6/14/2012

The Merchant Tea & Coffee (Perth WA) - CLOSED

183 Murray St
Perth Western Australia 6000
(08) 9221 1323
http://www.themerchant.com.au
Hours:
    Mon-Thu 6:30 - 19:00
    Fri 6:30 - 21:00
    Sat 7:00 - 19:00
    Sun 8:00 - 18:00

The Merchant Tea & Coffee Perth on Urbanspoon The thing I like the most about the Merchant at Murray is that it is located in the busiest place of the city, but it is an intimate place for you to escape the world. The atmosphere of the place has always mesmerised me, me being a sucker for old colonial style, woodiness, cosy corners, little iron tables, ceiling fans, wood shelves and pigeon-hole areas with plenty of coffee-related stuff, and cozy corners with people whispering their secrets unaware that there is no noise-insulating bubble protecting them.  The whole furniture and decoration of the place is wonderful, and very welcoming and inviting to stay there for a long time, and that is why the place is usually full. Groups tend to seat in the terrace outside, though, while couples and solitude seekers tend to seat indoors.

However, the coffee they serve is just OK - Average, as well as their cakes, or at least the ones I have tried in the past. I haven't eaten there for a few years. Back then the food was simple but good, but I cannot say how things are at present. I will try again and report back. 

The service is just OK.

P. A. W. S. City Cafe (Perth WA) - CLOSED

120 Beaufort St 
Perth Western Australia 6000 (08) 9228 2435 
Website
Facebook
Hours: 
    Mon-Sun 8:30 - 21:00

Upon entering PAWS, you will get a feeling of entering a comfy backpacker hostel's lounge that is also a bit chaotic, as the shop, eating, serving and cash out areas are all mixed without any sort of harmonious spatial amalgamation - harmonious in its dysfunction, perhaps.

The seating area is very luminous, colourful and comfy, with a few nice ethnic details, office-like furniture, and wonderful world music. It would be great having some sort separation from the other areas by, for example, using cute ethnic screens/curtains so eaters have more intimacy and enjoy their meal without asking themselves "Where am I?".

THE FOOD - The selection of dishes is small, with six varieties of hot dishes and six cold ones, and a cake corner, but everything I tried (two salads and two hot dishes) tasted very good. This is unsophisticated cooking, more home-made vegan cooking than anything else, but the food was very tasty, and had an interesting mix of flavours and textures.  I liked it a lot! 


THE COFFEE - The coffee tastes a bit like mocha and is bland in general. A Lavazza machine with coffee pods produces great coffee and would not be out of place in PAWS. :O

THE PRICING - The pricing is fantastic. You can have a decent big vegan dish, mixing salads and hot dishes, for 12 dollars. Besides, you know the money serves a good cause and that what you eat is fresh. Not enough for you? Students get a 10% discount and takeaway is just 5 bucks!

THE SERVICE - Regarding the service, the lady behind the food counter was super-friendly, you go girl!, so much so that instead of charging me for two small dishes, charged me for just a big one, even though two small dishes are bigger than a big one. Lucky me! It was very cool. The cashier lady was completely plugged into her cashing machine and Ipod, and was a bit detached from the world. 

TIP
Servings are a bit small, so go for the large dish. I had two small dishes and I left feeling that there was plenty of room for more.

Meow!

UPDATE 24/8/2012
 I returned to Paws for lunch today, after Laura's photo showing a meal of humongous proportions. Humongous meals that taste good are my type of meal, you know. Last time I was there, my meal were very good but a bit small in size, and I had to have two small dishes to leave full. Today, I have ordered the big dish, which allow you to have three of the hot curries and three of the salads, plus the rice, for 12 dollars. The serving was indeed humongous. Most importantly everything was tasty and even yummy. The zucchini salad, and the parsley and parsnip one salad were terrific. The curries were also very tasty, and consistent in texture, not fluffy stuff.


I was really tempted by one of the sweets, a sort of vegan tiramisu made with custard, vegan jelly and carrot, and it was yummy and looked so very pretty.

Their coffee is still the same, not bad, but a bit weak for me.

The service is still very good, and the lady behind the kitchen counter a pleasure to deal with.

The place really is very quiet and will suit people who like quiet lunches, surrounded by people who also love quiet lunches in a luminous place. There was this grandma with her grandchild both sleeping on the sofa, as per the photo, and I thought that it was such a great sweet moment, in a restaurant, that I had to take a photo. Only at Paws.

I will be back.

Fez - NEW MANAGEMENT

83 Walcott St
Mt Lawley Western Australia 6050
(08) 9328 9999
http://www.fezcafe.net.au/
Hours:
    Mon-Sun 7:00 - 17:00

 Fez is a cute comfortable café located at the corner between Beaufort and Raglan Sts, occupying the round corner of the faux-art-deco building bellow which is located.

THE PLACE - Fez is an example of how to create a space that is attractive and welcoming to an eclectic group of people, from all ages, lifestyle preferences, attachment degree, sexual orientation or degree of "poshness". 

The indoor is very much like a little European café with a few ethnic details, unpretentious, welcoming and cosy. The outdoor area is lovely, with natural shading coming from the above balconies, so it is  open, still semi-hidden and relatively protected from the inclemency of the weather. The place, depending on the day and hour, can be quite or very loud.

I love the fact that they have tons of newspapers and magazines for the customers to browse while there.

THE FOOD -  The food is lovely, the portions generous and they are good value for money. Some of the dishes are Moroccan inspired and close to the original, and others are not. If you don't feel adventurous, you can always order some of their burgers, sandwiches, pannini, soups, salads or sweets. I usually leave the plates squeaky clean after finishing with them! So good.

The Charmoola chicken salad is one of the best chicken salads I have tried in Perth and so very filling. This is one of the best dishes in Fez.

The Murgaz is a tomato-based egg dish served on a ceramic dish coming directly from the oven to your table, still boiling. Very good.

The Veggie tagine is a mix of very hot vegetables casserole, very spicy and very hot! It is served in a traditional tagine pot, coming from the oven, very hot and still boiling. Not bad.

The Berber Breakfast is a variation of the Murgaz, but with meatballs instead of sausages. It is quite strong in flavour and perfect for brunch not as much for early breakfast. Not bad.


The Spanish Omelette is one of the disappointments in Fez. It is a simple omelette, quite small, with cherry tomatoes, mint, cheese and the supposed chorizos are instead Italian sausages. That is what call cheating! Forgettable.

The cakes are very good-looking but a bit too sweet for me, and average in taste. However, the last one I tried, the pear and sticky date was surprisingly light, moist and flavoursome. However, I wouldn't go to Fez for the sweets, to be honest, just  for their food.

THE COFFEE - Their coffee is a bit bland no matter which version you order, big or small, flat white or topped-up macchiato. If you are fussy about your coffee, as I am, order a topped-up macchiato instead of your usual flat white. Otherwise, their selection of teas, iced teas and natural juices might be a better option.

THE SERVICE - The service is relatively fast, and all the staff are very friendly, smiley and willing to serve and help. They guys are flooded if there place is full, and this is so because they need another hand helping. You can feel their stress! Instead you are served quite fast after ordering.

TIP
Forget the name. They have never claimed Fez as an authentic Moroccan restaurant. If you go without expectations, you will enjoy Fez much more, as the food is really good, and the Moroccan-inspired dishes are very tasty and something that you do not find in other places. If you want authentic Moroccan food go to Morocco. Simple!

TIP 2
If you like coriander, ask for an extra pinch of fresh coriander on your Murgaz and Berber Breakfast, as they certainly benefit from it.

Layout 7.5/10
Ambience 6.5 /10
Coffee 6/10
Food 7.6/10
Service 7/10
Pricing: 7.5

6/12/2012

"Don't Look Down" by Eliseo Subiela (2008)

Eliseo Subiela has that rare quality of seeing magic in reality, and portraying it in his movies with freshness and philosophical depth. His characters, despite being normal, live in a sort of limbo reality, and their interaction with our world is always eccentric and quirky. Subiela is true to himself in the premise of the movie, as it departs from a quote from an Andre Breton's poem that intrinsically links live, love and death and considers physical love as a redemptive element in life.

The movie revolves about the sexual awakening of Eloy, a sweet and absent-minded teenager, apprentice of electrician and courier boy to the nearby cemetery, who starts sleepwalking after the death of his father and ends in the arms of a sassy and older neighbour, Elvira, who will teach him how to satisfy a woman, and himself, in bed.

If you want to make a movie about tantric sex and erotic initiation you need two basic elements. Firstly, a couple of sensual actors who have chemistry on camera and are able to transmit eroticism to the spectator, so that we can believe that they are having sex and enjoying it. Secondly, to create the right atmosphere and mood so the sex scenes look natural and passionate. All of that was missing from the movie, despite sex being the main subject of the movie. The scenes look unnatural, forced, like a rehearsal. They are shot with constriction, without passion and with some visual bigotry, despite the intention of the movie being quite the opposite. It felt like those modern Kamasutra books with photos of nude couples posing in different positions - Boring and not erotic. It would have been better, perhaps, showing less, and leaving more to the imagination, which always gives great results.

The most memorable moments of the movie are, however, those few in which the movie distracts itself from Eros and portrays reality through Eloy's eyes and tells part of his family's story. The happy eeriness of Eloy's trips to the cemetery on his bike to deliver tablets are wonderfully photographed and shot, the natural interaction between the deceased and those alive are those more closely connected to Breton's initial poem and Subiela's style. Here we see the always charming Subiela in action, focusing on what he does best.

Regarding the acting, I found Leandro Stivelman good and believable in his portray of the sweet and dreamy Eloy, and also Hugo Arana in his short role as Eloy's deceased father. I did not find Antonella Costa believable at all in her portray of Elvira, neither in the erotic scenes or in the talking ones. Perhaps because the script does not give much information about her, and the viewer does not now or understands her; on the other hand, she does not have the sensuality or acting maturity necessaries to affront a role like this. The rest of the actors are Ok in their respective roles.

Glimpses of the best Subiela are wasted by a rather mediocre and un-erotic erotic movie with a very weak script.

"Room in Rome" by Julio Medem (2010)

Room in Rome is the story of a short-lived physical and emotional liaison between two women in a hotel room in Rome in the last night of summer. It will be a night of intense discovery, a tour de force between two ways of seeing life, love and sex.

The story is inspired in the Chilean movie "En la Cama", which, at its turn, was based on the American film "Before the Sunrise". However, the setting and dialogues have been reworked and reinvented by Medem, as the story happens in Rome and the couple has the same gender.

Julio's Medem's well known mastery and filming sensibility are seen everywhere in this movie. The use of the lighting and framing of the images are precious, elegant, warm and welcoming, very artistically composed with a great use of chiaroscuro and decoration. The room, which is the main set in which the movie happens, is not overwhelmingly present or a close asphyxiating place, but a very open fluid ethereal container where the story happens. Medem positions and moves the camera so the viewer feels is in the room, not watching the room. The spacial perspective is, therefore, very different. This is necessary as otherwise the movie would have felt oppressive and theatrical not a real and cinematic.

There is something magic about the way Medem has used the paintings in the room as well as the decoration of the ceilings, the three spaces of the room (dormitory, bathroom and balcony) and the decorative elements in it, not only to offer different facets of the personality of the characters, or show different phases in their relationship, but to incorporate those little visual elements into the story, like the little angels on the ceiling, the Venus on the bedside table, etc. This is very Medem, who always uses the surroundings as part of the story not as a mere decorative item. This movie reminded me of Medem's Chaotic Anna, in the way he incorporates art into life, and gives art a meaning that is never decorative or purely aesthetic.

The movie could have been claustrophobic and theatrical, but it is not. The story, despite happening in the room, goes well beyond the room through the conversations of the characters and their use of the Internet to show pieces of their present and respective identities.

Medem also shows a wonderful direction of the actors, which is reduced to the two leading actresses and four very secondary roles. The bed scenes are very erotic, definitely hot, still tastefully filmed.

The two main actress are great in their role, especially Elena Anaya as the honest and emotionally fragile Spaniard lesbian Alba. She believes her role (she is a recent out-the-closet lesbian herself), and gives all what she has, showing a great acting registry from comedy to tragedy, from sweetness to cockiness. Natasha Yarovenko is not as good, but still believable as the mysterious athletic sincere and strong hetero Russian beauty Natasha, shocked by her own attraction towards Alba. There seems to be certain intimacy between the camera and the actresses, an understanding and acceptance that makes the story believable. Moreover, the two actress have a great chemistry on camera and, something extremely important in a movie like this.

The main problem, to me, with the movie is going over the top in the drawing of the characters, so they seem somewhat removed from the viewer, not always believable. 1/ Do the characters need to have perfect bodies for the story be more believable? I mean, the two actresses have wow bodies, especially Yarovenko, so you feel that it is pure logic that they felt attracted to each other. What about having the same story with two actresses that feel attracted to each other but look more normal and less gorgeous? Said in other words, characters for which the physic attraction is not that so obvious, still equally strong. Otherwise, you are stereotyping lesbians and bi-curious as gorgeous girls only attracted to super-duder gals. 2/ Do the characters need to have such a high professional profile to be more interesting? I don't think so. A normal person can have a great story to tell, immense depth in her soul, be very hot and attractive, and still be an office worker, for example. Finally, despite he music being very beautify, it is also very repetitive and you end resenting it.

To be honest, when I heard that Medem wanted to film a movie like this, I thought that it was just out of character. But, after watching it, I think he has adopted the story and made it completely his. A story that I thought would not interest me at all, and, on the contrary, I enjoyed immensely.

6/11/2012

Trackside Bakery (Perth WA)

378 Wellington Street
City Station Complex
Perth Western Australia 6000
(08) 9325 3714
  
This is one of those places that satisfies the eating monster in you. You know, that monster in your stomach that awakes when you are super-hungry and fancying naughty fatty unhealthy re-fried food... like a pizza pie, like a fried crab stick, a corn jack, samosas, mini-pizzas with cheap cheese and tomato, or super-fried oily crunchy anything, or big sandwiches/pannini/rolls with anything fatty that looks colourful, or the usual boring tarts, "Donuts", cakes, which are never my thing as my monster likes it savoury. In a way it is sort of manly food, if you know what I mean. If you have one of those days, as I do, I go there, because, well, it is on my way to/from many places. I never feel guilty about these moments, but I do feel upset at being charged 20-30% more for the same items than in the shop down the escalator  (take as an ex. the corn jacks or chicken strips).

The coffee is average, but not bad.

The best thing about the place is the long wall table facing Wellington St and Forrest Chase, or better said the quotes and sentences written on the panels in it. They are really nice, a touch of sensitivity in this not-for-the-sensitive-eater industrial bakery.

The service is fast but OK/poor depending on the person at the counter, and on the people cueing. However, beware, the place can be really dirty at peak times.

The customers are a nice bunch of retires, tradies, passers-by, hidders-by, people-watchers, hungry-from-hell types, homeless types, schoolies, me, you, him. Humanity in its full splendour, or is it decadence?

On the positive side, there is a silver lining in every cloud, you know for sure that, the crowds being there all day long, the food is freshly fried and prepared every day.

Polly Coffee Bar (Perth WA)

Cultural Centre
Northbridge Western Australia 6003
(08) 9456 7890
Open Monday to Sunday, most of the day!
 
This cute tiny place has one of the best coffees in the CBD. Very good coffee that tastes of coffee without being too bitter, and with the right amount of creaminess. One of the best coffees in the CBD, and, the thing is, that is consistently good.

They also have tasty fresh bagels, wraps,  pannini, and sandwiches, very filling and satisfying.I f you are vegetarian this is also a perfect place for you.

Polly's has always stood out to me, not only for their coffee, but also for their terrific service: friendly baristas, welcoming smiles, they remember what you want from the first day, fast service, and eager to please and serve you fast. If these wasn't enough, they are unpretentious and genuine. Those girls rock and earn their salary every single day.

Cute cubicle. It is very cozy, perfect to hide from the world and peruse the newspaper or your fav fashion magazine. If you don't like hiding, you can seat outside in that wonderful corner with tables and stools they have outside, unless, well, it is raining.

Different take-away cup sizes would be a great addition to their service, super-please!

UPDATE
They now have EFPTOS available, but they will charge you a few cents if you spend less than 10$ in the transaction.