Golden Boy

Sometimes you need to go on dates with your friends.  Sometimes it’s a Friday dinner date for six, that turns into eight, that finally settles on a party of ten.  Sometimes, a few of those friends drink from 1pm before dinner… which honestly, makes dinner a whole lot more interesting.  Add two rounds of shots (as well as cocktails and a few bottles of wine) by 7.30pm and you’ve pretty much got a party.

Right, so, from the start. 

I have a severe peanut allergy (and am allergic to all other nuts as well), which always plays on my mind when going out for any kind of asian cuisine (or indian which I guess is technically asian… or just any meal because you can find nuts pretty much everywhere if you’re looking out for them), because generally speaking there’s usually quite a few dishes that contain nuts, and even if they don’t, there’s always the mixing of the pans and cross-contamination.  I’ve been turned away from a restaurant because they wouldn’t risk it.  When booking, we told the staff at Golden Boy about it, and they communicated with us, with the chef, the kitchen staff, and back to us just to cater for the one persons allergy, to make sure I would be 100% fine eating everything on that table.   It doesn’t sound like a lot but usually it’s a “yeah should be fine just remind us on the night”… and so I spend those nights with my epi pen at the ready. 

There was none of that, they made sure I was looked after, my dishes were kept away from others, prepared separately, and because it was a banquet, made sure the dishes we had (bar one or two) were nut free.  I was sold on the service before I had even gone there.  So if your date (or friend, or parent, who ever) has an allergy, they’re not going to miss out and they will be safe.  There will be no first date experience of stabbing your date with an epi pen, sorry to take some of the potential excitement out of the night for you. 

Our booking was for 6.30.  I was well aware a few of the girls attending had been drinking half the day, I wasn’t really surprised when we didn’t all arrive until 7pm.  However, as Golden Boy was so busy it meant that we couldn’t get all the dishes we were going to because there wasn’t enough time before their next booking.  We were pretty lucky they could accommodate the extra 4 people we’d sprung on them so we couldn’t complain. 

We went with the “tuk-tuk”, which is usually $58 a head but was less as we had the “mini”.  They picked out their menu favourites and served them - though they did ask us if anyone wanted anything in particular.  There was Stuffed Tomatoes, Salt & Pepper Chicken, Green Curry, a couple of whole Steamed Barramundi, Egg Net Salad, Crying Tiger, Steamed Rice, Cooling Plates and something else in there as well.  My dear lord it was a feast.  A beautiful, bright, aromatic, fresh, full flavoured plate-licking-good feast. 

Dear everyone reading this.  Go. To. Golden Boy.  Get off your chair, make your way down there right now.  Actually, maybe call first (re above: very busy), but okay get off this webpage, google their number (actually, don’t even worry about it, stay here with me, it’s 8227 0799).  The food was so damn FRESH.  I ate roasted stuffed tomatoes AND LOVED IT.  I had some egg omelette thing stuffed with a whole bunch of other stuff (technically they call it an Egg Net Salad, psh technicalities), AND LOVED IT.  I had a mouth-gasm every time I put a new dish in my mouth.  You know that feeling of being so full you couldn’t eat another bite, teamed  with oh I’m in a really nice public place so probably shouldn’t be disgusting?  Well my friend across the table from me was yelling for more shots so while everyone was distracted I ate as much as I possibly could and pretended I didn’t.

I will 10/10 be eating here again.  

Shiki

There's something nice about getting fancy pants on for a date night.  There's not many places we go that I will put on a pair of heels and not think that I'm probably over dressed. 

Paul's brother's fiancé, Jenna, suggested Shiki, and having been there for a previous work function, I could not wait to get there again. We booked a date and boom, double date night was on.

Because of the semi circle type tables for the plate the chef's cook on, we had another 6 people on the table with us. A couple of couples I will dub as "normal", one man, and one drunken loud mess of a wife who, throughout the evening, slammed her hands down and put her head on the table like a child while exclaiming that "she was on weight watchers".  She was definitely good for a laugh (at her expense). It didn't stop, and it got worse the more she drank (someone should have told her that wine counts as calories as well).  Seriously, the whole time we were there, which was a few hours, it just didn't stop. She would eat and eat and then be like nooooo i'm on weight watchers *throws tantrum like a 3 year old*.  It really was a good laugh, amazing, and must have been embarrassing for the guy that she was with (though to be honest he didn't seem that phased… it may have been regular behaviour).  I'm not being a hater I promise, it was just a funny, dominant part of our Shiki experience that I need to share.

So - back to why we were there. Food. I mentioned first up that I'm allergic to nuts and they quickly switched the little three sauce holder dish to one that wasn't going to kill me (always appreciated) and we were looking at the menus. For entree Paul braved crocodile (which he said tasted like squid) 

and I went some kind of delicious garlic beef.  

Jenna and Jamie had sashimi. I had tried sashimi before and I was not a fan, but Paul gave it a go and really enjoyed it. He said it didn't taste like he would expect raw fish to taste (it didn't taste "fishy"). Mains was were the party got started on the plates and we got a bit of flames thrown in for us so we could get a photo:

It was definitely a good time watching our food be prepared. The ingredients they were using seemed so minimal and simple, but everything tasted like so much more than what it was. Because everything was being cooked after we finished our entrees by the time the mains were ready I was super hungry all over again. We each had different types of fried rice, from garlic to chicken to vegetarian and it was awesome seeing the same starter ingredients and how just a couple were altered to create the different three. It kind of reminded me of the pokemon Eevee (the one that can evolve into 3 different pokemon… anyway).

We moved to a different table for dessert/coffee and eventually made our way outside. We stayed outside for a little while because we had one of those goodbyes that kept turning into conversation each time, and only left when it started to rain on us.  Double date night, excellent.

The Cavern Club

Musical date night appeared when we got free tickets to the fab four gig at cavern club.

Paul's band Hurricane Jane have played a fair number of gigs at the Cavern Club, and the owner/manager there loves them.  For those of you not aware, the Cavern Club was basically an underground funky club/bar dedicated to the Beatles. I mean themed cocktails, memorabilia, general funkiness everywhere.

I say was because recently, in a (successful) attempt to get more business and bigger crowds, Cavern have been opening their stage to a lot of different musical genre's, ranging from swing to hardcore metal. Anyway, they maintain their Beatles love with the Fab Four being their regular Beatles cover band (and they are amazing).

As I said, we got free tickets to see them play, and Paul and I decided to make a (date) night out of it. We had a few other friends going too so we went a bit early and in date night fashion got dinner. Other times we had been to Cavern it hadn't been the busiest of places, so we assumed that we wouldn't need to make reservations.

People, on nights of the Fab Four make reservations. The place was off the hizzay.

When we got there we asked a waiter/server/whatever they're called for a table for dinner. Bad move, we sent the poor kid into a breakdown frenzy. "oh, you want dinner??" *looks around in mad panic for a table* "yep, yep sure sure". We got a table, we got dinner, it was lovely and fine. But my god I understood his panic, there were a couple of large tables of drunken middle aged people having the time of their life.

After dinner our friends arrived and Paul held my bag while I got my groove on a little bit. I really enjoyed the night, the band were great and middle aged can DANCE. They were getting their groove on more than we were that's for sure.