Dos' Dimmies - Westside

26 Jul 2018 by Brunswick Lacrosse


Ladies and Gentlemen, Put seatbelts on your ears, because they’re about to go on the ride of their lives! #itcrowd

Footscray Lacrosse Club – 14th July – Round 11
Footscray, 1854.

A man stumbles up the dusty road approaching the Pioneer Hotel. It is a hot day and the dust from the road clogs his throat and covers his robes. It has been three months voyage from China and a long day on foot from the Melbourne docks. He needs a drink… In broken English he makes his offer known to the publican. He has no money, but he can offer something far more valuable in trade… the secret recipe of a ancient family dish passed down from generations immemorial. From between cracked, parched lips he rasps two syllables… ‘dim… sim’…
Fast forward 107 years, the year… 1961
An enterprising young publican from Footscray, inspired by the interstellar feats of one Yuri Gagarin, decides to modernise his great, great, grandfather’s ‘asian dumpling’ recipe, rocketing this ancient oriental treat into the modern age with a design borrowing from aerospace engineering. In fact, so well designed were his new dim-sims, passing NASA scientists were said to have been inspired to use this shape for their upcoming Space Shuttle plans… True? Who knows. But stranger things have happened…

Service
Wowweee did we have an eventful trip down to old Footscray town. Up by four goals at 3/4 time, we gave losing our best shot and came extremely close, even by Brunswick standards, unfortunately one Stephen Weissbacher inspiring us to fail at losing and by default giving us a golden goal win in extra time. It was a pretty good time. My heart was still recovering from the last gasp failed loss when I stumbled to the canteen and asked for the usual, only to be met by a puzzling scenario that even the main dude from The Da Vinci Code would stroke his chin over:
- They only had South Melbourne Market dimmies (SMD) *
- They had steamed AND fried options *
- Neither the fried or steamed would be ready for five minutes *
- They were $2.50 each (AUD)
*Excuse me if I wasn’t too excited by this. It surprised me given Footscray’s history as a working class suburb. I hadn’t realised the Soy Scourge had made it this far west. Did they have multiple types of kombucha in the fridge? Were they serving snags in sourdough bread made with a pre-napoleonic culture transported over in the sock of the goalie’s nonna? I just don’t really get the SMDs. They are behemoths, awkwardly huge. I’ll get more into the flavour later, but the pure size of these bad boys is intimidating. They are huge enough to form their own gravity, I was pulled in and without even knowing what happened I had ordered one each, steamed and fried.
*
While not being a huge fan of the fried, I did appreciate the yin and yang of the steamed and fried situation. Some culinary paradox where I could exist in two opposite dimensions at the same time, or could I? Do I really like fried dims? Yes! Or do I? It was starting to get a bit confusing out here. In fact things started to get awkward at the canteen at this point. i was indecisive, some weird scarecrow pendulum from the stars swinging between my decision to get a steamed and fried. Yes, no, yes, no, yes!
***If I had to compare a SMD to a planet it would be Jupiter. A day on Jupiter lasts for only 10 hours. Which is 2.4 times less than our own day. Which would mean that if i was waiting for my dimmies on Jupiter I would only have had to wait 2.08 minutes. However, if I WAS waiting on Jupiter, I would be dead within a few seconds due to the extreme pressure, heat and strange gasses. I guess what I am trying to say is that, waiting 5 minutes wasn’t ideal, but it’s better to wait 5 minutes in a nice clubrooms than 2 minutes on the surface of a gaseous super giant.
Despite the SMD dilemma, the service was fantastic. There was a varied staff and they dealt patiently with all of my erratic thoughts, movement and speech. The 5 minute wait wasn’t ideal, but when you are trying to cook through something which has a volume 1300 times the size of your own planet it can be excused.
- 7/10

Container
A nice little docking station for our astronomical treats. They fit perfectly, one per station. A positive of this was the chance to make your own little wallowing liquid suitable for the character of each dim, which I appreciated. Unfortunately they weren’t reusable, so having to use two cups for the one serving was a bit extravagant.
- 4/10

Soy
The surprises just kept coming here with the addition of a sneaky bottle of Srirachi nestled next to the Kikkoman (THREE IN A ROW!), perhaps a shout out to the rich Vietnamese history of the suburb. Unfortunately, restraint is not a characteristic I foster so my wallowing pool had a magmatic touch to it which would prove troublesome when paired with the temperature of these freshly cooked bad boys. However the canteen can’t be blamed for my own recklessness so just about full points here (I’d still like a nice big bottle of Kikkoman).
- 9/10

Consistency
This was a hot package. Fires of the sun. The melting point of steel is around 1370 degrees (celsius) which is around 23,000 degrees cooler than this dimmie was, making this dim sim (unofficially) the material with the highest known melting point in the known universe. Not a bad feat for a community tuck shop. After letting it cool off a little, the shop proved their expertise. It was perfectly cooked, the skin taut and firm like a dangerously inflated tyre. Well done.
- 8/10

Flavour
Have I mentioned that I’m a simple man? Maybe it’s a result of my family’s immigrant past. In my youth a boiled potato was a rich treat to be savoured. The spiciest condiment that we attached to any meal was parsley. If I could choose any Arnott’s biscuit it would be a milk arrowroot. Thus, the peppery spiced cabbage flavour of the SMD threw me. My tongue played out a delirious role play: it was a guard for a a spice trader on his way from Damascus to the far markets of Saigon. The dangerous trail of the Silk Road was ahead of us. Could the caravan owner survive the attacks of the bandits that were sure to come? Or would the biggest danger come from the hired swords of his own supposedly loyal caravan guards? Disturbing fantasies…
- 6/10

Final Score: 34/50

A very competitive effort here, despite the somewhat flashy move of the South Melbourne Dimmie. Not quite enough to knock off Altona off the top spot, but a good building block for next season.

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