Editor Pick
Rattle and Hum
- October 12, 2006
- Rated 4 of 5 by
stomps from Houston, Texas
When we arrived back in Cairns after our foray into the Atherton Tablelands, the sun was shining and the sky was nearly free of clouds - something we hadn't seen much on our rather rainy trip. Excited, we went to an Internet café that advertised parasailing trip bookings, hoping that I would make it on a trip that would give me a bird's eye view of the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately, since it was only about 15 minutes before the last trip of the day and the last few days had been rained out, I didn't make it in time.
This gave us a lot more free time than we thought we would have, and the first thing we thought of was food. Our lunch hadn't been very large, so we were definitely rather hungry. Unfortunately, we were both in weird moods; I was in the beginning stages of a very bad cold that would make me utterly miserable on the plane flight home the next day, and James was beat. Therefore, we had a difficult time choosing what type of food we actually wanted to eat. We passed by Greek - not open yet - and seafood - we're eating that tonight - and then wandered for quite a while without seeing any restaurants at all.
Finally, when walking along the Esplanade, we walked through Rattle & Hum's outdoor eating area. We had a quick glance at the menu, which was right next to a kitchen, where you could see a cook making fresh pizza. These pizzas cost about $15 - reasonable considering the Italian restaurant near James' place charges double that - and looked decent, so we took a seat.
The waitresses were essentially only there for serving drinks, and the one we had was pretty slow at doing even that. You have to order at the order counter inside the restaurant, and when you do, you get one of two types of buzzer - a pizza one or an "everything else" one. This is because, when it buzzes, you either go to the pizza kitchen or back to the counter.
We ended up choosing a meat-lovers pizza, which was very good - better than your average Pizza Hut or Dominos. It was a decent size, but we were still hungry afterwards, so we ordered a $7 bowl of potato wedges with sweet chili and sour cream. Like most wedge bowls, it was huge and there was no chance of us finishing them; also, like most wedge bowls, they were great.
There were few, if any, people inside the bar, which seemed odd to me because the tables outside were packed. However, once going inside, I realized why. Rattle & Hum is definitely foremost a bar and second most a restaurant. There were places to sit inside, but there were also lots of TVs and a couple pool tables. It looked like it would have been a fun place to hang out at night, but we had absolutely no energy to try to stay until then!
From journal Cairns: Australia's Tropical Tourist Mecca