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).

We headed to Haberfield to catch up with with Vick on Sunday night. We usually go to Dolcissimo, which is probably one of my favourite Italian restaurants in Sydney, but since a few new places had opened up we thought we’d be brave and try something different so we headed to Napoli in Bocca. I apologise now for the lack of photos, been feeling a bit off-key all weekend and was a bit too dizzy to take any proper photos.

Because I was feeling sick I went with the prawn penne (thought I’d keep it simple), it was great, a little on the garlicky side but I love garlic so it’s all good. G’s marinara was probably one of the best marinara’s I’ve had in a while, which is a high call coming from me. I’m a big marinara fan and if you stuff it up, your restaurant is as good as dead to me. Also, if you’re a lasagna fan, like Garfield, you would love this place. Vick’s lasanga was enormous! Seriously, it was huge! I think Garfield would even have trouble finishing it.

My only complaint: the rocket in the Rocket and Parmesan salad was too bitter, as was the Chinotto. But then again, I also thought the gelato we had after was too sour, so maybe it was just me.

I seriously did not stop eating on the weekend. It felt like I went from one meal straight to the next and it was all Italian food. It started with Pizza at the Beresford on Friday, then pasta (from Pizza Hut) on Saturday night, then the big one – Sunday.

Sunday started with pancakes for breakfast (at 11am). After “breakfast” I headed to Criniti’s at Darling Harbour for lunch with the girls. We love going there, especially after Agata introduced us to their Brescioli dish (pictured top centre). Rice dumplings with melted cheese on the inside. If you ever go there you have to order it!

After lunch, I drove home then straight away drove to Dee Why for dinner (with a full belly of food). It was Matty’s birthday and every year, without fail, we throw him a surprise dinner (or at least we try). I’m pretty sure he’s clued on by now and half expects a surprise every year, but never the less, it’s still fun.

Dinner was at Moltofino and the food’s pretty good. I highly recommend the Seafood Paella (pictured bottom centre). Yumo!

Anyway, Happy Birthday Matty! Quarter Century. Getting old…

Our company was nominated as one of 10 finalists for the Dell Small Business Excellence Awards. As such we were invited to the finalist lunch held at Quay Restaurant. I was uber excited because Quay was recently announced the winner of the 2009 Best Restaurant of the Year – SMH Good Food Guide, and 2010 Restaurant of the Year – Australian Gourmet Traveller. It also has an amazing view of the Harbour Bridge AND the Opera House.

Time for the food.

For entree I went with: Seared sea scallops, baby leeks, fennel, confit tomatoes, lime crème frianche, basil and lime dressing. Spectacular!

For my main meal I chose the: Victorian Pyrenees lamb rump, eggplant, eschallots, Ligurian olives, roasted tomatoes. Had this lunch been a year ago I wouldn’t have dreamt of choosing lamb, but now I love the stuff.

These potatoes were a big hit on our table and there was much discussion as to how they got them to be that shape. Pushed through a machine? Smashed, then shaped? Hand-carved? We’ll never know.

Dessert was highly anticipated: Seven texture valrhona chocolate cake.

It took us a while, but we eventually found the seven textures (I think). Here’s the breakdown (top to bottom):

1. A thin sheet of dark chocolate
2. Light chocolate mousse – not quite white chocolate, but not milk chocolate either.
3. A thin sheet of milk chocolate
4. Dark chocolate mousse
5. Some kind of nutty chocolate mixture – tastes like crunchy Nutella
6. Chocolate biscuit base – yum!
7. Chocolate sauce along the base.

Just a word of warning, you seriously cannot eat the full thing to yourself. I could only really get half way through it. Dan finished her’s but then felt sick the rest of the day.

The other option for dessert was Crème caramel, sauterne jelly, caramel cream, caramel ice-cream. It looks amazing, but it’s seriously death by caramel.

With a belly full of free food I can definitely see why it won Best Restaurant of the Year. If I were paying, I might have seen things differently. Free food always tastes better.

We had our company birthday lunch yesterday at Pendolino, The Strand Arcade. The decor is pretty cool, I sort of felt like I was at Hogwarts or a Parisian cafe. The place doubles as an olive oil gift shop where you can sample their olive oils.

I’m usually not a fan of olive oil, I think it just tastes like grass, but this olive oil was actually really nice. I must say, I was quite impressed, but not impressed enough to buy some.

I ordered a pretty crap entree because I hadn’t actually looked at the menu before the waitress came around. I thought I’d ordered pork belly as an entree, but turns out it was actually pork lard and prosciutto. At least the breadsticks were nice.

For my main meal I went with the Ocean trout, boy was I pleased. The trout was cooked perfectly and just fell apart in your mouth. As for the skin – amazing. I don’t know how they got the skin off and deep fried it so beautifully but they did, and it was great.

For dessert I went with the Pear tart. I was hoping it would be similar to the pear tart that Justine cooked on Masterchef. It was nothing like the Masterchef one, but I’m sure it’s of the same standard. Yum!

We did a quick dash to My Little Cupcake in Neutral Bay today which is conveniently located just minutes from my office. It’s this tiny shop that you would probably drive right by without noticing because it’s squashed in between two apartment blocks.

As soon as you enter the shop your lungs are filled with the aroma of freshly baked cupcakes and you seriously start to drool. The shop also has a limit to the amount of cupcake each person can order over the counter, otherwise there’s not enough to go around.

Do they taste as good as they look? They sure do! They’re utterly amazing and not overly sweet. I had to remember to share, otherwise I could have devoured the whole box.

Dare I say, these are the best cupcakes I’ve ever had…

Being in the mood to try something different we decided to go out for dinner on Friday night, we usually end up at Anna’s place chucking something on the barbie after the pub so it was a nice change. I think Jess wasn’t quite prepared for the change as she spend the majority of the time in the gutter, or sitting in my car feeling sick. Poor Jess, the food was so good!

We went to a tapas parlour in Bondi called Flying Squirrel. The food was seriously amazing, it was like there was a party in my mouth. A top favourite of the night were the Zucchini flowers. It adds a whole new level of functionality to flowers, they look good and taste even better. A definite must try!

Jess only managed to take a bit of these before she ran out the door feeling sick (not because of the food, just general sickness). So lucky us, we swooped in and got an extra mouthful of the delicious flowers each. Score!

As you can see the garlic prawns came with a ton of sauce. I know the picture doesn’t look great, but trust me it tastes amazing. I was tempted to pick up the bowl and lap up the sauce, but thought it inappropriate.

The salt and pepper squid served a challenge to cut and eat. I think we ended up spilling a lot of water on the table as we fought to cut the suckers into bite sized chunks. But once they were in our mouth, it was worth the effort. And the minted yoghurt dipped sauce, I wanted to lap that up too.

We finished off with chicken wings, for some reason we always end up eating wings on a Friday night. Anna was a bit disappointed, not because they weren’t yummy (because they were), but because she thought we ordered spicy chicken wings. Think she was confused with the Eastern, where we started the night.

All in all, great night out (expect for Jess)! I think we’re going make it a habit to try a new place every month. Can’t wait till next month, maybe we’ll do Mexican.

The Eastern is one of my favourite pubs in Sydney, not only does it serve great beer on tap (Yay for Kirin!), but they have a killer pub menu. For some strange reason last night I was craving their Spicy Buffalo Wings – they are amazingly good (especially when you drown it in ranch sauce). The last time we were there I was happily eating my wings (drowned in ranch sauce) and was gripping it so tightly, in fear of dropping it, that my fingers slipped and it went flying across the table. Luckily I didn’t get any sauce on anyone but I did, sadly, loose that yummy yummy wing.

On my return to The Eastern last night, I made sure I didn’t make the same mistake twice. Keeping a hold wasn’t a problem, instead it was the spiciness. Oh my goodness. They were so hot! Even my friends who can handle chilli were saying it was really spicy. And I had ordered 2 plates because I was planning to eat a ton of them, in the end I could only down 1 wing. Very disappointing. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles, I’m never going to enjoy those buffalo wings ever again.

Because the wings were so spicily disappointing, I went back to the bar to order a feta and pumpkin pizza. I thought I was playing it safe with the pizza, no chilli in this one. It was really nice, but for some reason every slice of pizza I ate only had pumpkin and no feta. Grr. Still not satisfied.

On the final trip to the bar, Nat ordered me some beef nachos (Thanks Nat!) and another plate of buffalo wings (Whyyy…..?). After a string of disappointment I wasn’t really expecting too much from the nachos.

But they were fantastic! Though before I dug in I made sure everyone ate the jalapenos (no more spicy!). They were just what I needed to end the night – a belly full of sour cream. Yum!