Tôi

Friday 2 Oct.

After a successful day of giving papers at the Greenscapes Conference at Brock (Holt’s was about dirty English gardens. What else?), we felt the need for some refreshment. We two, our former student at Caesarea Jennifer (who teaches at Rochester), Kathy, and her two students, Kate and Toby, went to Tôi on Fanny’s recommendation (“Go fast.”) Sort of a French-Asian-fusion-Vietnamese (Tôi means “I”, 1st person sing.) tapas bar. You know, the usual.

From the headings “grow” “swim” “fly” and roam” (and we are getting a mite tired of this particular whimsy on menus) we picked:
· sweet potato frites, with a sambal soya dip: a big hit
· fresh sweet potato rolls with cucumber, cilantro, daikon and baby cress: not as successful, maybe too close a repetition of flavors.
· grilled quails with tamarind glaze: mighty good mouthful
· jerk-style spiced chicken with coconut sticky rice: just the right amount of stick.
· lamb with prunes on couscous.
And we got a skewerful of shrimp, apparently by accident.

Service was a tad chaotic: somehow the whole second round of dishes got lost in or on their way to the kitchen, but our nice waiter (from Melbourne, if you please —“Sidney’s rubbish”) tracked them down and hauled them forth. All very tasty. A good wine list, too