Grand Opening Day - An Invitation

On 6th November 1934 Lockhart's new cafe "The Blue Bird" opened its doors.  It had been trading since 1906 as "The Marathon Oyster Bar and Saloon", "The Marathon Stores" and "Peterson's Cafe".  They were all precursors to the cultural icon of the Greek Cafe and were mixed businesses selling meals, fresh fruit and vegetables, grocery items such as tobacco and kerosene, confectionery, cold drinks and smallgoods.  Peter Veneris and Tony Matis had operated "The Paragon Cafe" across the road in Green Street since the early 1920s.  They took on the bigger cafe which had always been Greek run and decided to modernise.

Renovations and refurbishments were made to the building including new plate glass windows, a kitchen extension and realigning the roof.  Painters and decorators were called in and the doors were opened on Saturday 6th November to "The Blue Bird" now selling American style ice creams, sodas, milkshakes and its very own orange ale.  The Blue Bird quickly became Lockhart's premier cafe and sundae shop after its proprietors Peter Veneris (senior) and Tony Matis, offered first day's gross takings to the Wagga Hospital.

Eighty years on Roger and I are marking the date with a small celebration of our own.  We are opening our doors between 2 and 4 pm on Thursday 6th November for a celebratory afternoon tea and in tribute to the original proprietors, we are donating the proceeds to our local branch of The Red Cross.

So if you can join us to mark this milestone, please join us for afternoon tea.

The Booths are Back in Town

See, just like we promised at the start, the Blue Bird booths are finally back where they belong.  The iconic furniture takes pride of place in the cafe once again alongside the milk bar and the art deco mirrors.  Oh, you have no idea how fantastic it feels to finally be seeing our original vision come together.  It was a vision born two years ago when we looked through the grimy windows at the abandoned Blue Bird and grabbed the chance to rescue an old classic.  We saw how it could still be vibrant in a modern world, a world that had harshly dealt with most of its compatriots in towns across the country.  Somehow The Blue Bird defies the odds and lives on.

And she is looking good if I do say so.  The booth refurbishments have turned out well.  New highlights, new curves, new bling.  Our design touches are the stepped waterfall decorations under the mirrors and the diamond propellers on the ends.  We still have a bit of trim and some mood lighting to install but the new, old look is about 85% there.

The booths were unveiled at Spirit of the Land 2014.  It seems that we make a habit of revealing a new facet of the cafe at each anniversary.  It has so far been an incentive to give that extra push to complete each new stage.  The balancing act between surviving day to day, hand to mouth running a cafe and finding the time and money to complete projects has been immense.  Especially as life has a habit of getting in the way.  My philosophy on life (well one of many), is that it is good to have an idea about where you are going but putting firm timelines on a plan will likely bring the heartache of failure because no one is in complete control of life.  Goals are good but I would rather be a lifelong traveller than a tourist on a bus trip.  How we got the booths back in the cafe and what we learned about ourselves along the way, is far more interesting than the project itself.

P.S.  A person sitting in an orange booth looks across at a person sitting in a green booth.  Symmetry.

Another First

Inspired by our recent pie win I took the time during a quiet spell on Saturday to do some baking.  It was a bit slow in the cafe during the AFL Grand Final so I got out the mixing bowls and baked a chocolate cake to enter into the Lockhart Show the following day.  I am always nervous entering local show cookery competitions because I know that I am taking on longstanding country cooks, champion sponge and scone makers.  The standard of their entries is often high.  These cooks have after all been making and entering cakes for many years.  Their recipes have been handed down from generations of cooks and they know their kitchens and oven temperatures like the back of their hands.

Roger's grandmother could put her hand in her gas oven and tell by feel that it was the right, even temperature to cook the perfect sponge.  She made her own butter straight from the house cow and fed it in curls to her grandson.  Our friend Joy's mother Connie was inspirational.  She was taught to cook by her mother and passed her knowledge on to her own daughter.  Connie made champion sponges and fruit cakes and her cooking supported charities like the CWA and Red Cross at The Rock throughout her life.  Today Joy tirelessly makes trays of slices for the same charities.  Jelly slice, peanut caramel, hedgehog slice, she has made so many over the years that she is hard to beat.

So when I entered my high school recipe chocolate cake into the local Lockhart Show, I was summoning up all my experience and skill to compete.  After all, this cake was the first recipe that I learned in cookery class at school and my mother and I have made it many times sine then so I've had a bit of practice at it.  Mum adapted the recipe successfully to a coffee cake so that she could enjoy it too (she can't eat chocolate).  She used to bake every Saturday afternoon to fill the tins for Sunday lunch and weekday afternoon teas.  She is a good baker and passed her skill on to me.

We were too busy in the cafe on the Sunday to be able to join in the fun out at the Lockhart Showgrounds so I had to wait till the end of the day to hear whether my egg-free, low-fat chocolate cake had made the grade.  It won 1st Prize in the chocolate cake section and I have proudly displayed my certificate in our front window alongside the others.  The local win in the Lockhart Show is as important to us as our tourism and pie awards because a win at the local show offers us the support of our community. 

David takes on Goliath

We are over the moon today and immensely proud.  A few days ago we entered our Kashmir Vegetarian Gluten-free pie into the Official Great Aussie Pie Competition and with the results now in, we did better than expected.  After all, we were the David, going up against the Goliaths of the Australian pie world.  The competition within the industry was huge with the lists of medal winners over four days reading like a who's who of bakeries around the states and territories.  And there was my pie, packed carefully and tightly in a polystyrene box hoping that, with all the "this way up" and "precious pies inside" instructions on the outside, it would make it safely to Melbourne.  Apparently it did.

We looked for the results on Day 2 which, was about when we figured that our pie would have been judged.  Gold!  It had won a Gold medal and we were thrilled.  After all, I have only been making gluten-free pies since the start of winter so consider myself a rookie.  However, I have a philosophy where food is concerned.  I was a vegetarian for years and was always disappointed when I ate out.  If there was not a specifically dedicated vegetarian meal on the menu then you usually ended up with chips or wedges.  If there was, it was often pasta with a whole bunch of unrelated vegetables thrown together.  It felt as if I was being given a second class meal with all the leftover vegetables from other dishes.  It was as if the cook was saying that a vegetarian meal comprised nondescript food with the meat removed.  They were not dishes in their own right, with flavour and style.  So when I became vegetarian I decided that I was going to create dishes for my carnivorous friends that they could enjoy without noticing that there was no meat involved.

This is the approach I have taken with our gluten-free pies.  It is not a second-class pie, it has as much care and consideration in its making as any other pie.  I enjoy the challenge of replacing something conventional with something out of the ordinary and coming up with something tasty.  I guess I got it right with the Kashmir Vegetarian Gluten-free pie because we not only won a gold medal but...the overall gluten-free prize.  That means that the Blue Bird has been judged the best gluten-free pie...in Australia this year!  Wow, that was much better than we had expected.

We wished at the time that we could have entered our famous sausage roll and another gourmet pie as well but felt that the timing was not right with family visiting from NZ, Spirit of the Land preparations coming up and two local shows in which to participate.  This was also a long shot competition for us but we figured that you've got to give these things a go or you will never get anywhere.  Besides which, even just the effort of entering says to our customers that we believe enough in our product to let it stand up with others in our industry.  And we were right to have faith in our pies.  So now that we are feeling inspired, we will free up the time and resources to enter more categories next year.  It is always good to have the validation of your peers and this has definitely been a huge boost to our confidence.

Many years ago Peter Veneris made pies every day he worked at The Blue Bird.  Meat and apple were his pies, he told us.  We are honoured to keep up the Veneris tradition of pie-making.  In Peter's day, meat and apple were a staple variety.  In the 21st Century, new flavours and styles have emerged but the tradition of hand kneading dough and rolling out real homemade shortcrust pastry remains part of life at The Blue Bird.

On a Brighter Note

I will not dwell on the grim days of last week beyond offering our condolences to the Hunt family.  We do not know many of them well but nevertheless their heartbreak must be immense and we feel for their pain.  Also to the children of St Joseph's School who have suffered such a shock in their young lives.  You wish that you could shelter children from pain but life is full of distresses and it is not always possible to protect childhood innocence.  If there is anything that we can do from here, then we offer our ongoing help and support.

Prior to last week, we were working hard to perfect one of our gluten-free pies.  Why?  Because we decided to enter the Official Great Aussie Pie Competition which is being held in Melbourne as I write.  While we have only just begun our careers in pie-making, we decided that it was worth throwing our hats into the ring and entering.  We decided to start relatively small with just one offering this year as we understand that the competition is high.  Bakers and cafes from all over the country compete.

So our choice for entry was a specialty pie because that is what we consider we do best.  We have entered a vegetarian gluten-free pie.  Our Kashmir Pie has a handmade gluten-free shortcrust pastry base, filled with a mash of pumpkin, sweet potato, carrot, apricots, almonds and currants infused with sweet Indian spices.  The pie is topped with a mashed potato because we felt it necessary to vary our textures, given the challenge to make gluten-free pastry as light as standard pastry.  Our aim is to infuse flavour into an uninspiring world of gluten-free cooking.  So fingers crossed and wish us luck.  We know that we are up against some titans in the baking world however, in for a penny...

Night of Stars

Exhausted is how I would describe the pair of us today.  We had a tremendous evening at the gondola masquerade awards last night in Griffith.  Sleep and recovery however, was sadly lacking as we had to drive back early to Lockhart to open up the cafe and serve our customers.  Phew!  But it was worth the trip and all the effort put in entering the Inland Tourism Awards.  This may just be the start of something for us.  It certainly feels like we have taken a new direction and meeting all the people last night was like being welcomed into a group of like-minded friends.  We were nervous at the start of the evening but by the end, felt like we were celebrating along with others working hard in the tourism industry.

So how did we go?  As you know we were among the hopeful finalists in the Heritage and Cultural Tourism category.  We know that there were many others who never made it that far and felt proud to be considered for the award alongside the likes of Yanga National Park and Nundle Woollen Mill (a previous winner).  The competition was strong and the winner of the overall category was Yanga National Park but we won a special award of our own, one quite unique to the evening.  The Blue Bird Cafe proudly won the Encouragement Award, presented to us as a first time entrant just starting out on the journey.  We were advised that this award is not given out often but it recognises future potential and the integrity of a good tourism product.  We feel honoured therefore that we have the industry's faith in us and that we have been able to stand beside some outstanding businesses and multiple award winners.  It is an inspiration for us to go further next year.  Watch this space.

Wish Us Luck

Letting you all know that the cafe will be closed this Saturday evening and some of Sunday morning so that Roger and I can attend the Inland Tourism Awards in Griffith.  We have our glad rags dusted off and ready to go.  Courtesy of a lucky find at the opshop, I have a pretty new frock to wear and Roger has been instructed to scrub up and put on his Spirit of the Land fancy waistcoat for the occasion.  We will take some photos of the evening's excitement so that everyone can see us looking swish and having a ball.  It will be amazing if we win but even if we don't we are looking forward to a night away, a party and the chance to meet with other businesses working as hard as we are in the tourism industry.

Rest assured that we will still be cooking pizzas on Friday night and will make double the dough so you won't miss out as we will only be pizza making one night this week rather than the usual two.

So wish us luck and we will see you Sunday with all the news of the big night.