Thursday 28 October 2010

Gavin King Memorial Yak Vomit Award

In response to Gavin King's recent provocative attack on Cairns restaurants, KitchenSlut has decided to take the initiative and sponsor the inaugural Gavin King Memorial Yak Vomit Award.

The award will be for the most outstanding lamb shank dish at a Cairns restaurant, and is named in honour of the finest descriptive prose from King's infamous column:
  • "Maybe there was an international food competition in the rural provinces of Moldova, where this restaurant's lamb shanks scooped the top prize in a close decision against a traditional local soup dish made with just a pinch of salt and several generous scoops of yak vomit".
Kitchenslut hates to be pedantic given The King's reputation for accurate journalism, but one would have thought a Yak would have to stray some distance from its traditional Himalayan homeland to even be in Moldova? Perhaps Gavin meant some different kind of Yak?
We will also provide ratings with a yak symbol so each lamb shank dish can be rated at one, two, three, four or five yaks.

Restaurants will be able to display their Yak rating so never again will the Editor-At-Large wander the dangerous streets of Cairns ignorant of where to get himself a decent shank! A presentation shank feast at the winning establishment is anticipated.

However, there are only so many lamb shanks one can eat in a limited time so Kitchenslut calls for nominations to be shortlisted. I will start here and update this post as we go .......... a few suggestions google gremlins have struck and deleted subsequent entries!

Nominations for the Gavin King Yak Vomit Award for 2010:
  • Naked Nut
  • Ochre - Braised lamb shanks – bush tomato infused sauce – parsnip mash and gremolata
  • Adelfia
  • Plantation (Hotel Cairns)
  • L'Unico - (menu very recently changed?)

4 comments:

Colin Riddell said...

KS unimaginably boring dining companion I Certainly am not!
Butt to pay the price charged fore the worst cut off a lamb baa the flaps is a disgrace.
It should be a quarter of the price! Two ram that down past your tooth just makes me bleat to be fleeced like that .
We are getting the wool pulled over our eyes .
My friend Shaun and mary had a little lamb shank recently and everywhere they went the price was hard to swallow.
KS If you know where we can get some fore quarter of the price ? Let me know and I will dip in there with shear delight.

KitchenSlut said...

Queer, the mostly likely source of lamb forequarters is the Woolies in town which also stocks beef cheeks. You continue to display cultural snobbery!

I dont agree that this is the worst cut of a lamb. Far more flavoursome than the most expensive bland fillets and KS notes references to celebrity Tuscan butchers that the most worked meat is the most flavoursome .... but takes time.

I have had feedback that the Crown and Cock'n'Bull are good for shank pub food. Also if Franco has not downsized the two shank meal at Naked Nut I would think that the award fave and also good value .....

Colin Riddell said...

KS You bleat on about the prime lamb cuts.
Ewe are not an expert on sheep meat .
You try to ram home the point lamb shanks are a top cut.
I have chop you off at this point as I know more from killing my own lambs on my farm .
The shanks were the poor persons roast in the 50s and 60s .
Ewe are sticking your neck out naming places to eat at.
I have been fleeced at woolies you can,t pull the wool over my eyes I shop at coles.

KitchenSlut said...

"shanks were the poor persons roast in the 50s and 60s"

Queer, thank you for so beautifully exposing how your comments are culturally rooted when you have to reference a period of bland anglo-centric culinary boredom when anything ethnic was sneered at.

So lets now reject all "poor persons food" on a similar basis? Last visit to C'est Bon KS didn't hesitate to go the rabbit as he does whenever he can. Poor persons food which has barely escaped its depression stigma. Calamari? Not even poor persons food it was thrown back by fishermen and didnt even get to market. In her book 'Oyster', Nicollete Stasko recounts the periods in history when oysters have been "poor persons food" only resoted to during food shortages, poor buggers!

I don't think I did "bleat" about prime lamb cuts and didn't even use the term and would prefer not to. My reference to worked meat having more flavour (but of course tough and needing time) came from a student of Tuscan butcher Dario Cecchini. So it does, and when slow cooked to perfection a lamb shank is a match for many of the grossly overpriced "prime" but rather boring lamb cuts currently being flogged in supermarkets at ridiculous prices.

I am sticking my head out naming places to eat? It's my opinion if you don't like it I don't care and it's better than most of the other commercial tripe being flogged around town!

Queer, old girl, go back to the 50s and 60s ..... keep out of the public bar, thats for men, but sure you can get a shandy in the ladies lounge and a roast lamb for lunch ..... no pink or blood mind must be well cooked dear!