Vay Cay to Jay Jay – Part One

As you can tell from my title I’m completely delirious.
These next series of entries will be mostly about our current travels but I will try to keep them food related!

Hubby and I woke up bright and early this morning to board our flight to Cairns. We’re headed to the wonderful country of Japan again but decided to spend a day in Cairns to break up our flying time.

I think the plane was lacking oxygen as hubby and I had a few strange exchanges on the way over…
Hubby : No boobs but you make up for it with your nice back. Baby got back
Me: You got the boobs in our relationship (and I then proceeded to squeeze his chest while saying “honk honk”)

We’re very classy….

Cairns was just as lovely as ever and after getting our hire car, we went straight to the beach and walked around admiring our favourite spots while having a heated discussion about Gay Marriage. Never a dull moment…

We were pretty hungry and decided to stop in at a past favourite, “Rattle and Hum” 
There’s just something about this place we like….
We were a bit naughty with our food selections….

Very delicious!!
And from where we sat we could see lots of food going out. There were a lot of burgers that’s for sure.
The pic on the left is of a steak sandwich and that meat was just so tender!!! It was really lovely and sooooo sinful to eat!

After lunch we walked some more and did a bit of window shopping. We talked a lot about our trip to Japan… I’m looking forward to being there tomorrow….

I’m not quite sure what to say about our Air BnB experience in Cairns, suffice to say that if you’re not a people person, you probably shouldn’t book rooms in other people’s houses.
But it’s all good!! We have somewhere nice and clean to spend the night and will come back with lots of stories!

An hour or so later…

I really don’t want to say anything against our Air BNB host as she was… well she was herself and unfortunately it didn’t really mix with who we are.
We spent a couple of hours in that room in her apartment then decided we’d probably be happier if we were in a hotel room so, we moved.
I can’t explain the relief.
I can’t explain in this post what we didn’t like as I’d hate for anything to get back to our host. In her way, she tried her best, it was just not for us.

Back to food….
After a day of travelling,
lots of  walking,
dealing with the anxiety of wondering where we were going to sleep,
wondering if anyone would walk into our bedroom while we were sleeping,
(or into the bathroom while we were showering)
physical and mental exhaustion took it’s toll and made us not want to leave our hotel room.

After recouping in our hotel room, we walked to a nearby Woolies and got a couple of baguettes, some deli meats, sundried tomatos, olives, cucumbers and other goodies and made a jumbo size roll!!!
It was magnificent and really really hit the spot!!!

Tomorrow we’ll be in Japan where I’m sure I’ll have a bit of food anxiety but that doesn’t matter, that’s what being in a new culture is all about!

Mata chikaiuchini o ai shimashou! (Blame Google translate if that doesn’t make sense!!)

The Republic

Today on the Dining Diaries…

A perfect Pork Belly restores hubby’s faith that such a thing exists,
A less than enthusiastic waitress perks up when she sees me scribbling in my notebook and
If you need to take thirty minutes or more to figure out to the cent how much everyone owes for what, then you probably shouldn’t be going to a place where you can’t split the bill…

Diners today we found ourselves at The Republic. I had been here a few months earlier for a school reunion and thought it looked like a pretty cool place.  We were only meeting for drinks though, I didn’t even get to sneak a peak at the dining area that day…

I love the bar area. Great design, great lighting, great seating areas; It really is a place you want to relax and linger with a drink.

We walked through this nice area to get to the dining area and I felt a little let down. It just doesn’t seem as exciting. To me, it looked a little dated (carpet) but still, I was eager to see what the food would be like here.

Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of the bar area but there are plenty on their website.
The picture to the right is of the restaurant. I think it was the “green” on the walls and the carpet that put me off. All minor things…

The girl who greeted us seemed a little annoyed that she’d have another table to wait so close to the end of lunch service. There were two other groups in this restaurant when we came and she started to bring us to a table that was between the two. I asked if we could sit on the end table (for a bit of privacy) and it was like I’d asked her to perform a handstand. Grudgingly she took us to the end table and handed us some menus. She promptly told us that a couple of items on the menu weren’t available and a portion of the menu was for dinner service only (we were here for lunch) so that was a little disappointing. Hubby took a long time trying to figure out what he wanted but he eventually went for the Pork Belly. I chose the “Clean and Green Pasta” Spinach, fettucine, broccoli, kale, spring onion, peas, salsa verde.

Because we were quite peckish we started with a Duo of Dips.

The waitress shuffled off to take care of our order and hubby and I noticed the salt on the table.

I guess it’s a cute little bowl but all I could think were the fingers that had been in there. Luckily, I normally don’t salt my food but if I were someone who did, I don’t think I’d be using any salt from that little bowl.

When the Duo of Dips came out, the waitress saw me scribbling into my  notebook (Usually I try to be discreet) and saw me taking photos of the food. From that point she was switched on and attentive. I shouldn’t be hard on her really, and I don’t mean to be, but the change was pretty dramatic.

The dips were presented in an interesting way.

Firstly, I LOVE that they served this with carrots and cucumber!! Normally we get breads of some sort but I found this much lighter and nicer to eat.
They did also provide eight slices of sourdough bread which you might think is excessive but I’d rather excess than the opposite.

The dips themselves were quite nice. One was Egyptian Pumpkin and the other was a French Onion Dip.

They had a lovely consistency and flavour to them. I’m not normally a pumpkin person but this was really nice to eat.

While we were waiting for our mains to come out, one of the tables down the other end were discussing the bill. There were about eight in their party and I couldn’t believe how accurate to the cent their calculations were about who owed what. It became pretty amusing really. It wasn’t just a passing conversation this went on for twenty to thirty minutes! I had to think, if it really was that important, why wouldn’t they have gone somewhere where you order and pay at the same time!

When the mains came out, hubby was salivating.

His Pork Belly really looked amazing!! And it tasted just as good. His one little complaint is that there was no crackling but what was there was tasty. I kept trying to ask him what it was like but all I got back was “mmmmmm” so I figured he was experiencing a food fantasy and didn’t press for more. Eventually he told me that it was the best Pork Belly he’d ever had. The Jus was a little sweet and he’d kept some of the bread over from the Dips and used that to mop it up. The Pork was just divine – he even stopped to compliment the chef on the way out.

I had been craving pasta before we even entered the restaurant and was glad they had one that appealed to me.

I guess I kind of skipped over the bit in the menu where it said there were peas. It’s not that I don’t like peas, but I think their inclusion had more to do with their colour than anything else.
Having said that, the pasta was cooked really well, the broccoli was cooked but still had firmness and everything else worked well together – There was a bit of an olive oil taste as well which I loved. This was a really nice dish that I would have again, even with the peas if I had to.

If we do come to the Republic again, I’m not sure we’d eat in the restaurant. We’d probably just hang out at the bar with something from the bar menu.
It is an interesting place so I would definitely recommend a visit. The food was good and everything else just comes down to personal preference.

Have you been to the Republic?
What did you think?
Let me know in the comments below!

Till next we chow…