Sugar Hit - Grace Cafe

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

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