Troy McNaughtonAnother day another carrot - Tavolino
May 1st 2006 14:48
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When you aren’t in the swing of 9-5ly, 7-days-a-weekly, 50-weeks-a-yearly desk jobbery, your one day a week can seem fairly uninviting.
Maybe it’s just because you put yourself in a different timezone to get up for a 9am start and give yourself jetlag. This won’t be the case if you’re a science student.
Maybe it’s because you have no hard and fast rules about mid-week drinking and find your work days falling inconveniently on hangover days. This is the only explanation if you’re a college kid.
Maybe it’s because you try to avoid corporate snobs in your REAL life and manage quite tolerably when you’re forced to leave the house and go to your institution of study. This won’t be the case if you’re an economics or law student.
For whatever reasons, the planets collide and you don’t relish your one, two, three or gods help you more days a week doing ‘serious work’. The best you can hope for is a decent start time, a healthy pay packet and a lunch date.
We trundled, bumping into unidirectional drones, down Clarence Street (two streets back from George Street towards the water) looking for inviting decor, a come-hither smile from a waiter, or a great deal.
We also – high and mighty that we were in our princess gowns on our litters carried by footservants – wanted more options than “that tired looking sandwich or that tired looking sandwich.” This unreasonable demand struck at the heart of Café Civetta on Clarence St, Sydney (who cares what the actual address is if they have no virtual presence and the name is enough to avoid them by). They’re a cute shoebox kind of place with a lot of single people at their own tables… Anyone with a second opinion clearly moved on, as we did to…
www.whereis.com.au
Of course within seconds our choice was confirmed – Kooky Waitress Number 1 rocked up and sung us “hello” (which I always appreciate, just for future reference) and with a flourish and a fanfare offered us on a gold platter (wait for it) the absolute right to sit anywhere we wanted! But the riches didn’t stop flowing, the bounteous chest (erm, treasure chest that is) of Tavolino opened to our hungry, stapler-beaten, open hands.
We were promised the world – any sandwich our imaginations could concoct (pending a quick check of the pantry; Miss E describes the ambience as 1970s kitchen but she is going on some kind of aura invisible to the superunnatural because there was no visual evidence of this to the untrained eye) – we could have asked for green eggs and ham or unicorn hoof or magic mushroom and I have no doubt they would have obliged our fancy.
We were even promised, with grave and world-weary eyes for one so young as our faithful waitress heroine, that here the font of tap water was free for everyone to enjoy, peasants and princesses alike, and that this was NOT a kingdom of tap water for the few who could pay, but indeed an equal and community- minded realm.
No seriously, stop by, if only for the staff.
The troupe included a guy who was almost definitely someone’s brother in law and the world’s scariest and friendliest (the former at first glance, the latter upon communication) might-not-be-but-certainly-could-have-been lesbian. All were immensely obliging, friendly and generally lovely.
- $10 lunch pasta for a huge plate that Miss E rated very highl-E. She notes the creativity to avoid the comfortable tomato base for a vegetarian sauce and dubbed it “interesting and very tasty.”
- Very adequate iced coffee that was CHILLED TO PERFECTION and the perfect sweetness – Miss J* who often accompanies me to Insomnia will tell you that I turn into a spoiled five year old at the mercy of a good iced coffee.
- Great and great big salad with balsamic vinegar – so easy and yet so easy to achieve.
- Steak sandwich that was, while somewhat underdone for my borderline vegetarian tastes, very satisfying and tasty.
OK so maybe my delusional midday state of near catatonia affected my perceptions. Maybe it wasn’t a fantasy land. Maybe I wasn’t truly happy. But goshdarnit, if that’s fake contentment, I’d take it any day.
So to leave you all with a fake smile on your fake faces….
"A British company is developing computer chips that store music in women's breast implants. This is a major breakthrough...
Women are always complaining about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them!"
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
** I may have talked it up but this job is NOTHING to send a text about. I figure if it’s worth 25c it’s even less spectacular that ‘nothing to write home about’, since at the very least that’s going to cost you 50c – more if you’re overseas… Time to update, people!
Update and… caffeinate!
PS. For my niche audience: Trainspotter's Paradise... or How to Bomb Wynyard.
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Comment by Cibbuano
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And I bet that steak sandwich would have been perfect for me. Rare, baby!
Your trainspotter link is freaked-up.
Comment by amy
And stop following my comments around. I have an assignment due at 2 o'clock! =P
Comment by Cibbuano
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Ready.... BREAK!