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!

Crab racing at Friend in Hand Hotel isn’t something you see everyday. It may look normal from the outside, but once inside it’s a totally different story. You have a pub packed with people, who are dripping wet after being doused by the bar staff, cheering for these tiny little creatures who undoubtedly have no idea what’s going on. I wonder if this is classed as animal cruelty?

We were there to celebrate Dom’s birthday and boy was it an experience. The pub alone is a novelty, so if you can’t make it there on a Tuesday night for the crab race I’m sure you’ll be just as entertained by the decor.

It has to be the most overly decorated pub I’ve ever seen. There’s so much random stuff from police signs to fireman mannequins, antler heads to full length canoes and did I mention the pub cockatoo?

Awesome awesome food
We were all pretty starving and ready for a feed. G and I shared the eggplant parmigiana and a combo meal of steak and lasagna (can you tell we were hungry?). OMG the food was amazing! You know that moment when your food comes out from the kitchen and you anticipate that first bite? This first mouthful was sheer heaven. If you go there I would highly recommend the eggplant parmigiana – the best I’ve ever had. They look a bit like little fish fillets.

The race
The crab race only took a minute, the little creatures must have been scared. Dom’s crab, Chichi, finished in the top 5 (Well done Chichi!). So to battle it out for first place they had a South Park inspired “Chocolate Salty Balls” eating competition.

Dom didn’t win, but he sure does look like a champ!

My friend Lisa is moving to the UK next week, so to celebrate (is celebrate the right word?) we went to Harry’s Singapore Chilli Crab Restaurant for a feast. I’ve heard of the place before but hadn’t been there so I was eager to sample their crab, especially after looking at their website where they boast that “Nobody leaves the door unhappy”. That’s a pretty big statement.

Coming from a Singaporean background I had pretty high expectations. My grandma, the head chef of the family, makes the best food in the world, and the best chilli crab. So they had their work cut out for them.

After choosing a heafty 1.9kg crab we were each given a neck-to-waist apron and crab eating utensils. Two thumbs up to the apron, one for keeping us clean and one for saving pieces of meat that would otherwise have hit the floor.

The actual crab itself was really nice, big chunks of juicy crab meat (if you had the patience and persistence) especially in the claw – which was massive. But I think they failed on the sauce, it wasn’t that rich tomato / chilli mixture with bits of egg through it. It didn’t have that lingering aroma. Oh well… At least the salt and pepper squid was really nice, so if you like salt and pepper squid (and who doesn’t) head there.

After dinner we ventured out into the cold rainy night to find some dessert. I wasn’t quite satisfied with the crab so I’m glad my friends are into their desserts. On the way to Passion Flower we got distracted by the gelato display at this Thai restaurant on Campbell street. I think the place is called Chat Thai, but I’m not 100% sure.

I decided to stick to my gut and went with a good old fashion Banana Split. I use to eat these all the time as a kid so it really took me back a few years. Now you can’t really mess up a Banana Split, and they didn’t. It was just what I wanted, with a cherry on top (though I didn’t eat the cherry – don’t like fake cherries).

Every 5 months or so I catch up with a good old friend of mine, Michelle. Michelle and I go way back, I think we’ve known each other for about 20 years now.

When we catch up I’ll leave the venue choice to Michelle, the only requirement is that it must be listed in the Entertainment book otherwise we ain’t going there. Our catch up meals are usually a 2-for-1 or 25% off meal – love it! But being “thrifty” can backfire on you. The last time we tried to be cheap we rocked up at this cafe in Leichhardt and, as you can see from the picture, it was nothing but a closed shop. How disappointing. Luckily there was another Entertainment book cafe across the road so we just went there instead.

This time we had better luck, we went to The Roxanne in Glebe and ordered a Big Breakfast each. Michelle went with the Veggie Big Breakfast as the healthy alternative which had 2 poached eggs, mushrooms, grilled tomato, spinach, baked beans and a hash brown. I went all out and got the “real” Big Breakfast which had scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, grilled tomato and a hash brown. Seriously it’s not a big breakfast unless there’s bacon on the plate. I thought my Big Breakfast (left) was yummier, more appealing and more appetising compared to Michelle’s Veggie Big Breakfast (right). But I’ll let you be the judge of that.

By the end of the meal we had both successfully cleared our plates and saved 25% off the meal. Thanks Entertainment book!