Rendezvous at Rendezvous Cafe

There is much competition, promotionally speaking, regarding Darwin's best Laksa.  Experience has led me to not trust any restaurant, cafe, or used car lot that advertises itself as offering 'the best (insert item here) in town'.  Melbourne, renowned for its decent coffee and local bean roasters, was never short of desperate, suburban cafes - the type that exclusively cater to convenient lunches squeezed into an half hour work break - claiming they brewed the 'best coffee in town'.  Ah, what mugs of muddy bilge I do not miss.  Thence, entering Smith Street's Rendezvous cafe with my culinary comrade in arms (who has eaten a laksa at Rendezvous and said it was "alright"), I tip toed on the prudent side of mistrust and... ordered something else!

After fetching a menu, we took a seat wallside.  Had i delerium tremens, for something certainly was shaking.  Its the fan, Sarah Informed, which shook from ceiling, through the wall, exiting its tremors through the table.  So we moved to a table not in contiguity with the wall, scanned again the now unflickering menu, then ordered.

Sarah chose the Tom Yum, which was piquantly herbal, generously meated, and certainly knew all about chili's relation to a soup sipper's sweat glands.  I only had a spoonful, but it was a spoonful that invited me to order this dish on my next visit, remembering my sweat towel.

Look at that chilli fuzz clinging to the sides of the noodle-fall's plunge pool!

I ordered the Nasi Lemak, which came to me quite clinically presented: neatness minus much representational allure.  And, notably, where was the mid-brain of a nasi-lemak... the sambal?  I was also surprised by the merely boiled and quartered, rather than boiled and then fried-in-chili egg that is standard fare amongst my prior experiences of a good Nasi Lemak?

But plain appearances can be deceiving, even if they are generally not.  The very soupy rendang, which looked more like an English beef casserole, melted its little cubes across my tongue most pleasantly.  This is the best rendang I've tasted in Darwin. What it lacked in intensity was made up for by the way the flavour was confidently distributed throughout the meat.  A dash of sliced spring onions atop added a subtle lick of freshness to this very sugary beef rendang.  I was impressed.  Then there was the coconut rice: one could see congealed specks of coconut cream in it.  This was delicious, if not somewhat too sweet.  If it was served as a rice custard, I may have rather said it could have been somewhat sweeter.  I do, however, prefer my rice less swollen.  The roasted peanuts were... peanuts, roasted without surprise.  The anchovies were delicious, although they were very salty.  One could see their little eyes peering out from beneath the intricate, tan batter, not quite knowing what to make of what had become of them.  Last and least, a few token slices of tomato and cucumber had been slipped on the plate's edge - quite useless as a salad, and even more useless without the requisite sambal their action is traditionally meant to soothe.

The test with any Nasi Lemak is when all the ingredients are piggishly shoveled into the mouth together.  Here the sweetness of the rendang grabbed the willing arm of the sweet rice and swung a merry lunchtime jig around the crunchy peanuts and the startle-eyed anchovies.  The egg, however, felt out of place and was mopingly swallowed separately.  The man in black in the photo above is counseling a fretting anchovy.

Sarah, who seemed to be melting into her own sweat pool, obviously enjoyed her Tom Yum.

While I did my best to relieve the dish washer of her labours, and look forward to my next, lo, rendezvous at Rendezvous cafe.  Maybe their 'best laksa' claims have something to them.

1. How about this: Rendezvous Cafe. Malaysian/Singaporean. Shop 6, The Mall , 32 Smith St, Darwin, NT,  Ph: (08) 8981 9231