A Breakfast, Brunch and Dinner - New York City

I have been struggling to bind my one off meals while at New York so I thought it would make sense to have a couple of posts covering my various meals which are not specifically themed.

This post covers a breakfast, a brunch and a dinner which occurred on different occasions during my recent trip.

Jack's Wife Freda
One day while I was strolling around Soho, I was near the boundary of where Soho changes to Nolita and I saw a group of people milling around a little cafe. My curiosity got to me, I decided to get nearer and saw the sign "Jack's Wife Freda".  What an interesting name! It certainly perked my interest and after a bit of googling back in the hotel, I came by one early morning for breakfast.

It was a cosy little bistro packed to the brim with diners. I managed to slide into a little table and ordered the Madame Freda. It was a Pressed sandwich with duck prosciutto, cheddar béchamel, gruyere and a fried egg.

It was delicious! The duck prosciutto was thinly sliced, and the béchamel and gruyere was nicely cheesy. There was a small salad of rocket with pickled onion. I loved the sweetness of the onion.

I also had a fresh cantaloupe juice (for us Aussies it is rock melon juice).

The people were friendly and I could see Freda running the front of house.

Wishlist: Green Shakshuka with Challah toast.

Jane
My friend JN and I were informed by the hotel concierge that Jane was one of the best places to have brunch when in New York. How could we resist checking it out? However, since it was so popular, it is a must to book for brunch.

When we got there on a Sunday, we understood what he meant. It was quite a large restaurant but whoa! It was so full of people and the queue outside to wait for a table for those who booked was just as bad. Goodness! I could only hope the food's good!

By the way, I may have forgotten to mention that Jane has special menus for brunch. Brunch is only on Saturdays and Sundays.

The other thing to be aware of is if you order a dish from the brunch menu, you get a free Cocktail!!!! :)

Papparich Parramatta (Parramatta, Sydney)

As most of you would know, Papparich is a chain of Malaysian food outlets around Australia and Asia Pacific. The first venue I dined at was the Chatswood branch which was their first restaurant in Sydney. Till today, I think there are queues just to get a table. And that opened over a year ago.

Recently, they opened in Parramatta and the food blogger in me had to check it out. On my first visit I met up with Mel from The Adventures of Miss Piggy and her husband Dave. It was nice catching up with Mel after such a long time and as usual we were busy taking pics of our dishes before we took a single bite.

Deep fried chicken skin - we had to order this, especially since I had yet to try this wonderfully crispy, addictive dish. Yum! I couldn't stop popping one in my mouth every few minutes. Dangerous!!

Nasi Lemak with Beef Rendang - a very popular dish which was ordered by Mel and Dave. Turns out this is one of their favourite dishes to order when at Papparich!

Biryani Rice With Red Chicken and Sambal Prawns - this is one of my favourite dishes to order and it did not disappoint. I do like the flavours of the Biryani rice which was infused with various spices like onions, cardamom and cloves. It makes this rice so much more interesting and full of flavour. The red chicken had a slightly sweet yet slightly spicy flavour. And all this served with a rather large pappadum.

Cho Cho San (Potts Point, Sydney)

The name itself calls for attention. When I first read about Cho Cho San, it was the name of the restaurant that caught my eye. And after reading many positive reviews, I was keen to check it out.

A few weeks ago, there was an opportunity to have lunch here and it was nice that we could actually book a table for lunch.  As opposed to get there early and queue up for a table! When I stepped into the restaurant, my first impressions were bright, light, clean, and modern! I felt excited to be here! The great lighting in the restaurant brought a big food blogger's smile to my face! :)

What's so interesting about Cho Cho San is none of the people at the helm are of Japanese origin and yet the menu is Japanese focused with a modern interpretation.

The menu is divided into Small dishes, Raw bar, Hibachi grill, Others, Sweets and Feed Me Please.

From the Small dishes section, we chose:

Silken tofu in tomato dashi - super smooth tofu with a delicious, flavourful yet subtle dashi. Very elegant broth but so good!

Tempura pumpkin - the pumpkin was soft and sweet with a contrasting texture of the crunchy tempura batter.

Fried chicken - a generous plate of what I would say was a very popular dish with us. The mayo went so well with the fried chicken.

Prawn bun - I wish I could have had more of this. A warm and toasted bun which cradled a beautiful mix of sweet prawn meat which had touches of mayo. Yum to the max! More please! :)

Fix St James (Sydney CBD)

A few of us were meeting up for some 'after work dinner' and we selected a venue near our office. Fix St James is literally a short stroll from my office. How convenient!

Upon checking their menu I was somehow attracted to their entrees and decided on 2 entrees instead of a main.

Duck liver parfait, brioche toast and pickled cucumber. Pretty to look at and delicious to boot! The parfait was smooth and creamy and I really liked the addition of the pickled cucumber. It was a nice dimension. I only wish there was a bit more of the brioche toast.

Fried chicken, mash and gravy. I enjoyed the pieces of fried chicken but would have liked more gravy to the mash.

Cabramatta Crawl April 2014

I am sure all of you have occasional cravings for certain types of food (and you don't have to be pregnant to experience this!). This can beset you at any point in time. Well, lately I have been craving all things Vietnamese and I don't even know why! My good friend CW and I have been planning to do a Cabramatta Crawl since February of this year. Yes! You read right, February! :-)

We finally managed to make it work. No heat wave, no prearranged social engagement and most importantly no track work planned that weekend. Yay! I was looking forward to satisfying my cravings!

The plan was to eat through our hit list but share the meals so we didn't fill up too quickly. We started by having breakfast and pho was our choice.

Pho Tau Bay has reputedly the best pho in town. I don't recall having been here before and it was quite a tiny little restaurant. We got there before 10 am and was lucky enough not to have to wait for a table. As we sat down, a man came up to take our order but we were not given any menus. It was quite funny because I didn't know what to call the dish outside of the word 'pho'. CW was fast thinking enough and said 'the special' please. We ordered a large bowl so we could share. I asked CW whether she knew what the special meant and it was an assumption it meant all parts of the beef like tendon, tripe, beef balls and thin slices of beef. To be absolutely sure, I went searching for the menu. There was a board near the front counter and to my relief the special was exactly what we thought. Phew!

Well, what can I say about the pho? The broth was packed with flavour, yet not unctuous. I didn't feel I was drinking heaps of fat. As a matter of fact I felt I was drinking spoonfuls of goodness! A beautiful bowl of noodles, beef, tendons and a great broth which was lifted by the spikes of spicy chilli slices we consumed. So good!

We then decided to give our tummy a little break and walked around the shops. Along the way, I had a feeling of being back in Malaysia. Seeing familiar ingredients such as fresh tamarind, packets of instant coffee, shelves of biscuits and confectionery. And even a coconut grater!

And the abundance of street food, seafood and fresh vegetables and herbs make us consumers so spoilt for choice!

Our second stop was at Tan Viet Noodle House. There were queues to dine here. We came at the right time, only 2 were ahead of us in the queue. But later on I saw about 10 people deep waiting to get a table.

Ippudo Sydney (CBD)

Yes, once again this is another place I have yet to check out until now! What is the matter with me? Well, my only defence is, there are so many places to check out in Sydney and sometimes it takes longer to get to one place. :)

Believe it or not, it has taken about 2 months of talking about Ippudo to finally actually eat there. My friend DD and I have been planning to take a lunch break there for the past 2 months but we haven't been successful in finding the right time to do this. Sheer frustration and quite laughable actually! Work gets crazy busy and sometimes there is no time for a decent lunch break.

But we did it one fine day! And to top it off, I decided to add another lunch visit to try out different things on the menu.

Ippudo Sydney as I am sure all of you in Sydney would know is located in Westfield Sydney. It opened in December 2012 and is still going strong. In the past year there has been an absolute boom for all things ramen and I believe this food empire opened in Sydney at the right time.

For lunch we decided to have their signature Ippudo pork bun which was soft, fluffy pillow-like buns filled with braised pork and the Ippudo original sauce. Their sauce is mayo based and was light and creamy. I could have popped a few of this in!

I had the Shiromaru Tamago which was the original tonkotsu broth served with thin noodles, pork loin, bean sprouts, black mushroom, flavoured egg and shallots. This is the hakata style of ramen broth.

DD had the Karaka Men Tamago which was the original tonkotsu broth, with special spicy miso, ground pork and flavoured egg.

House of Crabs (Surry Hills, Sydney)

Crabs! What can I say about crabs except that I do love eating this crustacean! I love getting my hands dirty, cracking the claws and getting into the meaty bits. Yum! And when there is great sauce, even better!!

The first time I heard about the House of Crabs was when I saw some photos on Instagram posted by Helen of Grab Your Fork sometime last year. The crabs perked my interest.

My friends and I finally managed to organise a lunch on a wet Sunday. We got there so early we had to wait outside as the venue was not even opened yet. :)

House of Crabs is located on the 1st floor of The Norfolk. As I walked up the stairs I immediately saw all the crab like decor. There was very much a chintzy, schmaltzy vibe to the place. It was long john silver, shanty like with heaps of quirky artefacts! I loved it! Something so different and blasé with its 'in your face' American South shanty feel. I don't know how else to describe it.

We pored over the menu and decided on:

Creole Corn with Dorito and jerky salt

Fries with Cajun salt

Little neck clams with Mexican sauce

Queensland prawns with Cajun sauce

King crab with Lemon pepper sauce