Friday, 17 July 2009
While these pages don’t attract a lot of visitors and the feedback from those who drop by is encouraging, we’re still very much in the amateur ranks when it comes to things like food and wine reviews.
If that sounds like false modesty, how else do you explain the fact that we dropped into a new eatery for lunch yesterday, enjoyed it greatly, had a lengthy chat to the proprietors and left without photos of the dishes we’d sampled?
Coyotes in Herbert Street is the latest addition to the range of eateries in downtown Bowen and is a welcome departure from the fairly standard menus on offer around town. A purist with a detailed knowledge of the ins and outs of Mexican cuisine would possibly point out that what’s on offer isn’t quite authentic but authenticity isn’t necessarily the name of the game. In most cases (from the proprietor’s point of view) it’s a matter of getting bums on seats and based on a lunchtime sampling of a couple of tasty options finding somewhere to sit may well be a case of booking suggested in the not-too-distant future.
We haven’t been eating out as much as we’d like to over the past few years, and mightn’t have got to Coyotes yesterday unless I’d run across chef Col on the footpath outside his new venture on opening day.
I’d already noted the place was open for lunch on my way to Jochheims and was on my way back when I stopped for a chat, as you do when you find an acquaintance standing in the middle of the footpath. Most of my previous interactions with the proprietors had been centred around my former classroom role and I made my way home reflecting that something needed to be down to ensure that there were sufficient spondulicks rolling into the coffers to allow Oatmeal Dough to maintain the level of Nintendo and Playstation goodies to which he’d become accustomed.
Besides, I felt like a feed of something Mexican that wasn’t cooked by Yours Truly.
Subsequent discussions had us heading downtown the following day with a bottle of the Rockford ‘08 White Frontignac with a view to a spot of spicy tucker for the noonday meal.
The place lacks a liquor licence at the moment (that’ll change, but these things take time). I’d hope Col and Nikki end up adopting a BYO Wine Only policy when it arrives, with a corkage charge that’s commensurate with the mark-up on what ends up on their own wine list.