West Juliett (Marrickville, Sydney)

When I read about new and upcoming cafes in the inner west, I am reminded time and time again of how many places I need to check out. There is a part of me that knows I am constantly trying to catch up but not very successful at it though! :(

Even though West Juliett has been open for over a year, I have yet to try it out until now. It was a Saturday and lunch time. My friends and I agreed to meet at around noon but fortunately for me they arrived earlier and put their name down for a table. By the time I got there, lo and behold they were already seated. Now I call this sheer good luck as there were many people hanging around waiting for a table.

After poring over the menu, I took a look inside the cafe and realised how very popular this place was. It was absolutely buzzing and packed with people!

Salad of Lamb shoulder, ripe tomatoes, freekeh, basil, tahini yoghurt, and chilli oil. It looked so fresh and the lamb was tender and delicious.

Grass fed burger, lettuce, cheddar, Dijon, tomato, pickles, mayo and relish. Impressive way to serve a burger, a knife stabbed in the middle of the burger is one way to attract attention! It was a very good burger, the meat patty was nice and pink and juicily tender. And the bun was soft and pillowy.

JM had the burger too but he had a bacon added to the burger and he loved every bite of it!

Shenkin Kitchen (Enmore, Sydney)

A recent decision to have a breakfast catch up had me googling for ideas and I don't know how but I came to be at Cafe Shenkin's website. After noticing they had 4 locations, I decided we should go for the Enmore location.

I then realised it was the same one Helen of Grab Your Fork reviewed earlier in the year. As you can imagine, I re-read her post and other food bloggers posts to have an idea of the dishes they tried.

For those of you unfamiliar with Cafe Shenkin, it is an Israeli cafe and all the food is reflective of the Israeli heritage. Having not been exposed to Israeli food before, I was fascinated at the similarities to other middle eastern food I have tried like Lebanese, and Turkish food.

Admittedly I am not too familiar with Enmore, having not frequented here before. I realised how hard it was to find parking that allowed for more than an hour. Impossible! Aargh! Why is it so hard to get decent timeline parking at these inner west suburbs? :(

Enough of the venting. Now to focus on Shenkin Kitchen. It was warm, welcoming and funky. The decor caught my eye. There was this quirky stairs decorated with plants right above where we were sitting. The black board was nicely written with their specials and there were some quirky artefacts around the cafe.

This is what we had for breakfast.

Ziva - a baked filo pastry filled with cheese and olives, a boiled egg, hummus, grated tomato, and spicy coriander. CM loved the pastry and commented on the delicious flavours of the cheese with the olives. The hummus went down a treat too.