FoodieChat

I stumbled upon this place by complete accident.  Walking over to Marigold, I noticed this completely open kitchen with food displayed in the window to make mouths water and pedestrians stop in their tracks.    And I certainly wasn’t the only one.  In front of the glass display of food and chefs was a long queue crouching beneath a solitary outdoor heater.  Mental note – MUST TRY!  

Well, try I did.  And it was even better than I expected.  From the window I actually had no idea what type of food it was – it was definitely Asian – in fact, it turned out to be Thai.  Home Thai – as in home cooked style food.  But I don’t know whose home has such amazing food every night – maybe a palace?  It was so hard to pick what to eat, but guided by the photos in the extensive menu, and sneaking glances at what arrived at other tables, we settled firstly on the Pad Thai. Did I mention this place is cheap??? $10.50!!  Authentically with sugar, peanuts and chilli powder on the side, fresh and cooked beansprouts.  And not oily but also not gluggy!  Did I mention the staff all use ipads to take your order?  A bit too cute – because it failed on our occasion and the waitress didn’t want to hand write our orders cos it wouldn’t go through.  Luckily it went back online after around 10 minutes. Oh , and also the waitresses wear LV side satchels.  Were they also from Thailand?

Highly recommended: the banana flower salad, topped with 6 gigantic prawns. It was text book perfect. Crunch, salt, sour, spicy all in one bite through fresh chillis, fish sauce, coriander, peanuts – YUM.  And the prawns were so generous.  Served on an artfully carved leaf too.

We finished off with two desserts – $6.50 for this mango (Fresh!) with sticky rice and coconut cream.  Umm… not sure if the kitchen mixed up the sticky rice, because it was salty  They also have sticky rice as a rice choice too.  So not really a fan of this dish.  Perfect texture of rice though.

And definitely couldn’t go past the dessert sampler. A steal at $5.50!  Banana fritters and various sticky rice and coconut puddings.

Another word of warning – don’t wear nice clothes, cos you will STINK afterwards!  But it is SOoooo worth it.  I can’t wait to go again.   Awesome food, and well priced too.  The Haymarket dining scene is looking up and lifting up in standards!

Two trusted independent sources, a third overheard and verified – Jimmy Lik’s is very good.  Must try. Hmmm… Longrain or Jimmy Liks?  Both are kinda modern asian with a twist, both are actually quite a bit more expensive than traditional Asian food!  OK, Jimmy Liks it is.  It’s in Pott’s Point, on a very quiet street.  Issue number one. Parking – or lack thereof.  We circled the Cross, Potts Point, everywhere is only 1 hour parking!  And on both sides of the street – diligent parking inspectors, so no sneaky overtime parking!  The paid carparks were a bit too far.  Lucky – 20 minutes circling later, some parking outside the school.   We found the restaurant, heaters blazing outside, two entrances – one to the bar, and one to the restaurant.  In the restaurant, communal dining is the go.  Which is great for groups, but slightly awkward for the two of us.  Their method is to seat couples side by side on the long communal table, NOT opposite.  Which lead me to say to the (very hot stranger in front of me): “Despite the fact that I would love to gaze into your eyes all night, I don’t know you, so would you mind if we swapped?”.   Hot guy agreed, and we swapped.  Oh dear. All the staff found this highly confusing, as all night, we got each others’ food served to us wrongly!  And pity, hot guy’s hot girlfriend came along eventually too. D’oh! hehehe.  Anyway, awkward seating aside… the food was quite good.  We tried the corn fritters.  (Have you noticed I have a thing for corn fritters?).  I expected breakfast style pancakes, but instead, 6 round puffs slightly bigger than golf balls.  They stick together with their batter, and are served with an assortment of vietnamese herbs, and a home made sweet chilli sauce.

We also opted for a sticky crispy skin duck with tamarind and orange ($33).  Viet style duck a l’orange I guess?  It was very sweet and sticky, and yummy, but bits of it were a bit too deep fried till they became like duck jerky!  But the garnishes were so beautiful and fresh, and the sauce very fragrant.

Regrettably, we thought we knew better than the waiter.  He (wisely) recommended that we opt for something different than our caramelised beef rib, as all our dishes were sweet.  He was right!  It would have been good to order something with a different element (salty for example), as the flavours were quite similiar.    Not so generous this one, but lip smackingly delicious all the same. (more…)

For my birthday this year, I chose Jugemu and Shimbashi, in Neutral Bay.  It’s actually two restaurants. One side specialises in teppanyaki and the other side in traditional Japanese cuisine (aka non teppanyaki in my lay person terms hehehe).  What attracted me to this restaurant was that it is known for its hand made soba. A man sits in a booth at the front every day stretching buckwheat into compliance and forming the day’s noodles.  I haven’t ever been able to witness this, however the room is still there for all to see in its floury authenticity!

The menu is vast, and has everything – you get both the teppanyaki and standard food menu in one.  The best thing is that the dishes are small (with not so small prices in some cases!) so you can order a variety of things to try.  I wanted to try the Japanese egg omelette.  Oops, I didn’t realise it was just the sushi egg – but sliced thicker!  It was served warm, with some grated fresh daikon.  It was $8 for four pieces.

We wanted to try the dragon roll, which was $18.  It consisted of 8 pieces of sushi, freshly fried soft shell crab with roe rolled into the rice.  It was very yummy, but alas, no avocado, and to be honest, we thought the servings were very stingy – given that I could have 3 plates of dragon roll (of 3 pieces) at Umi Kaitzen in Haymarket!  But aside from the price, it was very very nice.  What wasn’t welcome however, was the 50c charge for extra wasabi.  I have never been to a place that charges for that – it would have been appreciated if the waitress would warn us beforehand.

I was very curious to try the rice balls.  They were kinda like Japanese arancini of sticky rice – seasoned rice balls, but disappointingly again, with no filling, just rice balls.  They were $8 for two.

For me, the highlight of the evening was the freshly teppan fried gyoza. You can choose from chicken or pork (we chose pork).  What makes them a cut above the rest is the juicy filling which was wrapped very tightly in the wrapper – not loose clumsy parcels like many other versions. Also, the bases were crunchy and the wrapper just the right thickness.  $10 for 6.  You’ll need maybe two serves they are so good!

Another special of the restaurant is the Japanese pancake (okonomiyaki).  Several versions are on offer. Standard chicken or prawn or wagyu beef ones at $13 each, or “special” ones for around $19 each.  They are served with a little box of the condiments – dehyrated parsley, and very finely sliced bonito flakes, you know, those moving tentacle type things that  are served on top!

I have a confession.  I loathe mayonnaise.  And every sour white creamy type of sauce.  Creme fraiche, sour cream, my worst nightmare!  Yes, even sweet Japanese mayo!  So since it happens to sneak itself onto many Japanese dishes, I requested the pancake sans mayo.  We selected the special one. It had pork and two split prawns on top.  It was quite small. I was actually annoyed at the waitress, because we wanted to order 2 pancakes between 4, but she INSISTED that one would be enough… lo and behold, it wasn’t And then when we wanted to order another one, we were told it would be a 30 minute wait! Not happy Jan!  But hungry!! (more…)

It is SO cold lately, that all I want to eat every night coming home from work is a hot bowl of noodle soup.  Usually that’s noodles (udon, egg noodles, rice noodles), with veges of some sort, meat of some sort and some fish balls.  Tonight, I had some leftovers from a steamboat meal so my trick was to poach all the ingredients for just long enough to cook them without turning them into a soggy mess.  Two bowls of water going at once.  One for the fish ball squares – they need to be boiled for 10minutes.  And whilst that is going, poach the other ingredients in order of delicateness - golden mushrooms, shitaki mushrooms, then the tripe and finally the seafood ever so slightly.  Rinse the rice noodles under hot water (if you boil them they will be too soggy). And make the soup base: boil 2 cups of chicken stock, and add a slurp of soy sauce, a sprinkle of white pepper, a few drops of sesame oil and some chopped spring onions.  Place refreshed noodles in a bowl, and arrange all the ingredients nicely on top.  Pour on the hot soup and serve steaming hot.  No need for heaters and woolly socks, you will be warmed to the core In 15 minutes flat too