I recently had some birthday drinks and nibbles at the Opera Bar, which was really a shameless excuse to try their Vegetarian Tasting Plate ($42). Verdict? Mostly fab – except for the orange braised fennel (no vegetable quite hits the ‘uh!’ button like fennel) and over-lemony veg tartlets. The fried won-tons were incredible though, and […]
It was a running joke that Keith, Alison, Will and I would one day go on a 50s-style double-date. You know, just like in Archie comics or on Happy Days, with us all sipping milkshakes out of heart-shaped straws and hoeing down burgers and fries between sitcom-style punchlines. With a jukebox blaring the kind of […]
One of the ace things about blogging is being glove-tapped on the shoulder and being surprised with a silver platter of first-rate links. So I was lucky to have Gemma recently email me about a (literal) head-in-the-clouds foodie experience. Dinner In The Sky is exactly what its name conjures up – your meal takes place […]
There’s nothing more rock ‘n’ roll than some ego-fuelled tiff between rival bands. But there’s something slightly surreal (and we are talking melting-clocks territory here) when ex musical arch-enemies start to bond over… cheese? This is supposedly how the rift between Britpop territory-stakers, Blur and Oasis, could be mended, according to a syndicated piece in […]
I love the Opera Bar. Like its architectural namesake, it keens with lots of high notes and hums rather nicely all up and down the treble clef. A few of the meals I’ve had there have been as memorable as the plays, concerts and acts I’ve seen at the nearby Sydney Opera House. And even […]
I used to spend a crazy amount of time cooking on the weekends. If I wanted to create my own time warp, I just had to flick through to an untried recipe in a book. Hours would vaporise – from the prep to the cooking to the mouthfuls eaten to the always-dreary washing up. I’d […]
While at uni I’d worked casually in a restaurant where we’d take tinned snails, put them into shells and bury them under butter flavoured with garlic granules. Then we’d freeze the snails and, when needed, thaw them in the microwave, grill them, send them out and then wash the shells in the dishwasher when they […]
Sometimes a meal out can be so good you want to laser it into your memory so you can remember it forever. In fact, my first visit to Bentley Restaurant and Bar made my brain light up so much that it inspired me to start a food blog, ensuring that I’d have some digital keepsake […]
“People cook to bring something to the table; people write to keep something that was said there. I enjoy the company of cooks, I realised, because I love the occasions they create for conversation.”-Adam Gopnik, Through The Children’s Gate(as illustrated by a picture Will took at Pizza E Birra in Surry Hills, where the conversation […]
With a set dish and bit of booze for $25, Sydney Festival Feasts is a brilliant way to score a table at restaurants that might otherwise be over your budget. Yesterday, Michael and I had the vego option at Wildfire at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in Circular Quay – it was a simple pasta, nothing […]
