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| CROWS NEST :: SYDNEY :: NEW SOUTH WALES I USED TO WORK AS A RESTAURANT REVIEWER FOR THE NORTH SHORE TIMES IN SYDNEY AND SOMETIMES, IF I WAS LUCKY, I WOULD DINE AT TWO DIFFERENT ESTABLISHMENTS ON THE SAME DAY. Between lunches at Swiss bistros at Lane Cove and Chatswood hamburger joints I scoffed barbeque Korean on the Pacific Highway stretch, where it winds its way past North Sydney, and plenty of good Chinese. It was mighty convenient that I was living a 10 minute walk away, across the highway from the Royal North Shore Hospital, just past St Leonard's railway station. Crows Nest is one multicultural treat, whichever road you happen to be traversing. Italian pizzerias run by guys with names like Vince intersperse with Thai takeouts with creative names and shops where Javanese xylophones and African masks create the ambience. North Indian, Japanese, Korean . the local Sydney City Hub newspaper, and it has long been one of the food and fashion and fetish centers of the city. The amazing thing is, it is not on any tourist/traveller radar, as far as I can see. Then again, the places which are just under the tourist/traveller radar, are usually the best places to visit and get a feel for the local culture, so perhaps it is better that Newtown remained unknown. If your aim is to get a feel for the whackiness and wierdness of modern Australian life, however, Newtown is the place to go! It won't disappoint you I promise. Nonetheless: one thing you have got to keep in mind is that while Newtown is by far the most Bohemian district of Sydney, it is different from Bohemian communities in other parts of the world. This is Australia after all, and the Australian personality still shines through -- perhaps even more forcefully than in any suburbs. Along with Darwin, this is the last surviving outpost of the classic Aussie larrikin. Instead of rebelling against the basic Australian personality, Newtown folks push that personality to its logical extreme. For example, Australians have always been down to earth and minimalistic in their fashions. It should therefore come as no surprise that the Bohemians of Newtown go in for a natural look -- no shirt, no shoes, whatever gets you closer to Mother Earth. If the potency of body odor offends you, this is probably not the best place to go. On the other hand if you enjoy lively discourse and lively folks keeping it real, then you will enjoy Newtown. Unlike other famous parts of Sydney (for example Bondi Beach, the ocean exerts little influence here. Instead, as in Melbourne, people turn to the streets for their entertainment. Restaurants, shops and pubs are the principal methods of diversion.
If you want find out what is happening in Newtown, click the Newtown Precinct Page for details. The Precinct accurately describes Newtown as the "cultural and creative epicenter of the Sydney inner west". In a newspaper article, Pam Walker wrote: Now the area has become the cradle for the performing arts, actively nurturing young playrights, actors and dancers. So exactly what is about Newtown that attracts the creatively endowed? The Enmore Theatre's Greg Khoury says that the suburb's artistic leanings go back a long way. In fact, Newtown has thrived since its inception as an artistic outpost to Sydney in the late 19th Century. "I can't think of any other area that had so many theatres and venues in it," he said. "When you see the photos of the 19th Century it looks like an absolutely thriving burgeoning gold rush town." He got that right -- this is a gold rush town! So, where do you find the goodies? Read on dear reader, read on! But first, a basic geographic pointer -- Newtown is basically one long street (King Street) and a lot of little appendages. I remember that the first few times I visited King St in the 1990s, I realized this was a helluva long street. The roads might be bustling with snarling little cars and trucks, but the pavement is a walk on the wild side. There are Thai eateries, Turkish pide and kebab joints, tattoo clinics, M&S accessory retailers, raucous pubs and billiards hall. Or rather make that billiard halls!
CROWS NEST ANTIQUES A place filled with African masks and Indonesian music.
CROWS NEST RESTAURANTS I ALWAYS USED TO RESPECT CROWS NEST FOR ITS INTERNATIOANL RANGE OF DINING OPTIONS; THERE IS ALSO A STRONG ECOEMPHASIS. Here is a selection of some of the clothing stores in the suburb:
Grill'd: 57 Willoughby Road
Crows Nest. Phone: 02 9436 0699.  According to Menufest: "The Grill'd concept was born when Simon Crowe, the company founder, decided to do something about the lack of a decent, healthy hamburger in the Australian market." Lamb, chicken, beef and vegie burgers are on the menu here.
MuMu Grill: 70 Alexander St, Crows Nest. Phone: 02 9460 6877.  Grill, tapas and bar... who could imagine a better combination? As the aforementioned North Shore Times has reported, this place has the largest al fresco dining space in Crows Nest. Looks and feels like a friend's garden. The kind of place we could get a beer bust going, as the old anime went. On the blog tip, Raspberri Cupcakes says: "MuMu Grill is located in the spot that was once the Red Spot pizza restaurant. To be honest I had passed it many times but never thought of trying it until reading about it on Not Quite Nigella. I like what they have done with the place, the panels covered with cows and pigs made me giggle. I have to rush to get there in time, damn my reliance on public transport! I miss out on the behind the scenes tour with Chef Craig Macindoe, oh wells."
Pino's Pizzeria: 49 Willoughby Road,
Crows Nest. Phone: 02 9439 2081.  Who would have thought that I would go all the way to Australia to get a dose of the runs? I have been to Vietnam six times in the last three years and even though I often dine on the streets there, I hardly ever get an upset stomach... nothing too bad anyway, maybe an overdose of fibre. I have lived in Japan for nine years and eaten raw chicken, raw horse and canned whale meat and felt none the worse for wear, accrued bad karma notwithstanding. It took returning to my native Australia to get a really intense case of diahhrea, one that lasted for nearly a week, and I believe it all started at Pino's Pizzeria. Mind you they were good pizzas that we quoffed there, me and the Mae brothers and their two halfJapanese descendents... mine were heavy on the anchovies. It was probably the anchovies that unsettled me. If I had been like Garnet Mae (pictured above) and limited myself to the Vegetariana (artichokes, mushroom, onion, olives and capsicum) I would probably have been okay. Probably.
NEWTOWN FETISH The Kastle: 131 Abercrombie St, Chippendale. Phone: 02/9690/1150. In a media saturated with imagery I sometimes wonder what desire looked like before we were exposed to porn... the assumption being that pornography always leads to S&M? Can you remember your earliest fantasies... they were undoubtedly less hardcore than your pornconditioned fantasies now? Unless you have an exceptionally strong moral foundation... or you're a feminist. But if you don't have and you aren't, and if you have been infiltrated by fetishism to some degree by all the pornware out there (and to be honest everyone is a fetishist these days, as much as they would like to deny it), then you might find yourself someday at a place like the Kastle. I visited this Newtown institution at the end of 1993 when I was studying at in Bathurst and living in a share house with Meat Pie director Garnet Mae (the movie about a guy with a thing for kitchen appliances, who gets a penis transplant), Fiona Honor, and the adorable though terminally messy/messed up Katja Forbes, on the outskirts of town. In a place which I think was called Rocket Street. Looking back on it this was one of the few sharehouse experiences in my life which actually worked, for a couple of months at least. It was a nice change of pace to the psychotic gay/lesbian sharehouse I had experimented with on the other side of Russell Street. Living at Rocket Street had its nice domestic vibe and warm stove moments until the end of 1993, when we all veered off our different ways. Late 1993 we were going through a kind of happy hardcore/techno phase and Fiona Honor's boyfriend Stu was displaying the first signs of an interest in S&M. I don't remember how exactly it happened, but we decided one weekend to car it to Sydney on the other side of the mountains, no doubt in Garnet Mae's trusty old skyblue shitbox, and visit the place they called The Kastle. Sinister looking entrance -- just an anonymous door on an innercity backstreet. Kind of looked like an abandoned warehouse. Enter inside and suddenly it is warm and there are tonnes of guys and gals wearing black leather, heavy moustaches, dark techno on the decks (this was the early 1990s, remember!) I was expecting it to be a nightclub, but it was more a theatre... a theatre of cruelty. True to his form Stuart Ridley stripped off his shirt and allowed some dame to drip hot wax on his chest, sometime near the end of our stay. The beginning of his descent. Then I saw a man and two women engaged in a threeway kiss, and I knew that a new fesan 2008 and Miss Trinidad/Tobagos. They have lived the fantasy... I have not (not yet!)
 CROWS NEST PUBS Bank Hotel: Newtown. Jess had the following piece of advice for those looking to pick up at the Bank Hotel: don't. "Unless you are a very butch lesbian, don't bother with the Bank Hotel in Newtown! Definitely pass through there on your way to Suma Lee Thai which is downstairs - it's AMAZING (albeit expensive)."
Botany View Hotel: 597 King St, Newtown. Phone: 02/9519 4501.
Coopers Arms Hotel: 221 King St, Newtown. Phone: 02/9550 3461.
The Sandringham Hotel: Newtown.
The Vanguard: 42 King St, Newtown. Phone: 02/9209 4614. Web: http://www.thevanguard.com.
CROWS NEST RESTAURANTS The Counter: 118 Willoughby Rd, Crows Nest. Phone: 02/9436 2700. Classic American burgers, onion rings, milkshakes. . Taking cues from all over his home continent, you can expect to experience distinct flavours from plantain chips from Nigeria, Bua; tender goat curry from Ghana and Yai Machuzi - boiled eggs rolled in chicken mince, coated in bread crumbs and spices - kind of like an African scotch egg..."
Thai Pothong Newtown: 294 King St, Newtown (50m from train station.) Phone: 02/9519 8050.
NEWTOWN THEATRES Enmore Theatre: 52 Enmore Rd, Newtown. Phone: 02/9550 3666. Without a doubt this is Sydney's leading concert venue, hosting in recent times the incredible Franz Ferdinand, the legendary old school Bangles, and so on, and on. If the Arctic Monkeys played there one day I would be really impressed. For more information and booking details go to the website at http://www.enmoretheatre.com.au. Newtown Theatre: Corner Bray St and King St, Newtown.
Sidetrack Studio Theatre: 122 Addison Rd, Marrickville. Phone: 02/9294 4655.
Akihabara Japan - Christiana Denmark - Kampong Glam, the Edgy Indie Heart of Singapore - Sydney Dining Challenge - Reykjavik Iceland |
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