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?

LuMi Bar and Dining (Pyrmont, Sydney)

LuMi has been on my list since the first time I saw their food pics on Instagram back in Oct 2014. So far all I have read about the food has been positive reviews and I couldn't wait to dine there. Again it was for another good friend's birthday catch up but why not, eh? :)


This time it was for lunch on a Saturday and we were lucky the weather was in good form.

What a view from the restaurant!

Normally on Saturdays for lunch, there is the a la carte option or a 4 course degustation. However their website did say we could request for the 8 course degustation as long as we gave ample notice. I did! :)

We started with a tasting platter of Cheese tartlet and corn, Rice crisps with salt and vinegar, Cos lettuce with pistachio and horseradish, Potato and Rosemary Focaccia. The rice crisp was paper thin and almost melting in my mouth. And the focaccia was light and fluffy and superb!



And the Chawanmushi certainly played tricks on my mind. The dish looked Japanese but was full of Italian flavours with every mouthful. There was parmesan in the custard, tomato water with basil on top. Loved it!

White cucumber with apple and sour cream. Lovely presentation, clean flavours, crunchy textures and very summery in image and flavours.

Veal Tartare with tarragon, emulsion, roasted capsicum and buckwheat - I completely forgot to take a picture of this delightful dish! Aaargh! :( I loved the crunchy texture of the puffed buckwheat which offset so well against the smooth veal.

Spelt Ravioli with burnt butter, pumpkin, avruga, and chives. Their signature which didn't disappoint. I really liked the visual beauty of the ravioli. 

Spaghetti Alla Chitarra, with Orange beurre blanc, scampi and bottarga - the squid ink pasta was nicely al dente and I could taste bites of the sweet tasting scampi.

The Governors Table (Sydney CBD)

The name of this restaurant intrigued me when I first saw pictures of its food on Instagram. After realising where it is located (at the Museum of Sydney) I had a better understanding of the principles of not only the name but the touches of Australian native herbs, floral and fauna throughout its menu and decor.

I loved the openness of the exterior connecting to the interior. How perfect it would be sitting there on a balmy evening looking out to the busy street from the inside.

When we were seated at our table, my friend, the lovely LA, asked the front of house how his day had been. I think it threw him to have a guest asked how he was as opposed to the other way round! I unwittingly proceeded to explain we were here to celebrate LA's birthday.

As we were perusing the menu, he served us 2 glasses of bubblies in celebration of her birthday (on the house!). What a lovely and generous surprise!

Confit salmon, blood orange curd, soy bean, tomato and roe. Wow! This dish was seriously good. The salmon was practically melting in my mouth and soft as butter. A beautiful blend of flavours with the salmon the star of the dish.

Spiced lamb ribs, binnorie feta, and pomegranate glaze. Tender, smoky ribs with delightfully crunchy pomegranates scattered through the dish.

Grilled king prawns, mojo verde, with black garlic aioli. Firstly, I would like to say that we did not order this dish. Once again our suave front of house presented us a free dish because of LA's birthday. We couldn't believe it, another generous gesture! Irrespective of whether we had paid for it or not, I found the prawns to be succulent, sweet, nicely grilled and the back garlic aioli had a slightly smokey yet sweet flavour. Very interesting combination.

Tiger prawn linguine, black garlic, citrus mascarpone, nasturtium, and chilli crumb. It was a light, fresh and subtly spiced pasta. Remember, we ordered this dish before we were served with the surprise king prawns. But in my opinion there is no such thing as too much prawns! :)

The Lemon Tree (Sydney CBD)

The Lemon Tree is conveniently located right under Australia Square, smack in the city centre. As a matter of fact it is walking distance from Wynyard station and I had the opportunity to check it out over two visits.

I like the look of the little restaurant, it had an alfresco feel to it and certainly reminded me of the southern part of Italy. Which is exactly what was intended. The cuisine is intended to reflect the southern part of Italy and the decor of white chairs, tables and an open air atmosphere certainly does add to the vibe.

On my first visit it was lunch time and we arrived just after noon and managed to grab a table at the bar side, i.e. high chairs with a high table. The menu is quite limited and kept deliberately simple.

There is the Bar section with dishes such as Rock Oysters, and Sicilian Olives. Primi Plati which is pasta dishes, Contorni (side dishes) such as salads and fries. And obviously there is Dolci for desserts.

For lunch we had:

Spaghetti E Vongole - this was my dish and I liked the light touch of olive oil, parsley, and fresh chilli to the al dente pasta. The Vongole was nicely cooked but the meat from the clams was a little small for my liking.

Lasagne Di Carne - this was a tasty dish, it reminded me of a home cooked lasagne. It was not overly robust but definitely tasty.

For dessert we couldn't resist the Lemon Tart. It was sublimely rich in the lemon flavour, tangy yet sweet and super smooth. Delicious! Sorry about the quality of the photo, it got cloudy and I wasn't lucky with my timing of the photo.

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!

Napoli In Bocca

Napoli In Bocca is located in the suburb of Haberfield. In my humble opinion, Haberfield epitomises all things Italian in Sydney. Yes, I know most of everyone thinks of Leichhardt as the Italian suburb but for me it is Haberfield. It has a sense of being in a community and an Italian one at that!

When I do come here, I can't help myself and go crazy with the biscottis, the gelato, pasta, cheese, smallgoods etc. Tonight we celebrate a special dinner for AF, who did amazingly well in the recent HSC exams. His choice was Italian and I picked this restaurant. I have been here twice before and enjoyed both meals.

I stepped in to the restaurant and I felt like I was in a nice family oriented Italian restaurant. I felt the warmth, both metaphorical and physical. The wood fired oven greeted me as I passed 2 young Italian men working away on the pizzas.

There were 8 of us tonight so we started off by having some entree. We had the Bruschetta pizza and Stuffed zucchini flowers. Both were delicious but the zucchini flowers were not as popular because the majority of the group didn't like anchovies. So NF and I happily had our lion's share of the zucchini flowers.

Then we ordered individual main dishes. Some had pizzas, some had calzone and others had pasta. I ordered the Linguine Vongole and found my dish absolutely delightful. It was a simple but classic dish and the linguine was perfectly al dente. By the way, all servings were generous!