Um, I’ll have the Brown Windsor Soup, followed by the Steak and Kidney Pudding - do you boil it on the premises? Oh, good.
My friend will have Mulligitawny soup - oh, it’s off? Then I think perhaps the tinned asparagus, yes? Followed by the fish in batter. Is it fried in lard? Oh yummy.
And for veges, watery boiled carrots and peas, and we knew the moment that aroma hit us as we came in the door that the limp cabbage was on tonight’s special list, so we’ll have that too.
After the main course we’ll have the cabinet pudding and the trifle with tinned peaches - oh you only have fresh? No, I don’t think so. I’ll have the sago and semolina dumplings, then.
Then cheese with greens - three kinds of cheddar? - well done! and milky coffee. We brought our own after-eight mints, of course.
Now if you could just turn off the heating, and arrange for that draft around our ankles, we’ll see about which beer you should warm up for us.
S’cuse me! S’cuse me! Could we have some definitions here? [tap-tap-tap of the foot]
“Service club” to me sounds like an, ah, euphemism. But the kind of service I’m thinking of doesn’t come with a salad bar, so I’m curious.
“Damper” as a word sounds…unappetizing. Damp. Like it might be moist flannel or somesuch thing, served on a plate, maybe sprinkled with powdered sugar (actually, that’s a pretty good description of a Belgian waffle from IHOP - International House of Pancakes, if you don’t have those…)
“Australian decor,” though, is the concept that’s really frightening me!
Benihana of Tokyo, the hemi-demi-semi-quasi-Japanese-ish steakhouse, did exactly that. At least in the late 80s, their Tokyo outpost was called “Benihana of New York.”
When I first read that I was aghast, but then I thought it was very reassuring
Terrorist Leader: "If you Australians do not meet our demands we will drop a dirty nuke on the “G” during your footie final. You have no option but to comply. You are totally isolated. You know the Americans will not support you.
Australian Leader: “Don’t think so, mate. Look here, you see Americans will queue for 2 hours to eat at an Outback Steakhouse. How much closer cultural ties can you get”
**Terrorist Leader: ** “Bugger… Omar, change the GPS co-ordinates to Pontypool”
Well, I’ve emailed the local outlet asking for their menu (surely they aren’t going to overlook our bugs, yabbies and crays in favour of shrimp and crawfish). As they don’t open until dinner time, I’m not expecting an answer for quite a few hours.
If this should come down to all out warfare, I suggest that we load up our weaponry with all those damn pickles which have been polluting our burgers for the last 20 years (who said we couldn’t find a use for them?) and drop them on the world headquaters of McDonalds and Burger King - that’ll give them something to think about.
Aside to fellow Aussies : what do you do with the pickle. My kids have pickle races with them. This involves flinging them at the wall and seeing whose pickle reaches “home” first.
McDonalds don’t seem to have updated the “New Tastes” menu on their website to include the Outback Omelette yet. It’s still showing the menu they were using at Easter (Fish ‘n’ Fries).
Does anyone remember their “Tastes of India” debacle last year - I’d forgotten about it until I came across this press release on their website (requires Acrobat Reader).
Service club I’m guessing this would be the RSL (Retired Servicemen’s League) or Lions Club or something like that. Those serve food, and they’re - well - clubs. Although not sleazy ones
Damper is bread made with just flour,salt and water, cooked on top of a fire - what the early settlers ate 'cos they couldn’t get anything better. Why anyone would want to eat it these days passes belief. But I bet they cheat and put yeast in.
Australian decor Yeah? Wanna make something of it? I’ll 'ave yer.
Now, this time two weeks ago I was in an American-themed restaurant - the Lone Star Steakhouse. Dead ruminants all over the walls and semi-naked poster-people all over the dunny walls (the guys with me were quite miffed - they only got ONE semi-naked chick in the restrooms, but the the girls got FIVE studs). I suppose that’s high culture, ay? Ay?
I’m not sure the US has any equivalent of our service clubs. Think mini-Vegas. They usually have a large poker (slot) machine area, a cafe, a bistro and a restaurant, plus an auditorium and function rooms. Some have sporting complexes and gymnasiums attached. They rely largely on gambling revenue (the drink prices are cheaper than average) and organise activities like bingo and meat raffles during the daytime. Most people in metropolitan areas will live somewhere reasonably close to a club and convenience is a big attraction (we have tough drink-driving laws here) along with the relatively cheap prices for food and drinks.
Damper, as noted, is a yeastless bread cooked from very basic staple ingredients. Made properly, it turns out a lot like scones, but there aren’t a lot of people these days who can make it properly.
I just found the Outback advertisement again, and their interpetation of “Australian Decor” seems to be as follows :
The restaurant features large booths and tables and a collection of Australian and Aboriginal Art and memorabilia
There are better places, of course. Diner burgers are usually a bit better than Outback burgers, but Outback ones are still pretty good, methinks.
And “love” is not too strong a word for the sentiment I have for the Blooming Onion. I LOVE that fucking thing. I swear, I could eat an entire thing if given the chance.
I’m pretty sure I know what bingo is but I’ll be damned if I’ve heard of a meat raffle. What gives with that? And if these are the choices of daytime activities what goes on at night? (perhaps I don’t really want to know but I’m curious never the less).
A raffle is kind of like a mini sweepstakes/lottery. You buy tickets hoping to win a prize. The typical meat/chook/produce raffle at service clubs might have 40 trays of meat and you buy tickets which then enter you in each of those 40 draws.
There are daytime and night time raffles and bingo (called housie in some states), but generally the daytime activities are targetted towards people who wouldn’t generally go out of a night - elderly people and homemakers.
Most clubs dedicate Friday and Saturday nights to music (you can often see “name” acts for a reasonabe price at clubs), Sundays tend to be more family oriented (often a free kids movie or similar) and week nights very from club to club. Cheap drink nights tend to be held on Monday and Tuesday as they are the quietest nights of the week and the hardest nights to attract a crowd. Many clubs also hold trivia nights or darts competitions in the early part of the week or offer large cash prizes in “lucky badge craws” which require the member to be on the premises at the time their number is drawn in order to win the prize.
Rooty Hill RSL Club is a fairly large club about 5 kilometres from my home and it’s “What’s On” and “Entertainment” menus give you a pretty good idea of what clubs are all about.
A selection of cuts of meat (no offal) mainly beef, maybe a roast or leg of lamb with some mince and/or sausages and a sprig of parsley in styrene tray covered with glad wrap.
There’s no standard size but 1-2 kgs of would be the norm. Enough for a decent family BBQ. Tickets are cheap say 20-50 cents each, in a draw of 100-200.
There are no sexual aspects to it, at least in the ones I’ve done but then I’m fugly.
It’s a fixture at any service club and a staple of fund raising techniques for many amateur sporting clubs at their local hotel.
Is this meat raffle concept exclusively an Eastern States thing? I had never encountered it until this January, when I was in Queensland. I was a little perplexed when the pub owner’s wife trotted out with a big tray of raw meat chirping “raffle! raffle!”, but soon figured it out.
Of course, we all bought tickets (bargain! 50c). Not entirely sure what a group of house-less, BBQ-less backpackers would do with 2 kgs of raw cow, but as it turned out we never had the opportunity to explore the options.
Then again, I never experienced burger with a fried egg on it until I made it to Sydney this summer. (Unfortunately, my virgin egg burger experience was courtesy of a greasy burger joint in Kings Cross. Oily egg + fried meat at 3:00am (with the belly full of NSW beer [Toohey’s New, I think]) does not a great eating experience make. I took my revenge by vomiting on public transport bus later that fine morning. Take that, Sydney!)
The RSLs out here in the West aren’t quite entertainment complexes they are over East. Never been to one here, but it seems they’re just little suburban clubs for older people (for the foreigners: RSL = Returned Servicemen’s League) - no bands, no poker machines, etc. I was quite taken when we made it to Sydney in January and discovered a whole new world of RSL entertainment. A trip to Rooty Hill was made, of course.
Do Americans understand the colloquial meaning of ‘root’?
