Extreme Food Dating: Lava Stonegrill
A mere few blocks away from my old home in Mount Lawley there exists a restaurant where they bring you a stack of raw meat and a rock that was supposedly thrown out of an erupting volcano. This rock is heated to an insane temperature - hot enough to make your face sweat the entire meal - and delivered to you at your fancy white linen covered table so that you might cook your food upon it. Reservations are a must.
I had been curious about this place - the Lava Stonegrill - for a while. But it wasn’t quite quirky enough for Extreme Food Dating. It just sounded like a variation on Korean BBQ. Then, a friend of mine took some girl from the internet on a date there and liked it (and the date worked out well…). He reported back that they had along with the beef and chicken stacks of raw meat, they also had a game platter, featuring crocodile fillet, venison steak (although, I feel I must tell you that they promised me “venison” on the menu), wild boar and kangaroo steak, all served with a bush tomato chutney. Sold!
For extra bonus fun points (but not intentionally), the date was scheduled to occur during a brief period when I was on a some rather innocuous medication that, despite its supposed innocuous nature, had the side effect of messing with my head (if you have ever tried old school anti-malarials, it was something like that, but more of the daytime weirdness and less of the sleeping weirdness).
So, the date started out well (at least it seemed so to my foggy brain). We arrived at the grill - it was packed and swanky and somehow fully stocked with hot gay waiters. Despite their hotness, these waiters kinda sucked at waiting in a timely fashion.
I mean really, how long does it take to prepare food that I cook myself?
This is something I’ve noticed that is annoyingly common with Perth cafes and restaurants. Even with no one else in the cafe, it often takes them a good 5 minutes to take the cookie out of a jar, put it in a bag and charge me for it. One time I waited 15 min just to get a pre-made sandwich warmed up.
As advertised, the plate of uncooked meat and a sizzling lava rock came with the tomato chutney, and some other delicious yet unidentified dip type thing. The waiter hurriedly told me what each piece of meat was, and then scurried away, and I immediately forgot what everything was, except for the one that looked like chicken (the rest were all red meat) - that one was crocodile. When I finally hailed the water down again to ask which meat was what, he claimed they had been reorganized and couldn’t tell me. So, my dear readers, I cannot give you much of a review of each meat, other than the crocodile tasted like chicken. Surprise.
This was $34. I had to order the steamed vegetables on the side - another $7.90. Some readers might remember the kilo of steak and kilo of chips I had at Outback Jack’s, all of which were a mere $36.
When I was done the cooking, I wanted the hot rock to go away because they made me feel like I was going through menopause. I’m not sure if this was from my crazy drugs or the heat of the sizzling plate before me. But either way, you can imagine its not so pleasant to have a sizzling hot rock cooking your face while you’re trying to enjoy your dinner.
All and all, overpriced and underserved. Also, more craziness next time please.
Extreme Food Dating: Outback Jack’s
My five odd years of vegetarianism, which promptly ended when I moved from cosmopolitan central Canada to suburban western Australia, has unfortunately left me rather meat obsessed. Especially steak, which I never liked before. My food eroticist friend Matt told me that there was this steak place in Fremantle called Outback Jack’s where if you ate a kilo of steak ass, I mean rump, they’d give it to you for half price, and an XXXL tshirt to prove it. This seemed like a stupid deal - if you’re going to do something that’s gonna make you constipated for days and sweat meat you should probably be able to do it for free. But then I realised this was the best date idea ever. Obviously. What could be hotter than stuffing meat into your face until you feel like barfing? Plus, the jingle that autoplays when you go to their website (always a good sign) had very Australian men telling me that their steak would melt in my mouth. Take a listen, it’s pretty convincing.
My Date, who somehow remained unfazed when I told him that the evening’s activity was competitive eating, came to pick me up to drive down to Fremantle. Read more
-
Food Pr0n
-
Syndicate!
