Canberra Centre- That's My Style (if you like fire alarms and half cooked pizzas)

Last weekend - Ant and I tripped the light fantastic and pottered on down to our local "food trough" - the Canberra Centre.

The Canberra Centre prides itself on being the ritzy-iest shopping centre of them all (well in Canberra anyway)... There is Boost Juice (ooh la la), the Coffee Club (ooh la la la), Kentucky Fried Chicken (tres bien!) but unfortunately - no Ohh La La.

Having doing a "lap" of the food trough (aka court) outlets - everything was looking rather depressing. After being touted by the staff at "Cafe Evropi" who are trying to sell their luke-warm not so fresh pasta to anyone who is within 10 meters of the shop (be warned! This is the only place in Australia where you get touted!) - we headed to the food trough shop "Neptune's Carvery". With a name like that - it has just got to be great.... right??? (~~cough~!).

They had some Asian couple running the place - but instead of serving up their native cuisine - they were dishing up some "white bread" stuff including "ChickenSchnitzelss on a roll", "Roast Pork on a roll", "Minute Steak on a roll" and some "Pizza sitting in the display oven for a day".

Ant and I both choose the "Pizza sitting in the display oven for a day" Special which included a 600ml Coke for the princely sum of $8.50.

In order to make the food barely edible - the woman had to put our stale pizzas in a sandwich press for a couple of minutes (ahh - sandwich pressing pizzas - that traditional way of cooking a true Italian pizza!!).

After munching down (slowly) a slice of the "seafood pizza" - Ant asked me "do you like it?". I responded "It's OK." Ant knows that I say that something is "OK" - it isn't good...

As I took a bite from my second slice - the Canberra Centre fire alarm went off. It wasn't the "woooohhhh woooooooh" alarm but the "err err err" alarm (you know - the one where you don't evacuate!). What a stylish way to end our stylish dinner at the super stylish food court (sorry - I meant to say trough) that is the Canberra Centre Food Trough!

When the "woooohhhh woooohhhh" sound went off - Ant and I knew it was time to take our pizzas and eat them elsewhere. Canberra Centre was in a bit of a mess... The store owners all looked bedazzled and confused, the shoppers tried to keep on shopping and the guy over the P.A system was completely inaudible.

When we made it to the outside - Ant and I wanted to get some T-Shirts made up saying "We Survived the Canberra Centre Fire Alarm 2006". Thankfully - there was no real fire - because if there was - there was no one guarding the front entrances to the Centre - and we saw heaps of people wandering in (despite the "Wooooohh wooooohh" alarm going off).

Despite the Canberra Centre being a very ritzy mall (hello "Hot Dollar" and "Crazy Johns") - the food trough is not so ritzy. Two undercooked pizzas sitting on display for a whole day out of five.