While Tucson’s food scene is fairly representative of a wide range of cultures, to my knowledge there hasn’t been an Australian restaurant in the mix recently, if ever. Now, we have the Aussie Cantina on Sixth Street, near Arizona Stadium. Of course, you might be hard-pressed to find someone in Tucson who has any idea of what Australian food consists of other than “Like, shrimp on the barbie?”
Aussie Cantina inhabits a space that has housed at least five unsuccessful bars and restaurants since my days at the UA, and the owners have done a fantastic job of cleaning up and classing up the joint. The open-air concept, with a small stage, a nice bar, a lounge area and a decent-size patio are a far cry from the dive bars of the past.
The menu, revamped recently for the new year, is full of drink-friendly foods, with lots of Aussie-themed dishes (which, after 100 years of colonization by the Brits, it’s not surprising that many of them resemble British dishes). Ted and I visited for a weekend lunch and a weekday night dinner. The service was quick and friendly on both visits, but the restaurant was virtually empty—we were the only table both times.
So what is Australian food? Well, we tried the shrimp on the barbie ($9 for five large shrimp), spiced, grilled and served chilled with cocktail sauce; fish and chips ($10), made with Foster’s batter, of course; Aussie rolls ($10, in various flavors); Aussie meat pie ($10); Aussie-style tacos ($9 for three); and dingo dogs ($5 for three). We also tried the lamb lollypops ($10) and “the Yank” grilled bistro steak ($14).
All of the food was scrumptious. The shrimp were nicely seasoned, with a little spiciness, and weren’t overcooked. The dingo dogs and the lamb lollypops were our favorite appetizers. Dingo dogs are chubby little pork sausages on a stick, dipped in Foster’s beer batter and deep-fried, and served with a whole-grain, tangy mustard. The sausages were juicy, and the batter was both light and crispy. The lamb chops (two per order) are coated in a pistachio-mint pesto, grilled and served with a light lemony butter sauce. Cooked to a perfect medium-rare, they were flavorful and a nice start to the meal, though for $10 maybe three lamb lollypops would make the dish more palatable.
For the tacos, we decided on kangaroo meat (available seasonally) over the fish or spicy shrimp. The ground ‘roo was very lean and had a similar flavor to a grass-fed beef, with a nice hint of gaminess. The tacos were garnished with a jicama-tomato-ginger slaw and a chipotle cream sauce. It would be nice to see kangaroo in forms other than ground meat, but the tacos were an approachable way to introduce it to an unfamiliar audience.
All of the entrées are generously portioned, and the food definitely lends itself to drinking—a good thing when you’ve got a fully stocked bar, a nice cocktail menu ($7.50 for the house cocktails) and 24 beers on tap ($3 to $6 a pint). The Aussie rolls, served with fries and slaw, had a variety of ingredients rolled into a puff pastry. I tried the traditional roll, which had seasoned ground beef and pork with herbs. There’s also a veggie version, and a Southwestern version with Hatch chiles, red onions and red pepper aioli. The flavors were great but there was a little too much puff pastry and not quite enough filling, which made it dry. The meat pie, on the other hand, was pastry perfection, encasing slow-stewed tender beef short ribs and root veggies atop a mountain of mashed potatoes and English peas. It was simply delicious.
The fish and chips and the bistro steak were also yummy. The fish was flaky and tender, with a crispy crust, and came with fries, slaw, malt vinegar and tartar sauce. The bistro steak was a generous cut. I ordered it medium-rare, and although it came out more on the medium side, it was still very tender. The steak was served on a pile of cheesy, creamy mashed potatoes, with sautéed asparagus spears and a pat of caramelized onion butter to melt over the steak.
As Tucson’s first representation of the Outback (besides that unfortunately named chain steakhouse that has nothing to do with Australian food as far as I can tell), Aussie Cantina has made a splash with its upscale pub fare. Hopefully, the customers will follow.
This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2014.
Lots of FREE PARKING directly behind Aussie Cantina! 30+ spots! BIG PARTY for AUSTRALIA DAY this Sunday, Jan 26th.
I have eaten there a couple of times and love it. The ambiance is super, the service is very friendly, the food is awesome as well as unique, and it would give any sports bar a run for its money when it comes to watching sports. It gets an 11 out of 10 from me.
Thank you to all the staff at the pub for all your hard work!
Thank you to all the staff at the pub . We could not have done it with out you!
Food is good, but way overpriced and they have NO australian beers that I can’t get at the store. I tried to go to watch the playoffs last Sunday and they were closed. A sportsbar thats closed on Sundays during the playoffs? This has to be the worst location ever for a restaurant/bar. So many have tried and failed here I’ve lost count. They can talk up their “free parking” all they want, because that’s their best selling feature. It was dead on the Friday I went. I see a lot of living social and groupons in their future followed by the eventual closing. My prediction is mid summer before they call it quits. Sorry guys, but you would have done a lot better on Campbell or 4th.
Ate there a few weeks ago for lunch and really enjoyed it. Food was good and the place was really nice. Waitress noted that they had revised the menu and lowered prices. I didn’t see anything over $10 on the menu. Enjoy!
I loved the idea of having aussie food. I’ve been in the US for about 5 years now, originally from Sydney. So i tried this place and it is no more authentic than McDonalds. I wish it were real aussie fare but it isn’t. Doesn’t even come close, its american with aussie names.
“but the restaurant was virtually empty—we were the only table both times.”
OUCH!
It’s got to be hard to market “Australian food.” No one really has any idea what it is, aside from the coarse and now badly aged “shrimp on the barbie” cliché, and the long-stereotyped Vegemite. Is it even all that different from traditional middle-American fare? Oh yeah, and beers in fat cans. Americans like Australians and their idea of what Australia is because they perceive Australians to be much like their image of themselves as Americans, and can identify with a highly modern and cosmopolitan culture that still has a rugged, mildly rough around the edges “wild west” side to it. But none of that includes food. So if the restaurant doesn’t do something identifiably Australian that’s good, what little initial enthusiasm the place creates will dissipate fairly quickly. Still, if the food’s reliably excellent and priced well, people will come back and the whole Australia thing will take a back seat. People go to the Outback not because they like Australian stuff (how Australian is a “bloomin’ onion” really?) but because people like chains and like what Outback sells. That’s probably not a viable model for an independently owned place that crucially needs to connect its name/theme with what it sells unless what they sell is so good and reasonably priced that the whole Oz thing becomes something of an endearing incongruence. Opening on Sunday is also a good idea.
Serving kangaroo meat is pretty tacky.
Things I ate while in Australia:
Meat pies, lamb, fish, mutton, crocodile, kangaroo, Italian food, Malaysian food, Thai food, Indian food, Chinese Dim Sum, and one stop at an American themed restaurant (steaks, burgers, etc) just to say I did it…
The best dinner I had was at a nice little place in Melbourne with a classically trained chef who served his lamb with a wine reduction, roasted potatoes and mesclun salad. I could have gotten that anywhere, but what made it “Australian” to me was that the chef sat down at my table, poured me a glass of wine and we talked politics for 2 hours. His main question? WTF were Americans thinking voting GWB into office a second time.
Another great place served little fried fishies with different powdered spices. Essentially a bucket of fried bait served with local beers. It was fantastic.
The kangaroo I had was served in a restaurant that felt like a chain in Darwin. It was quite gamey, but according to my friend in Perth, kangaroo is hit or miss, so I can understand why they’d serve it ground up.
Didn’t have a Fosters or any other Americanized beers the whole month I was down under. But I haven’t had much luck finding a XXXX Bitter anywhere in the US. Maybe I should try Plaza.
groupon coupons hit my email this morning. sure sign of death