I have passed by The Australian nearly every day for the past 5 months on my walk to and from work.  I decided it would be a good place to meet up with a friend for a quick drinks and a bite.  We arrived during happy hour and found that they had live music. Some very good rock from the 90s kept us happy the entire time.

We started with the Aussie Sliders which came with seasoned mini beef burgers, topped with pepper jack cheese, served with beets.  We went with no cheese (due to my allergy).  These had nice flavor.

Then we tried the Grilled Kangaroo Skewers, which came with four roo skewers, basted with tamarind barbecue sauce and grilled rare, served over a bed on julienned carrots and cucumbers and dusted with toasted and chopped cashews.  I thought it would be fun to try something so novel!  We were both surprised how much it tasted like tender steak.  Quite good.

But the real reason I was there was for the pavlova.  Not a lot of places serve pavlova, and I’m kind of obsessed with it, so we had to get it.

It had a really nice passion fruit sauce around it and a big pile of whipped cream.  The pavlova itself was quite good, with a crunchy shell and soft give in the center.  Pavlova isn’t a complex dessert, but this one was executed well and tasted great.  Thumbs up!

Overall, The Australian is a better than average bar. It has all the makings of a run-of-the-mill establishment, but the food is interesting and flavorful, they have live music, and they have pavlova!  Score!  I’m curious to try some other things on the menu and have a full meal there.

Total Nom Points: 6.5 out of 7

Sorry I’ve been a bit MIA! Wedding planning is a beast.  We just came back from Maine where we spent 4 days seeing 11 venues. It was crazy, but we saw some great places. In fact, we found FOUR places… all of which are in hot contention.

If you want to see our exploration process, I started a blog about the search: A Very ME Wedding

I’d also like to mention that my last post was #500 here on NYC Nom Nom.  I can’t believe how far this has come.

Stay tuned… more FOOD POSTS coming very soon!

I really enjoy blogging here at NYCNomNom, but free booze certainly makes it that much better!  BoozeCarriage contacted me with an offer to try out their service with a $50 credit.  Couldn’t turn that down! So now I will live blog the experience…

I browsed their website and first found it strange that wine and liquor were separate from beer. I checked out the beer page first and found they had an okay selection, with about a dozen craft beers on their list. None of them tickled my fancy, so I switched over to the liquor/wine page and dove into White: France.

Low and behold, two Vouvrays on the list! Our favorite type of wine is quite rare, so this was a lovely surprise.  I clicked on each one and sadly, there is no information about the wines. This seems like a great place to put in a quick blurb and some tasting notes. Hopefully they are working on that! Oh and no vintage? That’s a bit strange.

Prices seem reasonable, with most in the $12-$20 range and one coming in at $24.99.

Into cart: Remy Pannier Vouvray for $12.99

Went to try a Search and realized they had no Search.  Not loving the UI of the site or information therein, but hopefully this is a work in progress. I see that they have a way to rank it by review, but there are no reviews yet, so I have to assume I’m seeing a beta version.

Now to see if they have Russian River Chardonay.  White: California…

57 options… no vintages and no descriptions on where it’s from. I found Patz & Hall, the wine that started our Russian River Valley obsession, but it’s $40 and doesn’t specify what year. They had some $40 years, some $80 years, and some $20 years. Ehh… why not? Patz & Hall Chardonnay it is.

BoozeCarriage has a promise that anything on their site will be delivered, for free, in 30-60 minutes. You have the option to add a tip to the delivery-person, which I appreciate since I don’t always have small bills handy.

The check-out process is easy enough, but when entering my code in for the credit, it only displays a small note but still shows the total cart amount in the box.  I hesitantly hit the button to proceed and hope that the credit goes through. Payment information on the next page shows I’ve only been charged for the amount I went over on the credit. Phew!

Order placed at 8:35pm…

By 9:35pm, can I really have wine in my hand without any planning ahead of time?

My mind wanders… Party runs out of wine, no need to run to the liquor store, order from BoozeCarriage! Come home from a bad day and really need a scotch? No worries! BoozeCarriage is there for you.

My pondering is interrupted by a phone call.  It’s less than 5 minutes after I place the order and a nice gentleman is informing me that they are out of Patz & Hall but they DO have another Chardonnay from Napa that is on sale for the same price.  Hopefully it really is a $40 Chardonnay!  I find it listed on the site (Grgich Hills Chardonnay) for $42.  Fingers crossed it’s good.

I’m disappointed by this, but the customer service is good enough that I’m not too upset.

9:10pm: Doorbell rings… but it’s our dinner instead (Thai food… a good pair with our white wine!)

9:17pm: Doorbell Take 2… SUCCESS!  The wine has arrived. Ordered just 40 minutes ago. Not too shabby!

And they are chilled! Even better.

9:19pm: Wine is open. Thai food is set. Life is good.

We try the Chardonnay and yup… it’s damn good.

Thanks BoozeCarriage.com

Full disclosure: BoozeCarriage.com reached out to me and provided me with a $50 credit to try their site with the purpose of reviewing it.  The review I have posted is reflective of my honest opinion about the experience.