Another birthday, black pudding hotdogs, and 2:1 steak

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

Ti Kou­ka cel­e­brat­ed their 3^rd 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….).

And 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.

Beware 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:

• Chow Tory — 2:1 Mon­day mains (no book­ings)
• The Library — 2:1 Tues­day desserts (no book­ings)
• Boat Cafe — 2:1 Wednes­day mains (book­ings rec­om­mend­ed)
• Bet­tys Func­tion House — 2:1 Thurs­day cock­tails (and great nib­bles)

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