Last night in Sydney

We were scheduled to all gather for a team dinner the night before our departure for Tamworth and Gary scoped out a charming restaurant called Phillip’s Foote.  It has narrow frontage on George Street, but stretches quite extensively towards the back where it is open-air, but covered by an assortment of wooden roofs and tarps to protect you from the elements.  Good thing too because partway through our meal, the rains came.  There was nothing so dainty as raindrops in this.  It was just a cubic mass of falling water filling the air with a fearful, pounding din.  We remained quite dry, but the wind found the cracks and an unwelcome chill wrapped itself around our ankles.

The novelty to this restaurant is that you select your raw meat and then proceed to one of several barbecues and cook it yourself.  All the meat is the same price and includes a salad bar as well as potatoes and breads.  No one comes to serve you.  If you want a glass of wine, you wend your way down to the bar and get one.  Periodically a bus-boy comes by with a wicker basket on his arm and clears your table of debris but otherwise, you're left undisturbed.

At the end of our meal the ten of us squeezed around one table and so, radiant with cholesterol and contentment, we relaxed to enjoy each other’s company and to wonder what had happened to our two Lost Ladies.