FoodieChat

Bathers’ Pavillion, Balmoral, is well known for its brunches in the cafe, and also the fine dining restaurant, both sharing an uninterrupted view of Balmoral Beach as you dine.  But did you know that it also offers the best value high tea in Sydney?  It is just $50 for two people, and really does make you think why other Sydney hotels charge so much for around the same thing, minus the view!  Bathers’ Pavillion takes a more casual approach, no stuffy waiters and elegant china here!  This is very well suited to its large proportion of families that come her also much more affordable at $25 instead of $50+ per person.  The napkins are brightly coloured, and suit the seaside type of interiors inside.

Also unlike other stuffy high teas in Sydney, Bathers does NOT put everyone’s food onto the one tea stand in an attempt to make it not look stingy! Bathers puts two persons food on the one stand, no need to make it look good value because it already is!

Many people eat savoury sweet sweet, but for me, I start with hot then move to savoury then to sweet.  First up, scones!  One each, still warm, and of a good size, served with whipped cream and strawberry jam.  High tea purists might argue that clotted cream or double cream should be served.  But I prefer my cream with as little saturated fat as possible, it makes it much less heavy.

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Last year, I bought the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, based purely on the beautiful traditional home baked goodies that filled its pages.  A year later, I was lucky enough to get to visit London, and purely by coincidence, managed to pass the actual store whilst exploring trendy Soho!  You can’t miss it, as the book is so true to the store – the pink bird sitting on top of the painted font (a hummingbird dare I say? ) and the striking red shelves with its wares on display.

Inside the store, it’s even cuter, with pink cupboards, pink and brown checkered floor and rows and rows of perfect cupcakes behind glass display cabinets. (I didn’t notice this lovey dovey couple on the left until I got home, the guy blended so well with the decor ).  The restaurant has a row of benches where you can eat it (it costs more though) and enjoy a coffee.

All the treats from the book are on display here.  The most popular is the red velvet, and of course the traditional vanilla cupcake, each is adorned with a lick of pastel cream.  New flavour of the day was the earl grey tea flavour.

These mounds of calories and goodness were in fact rocky roads, rather than rocky road topped cupcakes as I had imagined.

Apart from the cupcakes, Hummingbird Bakery also has large cakes. Sadly, I didn’t realise you could buy these by the slice, until too late

Despite the fact that I was still full from lunch, I decided I did not want to carry around a cupcake whilst shopping. So I had to eat one there. Eating in costs just slightly more – but at least it allowed me to dissect what’s so good about these cupcakes After much agonising deliberation, I decided on a chocolate cupcake for something different, swathed in a gorgeous lemon coloured vanilla frosting. Read the rest of this entry »

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

We Aussies feel a sense of connection with Denmark, after all, we gave them their Crown Princess Mary!  Thinking of Denmark, the images that come to mind are beautiful people, blonde hair blue eyed babies, fresh air, water, canals, and danish pastries!!  Well all these things Denmark does have.  But one thing I did not expect it to be was so expensive The Danish Kroner exchange rate with the Aussie has resulted in coffees costing no less than $6 to have in or take away, same price for soft drinks too.  And whilst Croatia and Greece average meal price was 10 euros and an expensive meal being 20 euros, it was more like an average meal in Copenhagen being 20 euros   Anyway….. What is Danish food like?  Traditional food includes herrings, lots of meats and stews as it’s such a cold country, meatballs, and the open sandwich. Which is exactly as it sounds.  Slices of bread topped with all manner of condiments, meats and flavours eaten on a plate with a knife and fork with no bread on top.    We went in search of traditional Danish food, and found the Kovenhavner Cafeen.   At approx DKK190 per meal it was a little on the expensive side to us (you can find meals for DKK160), but it looked full of Danish people so it must be good right?   My first upset was that they refused to serve tap water.  Bottled water only.  Imagine if they opened in Sydney, there would be a huge revolt!  And I must admit when I walked in the restaurant, I thought “yuck”.  It was so old and a bit musty.  You can imagine old people playing cards and smoking in here as it was dark and the carpet ugly and old, with very outdated furniture.  So in conjunction with the limited menu, i wasn’t that enthused about this place.  Well after looking at the menu for a while, thinking “what’s the least bad thing I could eat”, I settled on the Copenhagen casserole.  Pork loin casserole which must be ordered in at least 2 serves.  The waiter brought this huge cast iron pot which was approx only 1/4 full of food.  But woooaaahhhh what it lacked in volume it made up for in flavour.  I was proved wrong again – appearances deceptive as this was the most delicious thing I had eaten in Copenhagen!!

It came with freshly deep fried (And very oily) but crispy french fries.

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