Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 09, 2003


BRISBANE IS BEST, SIMON SAYS


ON MY first visit to Brisbane, I was introduced to a ruddy man who roared ``We do things differently in Queensland!'' as he tried to crush every bone in my hand. On my last visit, he was the Premier. Brisbane remains one of my least desirable capital cities. The river smells fetid, the humidity is wretched, the cabbies reek of BO and the XXXX beer smells like a cabbie. A Brisbane friend, Simon M, was recently in Adelaide and it took him no time at all to unload the usual extravagant palaver about everything being bigger and better in Queensland. One of the things at which our Queensland cousins are undoubtedly the best is bragging. Damn shame about the mauling the Maroons copped in the State of Origin rugby game. Simon scoffed at the suggestion that Adelaide had better steaks than Queensland. He said the Breakfast Creek Hotel's steaks were indisputably the best in the country, indeed the world. Sigh. He left me no choice. I took him to Gaucho's, the red-blooded altar of blokey steakdom in Gouger St, whose co-owner Joe Puntareri spent 15 years doing ballroom dancing. Seriously. (I have been waiting a long time to slip that one in.) The first cut of Simon's knife slipped so easily through the Gaucho's fillet that he grudgingly had to agree it was indeed a fine slab of meat, if not in the same league as the Breakfast Creek pub's. Of course not. We had a bottle or two of red with friends and Simon was last seen tottering into the night towards the GPO pie cart, demanding to know where he could pick up a ``slab of Grange''. Next morning, on my way to work as dawn broke, I was driving along Gouger St and spotted Simon, in the same clothes as last night and unshaven, lingering outside Gaucho's window. Score one to us. Simon was here long enough and ate enough of our food to eventually be persuaded that some South Australian produce did indeed rate as the best in the land. By the time he left for home we had compiled a Top 6 list of local fare that he more or less conceded were the best. In no particular order they were the steak (yes, Simon, I am claiming it), grilled King George Whiting, baked snapper, oysters, any red wine and the erotically charged women for which Adelaide is justly famous. I made up the last one. Simon is the sort of bloke who barely notices the opposite sex. He went into hysterics on hearing Adelaide dismissed as ``Dubbo with poofters''. A cheap shot. He returns soon on the seductive promise of a Balfour's frog cake.No real rivalry exists between Adelaide and Brisbane, unlike our edgy relationship with Melbourne, and I would like to see that situation changed. Compared to Adelaide's genteel neglect, Brisbane is brash and uncouth and I am in no particular rush to return there, not even for a Breakfast Creek steak. The best thing about Adelaide is it's not Brisbane.