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.

Three Blue Ducks (Bronte, Sydney)

My regular readers must be so over me constantly saying 'this is another place I have been wanting to dine at'. It would seem my list is endless and forever changing to add more and more. But it is the truth so I do apologise to those who do read my blog regularly that I will constantly be saying lines like 'I have been wanting to check it out since it opened'. :)

Three Blue Ducks has been on my list for at least over a year now. There was an attempt to dine there last year with a friend of mine but those plans fell through and this time it all worked out!

It was a Saturday night and I elected for the 6.00 pm seating which meant we would have to leave around 8.15 for the next round of diners. Understandably so as it is a small restaurant and a very popular one at that!

I was so excited be to finally be here and I liked the cool vibe. There were some interesting pieces of mural art on the walls and some antique artefacts hanging on one of the walls. And I do like the corridor of sunshine with plants hanging off the walls! The bar area is located on one side of this corridor and the main restaurant is located on the other side.

We were seated in the bar section and the guys serving us were very friendly. I had a mocktail and CM and JM had cocktails.

We decided to share some small plates and ordered a few mains with the idea of sharing some of the mains too.

We started with:

Chicken liver parfait with Iggy's bread (from the bar menu) - a rustic looking parfait but so so delicious! It was smooth and creamy and quite addictive actually. The bread was beautiful, it had the texture and feel of a mini damper. This was JM's first taste of chicken liver parfait and I think he is now a fan!

Mussels and pipis with chilli and lemongrass - seriously YUM! The chilli and lemongrass sauce should be bottled and sold commercially. It was that good!!

Corn, chawanmushi and crab - I asked for this dish because I was wanted to try chawanmushi and I can't say no to crab. It was a lovely dish, light, summery with beautiful textures of the silky chawanmushi. Delicious!

Beetroot salad with parsley and dates - a fresh looking salad with lovely slivers of beetroot. And on top of that we had a side dish of roasted carrots.

And for mains, we had 2 serves of the Egg hopper, caramelised eggplant curry, yoghurt and Sambal. Mmmm..mmmm. A burst of flavours mingled as I savoured the dish.. there was sweet, savoury and a slight tang from the yoghurt. I found out that the curry had toppings of chilli powder, coriander, eschalot and green onion. Another delicious dish.