Carl Warner Foodscapes

Saw these on a morning show here, and I went to the website to take a better look. Aren’t they cool?!

The ’sea’ is actually salmon! The rocks are bread or potatoes… and that’s a little green pea pod boat!

Review: La Sala

The gang met to have a farewell dinner for Justin, who’s leaving Sydney after completing his Master’s degree. It’s a pity, really, because we’ve just started to hang out with the group and we’re now losing a member! Come back soon, Justin!

Justin tried to book Lucio’s, but the place was apparently booked out. He googled around and stumbled upon La Sala, a restaurant in Surry Hills, close to the border of the city.

Review: Cafe Cya

I found another convenient Korean restaurant in the city, with a cheery “Cafe Cya!” as its name. Was meeting Szuhan and Maggie for dinner, and they were catching a pre-dinner movie at the Greater Cinemas on George Street. This little restaurant is nestled in one of the little dodgy alleyways, but oh-so-convenient as it was right opposite the cinema!

Complimentary Banchan

Missing the taste of home…

Review: La Brasserie

A bunch of us were invited to Daryl’s birthday dinner, which was held at La Brasserie in Darlinghurst. Googling its website, as I always do before heading to a restaurant, here’s what is written:

“Welcome to La Brasserie, Sydney’s most authentic Parisian brasserie dining experience. Situated in the lively, cosmopolitan restaurant scene of Crown Street, Darlinghurst, La Brasserie offers you superb traditional French cuisine, a comprehensive and affordable selection of fine French and Australian wines and an extensive bar that brims with rare and exotic spirits from around the world…And all this in the warm, relaxed, sophisticated atmosphere we’ve created for you.”

Bailout Bollocks!

Seriously, what’s up with all this bailout talk for the motor industry eh? Oh, woe is me! I’m going bankrupt! Help me! Because if you don’t, so many people are going to lose their jobs and the economy will get worse! You helped the banks and insurance giants, now help us!

I get the “impact” that this will have on the economy. If these industries go down, everything spirals downward and the little people will suffer too. So you MUST help us, to help others! This is altruistic and necessary!

The next thing you will hear is that Starbucks needs a bailout too because with so many people jobless, there aren’t enough executives buying a cuppa latte in the morning. And what happens if you don’t help Starbucks – the LARGEST coffeehouse in the world? Well, calamity! Because 15,000 stores in 44 countries will close and thousands of employees will be out of work! Those poor farmers providing us with “freetrade coffeebeans” will have no one to sell their produce to! You HAVE to save us!

Well, bollocks, I say. Let’s look at this on a micro-level then. Have every INDIVIDUAL who has gone bankrupt/is going bankrupt storm to the government buildings and demand that the government bail them out too. Have all the employees who have lost their jobs go up to the government and tell them you need a bailout too, because otherwise your family will be impacted. There is going to be a spiral effect too — if you don’t bail me out, my family will be without a breadwinner and my kids can’t go to school and we can’t feed ourselves! Have every cafe owner and mama shopkeeper go to the government, and tell them that you need a bailout because otherwise, how are people going to get their news?! People will become uneducated! There’s going to be a spiral effect!

Bollocks! Go get your CEOs and big execs to reach into their Swiss bank accounts and bring out the millions. When you make profits, you keep your earnings, buy a plane/yatch/porsche/beachfront home in Miami and when you make a loss, you go crying to someone else for help? Take some personal responsibility! For all the bailout requests, I don’t remember hearing a single apology for poor decisions made by someone sitting up in their high and mighty throne.

“The executives defended themselves before the Senate on Tuesday, saying that the cause of their misfortunes was not management mistakes, but the weak economy and the inability of consumers to obtain credit to buy cars.” (New York Times, 19th Nov 2008)

Bollocks!!!

You want to help? Distribute all the millions to individual families and have them all spend that amount on a new car. That will ‘boost’ the motor industry, wouldn’t it? Increased spending! Consumer confidence! The industry gets saved! And every family gets a new car!!

Articles to read:
The New York Times: What’s the Value of a Big Bonus?
The Age: Bosses Go Begging But Keep Silver Spoons

Tokyo Treats

He’s been back for more than two weeks and I haven’t gotten down to blogging all the pretty things he brought back from Japan! Well, more like YUMMY things.

The sweet boy surprised me by coming home earlier than expected. Well, I knew he was coming back on the day, but he said he had to go into office right after touching down at the airport at 7am (!). But instead of coming home only in the evening, he was home by lunchtime! Sweet surprise.

To my horror though, he was lugging home more than the single cabin luggage he left with!

Have you met John?

John Dory, that is.

Pretty pissed looking fish eh? I felt really bad pan-frying the guy.

On a more serious note, fish is indeed cheap here! The John Dory goes for $16 a kilo, which I thought was pretty cheap, given how my mum always tells me she’s paying $20++ for a small fillet of watchamacallit. And then the fisherman tells me the John Dory is one of the most expensive fishes around. More fishes for dinner I say!

It has taken a while to get used to some of their names and what they’re good for. There’s the Jewfish, the Warehou (pronounced ‘wah-hoo’), the leatherjackets (as opposed to the oceanjackets), the Morwong, the Sea Mullet Chermoula… all very foreign and confusing!!

French Riviera: The Famous Double Bay Ice Cream

I love it when friends visit!! Was absolutely giddy with excitement when Zee told me a couple of months ago that she was coming to Sydney with her now-fiance YS (CONGRATULATIONS AGAIN!). Wait, I CAN announce on my blog right? Everyone knows already right?

It was so much fun when those two were here! They did suffer a bit of Sydney’s erratic weather, but I’m always there hollering around bringing buckets of sunshine to them. Wahahaha.

I was really excited to bring them to French Riviera, which has just about the best yoghurt ice-cream that I know of. After a so-so dinner at Renato Trattoria at World Square (it could have something to do with the Four Cheeses Pizza that YS experimented with…), we headed a couple of blocks down to a very busy French Riviera. It was Halloween night and half of Sydney seemed to be roaming up and down George Street.

We managed to get squashed into a small table right infront of the cashier, but they seemed to be having a really busy night so we make do with what we’ve got. Before we even stepped into the cafe, Thad had already decided that we WILL be ordering the Tower.

So here’s the breakdown:

Rainbow Surprise – $32 (2-3 persons/17 scoops?)
Super Gastronomic Surprise – $37 (4-5 persons/24 scoops)
Maxi – $45 (6+ persons/?!?! scoops)

Not surprisingly, he was already eyeing the Maxi (even though there was only 4 of us!). He relented to a Super (but Zee and YS’s eyeballs were still popping out of their sockets) and I managed to convince him that after a huge dinner, all we can possibly stuff ourselves with was the Rainbow. We were concerned that the cafe would not allow, because they have a policy that each customer has to order a portion (i.e. no sharing of a single scoop between 2 people). So according to the menu, we would HAVE to order the Super. We got the attention of our beautiful waitress, and with a quavering voice and doeful eyes asked if we could get the Rainbow. And she said ‘Yes’ ! In fact, she commented that it was probably “more than enough”. Uh-oh…

So we chatted while waiting for the pile up to occur at the counter. At this point, I saw a staff pouring some yummy chocolate sauce over a tower and I went “Woah look at that! Man, thank goodness we didn’t order THAT! We wouldn’t be able to finish! Nah, that’ CAN’T be ours. No way! That’s the Maxi! It’s waayy too big! Must be for another table!” On and on I went, until she plonked the damn thing on our table. Gahhhh!

Think it doesn’t look too bad? Let’s compare with the size of my head.

Grinning from ear to ear

We were all pretty delirious staring at the Rainbow Surprise. Lots of photo-taking for evidence that we actually ordered the monstrosity.

Happiness is…

Yay he’s back!!