Queenies (Surry hills, Sydney)

After reviewing my recent posts, I have just realised that I have been hanging out quite a bit at Surry Hills lately! I need to break this trend or before I know it, I might just end up living in this trendy end of town! :) Wouldn't that be a hoot?!

A recent mid week catch up with a friend ended up with us having some Jamaican food at Queenies. It is located above The Forresters and I almost missed the corner stairs to get up to Queenies.

As I was walking up the stairs and taking in the decor, I had a feeling of déjà vu. The position of the restaurant and decor reminded me very strangely of The House of Crabs! For the life of me, I know not why!?!

Once again, the concept is shared plates and we decided to try out the following:

Bammies filled with Prawn, mango and ginger; and pulled pork and pineapple. Firstly a little internet research has revealed to me that bammies are West Indian flat pancakes made from cassava flour. Of the two, we definitely preferred the prawn and mango bammy. Such a classic and tropical flavours.

We found the pulled pork a trifle flat in flavour. I know what to order next time. :)

Sugarcane Restaurant (Surry Hills, Sydney)

Sugarcane has been in the food scene for a while now but I think since it recently went through a revamp of their menu and a fresh interior look, it has picked up interest in the Sydney food scene.

Recently I had an opportunity to check it out one Saturday night. It was a rather chilly night actually but quite warm in the restaurant. We were seated at one of the long communal tables.

Sugarcane is one of those restaurants with 2 seatings and since we had to vacate by 8.00 I decided to take the 6.00 pm option. KL and I had already checked the menu online so we had an idea of what we wanted.

The food came out thick and fast!

Sydney rock oyster with Sugarcane dressing - a few hmmm's from my table indicated these were good. I am not an oyster person so I skipped this one.

Prawn, rice cake and caramelised sugar cane. This piece of appetiser stood alone on its own as I was the only one who ordered it. I popped the whole thing in my mouth and was greeted with an explosion of flavours! Completely surprised but delighted by the tart and sweet flavours and the crunchy texture of the rice cake was spot on! I now wish I had ordered more of these! Super delicious!!!!

Sorry - not a great shot! :(

Crispy tortilla, crab, green apple, coconut and lime. Light, fresh and tangy flavours with a delightfully crispy tortilla.

Fried eggs, black vinegar and caramel. Better known as son-in-law eggs, these were so addictive. The egg was gooey on the inside and the black vinegar and caramel sauce was oh so deliciously sweet and slightly sharp. The sauce perfectly complemented the egg. Yum!

Pad Thai with a serve of chicken. Now, I thought we were going to get the normal chicken that comes with Pad Thai. You know, the chicken breast slivers we typically get when we order Pad Thai with chicken. Boy was I wrong! These were twice cooked chicken and came fried! There was a delicious caramelisation to the chicken which brought a nice complexity to an otherwise standard pad Thai. I liked the fact the bean sprouts were not fried and were fresh and still crunchy.

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!

Devon Cafe By Day (Surry Hills, Sydney)

I finally found the opportunity to check out Devon Cafe, not just once but twice! This cafe has been opened since 2013 and has been pulling in the crowds ever since. What is it about this cafe that attracts the hordes? Is it the coffee, is the the food, or is it the quirky dish names on the menu? Better still, is it the friendly service? Let's find out, shall we? :)

My first visit was on a Saturday morning and I came with my friend CW. We arrived around 11.15 am and were told it would be around a 15 minute wait before we could get a table. When we did get our seats, it was at the communal table sharing with other diners. Did I ever mention I love communal tables? I get to be a sticky beak and see what others have ordered!

After poring over the menu which had some interesting dish names, we decided on sharing all our dishes.

Watermelon, apple and mint juice

Kaya Toast - coconut jam, with 63' eggs served in light soy sauce,  and brioche toast lightly buttered. I ordered this dish because kaya toast is such a typical breakfast dish in Malaysia. It brought back memories of my childhood when I was living in the small town of Klang. But back then I would have had the kaya toast on its own and the soft boiled eggs on its own slathered with white pepper, light soy with dark caramel sauce and dipped with soft white bread! At Devon Cafe, you are encouraged to venture into dipping the toast into the eggs and have gooey soft eggs which are slightly salted with the sweet caramelly kaya toast. Nice!

Breakfast with the Sakuma's - I absolutely love the name of this dish! I wonder who the Sakuma's were? It was Miso grilled salmon, smoked eel croquette, 63' egg, radish petit salad and kewpie mayonnaise. Firstly, before I describe the flavours I would like to state how excited I was to see the dish was back on the menu. The menu had gone through a change recently and the Sakuma dish was off the menu. And I had heard how good it was!

My First Time at Chur Burger (Surry Hills, Sydney)

Okay! I have finally joined the rest of the Sydney food blogging crowd who have visited Chur Burger! And funnily enough it was not even a planned visit but it's the spontaneous decisions that make it so much more fun, don't you think so?

This place is famous for its crowds and queues, let alone its burgers. So I was lucky to have one of my friends AJ arrive there ahead of us. By the time I got there, I only had to hang around for a minute and there were seats ready for us.

As expected, the place was full, with loud music in the background and the team busy as! We were seated near the kitchen area but I didn't realise until later on that there was a neon sign right next to me which would distort every one of my food photo. The sign was lit in red! Aargh!

Please excuse the quality of the photos, they had to be photo shopped. :(

We had the following:

Grilled beef burger with cheese, tomato jam, mustard mayo and pickle - I decided to try the classic beef burger to mentally compare against others from a rating perspective. It was a good burger, no question about it but in my humble opinion the jury is out if it is the best burger in Sydney.

Pulled pork with Chur BBQ sauce, red slaw and fennel mayo. AJ ordered this as he loved it the last time he had it and couldn't resist it again. Thumbs up from him!

Nomad (Surry Hills, Sydney)

Yay! My first post of 2014 is about a great new restaurant in Surry Hills. My meal at Nomad occurred a couple of weeks before Christmas and as usual, I am a little behind with my posts.

By the way, my new year's resolution is to be more on the ball with my blog posts. One can only try but no promises! :)

Nomad has a 2 session seating policy with fixed times. Not sure if it is only for Saturdays but as mentioned before this is becoming rather prevalent. I have a friend who dislikes this policy intensely and absolutely refuses to go to restaurants who has this. I actually don't have an issue about it and ultimately I am there to enjoy the meal and the company. How do you feel about restaurants with 2 fixed time sessions in one evening?

When I walked into Nomad, I was struck by the openness of the restaurant. There was a warehouse like feel to it. It was like being in a loft. I loved it. Everything was open, even the kitchen. On one side was the stack of wine bottles and next to it was the drying area for the small goods. On the other side was shelves of bottled pickles. At the far end of the hanging small goods was the cheese room.

Our seating was for 6.00 pm and I liked the fact the restaurant was open before 6 to allow us to sit down and peruse the menu in good time.

As I was being seated, I was asked if I wanted tap water or sparkling water. Before I could answer, I was informed that it would cost me $4 per person for unlimited sparkling. Well, that decided for me, so I chose sparkling. I really like it when we diners are told of the prices before we decide on drinks and on specials.

So here is a list of the spread we had. I think we ordered just a little too much but I wanted to try everything. A common problem, as usual. :)

We started with the snacks which are categorised as small in the dinner menu.

Wood fired sourdough with black salt butter.

House made Nomad charcuterie - a selection of lardo, beef cheeks, ox heart pastrami, mortadella and chorizo. The lardo was just a tad to lardy for us but we loved the ox heart pastrami and beef cheeks. I also enjoyed the mortadella.

Foie gras and chicken liver parfait - the dish of the night as far as I am concerned! Although I am not normally a fan of the foie gras, it did lift up the flavours of the chicken liver parfait. The crunchiness of the pickles provided the requisite texture to offset the smooth and creamy parfait. Altogether they make a good combination of flavours and textures.

The Paramount Coffee Project (Surry Hills)

I have been holding off posting my experience at Paramount Coffee Project (PCP) as I really wanted to return to try their Crab Po Boy before I was happy enough to talk about my experience there. But sigh! I just haven't been able to return since my first two visits from weeks ago. So here it is, my post on PCP without trying the Crab Po Boy!

A week after Paramount Coffee Project opened in Surry Hills, I had an opportunity to check it out with my mate DD. My first visit was at lunch time. As it was only a week old then, it was not flooded with people yet. I loved the wide open space of the interior when I stepped in. It was larger than I anticipated but quite cool actually! There were a few bicycles stacked at the rear wall and it reminded of the bikes I saw when I was at Seven Seeds in Melbourne last year. Not surprising since this project is a joint one between Mark Dundon of Seven Seeds and Russell Beard of Reuben Hills.

And I liked the separate coffee station where serious coffee aficionados can hang out.

I had the Double Fried Chicken which was a spicy coated fillet with house slaw and creole relish. The chicken was tasty and I liked the slight kick in the relish. The only thing I found wanting was I would have liked the chicken to be crunchier. But the flavours were certainly there.

DD had the Joey chestnut which was a wiener with mustard, ketchup, cheddar, onion jam on milk bun hot dog. In other words, an upmarket version of the very American hot dog. DD also ordered some pickles with it. I had a bite of the hot dog just so I could taste the flavours and textures. The wiener was really good, there was a nice bite to it. The only thing we found wanting was the texture of the bun. It wasn't as soft as we had expected. It was actually quite dry. Maybe the bun was toasted too long. But that diminished the other good things about the hot dog. But I have been reading other blogs since then, some of whom had the hot dog and there were comments on how soft the bun was. So I take it as an anomaly that DD was not lucky enough with his hot dog bun.

Bishop Sessa (Surry Hills)

Yes, I am back at Surry Hills but this time it is for dinner at Bishop Sessa. For some reason, none of my foodie friends whom I spoke to recently even knows of Bishop Sessa. I was very surprised by that.

Bishop Sessa is located at where Crown Street Assembly used to be, and where Tabou was. Even though this dinner occurred about a month ago, I still recall the wonderful meal we had there.

There was the option to have the 6 course degustation menu or a la carte. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, we collectively decided to have a la carte. Admittedly, the restaurant was very dimly lit and reading the menu was a challenge in itself. Fortunately I had my torchlight app from my phone which was put to good use that night. :)

Entrees
My entree was Scallop ceviche with cucumber, avocado and lemon and ginger sorbet. If I ate the beautifully and thinly sliced scallop, it would have tasted quite flat. But the sorbet was popping with the flavour of ginger and was a great companion for the scallop. Lovely dish! The sheet of rice paper roll served over the dish was so light and tasty.

NF had the Carpaccio of Glacier 51 Patagonian Toothfish, smoked clam, miso, apple and black olive. NF seemed to have enjoyed it and he commented on how smoky the clam was and the combination of flavours were good.

EF had the Heirloom beetroot and radish salad with smoked goat's cheese, pomegranate and walnuts. Even though I didn't taste the dish, I can already imagine the textures and flavours blending very well together. I have always loved having walnuts in a salad.

Mains
I had the Roasted Aylesbury duck breast, duck leg sausage roll, lentils, kale, carrot, orange and onion marmalade. Yummmmm..yummmm..yummm! Duck is one of my favourite meats and this dish did it for me. The duck leg sausage roll was divine. The duck meat in the sausage roll was full of flavour and melt-in-your-mouth tender. The duck breast was lovely but for me it was the sausage roll that caught my eye.