FoodieChat

Every year for the Sydney Festival, I like to try one of the Fast Festival Feasts where you get a main course and a glass of wine for $25.  This year, Wildfire, at the Overseas Passenger Terminal was the choice; where we had kingfish, with one scallop tortellini and romesco sauce. Great sauce, but sadly I think the fish had seen better days and was ready before our 6pm arrival.  Nevermind, we moved onto dessert.  A very interesting looking dessert menu, we decided upon the doughnut box, and the nougatine souffle, both $18.  The donut box was in fact 6 mini donut holes, which come with 3 test tubes and pipettes of sauce – raspberry, white chocolate, and chocolate, which you squeeze and inject into the donuts!  The donuts are covered in sugar and cinnamon and set in a pretty box with a shot glass of caramel and chocolate mousse.  Not too sweet which was good.

The souffle was the chef’s choice and was a good balance of light and airy whilst actually having a bit of substance – usually I find souffles like eating a cloud of nothing.  It came with a chocolate crackle type thing on top of an ice cream segment; and the same shot glass with a chocolate cigar in it. (more…)

Well it’s that time of year again when Sydney foodies descend upon top restaurants, hotels, bars and even parks to eat and drink their way around town for the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Month.  And top of the list for the evenings is the Sugar Hit – the $20 plate of dessert and glass of dessert wine (up from $15 in previous years).  We went to the elegant Cafe Opera at the intercontinental, fully intending to have the Sugar Hit, but instead captivated by the dessert trolley before us, which offered an array of beautiful irresistable patisserie at only $8 each.  Well, there’s the bird in the hand theory – we could see before our eyes what we were going to get (and save $4 each too – since dessert wine is $8 a glass), or get the sugar hit. Well – bird’s good for me.

I’m quite familiar with the quality of the desserts at the Inter Cont as I had done a Hands On cooking class five years back, and returned frequently to have the cakes take away.

A favourite is the tear drop shaped black forest cake – chocolate sponge topped with sour cherry compote, whipped cream and finished off with a layer of cherry jelly.  Tempting tiramisu manifested as a cake – sponge fingers top, bottom and side, and a smooth thick layer of coffee liqueur flavoured marscarpone – and topped with a delicate rolled tuile.

The pavlova slice is deceptively light – filled with raspberries, mango and whipped cream – soft and fluffy with a slightly crispy meringue top.  And… DIY sugar hit hahaha.

But my absolute favourite of all time is the passionfruit mousse cake, which for me takes the cake (literally) for its tangy passionfruit that cuts through the sweetness in a light mousse; wrapped with a dotted sponge collar and a layer of jelly on top.  Butterflies or leaves of chocolate spiked on top, and a shard of speckled white chocolate for good measure.  The staff could have been a bit more generous with the dessert wine, but when you could catch them were attentive and polite.  The large couches are a comfortable way to rest and soak up the atmosphere – but be quick as there are no bookings on a Friday night – and the queue starts well before the 9pm starting time.

www.gfm.smh.com.au for more events.  Sydney Intercontinental Hotel  117 Macquarie Street Sydney 9240 1369 

One of my favourite ways to spend a day on the weekend is to meet friends and family to have Yum Cha – or “Dim Sum” as the yankees call it.  “Yum Cha” means “Drink tea” in Chinese, whilst “Dim Sum” is what you eat there as an accompaniment for the tea as you catch up – although in modern times, the food overshadows the tea!  Get to Marigold early, as there can be a queue from 11:30am on the weekend – an alternative to the take a number and listen to the microphone approach adopted by some.   Then when you get your table, order your tea (Jasmine, green, oolong etc), and cast your eye over the trolleys filled with steaming hot food (literally – some of the trolleys are mobile steamers filled with hot water).  I love Yum Cha also because the food is mini.  Bite sized so you can have a bit of everything.  Sorry on this trip we didn’t eat that much but here’s what we did have.

Char Siu Bau (or BBQ pork buns) are well known to the general population as fluffly steaming white dough buns filled with sweet pork. But have you tried the baked and glazed version – with a brown top, rounded and smooth?  Another favourite bun of mine is the polo or pineapple buns, filled with custard and topped with a sweet, crispy topping.

Essential but unhealthy – the mandatory spring rolls are crispy, deep fried asian sausage rolls – filled with mince of pork, mushrooms, and prawns if you’re lucky, as well as wood ear mushroom shreds and bamboo.  For the more health conscious, the steamed dumplings are a solid offering.  Prawn dumplings (har gau) are often chased by enthusiastic impatient diners (oh no, I would never do such a thing! ) and are often the first to go; and the most asked for.  Like a steam prawn wonton, wrapped in rice paper and steamed.

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The premises have formerly housed the QANTAS headquarters, a bank branch, and there’s even an optometrist next door.  So it was quite a surprise to workers in surrounding buildings to discover that a new Japanese restaurant suddenly staged a low key opening – appearing suddenly without much fanfare.  The saying to not judge a book by its cover holds true in this case as you are impressed from the moment you walk in.  What looks like a quickly flung together room of tables and chairs looking in from the outside (and also spectacles) is in fact a buzzing room of long pale timber banquettes, with half a dozen cozy couched nooks that offer more private dining on the other side.  The large sushi counter with its sushi train (that even runs through a wall) dominates the space, and provides a moving feast for the eye and a focus from the room.  And the food is GREAT, and certainly, surprisingly priced for the Sydney CBD. 

We took the spacious couched booth and had the salmon sashimi – melt in the mouth tender, juicy and sublime – and fresh; and two other a la carte sushi rolls – soft shell crab roll and prawn and avocado roll.

Six 6 bite sized morsels – I hate it when the sushis are so huge and the nori so stale that you look like a dog attacking a piece of meat as you attempt to bite into a sushi without shoving the whole thing in your mouth. Not so at this place! So fresh and visually exciting – the crab looks like it’s leaping out the sushi (a la Sebastien from the Little Mermaid!)

Okay if I *had* to complain, perhaps they could have given me the full prawn (and also along the length of the roll) rather than the half. But the rice had just the perfect amount of bite, and the nori fresh, with just the right amount of roe to coat the inside out rolls.

Okay if I were to make another complaint it would be that the entrees came after the mains. But oh well…. I had the ebi don – three crumbed prawns with egg and onion on rice.  Egg was teeny bit runny for me (not just the yolk) and I wasn’t sure whether I preferred the prawn to be tempura rather than breaded, but yummy nonetheless.

The chicken katsu curry was text book perfect, and portions generous for city meals; and the udon hotpot was filled to the brim with slurpy soft noodles, a prawn, and an egg – still runny – so that you can swirl it in or slurp whole into your mouth! 

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