fitzroyalty

In my hectic trip to Perth to see Tori Amos I also managed to see family, catch up with friends and eat at two of the trendiest tapas restaurants: Duende in Leederville and The Pony Club in Mt Lawley. The differences between the two were significant. I’d read about both in travel and leisure magazines and was keen to see if the tapas trend, which has become extremely popular in Melbourne, could be delivered successfully in Perth. Movida is exceptional and difficult to match.

Firstly Duende. I entered the premises alone as I arrived before my friend, who had made a booking. I tried to make eye contact with two members of staff and enquire about the table booking, but both ignored me. It wasn’t clear where I should go or what I should do; I felt unwelcome. Through the window I saw my friend parking and getting out of her car, so I went outside to greet her. When we entered together we were also ignored until my friend managed to stop one of the staff and ask for our table. This was not a promising beginning.

After reading the menu and ordering drinks - me a tempranillo by the glass - we ordered some food. From my reading about wine I believe that the correct pronunciation is temprannEE-O, but the woman who served us pronounced both Ls. It made me recall ordering the Italian soft drink chinotto at a cafe on South Terrace in Fremantle many years ago. It is pronounced kinotto but the waitress corrected me and pronounced it CHinotto. Not knowing or understanding the items on your menu is no way to provide quality service to customers.

The wine was very good but the wines by the glass were not on the menu and were not priced. They were described verbally. This is something I don’t like. I expect the pricing of all items to be obvious and to have a chance to read about them in the menu.

The food arrived along with another friend, and we ate and ordered some more. The anchovies on crostini were delicious, similar to the ones I ate at The Commoner recently. It’s curious how dishes become quickly fashionable and appear on menus at quite different restaurants.

The pork with fennel seeds and raisins and the roast duck were both amazing. After more wine it was time to leave to get to the Concert Hall to see Tori Amos. As Duende had filled with customers the service had strangely got better; more prompt and attentive.

The final bill was a shock at $200 for two well fed people with one more glass of wine for the third person who didn’t eat anything. The wine obviously cost more than I expected.

The next night I went to The Pony Club with a different friend. On arrival we were greeted immediately and given a good table, without a booking, in the front looking out onto the street. We ordered wine that was clearly marked and priced on the menu - a deliciously dry verdejo for me - and talked while waiting for our food. We had selected a variety of dishes and all were excellent.

The meatballs were served in a flavoursome but watery sauce in a large glass; fortunately the chicken cooked in a herb crust was served with lots of cous cous that we later used to soak up the meatball juice.

I would have preferred a thicker sauce more like that served with the spicy meatballs at The Victoria Room in Darlinghurst but overall this was a very minor observation to make.

The eggplant timbale with asparagus in particular was exceptional, though I must confess to be experiencing an eggplant craving at the moment and order it in many forms wherever I can find it. The tortilla was was also delicious.

The salad of rocket, walnut, sherry poached pear, jamon and blue cheese was amazing and the perfect accompiament to the other dishes.

The service throughout was professional and attentive, if a little tryhard and overly artificially cool. In my moodier moments I consider my 35 years to be early middle age and feel somewhat disconcerted by having a 20something woman in an 80s ra ra skirt asking if ‘you kids are ok with everything?’ Yes, thanks, but less is more. If you don’t call me a kid I won’t call you a bimbo. My companion, a tertiary educated and professionally employed woman also in her thirties, was equally nonplussed. We were far from the oldest diners there - the venue filled quickly and served a diverse clientele.

With the food at both restaurants very very good, their different styles of presentation and service became more obvious. The service, menu presentation and general ambience at The Pony Club were all superior to Duende.

After doing some research online and reading a variety of reviews about each restaurtant, another significant difference emerged. The Pony Club has a functional if not outstanding website, whereas Duende advertises one but when you type in the URL promoted in the September issue of the Qantas magazine (http://www.duendetapasbar.com.au/) there is no site there, only an ‘under construction’ error message. After reading about Duende on the flight to Perth (I often use the magazine to choose restaurants in places I visit) I was disappointed by this.

If leisure and recreation businesses like restaurants want to capitalise on the exposure they get through the lifestyle press, such as airline magazines, then a good website is crucial. I read the magazine and went on to pursue further information on which to base my decision about where to eat. Next time, I should listen to my intuition about the holistic nature of marketing and identity, and disregard a positive review in a magazine in favour of the impression I get from a upmarket establishment that promotes a website that does not exist.

Next time, no website, no visit. To pay Movida prices for less than Movida perfection is a sign of poor value. In contrast, The Pony Club was reasonable value, with a relaxing atmosphere and very enjoyable food. Of the two, only The Pony Club is worth visiting.

Finally TEENAGE HUSTLING! Thank you Tori. I have been waiting the whole tour to hear it. I asked her to play it in Brisbane and it was so thrilling to finally hear it. Pip was impossibly hot in purple and was very bouncy on the piano stool.

It was a tiny meet n greet (21 people, all over in 15 minutes). Brilliant show, long setlist.

The improv was about the long flight from Sydney to Perth and being in ’schmoozy’ class (ie business or first class) because ‘they’ (record company?) were paying for it. On the flight, Tash was wriggling and Tori realised she was masturbating. Tori told Tash not to touch her private parts in public places!

Having seen Teenage Hustling I was content, and so didn’t go to the second Perth show, where Tori finally did Isabel.

The international comedian otherwise known as the president of Iran spoke at Columbia University in the USA recently, and denied that gays exist in Iran. Is he a member of the Australian Liberal Party? Perhaps once John Howard gets boned he can go to Iran and seek election there. He would fit in.

Howard has refused again to reform laws that discriminate against same-sex couples. Basically, the Liberals are saying some people are invisible and hence the government does not need to adjust old laws to acknowledge invisible people. But my gay and lesbian friends are not invisible. All around the world, gay and lesbian voices are speaking out about their political experiences, including in Iran.

In a cogent and calm article Tim Wilson demolishes the Liberal case for perpetuating discrimination. His conclusion is brilliant:

Howard’s conservatism should lead him to support reform recognising the dignity of same-sex couples. His critics have always wrongly equated his conservatism with regressivism.

The Prime Minister has, unfortunately, missed his chance to prove his critics wrong.

A few days later comes more gay news from that cesspit of pinko greenie lefty radicalism also known as Telstra. The suits in the big pond think that treating all employees equally regardless of who they choose to fuck in their own time is a sensible thing to do.

It is common knowledge that Telstra and the government are at war over the slow struggle towards privatisation, mobile phone networks, regulatory conditions and the future of broadband infrastructure.

What is so delicious about the news of Telstra’s enlightened sexual orientation policy is its potential to further annoy the government:

Federal Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes said Telstra was leading the pack in overhauling its policies.

“This is a demonstration of how a good corporate citizen should behave - not treating people differently simply because of who they love. It’s an example the federal Government should follow, rather than continuing with the 58 laws which discriminate against same-sex couples in financial and work-related entitlements,” he told The Australian.

I suspect that there is a brilliant political strategist at Telstra working overtime on ways to frustrate the federal government. Making the greedy telco with appalling customer service standards appear to be a fairer and more engaged participant in contemporary Australian society than the government, which is supposed to support the Australian community, is a work of subtle genius and beauty. Whoever you are, I applaud you.

ps can you tell me how fast the broadband is in Iran?

Today I’m flying to Perth to see Tori for the sixth and final time this tour. I’m dreaming of Isabel - the only persona I haven’t seen perform. I am hopeful because some of the others have appeared three times in Australia, whereas Isabel has performed only once. Isabel is the shy one. According to friends who asked Tori about this at the meet and greet in Canberra, she doesn’t feel like doing Isabel as often as the other personas.

In her blog Isabel writes about how the goddess is alive and well in Adelaide. The goddess certainly possessed Pip when she performed there. I wonder if Isabel went to the show? I wonder whether she feels possessed much herself? It appears that Isabel lives more through observing others than through expressing herself.

I’m also wishing and yearning that Tori plays Teenage Hustling - one of the outstanding songs on her new album American Doll Posse. At the meet and greet in Brisbane I asked Tori why she had not played this song so far in Australia. She told me that it is the hardest song on the album to play (emotionally, not physically). Tori said that it takes a lot of strength to play Teenage Hustling and most nights she simply doesn’t have the capacity to play it.

There is something charming and sweet about this. It reminds me of interviews I have seen with Keith Richards, who talks about his songs as his children, and about it being impossible to name a favourite in case he upsets all the others. Tori imbues her songs with intense emotional energy. It is impossible to tell which of her songs have direct biographical reference and which are constructs; like all great artists Tori and her works are simultaneously one and separate.

I have no further expectations. Every show I have seen has been amazing. It’s been a wonderful three weeks of music and travel. I’ve seen five shows and met Tori three times. If my aircraft lands on time I should make it to the meet and greet again, but if not I won’t be sad. I have nothing new to request. It would be lovely to hear Merman, but Tori played that in 2005.

After requesting 1000 Oceans, my favourite song, during our brief chat at the meet and greet in Adelaide, I watched as Tori wrote it on her hand in black pen (she only wrote three requests down, all from people who had told her they had attended multiple shows, and she played all three). She also signed my copy of To Venus and Back, my favourite of her albums (and the one that contains 1000 Oceans). To then hear her play it that night was so special that I don’t think anything could beat it.

For many years I have thought that 8 February 1996, the day I saw Placebo (then completely unknown, and before their first album came out) open for David Bowie in Milan, was the greatest day of my life. At the time, I thought the noisy punk/pop opening band I’d never heard of was unusually good for a support act, and that I should find out more about them. I’m still a fan and I’ve seen them four times over eleven years.

Seeing Bowie was a lifelong dream fulfilled. What was amazing at the time was that he was touring his recently released album Outside: an obtuse concept album full of difficult, non-commercial songs. It has become my favourite, although I would say that Low remains his greatest work. Bowie played classic older songs like ‘Diamond Dogs’ and ‘Teenage Wildlife’ among the dystopian beats of Outside including ‘We prick you’ and ‘I have not been to Oxford Town’. He also played magical drum n bass versions of his early songs ‘Andy Warhol’ and ‘The man who sold the world’. Seeing him four times in a week on his 2004 Reality tour in Australia was barely enough.

As I’m about to see my tenth Tori concert over sixteen years (starting with her performance at the Octagon theatre at UWA in November 1992), I’m starting to think that 20 September 2007, the day that Tori Amos played my favourite song just for me, was better than all these other days.

Last night I went to the Westgarth cinema to see a film - Mare Nero - at the Italian Film Festival.

It started out well but gradually became so stylised and affected that it lost all meaning and became a random sequence of beautiful images. The story was superfluous to the mood, which was established by scenes in clinically clean offices and homes with white and blue predominant. I got bored, then exasperated when at the end it was implied that the entire murder case the detective was investigating was part of a dream sequence he was having after a good shag with his cute French girlfriend. Disappointed!

It’s funny how your brain tricks you into seeing what you expect to see. I’ve walked past this place on Smith St for months without noticing the extra n in their banner. So why did I suddenly notice it last week? Is is a typo or a play on the two Ns in their name?