Broome & Beyond: Cape Leveque

Friday 14th July, almost 8:30 am

Last night we ate dinner at Raugi's, the resort restaurant. (Actually, Kooljaman is a "wilderness camp" rather than a resort.) We'd booked in when we checked in, our name was not on the list... Today I find an email that says we are booked in for *tonight*. Not to worry. We arrived just before 6:30 and were seated.

Thirty minutes later, they take our order. Prices are for two or three courses. We take advice and have one entree, two mains, one dessert, which adds up two two courses each. Plus coffee. Our mains are tasting plates, "bush" and vegetarian.

Entree takes only twenty minutes or so. Then we sit and wait. It's almost eight o'clock before we get our mains. Dessert & coffee follow quite quickly. By then there is only one table left... and they are onto post-dinner drinks.

Entree is smoked fish & smoked fish-cake. With a few smears and dots of fancy stuff. This is a very fancy restaurant!

Mains are interesting. Half a dozen various things on each plate. The camel cottage pie is not very nice but everything else tastes good. After a brief taste of each, they all mix around and it's hard to remember what is what. Especially all the dots and smears and dollops of extract of this and that... Lots of bush tucker materials but we're not sure what goes with what.

In my opinion: The chef should have decided, for example, that emu chorizo goes with humbug fruit (no, gubbinge fruit? whatever...) -- and placed them together. As it is, we just eat a bit of whatever is there. Sure, it's all interesting and tasty and mostly quite nice. But there is no appreciation of why all of those ingredients were used. However:

Dessert is an "assiette" ! of chocolate and fruit. Six items arranged in a row. Each one just big enough for two mouthfuls. We start at one end and have half each... So each item, we eat it with its selected accompaniment. We're benefitting from the chef's "advice". Oh, and each piece is delicious :-)

Total damage -- including coffee: $130. Wow!

Tonight we'll try the hamburger joint that's open on Fridays...

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This (Friday) morning: Up with the sun (6:30) for a run along the western beach. It's on the ocean side of the cape, not safe for swimming. Tide is low, we're the only people there. We jog 2.5km south then back again. Peaceful, beautiful :-)

Now we've had a cup of tea. And we're about to head off to sample what will probably be a very expensive breakfast...

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Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper
Agamedes Consulting / Problems? Solved.
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"Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky." - Michel de Montaigne