Taste of Sydney

The Taste of Sydney food festival is currently on in Sydney. It started on Thursday 8/3 and ends on Sunday 11/3. Because of the heavy rains on Thursday, the Thursday event had to be cancelled but today's weather has been stunningly glorious. Summer showed it's true colors today, except summer is over and we are now officially in Autumn mode. It was so hot out in Centennial Park that I am sure there were some people getting burnt walking around the stalls.

My friend AK and I were so excited about attending the food event. We are both first timers. We bought the tickets a few weeks ago together with some Crowns. Crowns are the main currency of trade at the event. They are used to purchase the food, drinks and other purchases from the stall vendors. In addition to Crowns, cash is accepted too. This can happen when you run out of Crowns.

As we approached the main entrance, we were given a Menu Card each. Basically it is a booklet listing all the main events (i.e. cooking demonstrations from various chefs, the list of chefs at the Chef's Table, list of restaurants and their menus etc.).

We walked around the greens and tried to see as many stalls as possible. There was Patisse, Fine French Food, Brown Brothers, Organic Dairy Farmers ( I loved their blue cheese and bought some). The list goes on. All in all there are 110 exhibitors with stands.

Patisse's Macaron Tower

I saw Alvin Quah ( of MasterChef fame) cooking at the De Dietrich Demonstration Kitchen. He was demonstrating cooking Duck SanChoy Bao. Manu Feildel was busy posing pictures with so many of his fans outside his L'Etoile restaurant stall. AK is a huge fan and I managed to take a picture of her with Manu. He was very gracious and posed with so many people. He is obviously very popular.

Alvin Quah in cook demonstration mode

Manu with some of his fans

I saw Shaun Presland outside his stand Sake Restaurant & Bar, Colin Fassnidge at Four in Hand and Martin Boetz for a brief moment at the front of the Longrain stall.

We tasted organic cheese, Nespresso coffee, mineral soft drinks, jams and duck pate. For actual dishes, we used our Crowns to have the following:

Fried Hawskebury School Prawns with prosciutto and rouille. This was very nice and we could eat the whole prawns. Crunchy, tasty and the rouille went well with the saltiness of the prosciutto. We bought this from the Quarter Twenty One stall.

School prawns with prosciutto and rouille

We also got a freebie Slow Cooked and Caramelised Short Rib with bone marrow persillade. This was from Quarter Twenty One too. It was delicious, the meat was so tender.

From Sake Restaurant & Bar, we had the Hiramasa Kingfish Ceviche. Delicious! Loved the kingfish!

Kingfish ceviche

From L'Etoile, AK had the Apple and Cinnamon Donut for her dessert. It started to get really hot do I settled for a Blood Plum with Vanilla Ripple Popsicle from Pure Pops. Yummy! AK so loved her donut.

Apple and Cinnamon Donut

Somewhere along the way, we shared a Salted Caramel macaron but I cannot remember which patisserie we bought it from.

We relaxed for a bit in the shade sitting on the grass and enjoying the beautiful breeze and amazed at the beautiful weather we were enjoying.

What a lovely way to while a Saturday away. Gorgeous Sydney weather, lots of food to try out and a great friend who shared this adventure with me.

Cheers AK, I had a lovely day. Thank you for coming with me.

Taste of Sydney website is http://www.tasteofsydney.com.au/


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