The birth­day first.  Since I seem to be on a birth­day roll lately.

Ti Kouka cel­eb­rated their 3rd birth­day on Fri­day just gone (well done guys). Even though I couldn’t make lunch with free bubbles, I did man­age to grab deli­cious car­rot cake for after­noon tea (purely for cel­eb­rat­ory pur­poses you under­stand), and con­firm their new ven­ture should be open­ing this week – The Leeds Street Bakery and Red Rab­bit Roast­ery in the Han­nahs Build­ing beside Gold­ings Free Dive Bar.  This ven­ture is more about col­lect­ing on the run, but I don’t doubt for a minute the con­tin­ued qual­ity product we’ve come to know and love TK for (and I sus­pect you just might be able to have tasty treats with your beer next time you’re at Gold­ings….).

Crazy hotdogAnd then in one of those quirk’s of fate, who turned up as the res­taur­ant of the week at the City Mar­ket yes­ter­day – none oth­er than Crazy Horse the Steak­house.  Only the same place we’d just booked for the first time in ages in rela­tion to a who-does-good-steak-around-town con­ver­sa­tion (and yes you do need to book for the Monday 2:1 steak deal, its packed as a packed thing!).

So, black pud­ding hot­dog for break­fast as a warm up to the steak event?  Why not indeed. With crispy shal­lots and sauerkraut.  And yep, as tasty as it was inter­est­ing.

And the steak.  In the 2:1 deal you can choose dif­fer­ent steaks and the cheapest will be cred­ited, so if you’ve nev­er had wagyu and always had a hanker­ing to try one, this is the place to do it.

Crazy steakBeware the sides are all extras and with drinks and so on, one can still spend more than ima­gined but get­ting one of those steaks free is a pretty tasty com­pens­a­tion.  We actu­ally had fil­let and sir­loin and both were very pleas­ant and cooked exactly as prom­ised (but with a bit of gristle through the sir­loin I have to say) and all sides, ser­vice, ambi­ence and present­a­tion (mar­row in a bone any­one?) very good.  And some inter­est­ing sides like asparagus with poached egg, coleslaw with pea­nuts, large chunky wedgy potato skins, maple glazed yams with toasted pecans (in sea­son), gnoc­chi Par­is­i­enne, brus­sel sprouts with con­fit chest­nuts and lar­dons.…

$89 for a couple of good steaks, three sides and two drinks left us well sated and pretty sat­is­fied.

So now I have Portlander and CHS in my mind for good city steaks, but I sus­pect there are oth­ers…?

And white we’re on the 2:1 front, a couple of oth­er fun places that spring to mind if cook­ing just isn’t doing it for you:

So there’s half the week covered, happy to hear of oth­ers.…