Amphora, St Lucia

Gam and I have made it a goal to have dinner out every Wednesday as a way of celebrating 'hump day' and the downhill to the weekend. Last week we visited a new little cheapie Italian restaurant, Gregorio's, in the 'Ville (and were pleasantly surprised) but my attempts to take photos with Gam's mobile for an impromptu review were thwarted by what must have been a bad case of the shakes, if the blurriness of most of the photos is anything to go by. At least that gave us a good excuse to go there again.

Yesterday we visited Amphora, a little restaurant in St Lucia that we've been meaning to go to for years. We've passed it in the bus, walked past it countless times and said every time "we must go there!", but somehow we never made it until yesterday. Well, clearly Amphora didn't go stale in the time we've been dithering, because it was frigging awesome.

Gam and I rocked up around 5:30pm to ask when they opened for dinner and if they had any seats available, booked a table, then came back around 6pm (which is when they open). If I have one piece of advice right now it's book in advance. I don't think they expected to be particularly busy (it was Wednesday night and State of Origin was on), but it's such a fairly little place, and customers didn't stop coming. We had a nice spot near the door that had a pleasant view of the street and roundabout, from which we got to watch some idiot lean half their body out the window of the 4WD they were a passenger in and peg a wad of rubbish at the 4WD behind them. Plenty of hoons and people going for their evening stroll. Very entertaining.

The lone waitress was a couple of minutes late for work, stuck in traffic (probably due to 'Origin) and she took our order almost the minute she walked in the door. She was lovely. If you can think of all the movies you've seen that had a 'waitress with a heart of gold' character, she'd fit right in.

Quite possibly the best calamari in Brisbane, if not the world...

We ordered two starters- a small platter of mezethes and a small platter of calamari, $15 each. They arrived in a timely fashion, taking just long enough to let you know they weren't just hauling something out of the microwave. Now, these are what are worth returning for: if you order anything at Amphora it should be the calamari and the mezethes. Total. Tonguegasm. Next time we're foregoing the mains and ordering a large one of each of these. This was the best calamari I have ever tasted in my life. Succulent, perfectly fried, and with an oh-my-god sauce. I don't even know how to describe the (tomato-based) sauce... it was beyond delicious.

Mezethes platter, viewed from the fried-side. Not as unhealthy as it looks!

The mezethes were fresh fresh fresh- the cucumber and capsicum were freshly sliced, the little dips were really tasty (the bread that accompanied the mezethes on a separate platter was on a par with the rest of it- really good). There was more calamari and a few whitebait, again perfectly cooked. The feta was creamy, the olives were incredibly flavourful, marinated in something delicious that didn't just taste like something you'd find in your average deli, let alone the supermarket; the lamb rissole thingy had fresh mint and herbs, the eggplant, sausage ('chorizo', but I'm not 100% clear on what genuine chorizo tastes like given that every one I've ever tried was different, but this one was good- flavourful with no gristle) and haloumi were all spot on. There was also a neat little feta pastry that I cleaned up. The only thing we didn't eat was the tomato. I could quite happily have gone home at this point. The platters didn't look huge, but they certainly contained enough to satisfy. A large platter of mezethes would be a solid but very healthy meal.

I tried to take a photo from the other side of the mezethes platter to properly capture the colour, but I fluffed my aim...

In the meantime, the place had been filling up. Now, if I had to describe the atmosphere of this place before the majority of its clientèle arrived, I would have called it 'homely'. Slightly rustic, like a bigger version of a nice old kitchen. Slightly chipped paint, laminated tables, kitchen visible from where we were sitting (but not from the main dining area). If I had to describe the majority of the clientele and the atmosphere of the place after it filled up, I could do it in one word: grey.

If I had a few sentences to add it would be along the lines of 'grey, dour, middle-aged to elderly, Liberal-voting... and a bit depressing'. Seriously, this place had the least-mixed customer base of anywhere we've been in St Lucia or anywhere else. The two other dour, middle-aged couples seated near to us took it upon themselves to loudly discuss their assets and stock portfolios. The few younger people that did show up were blazer-wearing Young Liberal-looking types in the company of their middle-aged-Liberal-voter-looking parents. The only normal young people in the place were 3 asian girls who came in together- they looked like students. The staid uniformity of the clientele was perplexing and slightly terrifying. Sure, St Lucia has plenty of boring, dour 'riche'. But it also has a great mix of Aussie and foreign students, middle-aged academic types, middle-class families with kids and the odd bogan. None of this was evident in the make-up of the people who visited Amphora on the night we were there, and I'm tempted to say this was no fluke, as the waitress greeted several of them as regulars. I resolved that if we're ever to visit again we have to bring friends and alcohol... even if our noisy, daggy, ethnically-mixed presence doesn't scare away the dour, boring riche it will at least horrify them sufficiently to be entertaining.

Yahni potatoes

Unfortunately we had more than enough time to dwell on this because the mains took a loooong time to arrive. Admittedly this was probably because the place was more full than expected- a largish party showed up (they all looked the same by this point) and I suppose the chef and young guy helping out in the kitchen were worked off their feet. Anyway, our mains didn't arrive until about 8:45pm, by which time we were getting a bit antsy.

Mains were all around $30; Gam ordered the rib-eye fillet with a side order of 'yahni potatoes', which the waitress told us were potatoes cooked in duck fat. Very tasty, those.

The chick pea fritter

I had hemmed and hawed over the chick pea fritter- the idea of paying $30 for something made of chick peas seemed rather excessive, particularly when the meat and fish dishes were the same price. But I felt more like chick peas than meat, so that's what I went for. It described the fritter as 'lightly spiced' and coming with a mesclun salad, grilled haloumi and olive oil. I have to say, after the mezethes and calamari I was expecting something similarly mind-blowing, and the chick pea fritter didn't really live up to that mark. It really was good, don't get me wrong, but the bar had been set so high I couldn't help but be a little disappointed that it didn't blow my head off with utter fabulousness. It was great in a comfort-food-y kind of way, though I would have described it as more creamy-texured than spicy. The mesclun 'salad' was fairly tiny, merely a seat for the fritter. The haloumi was delicious, but I couldn't finish it because I was so full I felt like I was about to burst! It can't have been all bad if I let myself get to that point...

Rib-eye (sitting on crouton)

I think Gam was similarly underwhelmed by his rib-eye, which looked great and was cooked exactly how he liked it but couldn't come close to matching the calamari and mezethes for him, either.

The menu we were handed at the beginning of the night didn't include desserts, but Gam said he saw a plate of something tasty and dessert-ish being taken out to the main dining room. I have to say though, we were too full to contemplate even asking about dessert by that point so we just paid up and left, resolving to return for the calamari and mezethes.

UPDATE 03/03/2009: I've lost count of the times we've now had take-away mezethes and calamari from Amphora now, and let me just say it has been flawless every time. I don't think there's a take-away meal I enjoy more. We went to eat at Amphora again with two friends of ours a couple of weeks ago and the food was superlative- I had a special of moussaka and Gam had some kind of fish... I can't remember if he ordered off the specials board or the menu, but we all enjoyed our meals immensely and our friends, visiting from London, were in awe of the value for money in terms of the quality of the food (NOT a hint that prices should go up, mind! Watt did that after a good review in the Brisbane News last year, much to our chagrin). The only problem was that my stomach couldn't stretch to accommodate all the mezethes plus the entire serve of moussaka, much to my disappointment (if Gam and our friends had been prepared to sit around for another hour while I slowly polished if off I'm sure I could have achieved it, but I'm already the world's slowest eater...). The clientele was as grey and dour as ever.

We want to take a larger bunch of our friends there, but when I tried to get a reservation I was told I should try 2 weeks in advance if we wanted to book for 8 people or more. That shouldn't have been a surprise given that I'd only just managed to scrape a Wednesday booking on the previous occasion. The remedy? Mass take-out mezethes, eaten at our place! I think everyone who tried it will be coming along next time for the real thing... I crave Amphora's mezethes these days...