauce and I think it was one of the best steaks I’ve eaten in the last 6 months. Asking around the table, everyone was very happy with their steak – even the folk that normally order higher cooked steak where happy ordering one degree of rareness down.

We weren’t initially going to order any dessert, however as soon as one person went in for something sweet; everyone else indulged too. Mmm, sticky date pudding!

Great night out, good company, positively devine steak – just excellent.

Slow Fast Food

Al — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:58:52 +0000

I consider myself to be quite a patient person in most instances, however there are certain things that frustrate me no end – one of which happens to be slow service at a fast food establishment.

I understand that from time to time, things go wrong in the kitchen and it takes time to recover. I sympathise when there is an unexpected rush of people and the kitchen is completely overwhelmed; it happens and I’ve experienced it first hand many times. However, when it’s slow all the time, something is clearly wrong.

To cite an example, the Nandos at the Helensvale Town Centre on the Gold Coast seems completely incapable of serving food at a reasonable pace. I’m not expecting the type of service that you’d normally see from the finely tuned machine that is a McDonalds – no, I’m talking about a number under 10 minutes.

In the last three months, I’ve probably ordered food from the Helensvale Nandos four or five times and each time, the speed of service is completely unacceptable. Under normal serving conditions, it takes anywhere from 15-20 minutes however on one occasion I waited for just under 30 minutes.

I realise that in most cases it isn’t going to be the staffs fault and is more likely the management cutting costs by rostering fewer staff on. Of course, the public will only tolerate substandard service for soo long before they simply stop going there. If it weren’t for the fact that you pay for your meal before receiving the food, I’m sure they’d be losing a lot more money from clients walking out the door, being sick and tired of waiting for slow fast food.

Opera Fast, Potato Slow

Defridgeration

Al — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:41:47 +0000

Last weekend, our refridgerator started showing a warning signal that something wasn’t quite right and by midweek it had decided it was a good time to stop refridgerating.

When it stopped cooling properly, I opened up the phone book and started calling around to service people to come and fix the fridge. I naively thought that it’d be a simple process and someone would be out that same day, it turns out that wasn’t the case. After calling 15-20 different businesses, the standard responses were that they didn’t service Fisher & Paykel fridges or they were too busy.

Of the ones that did service Fisher & Paykel fridges, the soonest we might be able to get someone out was going to be the following Monday. Now comes the amazing part, of the ones that did performed fridge repairs on Fisher & Paykel, their fees varied from a $100 to $150 for the call out fee. Once they were on site, they billed a similar amount per hour for labor and of course parts were extra.

Apparently, refridgeration is a license to print money like plumbing.

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Fabulous Steak

Al — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:42:31 +0000

Last night Claire and I ventured up to Brisbane to see her family and have an early dinner. Initially we were going to dine at a cafe however someone had the brilliant idea of heading to Hogs Breath at Indooroopilly.

With a tiny bit of discussion, I convinced all concerned parties that ordering well done steak at Hogs Breath is all but a cardinal sin and we put through a couple of orders for medium well. Everyone was very impressed with their steaks, no complaints at all. Claire and I haven’t had Hogs Breath for months, so it was a real treat to eat out there again and as usual, the medium rare steak was magnificent.

For dessert, I went with the sticky date pudding but we also ordered a new rocky road inspired dish. It was more expensive than all the other desserts on offer but it didn’t click to anyone at the time until it arrived and it could have literally satisfied three or four very hungry dessert eaters! It was in an oversized red wine or cherry shaped glass, none of us on the table could believe how big it was.

It was good to get out after a very long week at work, I hope it isn’t soo long between steaks again!