Eataly New York

I know! More New York posts! Really? Yes, I have been rather slow with my travel posts and I had decided to scatter them across the months rather than put up post after post of NYC! Sorry to those who would be 'so over' my New York trip by now.

The famous "Flatiron" building just outside Eataly

This post is about the time I spent at Eataly in Dec last year. It was not my first time, admittedly I did give it a whirlwind visit in June 2013 but this time I made an effort to spend a couple of hours here.

And for that, I saw aisles of dried pasta, pasta sauces, fresh pasta, recipe books, chocolates, Italian sweets, salami, prosciutto, and a whole host of Italian small goods, both packaged and freshly served off the counter. Oh and there was cheese, desserts and heaps of Italian bottled drinks. Need I go on?

Coogee Pavilion (Coogee, Sydney)

Another food venture by the Merivale Group and this time it is at Coogee. It has been a few months since Coogee Pavilion opened and it has been on my list. I did wonder when I could take the opportunity to frequent Coogee as it is literally the opposite side of the city from where I live.

Lo and behold a friend suggested we ladies meet up at Coogee Pavilion as she had been there and really enjoyed the vibe and the food. So here we are on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon enjoying the glorious weather and taking in the atmosphere of this happening place.

Fortunately we were allowed to book a table because it was packed as sardines and there were so many walk ins who had to wait for a table.

It is located at the most perfect spot right next to the promenade facing Coogee beach. There is a kiosk for take aways and in the main building there are sections for grilled food, juices, pizzas, Will and Co coffee and seafood (fresh/raw or cooked).

I could not believe how large the space was. More on what I saw later in this post.

We decided on the following:

Mini lobster roll with lemon mayo, celery and chives. I had to order this as I was curious to check it out. I liked the mini size, enough to get a good taste but not feel too full to have other dishes. There were nice flavours of tang and crunchy crispy chips. Yes, there were potato chips in the mix. Interesting combinations which I enjoyed.

A couple of us ordered the Coogee Diner Burger with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle with a burger sauce. Served with chips of course! Yep! It was seriously good! I could not get over the pillow soft burger buns, soooo good! Oh dear, I am getting hungry just describing the dish!

Bar Surry Hills and Italian Kitchen (Surry Hills, Sydney)

The story of how we came to be here is quite amusing. I hope my regular visitors will bear with me while I regale you with this snippet. My friends and I had been planning this catch up for a while now and we had decided on lunching at Tapavino.

But we had arranged this quite a while ago and Tapavino's website at that time did indicate it was open on Saturdays. Lo and behold, around 10 pm the night before the catch up, for some reason I was compelled to check the website and realised to my horror Tapavino was no longer open on the weekends! Aargh!

After some scrambling of text messages and some quick googling, I decided on checking out Bar Surry Hills and Italian Kitchen which recently launched a revamped refurbishment and menu.

At around 12.30 pm on a Saturday, I was the first to walk in and it felt quite strange to be the first one on the premise. But over the next few hours, it started to have more and more people coming in. Phew!

We chatted and chilled over drinks and some delicious food. I was very surprised at how good the food turned out.

Garlic Parmesan Crust - talk about super crusty. My friends said it was delicious! They finished the lot so that says something!

Salumi Misti Board of prosciutto, sopressa, mortadella with hand made grissini, Sicilian olives, grana and extra virgin olive oil. I shared with this my friend MA and we both loved the board. I even got to see the salumi being thinly shaved by the young cook. Loved the grissini and the salumi were so thinly sliced the shavings were practically melting in my mouth. More please!

Bianco Pizza which was a potato, rosemary, mozzarella, and garlic pizza drizzled with truffle oil. I did not expect the pizza to be as thin as it turned out. It was wonderfully crusty and the potatoes were thinly sliced yet had a nice bite. Yum!

Dinner at Via Napoli Pizzeria ( Lane Cove, Sydney)

What a night to pick for dining out!! It was wet, cold and windy but my friends and I still met up.

It was bucketing!

I had been itching to check out Via Napoli for a while now. Even since I heard about their metre long pizzas! On top of that after seeing thesuzchef's IG photos of their pizza earlier this year, I was salivating. And to add more salt to the wound, the recent Time Out magazine's special on pizzas voted Via Napoli as the number pizza place in Sydney.

That was it! I had to go check it out!!!! The blah weather was an absolute dampener but not enough to deter me.

I couldn't believe how popular the place was. Packed to the rafters! So much so we were relegated to the back of the building. An annex that was only accessible outdoors. Out came the umbrellas!

Our meal consisted of shared plates of:

Prosciutto E Bufala - Prosciutto Parma with Buffalo Mozzarella. I had been eyeballing this dish since I perused their menu a few days ago and it was delicious. The mozzarella was so fresh and had a great texture and the prosciutto was full of flavour. I have yet to find a local prosciutto that can match to those I had in Italy but this one was pretty good!

Grilled prawns with rocket salad. This was one of the specials of the day and the prawns were beautifully cooked. They were succulent and had a lovely smoky taste from the grill. More please!!

GPO Pizza (Sydney CBD)

Not long after most of us had returned to Sydney from our fab NYC trip, some of us who live in Sydney decided to meet up for pizza. When we were in Brooklyn, we had pizza at Grimaldi's (see Brooklyn and Grimaldi's) and NC claimed at that point in time that the pizza at GPO was much better.

Well, we decided to take her up on her claim and we met up at GPO Pizza for dinner one Thursday night. It was lovely to see my travel mates again. Deja vu hit me big time! There was AW, NC AND JN and we ordered a few pizzas as we chatted and caught up with each other.

I had not eaten at any of the outlets in GPO prior to this evening. I didn't even realise there was even a concept of a food court in the GPO building. But now I know! I quite liked the open dining area and felt quite happy that I could sit anywhere and order from any of the outlets.

We had:

Bruschetta to start

Margherita (Tomato base with Mozzarella and Basil)

Ortolana (Tomato base with Mozzarella, Eggplant, Zucchini and Mushroom)

The Brooklyn Bridge and Pizza at Grimaldi's (New York City)

I have mentioned before about my mental to do list (as one would say a bucket list) that I occasionally get a chance to scratch an item off. During my recent trip to New York, I managed to scratch quite a few off my list and my walk across the Brooklyn Bridge was another scratch off!!!

It was another warm and sunny morning when we walked across the bridge. It was also high in humidity and we were sweating profusely as we slowly walked the bridge busily taking photos of Brooklyn and also of Manhattan.

Photo courtesy of Sami Lukis

There were parts of the bridge that was undergoing repairs which accounted for some sections being covered by construction walls and ropes. But that didn't bother me, I just wanted to soak it all in. I was really walking across this iconic bridge! Across some parts of the bridge I could see little locks along the metallic chains. Fascinating.

Photo courtesy of Sami Lukis

As we arrived at the other end and we were in Brooklyn itself we took a quick stroll around and ended up in the park next to bridge. It was a lovely park designed for families. There were mothers with their children playing in a cordoned off area. There was a little alcove where we could take pictures of the bridge from the Brooklyn end.