my very pregnant friend, her partner, my old buddy and my birth doula extraordinaire Bruce, B1, boybean, simon and yours truly went out for lunch today to celebrate the revitalisation of old friendships. as we live in 'the Hills' (a sightseeing destination in this wee town of ours) it was decided that everyone would trundle 'up the hill' to our place and we would all have lunch somewhere in our village. we decided to imbibe in the gastronomique delights on offer at the 'loca vore'. loca vore means to 'eat local' and amusingly was the 2007 Oxford word of the year. as this state of ours, South Australia, has a bit of a reputation as a foodie and wine lovers delight, its no wonder that the owners of the 'loca vore' have no trouble sourcing high quality local produce. the loca vore, as its name implies, offers a menu made from local ingredients only. This is what they have to say about their business...
In keeping with the principles of the 100-Mile Diet, The Locavore is dedicated to sourcing food and wines from places as close to us as possible (160 kilometres, in fact).
This is then balanced with the following approach: if not local; eat family-farmed; if not family-farmed, eat organic; if not organic, eat fair trade.
The idea is to run our business as sustainably as we can and look after the earth that looks after us... this way, we can continue to enjoy all the wonderful things it has to offer.
The waiter kindly informed us all that the average 'big name supermarket' shopping trolley accounts for more than 70,000 miles, thats a lot of carbon miles for your weekly shopping! (when did aussies start using miles??) so with a guilt free conscience (at least on the 'carbon miles for food' front and supporting local business) we ordered. The menu was impressive: they do tapas style offerings as well as regular entree and mains. Between us we chose loca vore made pan fried gnocci with a rocket pesto and goat cheese, pan seared tuna with a dukka crust on a mash of potato and dill and fried capers (god i LOVE fried capers, so you can assume that the tuna was mine) rabbit pie on a pea puree, cauliflower and blue cheese soup with bruscetta (pic courtesy of my camera phone) The Semillion was from the adelaide hills and B1 had a Bickfords Kola. desert was a lemon myrtle sorbet, rhubarb crumble, vanilla bean ice cream and pear frangipaine with soft caramel vanilla creme. So with the old hip pocket having taken a hit, we stumbled the 300m home for coffee. Its great to see that after a year in operation, an idea as this one is going strong and they have just opened upstairs of their premises to late night 'silver service' dining, showing the growing local support for such a concept. hurrah the day when we all loca vore when we eat and it becomes a more mainstream, not-so-high-end concept.
5 comments:
Kel, its 12.37am, after reading your latest post my taste buds have exploded into a feeding frenzy.
See this is what happens when one spends hours on end designing a website for someone else and then opens your blog to find out Ive been neglecting my nutritional needs....
I'm off to the kitchen.
Bye Kel
Hungry Wombat
food looks great. :O and it's an interesting idea, sourcing ingredients locally in order to avoid the emissions associated with transport from far off places.
Oh yummo Kel...
What a delightful luncheon you had. It must have been the day for it yesterday. After my second round with the passports office I phoned John to let him know how I got on and he came to pick me up and take me out to lunch. We went to Mecca Bah in Brisbane...exquisite Turkish food. We ate a selection from their Mezze menu...we chose mussels deep fried with a chick pea batter and a tahini dipping sauce, lamb koftas, a roasted beetroot, rocket and goats cheese salad and sweet potato falafels...everything came with delightful dipping sauces, all different. Actually, we don't go out on "dates" alone often enough...it reminded me of when we first met. Due to a set of unusual circumstances we found it hard to spend time together in the evenings and on weekends so we used to escape from work a couple of times a week to go out. Fortunately this only lasted about 4 weeks...it was agonising really but so sweet when we were abe to spend more time together.
Okay...I have hijacked your blog now. Am rambling when I should be doing housework.
Will keep the restaurant in mind if ever I get down your way. Will you join me for lunch if I do..??
BTW...
This week I cooked a lovely lamb pasta with capers in...John told me of a pizza place in Rockhampton that used to throw a handful of capers in hot oil and then scatter them on the pizza after they had exploded.
What a coincidence to read of them on your blog too...!!!
One word: jealous.
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