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Gelato
Bar Restaurant
140 CAMPBELL PARADE, BONDI BEACH
t: (02) 9130 4033
Open Daily 8am-11pm
Review
Great
coffee, cakes, service, value for money, and pet
friendly
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Article
Ahead
by a nose, by Keith Austin - 8th July 2003
(Credit:
The Sydney Morning Herald)
They
say it's good to feed a cold, and Bondi's Gelato
Bar cure is not to be sniffed at.
In
Whitechapel, east London, there used to be a rightly
famous kosher restaurant called Blooms . There
also used to be a young journalist who, when working
nearby, would nip up the road to Blooms for a
cheap and cheerful pig-out.
How
those memories came flooding back when Popsi Bubblehead
and I visited the Gelato Bar Restaurant on Campbell
Parade recently.
This
has to be one of the most inaptly named places
in the world. Its name comes from an Italian ice-cream,
it has a front window display that makes it look
like a cake shop and yet, deep inside its charming
faux-art deco decor, you can feast on crumbed
chicken livers with mash and cucumber salad.
And,
yikes and away, my mum used to make cucumber salad
like this on Sunday afternoons after we got back
from the bagel shop.
But
enough of the memory lane stuff. We are here because
Popsi is not a well bunny. She has been laid low
by the dreaded flu lurgy and a friend has suggested
nay, ordered that she get some Jewish penicillin
inside her.
This
takes the form of Gelato's matzo dumpling soup
(with free crusty bread) and is perhaps the closest
mankind will ever come to curing the common cold.
Within minutes of getting the chicken broth inside
her, Popsi's nose has ceased to glow and therefore
is no longer a danger to shipping.
As
a gesture of solidarity I have the chicken noodle
soup, which comes with noodles and carrot in place
of the planet-sized dumplings that are wobbling
around in Popsi's bowl.
This
is winter fare par excellence and, if you weren't
a guts like me, would be enough to keep you going
for days. Unfortunately, I cannot refrain from
ordering the chicken livers, too.
These
look a little like deep-fried chicken wings and
arrive piled high on a large plate. At times liver
can be a little dry but the cucumber salad (which
is essentially a bowl of sliced cucumber in a
vinegary marinade) offsets this marvellously.
The
mash isn't so much mash as fluffy boiled potatoes
but the combination of the three is good. I'm
not convinced by the little plastic cup of tartare
sauce, though. I think it must have snuck in from
a fish and chip shop.
And
what I can also do without is Popsi's assertion
that eating too much liver can lead to an overdose
of vitamin A in which your bones bleed (I am going
to have to cancel her subscription to Fortean
Times). While I try to digest both my liver and
this charming fact, she adds that you would have
to consume the equivalent of a "woolly mammoth"
for this to happen.
This
is not at all helpful because I seem to have that
equivalent on the plate in front of me. Luckily,
I cannot eat it all and am saved from myself.
Next
time I am going to have to try the boiled beef
and sauerkraut but I am going to leave the Bubblehead
at home in case eating too much sauerkraut makes
your eyeballs bleed.
Tried
Matzo dumpling soup ($8.50), chicken noodle soup
($7.50), crumbed chicken livers ($21)
Bottom line for two $37
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