Friday 15 April 2011

Sydney food highlights and Zumbo macarons


Recently Mr B and I made a quick trip to Sydney. I didn't take many photos of all the glorious food we ate (too busy eating it!), but here are some food highlights:

Ms G.'s - Potts Point http://www.merivale.com/#/msgs/msgs

Coming from the Merivale crowd, you'd expect nothing but the beautiful people. It's also located in a funky renovated terrace smack bang behind the heart of  Kingscross. Be prepared to wait for a table. We amused ourselves with cocktails in the bar upstairs (drank out of bubble tea cups) until they called us for the table. Ms G.'s has been blogged and loved by many but highlights for me, OJ and Brades included:

Mini bahn mi: chicken katsu mini burgers - we could have dropped anchor on them and ate 20 - so good!
Jow's sweet and sour lamb ribs: finger lickn' good! Crispy skin with tender soft lamby goodness
Stoner's Delight: two words - doughnut ice-cream. Yep, tastes just like a doughnut. Awesome.

Bill's - Woollahra http://www.bills.com.au/

It was a solo breakfast for me without Mr B. I found myself in Woollahra with more of the fabulous people, waiting patiently for the Donna Hay General Store to open at 10am. It was a 'quiet' Friday morning service apparently, but with only 3 or so tables free, I saw nothing quiet about this. That said, staff were efficient, friendly and the food was quality as always. I wasn't keen on a big cooked breakfast as I knew where I was going later (Zumbo!) so I opted for the 5 grain porridge with stewed fruit and brown sugar, along with house blended chai tea made on soy milk (the only way!). The serving of porridge was HUGE - it would have fed four people, so I barely scraped the top and ate the fruit. It was lovely and the chai came with a little glass of warmed honey, just the way I like it.

Spice Temple - Sydney http://www.rockpool.com.au/sydney/spice-temple/

Last visit, Mr B and I ate upstairs from the Spice Temple in Neil Perry's other restaurant in the area, the Rockpool Bar and Grill. While going upstairs to Rockpool B & G, I saw a door with a strange video screen on it. This time we decided to find out what was behind the video door. We had an early booking (6pm) as that was all that was left a week out from the day we wanted to eat. We arrived and were seated at the bar until the restaurant floor opened. We had some drinks and some spiced popcorn and then were shown our seats, right by the much talked about portraits of beautiful Asian women. The interior is incredibly dark and sexy at dinner time and we did notice the cool soundtrack, apparently mixed especially by a DJ (no iPod mix 'tapes' here!). The highlights here for us:

The non-alcoholic soda's: Surprisingly these were amazing. I'm still dreaming of the refreshing apple and jasmine soda. Fresh apple juice blended with delicate jasmine tea with a hint of cucumber. I also tried the lavender and mint soda and the lemongrass and rose. All go well with the spicier dishes.
Steamed eggplant with three flavours: this was sweet and salty and a great start to the meal.
Stir fried cumin lamb with steamed bread pockets: The steamed bread pockets were very curious but extremely tasty. They reminded me of a more sturdy dough used for BBQ pork buns, in a rectangular shape with an opening to stuff them full of the tasty lamb stir fry. Thankfully the chef's cut the meat small so you can get more lamb in the pockets!

Hugo's - Manly Wharf  http://www.hugos.com.au/

It wasn't our intention to end up at Hugo's when we decided to go to Manly for the day. The quintessential Manly setting where Hugo's is situated however (water, Manly ferry etc) sold us. We were lucky to get in for Sunday lunch, competing with lots of larger groups of families and friends having a lazy Sunday lunch. We settled on a simple pepperoni pizza and a pear, parmesan and rocket salad (I may have eaten Ben and Jerry's before this meal!). If you do make the trip to Manly, call ahead to Hugo's for a booking, it is totally worth the view, the food and the atmosphere.

Zumbo

Last but not least, let me share these little gleaming Zumbo jewels with you. I decided to buy one of each of the flavours on sale on the day (I visited the Rozelle store). The lady who served me asked "Are these for tonight? Do you want to write the flavours down so you can tell everyone?". I of course agreed, but did not let on that the 'everyone' she thought they were for was just Mr B and I. Yep, we ate the lot. I ate three before I'd driven away from the shop so alas for Mr B, he only got to taste 9 of the flavours.

One word: SENSATIONAL!


Can you tell I took this in the car before eating the three? :-)

The flavours from bottom to top:

Musk
Salted Butter Caramel
Chocolate
Choc-Orange
Pancakes with Maple Syrup (My absolute favourite! So good!)
Peach and Lime
Blackberry
Passionfruit
Banana
Lime and Pineapple
Raspberry and Licorice
Honey, Apricot and Yoghurt

Enjoy!

Bx

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