7/16 - Me, Myself, Manly, and an Emu

In order to contemplate the events of a year ago, I decided to get out of Brisbane and go to the Pacific coast. Unfortunately, since it had pretty much been a crummy weekend, weather and otherwise, I hadn't made any plans and I slept in. By the time I got my act together, it was too late to get to a completely isolated place, so I hopped on the train and went to Manly, which is a quaint seaside harbor mainly known for its marina, which is the 2nd largest in the Southern Hemisphere.

Clouds over Manly

Manly Marina

A dog and his boat

After getting back to Brisbane from Manly, I decided to go for a good Australian meal, in honor of Ben and Giulia's love for fine food, and in the tradition of the "food as celebration/mourning" theme that our memorials have taken on. So I ended up in the Berkeley-ish suburb of West End, where I passed by Tukka, which is known throughout the Australia for serving excellent gourmet food using indigenous ingredients.

Tukka

I had a hard time trying to decide between the wallaby and the emu, but I decided to be adventurous and try the emu. Apparently, wallaby is kind of like kangaroo, which you can eat for cheaper at other places in Oz.

The menu

To start out with, they brought out a complimentary appetizer of a Queensland mussel with chili lime sauce. It was so good, I ate it before I could take a picture of it (I wasn't the only one taking pictures of the food -- there was a table of Hong Kong tourists that was doing the same thing). Then they brought out damper, which is a bread made without yeast, with macadamia oil and a nut paste. It also came with a pepper leaf that was supposedly really hot, but wasn't that spicy at all.

Damper (unleavened bread) with macadamia oil and nut paste

Finally, the main course of rare emu fillet with watermelon glaze and baby turnips:

Rare emu fillet with watermelon glaze

The emu was a lot like very tender and rare beef, which was strange to me since it's a bird. The waiter said that it would be gamier than beef, but I didn't notice that at all. Even though it didn't look like a lot of food on the plate, it was actually a lot of meat and very filling. Afterwards, they brought out some complimentary samples of Australian fudge, but sadly, I had to decline them.

Everything was fantastic, but the only problem was that, the whole time, I kept thinking of that movie, The Freshman, with Matthew Broderick and Marlon Brando. In the movie, Brando's Godfather-spoofing character is involved in an underground restaurant that purportedly serves endangered species...[spoiler alert]...but unbeknownst to the high-paying customers, they're really just serving smoked turkey, or something mundane like that. [/end spoiler] Anyway, I don't think I was being duped, but the emu was definitely beef-like.

In the end, I'm not sure why I decided to actually go in to Tukka -- it's way out of my price range -- but I'm glad I did. It proved to be well worth the money, and it would definitely have been a place that Ben would have tried at least once for the food and the expeience.