Orana

Bread proofing at the table

Potato damper on lemon myrtle smoked macadamia butter & native thyme

Hot-smoked pipis & beach succulents

Kangaroo tendon & tasmanian mountain pepper

Riberry, native juniper, muntrie & mango

Spencer Gulf prawn & Davidson plum

Pancetta, potato & pepper pie

Smoky Bay Oyster

Beetroot Roses

Cuttlefish, dry aged beef, finger lime & sea parsley

Freshly baked bread (from the dough that was proofing at the table)

Yabby with potato & young macadamia salad

Kohlrabi, dorrigo, quandong & lemon myrtle

Coorong mullet, lemon iron bark, warrigal greens & Geladton wax (and green ants)

South Devon beef, blackberry, wild garlic, smoked potato & leek

Paperbark, macadamia & zig zag wattle

Native currant fool

Jillungin tea, bottle brush & tree nut tea

Set buffalo milk, strawberry & eucalyptus

Bennelong

I think I need to ease myself back into writing again. So let's just keep it short and simple for now. Went to Bennelong for lunch to celebrate Robin's birthday. Here are the photos. 

No idea what Kombucha was, just ordered it because I saw words like lime and mint on the drinks menu. 

Robin's entree Seared blue mackerel, takuan pickles, preserved lemon, green wheat, marrow broth, nasturtiums

My entree Smoked Blackmore Wagyu tartare, fermented chilli paste, cultured cream & grains, mushrooms, seaweed, egg yolk

Robin's main Roasted John Dory, served on teh bone, orach, turnips, native coastal greens, umami butter

My main Snapper fillet, strawberry clams, purple asparagus, garlic chives, ice plant, garlic blossoms

Complimentary cupcake!!! I now learn to always tell them what I'm celebrating when I book the table. Most of the time you might not get anything, but maybe once in a while when you're lucky you will get THE BEST CUPCAKE EVER!! 

Robin's dessert Cherry Jam Lamington. His comment after eating is "How am I supposed to go back to normal lamington from Coles now?" Menu is not very descriptive so I'll have to explain a little. The white fluffy stuff was shaved coconut ice cream. The covering chocolate was thick and gooey. The tart cherry jam inside just cut through the sweetness of the chocolate, so that overall it's not overly sweet. 

 My Pavlova. I ordered this because it looked nothing like a normal pavlova. Saw this Opera House looking dessert on some other blogs before and it just got stuck in my head. So I just had to order it. 

 

There we go. First blog in almost 3 years :) Hope it won't be another 3 years till the next post. 

Bennelong Restaurant

Sydney Opera House

Bennelong Point, Sydney NSW 2000

Tel: 02-9240 8000

Kikunoi - My 1st 3 Michelin stars restaurant!!

I'll just upload photos and brief description of the dishes as I remember because I've lost the menu *sigh*.. Photos are not doing any justice to the food anyway. I failed big time at taking photos of these dishes... :( Loved the dishes, but I didn't like any of the photos that I took. None of them could show how nice the food was!! 

My sparkling sake. I liked it so much that I went around Kyoto liquor store looking for it. Bought a bottle of it back to Sydney :D Found out that the restaurant only charged little bit more than the shop which we thought was quite good because they didn't try to rip people off haha.. 

**Good news! I found the menu! haha..** So here's the Assortment of appetizers:" horse reins" sushi, ume agar-agar jelly, icefish with yuzu, tofu marinated in red-pickled ume, fuki(coltsfoot) bud marinated in miso, rapini dressed with mustard, cod roe terrine, sweet black beans, wasabi green. Many things on the plate, had never tasted any of these things before. Favourite was actually the wasabi greens. Crunchy sweet refreshing vegetable with a bit of wasabi kick. Very interesting (not to say the rest were not though..) 

Robin's sake. Very nice sake too. We wanted to buy and bring this back as well, but couldn't find it anywhere :( 

Steamed prawn, grated red turnip, ginger served in a cup with a wooden spoon. Upon serving the dish, the waitress gestured to us that we were supposed to stir and mix everything in the cup before eating. So here's photo of the stirred stuff. 

This bowl doesn't look like much, but there were many things in there Sashimi of flounder and botan prawn, prawn roe, flounder liver sauce, udo(wild mountain vegetable) curl, carrot curl, wasabi, marinated fresh nori. The sauce was something really different. Thick and creamy with intense fish flavour, looks almost like a runny peanut butter but taste nothing like it. 

Sashimi of koshini (young bluefin tuna), soy marinated egg yolk sauce. For us Malaysian who grew up on soft boiled eggs, here's the ultimate version of it. I didn't think much of the sashimi, but the egg yolk sauce... oh the sauce... I literally licked the saucer clean. It's like soft boiled egg but only the best part and it was concentrated - so much flavour and so creamy. 

Minced duck, yomogi (Japanese mugwort) dumpling, kujo onion, arrowhead root, giant turnip slice, daikon, carrot, tetragon leaf, gold leaf. Yup, I ate gold. According to the book, this was supposed to make with tortoise. I guess they ran out of tortoise, so we got duck. A lot less exotic :p 

Grilled halibut, dried karasumi (grey mullet roe), shiitake mushroom. See the "crust"? That's the grey mullet roe. Whole piece of halibut is covered with the mullet roe. Perfectly grilled. Sweet, juicy, tender fish with roes going everywhere in the mouth. 

Kumquat-wasabi sorbet. I guessed we did need the palate cleanser after having popping roes all over our mouths :) It was quite strong with wasabi flavour - a bit of the clearing the nostril action there. Very nice though. I don't understand why all the restaurants never give enough of the palate cleanser haha.. 

Steamed cod milt tofu in a san-po-kan citrus cup, red pepper, ponzu. Most unforgettable dish of the meal! That was because we didn't know what milt was haha.. Smells really good, very yummy, very soft, wobbly and creamy. 

Here's a closer look of the cod milt. It doesn't look good, but it's very very nice. Thin membrane on the outside, once bitten, the sweet creamy filling will burst and fill the mouth with it. I thought it was yum, didn't know what it was, thought it looked like a brain or intestine or some internal organs. Then I checked dictionary between dishes and found out "Fish sperm or sperm-filled reproductive gland" Luckily I checked AFTER I ate. 

Hotpot of yellowtail, tofu, shogoin turnip, kintoki carrot, kujo onion, mibuna leaf, ponzu, yuzu. By that time, we were already stuffed. Could barely finish the fish. Didn't even drink the soup. 

Last of the savoury dish - Glutinous rice steamed with anago eel, kinome herb, burdock root and white miso soup, fried burdock root, seven spice powder, pickled daikon stalk, pickled daikon leaf, red pickled chopped eggplant. I remember the pickled egg plant very sour. We were so so stuffed after this. Couldn't finish the rice. It was really good though! So we just ate really really slowly.. 

Finally.. dessert! Strawberry ice cream, strawberry soup. Digress a bit, Japan did have really really nice strawberries. The more expensive the nicer they were. Even saw some white strawberries. Not sure how they taste though. Didn't buy them because they costed like AUD25 for 9 strawberries hahaha.. So if anyone of you have tried the white strawberries let me know. I'm really curious on whether they are nicer than the red strawberries, whether they are worth the money. 

So here's my very first experience in a michelin stars restaurant. Definitely a memorable trip. Highly recommended for those who are visiting Kyoto :) However, booking can only be done via hotel. They won't accept any reservation by direct phone call. 

For more information, please visit their website at http://kikunoi.jp/english/store/

Tomislav

To celebrate our 3rd anniversary, we handed the little monster to in laws and headed to Tomislav at Kings Cross. Thought we should enjoy our night out, so we went for the degustation which wasn't on the menu. Apparently it's just whatever the chef felt like serving on that day. Some might be on the menu, some might not. Sounded fun and adventurous, so we went for it :) 

Started with some awesome rice crackers and a perfume bottle with vinegar in it. So you can have as much or as little vinegar as you want. 

Here's some spraying in action :D

THE best marshmallow ever!! 3 cheese marshmallow. We actually asked the waitress if we could buy these for take away haha.. :p 

Soft Polenta Cream with apple ice and caramel ice cream.  I really like the creamy polenta, but not so sure about mixing it with the cold apple ice... still good though.. 

Churned butter to go with sour dough from the Iggy's bakery. Apparently that bakery got really good bread according to my chef bro in law. Didn't think much of that bread (tasted like a normal sour dough to me haha..) , but I liked the butter. 

Spanish makerel carpaccio with 

salad burnette, mackerel mousse,

prawn crackers. Luckily Robin said he still prefers my mum's homemade prawn crakers. Otherwise he would've gotten into whole lot of trouble hahaha.. :p 

Poached yellow fin tuna with sour potato, rainforest lime, grilled Chinese cabbage. 1 of the best dishes of the night. Next time I'll try making mashed potato with some lime zest on it. Tasted really good!! 

Butter poached scallops with seaweed - peas shoots, Crystal Bay prawns. 

Roast Veal Sweetbread with grilled mango, foie gras crumbs, poached quail’s yolk. The foie gras crumbs were so good!!! It was icy cold, creamy, rich, yet crumbly. So so good. 

Grilled blackmore's tongue with 

sour beetroot, malt ice cream, 

grilled purple onions. 

Interesting salad for extra side dish. Lettuce with hazelnut and cranberries. 

Lastly, Lemon cheesecake with mint crumbs, vanilla ice cream, compressed watermelon. Not sure what does compressed watermelon mean. It looked and tasted like normal watermelon to me haha.. Oh well.. maybe they did something to it but I didn't notice.. 

Overall it was a great night out. Really really happy with the food. Almost had the whole restaurant to ourselves because there weren't anyone else other than 1 other customer that came in half way through out our meal. Service was excellent! As the degustation wasn't on the menu, so I had to quickly write down the dishes on my phone as the waitress served them. Guess what happens with my clumsy fingers? I accidentally deleted the note. Couldn't be bothered trying to remember everything from the start, so I asked the waitress for the menu. She said she would type it out in and email to me which she did the next day. So it was very nice of her. Only thing that didn't work is lighting wasn't perfect for photos. Oh well... sorry people.. If they start opening at lunch time I'll go again and try to take nicer photos heehee.. :) 

Tomislav Restaurant

2/13 Kirketon Rd, Sydney NSW 2010

Tel:02-9356 4535

Hours: 6:00 pm–11:00 pm 

Closed Monday