It must be this cold weather that’s been making me crave a good bowl of Har Mee (Prawn noodle soup), but for the past couple of years I haven’t been able to find a decent bowl. The best in Sydney was ‘the dungeon’ (as we called it) on Castleraegh Street, but ever since it closed about 4 years ago I’ve been left stranded (and hungry).

When Vick introduced me to To’s Malaysian Gourmet in North Sydney I knew the drought was over, though my laziness to walk to North Sydney does prevent me from time to time. I really should make the trip to North Sydney more often, their Har Mee is awesome! And when you order take-away you get 2 bowls! Yum yum. Though the only problem with eating at your desk is that you’re left with orange spots all over your screen and keyboard. Oh well, it’s worth it!

And she’s back! After 10 months gallivanting around the globe Lisa’s back in Oz (for how long, nobody knows).

To catch up on all the juicy goss we headed to Habib’s at Bankstown for a garlic sauced charcoal chicken feast. 9 girls; 2 family meals and an additional quarter chicken later; and we were a happy bunch of garlicky girls.

After hearing what I imagine was only a glimpse of the stories to come, I must say I’m even more motivated to fly away on a jet plane. Traveling in 2011 is definitely on the cards.

Good to have you back Lisa! Missed my drinking buddy. =P

Weird stuff always happens to Sonja, when she went to see the Eiffel Tower a giant spit ball landed in her ear, that’s right IN her ear. The wind must have been really strong at the exact second it was passing her ear and projected the spit ball horizontally into her ear. Gross. As a result of weird stuff following Sonja she’s got a lot of really interesting stories, and her birthday was just another one to add to the pile.

She chose this tiny Swiss restaurant. The food was okay, thought I found it a bit rude; like the service (but I’ll get to that later). Here’s my chicken schnitzel giving me the finger.

Jenny, for some bizarre reason, went with the pork hock. Boy did she get a shock when it arrived, the thing was a beast.

The food was pretty good but the service was … I don’t know … weird. Half of the time we weren’t sure if the host was joking around with us or if he really didn’t want us to ask what was in the garden salad. Let me paint the scene.

Anna ordered a garden salad to go with her meal.
Connie – indecisive about the salad – then ask what’s in the garden salad.

Fair enough question.

The host looked mortified that she asked and instead of just describing what was in the salad he said “Why do you need to ask? How about I bring out her salad (Anna’s) and you can see that and then decide if you want one”.

Okay…

The night continued in the same fashion filled with a lot of awkward silent WTF looks throughout the restaurant. He even made a comment once saying “The food is all good here, service not so good, but the food is good.” At the time we weren’t sure if we were meant to take that literally, but by the end of the night we figured he wasn’t joking.

After debating about who should ask for the bill, it finally arrived as a scrambled messy piece of paper. Because I didn’t have any money on me I was going to take the cash and pay for the meal on my card. The host freaked out saying I couldn’t do that and that it’s illegal, then went on a rant about not letting me do that. WTF – chill out! Instead he let me pay for my part of the bill on card and took the cash. Tom’s comment of “Oh you like cash do you” didn’t help the situation either.

Let’s just say we’re not going back there anytime soon.

It was time for my tri-yearly catch up with Mish so, as usual, we raided her Entertainment book for the best coupons. Corelli’s cafe in Newtown was the winner with a 2-for-1 coupon. Total damage for a heap of coffee and a belly full of good food $10 each. Bargain.

Whoever first thought of serving coffee in a soup bowl is genius, perhaps a crazy caffeine-addicted genius but a genius nonetheless. I must admit I struggled with my coffee, I’d nearly finished my bowl when I realised my hands were shaking so I thought it best to resign and admit defeat. Should have waved the white flag earlier, I was up half the night buzzing.

The corn fritters are a must. I was so into my corn fritters I’d forgotten I about the pile of bacon on the plate.

After stuffing ourselves silly we ventured down the road to score another 2-for-1 deal at Cold Rock Ice Creamery. Being in the mood for something different I decided to make up a new mix: Mango Yoghurt ice-cream with Bounty mix in. Strange, but it was actually really nice. I guess a better indicator of taste would be: Would I order it again? Sure would.

With ‘Shire people’ never leaving The Shire, we all made the long voyage down to there to celebrate Nga’s Birthday. It was Opah restaurant for a Greek banquet where I had to make sure I paced myself or suffer the consequences of being too full for cake – the surprise Cold Rock ice cream cake. This cake was a killer with 3 different layers of ice cream goodness:

The first layer: Cookies and cream ice-cream with Maltesers
The second layer: Vanilla ice-cream with gummi bears (Nga’s favourite, though most of us ended up spitting out the gummi bears)
The third layer was: Ferrero Rocher ice-cream with nuts and Nutella.

Drool… It really was an awesome cake and I think a new standard for birthdays to come. Agata – you’re next!

I don’t know if it was because we were in The Shire but it seriously did not stop raining! Even the simple task of walking across the road from the restaurant to Northies (or the RSL as Jenny would call it) required a lot of persuasion, and we’re usually not one to need a lot of persuasion when there’s alcohol. Speaking of alcohol, I think the birthday girl had a bit too much.

Happy Birthday Nga!

I headed to Etch Restaurant for a catch up dinner with some of the girls from uni, I haven’t seen some of them in years so it was a long over due dinner. Every time we meet up we know we’re in for a good laugh, and a stomach work out because we usually end up doubled-over on the floor clutching our stomach with tears in our eyes from laughing too much. Dinner, even though at a fancy restaurant, was no different. We were laughing so hard we had tears in our eyes, were probably the loudest table there and I’m pretty sure the staff at the restaurant were having a good laugh at us too.

If you go to Etch I would highly recommend the degustation menu – it was frickin awesome! And at $85, it’s a bargain.
Here are the pics (sorry they aren’t great, no flash and no tripod = noisy photos that just don’t do the food justice):

Marinated Hiramasa kingfish, avocado, wasabi mayonnaise and burnt lime.
What a stunning opener.

Pan roasted Queensland scallops, cauliflower puree, bhaji, curry oil
Yum and yum with yum spread on the plate. Can you tell I’m liking the food so far?

Local sea bream, crumbed scampi, blood orange, confit fennel
The bream was so soft it fell apart in your mouth.

Crispy spiced duck, watermelon, cucumber, black bean vinaigrette
This was one of my favourites for the night. Who would have thought duck and watermelon go so well together.

6 hour braised beef cheek, spinach puree, Madeira consommé
The duck was a tough dish to follow so I didn’t highly rate this dish. The beef was really soft and fell apart on your plate, but I think I was still dreaming about the duck.

Pre-dessert
Sorry I forgot what this was and it’s not on their website, all I remember is that there’s sorbet and grapefruit and it was delicious. Oh and the pale orange looking blob wobbles.

Caramel date tart, burnt butter ice cream, Earl Grey tea syrup
O.M.F.G! This tart is THE BEST TART I’VE EVER HAD. No joke. Everyone at our table was so impressed, and everyone not at our table was jealous. No doubt there were some tables pointing and saying “I’ll have what she’s having”. I seriously had to restrain myself from picking up the plate and licking it clean.

Etch lolly tray
This isn’t part of the degustation, we ordered this separately. Right to left: Coconut cigars with sherbet, dark chocolate slice, pistachio lolly, and mint ice-cream dipped in white chocolate. The cigar and the ice cream were my favourite from the plate. The dark chocolate slice, which I mistakenly left till last wasn’t my cup of tea but if you like dark chocolate you’ll love it. I took a bite and wanted to spit it out, leaving me with a not so nice last taste in my mouth. To make up for that yukky last taste I snorted, I mean licked some sherbet.

Even though my birthday is at the start of January we’re still celebrating. I actually wasn’t going to bother doing anything but Anna wouldn’t take no for an answer so we rounded up the troops for a Mexican fiesta at Cafe Pacifico.

I’ve wanted to try this place for a while now, I’ve walked past a couple of times and it always looked like a lot of fun. As you can see from the picture above, there’s no shortage of alcohol, in fact the drinks menu had 4 pages solely dedicated to tequila. Being my birthday dinner I was a bit scared of those 4-pages.

Because we had a big group we went with the set menu, just makes life so much easier. Here’s the run down:

The first entree was corn fritters, now I always thought corn fritters were flat pancake looking things, I guess they’re round in Mexico. Whatever the shape or size I don’t really care, they were so good and a great was to start the meal.

Next up was a dish called ‘Queso Fundido’ where you make tortillas packed with chorizo, tomatoes, olives and hot peppers. I think the fun in ‘fundido’ comes from the spicy kick at the end, which then leads to the consumption of a lot of mojito. And I don’t usually like mojitos, but this mojito was really nice, so nice that I didn’t even want to sample their extensive range of Mexican beers.

The third and final entree were these corn-chip pizza looking things topped with chicken and – everyone’s favourite – refried beans (Note the hint sarcasm).

By now we were stuffed and the main hadn’t even arrived. Nevertheless we tried our best to eat as many fajitas as possible but to be honest we barely made a dent, even the boys had to admit defeat.

After stuffing ourselves silly, we moved to the bar for a round of tequila. Just one round because like most people, we’re scared of tequila. We ordered the “Tequila of the week” because to us, tequila is tequila. You should have seen the look of absolute horror on our faces when the bartender poured the tequila, the smell of it burnt my nostril hairs and almost sent me running. And instead of the usual lick-sip-suck, we were given the tequila shot and red shot as the chaser. I was scared.

3, 2, 1, shot, shot.

Much to my surprise it was quite nice. I was expecting this nail polish remover type burn, but was pleasantly surprised with a nice smooth slightly warm sensation down my throat, followed by a Bloody Mary type chaser. Yum. I think I could grow to like tequila.

The night progressed to bar hopping on Oxford Street to places that for some reason, lacked sufficient A/C. After sweating it out we decided to call it a night.

I love birthdays. Great food, great friends and memento Sombrero Hats – that’s what it’s all about. Thanks for the presents guys! You know me too well – cooking and beaching. And did I mention the awesome sombrero hat?

The girls had been wanting to go to Fig Tree restaurant for a while now, they just needed an excuse, luck for them (and for me) it was my birthday. The place has an amazing view of Byron Bay which you can enjoy from the restaurant or while relaxing in the pool.

Every Thursday in Byron there’s the Byron Farmers’ Market where you can buy fresh local produce. As such, every Thursday night Fig Tree does a Farmers’ Market Dinner where everything is bought fresh that morning from the markets, and the menu changes each week depending on what’s at the market.

I should have taken a proper photo of the menu because we kept wondering what we were eating – all of which were amazing. The first entree was like a bite-size bruschetta with sun-dried tomatoes and goats cheese. I could have easily eaten 20 of these but there were another 3 courses to come so it’s just as well it was tiny and delicious.

The second entree was again, tiny but delicious, and since none of us actually read the menu properly we had no idea what was in it. It sort of tasted like Pho, but cheesy and creamy with a hint of orange zest. Okay the way I described it doesn’t sound very appealing but believe me, it was amazing, it really did just melt in your mouth.

The only thing on the menu any of us actually read were the mains – it was the only thing we had to make a choice on. For my main I went with the duck with roasted apricots and green beans.

One of the highlights of the meal was the dessert (sorry about the crappy photo, it was getting dark and I hate using flash). Home-made sorbet, poached apricot and deep-fried wanton skin with chocolate sauce. It was the perfect way to end the meal.

I couldn’t believe how good the food was! I can honestly say I think it’s the best meal I’ve had in a long time, it’s on par with the meal I had at Quay – a restaurant that’s won all sorts of awards.

If you’re ever in the Byron area, definitely make the trip to Fig Tree.

Anna’s probably one of – if not the most - stylish people I know, so it’s only natural to celebrate her birthday accordingly. We went to the Gazebo Wine Garden, a gorgeous restaurant in Elizabeth Bay with flair. As you can tell from the name of the restaurant there’s a lot of wine.

There are a few kooky things that give the place a unique charm, one being the bathrooms, which would have been a bit inappropriate to photograph so I didn’t. You’re just going to have to go there yourself to check it out. Another odd thing was the Christmas Tree and Tasmanian devil (?) stuck to the ceiling.

With a party of 20+, our table was split into two and we were in for a set menu. I’m usually not the biggest fan of set menus because of the limited selection, but I was pretty impressed with the choices.

Instead of the usual 2 options for entree our table was given a variety of plates to share. It was great to be able to pick at each of the different plates. My favourite was this glorified sausage roll.

For my main I went with the ocean trout, ever since my recent Byron trip I’ve been craving seafood.

For dessert I went with the good old chocolate brownie. I was away from my seat when it came out, so Brendan decided to draw a little face on the ice cream. Looks a bit grumpy, probably because I was about to demolish it.

The atmosphere was fantastic, very happening, very lively and very festive. Every time a birthday girl/boy ordered a drink, the staff would stick a sparkler in it, ring a cow bell and shout and cheer as they brought the drink to you.

Good venue, good food and good friends. What better way to celebrate a birthday. Happy Birthday Anna!

That was our plan of attack at trivia last night, if we didn’t know the answer, we just went with Abba. I would highly not recommend it though, we came last. Good effort team! But I think it’ll be a while till we can show our faces at The Rose again.

Even though we totally sucked at trivia, we were still able to take advantage of the trivia food deal. If you play, you can order small pizzas for $10 each and they’re well worth it. Great pizzas, crappy photo (My bad, I hate using flash).