On a sunny day when it seemed every car wanted to cross the Harbour Bridge from the North to the East, and the sun shone brightly and the wind blew a little too enthusiastically, a picnic spread was laid out in scenic Centennial Park. Getting there at 12pm seemed to be the trick as there were many tables free, by 1pm all tables had filled.
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A bunch of well intentioned coffee seekers converged on Gelato Bar one weekend afternoon to partake of coffee only but one glance at the window and we were salivating. “OK maybe if we share something” was the first utterance followed quickly by “I think I could actually have one on my own”.
Gelato Bar is one of those places that has been around for decades (since 1958) and is loved by locals and visitors alike not only for their scrumptious pastry and cake windows (their strudels are legendary) but also their Hungarian/European main meals. I spied Matzo ball soup, one of my favourite soups so I know I will have to come back soon to have this.
We order coffees and peruse the menu but instead of choosing from the menu, we’d rather point and choose from the window outside so our friendly waitress follows us outside and explains what everything is. There are several flavours of strudel to choose from including apple, cherry, poppyseed, cheese & cherry and chocolate & hazelnut ($6.80). The cheese & cherry appeals to A1 and she selects that.
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If you’re lucky enough to visit Tetsuyas like I did for my birthday several years ago, unless you’ve access to a trust fund or a fabulous business expense account, visits are few and far between. In order to relive some of those heavenly taste sensations, a few years ago Tetsuya brought out a cookbook called aptly “Tetsuya” ($55 hardcover) that has recipes for all of his famous dishes (yes including the Confit of Petuna Ocean Trout!). This oyster dish (considered an extra course for an extra cost) was a favourite of mine for many reasons: I love Pacific Oysters and I love Ocean Trout and Salmon Roe.
Its easy enough and can be done ahead of time enough to serve at a dinner party and can make the most unaccomplished non cook an instant chef. In fact my husband who cooks on average once every two years made this without a fuss. I don’t know how this compares to his prepackaged Tetsuyas for Oysters Vinaigrette ($11.95 from David Jones), its probably the same thing from the ingredients list but if you feel like making this yourself, its a cinch to do. What is pleasantly surprising to me is the relative simplicity of the dishes in his cookbook, I suppose in order to showcase the freshness of the ingredients. There are also plenty of beautiful photographs, food porn if ever I saw some.
I could happily eat this every day of my life although it goes without saying that its best enjoyed on a sunny Sydney day on a sunny balcony where we had this.
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Its that time of the year again, Moon Festival time where the streets are closed off in Chinatown for the Moon festival (or Mid-Autumn, Lantern festival or Mooncake festival) and storekeepers display fancily embossed tins of gleaming mooncakes. For those unfamiliar with the Moon Festival, according to Wikipedia:
“The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar.
Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together. Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as:
* Eating moon cakes outside under the moon
* Putting pomelo rinds on one’s head
* Carrying brightly lit lanterns
* Burning incense in reverence to deities including Chang’e
* Planting Mid-Autumn trees
* Lighting lanterns on towers
* Fire Dragon Dances”
I can’t say that we did any of these, but the closest one we came to was the first one, eating Mooncakes, not under the moon but at night (does that count?).
There are several kinds of fillings for moon cakes including lotus seed, red bean and fruit & nut and the more expensive ones have salted egg yolks inside them (the more yolks, the more expensive generally). In this case, I am a cheap eater as I don’t eat like the egg yolks, much to the joy of the salted egg lovers around me.
Today we have mooncakes with a red bean filling which I haven’t tried before as the Lotus filling is my usual favourite. Each cake has 2 yolks and the box of 4 was $24.95. The embossing is impressively deep and clear, like a stamp and I cannot resist running my fingers over its deep grooves. Cutting it up into eighths, we bite into the triangle slices. Its nice and sweet with a deep, deep, dark red almost black velvet bean filling, good, but I miss the nuttiness of the Lotus seed filling, still my favourite.
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Nestled between Emperors Garden BBQ and Thailand DVD in Chinatown sits a seedy looking entrance inviting customers to peruse Comic books and various DVDs. You could’ve walked past it hundreds of times and never noticed it or assumed that it would be an X rated bookshop upstairs.
I’ve asked my husband to look up somewhere for us to eat that night as we were staying in the Meriton on Kent apartments (part of the www.lastminute.com.au’s $1 secret hotel promotion). He calls me back excitedly “How about a Comic Book store?” and before I can exasperatedly remind him that we’re looking for a restaurant he tells me about this amazing hole in the wall Comic book store that also serves food and is known for their Hot Beef Noodle soup. He knows that I love quirky and at 6.30pm we set off in search of this elusive gem on Thomas Street, opposite Market City and Burlington centre.
Once you walk upstairs, the seediness is gone. Instead, its the ultimate in quirky kitsch – a comic book store slash internet cafe slash eatery run by the sweetest person to helm a kitchen. From one angle, it looks like someone’s house, from another, its shelf after shelf of comic books, from another its an internet cafe and from another, up in the back, its a small cafe which you’d never know of walking in except for the aroma of fried eggs.
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