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! :)

Bentley Restaurant & Bar (Sydney CBD)

Bentley used to be located in Surry Hills but earlier this year relocated to the business part of town. It is now located on the ground floor of the Radisson Blue hotel. It made it a lot easier for me now that Bentley is in town (literally) to have an early birthday dinner with my dear friend SH.

SH is, I must say, a wine buff and for special meals she tends to frequent restaurants that have a good wine list. Bentley was earmarked by her because they have a good sommelier and have a reputation of having a good repertoire of wine. Having recently won the NSW Wine List of the year, expectations were high!

I found the interior to be quite interesting, it was very modern in look and feel. And it was quite dark. Sigh! :(

One of the first things SH does is to scrutinise the wine list to decide what she wants.

When the young lady attending our table asked for her choice of wine, there seemed to be a slight miscommunication and no matter how many times SH pronounced the label, the young lady failed to understand her. You can imagine how frustrated SH was starting to become. She had to resort to opening the wine list to show the actual label name and vintage she wanted.

To make matters worse, when the wine was being poured, there was no showing of the bottle to her nor was there even a chance to taste the wine before the glass was filled. And on top of that they did not even provide the right wine glass for the pinot noir! Poor SH was quite offended with the whole process and I think that set off a rather negative view of the service at Bentley.

But let's talk about the food. :)

We started with a complimentary Smoked eel and mash crisp. I thought it was going to be a warm bite but surprisingly when I bit into it, the filling was cold but the pastry was crunchy. Very interesting contrasting texture of cold and crunchy.

Entree of Alpine salmon, malt, mandarin, and black sausage crumbs. SH was thoroughly enjoying this dish. The verdict was delicious!

Entree of Quail, smoked celery, and white soy dressing. I was enjoying how perfectly cooked the quail was. The meat was tender, and had a nice touch of pink. The texture of the celery shaved lengthwise was different and this provided the much needed crunch.

Main of Kurobata pork, macadamia milk, wattle crumbs, and rhubarb. I liked that there were elements of our native greens being used in this dish. SH couldn't help but enjoy the dish. She mentioned that the flavours and textures made it a delicious dish.

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!

Sakura Kaiten Sushi (Melbourne CBD)

I think I have said before that sometimes unplanned things turn out to be delightful surprises! Well, this dinner at a little sushi bar in one of the little lanes in Melbourne was a surprise hit!

Sakura Kaiten Sushi is located on Little Collins Street closer to the Parliament end of town. We had no plans on where to dine so we just walked and walked and over time DD must have had a idea of where to go and we slowly but surely headed to this tiny sushi bar that was packed to the rafters!

I wasn't even planning on blogging about it as I wanted a night off and was feeling slightly stressed about the next day's big demo. But I couldn't help myself, the food looked good, it was packed and obviously very popular. So the blogger in me succumbed and out came my camera! :)

Unfortunately as we did not book we did not get seats at the actual bar but had a side table instead, thus the bad lighting of my photos! :(

Grilled salmon

Soft shell crab roll

Edamame

Salmon with lobster