WARNING: Do not continue reading this post if
hungry.
No Koh holiday is complete without good food. So an essential part of any holiday itinerary
is to make sure there’s good food to keep the Dad happy.It isn’t difficult to find good food in Sydney. One reason why my folks were so keen to come
back is also cos they love the food here – the Chinese food to be
specific. Their yum-cha and Chinese
seafood ranks high on my mum’s must-eat list (and that says a lot) cos Mummy is
usually very easy with food.
Our daughter is also pretty much an Asian kid so I
tried to make sure that everyday, we had a good mix of Asian and Aussie
food. Here’re a list of places we dined
at and our humble reviews …
Café Sydney came highly recommended on some the
reviews I read online but it turned out to be the least favoured amongst the
meals we had. The food wasn’t bad but
the service turned us off. Yes the
ambience was nice and all but they made us feel like all throughout dinner,
they just couldn’t wait to get rid of us Asian tourist diners. Unless you really must dine with the view of
the Sydney bridge in sight, I don’t recommend coming here despite what the
reviews say.
One of places we discovered on this trip that won
our hearts though was a little Italian trattoria – A Tavola. It was a last minute decision to have some
Italian pasta for dinner so I just googled it and took the chance with the
lovely reviews I read. They were so warm
over the phone and gladly took in our reservations even though they were
actually running full. You know, when
you dine with a toddler who’s just embracing the Terrible Twos, all you really
pray for is for wonderful waitresses who’ll put up with spills on the floor and
Disney cartoons playing in the background.
And the folks at A Tavola, they made Jules feel so welcome, I was most
thankful!! They offered to bring her to the kitchen to watch the chefs in
action so that we could take some time to enjoy the meal, one of them saw her
watching Monsters’ Inc on the ipad and even told Jules how that too was her
favourite cartoon!! Almost every wait staff came by our table just to entertain
Jules and even attempted to teach her an Italian or two – “Ciao Julianne”!! When you get good service AND good food – that’s
like a dream!! The food was simple, fresh and wholesome!! That panfried salami
with polenta – crazy good!! And that simple tagliatelle tossed in olive oil and
mushrooms –
died and gone to heaven!! Easily our best meal in Sydney!!
So I raved so much about Chinese food in Sydney –
we were so unadventurous we stuck with the same Chinese restaurant we visited
10 years ago and went back twice during the trip. The food standard at Golden Century is still
as good as it was 10 years ago. We ended
our last night in Sydney with a yummy lobster noodle dinner there. It’s hard to find good lobster noodle where
the lobsters is fresh and the noodles nicely braised and infused with all the
juices and goodness of the lobster. My
favourite by far is the one served up at the Mandarin Kitchen in London’s
Queensway. But this one comes a close
second. Jules was
lapping up the noodles
too!!
Another Asian meal we had was at Sokyo – a fusion
Japanese restaurant serving up delectable Japanese dishes such as their fish
carpaccio and light and crunchy tempuras.
That wagyu beef sirloin that we ordered was also beautifully done. They didn’t have anything for Jules on the
menu though but my Asian daughter didn’t complain that all I fed her was japanese
rice and miso soup that night. Maybe it
was some fancy rice grain they
used.
If you’re familiar with celebrity chefs in Sydney,
then you would have heard of Bills.
Bills have become a Sydney institution and the place to go for a
quintessential Aussie brekkie. I have a couple of his cookbooks and one of his
recipe that is on repeat in my kitchen is his banana choc chip loaf. So breakfast at Bills – really, there are
scramble eggs and there are Bills’ scramble eggs. Tried as I have, I cannot recreate that dish
at home. Maybe they just don’t work with our local eggs. They also serve some mean ricotta
hotcakes. I don’t know how they do it
but the hotcakes were so fluffy and light, like eating clouds (not that I’ve
tasted clouds but, just saying).
We had a 4pm flight to catch and wrapped up our
Sydney holiday with a visit to a lovely café – The Grounds of Alexandria – in
the suburb of Alexandria. It’s a café
cum roaster cum florist cum farm all in one and it’s a lovely lovely place to
visit. It came at the little sis’s
recommendation when she visited the place earlier in June. That saffron pasta with prawns that we
ordered – oh my – if I didn’t put a stop to it, Jules would have finished the
entire plate by herself!!
And that wraps up eat-our-way-through-Sydney and
our holiday posts. We’re headed to
Disneyland in about 2 months for our next holiday. Till then, have an awesome end to 2013!!
*********************
Level 5/31 Alfred St, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
348 Victoria Street, Darlinghurst NSW 2010, Australia
359 Crown Street, Surrey Hills, NSW 2010, Australia
With outlets across the city
7A, No.2 Huntley Street, Alexandria, NSW 2015, Australia
393-399 Sussex St, Haymarket NSW 2000, Australia
Level G, The Star, 80 Pyrmont Street, NSW 2009, Australia
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