Chapter 12 Food!

In Portugal, I had something of a reputation as the food guy.  This time around, I ate most of my meals at home, having porridge, tea and fruit for brekkie and grilling stuff for dinner.  I usually brought some fruit and granola bars for lunch, but I did take some time to sample local lunch fair.

The Alex Surf Club offered us a coupon for a lovely grilled chicken burger, which was really good, and I also had their grilled  chicken wrap, which was enormous (half got saved for the next day’s lunch).

Everyone extolled the virtues of pie before I got to Oz.  I tried a beef, onion and mushroom pie in Coolum for lunch one day, which was OK, but at Moffats Beach I was directed by the locals to the little coffee shop next to the car park (I can’t remember the name, unfortunately, but is the closest place to the car park) for the pork, apple and cider pie.  Oh. My. God.  Just fantastic!!  I had one for lunch on two successive days.  I also had a breakfast pie, which had mince (ground beef), egg and cheese, with tomato sauce (ketchup), which was a tasty breakfast, in Mudjimba, near the Twin Waters resort. 

I tired a fish kebab sandwich in Coolum, which was really a big piece of deep-fried fish, topped with chopped mint and tabouli and tomatoes and onion with tartar sauce and wrapped in some flat bread of some sort.  Quite tasty, though grilled fish would have been nicer, I think.

Australian burgers with “the works” deserve special mention. Start with a burger, fairly thin but made with real ground beef, not one of those pre-formed beef patties like we often have in the States.  Add the usual lettuce and tomato and tomato sauce, but then include:  beet slices, and a fried egg, and bacon (like Canadian bacon) and a pineapple slice.  Really really good.  Messy, too, of course.  But lovely.

A pork, apple and cider pie.  To. Die. For.