William Chong

Email: loulouatbeach@xtra.co.nz; Website: www.eatout.co.nz/lou-lou-at-the-beach.html; Ph: 09 534 1989; 32 The Esplanade, Eastern Beach, Howick; breakfast $10-18, lunch $9-19, dinner mains $17-28.

Rating: A

Fabulous location, striking decor, though there’s room for improvement in the kitchen department.

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We dropped in for an early meal at Lou Lou’s and for a bit of a treat. The well-known ceiling was probably the first thing that caught our attention – hundreds of wine corks with flexi-lighting playfully winding around them. It’s apparently been there since the previous owners ran it as Oasis – C and I found ourselves gazing and the intricate shapes, patterns, signatures and whatnot splashed above our heads. It works particularly well with the rest of the decor, which seems to be decked out like an old sea schooner.

There’s not just a nautical theme, however: co-owner, Louisa Hayward is also an artist with a distinctive Matisse style, and her nom de plume extends to canvas paintings, self-branded Australian shiraz, and of course the restaurant name itself.

We order a couple of mains in the hopes of dashing off quickly: C goes for a spaghetti marinara with mixed seafood, while I opt for the grilled skin-on gurnard and a ginger sake sauce. The waiter is relaxed, and sports an Irish accent which resounds in jovial banter with the customer throughout the evening.

Our food is presented in oversize bowls that proudly proclaim Lou Lou’s technicolour style – it wouldn’t have surprised me if Hayward stepped out and told us that the crockery was hand-crafted and for sale. C’s spaghetti marinara was a fantastic medley of sumptuous scallops, taut calamari and a well-herbed tomato sauce.

Unfortunately, I was shortchanged on my fish when it was presented as a half-baked fillet without the expected crisp pan-fried skin. I’ll be honest – it looked like the inside of a battered fish from the local takeaways. Upon questioning the waiter, he admitted that the fish they had that day wasn’t skin-on to begin with, and kindly offered to replace my main with no extra charge. I decided to go for the same spaghetti and C was revelling in, and was equally satisfied.

All in all, we enjoyed the rest of our meal, and even enjoyed a bit of sticky date pudding to cap the night off. Pity about the fish fiasco – but the service was humble and helpful, and we definitely couldn’t fault that.

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N.B. Lou Lou’s has actually featured on restaurant entrepreneur John Palino’s show, “The Kitchen Job”. The episode review and a follow-up blog post at menumania.co.nz makes for pretty interesting reading.

Aucklanders, forget your staid TV shows and fireside novels this winter. The preeminent show in town this month is undoubtedly Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash-hit musical, “CATS”. I took the opportunity during the week to see the Auckland production of the musical that arguably sparked the ongoing West End/Broadway revival.

Staged as part of the Harlequin Musical Theatre’s 50th year anniversary show, this Howick-based group takes temporary residence at the Auckland Civic Theatre from 6-27 June 2009. “CATS” is an impressive performance full of wit, personality and athleticism that elevates the cast well above suburban-production status.

Featuring Kiwi singing legend Tina Cross in the role of Grizabella and Dancing with the Star finalist Shane Cortese as Rum Tum Tugger, there was definitely an air of professionalism as a motivated motley of singers, dancers and musicians played their part in bringing T.S Eliot’s jellicle cats to life.

After getting over musically-hesitant opening, the show pounced into action with much song and dance. The opening number “Jellicle Cats” startled the senses as cats appeared from the nooks and crannies of a larger-than-life rooftop set, bursting into impressive melodies and impeccably choreographed movements. The plot revolves around a single night when the tribe of Jellicle cats unite to celebrate who they are, and to select one of them to be reborn in “cat heaven” – though one was left bemused as to the peculiar nature of this transformation (hint: it involves a flying chimney).

The audience were treated to plenty of outstanding feline personifications throughout. There was Shane Cortese and his Elvis-like interpretation of Rum Tum Tugger (probably fortunate to fit into his gasp-for-air PVC pants). Cat-burglars Mungojerry (Clinton Meneses) and Rumpleteaser (Andrea Grant) impressed with their paired choreography and a number of spectacular lifts. Skimbleshank (Tom Webster) with his railway-cat number was a notable delight, particularly when the resourceful cat chorus spontaneously crafted a full-blown steam engine out of back-alley junk pieces. Tina Cross drew lengthy applause with her spirited treatment of the stirring theatre classic “Memory”; it was a joy to hear it in context as opposed to the much-hyped, Susan Boyle rendition.

Perhaps the best reason for going to see “CATS” is that it’s engaging enough for the everyday punter. The high production values, stunning pyrotechnics and well-rehearsed numbers will impress anyone from the musically-vacant to the seasoned theatre-goer. You probably won’t understand everything the cast are singing and dancing about, but they’ll still convince you in a riposte of musical delight that there’s more to cats than meets the eye.

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I’m normally very careful in keeping my posts on this site away from work-related affairs. I work with hundreds of confidential documents and with commercially-sensitive information, so it’s generall unwise to blab about my office-time writing endeavours.

However I think it should be OK for me to tell everyone a bit about my current project. Our company’s basically been hired to fix up another agency’s bad work, some of which I’d like to share – for laughs, for serious criticism, and for a general sense of bewilderment.

Bear in mind the copy should be written for a medically-literate audience, and should normally be in a formal, scientific tone.

On the topic of diets:

“People do not have too [sic] eat as much on an organic diet as it contains more (e.g. nutrients) and tastes better.

There are zillions of diets available … Unfortunately, no successful programmeme [sic] for primary prevention has yet been established. …”

On drug adduction:

The brouhaha surrounding addiction is probably anecdotal. As the drug is a CNS stimulant like caffeine, ephedrine and amphetamine then there is the potential for people to become addicted or dependent on that feeling…

On weight loss programmes:

Calorie or point counting and weight loss programmemes [sic] (e.g. Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig) work because they are successful in restricting the calorie intake by providing tools, meals, weekly visits and support in reaching weight loss goals.

These were just a few of the many painful-to-read examples we found. I was also disappointed to also find that of the content that wasn’t purely rank opinion, poor spelling and wild conjecture, there were entire sections that were not-so-subtly plagiarised from published journal articles.

For example, the following paragraph was puzzling because it didn’t seem to be written with the audience (pharmaceutical reps) in mind…

Prevention is the first choice. It has to be our first commitment, particularly to our children and adolescents. Unfortunately, no successful programmeme for primary prevention has yet been established. We have a pervasive culture, reinforced by powerful commercial forces, that promotes eating and physical inactivity. To challenge this established culture will take strong political will and a multidisciplinary approach.

… until I discovered it was word-for-word from the first page of this article.

You could conceivably turn a blind eye to that sort of thing for primary-secondary school essays, but for paid agency work? It was worse than Noelle McCarthy, that’s for sure.

The moral of the story – don’t pay anyone to give you half-baked, plagiarised writing. You might just have to hire someone else to fix it!

Got a fantastic article today from my AWAD email. Motherjones.com has made a list of 20 interesting euphemisms that have been employed to describe the physical appearance of Britain’s Got Talent megastar Susan Boyle (you know the one…) – a little snapshot of the power of the English vocabulary (and the creatives that put it to good use).

A few highlights below:

… and how we wrote her off because of her not-hottitude. Right?

1. “The plain Jane superstar,” – Daily News article

2. “Like Shrek come to life,” – Rosie O’Donnell to People magazine.

4. “Plain, dowdy, unemployed,” – New York Magazine round up.

5. The Age of Melbourne let an imaginary Jane Austen do the dissing and refers to her as “ill-favoured.”

“Ill-favoured” – interesting…

6. “Stocky, beetle-browed,” is the word from The LA Times.

Do beetles have eyebrows?

9. “Hairy angel” and “unfortunate gait”Daily Mail

14. The New York Post gave us “ugly duckling” and “golden-throated spinster,” which has to be the most Brothers Grimm take.

Well her story is almost like a Brothers Grimm fairytale, no?

18. “Avatar of yearning” – Tina Brown, The Daily Beast.

LOL.

19. “Badger in a dress” – Wales on Sunday.

If you have been hiding for the past few weeks or just haven’t seen her amazing performance of Les Mis’s “I Dreamed a Dream”, you have to check it out.

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You really have to hand it to this particular Ray White real estate agent, who’s advertising a cosy 2 bedroom unit in Pakuranga.

I just had to highlight what could well be the understatement of the year:

… its location in a quiet cul-de-sac street is within walking distance of Westfield Pakuranga and the Panmure Basin. Motorway access is nearby…

Thanks to Streetview function on the Trademe listing, astute readers get to see through the spin as follows:

View Larger Map

Nearby? I mean, the house is sitting right next to the motorway! How is that a quiet cul-de-sac street?

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Website: www.foodbox.co.nz; Ph: 09 265 1054; Email: orders@foodbox.co.nz; boxes from $32.

Most of you know I’m a pretty busy bloke. Between working, commuting, serving, tidying, writing, singing, dancing and sleeping, there’s usually very little time to do groceries on a regular basis. When I do it’s usually bleary-eyed after a long day, and I’m on autopilot through the supermarket aisles picking whatever looks colourful and edible. As many of you can testify, that doesn’t equate to fresh fruit and vegetables most of the time… (hint: soft drinks and chips are very colourful, and very edible!)

So when I got a flyer in my letterbox introducing foodbox.co.nz, I was intrigued. Basically the folk at this venture source whatever fruit and vegetables are in season around New Zealand, pack them into boxes, and deliver them to your door once a week. Little fuss, little use of airpoints to get your 5-plus a day (bananas are obviously the exception to the home-grown rule). They had an option for a once-off delivery, so I decided to try it out.

On Thursday we gather round and open our box. We’re pleasantly surprised – for $32 it’s bananas, kiwifruit, apples, pears, green beans, mushrooms, a head of lettuce, tomatoes, a leek, capsicum, onions, carrots, gourmet potatoes, and passionfruit. There’s an envelope with some quirky notes about the food we’ve just received. I like the trivia about where passionfruit comes from (answer: Spanish Jesuit missionaries in South America named the fruit as a symbol of the Passion of the Christ). They boast that we have got in our hands New Zealand-grown grapes, and include a recipe for a Moroccan cous-cous that can be cooked using the ingredients in our box.

It’s definitely not a replacement for all your shopping. You’ll still need to shop for meat, rice, milk, all your other balanced-diet necessities. And if you have Asian-cuisine inclinations, vegetables like bokchoy and Chinese cabbage may not be a regular feature. While you’re allowed to replace any fruit and veg you don’t like from your box, it’s still a lucky dip of produce that may not suit the guy that’s hell-bent on getting some papaya, or the gal who demands peaches come hell or high water.

But I give it two thumbs up because of one simple fact: I’m eating more fruit and veg. I won’t claim to now eat exclusively at home, but the guys at foodbox.co.nz give you this stuff in such a jovial, non-patronising way (take heed, Ministry of Economic Development TV ads) that you’re motivated to eat what you buy. And that equates to savings from the takeaways, the fast-food outlets, the pubs and restaurants. And the variety of fruit/veg we’re eating is definitely a plus. It’s a joy to try a passionfruit for the first time in my life, and to be given stalks of rhubarb and challenged to cook it in a meaningful way (I did a sugar-laden rhubarb crumble).�

Foodbox.co.nz can make something as mundane as your fruit and veg a present-opening, diet-altering delight.

Website: http://www.skycitymetro.com/detail.asp?id=144; Ph: 09 309 3388; SkyCity Metro Food Court, 291-297 Queen St, Auckland Central; Email: kontak78@hotmail.com; drinks $3-5; mains from $8.

Rating: A

Prior to catching a movie at the Queen St cinemas, we looked around the Skycity Metro Food Court for something to eat. It’s not often we trailblaze into the city, and so we wanted to try something new. Just as we were about to look elsewhere, I spotted the boldly lit sign of Kaya + Toast. I instantly recognised the name as a feature of Malaysian cuisine; we had to check it out.

Once down a short flight of stairs, we looked around. The place combined a modern decor of bold reds, blacks and whites with visual displays of cultural paraphenalia uniquely Malaysian culture. Black-and-white photos of quaint Peninsular storefronts, hanging on the red-tiled walls. Comic books drawn by Malaysian cartoonist Lat, neatly stacked on a white formica bar counter. Jet-black tables with DIY hardwood benches. This place reminded me of childhood pilgrimages to the local kopitiam (coffee house).

While empty when we arrived, the 4-5 tables at Kaya + Toast quickly filled up, filling the air with familiar accents and exuberant talk in Manglish. It’s clear that Kaya + Toast is a hub for these expatriates, like myself, to hang out and remind themselves of food from their childhood, delicacies from their motherland.

Kaya + Toast’s menu throws together all the favourites from the traditional Malaysian coffeehouse. Food options include thick-cut toast and kaya spreads, chicken laksa dishes, and home-made fish curries. The beverages range from the popular Malaysian coffees and iced lemon teas, to drinks with names such as ‘I am diet’ (a mix of malty Horlicks and Nestum, a cereal drink) and ‘Charm’ (coffee and tea in the same cup). There’s an eerie familiarity to the menu, and in my opinion the coffeehouse cuisine here is as natural to the Malaysian psyche as fish and chips are to the Kiwi experience.

For my meal I tried the ubiquitous ‘nasi lemak’, a pseudo-platter of fragrant rice, anchovies, cucumber slices, peanuts and a hard-boiled egg. In Malaysia it’s normally eaten for breakfast, and mine came with an extra chicken drumstick. C stuck to a more modest bread and curry, which was well-flavoured and generously spiced.

While the food tasted great, I was a bit disappointed with the small portions and not-small pricing. It’s a far cry from Malaysian roadside stalls that offer more generous portions, and perhaps underscored the cost of importing an authentic Malaysian taste to Central Auckland. Nevertheless, with neigbouring BurgerKing pricing their calorie-laden combos at recessionary prices, Kaya + Toast could similarly do with a slight market correction.

Owner Vincent Chan opened this cafe in late 2008 and seems to have crafted a midcity hangout for homesick Malaysian students, and others well-acquanted with the eclectic kopitiam cuisine. Time will tell whether this place will draw in the uninitiated mainstream crowd and become a permanent fixture at the Skycity Metro food court.

Website: http://ima-ibn.co.nz; Email: info@ima-ibn.co.nz; Ph: 09 300 7252; 57 Fort St, Central Auckland; breakfast $5-18, lunch $12-22, dinner mains $24-32.

Rating: AA+

(A=return customer, AA=worth going weekly, AAA=so awesome so awesome so awesome)

We like trying out Mediterranean food. This is because, in general, it’s far removed from our own ethnic cuisine experiences (i.e. chips and chopsticks, pies and chow mein). So after our last exciting experience with Mediterranean cuisine, I discovered Ima and Ibn, a gem of a restaurant tucked within the increasingly gentrified Fort St, oddly juxtaposed between convenience stores, parking buildings and worldly attractions of the red-light district type.

Co-owned by Israeli Yael Shochat and Palestinian Khaled Masroujeh, we were intrigued by their story (“Ima and Ibn” translates to “Mother and son” in Hebrew and Arabic respectively), as well as their dishes listed on their online menu: traditional, apolitical, and epitomising what Shochat terms the “cuisine of the sun”. It sounded fascinating; we decided to drop by for dinner.

The first thing you notice in this place is the warm, coppery glow, which comes, you discover, from patterned light panels in the ceiling. A painting of ‘Ima’, surrounded by a bevy of foodstuffs sits prominently on a backdrop of sienna and red-ochre walls. Dozens of recipe and cookbooks perched on wooden shelves hint at a lifelong passion, and it feels as if you’ve entered a space oddly familiar, and as homely as your own mother’s kitchen.

Their dinner menu was geared towards quality over quantity, with five entreés and five mains to choose from – for those well-acquainted with Mediterranean cuisine it might not have been too much to choose from. For us, however, we mulled excitedly over a veritable Med-spread collection: from North African brik (almost like a poached egg within a tuna-filled wonton) to Jewish-style chicken liver paté, from lamb kubeh on hummus to market fish and Israeli couscous. Our waiter Robin was affable and knowledgeable about the finer details of each dish.

For mains, C went for the Mezze platter. It looks modest in the photo, but the antipasto-style plate was huge. We loved experiencing the variety of flavours and tastes on offer. C’s favourite were the feta and spinach pockets, while I was quite partial to the chickpea balls and the Turkish hummus.

For my main, I ordered a Middle Eastern plate: an assortment of salads, Lebanese-style rice (fragrantly spiced and moistened with olive oil), and haloumi cheese on top. I’m always fascinated by haloumi (it’s the only cheese you can fry or grill because of its high melting point), and order it whenever I can.

We stuffed ourselves with all of the above, which unfortunately meant not giving desserts a try this time. But on another day I’m sure it’d be great to give the Middle Eastern dessert platter, or the Knafeh (a Palestinian sweet pastry thing), or even some homemade ice-creams and sorbets that they had on offer a good go.

All in all, Ima and Ibn seemed to have a genuine sense of a warmth, and a professional touch to their traditional meals. I have to admit it wasn’t easy on the wallet, but for such authenticity, freshness and an amazing variety of Mediterranean cuisine, C and I both agreed it was worth every cent.

In December 2008, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a literature review, by Drs Sarah Bache and Frank Edenborough, of the numerous health problems and injuries associated with making music.

Under the subhead of “Dermatological conditions”, they included references to various conditions such as guitarist’s nipple, cellist’s chest, cello knee and — get this — cello scrotum.

Every cello player is aware that even the most vigorous playing style would still never be able to cause such an awkward injury. Indeed, Elaine Murphy, the senior doctor who first posited the condition in 1974, has ‘fessed up in a subsequent letter to the editor:

Perhaps after 34 years it’s time for us to confess that we invented cello scrotum.

Reading Curtis’s 1974 letter to the BMJ on guitar nipple, we thought it highly likely to be a spoof and decided to go one further by submitting a letter pretending to have noted a similar phenomenon in cellists, signed by the non-doctor one of us (JMM). Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realise the physical impossibility of our claim.

I guess this guy will be less worried now!

Looking at two recent studies, the defining dilemma for the old pacemaker-wearing folk that love their iPods would probably be this: “which is more dangerous to me, death metal or draping my headphones across my chest?”

“Headphones interfere with heart devices” was one of the major headlines-grabbing presentations at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2008. In the news release, researchers shared their findings from investigating the effects of mp3 player headphones – most of them contain the magnetic substance neodymium – on the operation of implanted cardiac devices (e.g. pacemakers) and defibrillators.

The researchers found a detectable interference with the device by the headphones in 14 patients, (23 percent). Specifically, they observed that 15 percent of the pacemaker patients and 30 percent of the defibrillator patients had a magnet response, Maisel said.

For patients with pacemakers, exposure to the headphones can force the device to deliver signals to the heart, causing it to beat without regard to the patients’ underlying heart rhythm, he said. Exposure of a defibrillator to the headphones can temporarily deactivate the defibrillator. In most cases, removal of the headphones restores normal device function.

Patients should not focus on the brands we tested but instead should simply be instructed to keep their headphones at least 3 cm from their implantable devices.

Another study presented at the same conference (reported in stuff.co.nz) gave some interesting findings related to cardiovascular function. The authors found that listening to music you like may improve blood flow. 10 healthy non-smoking men and women had ultrasound tests to examine blood vessel function while listening either to music that made them feel happy, or music that made them anxious.

Compared to normal baseline measurements, blood vessel diameter increased 26 percent on average when the volunteers heard their joyful music. Interestingly (though hardly statistically significant), most of the volunteers chose country music as joyful(!). Listening to music they disliked narrowed blood vessels by 6 percent (most of them chose heavy metal).

I guess now we can add good music (together with statins, ACE inhibitors, dark chocolate, laughter and other undiscovered finer-things) to the list of effective vasodilators. And smooth blood flow leads to less of the blood clots that cause heart attacks and strokes. Who knew listening to the Dixie Chicks could be�good for your heart?