Mystery Pub #58 was at The Archer, in North Adelaide. We enjoyed our time there at a small table by the front door. It’s a monthly event during which Claire and I happily immerse ourselves in ourselves while about us strangers come and go. We had hot chips.
Dadaism is an avant-garde intellectual movement. It began around the time of the First World War. Although not at first an art movement, it did influence art greatly for a time and Salvador Dali was a follower as was Samuel Beckett.
Buckethead is an American guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. He grew up near Disneyland. In 2011, Buckethead started releasing albums in the Pikes series, mini-albums usually around thirty minutes in length. He has released 655 Pike albums, 175 of which are live albums.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres in circumference and as deep as 175 metres beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva.
Meanwhile, we hear a song from acclaimed Vegas lounge act, Midnight Oil.
With twinkling ivories and a Sinatra swing, it’s a jazzy version of ‘Blue Sky Mine.’ But this searing satire and call for social justice is somehow oddly appropriate in a wine bar as an accompaniment to our Friday evening entertainment.
How exactly? I’m unsure.
Welcome to The Pink Pig on O’Connell Street in North Adelaide. It’s both mythic and material, and timeless but everlastingly preserved in 1986. Glimpsing myself in a mirror, I’m surprised to not see a boxy Ferris Bueller shirt and skinny leather tie upon my chassis.
Opened in 1973, it enjoys unparalleled affection. It’s comforted us all across the long decades, even Claire and me who’d between us have only visited once prior to tonight. One could argue that if it didn’t exist, it’d be necessary to invent it, or at least apply for the liquor licence. Nobody who draws breath can dislike The Pink Pig.
We take our (reserved) seats overlooking the street. There’s a small, round window and it’s like being in a submarine. ‘So, tell me about the times you’ve been here,’ I ask Claire, certain to evoke a rich response. Then, not for the first time, my wife surprises me by saying, ‘I don’t reckon I’ve ever been here.’ That’s our mission at Mystery Pub Inc: to right individual wrongs, or at least conspicuous hospitality omissions.
The tap beer is a house XPA. I say to mine host, ‘I’ll have one of these, thanks. Can I ask where it’s from?’ and am confident this is a courteous question, even at 5.15pm on a winter afternoon. Barkeep pauses dangerously, eyebrows narrowing, and this gives our exchange some minor Goodfellas menace. With vague caution he replies, ‘A craft brewer up north.’ Mmm. Up north, I wonder. However, I leave it alone as I don’t wish to get wacked. Especially on a Friday.
Without additional mobster subtext, I get Claire a sauvignon blanc.
Back by the window in our burnt-orange submarine the casino tunes continue with a hep-cat cover of Paul Young’s 1985 hit, ‘Every Time You Go Away.’ As the chorus begins, I giggle (internally). I know what’s coming.
Every time you go away
You take a piece of me with you
Of course, the celebrated mondegreen (misheard lyric) is
Every time you go away
You take a piece of meat with you
And this will always be funny.
Out the back there’s sporting memorabilia including framed photos of (the nephew of dear friend) Port Power icon Justin Westhoff, Arsenal FC, and a sweaty box (surely an acceptable collective noun) of Australian cricket teams.
The Pink Pig must’ve been compulsory for visiting Test sides and I imagine Beefy Botham, I.V.A. Richards, and Bob Willis among its enthusiastic patrons. Well beyond any modern curfew, Ian Chappell would’ve quarreled with each of them here over pork and pilsner.
As is now customary, Claire procures a cocktail (strawberry daiquiri) and having enjoyed the first, I opt for a second XPA. These, too, are satisfactory.
We need nourishment and could get an entire pig on a spit (with potatoes, seasonal vegetables, salads and sauces) for $1200 but don’t as we’re 28 short of the suggested dining party of thirty persons.
Claire and I chat further about the pig on a spit, but I can imagine the barkeep saying, perhaps in a sinister way, that in selecting this option we’d likely need to, ‘take a (terribly substantial) piece of meat with you.’
In April a spoken sentence by Claire included this clause, ‘and to make Mystery Pub a real celebration we should have hot chips.’ Thinking this a most appealing idea I nodded, then likely added, ‘I love me a chip’ and with this the matter was immediately and forever decided.
But sometimes, despite the early enthusiasms of all participants, some traditions splutter and stall. Our monthly hot chip ritual ended with its streak at one. Perhaps it was rash and reckless. And then this happened…
The Royal Oak on North Adelaide’s O’Connell Street does a tidy line in share plates. Enhancing the mandatory mystery but forsaking chips, Claire clandestinely ordered a serve of honey-roasted carrots and lamb sausage rolls. Both were minor key triumphs although about the carrots there was a faint suggestion of hot carnival doughnuts. Chips were now dead.
Beyond the CBD, North Adelaide’s our finest suburb for pubs, with The Kentish, Queen’s Head, and The Wellington all at Group 1 level. The Royal Oak holds its own as a confident, independent pub.
Inside, it’s the aesthetic inverse of all those cavernous and charisma-free supermarket pubs. The interior functions as a contemporary art gallery, and we could be in one of MONA’s G-rated colonnades (there aren’t many). In the dining room various constructed lobster hang off the walls, in an intriguing tangling of text and context. Their meaning is that they are devoid of any meaning, but this renders them intriguing.
TV screens often reflect a pub’s heart. Boozers with monitors crowding every wall, multiple Medusas tempting with horseracing odds and assorted sports inducements. However, the Royal Oak’s home to old B&W television sets. In a dark nook, one has silent static racing across the curved glass. High in the front bar another shows a test pattern. Had we lingered until 7pm we could’ve seen Jane Riley and (forever mute) Fat Cat urging us to bed with a mellow, ‘Good night, girls and boys.’
An additional consideration is the pub soundtrack and tonight, we have the blues. Professor Longhair. Dr. John. A highlight is, ‘Let the Good Times Roll’ by Louis Jordon as featured (ironically) in The Blues Brothers. This swampy music triggers conversation about Claire’s four musician brothers (Don, Geoff, Brian, and Matt) and their bands such as The Sensational Bodgies, The Tremolo Men, and Lost Romaldo Groove.
A blackboard’s advertising upcoming musical acts and there’s a modest stage by another fireplace. An awkward tuba, confident trumpet, and other brass instruments jut from the walls as a commemorative tableau to performers both local and distant. Fairy lights are festooned on wagon wheels and across doorways.
A young bar staffer lowers a log into the glowing fireplace. There’s an easing, murmuring momentum in the bar. Maybe this unhurriedness suits the solstice with today being the true beginning of winter (for those of us who value science and enlightened thinking).
Our second and concluding drink comes courtesy of table service (in a pub, I know!) with a green cocktail named for the Mississippi (it’s New Orleans night in here) for Claire, and a Pale Ale for me. I’ve eschewed the craft beer offerings for the metronomic safety of a Coopers. But then for my wife, the cocktail aficionado’s dilemma: drink as is and preserve the pretty appearance or stir and ruin the visual art but agitate the beverage to achieve its intended palate?
The Royal Oak’s an exquisite environment in which to devote a Friday hour. I’m most pleased we did.
At the pub’s posterior is a tiny beer garden with capacity for a dozen. Its wall is festooned by a black outline painting, intriguingly of the hotel itself. This seems redundant marketing. Surely, if you’re clasping a refreshment in a shady nook, you don’t need to look at a visual rendition of the pub, to entice you to swing by that very venue. You’re already sorta sold. While Claire’s buying our second and ultimate round, I peer at this meta-painting, zeroing in on the beer garden and try to find the artwork on the wall.
Tradition demands when in an Empire-themed North Adelaide boozer for Mystery Pub I’ve a Heineken. In 2021 I commenced this at the Kentish, Mystery Pub #9. I insist that Heineken is European VB, but without the sophistication, presence, and contextual glamour. Claire arks, ‘Why do you buy this?’ Thinking deeply about her question, I contemplate my life’s story, good and varied fortune, and not inconsiderable world travel before declaring, ‘I dunno.’
An older couple’s in the courtyard. Cautious and tentative with each other, Claire wonders if they’re on a date. Hang on, the man’s on his phone while she patiently waits, her face poised between a smile and a frown. There’s significant physical and, it would seem, interpersonal distance between them. We speculate again: date or comfortable couple? He’s finished texting and now they’re talking again and finally, she’s smiling.
In the corridor by the front bar hangs a framed print of the London Underground map. I love maps and this is the best. It’s even more evocative of the British capital than a Monopoly board. While the Friday cluster goes to and from, I drink in the details. The Tube stops are splendidly poetic and offer complete, expressive itineraries. St John’s Wood. Alight here for Harrods, Lords Cricket Ground, and Abbey Road Studios and its pedestrian crossing. And then there’s Waterloo. Hop off for a promenade along the Thames, ride on the London Eye or visit to the Dali Universe.
North Adelaide’s a superb suburb of opulent mansions and the front bar is today colonised by a boisterous, self-important consortium of suits. We squash past. An easy guess is they’re legal eagles whose long lunch is elongating. We note one of this throng untimely begripped by chardonnay. She’s making abundant but thus far utterly unsuccessful advances towards a colleague. His uninterest is apparent. Tonight, there’ll be tears and also likely Monday in the office.
Earlier, we visited a Light Square gallery where Claire met the artist and comedian Sam Kissajukian as she’s soon interpreting at his exhibition. Meanwhile, I wandered around, examining and reading the painting’s narratives. One mentioned liminality, which means, among other things, the state, place, or condition of transition. Later in the beer garden liminality applied to us as in our evening culinary evolution, we contemplated pub foods and then surrendered to a blissful bowl of wedges.
We spoke of their initial popularity, ensuing fall from grace, and their recent and happy reappearance in taverns just like The British. Despite this perpetual flux, the sour cream and chilli sauce work in humble tandem.
mickeytales 