Sunday, September 21, 2008

Queensland

I knew nothing of Queensland before my arrival in Australia, except that people move there in Neighbours when they need a life-changing experience, much like how people in Eastenders move to Manchester. It turns out to be the Sunshine State, with the highest incidence of skin cancer in the world (!), and unsurprisingly, filled with tourist traps keen to capitalise on silly sun worshippers from Europe.

Therefore, finding a one-hat restaurant along the strip in Palm Cove was most unexpected, and turned out to be the place to eat in this little sunny village. Nu-nu certainly doesn't look that great from the outside, to the extent that Albert, Michelle and I had already dismissed it for lunch before we found out its pedigree; "just another tourist trap!" we thought, particularly given the inclusion of spring rolls on the menu.

However, for once, Asian fusion works, with quite simple yet interesting dishes done very well, and given that every other place along the strip charges $30+ for a badly cooked main course, not bad value either. (Apologies for the bad quality photos, my blackberry died and had to rely on Damo's battered one for the pics here):

To start, blue swimmer crab tortellini with a saffron broth - the pasta admittedly was a bit thick, but the crab filling was very ... erm... crabby, and for once I understood the point of saffron in a dish:


The plate was one of those way-too-big-for-the-food plates, one of those where you can't lean your cutlery anywhere without your knife dropping into the food - highly annoying. Never mind though, because I was super super impressed with the main course. The menu was so eclectic that it was very difficult to choose. I was initially tempted by "Mary's feast", lamb rack, brains and something else I can't remember, but on impulse changed my mind to the mussaman fish curry - sounds simple and uninspiring, but was delicious:


The spicing was just right, extremely fresh tasting, very aromatic. You can just about make out in the picture that there is some sort of salad on the left - a very clever salad at that, with young coconut, squid, pickled cucumber and Thai basil, gorgeous gorgeous.

A special mention goes to Damo's main of roast goat which gave me a bit of dinner envy, mainly due to the perfectly cooked rack which you can just about see:

Great evening all round - accompanied by some yummy Tassie gewurtztraminer!

Melbourne

Melbourne is really quite beautiful - it's such a shame that Sydney always steals the spotlight just because it has that Opera House. I had a wonderful time walking by the beautiful riverside, exploring the art museums, and having an eclectic weekend of food.

First off, I ate a lot of ice cream. I was kindly hosted by my cousin Sherman and his lovely fiancee Christine, and Christine has an impressive addiction to ice cream. The most interesting one we had was from Il Dolce Freddo in Carlton, obviously a favourite of the locals with people pouring out of the tiny entrance. Its specialty is durian gelato, which was as stinky and overpowering as I expected it to be!! (I figured out the other day that I only really don't eat about 4 things on this earth, and durian is one of those) But I enjoyed the pandan & coconut, and also the mango - makes me wonder how an Italian gelato shop came to make all these Asian flavours.

One curiosity that I discovered whilst getting lost through the streets of the city centre was Lord of the Fries, a fast food mini-chain with questionable motives. Its mission appears to be the first vegetarian and gluten-free chain specialising in chips/fries, the idea being that it cooks very good chips accompanied by a variety of gloopy sauces. Fake meat 'burgers' and 'chicken nuggets' are also on offer. I had the unfortunate impulse to try some of these nuggets, accompanied by their Belgian sauce (basically really thick mayo), which were incredibly greasy and cloying, although the few chips that sneaked in were pretty good. Food aside, I really disliked the idea of this place - why worry about being gluten free when you're stuffing your face with a ton of grease covered with more grease? Actually don't get me started on the modern "allergy" to gluten... :p

Slightly outside of Melbourne, we spent a day in the Yarra Valley, famous for its wineries and also above average eateries. I know very little about wine, only what I like to drink, and I concluded a long time ago that I don't like Australian whites. However, I do love Australian Shiraz, which is interesting given that I drink little red wine usually. The wineries are certainly not a cheap way to buy wine (pretty much the same prices as you would get in the city), but I did discover sparkling Shiraz, which I could happily quaff away on a lazy afternoon in the sun.

Last but not least, my final day in Melbourne coincided with the Chinese Midautumn Festival, so obviously we had to do a Chinese dinner. I can't quite remember where we went, but it was in the Vietnamese area in the west side of the city (given that I was leaving from Avalon airport, which is certainly not part of Melbourne!!). My favourite dish was snowpea shoots (豆苗, possibly my favourite Chinese vegetable) with salted and century egg:



Also had braised pork belly with tofu (pretty good, but as you can probably see, the pork was very fatty:


Accompanied by a steamed bass and a plate of barbeque meats, it made four dishes - sorry mum that it is not a lucky number of dishes, but they were enormous!

Thursday, September 11, 2008

This Charming Man

Oscillate Wildly in Newtown is supposedly one of the hottest restaurants in Sydney right now. The 24-year-old chef Daniel Puskas has just been named the Young Chef of the Year, and bookings are reputedly more difficult to get than at Tetsuya's. Jess made a booking months ago, and yesterday we went with Ah Toy and Carolyn to see what the fuss is about.

The location is an interesting one - it was my first time in Newtown, and I somehow wish I had spent more time in these areas than hanging around CBD, Potts Point and Paddo. Like where I live back in London, there appears to be real people living here. The restaurant is tucked into a little side street, and is absolutely minute. It seats 30 people at a stretch, and you have to walk through the kitchen to visit the loos. Exactly my kind of place!

Obviously it was packed full when we arrived, and there is no choice but experience the 8 course degustation menu. So, we have a lot to get through, let's begin:


To start: "Celeriac, Tonka, Brazil Nut, White Chocolate" - basically a celeriac soup with nut sprinkles. I was quite underwhelmed by this, there was a little sweetness at the bottom of the bowl (which I'm guessing is the chocolate), but ultimately I can make celeriac soup like this. Moving on to the second course:

This is where we get a little wanky and Heston Blumenthaly: "Tomato Snow, Cottage Cheese, Cucumber, Soil", basically a crushed tomato sorbet over a smear of cheese, with some grated beetroot as the "soil". Hmmm. It's one of those dishes which are very interesting but ultimately would you want to eat a big plate of it? Not really. Next...

This was the first star of the show: "Salmon, Grapefruit, Beetroot, Lavender, Liquorice Root", essentially cured salmon favoured with liquorice, with a beetroot sorbet and some lavender foam. Part of the reason I liked this dish so much was that individually, each of the elements were not really that good, particularly the lavender foam (definitely smelt and tasted of old ladies). But somehow, if you squeeze all the ingredients onto your fork in one go, the combination works. I could've eaten a very big plate of this one.

Next one was "Mulloway, Bacon, Onion, Parmesan Crust", mulloway also known as jewfish, but something I had never eaten before. I joked as we were tucking in that the Italians have a funny rule about never mixing cheese and fish, and having eaten this dish, there is an element of truth maybe. This was by far the most unsuccessful dish in my opinion, the parmesan crust just disturbed me. It was grainy, a bit overpowering, clashing with the already strong flavours of the bacon and onion.

Next was "Duck, Sassafras, Sweet Potato, Cinnamon", which boiled down to seared duck breast sitting on a cinnamon "doughnut" with a smear of sweet potato puree. I enjoyed the dish very much, but for some reason I am always underwhelmed by duck in restaurants. Maybe because doing a seared duck breast really isn't too difficult, and is so delicious it will always be the star of the show anway. I have no idea how the sassafras fits in here, or what it is, but according to wikipedia it is a prized in Europe as a cure of gonorrhea. Now I know!


Main meat dish of the day was "Lamb, Pistachio, Eggplant, Quince, Port", with an obviously Middle Eastern slant, accompanied by a filo pastry containing I'm not quite sure what. I like my meat pretty rare, but for me the cut here (rump) needed just a teeny bit more cooking, given my piece had a thick layer of fat at the bottom which was on the verge of being gristly. But very good flavours in the quince and port sauce.

By this point, I was already stuffed. The portions are not inconsiderable given that there are 8 courses. However, for once I was genuinely surprised and impressed by a dessert:



You may have noticed that I'm not a big dessert eater, but "Hibiscus, Long Pepper, Ginger, Coriander" has to be one of the best desserts I've eaten in a long long time. It was really a pannacotta flavoured with ginger and pepper, with hibiscus sorbet on top with a small scattering of baby coriander, what a tremendous combination. The coriander for once was the star here, it livened up the palette against the creaminess and the coldness. Genius. A shame I really was too full to enjoy this more.

Even more of a shame was that the meal didn't end with the pannacotta dish, because the second dessert was a real disappointment. The most simply named "Pumpkin Pie" tried to be a celebration of pumpkin, including a mousse and sorbet. I love pumpkin, but I left a lot of it untouched (as shown above!). Maybe I was just too full., but this felt very "mucked about with".

All in all, despite a few dishes that didn't quite work for me, I was super impressed. I'm still not convinced about this wave of "molecular gastronomy" that is sweeping the world right now, but I do like the idea of thinking about challenging combinations of flavours. Most refreshing though was the price - 8 courses at $95 is extremely good value, and includes free (what? free?!) tea/coffee and petit fours. Wine list also extremely reasonable, we were even offered a rioja by the glass at $4 each.

So who was the "Charming Man" in my post title? The owner/waiter Ross Godfrey was extremely charming throughout the meal, very patient given that one of us arrived very late. But it was his musical geekiness that I loved. The restaurant is named after an instrumental by the Smiths, and inside the restaurant, they played some very obscure British indie (Black Box Recorder's "England Made Me" accompanied my tremendous pannacotta). So lovely to see someone putting so much of their heart in their business. I really hope the big time doesn't become too much of an incentive, and this little, interesting place stays little, and interesting.

Monday, September 8, 2008

'You're still hungry, aren't you?'

Oh dear, looks like I've spent way too much of my time eating with Damo and Jess lately, especially as during tonight's visit to Oy, the Thai restaurant on Macleay Street, I just knew Damo wasn't quite satisfied and had to order some more food :p

I walk past Oy every weekend during my grocery shopping trips in Potts Point, and have heard many others rave about Sailors Thai in the Rocks (Oy is owned by the same peeps), so it was a pretty natural choice when we were stuck in the area as 3 other places were either closed or full. This time though, we were accompanied by the lovely Bec who is here visiting from Melbourne.

The menu is pretty interesting, with many standard Thai takeaway dishes with a bit of a twist. We started with betel leaf with smoked trout, more or less the same dish as the one served at Longrain - must say that this version wasn't quite as good - extremely sweet with the peanut caramel and not balanced enough by the saltiness of the fish (and interestingly, just reading a review by the Telegraph of a similar dish, and they said it wasn't sweet enough)

Other plates to share were grilled duck salad:

Pretty good flavours here, and the duck had good, sweet, fatty skin, but as you can tell, not much duck buried under all that celery and coriander. Also had deep fried fish with a mango salad:



The salad was very good, fresh, zingy, but I suspect we only got half the fish. Other very small portions we had were a stir fried noodles with microscopic prawns, and aubergine with minced chicken and tofu.

The food is really pretty good and interesting here, but the prices are a bit ridiculous. All mains were more starter sized, and priced keenly at $20-30 a dish. Damo did have to order some more, and had a squid with duck egg (probably the best dish we had). A shame, given that it's so close to home, but I have now realised there is a direct bus to Spice I Am - I will stop going on about this restaurant soon, honest!

In the desert

I had the most amazing time in Ayers Rock/Uluru this weekend - thank god I didn't take the advice of everyone who said it wasn't worth going there! However many times you've seen the big old rock in postcards, in Lonely Planets, it is still incredible to see it right up in front of you. The best bit was seeing it in the pitch black, this enormous hunk of dark.

But anyway, this is a food blog. As you would expect in such a touristy place in literally the middle of nowhere, the choices are pretty limited, and the prices rather high. I stayed at at a hostel which modelled itself on a 1860's outback lodge, which included a self-cook barbeque area in the evenings accompanied by cheesy live "entertainment". When I first arrived, I stuck with the simple option, and opted for an "full outback burger":



From the top - cheese, fried egg, onions, bacon, beefburger, pineapple, beetroot, tomato, lettuce. Phew! And surprisingly good! I must say that pineapple really has no place in a burger, but I was completely converted to the beetroot. Having said that, this year (thanks to Abel & Cole) has been the year where I've discovered beetroot, a shame it looks like you've murdered someone in your kitchen whenever you try to cook it.

My hostel place also offered an "Australiana" buffet promising "authentic outback tucker", so how could I resist? It was certainly an experience, but at $47 per person, not sure one I would recommend:

On my count, 9 different animals died for this plate of food: squid, crocodile, mussels, prawns, emu, camel, kangaroo, barramundi, and the humble chicken - and for once I understand why the more unusual animals are not eaten more widely in the world! The smoked kangeroo was really very good (I am a definite convert, sorry Skips), but everything else was really pretty nasty, particularly the emu sausage. But then it was probably my fault in thinking that overcooked meat from a buffet would ever taste good.

This weekend for once wasn't about the food though. Best meal of the weekend was probably the 4 Nice biscuits I scoffed with my cup of tea, watching the sunrise hit the rock...

Monday, September 1, 2008

Eel is not eww

Time for me to be a little evangelical here - please people, eat more eel. It is hugely in abundance (even in the River Thames!), it is delicious, and I'm led to believe it is very good for you. People complain they are ugly, but most fish are ugly!!

Second foodie trip in the 'burbs of Sydney was at Hoong Cheong in Punchbowl - the only Chinese in a strip dominated by Lebanese foodshops and restaurants, and immediately you know it's the kind of place that Chinese families congregate not really caring about service. The speciality here is seafood, in particular eel.

We had two contrasting ways with eel - first off, eel in a salt and pepper and chilli batter. A thousand times yummier than salt and pepper squid (zzzz!), and very good here - very light batter, not at all greasy, and most miraculously, manages to maintain its crispness even when cold (instead of descending into a greasy, soggy mess):


God bless whoever it was who boned it all out!

Eel number two was more interesting, and to my taste, even better. This one was steamed with a garlic and dried mandarin peel - really brought out the sweetness in the fish (and you can see how ridiculously big the portions are too):


We supplemented this with more fish. I love tofu, and living on my own rarely get the chance to gorge out on it, so we had tofu with 石斑 (grouper fish):



Accompanied by 四季豆 (four season beans) with fermented beancurd, what a perfectly yummy meal. Such a shame it is so far out of the city, would love to return before I leave Sydney...

So pho, so good

A visit to family friends Uncle Kin and Aunt Anissa led me to the suburbs of Sydney. I'd never ventured much beyond the airport before, but lots of good food to be had.

First stop, pho! We went to An Pho in Bankstown, reputed to be the best for pho amongst the Vietnamese community. It only serves pho: beef (raw, cooked, balls, tripe, brisket, tendons, or a mixture) or chicken. That's it. And extra bowls of the soup if you want it.

And you can see why they can sell just the bowl of soup by itself - definitely the best pho soup I've had in Sydney. Not overpoweringly sweet, or overpoweringly salty, or overpoweringly fatty. And the portions were enormous:

Apparently, the secret of their soup is dried silk worm (not opium as we were conjecturing). I continue to bow down to this most humble of dishes - I'm never going to be able to recreate it at home, it's going to remain a dish of some mystery to me. I don't really want to know how it's made, part of the fun is trying radically different versions and finding really good ones like this.

Why is everything red?

I was most impressed when I arrived in Sydney to see a thriving Koreantown right by Chinatown - although we are blessed with some excellent Korean food in London (particularly the fabulous Nara in Soho), it is nowhere near as prevalent as it is here. I have been indulging on way too many packets of those ridiculously addictive Shin Ranyun spicy ramen noodles (wow, I have just found an equally ridiculous wiki article about them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_ramyun, which explains why they disappeared in the UK due to "irradiated ingredients" - hmmm).

Obviously I had to take advantage of this situation and eat some Korean food whilst I am here, so I dragged Jess, Albert, Frank, Damo and Damo's lovely missus Sarah to Seoul Ria on George St. You walk in and you know it will be good. The entire room was full of Koreans chomping away, the decor utilitarian, supplemented by big plasmas showing Korean telly. There was a party of what appeared to be 5 generations of one family in the middle.

The others gave Albert and me the responsibility of ordering, and we had (excuse the made-up spellings, and sorry for lack of pictures, too busy eating!):
  • Japchae - stir fried glass noodles with seafood, very heavy on the sesame oil, absolutely delish, with thicker than I've seen before noodles
  • Dolsot bibimbap - rice with veg and beef and raw egg served on a hot stone with chilli sauce, I didn't get enough!
  • Rice cake - not something I've eaten that often, very stodgy, not dissimilar to the Chinese version, but obviously with a red sauce this time!
  • Steamed beef rib - sounds very uninspiring, but the beef so tender it was just falling off the bone. I remember when I worked OT in Hong Kong and we used to fight over this dish
  • Tofu soup - oh I could've eaten it all by myself, with a bowl of rice, my idea of comfort food
  • Seafood pancake (par-jeon) - the only real disappointment - the batter very thick and not crisp enough

The banchan (side dishes) were also pretty interesting. As well as the usual kimchi and weird yam cakes, we also had pasta salad! We didn't eat much of that! Here is the kimchi - verdict was that it had the right level of spice, but wasn't sour enough.


We also sampled some of the interesting alcoholic options available - given that there were so many of us, we tried a bit of everything! The following pic makes me look like an alkie:


Left to right: Hahn beer (Australian unfortunately), carbonated rice wine (looks disgusting, but very very quaffable), and "hundred year" wine (tasted of ginseng, acquired taste!)