This one almost doesn’t need a caption, but Craig needs to learn that if he puts shit like this up on his Flickr I will use it for evil.

Have at it!

“After my experience with my series Let’s Cook! With Craig, I think I have developed a finely tuned taste for quality cuisine. Also being one who is always looking for a bargain, it makes me highly qualified to search out and review cheap meals around inner Melbourne. Come with me as I visit all those little counter meals and pubs that are hidden from the main streets. I’ll try their meals and give you the low down on the cost and quality of the meal.”
– Craig

Percy’s Bar
(418 Lygon St, Carlton)
DINNER

Duck with roast vegetables was ordered this evening at Percy’s Bar in Carlton.

It looked the goods as it approached but as soon as she put it down, all that I could think of was the price that I had just paid for this thing.

It was dry. There were not enough mix of vegetables. It cost me $24.00

The roast potato was nice and the gravox was nice too! I think I would have been better off going to Red Rooster.

2 out of 5.

“After my experience with my series Let’s Cook! with Craig, I think I have developed a finely tuned taste for quality cuisine. Also being one who is always looking for a bargain, it makes me highly qualified to search out and review cheap meals around inner Melbourne. Come with me as I visit all those little counter meals and pubs that are hidden from the main streets. I’ll try their meals and give you the low down on the cost and quality of the meal.”
– Craig

The Clyde Hotel
(385 Cardigan St, Carlton)
DINNER

Having previously visited The Clyde for a very ordinary Chicken Parma, I decided to give it a second chance and found something on the menu that sparked some interest.

The kangaroo sausage on mash with apple, beetroot and gravy.

The apple and beetroot was not too overwhelming. It was subtle and didn’t take away from the ‘roo flavour.

Having had kangaroo before it was quite good and priced fairly.

I would have said that it was over priced at $16.50, but the mix of flavours made the meal very much worth the dollars.

Much better than their chicken parma. At $15.50. A very average crispy chicken-like heart shaped thing with a touch of cheese on a few chips.

Overall 3 stars out of 5.

Get into it!

We’ve cooked with Craig, so now let’s review with Craig.

“I tend to eat out a lot so I know what I like. I like quality food and at a good price. If it is really that good, I don’t mind paying that little bit more. Time to start reviewing some of inner-Melbourne’s eats.”
– Craig

Threshermans Bakehouse
(221 Faraday St Carlton)
BREAKFAST

Threshermans was once an outstanding place for value for money until it was sold in about 2005.

Since then quality has declined and I’m sad to say that I’ve gone from being a regular there to staying completely away from it.

A week ago, I found myself awake fairly early and was looking for some breakfast in Carlton.

I decided to drop the self-imposed ban on Thresherman’s and try their Big Breakfast which I always remembered as being of good quality.

Let me say that I’m glad I did. The eggs were perfect, the sausage and bacon were perfect – not too crispy and not too uncooked. The spinach was okay, although I don’t have much of a liking for it anyway. I didn’t like the mushrooms. I think they could have been cooked a little more. The toast could have been buttered. The tomato looked well cooked but I don’t eat tomato so you’ll have to check out the pic above.

Overall satisfactory, although they charge for tomato sauce.

Time to put the self-imposed ban back on.

2 out of 5.

Episode 4: Craig heads outdoors for a classic summer event — the great Aussie BBQ.

Rate this episode at YouTube.

Facebook can be shitty, frustrating and useless at times, but it’s awesome when a message like this pops up in your feed.

Awesome!!1!

And when I clicked on the link I wasn’t disappointed. Check out this double-whammy of Craig goodness.

What’s worse — the haircut or the drink?

Turns out that Craig’s girly-drink thing has been a problem for quite some time. At least his haircuts are slightly better these days.

Choice Magazine has unveiled its annual list of ten “shonky” products, and it’s bad news for Craig.

For a hard earned thirst

Consumer lobby group Choice has unveiled its annual Shonky Awards for what it terms dodgy and deceitful goods and services.

[...]

[One] of the 10 winners of a Shonky this year is the maker of the alcopop Vodka Mudshake Original Chocolate.

[Choice's Christopher] Zinn says this won because it masked its 4 per cent alcohol content with its chocolate milkshake flavour.

I shit you not, Craig loves these things. Once we were bushwalking at the Grampians and went to a Chinese restaurant in Sale Stawell for dinner. I took in a couple of longnecks of Coopers Sparkling and Craig took in a four-pack of those Mudshake abominations. Despite the looks of hatred from locals as we entered (”Would ya look at them city poofs with their city poof drinks, Bev?”) Craig skolled one in two gulps, wiped his mouth with glee, opened a second, and necked half of that before even breathing. There’re also one or two rotting at the bottom of my fridge that he left there after pizza one night.

It’s easy to give Craig shit about his girly-drink habit (he took a sixer of UDL cans to Canberra for our Lachlan Connor, Independent roadtrip, while the rest of us took a case of beer), but after I read the whole article about the Shonky Awards I got a bit worried about Craig.

“Even before the whole alcopop got very controversial we decided to test them with some teenagers aged 18 and 19, for legal reasons of course, to see if they could actually taste the alcohol in alcopops – and there was one where half of the males couldn’t tell that this Vodka Mudshake Original Chocolate actually contained any alcohol,” he said.

“So the makers of that have got a Shonky for a product that really resembles a milkshake and tastes like one and doesn’t really taste alcoholic at all, which of course is the idea because all the advice is that kids at first don’t actually like the taste of alcohol and these are gateway beverages that get them used to the taste.”

A “gateway beverage”? Yikes! What will Craig move onto next if we don’t stage an intervention?

Checking out a photograph of me that a friend had put on Facebook, I notice a comment from Craig that read, in part:

It is the yeah two thousands!

I don’t even know where to start with that sentence but, ladies and gentlemans, I have my new favourite saying.

We’re recording tonight’s GrodsThink podcast at Jeremy’s house, so this afternoon Craig sends an email to us all asking for Jeremy’s address. John Surname replied first with “21 Marx Lane” and the suburb in which Mr Sear resides. A couple of minutes later I get a Gmail chat message from Surname, quoting another Gmail chat message.

John: “Craig: Its not coming up on google earth or google maps” HAHA

Gold.

Oh, and speaking of gold, here’s a photo I took recently of Craig looking ridiculous.

Caption entries in comments.

GrodsCorp’s favourite chef and podcast sound engineer, Craig, walked into my classroom this afternoon to fix a computer problem. I was reading a book to the kids and we all ignored him for a few minutes. When I reached the end of the chapter I closed the book and said in a loud, sing-song voice, “Hi, Craig!” All the kids parroted, “Hi, Craig!” after me, causing widdle Cwaigy to blush a little bit. I then joked that it was lucky I was reading aloud as Craig can’t read so he just looks at the pictures and guesses. Without missing a beat one of the kids (bless ‘em) announced confidently, “He might not be able to read but he sure can cook!”

Craig’s online anonymity has been pwned. Priceless.

Because Craig’s a wacky, crazy, zany, dude, he sometimes hits record when he shouldn’t. This is a section of the audio he captured by recording after we finished GrodsCast 4.