No Indian Summer Here

Already the resolution to write here weekly is under pressure, my apologies to anyone who has been waiting in limbo for this episode.

Following Greek, Italian and Chinese festivals, as well as broader food and wine events in most of the city suburbs, it was the turn of the Indian community to put on the show last weekend.

Now while all this food and drink is of course very welcome, festival fatigue is a real danger and I have been suffering from a culinary apathy of late.

However, I had been particularly looking forward to this one, and with good reason. Surely my quest for decent curry must be at an end.

Alas, it continues.

For somebody who’s desert island diet is three parts curry to one part smelly cheese, the quality of Indian food in this town is frankly nothing short of a scandal, and a growing blot on my gastronomic landscape.

With an air of what I can only describe as insouciance, a series of waiters have conspired to leave me longing for Rusholme.

I have been thinking long and hard about how to best describe this uninspiring, primordial swill advertised as curry. I would say mediocre, but it’s not that good. I was tempted by gristly lava, but it’s not that hot.....spices being too left field for the “curry” chefs of Adelaide.

Eventually I concluded there was only accurate way to describe it.

Brown.

At a recent unfulfilling Indian experience, we were served by a girl from Leeds. She at least, and alone among the purveyors of “curry” in this town, had the good grace to look embarrassed at the slop she placed in front of us.

But enough of that. Now that all the festivals, motor races, athletics and cricket are out of the way, there is room on TV for the winter sports, which in South Australia means Aussie Rules Football, or just plain footy.

This week was the start of the new season and if you thought there was a lot of soccer on TV in the UK, think again. There were eight games on TV at the weekend, each of them lasting a little shy of 3 hours.

No signs of overkill though, it seems that too much of a good thing IS a good thing and by Wednesday, the withdrawal signs are already on show.

It’s a pretty unique game which only seems to resemble a Wild West brawl between enormous numbers of huge blokes on a massive pitch with a ball which they largely ignore while landing tasty looking blows on each other and wearing vests designed for the girls to swoon over vast biceps.

Despite the name of the game, there are very few rules and it’s brilliant to watch live. We live about 100m from the local oval (bit of jargon for you there, oval = Aussie sports ground) and are now Norwood Redlegs supporters. It’s a bit like supporting a non league football team with 4,000 other misfits.

You’ll be pleased to hear we won the first match of the season against local rivals Glenelg, the seaside team. After being behind the whole game, we came back to snatch a brave victory in the last five minutes.

Tomorrow the mighty Redlegs take on Sturt, another big match apparently but, more importantly, the venue, the Unley Oval, is close to another alleged Indian restaurant of repute.

We’ll see!

M&W