Brunch, Lunch & Munch

Iiza

2012-01-05T14:32:00.001+11:00

First post of 2012!! Happy new year everyone!! Hope everyone had a good break :) I had a day off from being a mum so I decided to go to a restaurant in an area that I wouldn't want to go with a pram and a baby. That place is Newtown. We all know how "easy" it is to find a parking at Newtown. So on my day off, I went to Newtown with my friend to this Japanese restaurant that I have heard about quite a bit.

Green tea Noodle Salad - Green-tea noodles & fresh greens with soy onion dressing $14. This was quite nice. I really liked the dressing.

One thing the thing that I missed since I got pregnant was the sashimi. Now that I can eat anything and everything again, of course sashimi will be on the table :) Chefs Selection Sashimi Plate - Deluxe 18pcs of assorted fresh sashimi - $29. I think we really need Japanese restaurant of this kind of quality around the Shire.

Fire Roll - 6 pcs of tuna rolls topped with spicy sauce & crunchy potato - $14.50. Just thought I would try something a little bit different. I quite like the spicy sauce. The only problem was that they fell apart quite easily.

This was something that I have never had in other Japanese restaurants. Japanese Gyu-suji Nikomi - Tender Wagyu beef tendon braised over night in miso stew
served in a clay hot pot (limited serves per day) - $21. This stew was very very tasty. Came with 2 slices of garlic bread which were so nice after dipping into the thick soup. Actually it wasn't really a soupy soup, it was more like thick yummy gravy :)

Now this was the favourite of the day. 5 Seared ‘Aburi’ Sushi Plate - Deluxe 12pcs of delicately flame seared sushi - $34. I was told to order this if I ever get to visit this restaurant. So I did and I can understand why. It was sooooo gooood!!! As soon as I put a piece of them in my mouth, it was like O.M.G. Why can't I find something like this around the Shire? Now I need to go back to city everytime I want this. For all the girls who are planning to have a baby, DO NOT try this. You will not be able to resist eating this during pregnancy.

Spider Roll - 6 pcs of crispy soft shell crab sushi rolls wrapped with finely sliced seasoned daikon radish - $14.50. First time I tried sushi wrapped up with daikon. It was quite interesting as the daikon added a bit of refreshing tartness to the sushi. Kind of like a lemon to fish and chips.

That was a really really satisfying good meal. I really wish we have Japanese restaurants that serve food like this a bit closer to home.

Iiza
184 King St,
Newtown, NSW 2042
Tel: 02 8095 9260

Home Thai Restaurant

2011-12-12T17:02:00.002+11:00

Haven't been eating out much since having the baby. So not much to blog about. For the sake of keeping the site active, here are some photos that I took ages ago but never got to post about them. Now, because it's been so long since I had that meal, I can't really remember much about them anymore :p That's why only posting the photos up.

Seriously can't remember what this was. Have a feeling it's a tom yum gong but not 100% sure.

Some kind of crispy pork belly and stir fried vege.

Hoi Jor - Deep fried pork, crab meat, water chestnut wrapped with bean curd served with plum sauce - $7.90

Yum Hua Plee - Banana flower with chicken, prawn, shallot, coriander, onion, dried coconut, cashew nut, fried shallot, chilli jam with chef's dressing - $14.90

Gang kew - Green curry paste with coconut milk, cherry eggplant, apple eggplant, basil, lime leaf and red chilli - $12.90

Somtum Thai - Green papaya with garlic, chilli, tomato, green bean, dried shrimps, peanut, lime juice, palm sugar - $8.90

Have a feeling this was the whole barramundi with tamarind. Not 100% sure again... Not a good photo of it anyway :p

Sai Groog Isan - A homemade Thai sausage traditionally from eastern part of Thailand frilled and served with fresh ginger and vegetable - $10.90

Par Thung - Bread stick with pandan custard - $5.00

Mango Sticky Rice - $6.50

I can't remember what this is called but I remember this dish. They were making this by the window so while waiting for seats outside the restaurant, everyone was watching these dumplings getting made. I remember this dish because it made an impression. It was on the dessert menu. It looked like a dessert, pretty like a dessert so we ordered thinking it'll be something sweet but it was savoury!! It was weird... as a dessert that's why I remember them. It should be an entree I reckon. We even told the waiter that it's more suitable as an entree heehee

Home Thai Restaurant

Shop 1 - 2

299 Sussex Street

Sydney NSW 2000

Tel: 02 9261 5058

La Guillotine & The Chocolate Room

2011-09-07T13:18:00.000+10:00

At the moment I'm going through all my new + old photos that I haven't posted before. Here's 1 of the not so recent visit to the French restaurant La Guillotine which was quite but didn't get posted earlier.
We wanted to bring Robin's mum out for dinner 1 day. Can't remember what occasion though. I think it was her birthday? Wanted to bring her to somewhere she normally wouldn't go, so we took her to try some French food at La Guillotine.

For entree to share, we had the Country style chicken liver and pork pate - $15. It comes with some herb bread, olives and gherkin. Been there twice, both times we ran out of bread before we could finish the pate.

Another entree to share Homemade traditional onion soup with croutons and melted cheese - $13. I didn't really get to try much of this because there were 4 or 5 of us.

Cant' remember whose main this was, but it was the Char-grilled lamb cutlets with herbs, whole grain mustard butter, ratatouille and mash potatoes - $32.

This was probably the nicest of all mains that we had. Beef fillet topped with a slice of Foie Gras, port wine sauce and saute potatoes with onions - $44. Bit expensive for a steak, but it was very very good.

Another main Duck breast with a cherry and Kirsch sauce on a gratin of potatoes - $44. Don't remember much about it, but I guess it's a good thing that at least no complaints :)
Note: Prices posted here might have changed since it was quite a while ago when I visited.

After dinner we didn't have dessert at La Guillotine, instead we went to The Chocolate Room to have some coffee and dessert.

Didn't take photo of the menu, so I don't have the price for the things we ordered here. This was probably the ice-chocolate.

Here's a hot chocolate with 3 pieces of chocolate from the counter, anti-clockwise from left: Pearl - 70% Dark chocolate ganache with Marc of champagne dipped in white chocolate, Cafe au lait - Milk chocolate caramel coffee dipped in milk chocolate & finished with a coffee bean trasnfer, Rum & Raisin - Macerated green Iran raisin soaked in rum, milk chocolate ganache coated in dark chocolate & drizzle with dark chocolate.

Pretty looking latte..

Another sort of hot chocolate. Can't remember what flavour this was though.

Pretty sure that was the waffle. Quite pretty and yummy :)

La Guillotine French Restaurant
518 Kent Street Sydney NSW 2000
Tel: 02 9264 1487

The Chocolate Room
Shop 210 Maestri Towers

Corner Sussex & Bathurst streets
Sydney NSW 2000
Tel: 02 9269 0004

Canberra Weekend Getaway

2011-05-25T22:10:00.000+10:00

We've been saying we want to get out of Sydney for a while. Never got to decide where to go, who to go with and it was such a hassle to try to organise something with more than 2 people - these 2 have to work on weekend, that 2 can't take leave on those days etc etc. So in the end we just thought forget it, we'll just make a short trip on our own and enjoy some good food. So here we were, ended up in Canberra for a weekend. Left Sydney on Saturday morning, arrived at Canberra around lunch time. Robin actually booked a table for lunch at this busy little bakery called Silo Bakery. He was actually thinking of bringing me there for the desserts which looked awesome on their website, but unfortunately by the time we got there they sold out of ALL their sweets. So we just had lunch there.

I ordered Vegetarian Pates - $12 which came with some sourdough.

The pates came in 3 different flavours: (Clockwise from top left) Pumpkin & walnut, mushroom & almond, pimento & hazelnut. My favourite was the pimento & hazelnut which was a bit like the crunchy chilli and tomato dip. Little bit spicy with the crunchy hazelnut on the freshly baked soft bread.. yummmm.. Can't have the real pate, I really wouldn't mind having these vegetarian pates instead. 2nd flavour that I liked was the mushroom & almond. The only problem with the pumpkin flavour was that it was sweet. Almost like a dessert. Still good, but just a bit weird with the sweetness in there.

Robin ordered the Oyster blade beef braised in beer & onions - $24. It was good too! I ate almost all the bread with my pate, so Robin only had a bit of the bread to go with his nice gravy. Should've ordered more bread. It was still very good though, tender beef with soft potatoes at the bottom soaking up all the yummy gravy.

So that's it for our lunch. It was a pity that we didn't get to eat any of the sweet pastries and stuff. Oh well, maybe another trip.

After lunch we went to the Questacon just to do some touristy thing when we were there :) Drove the mini blimp through a hoop, went into a pitch black dark tent to see the star lab, just basically being a kid again haha.. It was fun. I used to really like to visit all these science centres. Lots of cool things to play with.

Anyway, after that we went to our hotel and checked ourselves in. Had a bit of rest there before heading out to dinner. We were lucky that in our room there was this book. Can't remember what it's called now, but it's basically a where-to-eat-in-Canberra book. So we picked 1 of the restaurants in the book and guess what? It was at the same block as the Silo bakery that we went for lunch. The restaurant that we picked was the Kennedy Room. It's half restaurant and half pub. So the restaurant half had tables and chairs set up, the other half was the bar with some tall tables and stools and plenty of space for people to hang around and chat.

For entree to share, we ordered the Caramelised roast pork belly with chilli & coconut vinegar - $16. The meat was really tender, it was nice to go with the sweet and sour dressing. The only thing missing for me was the crunchy crackling. It would be so much nicer if it had the crackling at well.

Initially we only ordered 1 entree. Then we saw our next table ordered this and it looked really good! So we ordered 1 for ourselves as well - Fried calamari spiced with sumac & black pepper. It was really good too! Cooked just nice, very crispy outside, soft and tender inside. With a bit of lemon juice over it, it's easily 1 of the best fried calamari I've had.

We thought we should be 'healthy' and ordered some greens, but we ended up didn't finish it anyway :p I had to save some space for dessert and Robin's main came with some greens too.

I had the Almond & sesame seed crusted barramundi fillets with Ver Jus - $32. The fish was nice, it wasn't overcooked or anything, I just didn't really like the crust. It was like the dukkah that could be bought in some deli, which I thought the smell of herbs was a bit too strong for the fish. I probably would enjoy it more if it had just a layer of crispy skin. The potatoes with the creamy sauce were really nice though.

Poor Robin had to wait extra long for his Ribeye steak (400g) w beer battered chips, green peppercorn sauce & steamed vegetables - $36. The waitress took our order, even asked him how he would like the steak done, but when she got to the computer or something she just keyed in barramundi twice. So they made us 2 barramundi and didn't make the steak. So I just ate my fish first while Robin waited for his steak to be made. Apparently not worth the wait though. I didn't really try the steak but Robin said it wasnt' as good as expected. The best part of the dish was the chips. Sauce was good too. Just the meat not as tender as Robin thought it should be.

I ordered my dessert while Robin was eating his steak - Lime & coconut pannacotta with oven-dried pineapple - $13. When I took the first bite of the pineapple, it felt almost like I've discovered a new continent! I love everything pineapple - fresh pineapple, can pineapple, even (fake) pineapple flavoured gummi! So being introduced to this oven-dried pineapple was like "I've found a new way to eat pineapple!!" It was sooo good. The pannacotta on its own was very sweet, but together with the slight tartness of the pineapple they were like the perfect match. Wobbly + crispy; sweet + sour... Just made so much sense when put together. The only watchout was - the pineapple tend to stuck to the teeth hehee.. I didn't mind it at all, but I know it could be annoying at times :p

After dinner we just went up to the Mount Ainsley lookout. Wanted to take some star trails photos, but sky was too bright from the city lights and the big bright moon. Also, it was only 3 degrees at that time. So we didn't stay long there.

Next morning we woke up around 10am. As we were packing up, got a phone call from the reception to say that check out time was supposed to be 10 and it was almost 11 already haha. I thought I requested for late check out when I booked the room online, but I guess they didn't see my comment (or they ignored it). Anyway, so breakfast was skipped and we consulted our 'bible' of the trip again. Felt like having a Thai lunch, so we picked 1 of the Thai restaurants in the book. Guess what? It's located at the same block as Silo and Kennedy Room! haha.. I guess that block of shops at Kingston got plenty of good restaurants. Got there, restaurant was closed. So Robin suggested we go to the other suburb which he knew had plenty of nice restaurants too which was Manuka. So we went there and we saw another Thai restaurant which I remember was in the book too. It was the Bann Latsamy Thai Restaurant. By the way, sorry for not being able to provide prices for the dishes here. I took a copy of their menu, but couldn't find it now :p

For entree, we had the Rice paper prawn rolls. It was very similar to those that we get in Vietnamese restaurant. Refreshing sort of entree with fresh cucumber, some sprouts, cooked prawns and some rice noodle wrapped in rice paper.

There were a few options for rice on the menu and we picked the 1 that we never tried before: Saffron rice. It was bright orange in colour. Taste wise, I actually couldn't taste anything special. Robin said it taste like coconut rice, but I had a feeling the coconut taste came from the red curry, not the rice itself.

This was the Duck & lychee red curry which I thoguht contributed to the coconut taste in the rice when ate together with rice. It was very tasty, rich and full of coconut flavour. Generous servings too! Another thing that I liked was that all the duck meat was deboned :D Usually when order duck curry in Thai restaurants, I find that they give very little duck meat, just lots of vege. This was the opposite. Lots of meat, lots of big juicy lychees, very very good.

Another main that we ordered to go with our saffron rice - Stir fried tofu with cashew nuts. It wasn't too bad when eat with the rice, just a bit too sweet with the sauce. I would soak my rice with the red curry sauce but I wouldn't do the same with this. This plate of tofu + vege was really big too. We ended up asking for 2 takeaway boxes and packed ourselves 2 boxes full of lunch to bring to work the next day. Too full from these entree and mains. Didn't have any room for dessert :( I would get the mango sticky rice if I had room in my stomach.

Overall, it was a very relaxing trip. Very happy with all the food there. Did some touristy thingy like visit the questacon & the parliament as well. Experimented with making timelapse video too which you can see here. At first we thought what are we gonna do in Canberra for 2 days, but when we got there, there were actually more things that we wanted to do than we had time for. Not a bad place for a short trip at all :)

Silo bakery
36 Giles Street
Kingston ACT 2604
(02) 6260 6060

The Kennedy Room
25 Kennedy Street
Kingston
(02) 6162 2318

Bann Latsamy Thai Restaurant
M Centre
Shop 9, Flinders Way
Manuka ACT 2603
(02) 6295 0426

Samcheonggak (三清閣)

2011-04-28T22:40:00.000+10:00

I think it's about time I update my blog :p Haven't been eating at many new/interesting places lately. So not much of new material to write about. There are still stuff that I haven't posted though, so here's 1 of those. Just been feeling very tired lately, everyday after work, go home, have dinner, shower and sleep. Don't even have the energy to turn on my computer, let alone to sit in front of it to process photos or write.

Anyway, let's talk food. Went to Seoul earlier this year for holiday. Most of the stuff we had were street food, little things or supermarket food court stuff. I think I'll just make 1 post later to show all those in 1 post. For this post, I'll write about our meal at Samcheonggak. It's 14 course Korean fine dining :D It's the most expensive meal the whole trip. ₩110,000 per person (which roughly converts to AUD 110).

Started off with some fresh vege sticks with dip. Some chinese cabbage, celery, carrot and I'm not sure the other 1 was potato or pumpkin or something else. Didn't touch the celery. Not sure what dip that was too. I think it was some sort of bean paste kind of thing. Very strong flavour. Only need a little bit.

This was the pumpkin porridge. A bit like pumpkin soup, but with some oats and grains to bite on. Served together with the pumpkin porridge was the watery kimchi.

A better picture of the watery kimchi. It's a bit like the radish/carrot pickles that sometimes get served at the side of certain dishes in Vietnamese restaurants.

Here's the Seasoned King Prawn with Squeezed Pine Nut. The first thing that came to our mind was 'It's a bit small for King Prawn'. It was nice, but the prawn is not as big as expected. Just a normal size adult prawn we normally get in Sydney.

We had a bit of problem following the dishes that were served looking at the menu. It felt as though they just served whatever that got prepared quicker. Hence, this dish which was supposed to be the appetizer came after the prawn. Anyway, I quite like these tiny wraps. The wraps were really soft, with some vegetables inside. It was something light which would be good to start the meal with. Pity it didn't come out in order.

Again, another out of order dish - Platter of Dried Five Delicacies. This was supposed to be the very first dish according to the menu. It became the 4th to our table. I have no idea what they were, I'm guessing from left to right: dried pumpkin, then some sort of dried fruit, another dried something, candied walnut and dried strawberry. Strawberry looked a bit funny though. The top looked pale pink, the bottom look greenish. Almost like a mouldy strawberry :p Not a big fan of dried fruit. I guess these were alright since I did finish them all.

This was probably the best course of the whole meal - Stir fried abalone. The abalone was fresh and soft. Not chewy at all. Stir fried with some sesame seeds and sesame oil which gave it the great smell. As soon as Robin had a slice of it, he told me he would try making this back in Sydney (nope, never happened :p).

Something extra for us. Couldn't find this in the menu and have absolutely no idea what it was haha.. Can't really tell much from the photo other than there's a slice of cucumber sitting on top a pile of stuff.

Jeju Sliced Boiled Pork Belly. Not sure what those green leaves were, they were very aromatic which went very well wrapping the pork and ate together. Using the 2 different leaves even with the same meat would give 2 very different taste to the dish.

This blob of red thing was the Korean Beef Steak Tartare. A blob of raw meat like that just didn't look very nice to me :p It wasn't too bad though. Just didn't think it was too special that's all.

This was the Grilled Duck Breast & Angelica Salad. It was nice, but again, didn't think it was impressive though. It wasn't dry or anything, but it could be nicer if the skin was crispier.

This was the Wrapped Kimchi. It taste like the normal red kimchi, except presented slightly differnetly. All the smaller bits and pieces were wrapped in the big chinese cabbage leaves and put in a bowl like a ball of vegetable. Then it was cut open with a pair of scissors in front of us at our table to expose the filling inside.

This is another dish that was really good. Couldn't decide which was my favourite between this and the abalone. This was the Braised Short Beef Rips with Abalone. Beef was really soft, abalone was just as nice as the previous version the gravy was sweet and fragrant. Just couldn't get enough of it.

This was the Seafood Sinseollo i.e. royal hotpot. This was the 'special' in the menu. The whole meal would've been cheaper if we didn't have this. Just thought since I went all the way there, might as well see what's the fuss about. Nothing spectacular. Just a seafood soup. What was interesting was the pot itself :D It was a mini hot pot that was meant for 1 person only. It was soooo cute! Tiny little hotpot. We tried to find it in supermarket and department stores in Korea, couldn't find them. I should've taken another picture that show the size in perspective. It was around 15cm tall, 10cm diameter.

Some Oyster Kimchi as a side dish. By then we were so full already that we hardly touched it. Big oysters though.

Our last savoury dish - Seasonal Hot Pot with Rice. Basically a vegetable soup with rice. Different sorts of mushrooms, some chilli, tofu, greens, etc.

Rice that came with the vegetable hot pot was nice. It was purple in colour with lots of grains in it. Chewy and little bit sticky. I was so full that time but I still tried to eat as much of the rice as I could.

This was the only dessert that we had. No idea what the name was, only cinnamon dessert was mentioned. It looked like a mochi, when I saw it I was expecting something sticky and chewy, but it wasn't like that at all. It was more a soft fudge sort of texture. Can't say that I liked it, but it was o.k.

Cinnamon Tea was served at the end of the meal. Even though I didn't like the cinnamon dessert, but I thought the tea was nice. Maybe because the cinnamon taste is not as strong as the dessert. The cinnamon was a bit more 'humble' here. Tea was little bit sweet with the smell of cinnamon and some pine nuts floating on top. Good end to the 14 course meal.

Overall, I think for the same price I could get something better in Sydney. However, I probably shouldn't compare it this way, since it's totally different sort of experience, different sort of cuisine. The only thing I didn't like was the way they served. Dishes came out in the wrong order (they knew that too because they actually said to us "we serve this first, that will come later"). Also, it felt like we were being rushed. Usually in a degustation menu, dishes come out 1 by 1. Here, even before we finished our first dish, they would served the second dish on the table with the 3rd dish waiting at the side. Maybe the mentality is not to have us waiting, but I still don't think they should serve the next dish before we finish eating. From my experience with degustation menus, a 10 course meal would probably take 3 hours if not more. Over here, we finished our 14 courses within 1.5 hours. It wasn't 'eat slowly and enjoy', it was more like 'quick! next dish is here already!'.

Seoul-si Seongbuk-gu
Seongbuk2-dong 330-115
SamcheongGak

We were there for lunch, the restaurant had lots of windows around so it was nice and bright to take photo. Very spacious seatings as well.

Shoya

2011-02-04T00:21:00.001+11:00

Happy New Year people!! And today being the first day of Chinese New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai!! Here's the long overdue post about a very nice meal in Melbourne. Been meaning to write about this place for ages but kept on getting distracted. Been away for 3 weeks, before that was Christmas, and before that I was too busy playing zombie vs plant :p

Anyway, back to this meal. Had this when I went to Melbourne few months back. I knew there was this nice restaurant there but I didn't want to go alone. So I asked Vivienne who had recently moved to Melbourne to join me. We ordered quite a few dishes, chatted non-stop through dinner, totally didn't feel we've just met for the first time :) I guess that's the good thing about meeting up with food bloggers. There will never be the awkward silence because there's a topic that we can never finish talking about - FOOD!

Started with Sashimi Moriawase - Sashimi lover's feast – carefully selected and arranged by our chef to delight your eyes and mouth $42.80. I was a bit disappointed with the presentation of this sashimi. I wanted to show Vivienne the cool ice-bowl the sashimi that I had in my previous visit. I found out after that they only put the entree size sashimi in that beautiful ice-bowl, but not the main size sashimi. Even though the presentation was not as impressive as I thought it would be, the sashimi was very fresh and each and every piece was thick and sweet.

Salmon Toro Aburi - Rare cooked salmon belly - $7.00 As mentioned a few times in my blog, salmon aburi has to be my favourite sushi. I just really really like the smell of the lightly torched salmon. So when I saw salmon TORO aburi, I just had to order it. It was definitely as good as expected to be. The fragrant, the juice, the sweetness, it'll stay as my favourite sushi for long long time to come.

Served together with the salmon toro aburi was the Toro aburi - Lightly broiled tuna belly - $8.50. Almost as good as the salmon, but I'm biased towards salmon anyway :p

Crab Tempura - Whole ‘Taraba’ crab leg deep-fried in tempura style. This is not a very good photo because it doesn't show how long that crab leg was! It was probably the length of my forearm if not longer. The crab meat was so fresh, the batter was very crispy and there was just so much meat in that leg. Shell was cracked so all we needed to do was just to pick it up, dip it in the salt (green tea salt??) and bite. Even though it was deep fried, the meat was still juicy and sweet inside.

Nama Shii Hotate - SHOYA's signature and must try fired dish. Mashed scallops softy surround the quail egg topped with a whole shiitake mushroom to make it perfect $16.50. This was definitely something I thought very creative and different. Didn't care to eat that chilli that came with the quail eggs though. If nobody told me quail eggs have much higher cholesterol than chicken eggs, I could be popping these little yummy packages 1 after another into my mouth all night long.

Now this is the MUST ORDER dish. Beef Spinach Soufflé - Ox tongue simmered over two days with wine and sake then delicately rolled with spinach soufflé $32.00. By the way, the menu did not have photos of the dishes. So until we ordered and saw it on the table, we didn't know what to expect. At first I wasn't very sure about this. Beef Spinach Soufflé. Usually the soufflés that I know are desserts. Soft fluffy desserts that would rise very tall and then sink very fast too. Couldn't imagine a beef and spinach flavoured soufflé like that. As it turned out, it wasn't as I thought (phew!). It was actually REALLY REALLY GOOD!! The spinach around the ox tongue was so soft. I thought it would be like a lot of fibre and hard to chew, but no, it's like it was cooked till all fibre had dissolved and it would just melt in the mouth. The ox tongue was as written on menu, simmered over 2 days, it would literally just melt away together with the spinach. It was definitely 1 of those dishes that you take a bite and you would automatically close your eyes and go "MMMmmmmm............" and then you would wish that the plate would magically refill itself.

For dessert, Vivienne picked the Chocolate cake with plum wine. I tried a piece, like commented by Viv, couldn't really taste the plum wine. It was a nice rich creamy chocolate cake nonetheless. Just that we were expecting something a bit more than just a chocolate cake when we saw the term "plum wine" on the menu.

I ordered the Tofu Chocolate Mousse - Smooth light chocolate mousse smothered with tofu - $9.00. All I have to say is that it didn't feel like tofu :p It was a yummy creamy chocolate mousse as far as I know haha. The only thing kinda stood out was that red 'seeds' on the mousse. There were some gold flakes, a blueberry and the 2 red seeds. Not sure what they were, but they tasted like pepper seeds or something. Something herb-ish than fruity.

It was a very enjoyable evening. The restaurant managed to maintain the quality of the food they served since 2 years ago when I last went there. Very very satisfied with the meal. It was also very nice to meet up with Viv!! I thought it would be a little awkward to meet someone the first time, but nope, it was like meeting an old friend :D

Shoya
25 Market Lane, Melbourne, Victoria
Tel: (03) 9650 0848

Honestly, I can't remember how was the lighting condition already. So I thought if I don't remember it being particularly bad, that means it should be quite o.k :p Shouldn't be too difficult to take photos. Space wise was good. We were able to move the dish around and take photos from all sorts of different angles.

Glass Brasserie

2010-12-31T00:49:00.000+11:00

Welcome to the last post of Brunch, Lunch & Munch.... for 2010 :p No, I'm not planning to close my blog down just yet, even though at times I seemed to have abandoned it. It certainly doesn't feel like I've been writing this blog for more than 1 year already.

Being 1 of the lucky people that was approached by the organiser of Sydney Festival, I jumped at the opportunity to sample the Fast Festival Feast special offer at Glass Brasserie, Hilton. It's $30 for a main course with a glass of wine. (For list of other participating restaurants, visit the Fast Festival Feasts website)

This was the wine that I had. Stoneleigh Pinot Gris. I quite like this actually because it's got a bit of sweetness in it. Not so much like moscato which I really like, but this was also quite easy to drink.

Started off with some freshly baked bread with olive oil. If you're thinking the presentation of the bread looked odd, there's a very simple answer - I forgot to take photo before I went for the bread. Was too busy chatting with Cindy from Marketing Department in Hilton who was having this lunch with me. I guess if I gave an impression it'd be "the blogger who forgot to take photo" :p

Here's the main - Confit chicken leg, rocket salad with pickled orange zest, cauliflower puree and dates. I was surprised how well the sweet dates went with the tender chicken which was cooked for 2 hours in its own juice and goose fat. Rocket salad with the pickled orange was nice and refreshing too.

We actually had six Petit four :) From right to left, started with chocolate orange logs and mango passionfruit jelly

Then there was nougat, the very pretty orange marshmallow and chocolate friand. The nougat was really good! Chewy and sticky with strong honey taste. The orange marshmallow was good too! Looked so pretty.

The last was a new French dessert that I learnt from this meal. It's a canelé. Made with rum and vanilla. By looking at it I thought it was similar to a custard tart or with some filling inside. There's actually no filling. The outside was caramelized giving it a crust, while the inside was soft. The texture was a bit like a cake, but not soft and fluffy it's little bit more doughy and a bit more chewy. Quite interesting.

Lastly, a hot chocolate with a cookie to finish off the satisfying meal :)

Even though it was just a main and a glass of wine, but having the bread before main, then half a dozen of petit four AND a cup of hot chocolate, I was really full.

glass brasserie

Level 2, Hilton Sydney

488 George St, Sydney

Tel: 02 9265 6068

My table was very close to the big window looking straight at QVB. It would've been a really good view if QVB wasn't under renovation. I really should start taking photos at lunch time rather than dinner. It was so much easier :)

*YW dined as guest of Sydney Festival at glass brasserie

The Brasserie

2010-12-09T00:00:00.001+11:00

Went Melbourne for work a while ago. It was quite a good trip! Work wise, learnt a lot, came back feeling much better about my new role than before. Food wise, my boss actually said "go and have some good food, don't just get red rooster and stay in hotel" :D Then, I actually got to meet up with a blogger friend and had a great dinner (talk more about that next post). Anyway, so 1 evening me and my colleague finished work, so we just walked around Southbank looking for dinner. We actually walked into Nobu thinking should have a table at 830pm, but NOPE. So we had to pick another restaurant. Ended up at the Brasserie.

Since our boss actually said 'go and have some nice dinner, get a glass a wine or something', so being a good employee of course I follow my 'orders' :p Ordered a The Nesspresso Martini - A smooth blend of Grey Goose Vodka, Kahlua, Frangelico and a shot of Nesspresso. Coffee kept me awake, alcohol made me sleepy, so they should cancel each other out when combined :p It was actually quite nice.

Then some bread was served with olive oil and some salt with cracked pepper and something else (can't remember what those were).

After a while, entrees were served. I had The brasserie chicken liver and foie grae terrine with toasted onion jam tartine, mesclun salad - $22.50. I really liked the onion jam. Terrine was really nice, but the only problem I had was I didn't have enough toast and onion jam to go with it.

I tried a bit of my colleague's Steak Tartare - hand-diced raw wagyu beef with condiments - $22.50. It was really good!! I liked his entree better than my own actually :p I should've got that too. I would've been very happy with my terrine if I didn't try this :p

Colleague ordered the Dorper lamb rack - herb crusted with eggplant caviar - $38.50. Didn't try this, but it looked really good. He was very happy with it.

I was thinking of ordering something different, something that I normally wouldn't order. So I got the Cep mushroom gnocchi - with truffle oil and new season asparagus - $35. Saw a lot of gnocchi making on masterchef, but I actually can't remember when was the last time I ate them. I was surprised how fluffy and airy each 1 of them were. Basically a plate of yummy mini soft edible pillows. Loved those crispy cheese that were on top too!

We were very full after entree and main. Colleague asked if I wanted dessert. I decided not to have dessert here because while walking from hotel to restaurant, I saw a gelato stall. So I decided to go back to that stall for gelato instead.

Guess what flavour was this? Licorice!! When I first looked at it I thought "hmm.. licorice ice-cream..I'm not a licorice person.. maybe I'll get the hazelnut" but I was very curious because it was my first time seeing that flavour. So I asked if I could try a bit of it. It was definitely love at first bite!! It was so sooo good! My favourite flavour now. Unfortunately I still don't know where I can get licorice ice-cream in Sydney. I got 1 scoop and this was how my 1 scoop looks like. More ice-cream outside of the cup than inside (by the way, colleague was the hand model here). He ordered a scoop too, but he only got his cup filled and only a little bump in the middle that's taller than the cup's rim haha.. Not sure why that guy gave me so much more, but I'm definitely not complaining :D

The Brasserie

Crown Entertainment Complex
8 Whiteman St
Southbank VIC 3006
Tel: (03) 9292 7808

Lighting wasn't too bad at our table. Little bit dark, but still not too bad. I just felt a bit awkward taking photo of food with colleague because he was quite new and I didn't know him well. Not many people at work knows about my blog. He was cool with me taking photos of his food though. Ended up telling him about my blog and got him 'cooperated'. He would turn his plate for me and even volunteered to be my hand model haha.. Needless to say, we got along quite well :)

Jump Q Post!!! #1

2010-11-24T00:16:00.001+11:00

I've decided to make a new type of posts in my blog. It's the "Jump Q Post" series!! Everyone knows that I'm a very lazy blogger. I have HEAPS of backlog :p When I do get to write, I normally write in chronological order (basically go through my back log and start with the oldest). With "Jump Q" post, it's something that I thought I should write straight away and skip all my backlog because I'm THAT excited to tell everyone about it hahaha :) Now, let me tell you why this post deserved to be written first. What makes it more special than any other stuff in my backlog??? 1 word - TETSUYA! Yup!! I went to Tetsuya!! :D Tell me if you still don't think it deserves to be written first.

Now, this was easily the longest single meal I've had. The most courses in 1 meal too! Total of 14 courses including coffee and a little something that you'll see at the end of this post. We arrived at 7pm, didn't leave until 1215am or so. Yup! FIVE HOURS for 1 meal. We were the 3rd in the room when we got there, and we were the last to leave together with another table. Anyway , like my chemistry teacher in school used to say 'a picture is worth a thousand words', let's just look at the pictures now :)

As soon as we sat down, the waiter told us we were getting a glass of complementary champagne. He then took it out and showed us the champagne, couldn't remember what it was :p I don't really know my champagne. Not sure if it's a special day or everyone that visits would get 1.

Now, the 'grand opening' of our dinner - the Truffle Butter. It was THE BEST butter I've tasted ever! I've had dishes with truffle in them before, but truffle was never the 'main character' in those dishes. This butter however, truffle was definitely what this was all about. The butter was really creamy and airy, almost like a whipped cream. I could smell the truffle even before I put the bread in my mouth. By the way, there were 2 types of bread to choose from. Italian white and sour dough. Both were good!! Loved the butter so much that I kept wanting more bread. Robin had to keep on reminding me not to fill myself up with bread. We had many courses to go. We did end up wiping the butter clean, and guess what the very nice waiter did? He brought us another 1 hahaha :) Couldn't finish the second lot, was so tempted to ask if I could take it home :p

First course - Chilled Cucumber Soup with Sheep Yoghurt Ice Cream. The soup was very refreshing. Nice first course little course to tease our taste buds and to bring up appetite to want more. As I didn't study the menu before visiting, I had totally no idea what the dishes were throughout the whole night. So I was just waiting to be surprised with every course.

Second course (optional) - Pacific Oysters from Port Douglas with Rice Vinegar & Ginger. The waiter said "Would you like some oysters? It would go really well with the champagne". We thought, since we're already there, might as well try. Definitely no regret there! The oysters were so fresh, the dressing was so good!! It just complemented the oysters so well. The ginger just took all the fishy smell away from the oysters, what's left was just the plump sweet creamy oysters. It looked like something so simple, but it was so amazing!

Now, have a look at the photo and try to guess what you think this is. Third course - Carpaccio. So what carpaccio do you think this is? Beef? Tomato? Capcicum? The waiter only said "Carpaccio" when he took this dish to the table. We ate and after eating still had no idea what it was. Didn't taste like beef, the texture didn't feel like capcicum, definitely not tomato. It was something sweet. It was smoked watermelon!! With some garden herbs on top. This was 1 of the vegetarian dishes if anyone goes there for vegetarian degustation.

Course 4 - Sashimi of Kingfish with crushed black bean and orange zest. This was 1 of our favourite of all dishes that night. It was like a kingfish sashimi with a Chinese steamed fish twist. The dressing with the challot and coriander on the fish tasted almost like the Chinese steamed fish soy sauce. However, there was a tiny hint of orange in there. Very subtle. Robin ate his first while I was busy taking photos from different angle and stuff. His face was so serious and he said "Eat it." I put a small piece in my mouth. It was 1 of those "O-M-G" moment. Such familiar taste yet so different texture wise with raw fish and simply amazing.

Forgot to mention earlier, I think this is going to be a long post :p Let's continue on.

Now, does this look familiar or does this look familiar. Course 5 - Signature dish - Confit Petuna Ocean Trout with Konbu, Celery & Apple. I've learnt that night that Konbu is a type of seaweed. Robin thought it didn't live up to expectation, but I liked it. The only thing I didn't like was the celery, but that's just a personal preference that I dun like eating celery (luckily there weren't too much of it). The fish was really nice! The konbu on top made a crispy crust, the fish fillet was really fresh and firm. I don't mean it in a bad way, but the konbu crust tasted like potato chips flavouring (well, konbu does have glutamic acid that is used to make MSG :p). I thought that was very different. Definitely not something can be found anywhere else.

Now, this was definitely 1 of the special courses that weren't really on menu. Course 6 - Grilled Pig's Tail with NZ Scampi & Jamon Iberico. The look of this dish wasn't 1 of the greatest. Didn't look impressive, but the taste, another "O-M-G" dish. The Jamon Iberico was a Spanish ham that's cured for long time. The waiter said it was 1 of the highest grade. Scampi was slightly pan fried, it was so sweet. Pig's tail was grilled till VERY CRUNCHY. Separately, they were really nice on their own. Together, it was like exponentially nicer!! It just tasted so different when you eat them together rather than individually.The pig's tail gave the crunchy texture, scampi provided the sweetness, the ham was added another level of taste.

Course 7 - Braised Ox Tail with Sea Cucumber & Yuzu. As the sky got darker, my photos got blurrier too *sigh*. Sorry that you can't really see much in this photo other than the 2 rings of sea cucumber on top. Just have to believe me that it tasted AWESOME :) (By the way, I accidentally published the incomplete post. Hope nobody actually read it before I finish writing. *sigh* stupid keyboard :p)

Course 8 - Pancetta Wrapped Quail Breast with Fresh Sprouts & Onion. Well, let's say if you ask me which course I would give up to have another of that pig's tail, this is probable the 1. Not to say it's not nice, but just in comparison to others, this wasn't as impressive to me that's all. Mind you that we are talking about Tetsuya here. So even though I say not impressive enough, it can easily be the best dish in any other restaurant still. The puff rice thingy was interesthing though. Almost like rice bubbles except more of the toasted rice fragrant.

Course 9 - Slow-Roasted Breast of Duck with Smoked Leeks & Sansho. Duck was really really tender. Leeks was surprisingly good! Usually I don't really like leeks. For some reason I have problem swallowing leeks when I eat them. Didn't have problem with this though. Maybe because it was smoked till it was very very soft.

Course 10 - Our last savoury dish. Braised Cape Grim Beef Short - Rib with Spring Vegetable. This had to be the best rib I've ever had. The meat was so tender, the beef flavour was so intense! Just had to take each bite really slowly to savour every drop of juice from the meat.

Course 11 - Our first dessert which was made out of 2 parts. Blood Orange Sorbet and Summer Pudding. Again, sorry for the blurry photo that's out of focus :p This sorbet was actually blood orange and BLACK PEPPER. Who would've thought black pepper can be so nice as a flavour of sorbet with orange. The spicy after taste from the pepper was quite interesting.

Here's the 2nd part of the dessert - Summer pudding. It was brioche soaked in berry juice with strawberry, raspberry and blueberry. Robin liked this a lot. It's not overly sweet and it's very refreshing.

Course 12 - Golden Peach with Peach Granita. Don't think there's anything special with that golden peach, tasted like peach from the can :p Granita was nice and refreshing, the special component was actually the ice-cream. It's green. Guess what flavour? I could spend my whole life guessing and wouldn't get it. Peach leaf ice-cream. Cool eh! :) I can't really describe the taste though. Maybe a bit like pistachio, but that's just because it's green too :p

Course 13 - Last dessert before coffee. Chocolate Pave with Cream Cheese Ice Cream and Cinnamon Twigs. The last dish and I got too excited to see wobbly block of chocolate. I made the mistake of digging in before I took photo. If you can't tell where I've 'ruined' it, then I've successfully hid the spot haha :p I thought cinnamon twigs was just plain cinnamon sticks. Of course I was wrong. It was more like cinnamon flavour chocolate sticks that would snap as I bit. The wobbly chocolate pave was really rich and satisfying. Together with the cream cheese ice-cream, it was the perfect finish for the meal.

Course 14 - We were offered some tea or coffee after dinner to wash the rich chocolate pave down. Together with the coffe/tea was some mochi!

These pretty little things had chocolate ganache and chai in them. The mochi 'skin' was very thin but still chewy. The chai chocolate ganache was again something I wouldn't normally find in mochi. Just to show the proportion of skin to filling. Very thin mochi wrapped with LOTS of spicy chocolate ganache. Waiter recommended the best way to eat this was to pop the whole thing in the mouth, but I thought that would probably be too rich and heavy. So I took small bites and had a few sips of tea in between.

Conclusion, HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. If you thought of going, but is now hesitating because they lost a hat, you are missing out BIG TIME. Service was great!! Oh, and did I mention my brother in law works there? That's why we had extra courses :D Even had a tour around the kitchen, out to the garden, looked at their tomato plants, the pretty edible flowers and even their own bees! Robin almost didn't want to leave the wine cellar too.

So, there was my belated birthday present from my lovely husband :) I'm looking forward to next year's present already :D

Tetsuya's Restaurant

529 Kent Street
Sydney 2000
Tel: 02 9267 2900

It was still o.k when the sky was still bright because we were sitting by the window. As the sky gets dark, it got harder and harder to take photos. Towards the end it was almost impossible to take a decent photo. Now I'm definitely feeling the limitation of low light capability with my camera. Maybe I should buy a new camera and then go back there again ?? :)

Quay (again! :D)

2010-11-07T00:01:00.000+11:00

Hello everyone!! Long time no see!! Things been really crazy at work and also outside of work. Why? Because October was really a very popular wedding month! I had 1 wedding at the end of Sept, then 3 more in Oct. Those in Oct were all close family members i.e. my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law and my brother. Very happy for all these newly weds, at the same time also very glad that finally no more weddings to go to this year - it was tiring (for myself and also for my wallet :p). Now I can go back to my 'normal' routine and continue to TRY to blog regularly :p
Anyway, I celebrated my birthday couple months ago. Even though I try to have at least 12 months gap between visit of any restaurants, I couldn't say no when my sister say she's going to buy me nice dinner for my birthday, not especially when it's Quay :) (I've visited Quay earlier this year to celebrate Robin's birthday). She wanted to try the snow egg after watching it on masterchef. So she said to me "I'll buy you dinner at Quay, you go there with me. I want to eat snow egg". Like I would say no to that :)

So, we started our dinner with some drinks down at the bar. I had this yummy drink which I have forgotten what it was called. All I remember was it had mint, lime (??) and was very refreshing. If I took a photo of that drink menu I probably could remember which 1, but the very "smart" me of course didn't take a photo of the drink menu.

Amuse bouche - smoked mackeral, cucumber, crème fraiche and obviously a few other ingredients that I can't remember :p The last time I went we had a smoked fish amuse bouche too. Even though the piece of mackeral was so small, it was full of smokey flavour. While the crème fraiche added creaminess, the cucumber added the crunch to the texture. The combination was just perfect - full of smokey flavour, creamy when put in mouth, crunchy when bitten.

Salad of pink turnips & breakfast radishes, pickled beetroot, goats curd, blood sorrel, olive, pine resin, balsamico. This wasn't my entree, but I did had a taste of that tube looking thingy. It was incredible! It was like thin layer of crunchy fried biscuit/pastry (don't know what's the best word for it) cigar filled with creamy creamy goats curd. It was so good!

Raw Chinese artichokes, Hiramasa kingfish, smoked eel, horseradish, nasturtiums, octopus, pickled kohlrabi, egg white & radish flower. Honestly, I don't know half the ingredient of this dish. So I wouldn't know what's what. I just know there were so many different ingredient that gave different texture to each bite. Didn't need to know what's what as long as everything tasted good :)

Organic heirloom carrots, cumin, fennel & celery seeds, comte-infused curd, almonds, amaranth. This was Robin's dish. I think I tried some of his carrot, but don't remember much about it.

This was my gentle braise of pearl oyster, sea scallop, shaved squid, lettuce hearts, tapioca scallop velvet, oyster cream, wasabi flowers. This was very very good! Scallops were big and thick and fresh and sweet! The only reaction I had when I put it in my mouth was just "mmmmm......." Had to try to eat as slow as I could so that I wouldn't finish it too quickly. The squid was so thinly shaved and so tender. The crunchy lettuce hearts had accompanied them well.

Milk fed suffolk lamb leg poached in salted butter, slow cooked crisp lamb belly, pantelleria capers, nasturtiums, purslane, artichoke emulsion, bergamot jam. Both Robin and sis had the same dish. According to them, the meat was very very tender and but didn't really feel like goat meat. However, the smaller piece of lamb belly had real intense lamb flavour.

Mine was the slow cooked partridge stuffed with pumpernickel, morels and ethical spanish foie gras butter, faro, hazelnuts, cinnamon, cloves, rye, white asparagus cream. The partridge meat was so tender so soft with the creamy stuffing inside. The other stuff that accompanied the meat i.e. the hazelnuts and rye and stuff felt a bit like crunchy and chewy breakfast muesli :p

Eight texture chocolate cake featuring Arnedel Chocolate. A round piece of cake was brought to the table first. Then the waiter pour the warm chocolate ganache on the top of the cake and it made a 'crater' on the cake. Robin tried to separate the 8 things that gave the 8 textures, but he kept on counting and only managed to find 7. I didn't even bother :p All I know was it was very rich and creamy and yummy.

This was my dessert - Fresh custard apple, vanilla, warm caramelised brioche, palm blossom sugar, cream, wild thyme honey. My favourite component of this dessert was the brioche. So crispy on the outside, so soft and buttery on the inside. It was just perfect on its own. I didn't really like the other components though. I thought they had this cough syrup kind of after taste.

Overall, the food was great! Couldn't get any better birthday dinner meal than this. However, service wise was a little disappointing. Compare to my first visit, it seemed like this time they were very short staffed. Also, at my first visit, the staff was very alert, very attentive. They would come over to ask if we needed anything with just eye contact. However this time, we waited for ages for someone to look our way so that we could get the bill. Then had to wait for ages for someone to come and take our credit card to pay for the bill. (By the way, most of the dishes that sis had weren't show here e.g. snow egg because they were either showed in my other Quay post, or Robin ordered the same dish, so I just posted 1 photo).

Price: $155 per person for 4 course dinner
Location: Overseas Passenger Terminal,
The Rocks, Sydney 2000
Phone: (02) 9251 5600

It was very very hard to take photo there because of lighting. It was quite dim there. That's why all my photos here are very grainy. Had to dial up the ISO to take these photos. I forgot to put my watermark on these photos too. I thought better post it while I'm in the mood to write rather than wait for myself to put watermark on them which could be a couple weeks later.

Sugar Hit - Grace Cafe

2010-10-21T23:51:00.000+11:00

It's October!! That means it's good food month!! Which means ... *drum rolls...* Sugar hit !!! Yeah, I know, I'm probably 1 of the last to blog about sugar hit haha :p Actually I didn't realise sugar hit is on until I read it on food blogs. I'm not a very up to date person with all the events happening in Sydney. After I realised that sugar hit has started, I went to the Crave Sydney Food Festival website, there were like more than 20 restaurants that's participating in Sugar Hit this year. Absolutely no idea which to pick. Then I saw this phrase : "chocolate fairy floss". Straight away, it's decided. Off we went to the Grace Hotel :)

This was it! The devilish chocolate delight: chocolate fondant with self-saucing chocolate centre, Kahlua ice cream, chocolate macaroon and chocolate fairy floss - $20. The bunch of fluffly 'hair' was the fairy floss. A bit disappointed with it. Even though I didn't know what to expect, but after eating it was like 'hmmm... not so special'. It did have some sort of flavour, but didn't quite taste like chocolate. Maybe my expectation for the fairy floss was too high, that's why was disappointed with it. The other parts were REALLY GOOD though!! Macaron was as expected, crunchy when first bitten, then chewy on the inside and not overly overly sweet. Ice cream was good too!! Especially together with the chocolate fondant. It was a PERFECT fondant! Spongy cakey on the outside, once cut open the sticky gooey chocolate centre just oozed out.

Since there's only 1 dish to show, here's another photo from a differnet angle. Can see from here that the wafer biscuit didn't filled the whole glass. There were some strawberries at the bottom of the glass. It got a bit messy when I tried to break the wafer to reach the strawberries :p This whole thing didn't look like a lot, but it's very very rich. Especially the chocolate fondant. If anyone plan to have this straight after dinner, I would recommend to share this with another person (I did have the whole thing to myself though, just because I'm selfish when it comes to dessert :p). It came with a glass of sweet dessert wine. Didn't manage to get the name of that wine. Tea and coffee were included as well. Quite a good deal I would say :)

Grace Cafe

Corner King and York Streets

Sydney NSW 2000

Tel: 02-92726636

The cafe was not to say very well lit, but not too bad. Didn't really have much problem taking photos.

C&J's Wedding

2010-10-17T23:32:00.002+11:00

Good friend of mine just had her wedding recently. It was a beautiful wedding at the Observatory Hill. Not too hot, not too cold, beautiful clear blue sky. Unlike my own wedding, the weather was just PERFECT! The whole day I was just thinking how nice if this was the weather on my wedding day. Oh well, at least ours was probably more memorable (not very often you get 43 degrees, rain, sand storm and even hail on ONE SINGLE day).
C has an auntie and a cousin who are very very good with cooking. They were so nice to volunteer to cater for all the food at the ceremony. If I didn't know, I probably would've thought they bought all the food from some hotel or something. Let's start with the savoury stuff.

Here's the mini chicken pie. Actually they weren't really mini also. Just slightly smaller than normal pies. Too bad we had to leave them on the table for quite a while, so they got cold. Still good though!!

These were the pork curry puffs. Very very good!! Haven't had a good curry puff in aaggeessss before this.

These pretty looking one were cherry tomatoes stuffed with cream cheese. We had to carry these plated up from auntie's place to the Observatory Hill. To stop them from rolling off the plate, auntie put some salt on the plate which I thought worked really good and looked awesome too!!

Next was the potato cake with dill and prawns. All these were so well presented. Can you tell that they DO NOT work in the food industry? They probably should be going for Masterchef.

This was very popular among all the others - peking duck wraps! Again, pity they got cold before we could eat. Otherwise they would be so much nicer!!

The last of the savoury food - swiss roll sandwich with smoked salmon. If I can make all these things, I'll be putting on those 3 tier plates and start charging people $35 per person for high tea :D

Let's look at the dessert now. Cheesecake brownie with a blueberry on top.

Then, there were these yummy bite size mini Portuguese custard tarts.

Of course there had to be some beautiful looking macarons!! They were so good that I just have to put a photo of them close up here :p

Lastly, the 1 that impressed me the most was the cupcakes. Each and every single one of them were HAND MADE 1 by 1. They were just STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL! Everyone were like 'WOW..' and just stared at these with jaw dropped.

So these were the food served at the ceremony. A few hours after the ceremony we went to Sebel hotel for the reception.

For entree there was Kangaroo with a baby beetroot and sundried tomato salad. I didn't have this, but my brother who was sitting next to me didn't really like it. He said the salad dressing was too sour.

I had the Chilled king prawns with smoked salmon and lime aioli. I quite like this, except the menu said "king prawn" but the prawns weren't quite "king prawn" size :p

For main, 1 of them was the Kingfish with crayfish risotto. Risotto was very nice. I didn't have this dish, but I helped my sis finished her risotto :p I liked the rich creamy sauce.

I got the Confit duck served with garlic mash potato. My brother got this as well and his comment was "I think there was a discount on salt". Way too much salt on this dish! Looked pretty, but too salty for sure. Luckily there was the nice garlic mashed potato that could sort of made it a little better.

At least the dessert were not too bad. Citron tart with mascarpone. I quite enjoy this. Sweet and sour at the same time with some creamy mascarpone and the crumbly base.

The other dessert was the Tia Maria creme brulee with almond biscotti. I remember trying a bit of it, but can't remember much of it actually.

Not sure if the food at the reception really wasn't that great, or just because we had such great food during the day from the auntie that made these seemed worse than they were. Most of us were quite disappointed with the food that Sebel plated up. Had a chat with the bride a few days later, apparently all these dishes were way better when they did the taste test. Oh well..

Anyway, here's the very last photo which was part of our third dessert for the night. The beautiful wedding cake ! and yes, you have guessed it, they both love cats!! :)

Ceremony:
Observatory Hill
Watsons Road
Sydney 2000
Tel: (02) 9217 0485
(contact for the venue, not the food :p)

Reception:
The Sebel Pier One Sydney
11 Hickson Road, The Rocks, Sydney
Tel: (02)8298 9999

Zaaffran

2010-09-23T23:54:00.000+10:00

It's always fun to have friends visiting from overseas. It's time when I can bring them (i.e. I have excuse) to nice restaurants and we have more people to order more dishes to share :) However, this time I was given the task to pick a restaurant with a small challenge. 1 of them was a Malay so I had to look for halal restaurants. Lucky for me, eatability had a halal category to search on. That's how I found out that Zaaffran is a halal restaurant and it's also in the Entertainment Book. So it actually didn't take too long to decide.
We decided to go with the 4 courses BBQ Banquet - $44.90 per person. It's got a few entrées to share, some chicken, some lamb, some beef and even dessert so pretty much got everything covered.

Papadums and the mint sauce came not long after we placed our orders. Very crispy and not oily at all! Some places that I've been served papadums that were dripping in oil, but this didn't have a single drip of oil on them.

This dish here was the Gol Guppas. This was something new to me. These are the crispy hollow 'pods' with a hole. What we were supposed to do was to put the filling (the little bowl in the background) into the 'pods' and then put some sauce inside. The filling was made mainly with potato - kinda like curry puff filling.

These were the potato-corn mini patties. They were small bite size (like a 20c coin) pieces. Deep fried till crispy on the outside, but little bit chewy inside. Other than these 3 entrées, there were some garlic naans with some dips as well. Photo of the garlic naans were pretty bad, so I'm just gonna skip through them and go to the mains.

Our first main - Chicken seekh kebab & chicken tenderloins. Both the tenderloins and the kebab were very tasty. Lots of very fragrant herbs and cooked just right.

Mushroom naans came with our first main dish. It was my first time having mushroom naans. They were so good!! Lots and lots of mushroom inside the warm and fluffy naan. All of us liked the mushroom naans.

By the time our 3rd course was served, we were already starting to feel full from finishing ALL the mushroom naans. Massive pieces of beef ribs were served as part of the 3rd course. These beef ribs were quite disappointing though. The piece that I had was too chewy. Definitely over cooked. However, the other piece that my friend took was cooked perfectly! Very soft and tender! Then there was another that was in between. Not as hard as mine, but not as tender as the other. So it was kinda like a lucky dip.

Our 3rd course had also these lamb cutlets and stuffed mushrooms. Lamb cutlets were really really good! Normally I don't like lamb because of the smell, but these cutlet not only they didn't have that smell, but they were marinated well, perfectly cooked, slightly charred on the outside, but so tender and juicy inside. Much better than the beef ribs.

Another component of our 3rd course - cheese naans. By then, we could really hardly fit anything into our stomachs anymore. But look at the golden colour naan!! How could we resist that. I was cursing inside "why didn't they serve this earlier???" I could've fit the last few pieces into my stomach instead of just looked at them while the waitress took them away. I miss them already.

Luckily our last course was just 2 scoops of kulfi/ice-cream. The green was pistachio flavoured, the red was rose flavoured. They were more like gelato than ice-cream. So didn't feel too rich and creamy which was good given the state that we were in at the end of the 3rd course.

All of us enjoyed our dinner very much. Everything was halal which fit our main requirement. Coming from Malaysia, my friends were very surprised how well presented and different these Indian food were comparing to those in Malaysia. Gave them a totally different feel to Indian food. They even joked that the cheese naan here were made with such generous amount of cheese and if we were to get it like that in Malaysia, we might need to provide our own cheese :)

Harbourside Shopping Centre
Level 2, Shop 345, 10 Darling Dr
Tel: 02 92118900

Our table was very dark. We had a nice table by the window looking across the harbour to cockle bay wharf. Prefect view, but just not enough lighting for good photos.

The Restaurant

2010-09-18T23:34:00.001+10:00

"Let's go to The Restaurant for lunch" "which restaurant?" "The restaurant" "huh?? WHICH retaurant??" "THE restaurant" :p I'm just imagining how much fun it'll be if I ask someone to have a meal with me there. I was there for my friend's bridal shower tea party. Of course, the event organiser had better communication skills than me. Instead of saying "Venue: The Restaurant" on the invite, she wrote Art Gallery - which probably saved herself from receiving a lot of emails asking "what's the name of the restaurant?".
12 years I have been living in Sydney. First time stepping into the Art Gallery. Straight away I feel like I'm so 'classy' and 'sophisticated' already haha.. People armed with cameras to take photos of the arts and statues and stuff, I had my camera with me only thinking of the sandwiches and scones that they were going to serve in high tea. So, now let's look at what my camera ended up with.

High tea with a glass of bubbles - $35 (without the bubbles $26). Don't they just look so elegant being served in the shiny stand in tiers?

Let's start from the top tier - Tea sandwiches - Chargrilled zucchini, oregano, cream cheese, rocket, pine nut. Roast chicken, mayonnaise, radicchio, currants. The round 1s were the chargrilled zucchini and the triangle were the roast chicken. They were just so delicately cut and rolled up with a toothpick holding them in shape.

Second tier - Savoury treats - duck liver parfait on crouton. Potato soup, smoked river trout, dill. I love those duck liver parfait. So creamy so yum. With the sweet jelly on top, no idea what jelly that was, but it's just so good with the duck liver on the crispy croutons. As for the potato soup, it's very very thick and creamy. Never thought smoked trout could go so well in potato soup. I thought it would have the fishy taste, but none at all. Just added extra smokey flavour to the creamy potato soup.

The bottom tier - Sweet treats - Scone, Jame & cream, blueberry & lemon sable, chocolate & hazelnut marquise. 1 thing that I forgot to show, the jam & cream. That was actually the BEST PART of this tier!! The cream was so good! It was white with tiny black dots, must've been vanilla beans and the jam was so nice as well. Lucky for me someone didn't want their scone, so I had 1.5 scones :D I was so tempted to get a container and take those leftover jam and cream home :p

As a special treat, we got some homemade macarons made by the bride's cousin!! Strawberry flavoured with can't remember what cream inside :p What I did remember was that the flakes on top weren't chocolate. Those were actually dried strawberries. Here's a close up photo of the macaron.

It was a very nice place for a bridal shower tea party. Well done to the event organiser who picked this place for the party. We had a few games, had some bubbles, some nice food, nice view, excellent weather, it was just a beautiful day :)

Art Gallery Road,
The Domain, Sydney
Tel: (02) 9225 1819

The whole restaurant is surrounded by big big panel of glass looking out from the hill. When the weather is beautiful outside, there's just plenty of natural sunlight in the whole restaurant.

Bar of Plenty

2010-09-12T14:44:00.000+10:00

I had a parcel sent to my old address the other day. So I had to go all the way to the post office at North Parramatta even though I'm now living in the Shire. Wasn't too happy about that because I had to cut my lunch short and rush to post office and back to office (and I wasn't even expecting a parcel at all, no internet purchase and nobody told me anything about sending me a present :p)

Guess what I got in the mail?? Ta-da!! 2 bars of chocolate!! haha :D Straight away I was in a happy mood again :) Needed that afternoon sugar hit in the office.

Close up of that Roast Hazelnut & Honey Roast Cashews. Between the 2, I like this better simply because I prefer chocolate with nuts than chocolate with fruits. As the name stated, there's definitely plenty of nuts in the bar.

Here's the Berry Fruit & Vanilla Short Cake. The reason I don't like fruits in my chocolate is that sometimes the chewy fruit bits can get stuck in my teeth. But over here, I really like the crunchy vanilla short cake.

Overall, I quite like them. It's just that I'm more a dark chocolate than a milk chocolate person. After a couple pieces it just becomes too sweet. Maybe just 1 square at a time, oh by the way, the squares are bigger than the normal Cadbury blocks :)

I have to put good lighting because I took these photos at home in the afternoon haha.. However, first time doing product shots at home, not very good with getting rid of the shadows and evening the light out and stuff.

Chat Thai

2010-09-11T12:30:00.000+10:00

Went to watch Wicked the other day. It was a weekday, so had to drive to city after work and find somewhere to park and to have dinner before the show. Didn't really have much time to do all that before the show started, so decided to eat somewhere near to Capitol Theatre. Chat Thai was the perfect choice. It was right opposite the entrance to Capitol Theatre. So as soon as we finished our meal, we crossed the road and we were at the theatre already. The show was AWESOME!! Highly highly recommended for anyone who hasn't been. I think still have a few sessions left before the end of the month. Anyway, now, the meal that we had at Chat Thai...

Started with entree to share between me and a friend, Loug Chin Ping - $2.50 (each) - Grilled skewered beef (or pork) meat balls, accompanied with nahm jim - a sweet chilli and sour plum sauce. Mu Bhing - $2.50 (each) Skewered and char grilled lean pork marinated in galangal, lemongrass and garlic. Accompanied with nahm jim jaew.

Then a salad dish - Nahm Dtok - $12 - Char grilled pork and beef rump sliced then tossed lightly in lime juice, red onions, pounded roasted rice and roasted chilli flakes. Finished with shredded mint, shallots and coriander. Coriander - yucks :p Luckily they didn't put too much and could easily picked them out. Tender meat was nicely grilled and very aromatic, together with the lime juice dressing made it a very appetising dish.

I have a 'thing' for green curry. Everytime I go to a Thai restaurant it would be "should I get green curry or something differnet? green curry? o.k green curry" and then I would fill myself up with green curry and wasted a chance to try something else. Maybe I should give myself a quest to look for the best green curry :) Anyway, here's the Gaeng Keaw Gai (green curry chicken) - $14 - Chicken curry made with a spicy green paste of galangal, kaffir lime, lemongrass, garlic and long green chillies. The chicken and aromatic paste is cooked in coconut milk with apple eggplants and bamboo shoots then finished off with finely sliced kaffir lime leaves and thai basil.

We were very full, but I was greedy. Friends recommended the Sticky Rice Durian - $7.50 - Sticky rice steamed with sweet coconut cream and palm sugar accompanied with a durian custard and pieces of fresh durian. So even though both of us were very full, we still ordered 1 to share :) Lucky we did. I really liked it! Even though we were so full, but we still managed to polish the plate clean.

No wonder everytime we walked past this place, there was always long queue outside the door. Price was reasonable, food was very very tasty and my Thai friend said he goes there a few times a week!! So they must be serving really authentic Thai food :)

20 Campbell St
Haymarket NSW 2000
Tel: (02) 9211 1808

It was quite dim in the restaurant when we went for dinner. Pictures actually came out quite grainy when I had to use high ISO. Also there wasn't too much space to move around. Tables were packed very close to each other.

Lastly, I would like to bring to your attention, my newly created favicon and watermark!! :D For some reason the favicon only works in Chrome but not in IE. Not sure why. If you can't tell what it is, it's a Japanese rice ball - onigiri. As for the watermark, it's a chinese character which means "eat" with BLM written inside. It was pointed out to me that it looks like a rabbit and snake running towards the onigiri though :p Many thanks to MC for making the files, to my creative husband for the design and myself for the idea kekeke.. :p

The Sultan's Table

2010-09-03T00:44:00.000+10:00

Finally some good news after a series of drama, reminds me of the movie "A series of unfortunate events" (luckily it ends with a happy ending). That's why wasn't quite in a very good mood lately. Fed up of feeling negative and all though. At least it looks like the worst is now over and can start to see some good things happening. I'm definitely a happy ending person. Don't like watching sad movies and don't get people who likes watching sad movies too :p Anyway, luckily still managed to have some good food while all the dramas happening :)

Decided to meet up with some friends for dinner at The Sultan's Table. They said that they haven't had a dinner at a Turkish restaurant before. So we thought this should be a good place to introduce them to nice Turkish food :)

Large Mixed Dip - $20. This was probably the most colourful dish in the restaurant. Clockwise from top left corner: parsley, spinach, carrot, hummus, chilli, ??? , beetroot, ???. Some eggplant in the centre. Sorry about the 2 that I can't remember. Hummus was my favourite. The dips were served with some freshly baked Turkish bread. We weren't even half way through the dips when we finished our first basket of bread. Had to order extra bread.

Mixed grill - Combination of Adana, lamb, chicken kebabs served with salad and turkish bread - $26. There were 3 types of skewers here. Chicken was the best. The adana and the lamb skewers were a bit dry. Next time should just get the chicken.

Iskender - Fine slices of doner kebab meat served on a layer of turkish bread topped with home made yoghurt and special red sauce - $12. This was very different from the usual kebab. The layer of bread at the bottom soaked up all the yummy juice from the meat and the 'special red sauce'. When I read 'red sauce' automatically I thought it's gonna be spicy. It's actually not! It's like some sort of tomato based sauce or something.

Chicken pide - chicken, spinach, mushroom, onion, tomato, cheese & parsley - $13. For someone who's not too adventurous, this might be a good choice. Everyone will enjoy a good chicken pide :)

Here's something for those who want something little bit different with a bit more 'kick' - Sucuklu - Turkish sausage, cheese, egg & parsley - $12. First time having turkish sausage. It's actually quite spicy! Robin had a bit of trouble with it but I actually quite enjoyed it. I reckon it tasted better than the chicken pide, but it's a bit oilier than the chicken though.

Definitely don't mind visiting again. Everything tasted great and serving was very very generous. We ordered 5 dishes for 4 people and still ended up with 4 containers full of leftover for next day's lunch. So that means 5 dishes were actually enough to feed 8!!!

179 Enmore Rd
Enmore NSW 2042
Tel: (02) 9557 0229
Note: Booking is not necessary but highly recommended if you are not prepared to wait.

Lighting conditions varies depending on the tables. Some tables were set up close to light source some were actually quite dark especially out at the courtyard. Tables inside the shop should have better lighting. I actually don't really like these photos that I took here. They weren't focused at the right spot, didn't have the right DOF or they just don't tell much. All because I was rushing when I was taking photos. Couldn't wait to dig in, so I didn't spend enough time to properly adjust the settings and get the shot that I really like.

Masa

2010-08-22T23:23:00.000+10:00

Had a really bad day that day. So to make myself feel better I told Robin I wanted to have sushi and sashimi for dinner. That's why we ended up here. This restaurant was mentioned in the SMH not long ago and it's only about 10-15 mins away from home.

Started with a simple Seaweed Salad - $8.50. Wonder if anyone knows how to make those japanese salad dressing. Really liked the dressing.

We thought Takoyaki - $6 for 5 pieces was a bit expensive, so maybe there's something unusual about it. Turned out nothing unusual. We actually had to have them remade because the first time the takoyaki was still icy cold inside. Then they sent us another bowl. Nothing special, it's just that they were very generous with the octopus inside. Each ball had like 2-3 big chunks of octopus and the texture of the batter was very smooth.

Favourite of the night Agemochi - $6.50. Deep fried rice cake with light sauce. Looked exactly like agedashi tofu, but it's mochi inside. First time having mochi done this way, it's so sticky and chewy and went surprisingly well with the savoury sauce!! Really really liked it.

Deep fried flounder served with ponzu sauce - $12. We thought they would serve a whole flounder, but actually not. It was served in pieces. Taste was good, but some of the thicker bones weren't crispy enough to eat.

Flat head tempura - $10 . It was on the special menu, so we thought we should try it. Not too bad actually. Batter was thin and crispy, fish was very fresh too.

Now, the sushi + sashimi combo - $35 that I wanted. They came in those 2 tier containers. Here's the sashimi and the other 1 was the sushi.

Didn't look really spectacular, but they didn't disappoint me since that's the whole point of visiting. At least there weren't any stringy pieces and all of them were fresh.

Didn't really have many choices for dessert, so we didn't order any. Also, we couldn't find that yellowtail sashimi that was recommended in SMH on the menu. Overall, I'm very very happy that I've finally found a decent Japanese restaurant in Sydney south. Moved here for few months already and this was the first decent Japanese restaurant that we don't have to travel at least an hour for.

Masa Japanese Restaurant

28 Princes Hwy

Sylvania NSW 2224

Tel: (02) 9522 6995

Note: Booking in advance is highly recommended. It's not a big restaurant and we went there on a Monday and it was full and really busy (only 2 person working in there).

Lighting wasn't too bad in there, just a little cramped.

Jurin

2010-08-13T15:10:00.000+10:00

You know how I put in my info that I try not to repeat any restaurants in the same year? I broke my own rule with this restaurant. We liked it so much that at the end of the first visit we made booking on the spot for the next visit in less than 2 weeks time. So there will be many photos in this post, that doesn't mean I ate THAT much in 1 meal, that's simply because it's combination of 2 visits (2 different groups of people). I was given the task of making the orders on both visits, so I could deliberately not order the same dish unless it was something nice that I thought should be introduced to the 2nd group of people. Anyway, let's start looking at the nice food!!

Assorted Sashimi ~7 kind of fish~ - $35 Everything was so fresh, absolutely nothing to pick on here.

Grilled Premium Duck Breast - $15.80. Fat juicy duck breast meat with some pretty pink colour salt. Nicely grilled with yummy juice bursting out with each bite.

Udon Noodle Salad Sesame Sauce - $13.50 I thought the sesame sauce would be very rich and heavy, but it's actually not. Quite refreshing in fact. Sauce was served separately (i.e. the black bowl of sauce in the background) and we mixed at the table.

Grilled Beef Tongue - didn't get the price. Looks a bit boring and dry I must say, but it's actually not too bad. First time having beef tongue that was so thickly cut. Usually those that I had at Jap/Kor bbq, they were all thinly sliced.

Spicy Salmon Roll - $12.80. Even though it said "spicy", I didn't really find it spicy at all. Little bit disappointed at that.

Squid & Scallop Steamed Dampling [sic] "Shumai" - $11. 1 problem with Jurin was that their menu had quite a bit of spelling mistakes. Seeing the menu like that, Robin decided to order everything on the menu that had a spelling mistake just for fun. Glad that we did!! This was actually 1 of those nice dishes that we ordered again the in the second visit.

Jumbo Roll - $25. This is something you might want to order just for fun - just to see how HUGE a sushi can get :) However, because it's so big, eating it was a little bit 'tricky'.

Deep Fried School Prown [sic] "Koebi" - $9.50. There you go! Another spelling mistake spotted. Again, glad that we did order this! Very very crunchy school prawns, seasoned very well. Something that would go very well with some beer.

"Tonkatsu" Ccrumbed [sic] Deep Fried Pork Cutlet - $18.90. Another dish on the table because of spelling mistake. Very nice!! Crunchy crust outside, very tender inside.

Kasuzuke - $15.50. It's sake marinated fish. Can't remember what sort of fish that is though. Strong smell of sake, the texture a bit different from usual cooked fish. It's a bit softer and smoother. I quite enjoyed it.

Eggplant with Miso "Nasuden" - $13.50. Sister ordered it thinking it was like an eggplant dish that she had somewhere else. Turned out to be something totally different. Tasted alright, I just thought a bit too much sauce.

I really like the bamboo sake container that they used. Looked so cool! And before serving the sake, the waiter brought a tray of cups out for us to choose. There were all sorts of cups to choose from. Different colours, made of different materials, different shapes and etc.

Torched Salmon with Avocado Sauce - $15.50 I was hoping for the smell of torched salmon, like those seared salmon on sushi, but the salad dressing has covered the charred salmon smell. Little bit disappointed. Still tasty nonetheless.

Salmon & Cream Spring Roll "Harumaki" - $7.80 This was definitely different from the usual Chinese spring rolls that I had. The shape was different, sauce was different and the filling was different too! Yummy stuff!

Salmon Lover - $32.50 Yup! That's me. I like my salmon sashimi and sushi and aburi. A bit disappointed with the torched salmon though. Just not quite what I was expecting.

Scallop and Prawn saute with Lemon Soy Sauce. I know couldn't really see any scallop or prawn in focus, but they were certainly there :p Sorry! Bad photo... The eggplant that's in focus was really good too actually :)

Deep Fried Octopus "Takokara" - $9.50 We actually wanted to order the deep fried school "prown" again, but they ran out. So we got the octopus instead. Just as good! But because the pieces were bigger, it felt like we had less octopus than we had prawns.

Assorted Sushi - $32.50 Just ordered this to make sure that everyone got some sushi and got some rice to fill them up. Good that all the fish were fresh and yummy :)

Grilled Taraba Crab - $26.80 This was so so so good!!!! So fresh and so sweet! A must order, especially if someone is a crab fan.

Soft Shell Crab Roll - $12.80

Lobster Tempura Roll - $13.80 Didn't feel like it was lobster though. It was good, but tasted like prawn to me :p Both the rolls were quite nice.

Chirashi (Large) - $29.50. Not bad, but I think I still prefer Sakana-ya's barasushi though.

Pipi - $12.50 made with lots and lots of butter! The butter smell was incredible. Didn't taste oily or anything though. Just had the smell of butter, taste of butter but didn't feel too heavy or oily.

Assorted Tempura (with additional prawns) - $30.30 How pretty was that prawn tail?? They tasted just as good as they looked.

Chestnut - $3.50 I ordered this simply for pure curiosity. I liked those packet chestnuts that I bought from chinese grocery. No need to peel the shell or anything. However, with $3.50 I think I could get 2 packets, probably 60 of them instead of 3. However, THIS WAS SOOOO WORTH IT!!! They were really big chestnuts! Still don't know how they made it, but they were all so so sweet and soft. I would swap 10 packets of those chestnut from chinese store for 1 of these anytime.

Sakura mochi - $3.50 This was disappointing though. Were hoping for those round chewy mochi, but this not exactly round blob of sticky rice came out instead. Had some red bean paste in it, but didn't think there's anything special about it though.

Mixed Ice-cream - $6.50 Creamy and rich ice-cream, just nice to end the meal with.

There you go. Hope you enjoyed the photos as much as I did enjoy the meal at Jurin. Highly recommended restaurant. My favourite Japanese restaurant now. Service was very good too! 1 of the Japanese waiter was very nice and funny. We had to wait for our table a bit, while waiting he said he would give us something 'special' to compensate. He actually gave us some extra sake for the table. Some very nice special 1 which I didn't get the name. Conclusion, good food, good service and a menu that's got lots of spelling mistakes :p

316 Pacific Hwy
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Tel: (02) 9966 5811

Lighting wasn't too good for photo there at dinner time. A bit dark. Not much room to move around too. It's a small restaurant with as many tables and chairs as it could possibly fit before getting too uncomfortable for the guests.

Coffee Garam

2010-07-25T19:35:00.001+10:00

Hello everyone! Still remember me? The blogger that doesn't update her blog that much?? I know I know.. haven't been writing for a while. Was just so tired all the time in the last couple weeks. Started a new role at work, but still can't get rid of the old role, so pretty much doing 2 jobs now. Then there was the day when I had to wake up at 3:45am to get to the warehouse at 5am. Or the few days when I had to wake up at 5am to get to city at 7am. Not very fun :p Anyway, enough of me whinging about work. I'm sure everyone got their 'work stories' to tell. Plus it's weekend, I really should post something up before I lose all my readers.
The other day I had to go to dentist for my stage 1 surgery for a tooth implant (*sigh* another long story about that but I should refrain from whinging too much here). So I thought I probably wouldn't be able to eat much after the surgery, so better to have a nice big breakfast before I went to see my dentist. So we went to this new cafe at Surry Hills - Coffee Garam (in Indian it means hot coffee). It has only been opened for about 1.5 months.

Robin's flat white. No, it wasn't the waitress fault that the coffee spilt. I did that :p I was turning the coffee to take a photo and I turned it too quick.

This was my mocha. It was very creamy. I like ordering mocha because I like eating the froth with the chocolate powder :)

Robin's English Breakfast - $8.99 with free coffee. There was fried egg, bacon, mushroom, baked beans, roasted tomato and one slice of toast. Serving was very generous. While the mushrooms smelt nice and garlicky, but they tasted a bit sour. Still, for just $9, I don't think there are many places that can beat that.

This was my Turkish Delight $9.99 - toasted white bread with mayo, turkey breast, lettuce, red onions, cheese and plenty of seeded mustard. There's 1 thing that I didn't notice till I looked at the photo of the menu just then. It says "All sandwiches $7.50 with a can of drink!". So sandwich alone is $9.99, but with a can of drink it's $7.50 ? I think $7.50 with drinks has to be the price for takeaway.

We had a bit of chat with the owner Harvey in between waves of customers that came in for their coffee in the morning. His idea was to create a new breed of cafe - fusion of Australian and Indian. While there were the familiar sandwiches and fried eggs, there were also some Indian snacks that Harvey had added to the menu.

He got us to try the specialty of his cafe - Masala Chai. Apparently the masala that Harvey used at his shop was home made! It was basically tea with some spices like cinnamon/ ginger. Surprisingly good! I wasn't so sure about it before my first sip, but it turned out to be something very refreshing.

We also tried an Indian snacks - Dabeli $3. We were quite full before we ordered the extra snack, then I thought $3, it should be something small like a curry puff that I could share half with Robin. So I ordered it. Turned out, it was like a burger!!! It was basically a burger bun with filling that was made with sweet potato mix, pomegranate, onions, green chutney and tamarind chutney topped with roasted peanuts and coriander. Robin couldn't really eat it because it was too spicy for him. I didn't mind the spiciness though. It was a bit of savoury, a bit of sweet, and the roasted peanuts added crunchiness to the otherwise mushy mix. Very interesting snack. The only problem I had was that the filling kept on falling off.
Overall it was quite a nice cafe. New, modern, good place to just sit, relax and have some light meals. Staff was very friendly too. 1 thing that we thought could be improved was how quickly the drinks/food got served. We had to wait quite a while for our coffee and food to arrive. Then we had to wait quite a bit again for the our second round of order with the masala chai. Some people came in to order a cup of coffee for takeaway and they had to wait too. Not a big issue for us since we were just killing time before going to dentist, but I think for people that came in for coffee on the way to work, they probably might like their coffee served quicker.

Coffee Garam
29-37 Bellevue Street
Surry Hills NSW 2010
Tel: (02) 8065 1941

We went there in the morning, so no problem at all with lighting. It had big panels of glass across the front of the shop to let plenty of light in. The cafe was very spacious too.

*Robin and YW dined as guests of Coffee Garam

Bilson's Restaurant

2010-07-11T12:48:00.003+10:00

One day, Robin said to me, "Book this day out, we're going out for dinner" and wouldn't tell me where we were going. He dropped a hint and said "Surry Hills". On the actual day, when we were driving past Surry Hills, he didn't stop. So I asked "didn't you say we're going to Surry Hills?" he answered "I didn't say we're GOING TO Surry Hills, I said Surry Hills and we did PASS BY Surry Hills". I gave him a very dirty look because I had been flipping through the Entertainment book and checking out all the Surry Hills restaurant all week. Anyway, I knew it's going to be somewhere really nice because he specifically told me to wear nice, no t-shirt and jeans. Then, we arrived at the Radisson Plaza Hotel and saw the Bilson's sign. Straight away there's this silly grin on my face that probably didn't go away until we left :) It's a 3 hatted restaurant!! A really nice surprise dinner indeed! After we sat down, he told me that he already decided what we were going to have and ordered the Fine Bouche - 10 course degustation. So I didn't really get to 'analyse' the menu before it was taken away by the waiter. Not long after that some bread and butter were served, followed by our amuse bouche.

Veal sweetbread with parsley with mango chutney. This was my first time having sweetbread (the first time I heard of sweetbread was actually not long ago on Masterchef). This definitely made a very good first impression of sweetbread for me.

Freshwater Crayfish and Lobster Bavaroise, Green Pea a la Françaisé - From front to back of the photo, it's lobster bavaroise, prawn with jelly consommé, tart with peas and the streak of peas purée at the side. The lobster bavaroise is very rich, like a pate but softer and creamier, simply awesome! Here's the same dish again from the other end.

Tartar of Black Angus and Cuttlefish, Ink Mayonnaise and Mustard Ice Cream. For some reason I actually quite like mustard. English mustard, dijonaise mustard, even McD mustard sauce (my favourite sauce to go with the chips). I love ice-cream too!! So imagine mustard ice-cream :D It's 1 of those things that when heard, it's like "that's so weird!!" but once ate, it's "how come nobody thought about this earlier?!?"

Roasted Scallops, Petit Salé of Puy Lentils and Foie Gras Vinaigrette. As expected scallop was perfect. Sweet, fresh, nicely done. However, to me that's not the most impressive part of the dish. It was the bacon!! The bacon was like paper thin, it was so so so so so crispy!!

Hiramasa Kingfish with Braised Octopus, Cauliflower and Black Olives. Fish fillet with crispy skin! :) There was also a small piece of roasted cuttlefish at the side. Reminds me of those roasted cuttlefish snacks that I used to eat so much in Malaysia.

Roasted Partridge with Beetroot Braised Red Cabbage, Glazed Carrots and Rocket Pistou. O.k. I have a confession to make. I made the deadliest food blogger mistake. *YW takes a deep breath* I forgot to take photo before I took my first bite. There you go! I said it! Don't hit me!! That's why I had to crop the photo like this, so that it doesn't show the 'disturbed' gravy on the plate and the other half eaten piece of meat :p

Angus Beef Tenderloin ‘Façon Niçoise’ that is beef tenderloin with spanish onion purée and potato. Look how pink that beef was! This is how exactly how a steak should be done!

Palate cleanser time! Basil ice cream with carrot n cardamom. Another funny flavour ice-cream heehe..:) However, different from the mustard ice-cream which was a bit 'heavier' to go with the beef, this was very light and refreshing with the taste of the fresh herb.

Dessert time! Ta-da!! On the menu, it's caled Eve’s Platter. Lucky for the 'note' application on iphone that Robin had installed and pushing the limit of my short term memory trying to remember every word the waiter said, this is what I managed to jot down. From right to left, apple tart, apple parfait, ice cream with apple pieces, poached baby apple with balsemic reduction and ginger bread with mascarpone. Everything on this plate is miniscule and so cute!! Both Robin and I agreed that the best part was the apple parfait (second from right in the pic that looked like an apple with a black stem). It was like a apple flavoured ice ball with some sort of custard inside.

Eve's platter was a light dessert. This Autour Du Chocolat on the other hand was the rich and heavy 1! Again, couldn't tell much from the menu, so had to rely on my goldfish memory to quickly write down everything after the waiter explained the dish. Clockwise from the top, chocolate parfait, chocolate ice cream with chocolate crumbs, white chocolate ice-cream with chocolate brittle, dark chocolate cube with gold leaves. The dark chocolate cube was interesting. It was like a wobbly jelly, but very bitter (in the good dark chocolate way). Not something anyone should put the whole thing in the mouth even though it was just a little piece.

Petits Fours - rose meringue, pistachio cake with strawberry. I preferred the rose merigue over the pistachio cake. I thought the strawberry that's wedged inside the cake was a bit sour.

Overall, it was an AWESOME dinner!! The food was very impressive. 1 thing that maybe still have room for improvement was the staff. Not that they did anything bad, it's just some of them still felt a bit inexperience with handling the cutlery. Also, there was 1 waiter that gave the impression that he was impatient when he was explaining the dishes to us. Either he's rushing to somewhere else, or he just memorised the descriptions and tried to say it all out in 1 breath. There was 1 thing that I was very happy about though was that they were 'bloggers friendly'. The floor manager actually asked if I was a blogger and we exchanged business cards :)

Bilson's Restaurant
27 O'Connell St
Sydney NSW 2000
Tel: (02) 8214 0496

It was a little dark, but not a big problem, just need higher ISO.

Ice Cube

2010-07-01T12:59:00.000+10:00

It was the day when we went Imax to watch Avatar. Thinking we should go early to get ticket and then start queuing up for good seats, so we decided to have dinner nearby. What could be nearer than Ice Cube which was just downstairs? Plus we got to use our Entertainment Book too :)

Started with our entree - Seared scallops, on spiced avocado and gazpacho dressing - $21. Fresh and plump scallops, nicely caramelised on the outside, rested on top of spiced avocado 'stubs'. We didn't really like the whole dressing and avocado combination though. Didn't feel like they suited the scallops.

Second entree - Seasonal sashimi plate - $19.50. Since they had a sushi/sashimi bar in the restaurant, so we thought we would try the sashimi. Not too bad, thick slices of fresh salmon and kingfish. Nothing too impressive though.

After our rather "o.k but not great" entress, we didn't really have high expectation of the mains. To our surprise, the mains were actually very good!! Robin's main - Whole Fish of the day - Oven baked Snapper - $34. Fish was nicely done with crunchy skin but meat still moist. Very fresh too! Robin happily polished the whole plate clean.

Thinking I should have something different from what I normally would order, I went for the Rock fish casserole - black tiger prawns, scallops, bugs, reef fish, squid & mussels delicately poached in a citrus infused crayfish broth served with a crusty garlic baquette & saffron rouille - $38.50. This was so good!! The broth was so full of seafood goodness. It was really sweet from all the fresh seafood. It was surprisingly filling too!!

Didn't really have any room for dessert, plus didn't really have time too because by the time we wait for dessert and finish eating, we would've been late for movie. When we paid the bill, we were asked to give some feedback, in return, we would receive a $40 voucher for next meal. We said we definitely would go back again once we get the voucher since we enjoyed the mains very much. We did get the voucher after a few days, but the voucher is now expired :( (ops.. I guess that sort of shows how far behind I am with my posts. The voucher given for another visit was expired even before I got to write about first visit :p ) Anyway, conclusion was the mains were way better than entrees. Not that they were bad, just wasn't as impressive. Wouldn't mind going back again if my voucher hasn't expired :p

Ice cube
Ground Floor, The Imax Theatre Complex
31 Wheat Road
Darling Harbour, Sydney NSW 2000
Tel: 02-82673666

It was a little dark there, but not too bad. Just need slightly higher ISO like 400 or more.

Sean's Tapas

2010-06-22T16:39:00.004+10:00

My best friend came to visit from Malaysia. So 1 afternoon after watching movie, we decided to go and have a late lunch. It was around 3pm. Initially we planned to go Suminoya for Japanese BBQ, but because movie went longer than expected, we couldn't make it to Suminoya's lunch hours. So we decided to walk across the Pyrmont Bridge to the Star City and had lunch there.
When we walked out of the lift, we thought the place is closed till dinner too! The whole place was empty! Then we saw a waiter and asked whether they were still open for lunch and he said yes. So we just sat down at the sofa (seemed like a good idea to sit on comfy sofa at first, but actually it was quite hard to eat on sofa with food on the coffee table :p).

Anyway, as soon as we sat down and got comfortable, the waiter brought us some bread, olives and olive oil. Both of us weren't really olive person, but we still finished the bread :)

This was our Goat's cheese croquettes with smoked paprika aioli $8.The crust was very very crispy with warm soft goat's cheese inside. The smell wasn't too strong which was good for me :)

Crispy Prawns - Aioli & garlic crisps $16. The batter was like a crunchy coat to the prawn. Served with garlicky aioli and thinly sliced deep fried garlic crisps. Yummy! But just needed some chewing gum afterwards :p

This was the most 'unexpected' dish for me - the Egg & Chips, 62 degree egg with tomato chutney $9. The eggs and potatoes were brought to our table separately, then eggs were cracked in front of us and mixed with the potato at the table.

Toasted cheese sandwich with Murcia Al Vino cheese $8. Simple and yummy. Crunchy toast with melted gooey cheese, classic!

For dessert, we ordered the Churros with chocolate dipping sauce - $12. I think San Churro got nicer churros though.
Overall it was quite an enjoyable late lunch. A good friend, a few small dishes, cozy lounges, if only I can spend my afternoon like this everyday :)

Sean's Kitchen
Level 2, Star City
80 Pyrmont Street
NSW 2009
Tel: 97779000

Cozy little place but not so camera friendly because not enough lighting.

Ribs and Rumps

2010-06-10T16:56:00.002+10:00

Few months ago colleague was talking about places with nice steaks to bring visitors to. Ribs and Rumps came up as top choice for him. I went online, did some research and looked at the menu to see what I would order if I visit. Since then the name of this restaurant had stuck in my head. I was just waiting for an occasion for me to use as reason (or if you prefer 'excuse') to go there. Few months later, mum came to Sydney. Straight away this restaurant was put on the 'to-go-to' list :) It worked out perfectly on the day we went shopping at DFO in Homebush. R&R was just few mins away in the Olympic Park.

There were 4 of us, so we ordered a few things to share. Started with the Caesar (table size) $15.95. We knew we would be ordering a lot of meat, so we went for just the normal caesar salad instead of chicken caesar.

Here's our Ribs & Rump Original $45.95 (pork ribs, lamb ribs & 250g rump). It was served with baked potatoes. The lamb ribs were surprisingly good! I'm not so much a lamb person because of the smell, but this time I actually didn't mind it at all! Meat was thick and tender covered in fingers licking tasty sauce.

Oh, by the way, in case of messy eater like me who could never eat laksa without everyone knowing (because laksa soup will be all over my clothes), R and R bibs with cute logos all over were provided :) From this photo we can see that mum was enjoying her ribs :D

Here's the Mixed Grill - combination of beef and lamb ribs, sirloin steak, cutlets and rangy beef sausafe, topped with fried egg - $48.95. This was so HUGE that we couldn't finish eating everything. I think just this alone was enough for all 4 of us with some sides. There were more lamb ribs here so we were happy :)

Definitely going to order this again when I visit R&R next - the Sizzling black mushrooms $12.95 - giant field mushrooms grilled to perfection and served in garlic butter. The smell from the garlic butter was so good! They weren't kidding when they say GIANT mushrooms. These were so plump and juicy, totally coated in yummy garlic butter.
We couldn't even finish our main, so no room for dessert that day. Definitely protein overloaded :p Service was quite good, staff was very friendly. Looking at the photos now I feel like some of the ribs again :)

Ribs and Rumps No 8 Dawn Fraser Avenue, Homebush Bay 2127 NSW Tel: 02 9746 0554

We went there for lunch, so it was quite bright during the day. However, inside could be a bit dim if not seated close to the window.

Honeymoon - (finally) FINAL!!

2010-06-03T16:53:00.003+10:00

O.k. I think enough of honeymoon already. Not really gonna write about any specific restaurants or food here, this is just gonna be kind of the 'miscellaneous' things that we had on that trip.

Let's kick off with some dishes that we had in Singapore. 1 thing that we said we definitely going to eat in Singapore was frog porridge. As my favourite frog porridge stall at Geylang didn't really have much around it, so we decided to go to their branch at Lavender instead. It was located inside a food court so we had other choices as well. Here's the duck noodle to share. Things were quite small in serving size and we had about 5 or 6 people, so each person just tried little bit of it and the whole dish was gone.

Here you go! The famous frog porridge that we were so eagerly looking forward to. We ordered both flavours - this was the ginger and spring onion version. One time at my previous job, my Aussie workmate asked me what's nice in Singapore as he was visiting. He got grossed out when I said frog porridge haha :) So for those who have never tried frogs before, I'll just say "it's WAY better than chicken!!" The meat was smooth, tender, succulent and tasted sweeter than chicken.

Here's the 2nd flavour that I preferred - 宮保 ("kung bou" in Cantonese). It looked similar to the previous pot, with spring onion, ginger plus the most important ingredient the dried chilli!! If only Singapore has cooler climate. Piping hot porridge in clay pot + hot & sticky weather + frogs cooked with dried chilli were just not the the ideal combination, BUT, the frog was definitely worth the sweat and the annoying feeling of t-shirt sticking to our backs. It's something that once you've tried it, you'll think of it everytime you hear the word "Singapore".

A pot of porridge that came with the frogs. Even after all the frog meat was gone, it was still very good with the gravy. Yup, we wiped ALL the clay pots clean. Didn't even leave any gravy behind.

We also ordered the rojak. It came with 'you tiao', cucumber, tofu, a few other things that I can't remember now and the long strip of grilled calamari. Usually Malaysian version of rojak don't have that grilled calamari - which was actually quite good here. Of course the shrimp paste sweet sauce that went with the whole thing (thanks to LH for hand modelling :D)

Another dish for the table, oyster omelette. This was actually better than some other than we had before. In Singapore there are 2 types of oyster omelette - "orh jian" and "orh neng". "orh jian" is the thicker version with added corn flour that becomes sticky and gooey (which I don't like). On the other hand, "orh neng" is the oyster with just egg, so it's the dryer, not gooey version. Over here we ordered the "orh neng". Better than those that we had in Penang, but still not really that impressive. Could do with more and fresher oysters in there :p

1 of my favourite dessert in Singapore hawker centre. Had this at Lau Pa sat. It's the soursop ice served with fresh lime to squeeze over it. It was sweet and sour at the same time. Sweet from the slimy (in a good way) soursop (despite the name) and sour from the fresh lime. Very refreshing!

From memory (which is highly unreliable), I only had stinky tofu twice before. Once a few years ago in Malaysia and then again when I visited Taiwan in 2008. This was the 3rd time. Well, not really a big fan, more like eating it out of curiousity on how much it can stink :p It had this garbage/dirty drain smell, but didn't really taste very different from a normal deep fried tofu. Came with some crunchy pickled vegetables at the side. Definitely not something that everyone can accept, but once you can get past the smell, then it's actually not THAT bad.

Another of the must-have in Singapore - "fried carrot cake". It's actually not carrot, it's radish (I'm guessing everyone just calls it carrot cake because radish is called "bai lo bo" in Chinese which literally means white carrot. So "white carrot cake" became "carrot cake" ?? ) There's the black version and the white version. Black version would have the thick black soy sauce added to it so it would be little bit sweet. This was the white version where cubes of white cake were visible.

Satay!! Tried a few different satay here. Other than the usual chicken/beef, we also had some 'unusual' 1s. I remember there was the chewy beef tripe but I can't remember what's the other 1 - either duck or turkey (update: just confirmed with LH, it was duck). Tripe was little bit too chewy, I think I prefer them yum cha style - braised till really soft. Duck was o.k, didn't really taste that much different to chicken. The satay marinate masked most of the taste of the meat itself anyway. Still interesting nonetheless :)

Now, something that I really really really want to bring into Australia - Mr.Bean franchise! I just absolutely love the soy milk soft serve!! It was so good!! So creamy and smooth... There just something I like with the soy flavour. Like it's not just plain old boring vanilla softserve we get from McD. When I was working in SG, I would get this for 'afternoon tea' at least once a week.

Here's the last meal we had in Malaysia before we board the plane to come back to Sydney. This was the chef's special home made tofu - the SMOOTHEST tofu ever!! The tofu was deep fried first before pouring the gravy over, the inside was so silky that it can easily pushed through the gap between our teeth. As smooth as the tofu dessert "tau fu fah" at yum cha.

Another chef's special - chicken in wine soup with rice noodle. The smell was incredible with the wine, mushroom, ginger and sesame oil. I don't mind having this again right now in this weather. Definitely would get warmed up straight away.

Another dish that my dad would order every single time 東坡肉 "dong po rou". Pieces of pork belly with layers of slippery fat it was so bad but so good! Surrounding the pork were some plain buns (man tou)饅頭 with a slit to make it easy for us to make a pork man tou sandwich. My mum's the hand model here :)

So, that's all folks! Now I'll just have to convince Robin that we need another honeymoon soon :D

P.S. I know I know... No pricing, not address, no telephone number.. If anyone really thinking of visiting any of these places, let me know.. I'm pretty sure I can at least give directions on how to get to there. Pricing wise, these are road side stall/ hawker, so I'm pretty sure they won't make a big dent to your wallet and no need for reservation :)

There's also no camera indicator this time simply because there were more than 1 places and I don't really want to put 3 or 4 indicators in 1 post :p Might look confusing.. hahaha.. o.k o.k .. I'm lazy .. :p

Azuma - Kushiyaki

2010-05-25T20:36:00.000+10:00

O.k.. I have to admit I'm getting lazy with my blog. Getting my brother's PS3 with Final Fantasy 13 on it doesn't help too :p Everyday I'll be thinking of what time I can get home and what time I can start playing. Suddenly I realised it's been a while since my last update. I shouldn't give all my attention to PS3 and ignore my blog readers. So here's a post on Japanese degustation that I had at Azuma Kushiyaki.

First course was Tuna & Salmon Sashimi, served with wasabi and soy. I liked the light and refreshing dressing.

Here's course#2 - tasting plate that had of oyster, meat (can't remember what meat, I think pork) and fried squid. Everything was nicely done. Pork was cooked but still moist and pinkish, squid had nice crunchy coat and oyster was really fresh.

The pretty looking course#3 served on a fan shapped plate - Assorted Kushiyaki - 5 grilled skewers selected by chef. From left to right, zuchini, prawn, chicken, beef tongue, beef. Highlight of the dish - beef tongue! That was everyone's favourite.

Side order - Azuma Cocktail - Light refreshing mix of sake, Lemoncello liquor and lime juice. Very nice cocktail. Guys might consider it a girly drink though. Very easy to get people drunk on this thing as it's so easy to drink, people could just drink it like softdrink and wouldn't feel the alcohol until it's too late :p

Course#4 - Tasting Plate of Azuma’s Unique Nigiri Sushi- Seared Salmon, Seared Kingfish, Marinated Tuna & Spider Rolls. Seared salmon, 1 word, YUM!! Needless to say more.

Course#5 - Premium Wagyu Beef Sirloin Steak With seasonal green salad. Really really tender wagyu beef, melt-in-the-mouth kind of soft and juicy-ness, just couldn't get enough of it.

Last course, dessert - Belgian Chocolate mousse, Green tea rolled cake and homemade icecream. The green tea rolled cake was so so so good! Not overly sweet, very very soft and the green tea flavouring was just nice. I wished to have more of this.

Definitely had a great time there that night (besides the fact that some never-should-be-seen photos were taken). Great food, great company :) As it was a dinner paid for me, I wasn't allowed to know the price. Had a look at the menu online, I'm guessing it's the $77p.p degustation (but, the menu seems to be slightly different now).

Ground Floor Regent Place Shopping

501 George Street

Sydney NSW 2000

Tel: (02) 9267 7775

The room that we had was fairly dark, so it was a bit hard to take photos. Plus they had long tables and benches in the room that were very hard to move, that just made it harder to take photo from different angles and to move around. Maybe it would be better photo wise if we were seated outside the room.

Pasta Zanmai - Sunway Pyramid

2010-05-18T13:54:00.000+10:00

Technically, this should be 1 of the honeymoon post. Since I've lost count of how many honeymoon post I've got, so I've decided to leave this out of the honeymoon series :p The next honeymoon post will definitely be the final post. Honeymoon was so long ago that it's getting boring already. Anyway, here's a lunch that we had 1 of those days when we were in Sunway Pyramid.
Before going back to Malaysia, my sister told me that she went to a pasta place in Malaysia and it was quite good. I thought 'go all the way to Malaysia to eat pasta?? what sort of pasta can you get in Malaysia that you can't get in Sydney??' Turned out there was pasta that we don't really see in Sydney - Japanese fusion pasta.

Ika to Ika Sumi no Pasta - "Surume" Squid & Squid-ink Pasta - RM19. I actually quite like this pasta but Robin felt like he's been 'cheated'. He thought when the menu say 'squid-ink pasta' it was those black pasta that was made with squid ink. Not normal pasta that added squid ink as a sauce. I don't mind that at all though. Though it taste quite good, really liked the crunchy garlic too.

Yup.. spaghetti in soup - Asari to Kinoko no Soup Pasta - Short-neck Clam & Japanese Mushroom Soup Pasta - RM26. It wasn't too bad, but it's just not really THAT special. Just like seafood soup, instead of noodle there was spaghetti.

For side dish, we had Ika Geso Karaage - Fried Squid Tentacles - RM12

Another side dish - Hotate Teriyaki - Grilled Scallop with Teriyaki Sauce - RM12. This wasn't as good as expected. I find that it wasn't quite fresh enough and the sauce was little bit too sweet.

Another spaghetti main that we got - Kani to Avocado no Gomadare Shitate - Crabmeat & Avocado Pasta with Sesame Sauce - RM23. I liked the sesame sauce. They actually gave some grinded sesame to go with it too.

They had some interesting drinks on the menu as well. Here's the Apple Green Tea with slices of green apple as garnish. Interesting flavour, the best way I can describe is that it's very apple-ish and very green tea (not much help I know :p).

I had the Minty Cucumber - RM 9. It's a very refreshing drink. Especially nice for hot weather like Malaysia.

Definitely an interesting meal with pasta that's not Italian style. Wouldn't say it's really really fantastic or really really awesome, but definitely don't mind going back again and try their other dishes on the menu.

Lot F1. 73, Sunway Pyramid Shopping Mall,
No. 3, Jalan PJS 11/15, Bandar Sunway,
46150 Petaling Jaya,
Selangor Darul Ehsan.

TEL: 03 - 7492 0710

It's inside a shopping mall, nicely lit, shouldn't have too much trouble with lighting. Depending on where you sit, might not have enough space to move back (if lens is not wide enough or have a bigger minimum focus distance) or move around that's all.

Foveaux

2010-05-11T17:02:00.008+10:00

1 day I just felt like eating out. Wanted something nice. So I found myself an excuse - my entertainment book is expiring and we should use it while we can. So flipping through the EB, we found a restaurant which I didn't know how to pronounce the name - Foveaux (correct me if I'm wrong, I checked with my workmate, I think it's "for-vor"??). We went online, checked the price, there was actually a price drop with their degustation menu. EB listed $95, but it was actually $75 for 6 course degustation. We thought, cool! that's where we should go!.

Started with some bread and butter. We had 2 options: whole meal or white. Thinking I'll be little bit healthier, I went for whole meal. 1 minute after finishing the first bread, totally forgot about being healthy and stuff, got myself a 2nd bread, now the white bread haha.. Seriously, I think my DNA is not programmed to eat healthy :p

Oysters with chardonnay vinegar pearls and salmon roe (supplementary $4 each) This was our additional course. Order it as extra entree. Looked very pretty, tasted very fresh too. The chardonnay vinegar pearls were interesting to eat together with the salty salmon roe. Each of them would burst with flavours to fill our mouth when bitten.

Amuse bouche that we got on that day - Warmed pumpkin veloute with liquorice oil. As far as I can remember, this was my first time having savoury liquorice. Usually it's with chocolate or the sweet type. Very nice at start, however towards the bottom, all the liquorice sank and it got a bit too heavy for me. I used to didn't like the liquorice after taste, but I think I'm starting to like it more now.

YW Course#1 - Cold smoked tuna, whipped ponzu, tomato salsa, avocado and sesame. Highlight for me - whipped ponzu. Very light and fluffy but full of flavour. Went really well with the smoked tuna.

RM Course #1 - Tomato and olive sorbet, cucumber flowers, olive jelly, sheep's fetta and capsicum paint. My first course was a warm dish, but this is a very cold dish. The tomato and olive sorbet was very refreshing, but I felt a bit weird eating it, that's simply because of the difference in temperature.

YW Course#2 - Caramalised pork belly, ceveche prawn, black pudding puree, shiso and prawn rice cracker. This was really really good!! Both our course#2 were combination of some meat + seafood. The rice crackers were very crunchy. Pork belly was nicely caramalised outside, soft and juicy inside.

RM Course#2 - Sauteed hervey bay scallops, venison heart, sesame puree, crushed beetroot and la goya jus. This was the first time we see venison heart on menu. It was little bit more firm than normal meat and little bit chewy. Scallop was really nice too. Sweet and nicely caramalised. However, Robin said he didn't understand the sesame puree though. It had very fragrant smell, but didn't really have much taste. Maybe that's the reason it was there. Also, maybe a little too much beetroot too. Little bit was nice, but too much of it would overpower the venison or the scallop which had a lighter taste in comparison.

YW Course #3 - Roast snapper, yellow capsicum puree, black olive paint, eggplant, caper, parsley and garlic toast crumbs. I would happily fry fish at home everyday if everytime my fish can come out like this. Perfectly crunchy skin with smooth and soft meat. Eggplant and the garlic toast crumbs were really good as well! I had to stop taking photo of this dish because Robin said "if you don't eat now the skin wont' be crunchy anymore". Straight away I put my camera down :p

RM Course#3 - Herb baked leather jacket, braised rabbit, lettuce, peas and green olive puree. Had a bite of this fish, but thought "meh.. Mine was nicer with the crunchy skin" :p

YW Course #4 -Wakame roasted veal sirloin with Jerusalem artichoke purée, asparagus, summer purslane and a burnt butter jus. Veal was nicely cooked. Can see from the photo of the distinct 2 tones of pink of the meat. First time eating summer purslane (the leafy greens on the plate). The texture was not like the usual soft leafy vege, it's a bit firm, had a crunchy bite to it like a thin slice of carrot.

RM Course#4 - Braised lamb neck, cous cous, prune puree, spanish onion, carrot and orange. 1 word to describe this dish - orange. It smelt too strong of orange even though there's no orange visible. The lamb was very soft, but I thought the orange oil was too strong.

Course#5 for both - salad of pineapple, kaffir lime, yellow curry with coconut sorbet and rice paper. Robin was very amazed with the rice paper. Very thin crispy rice cracker on the top. Coconut sorbet was very refreshing, but I didn't really like the kaffir lime leaves in the pineapple salad. When I ate the coconut sorbet, all I tasted/smelt was kaffir lime and no coconut. Only when I ate the sorbet on it's own I could taste coconut.

YW Course#6 - Braised watermelon, passionfruit marshmallow, sheep's yoghurt sorbet, pink grapefruit, fruit salad sage and crumble. My favourite, definitely the passionfruit marshmallow. Lightly toasted on top, thick and fluffy the rest. I actually liked it a lot because it was heavier than the normal supermarket marshmallow. It felt more 'substantial'. Braised watermelon was not as sweet as expected. Sheep's yoghurt sorbet was actually quite light. Not as rich as it sounded like. Didn't really like the fruit salad sage though. Maybe I'm just not a herb-y kind of person. Thought the herb smell was too strong again.

RM Course#6 - Tobacco roasted pears with pecan gelato, raspberries, candied celery and chocolate wafers. Tobacco roasted pears were quite nice. Added some smokey flavour to the sweet pear. Didn't try the candied celery, didn't sound like something I would enjoy :p

Overall, I'm quite happy with the choices that I've made. As you can see, we had 2 options for each course. What happened was I picked what I want for each course, Robin would have the other dish so that we tried the whole menu. I think I picked all the nicer options :p

$75 for 6 course degustation (additional $30 or $50 for matching wine)
1/65-67 Foveaux St
Surry Hills NSW 2010
(02) 9211 0664

Notice the new feature of my blog? Well, the inventor (credit to MC for idea) didn't give it a name, so let's just call it the indicator :p Basically it's where I rate how easy or hard I find to take photo in the restaurant - whether the lighting is good, the seating arrangement, shadows etc.

For this restaurant I gave 1.5 camera because it was actually quite hard to take photo there. It was quite dark. Well, good for a nice dinner date, but not for taking photos (I don't like using flash and I don't like going past ISO400). Photos are actually quite grainy if I blow them up.

Honeymoon Part 6 - Jaan par André

2010-05-02T22:40:00.004+10:00

Initially we didn't really plan to go Singapore during honeymoon. It's just that 1 of our friend from Hong Kong was assigned to work there for a couple months, so we thought why not meet him at Singapore (since he invited us to stay at his luxurious apartment provided by his company). So we kinda just slotted 2 days in our schedule to give SG a quick visit. Once I decided that I'd be going to SG, straight away I thought of a post by es&t that I read a few months back. That post made such an impression because of the beautiful and colourful photos. So right after I booked my air ticket, I booked myself a table at Jaan par Andre (by the way, they got into the top 50 restaurant in the world recently).

If I wasn't paying attention to what the waiter was saying and I didn't read about it beforehand, I probably would think these were just some twigs from trees for table decoration. No, these were the bread and butter to start our meal with. There were 2 types of breadsticks here, the lighter in colour were the parmesan flavoured, the darker colour were squid ink. Once started nibbling on them, there was no way to stop until each and every stick was gone.

Entre #1 - PANACHE DE FRUIT DE MER - Panache of seafood, freshly pickled baby vegetables, spiced kaffir lime consommé. 1 thing about all the dishes in this restaurant, ALL of them looked absolutely stunning. It's so pretty that I have to show 2 photos of the same dish from different angle.

Maybe I've been watching stargate too much lately. The piece of prawn wrapped with jelly in the middle just looked like an alien egg of some sort :p

Entree#2 - GELEE DE FOIE GRAS CHAUDE "A LA FORESTIERE" - Hot foie gras jelly topped with wild mushroom fricassess, black winter truffle coulis.

Main #1 - "BOUDIN BLANC" DE MEDITERRANEE FAIT MAISON - light smoked homemade "boudin blanc" of Mediterranean seafood lobster emulsion, ginger scented william pear compote.

Main#2 SHORT RIB ROTI TRENTE-SIX HEURS AU CHARBON AROMATIQUE - Thirty-six hour roast short rib coated with aromatic charcoal, braised truffled polenta and cevenne onion. The meat was really good. Very tender and the charcoal coat just smelt so good. The 2 brown spherical object were actually some jelly like cream. Little bit sweet and very creamy. Really nice with the meat.

Dessert#1 - TARTE AU CITRON - "Lemon tart" on mini churros, granité of pink Campari- grapefruit. First thing we noticed about this dessert, they used the same dessert plate as Quay :) I like the sour grapefruit slushy/sorbet, but Robin found it too sour. As for churros, I think I still prefer them with warm melted chocolate.

Dessert#2 - Snickers - Snickers version 2009 (we had it in 2010 though :p) I really enjoyed it - definitely way better than the normal snickers. There was this cream with a pool of little black dots in the middle. No idea what that was, but looked pretty interesting :)

1 thing to mention about this restaurant is that their service was really quick. I mean really really quick. As soon as we sat, the breadsticks were out. Right after we finished the breadsticks, IMMIDIATELY we got our entree. The was no break between each dish. The whole 3 course meal was over within an hour. I was thinking of a relaxing lunch, sitting at level 70, enjoying the view a bit. However, with all the dishes came out that quickly, it felt a bit like we were being rushed out. Not exactly as 'relaxing' as I would like it to be.

If we didn't had our dinner at Quay just few weeks before we visited Jaan, we would be really impressed. However, because we just visited Quay, we couldn't help but compared the 2. Both restaurants served really incredible looking dishes. Both restaurant had the best view in each city. However, in terms of taste, Quay actually managed to impress the 2 of us a lot more.

3 courses at SGD58++ per person

Jaan par Andre
2 Stamford Road
70F Swissotel The Stamford
Tel:6837 3322

Taste of Shanghai - Eastwood

2010-04-29T00:25:00.000+10:00

Once in a while I do crave for some nice Shanghai food. The last time it happened, we ended up at Eastwood in a restaurant called Taste of Shanghai.

I think people rarely go to any Shanghainese restaurant and not order any xiao long bao (steamed mini pork buns). This was 1 of the first dish we saw on the menu, right in the middle of page 1 - Shanghai Steamed xiao long bao $8.80. Usually the way I 'judge' my xiao long bao is 1. whether the skin break easily when I try to lift it with chopsticks 2. whether there is steaming hot soup squirting out when I take my first bite.

We also ordered the Steamed xiao long bao with crab meat $10.80. These xlb actually met the 2 prerequisites of good xlb for me. The skin didn't break easily, but of course we still had to be very careful. I used to not like having these with vinegar, but now I've actually learnt to enjoy dipping them in little bit of vinegar to add more taste.

This was our Szechuan style shredded pork plus golden bun $14.80 + $5. The deep fried buns (man tou) were really good. Crispy on the outside, soft like cotton on the inside. The bun is plain, little bit sweet. Really nice to have it with the shredded pork (which would've been slightly too salty if eaten without the bun).

Ham pastry $8.80. Here's how it looked like on the inside. Finely diced ham with some shallot wrapped in layers of crispy pastry and some sesame seeds on top.

Here's another 1 that I quite like too - XO sauce stir fried Shanghai rice cake (didn't get to check the price for this). The rice cake was chewy, the texture was very different from normal noodles.

Another dish that I just had to order everytime I visit a Shanghainese restaurant was this Pan fried pork bun $9.80. Usually the filling inside is similar to those in xlb. There would be some soup inside the buns too. The difference between this and xlb was that the bun itself was thicker and fluffier and the bottom part of the bun was very crispy.

Here's the most expensive dish of the night - live barramundi with fermented rice and glutinous ball $28.80. The glutinous balls were actually my favourite part of the dish. Not that there's anything wrong with the fish, the fish itself was perfect! It's just more fun to try picking as many of the slippery sweet chewy balls up as possible with chopsticks. Good test of one's chopstick skills :)

Another dinner where we just ordered too much again. Oh well, at least it solved the problem of next day's lunch at work.

Taste of Shanghai - Eastwood

200 Rowe St

Eastwood 2122 NSW

Phone: (02) 9804 0388

Honeymoon Part 5

2010-04-24T01:05:00.003+10:00

After leaving Pangkor Laut Resort, we drove further north to another island - Penang with 1 aim in our minds - food! More yummy food!! As a wedding gift from my best friend, we got to stay at a very modern hotel - G Hotel - located at the famous Gurney Drive close to many of the famous hawker centres.
On the first night, straight away we went to the spot where I remember all the nice hawkers were (the last time I was at Gurney Drive was I think probably around 10 yrs ago).

The 1 thing that we had to have was the Penang fried kuay teow. Unfortunately the standard of food at all these hawkers here had dropped. Either that or our expectation were too high from all the anticipation since months ago. This was oily, soggy, not what a good char kuay teow supposed to be.

Another famous local Penang food that was ruined by the deteriorating hawkers - Oysters omelette. The oysters weren't fresh at all with very strong fishy smell. Together with the overly gooey starchy mix, it just wasn't pleasant at all.

Thinking I should get something that can't really go wrong but still slightly different (which only 1 hawker was selling out of 30 or so of them) - a spicy wonton noodle. I totally forgot that I was in Malaysia. When they wrote spicy, it was SPICY INDEED - unlike Sydney where most of the 'spicy' stuff was around sweet chilli level of spiciness. From the photo it looks quite 'tame', but if you have a closer look, you'll see the orange 'fringe' at the side of the white polystyrene box - which was the chilli oil that was added to the gravy. This thing BURNS!! Robin had 1 mouthful and couldn't take it. I tried and had a few mouthful, but still couldn't finish it. So just ate the deep fried wonton and the vege. So nope, didn't leave a good impression either. Even though none of these was as good as we were expecting them to, we were still full (or rather appetite was ruined). So just got ourselves some drinks and went back to hotel.

The next morning we decided that we won't try anything that's not on our "Penang good food directory". We didn't use the directory the day before because from memory the Gurney Drive hawker centre was really good + we were tired from driving so thought we would just have something nearby. So, the first thing we wanted to get is the best Penang char kuay teow. We managed to find the stall, but it was VERY HARD to find a parking in that area. We had to go round the block like 3 times for a street parking. It was worth it though. The stall was inside a coffee shop and while waiting for our char kuay teow we also ordered some yam cake from a different stall. This yam cake is so good with the deep fried shallot and dried prawns.

Knowing that the servings were going to be small, we also ordered a prawn noodle to share. Luckily the chilli was served separately in the spoon instead of mixing it in the soup. So Robin actually managed to eat this as well.

Now here's the famous Sisters Char Kuay Teow. This was sooooo much better than the other we had the night before!!! Tasted better, looked better, we were much happier with this. (For those who might want to know, this is Sisters at Jalan Macalister - near junction of Jalan Macalister/Jalan Perak.) 1 thing that I miss in char kuay teow is the cockles. They don't seem to fry kuay teow with cockles anymore. Prawns were used instead.

As for the best part of this Penang trip, the asam laksa!! A friend took me there years ago, which I had absolutely no idea how to get back there again. The only thing I remember was that it was near Kek Lok Si Temple. We didn't really have anything to do after our breakfast, so we decided to go do some sight seeing since it's Robin's first time at Penang. Guess what we found on our way?? This AWESOME asam laksa stall!! Thanks to the section of my brain that's keeping 'unimportant information', I was surprised that I could actually recognise the stall - at the side of the road with the sugarcane juice stall next to it. Both stalls were still there, just like how I remembered from a few years ago. The laksa wasn't as hot as it looked. We just had to pick the chilli out :p The soup was sour from the asam (tamarind) with lots of shredded fish. The black patch was the sweet prawn paste that was added on top. The noodle was very smooth and slippery (fun to slurp loudly :p). Together with some mint leaves, pineapple and onion, this was quite an appetizing dish which wouldn't leave you feeling bloated and queasy.

So conclusion, Gurney Drive was a disappointment to us. Luckily we stumbled upon this laksa stall and many thanks to Elaine for the food directory. Also many thanks to CH for the nice stay at G Hotel which served us ice-cream on arrival kekeke :)

Honeymoon Part 4

2010-04-18T02:07:00.003+10:00

I know it's been a while since I came back from honeymoon. As you can see, I still haven't quite caught up with my bunch of backlog yet haha.. Oh well, I'll just have to try harder to write more :p Anyway, I'll show a few more photos of my stay at Pangkor Laut Resort.

1 afternoon while we were walking back to our room, we saw a family of 'locals' on our way. They were waiting for someone to forget closing their door so that they could go to the mini bar and enjoy some drinks and nuts. That's why it was very important to lock the door behind when we were going in or out the room.

Here's the other local that we met around the island. Our friend here seemed to enjoy watching our tennis game, sitting near the court not afraid of those flying tennis balls at all.

Another family of locals - garfish. They were right outside of our balcony. Probably around 6 or 7 of them every night just gathering outside of our room. I think that's their sleeping place or something :p

Alright, enough of our new friends. Here's our dinner. Bread and butter to start off with.

Robin ordered the mixed tempura for entree and I got the otak-otak (grilled fish paste wrapped in banana leaves).

I find this to be quite different to the 'normal' otak-otak that I was used to. My dad used to get otak-otak from Muar in Malaysia. Muar's otak-otak was shorter but flatter, this otak-otak served here were longer but thicker. Taste quite different too. I still prefer the Muar type otak-otak than this. Seemed like the fish paste they used here had different kind of mixture in them.

Thinking I would have something 'local', so I ordered the nasi kandar It came with variety of curries and vegetables. I was quite happy when I saw the papadums but I was disappointed when I started breaking them. They had gone slightly soggy and not as cripy as they should. The curries were nice, not too spicy which suited me.

Robin ordered something more 'western' - ginger and coriander crusted grouper. It was served with mashed purple yam, zuchini and red bell pepper coulis. The mashed purple yam was quite an interesting substitute to the more common mashed potato.
We had scoops of ice-cream for dessert, which weren't anything great plus the lighting wasn't ideal, so I had skipped the photos.

We took a walk to the jetty after dinner. See the faint lights in the distance? Those were the lights from the main Pangkor island.

The pool and the beach early in the morning on our last day at PLR. As I have shown the breakfast buffet in earlier post, so we'll skip right to lunch on that day.

We had to leave the island at 2, so we decided to have an early lunch which wasn't too long after our buffet breakfast, so we just ordered some entrees to share and desserts. Here's our prawn salad.

Second entree, vegetable spring roll.

Both of us had the same dessert - tofu pannacotta. Very very nice dessert. The pannacotta itseld was similar to the 1 I had at musashi, but the presentation was much better here and the condiments were different. Special mention to the gooseberry here.

This was the first time I tried a gooseberry. Kinda look like a cherry, but I can't really remember how the taste was already :p

More anchovies at the jetty on our way back.

Some bigger 1s too! Seriously, if anyone planning to visit, highly recommend to bring a net. Then you'll have unlimited supply of ikan bilis for sambal or nasi lemak.

Last photo from this beautiful island, my failed attempt of panorama of Emerald Beach. I guess I'll have to go back there again so that I can try again. Agree? :D

Criniti's @ Parramatta

2010-04-14T21:53:00.002+10:00

This has to be the busiest restaurant among all others on Church Street at Parramatta. When mum and friends came over for a visit, bro decided to book a table and ordered the biggest pizza I had seen. They ordered some garlic bread to start with (I was late and by the time I got there, all I saw was empty plates which had garlic bread on them :p) Luckily that was the only thing I missed.

We had the chicken caesar salad ($24.90) to share for the table. Nicely grilled chicken, creamy sauce, big pieces of grated cheese and crispy fresh lettuce. Nothing to complain about for a chicken caesar salad.

Just in case there wasn't enough, brother also ordered some pasta. I'm guessing my sister picked this fettucine boscaiola ($28.90) because this is her favourite pasta sauce.

Now, here's the reason bro wanted to bring us there. The 1 meter long pizza! The 3 toppings that we had for our pizza al metro (price varies depending on toppings) were Godfather, Australiana and funghi (front to back).

Now I know why this restaurant is always busy. Even late at night when others are almost empty there's probably still some queue outside waiting for table here. It's not exactly cheap eat, but when we averaged it out among the 8 or 9 of us, it was actually not too bad.

Criniti's Southern Italian Cuisine

291 Church Street,

Parramatta NSW

Tel: 1300 274 648