Recently, and I realise that I’m a bit late posting this as the event occured a couple of weeks back, we had a big change in Australia. We had our first first female Prime Minister (and about time really, NZ had one ages ago). As this isn’t a political blog I won’t get into things here but I do recall hearing someone say “It’s the kind of event where you want to remember where you were and what you were doing”. I can proudly say:
“I was making turtle pancakes“.
A Happy Monday Dear Readers! I hope you all had a good weekend.Yesterday while I was breakfasting Mr NQN shouted out to me “You’re in The Age newspaper!”. It was an article where they discussed how some restaurateurs don’t like food bloggers taking photos. It was an interesting article but I just thought that it was a bit of a shame that they focused on very rare negative experiences whereas I’ve mostly had positive experiences. Out of the 550 plus dining out experiences for NQN, only 2 places have ever asked me not to take photos. The negativity is not a pattern or widespread-thankfully 
And my how things have definitely changed…
I hesitated. “With The Press Club, will they be ok with photos? George Colombaris is very anti food blogger so I just want to make sure they’ll be ok.” I ask Tourism Victoria when they ask me whether Mr NQN and I would like to dine at The Press Club Restaurant and Bar. It was apparently not a problem at all – phew!
The chef’s table
We take in the room. It’s very modern with specially commissioned orange Kosta Boda water glasses and a chef’s table at the front in which diners book a spot and enjoy a bird’s eye view of the open kitchen (and chefs will send you out a few morsels to try too ). There are dark browns everywhere and expensive flower arrangements.
Kalamata and wild olives in olive oil from Crete and Cypriot black salt
We start off with some kalamata and wild olives in some olive oil from Crete served with a Cypriot black rock salt with an olive and sourdough bread. I try these and they’re good but I am saving room for the entrees and mains (trust me, we have the lamb coming ).
Chicken – pastelaki of its wings, kritharaki, mytzithra snow $23.90
I flipped through the calendar. Was it really true? Had I had this dreaded wretched flu turned bronchitis for over a month? I hate to sound like a malingerer but the dates didn’t lie. I had had this dreaded lurgy for almost five weeks. It meant cancelling much desired travel plans and coughing my way through days and nights. I was never warm enough and we had the heaters on it seemed permanently.
Chef Darren Simpson
Last week I attended the launch of LG’s sexy new French Door fridge at La Scala in Woollahra where they revealed six new styles including my favourite, the black fridge. La Scala’s chef Darren Simpson was on hand to cook us up a delicious three course meal for us including a melt in the mouth Vitello Tonnato. Darren will be doing cooking demonstrations at the Good Food & Wine Show which is touring around Australia in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
One of the best things about eating out is getting ideas to cook things at home. I don’t mean molecular gastronomic creations (I can imagine these may go horribly home at Chez Elliott and I like my eyebrows) but things that are inspirations can still be found at the fanciest restaurants. Case in point, my trip a few months ago to The Royal Mail. They gave us a simple heirloom tomato salad simply dressed with basil and chives. It was easy and it was simple and absolutely possible to recreate at home.
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