Always Time

How much bubble tea can a man drank? Well. A lot it appears. Every day I get an off day, I slug one or two down. Chatime has changed the bubble tea game for me. Instead of Easyway’s primarily fruit based offerings, you get that plus you get different types of tea as well. Stuff like Blue Mountain Green Tea or Tibetan Milk Tea or Smoked Plum or Longan and Red Date. It’s super Asian and totally unadulterated in flavor. There’s no pandering to anyone except yellow skins. I just can’t live without tapioca pearls in the interstices of my teeth. So far I find the outlet on George Street across from World Square to have the overall best quality and consistency.

My faves.

1. Premium Pearl Milk Tea – for this they use their Sun Moon Lake tea, which tastes like a good/decent version of a  regular pearl milk tea. Their normal PMT sucks balls.
2. Grass Jelly Roasted Milk Tea – chin chow in the mix is win.
3. Honey Pomelo Juice – for those days when I want something bright and clean flavored.
4. Matcha Milk Tea – I don’t really like the red bean matcha. I just like the matcha without the red beans.
5. Passionfruit QQ – pearls plus coconut jelly plus my fave fake fruit flava.

One thing to note is I highly recommend asking for at least half sugar, if not 1/4. Reason being they put hella loads of sugar and most of the toppings already have some sugar content so there’s not really much need for extra. With the PPMT, I ask for zero sugar or 1/4 sugar. The pearls are sweet enough for me.

Things to never get.

1. Special Smoked Plum – only for those who really really like/know what smoked plums taste like.
2. Egg Custard – waste of time really.
3. Pearl Milk Tea – the regular PMT is total BS. would not pass for PMT in Taiwan.
4. Grapefruit QQ – the grapefruit flavor is crap, wayyy too orangey.

Amongst my housemates, we like call it Ch- Teem. Like a silentish a and teem instead of Cha-time. Reason why is I was in the queue at Easyway once when this group of teenaged girls were behind me around the time when Chatime first started opening up shops everywhere. This fat girl asked, “Hey, have you guys tried Ch-teem? Or whatever? Is it any good?”. I cracked up inside and wondered how far off the track her parents were in terms of getting their kids up to cultural speed. I mean, the fattie was clearly of Chinese descent and anyway, Chinese, Koreans and Japanese all use the same term for tea. Cha. How do you fuck that up? Ch-teem? Girl you need to go for some cultural immersion or some shit.

Jump Jump

About 5 hours ago, I jumped out of a plane attached via hooks and straps to another man. My face flapped for about a minute during the freefall and my eyes were classic Asian slits. I have photos to prove this. I had massive apprehensions about skydiving and I still think it’s kinda nuts but it’s also pretty damn awesome. Bit pricey and all but y’know, whatevs.

My girl’s friend came to stay with us and she had the similarly dastardly inclination as my girl to wanna skydive. So we did. 4 of us drove down to Wollogong with a mandantory stop at Maccas for brekkie. The comapny that does skydives is called Skydive The Beach and that’s mostly because they’re located at North Wollongong beach. Total damage for me was like $370. No small sum. It gets discounted if you’re a student/tourist or if you’re doing repeat visits with friends or something but anyway, it’s not the kinda thing you’d do just every weekend y’know.

We pay up and board a bus where we’re shuttled to the nearby airfield. Along the way, we fill up indemnity forms and stuff. The plane we would fly was bright blue and we loaded up 8 parachutists and their instructors packt like sardines in a crushd tin box. The flight up was really quick and you get a beautiful view of the oceanside. Everything looked like it was in slomo. I kept staring at the white waves crashing on the beach and they seemed to take forever to do so. Of course, at 14000 feet where we were going, everything was small and real distances were probably much larger than what I could imagine. It had this eerie calm to it, like I was some kinda spectator watching the world at large. It’s so much different to a commercial jet which only affords a brief glimpse in cushioned seats with LCD displays and chicken or fish.

Once we neared 3 miles from the destination, which was back at the beach, we got strapped up tight (I sat up on my instructor’s knees whilst he attached the harnesses before he rebriefed me on what to do. Not long after, they pulled the door open and the first girl put her legs out the plane. A split second later, she was gone. I wondered if I’d ever see that person again. It was like wtf ru serious? 3 more girls jumped out before the four of us. My good mate would be the last. He’d suffer having to watch everyone go. I went after our Japanese friend. My girl followed right after me.

I dangle my legs out the plane for maybe 1 second before my head is propped against the instructor’s shoulder and we’re out. It’s insane. I can’t believe I just fell out of a plane. That first instant is kinda mindblowing. Logically, you think you can’t survive. You understand you have a parachute and all but you see the ground swelling up before you. The air rushes around with the loudest swooping sound ever. I also happened to have a cold the night before so my sinuses got shot up into my brain. It hurt. A lot. The first 5 seconds I just felt helpless and terrified. The fear turned into exhilaration and mild panic. I didn’t think of any what ifs… but I realized that this could be it. Half a minute in, I was focusing on looking around and screaming on the top of my head even if I could barely hear myself. I had a 4 sec freefall before when I jumped off a few storeys into a giant cushion but this was a whole different league, never mind level. It was epic.

After a minute of freefall and my interminable swearing, the man latched around my back pull the chute cord and we heaved what felt like upwards rather suddenly and everything slowed down. Woah. No more flap flap flappy face. I could hear the instructor and myself. I calmed down. I steered a little before we swerved tightly around towards the landing zone.  The swerving feels a bit like a rollercoaster’s G-forces around tight corners. I stare at the scenery and look up to see my friends swirling around.Eventually, I tuck up legs up and we land softly on the ground.

I’m ALIVE!!!

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Gastro parK

You know that capitalization in the title? It’s not a mistake. It’s Grant King’s way of putting his name up there on his new restaurant. Gastro parK is located on Roslynn Street, just off the middle of the strip in King’s Cross. Previously, I’d dined at his his last restaurant Pier twice and the media and I think everyone in the food biz in Sydney has been waiting for him to show his next hand. A friend’s birthday was on the cards so this seemed the perfect chance to go.

I arrive early with two of my housemates and we proceed to start with a drink before the rest of the crew arrives. I am pleased to find an 09 Valminor Albarino by the glass and quaff it, remembering that I first drank it at Pier.

The menu is smallish and simple. It’s separated into snacks, entrees, mains and dessert. Nothing really screams out. There’s just a lot of good flavors, combos and you see a little bit of the old Pier if you look carefully enough.

Today, they also happen to be doing a truffle menu at the same time featuring Western Australian Manjimup truffles, which may not be quite the same as your French or Italian ones but it’s good enough. I remember when I ate at Pilu some time back and there was a truffle pasta on offer that I passed on. Head chef Giovanni Pilu actually came out to shave the truffles on for another table. I’m not expecting Grant King to do that but I was resolved not to pass up on something possibly hella tasty for once.

Alright when everyone gets there, I settle on the most sensible option for drinks. Sparklies! My pick was a Pelorus Cloudy Bay. Duh. It turned out to be really easy and tasty. We then decide on the food and the bread arrives! Well, first the stoneware plate arrives with a swab of butter and sea salt. Then the Sonoma miche slices are plopped onto them. In my case, the waitstaff couldn’t quite reach so it got plopped on the table. Wtf! Actually the service as a whole needs quite a bit of work imo if they wanna chase some hattage.

To share, we would first get a Putanesca Wafer, some octopus and a brioche with foie. The wafer is clever, it’s a play on the classic parmy wafers which are made by laying out parmesan on a tray and baking it. This one takes the elements of a putanesca sauce (anchovies, olives, tomato) and combines that with the cheese in a more free form look I didn’t think of before. It was presented standing up in a pebble with a groove cut into it.

The octopus comes with a smoked potato puree and lightly dressed parsley and sliced eschallot. This is fucking perfect. The smoked mash rends this deep richness and goes really well with octo. The salad meanwhile brightens things up and lifts the flavors altogether.

The brioche though, is a disappointment for me. If you have any item on a menu which mentions foie, I expect some decent amount of it. This version though seemed a little paltry and whilst the bread stick itself was good, the rhubarb served with it overwhelmed the foie. How the hell do you do that to one of the stronger ingredients on earth? Kind of an epic fail for me. My non foie loving housemate loved it though.

It’s ok, onto the entrees! 5 diners on the table. One serve of scallops, one serve of kingfish carpaccio and 3 serves of slow cooked egg with truffle soup. I had no idea what the scallops tasted like but according to my mate, it was rather nondescript. Good but you know, kinda blah as well. The carpaccio immediately reminds me of a dish at Pier with similar ingredients; sliced raw white fish, micro herbs, lime… However on this plate you get thicker chunks of fish (not quite a carpaccio) plus tuna bone marrow, fake caviar that is really sago and a lime gel. The tuna bone marrow sounds fuckin awesome but believe me, the biggest flavors on the plate were the fish and the lime. It’s still the same understated dish that its forebear was, more or less. Of course, I don’t have too much time to dick around. The star of the show was in front of my face. I tried some of the soup, which was deep and earthy, rich and tasty as all hell. It was just black like sesame soup but tasted like insane mushrooms. The egg hid below a few slices of truffle, which were pretty good. This is actually my first proper truffle dish so I don’t know what really really good stuff is. I’m just looking forward to that. However, put the whole egg in your mouth with the soup and the truffle slice and its like MMMMMMMMMMM! I am a truffle fan fo sho. I was hoping to lick my plate clean but the wierdly shaped bowl didn’t let me. It was shaped like a plate got squeezed by someone really strong before they fired it. I couldn’t put my face in and the spoon could only attempt to scrape at remainders. It was pretty bloody good.

When the place got reviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald, the dish they tried was the Crisp Scaled Snapper, which is what 2 of us got for the mains. We also had some lamb and another 2 serves of blue eye. I can’t remember the lamb much. The blue eye looked like it had an awesome texture because it was confit but I didn’t get a taste. I think in general, the resounding feeling was that mains were good but not quite great. Everything’s executed brilliantly and the flavors are good and it looks good and all but nothing really shouted EAT ME! My dish was apparently the brainchild of another chef in Spain. It involves leaving the scales on the snapper, and drawing them upwards so they stand before cooking and probably frying the scales so they turn crisp. It’s beautifully cooked and the scales are interesting. It is crispy and it does make the dish different but at the expense of the skin. Well, snapper skin doesn’t get super crisp but if you wanted something crispy with your whitefish, I’m sure you could do kingfish or blue eye or whatever. I could see the dish go awry all too easily. Fail at the scales and it’s game over. In fact, I had one or two myself that weren’t crisp, which makes things a mite hard to chew. The accompaniments were tasty but in my opinion not the best match with snapper. I had more smoked potato puree from the octopus dish earlier, some calamari, squid ink sauce and a squid inked crisp.

Dessert time! I went for the Pain Perdu with Apple and Balsamic Ice Cream. We also managed to try a Nitro Pavlova and a Chocolate dessert with honeycomb, frozen chocolate bits & mandarin sphere. I loved my dessert. It was pretty kickass. The french toast was insane. It was a cube, perfectly glazed all over and when you bite into it, you get the intense richness of sugar which was eased off by the balsamic ice cream. More smaller cubes of compressed/poached apples also went really well. The only absurd thing about it is the use of snow pea sprouts as a garnish. WTF? The nitro pav was good. It came accompanied by coconut, ribbons of pineapple and kiwi and inside the pav was some mangoey thing I think I’m 100%. The choco dessert was great. You break the sphere and out oozes the cream and sauce. The frozen choc bits were awesome.

All in all, I enjoyed the dinner even if it had curious moments, the stellar ones helped outweigh things. I really hope they work on serving because my table at the window is a little hard to serve for the waitstaff who just can’t bloody reach in. The food itself is probably on the prettier side rather than the tastier side but some things are really really good. Actually, I think the desserts on offer are pretty damn strong and some portions of dishes are also really good but some bits do raise my eyebrows. Pretty sure it’s deserving of a hat in the next good food guide and two if it keeps polishing things up.

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Bentley Redux

My birthday’s actually tomorrow but because I share it with my junior sous, it means I don’t get the day off. So I settle for yesterday off and I get to have dinner with friends at one of my favourite places in Sydney. I’d been to Bentley previously with my mother and my brother and had the degustation which was heaps fun and awesome. This time round we opted for an ala carte option and decided that we’d sorta make our own degu of sorts.

2 bottles of vino. The first is a lovely sweet, pineappley riesling from Germany, a Willi Schaefer. The second a slightly less pronounced pinot noir from Stoney Rise’s Holyman range. I reckon it coulda benefited from more time but maybe I was just fiending for a sick ass pinot. Flavor was good, regular straight up pinot. Cherry etc. Both bottles were recommended by in house sommelier Nick Hildebrant, replete with tache and hipster glasses. He’s a pretty nice guy and definitely one of Sydney’s best wine guys.

Food, was hella good. We shared 3 appetisers. The first one was my favourite. Smoked Eel Parfait with white soy, konbu and seaweed. I wished I had a whole thing to myself to be honest. It was really really good, delightfully delicate, the parfait itself was wrapped in a black squid ink fishy gelatinous skin and on the plate a swoosh of white creamy sauce and 3 shards of glass like adornments speckled with wakame? If this first course is anything to go by, I’m not really gonna bother to try to figure out which ingredient goes where and what’s not mentioned etc etc. Brent Savage’s food always looks great and there is distinct refinement in the cooking. Whilst he eschews more classic approaches to flavor and tends toward the wild and wacky (we’ll get some of that later), the overall experience is a fun one and some flavor combos always intrigue on the palate.

The second appetiser was a beef tartare which was wonderfully firm and superbly seasoned. The flavor of the central element shone through and it’s a wonderful modern version of a classic dish. It came with spherified wasabi balls that break up and shit but the flavor was quite mild. Put everything in the mouth and even if the ingredients aren’t traditional, the flavor somehow is sorta kinda.

The last one was brill too. Duck liver foie gras parfait sitting on a bed of puffed rice and pickled raisins. This was awesome and again, I wished I had a whole stick of it to myself. Y’know we had to split this appy 6 ways. Which means one little glorious bite. If I coulda done it again, I woulda ordered 2 of each appetiser. Anyway, foie gras parfait, smooth as foie gras parfait. Intense deep rich beautifully glorious flavor heightened when you hit the sweetness of the raisins and also sorta went well with the riesling’s sweetness. Puffed rice bringing dat texture and crunch. Breakfast for champions luxe concept. Rice krispies, raisins and foie gras. That’s on my menu in the future. Ok maybe, scrap everything and just leave the forcefed duck liver pastey thing that tastes like god intended.

Onto the entrees! We’d get our own. My korean housemate gets the jamon poached tuna. I took a hella blurry photo and it also has like bits of jamon and black sausage crumbs blackened even further with the use of squid ink. I think Savage likes black food. Let’s just say I wished there was a streak of jamon but the tuna had a lovely texture and the oils from the ham really went well with it but that was obvious from the start. The black shit all over the bottom, the sausage and stuff, that was intense.

My S/O decides to get my fave entree, the pork belly with wattle, garlic milk and rhubarb. I gotta say first off, the garlic flavor is nice and gentle and the treatment of the pork belly makes it like the best sio bak in the world ever. The appearance as well, sublime. I don’t recall getting too much rhubarb anywhere but I had mostly meat and one bite of everything. I got this piece of fat near the end of the course and then my mind went blam. That was like ooh yea. Pig fat.

Everyone else though, chose the lobster tail with coconut??!?, black bean and lamb sweetbreads. This one I was really intrigued with. Crustacean with lamb sweetbread is pretty classic but coconut, black bean and also shards of tapioca made shit just a tad tropical. I’m not 100% if everything goes together but I’ll say coconut with tapioca and black bean sago was nice with the lobster. The sweetbreads minus the coconut works great. Everything together maybe works. Each component though, was perfectly done. I just get sick of these composed plates where you don’t really know where to start and where to end. In summary, nice if somewhat disparate but this is exactly what makes Bentley Bentley I guess.

Main courses!!! Ok. To start with, Nick messes up. He scribbled our mains right but keyed em in wrong. No biggie. It’s a table of 6 chefs. We’re never fussed about stuff like this. So they apologise and resolve to try again. We ordered 2 ducks that became 2 lambs. S’alright. They do bring out some maize chips with aioli as a freebie and offer free cakeage as well. Maize chips. Crusty on the outside and crumbly on the inside. Flavor wise, it’s not gonna take out a solid french fry but it’s a nice, interesting alternative. Whilst waiting for my main, at least I get to sample everyone elses and also 2 other sides we got. The first one is brussel sprouts with hazelnuts and a creamy sauce. Tasted good, a proper decent side if a little unspectacular. The other side is kipfler potatoes cooked beautifully and served with artichokes and jerusalem artichokes. Awesome. This dish reminds me that side dishes can be great dishes in and of themselves as well.

The first main I get to try is the beef fillet, a generous looking portion served with swabs of adzuki bean puree and sweet tapioca. Yes it’s weird and the beef is obviously perfectly tender but it’s a fillet, so flavor wise, it always lacks beefiness somewhat. The garnish was maybe a touch too out there. The sweet bean puree had a density of flavor and grainy texture that was maybe a little strong versus the beef and didn’t really do much for the savoury element of the steak. Everything else was alright but just the red bean was maybe a little odd.

The other main is awesome sauce. Poached kingfish served with white and black fungus and covered in a pool of fennel puree. There was also streaks of green herb oil and possibly a vinaigrette as well. The plate was beautiful and I wish I had  a pic, might be able to steal from my mate but the flavor and texture of the fish itself was just… superb. W0uld order again.

Another one of the mains, the missed connections lamb rump was not too bad. I don’t remember too much but flavor wise, it was good. The pepper sauce was the best bit but if I recall correctly, the slightly lebanese/mediterraneany flavor profile of the dish kinda bored me if I’m being honest.

I only had one small bite of what felt like a chicken nugget from my mate’s plate of balled spatchcock. You see what appears to be a giant deep fried chats potato sitting on a plate with fresh pistachios, asparagus and sweetcorn polenta. Only the potato thing was the spatchcock. My mate enjoyed it and I trust his palate so it must’ve been pretty good. He didn’t share much the stingy bastard.

Salvation arrives at long last and I suppose some things are worth the wait. Sitting in front of me after like another 20 minutes is the most divine dish. Roast duck breast sliced and rolled into a beautiful pile sits over the most curiously cut cuttlefish and some mushroom, mushroom gelee? and I think pickled fennel. This was a wow moment when that duck breast went in. I immediately thought, dad would DIE for this. Of course sous vide duck is gonna be perfect. You lose the crispy skin but man, that first contact is just… super dope duckness. The whole dish for me, was my pick of the night.

Desserts were picked by two of the girls whilst the rest of us were chatting away. I’d scarcely even glanced at the menu. We got 3 to share. My favorite was the cashew custard. I’ve got no idea what else was on the plate but I can safely say it was awesome. The mild sweetness of the custard is what you start with until it eventually gives way to the rich roasted nuttiness of cashews. The weakest dessert was probably the date tart with rockmelon sorbet. The sorbet was excellent and in fact everything on the plate was too. Little blobs of uncertainty or whatever aside, they were great together. The tart itself however, was kinda weak. I expected a really deep rich flavor but it was surprisingly mild and perhaps not for the best. They caramelized the top and the texture itself was good but you really expect dense, dark flavor with date tarts and this one was like a milder date tasting but smudgy dense textured slice that we were disappointed with. The other dessert was the frozen goat’s cheese mousse, which to my palate did not have that strong pronounced goat’s cheese-ness. In fact, it tasted like fro yo. This one was pretty good and came with little pale blue blobs of violet cream, dark real honeycomb honeycomb and a whole lotta others.

Cake time was supposed to be a sweet potato cake, a korean jawn kopped from Eastwood that maybe lacked the finesse and refinement that Bentley had produced over the course of the entire meal but it wasn’t too bad at all. The main problem was both koreans at the table wondering if this was the correct flavor because whilst the mousse had a certain goguma-ish graininess, the taste was exceedingly mild. It was a pleasant little sponge/mousse combo though.

Highlights

• Smoked eel parfait. Smoky back end kicks in after fishy, konbu-y, eelyness and hit the palate roof with sudden intensity.
• Duck liver parfait. Some old standards die hard but new ways of representing them provide some new insight.
• Pork belly. Lip smacking.
• Black sausage bits in the tuna dish. Probably the dankest, deepest flavor the whole night.
• Kingfish. Want to eat this again. A whole plate of it.
• Duck breast. All duck should be like this.
• Cashew custard. It goes like this. Sweet creamy > Nutty Rich > bright sweet.

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Dat Maggie Beer

Burnt Fig Jam, Caramel & Honeycomb. My favoritest ice creamy cream cream in da world. I met this old lady once when I was groc shopping and she was like this one is the best and I was like hell yeah nanna you know wassup!

Finna Spark An L And Have Myself A Big Mak Attack

The title for this post comes from Das Racist’s Rainbow In The Dark. Anyway, a friend of my housemate makes awesome sauce macarons. I’ve actually started to pronounce it correct too after meeting him. The common misconception is the much hyped macaron is actually spelt macaroon. But in truth there’s only one O just so ya know.

MakMak is a small startup focused on making the damned bestest macarons Sydneyside and it’s all done from a small house in Newtown. Flavor wise, it keeps rotating and changing according to season and some whim but there’s a lotta effort going into each macaron, making sure there’s maximum flavor and texture. Oh and the texture… They are the most moistest, sweet but not cloying, crumbly, crispy, smudgy macarons I have ever had the pleasure of enjoying.

I’m sure Pierre Herme or Sadaharu Aoki make great ones too but the difference is I actually know the guy behind it and he’s a real affable person.

MakMak is doing real good now too. You can actually find their macarons on sale at Baffi & Mo, a cafe in Redfern and Duke Bistro in Darlinghurst to name but 2 up and coming hipspots in Sydney.

Onto the pr0n.

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Jervis Bay

Ahh… Holidays. A chance to relax at last. I wasn’t really thinking of going anywhere until like 2 weeks ago when I realized I was gonna have like 3 days off in a row during the Easter break. Lightbulb! Perfect chance to get outta Sydney, drive around nowhere and do nothing. The sort of non experiential bliss only afforded when you leave your immediate familiar surrounds and go somewhere else.

Somewhere else turned out to be Jervis Bay. Suggested by my housemate who had previously been and felt it was really beautiful or whatever. It’s like this large bay protected from the ocean by two juts of land. A gap between the bits of land means the bay is also connected to the ocean. It’s supposed to be one of those typically Sydney beach holiday type places filled with water sports, activities, nature sightseeing, ice cream and fish & chips. I just wanted to go somewhere. Anywhere.

It’s pronounced Jer Vis not Jar Vis as is commonly thought. Jer Vis. Some naval dude’s name. I learned this on the trip. It’s around 3 hours south of Sydney and the main town I suppose is Huskisson. The drive itself isn’t bad at all, pretty scenic along Princes Highway heading south so you get to see the ocean at times. It has a few windy bits and a lot of long steep slopes going up and down or down and up. No tight angles or insane winding like a drive into the Jenolan Caves like I did with my family last time. Easy is probably the best way to sum it up.

I manage to book a motel for like $165 a night, or $330 for 2 nights. Not bad given it’s the peak season and the motel is in a decent location, with decent amenities. In fact, the only thing I would complain about Huskisson Beach Motel is their choice of fishy print bedsheets. You guys need to get on that leopard print trend but I acknowledge the desire to stay true to locality. There’s a queen sized bed, a flatscreen, a bar fridge, access to a kitchen, free tea/coffee, a totally clean bathroom, towels, clean sheets… It ain’t some 5 star place with design your own burgers in bed at 3am or basketball courts inside the suite but it’ll do the trick.

The first thing I get to doing is really just walking down the main street of Huskisson and um getting some fish & chips and ice cream. Jervis Bay takeaway has really crap burgers but ok fish & chips. Ice cream came from the local Ice Creamery and it was alright. Night time was spent watching TLC hahaha. The next morning, we grabbed breakfast at the Husky Bakery + Cafe, which has ok breakfasts but much better looking pies. I totally regret not stuffing 2 pies instead of getting their big breakfast. A nice touch is a free glass of juice accompanying the brekkie. Right after the feed, we traipse down to Dolphin Wild Cruises where we sign up to grab a boat ride out into the bay. It seems like the main thing to do. We go out and the water looks real beautiful at the shallow bits. It’s like super clear and clean looking like you can see right thru to the bottom. As we get further out, you can’t see quite as much but it’s pretty much this largish piece of calm. A seal comes near the boat and I saw it but totally missed any chance at all to grab a photo. There’s some birds diving to get to fish in the water and the captain gives us some background to the area. Sadly, that’s about all the wildlife we see on the 2 hour ride under super dark skies. A couple of passengers look a little pukey and I wasn’t feeling too good either. When there’s nothing much to focus on, you just get a little seasick. At the end, they offer us a free ticket lasting a year to do the ride again but we weren’t really up for it lol. It’s rare that boats don’t catch a glimpse of dolphins as they live in the bay itself.

Other things you can do in Husky include stand up paddle where you stand on this oversized surfboard known as a paddle board and you paddle around the calm bits of the bay. Right outside Husky is this bit where the water is super still and shallow and you can maybe see fish and possibly even dolphins coming up close. I didn’t bother lol! You could also rent a boat or kayak or some water vehicle and get out but I didn’t bother doing that either! I just went for Husky’s “World Famous” Fish & Chips. Let me just say that everything is fucking world famous in little Australian towns nobody knows about. Their fish & chips is better than the previous joint but everytime I eat someone else’s version, I realize my workplace rocks the fuck outta this simple delight. Our tartare sauce is sooo sick. No one comes close. We also get some gelato from this place called Lickety Lick which also sells American candies, soft drinks, pop tarts and shit. There’s a lot of these American style candystores in little Aussie tourist towns. I would visit 2 more in Berry, a little town on the way home to Sydney.

I think the best place in Jervis Bay other than the Bay itself is really Hyams Beach. It’s this pretty awesome little stretch of sand just south of Husky. It’s rated by the Guinness world records as having the whitest sand in the world. I dunno if it’s really the whitest in the world but I thought the sand itself was superfine and superclean. I could pick up a mound of it and it would all fall off completely leaving no trace behind. No mud or gluck or anything at all. The water was also this awesome blue/turquoise and super clear. The view just opened out into Jervis Bay itself, with the bits of land shrouding the bay in the distance along with Bowen island nearby. I reckon it’s the nicest beach I’ve ever been to in my life. The little town itself is home to a few swanky looking residences/holiday homes that look a little like someone plucked a piece of Balmoral and dropped it south. There’s absolutely nothing around the area except the beach and Booderee national park. I like how most of the beach is just simply flanked by bush behind it. There’s a only a few house with direct access to the sand. Most of the place actually looks just a little untouched. It’s the kinda place I’d love to have near me, the sort of totally serene, close to unspoilt postcard paradise but something just uniquely Aussie. It’s not like your own private beach somewhere on some island in the caribbean/maldives/whatever but it’s like got bushland and some tourists and shit. Not too many tourists though. It ain’t Bondi/Surfer’s Paradise pho sho.

Post beach tripping was more TLC lol! My fave channel ever! Plus beer and snacks. I didn’t do much at all in Jervis Bay and maybe most people would go “why???” but to me, holidays are about doing nothing rather than rushing around cramming activities into a schedule. It’s about relaxing and chilling and doing nothing. If I really wanted to do something I’d do it, otherwise, I’d just chill. I wouldn’t do this if/when I go to say Tokyo but Jervis is perfect for the nothing sort of nothing everyone needs sometime.

Hopefully I’ll get to enjoy more of these expanses of void style holidays with lots of driving in the future.

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Bodega

Hohoho. This Tuesday, I got to hit up Bodega, the Surry Hills tapas style mainstay that’s got one chef’s hat. Bodega is the first restaurant of chefs Elvis Abrahanowicz and Ben Milgate. Previously, I had the immense pleasure to dine at their new place, Porteno and it was super dope kick ass. This time, I got to go to the place where they made their name and it didn’t disappoint! Somehow the waitress gives us a wine list with no insert which I point out and she hurriedly exchanges. This finally lets us score a cider and a beer to drink. Can’t remember the name of the cider but I got an Alhambra 1925 Reserva, which is a pretty balanced and straightforward lager beer, served in the bottle.

We arrive early although my friend forgets to put the parking ticket on her dashboard hahaha! Anyway, we open with some bread and white anchovies. Man, these suckers are so thick, firm and flavorsome. Tangy and acidic with the vinegary dressing but I’ve always loved these so much. They just taste so… clean and they’re like almost the size of sardines.

The follow is a plate of octopus cooked in malbec until the sauce forms this sludgy coating. It’s rich in flavor and pasty in texture which contrasts nicely with the bite of the octo. This is served with thinly sliced fennel, a nice little dressing and some smoked bonito. The bonito is just like real nice but it’s the complete combo that runs things here. I really like the balance of flavors in this dish. It’s the kinda cooking that I like, modern, inspired and totally interesting.

Not long after, we get our side dish, which is a pot of mushrooms cooked with garlic. Nothing too fancy just nice and tasty. I think the portion size is relatively generous and I defo get my shroom fix.

The final dish is my favourite. Veal sweetbreads sauteed off and served with a soft poached egg and chicarrones and some grains/beansy stuff I can’t remember the name of. The rich sweetbreads are totally set off by the dressing and the grainy beansy stuff with the crackling to provide the crunch and the egg the unctuousness. Just de-lish.

Bodega rocks and guess what. Yea it’s Porteno again next week lol! I’m eating dat good shit err week now.

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Ms G’s

So Merivale’s latest restaurant is helmed by Dan Hong and Jowett Yu and they cheekily decided to pun it Ms G’s after the much venerated food additive. I swear, it’s really not that bad and considering it’s found in many foods naturally, it’s not artificial. MSG just gets so misconstrued like a thousand other things. Anyway, the place is located in Potts Point, pretty near King’s Cross station on Victoria Street, where it’s all 1P parking except 2 lots. Which sucks. We end up parking a few minutes walk away but yea, easier to take the train there or just walk.

Outside, there’s the small neon pink signage that sticks out from the abyss of black that surrounds. Inside, it’s pretty goddamn busy for a Tuesday night. I reckon they pack more seats into this smallish space than the average restaurant. There’s 3 seperate mezzanine’s with the kitchen on the bottom. There’s barely enough space for people to pull their chairs out and get in/out. It’s not a bad thing per se but it’s clear the space caters for a more casual dining atmosphere. Read: Loud. Lots of chuckly gaffaws like at any other busy place with a cooler than average crowd I’d say. It’s new, it’s hip, it’s where everyone wants to be other than Porteno.

The decor is curious. The wall has some pseudo graffiti passage printed in white on a black background and the middle floor, where we’re seated has windows looking out into some foliage. There’s the requisite old school incandescent bulbs everywhere that I can’t really stand anymore and ropes! hanging like all over. The tables are composite chip block polished finished smooth on top so you see the “grain” and the chairs are a mish mash of iterations of Eames style chairs done in wireframe, plastic and rattan. Every table has this metal container with disposable chopsticks, white paper napkins, bubble tea straws and a bottle of sriracha, like you’d find in an Asian diner. Actually the interior guy was probably given the words “trendy as fuck Asian diner” in his brief.

We get served by a couple dudes. The second dude looks like the maitre’d on the night and stops us following the first dude, saying “don’t bother bout him, he gets lost sometimes…”. This is a good thing because I reckon we get this really nice seat in the middle floor, window and all, not the bottom floor, which just looked cramped to me haha. He seats us and this other dude comes over. His name I can’t recall at the mo but I do remember he wanted to be addressed as “Butterscotch”. I did not comply. Butterscotch gave us some menus and then left for a minute before returning and saying sarcastically that we were taking too long. Haha. Eventually, we make up our minds and he takes our order with a mini etch-a-sketch. It’s kinda funny cos I notice our ordered scribbled down. GT, PC etc.

We start with 2 cocktails. A green tea thingamajig, sorta like a mojito x mint green tea is mine and a Pina Colada is the other. Both come in ridiculous Ms G branded bubble tea cups. It’s so cute and there’s this big red dot that is Ms G’s mouth which you stab through with the straw. Pretty punny shit but the cocktails at like 13 or 14 a piece are pretty good. It really does feel like bubble tea too cos the pina comes with coconut jellies. Like nice ones I suppose, not completely like real bubble tea fake flavour everything.

The opener is the mini banh mi, with crispy pork belly encased in a micro bun, lettuce, cucumber, carrot, kimchi mayo I think and it’s $6 for one. We share one because my dining companion is hella tiny so I would have the responsibility of mopping shit up. They also offer a chicken version. It is fucking good. Really good. Like you wish they just sold normal sized versions of these in the daytime for lunch takeaways. Unfortunately, I still haven’t had any good banh mi in Sydney. Surprising cos there’s plenty of Vietnamese. It just seems like people do more pho and crispy skin chicken instead. Somehow the US banh mi craze hasn’t hit Sydney quite just yet.

We decide to just share everything together or rather I eat like 70% of the stuff and my friend gets to try more than she would normally. Numero uno is an entree of prawn toast with yuzu aioli and Vietnamese herbs. I actually had a variation of this before in Lotus, Dan Hong’s last restaurant which I though was ok but nothing spectacular. That time, the toast was flattish and it got topped with a parsley salad, almost like a tabbouleh. This time, the toast is thickish, super crispy and the herbs were awesome sauce. It made me wish we made simple starters like this. So easy to plate and so tasty.

Numero due is a salad of heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, lotsa herbs and crispy tofu with a spicy dressing. This is really good. The tomatoes are super sweet and meaty delicious. The eggplant isn’t the long variety but the bulbous rounder ones that are cooked firm and skinned. The tofu gives the textural contrast but the spicy dressing really pulls it all together.

Last. The main I looked forward to most was the whole deep fried baby chicken, which is done up korean fried chicken style with a kimchi mayo dip. However, instead of a whole bone in poussin, you get pieces as you would in like KFC or summin. I read that this was the thing to order and whilst the chicken was fried well, juicy and delicious, it wasn’t anything TOO amazing. I’d recommend it as like something to share and nibble on but I wanted so much more. I think the problem was mostly my lofty fried chicken expectations. I still had the amazing Abashiri fried chicken fresh in my memory with the awesome unsalty salt crusted skin and insanely flavoursome flesh. This just kinda pales to be honest.

Total damage came up to under a $100 for 2 cocktails, a starter, an entree and 2 “mains”. I was fullish with space but we decided to follow the original plan and go for dessert at Gelato Messina instead. I reckon for the food you get served, the location, the decor and ambience, the restaurant hits a lot of the right spots. The food isn’t quite 1 hat standard but some of it has to be really really close. Actually, I really like this place, which I was surprised with. First off, I didn’t have a great experience at Lotus beforehand. It was a bad choice on my part that night cos I relented with my mate’s penny pinching and we went for this cheapo 3 course $45 menu incl wine, which sucked balls. I still feel Lotus was better than what I had tasted but nevermind that. The other thing is when I looked at the menu at Ms G’s, I wasn’t a fan of the pan Asian variety but it turned out the place was really good. In fact, I’d love to go back again and try more stuff and if anything, this gives me courage in the forging of my own mod Asian food.

I suppose I really want to be able to create a new language for Asian food that doesn’t simply use exotic ingredients that white people don’t know how to pronounce as my marketing schtick. What I really want is to like create the first bowl of ramen or dishes like the modern Korean olive oil deep fried chicken or the current iteration of banh mi or maybe a new style bak kut teh or chicken rice or whatever. Something that uses modern cooking techniques to create new flavors that are still hauntingly familiar.

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Soz for blurry imperfect pics, was distracted by better sights.

Meat Is Murder

It’s a new month and as requisite, we decide to smash another kickass joint in Sydney as we keep knocking places off this terminally long list I keep. Today, we visit Porteno, an Argentinian grill inspired place run by the guys behind Bodega, a popular one hat tapas joint in Surry Hills. There’s a 50s style theme to the place, most apparent from the lady who must’ve been the lead hostess, dressed like Marilyn with a blonde coif and this striking graphic print dress with pumps on the feet. The head bartender had a bowtie, prescription chunky Raybans, suspenders and slicked hair. So did this guy that looked like the lead singer of Twin Shadow, but with slicked back hair. The two chefs too. They had slicked back hair and full sleeves. You half expect them to break out into some bubblegum punk whilst cooking. Ben Milgate was throwing chunks of seafood and beef on this sloping grill which has a lever to adjust the height whilst selecting from some rockabilly and jazz on his iPod. Elvis Abrahanowicz was at the chopping block, slicing up fresh grilled meat cut straight from the carcasses standing over the asador/open charcoal fire pit thing in the middle of the room. That last thing, the asador, is pretty much the biggest attention grabber. 2 whole baby suckling pigs and 2 baby suffolk lambs were slit open at the belly and opened up flat, placed into this metal holder and suspender over a big and really warm fire pit between the bar and the grill. Our table is right in front of it. We always get good seats. We take a gander at the menu although we know pretty much what we were getting. Pork for my mate, lamb for me. Two entrees including some smoked mackerel and grilled calamari. Somehow somewhere, whether because of the spectacle before or whatever, we ended up with a 3rd entree. Morcilla/Blood Sausage. Oh and uh some house bread with pork pate for kicks. The pate’s quite good. The bread’s not bad either. For $2 a person, we get 3 rolls and some extras. That’s better than many other places where bread is an extra. A hell of a lot better. It also sets the tone for the amount of protein we were about to consume. Vegetarians and vegans and those weak of constitution, look away now. I can’t recall the names of these two dressings but they would be helpful soon enough. Let me just say that if you eat at Porteno, these two will be your best friends. The first dish that arrived I think was terrific. It was some smoked mackerel served with pickled celery, heart of palm and some avocado. The mackerel was great, lovely deep flavor, crisp skin, tender flesh… The rest of it just served to amp up the savoury aspect with smooth, bright acidic and fresh to contrast. Just beautiful.

Entree #2. Chargrilled calamari with pickled green tomatoes and chilli. Grilled just so, charred just enough and the tomatoes and chilli just gave it enough interest. I’m really getting into this pickled tomato/peppers/chillies thing and this dish is a great example of how that acidity is able to support something strong in flavor and lift it even more.

Ooh yeah baby! Morcilla: Pig’s blood, fat, onions… Let me rephrase. Pig fat, pig fat, some blood, little bits of onions and more pig fat. The roasted capsicum it sits on is sweet and delish, a highlight but together… Ooh yeah baby!

Right enough fluff. Let’s move onto the mains. What you see above is a heaping pile of various cuts from a suckling pig that stood over the fire pit just moments ago. The flesh is oh man, so so tender and juice. Imagine the bestest roast pork you ever had. Now multiply that by two. And the crackling. It’s like icing, in fat form.

Mmmmm. My pick of the night, the lamb, which also happens to be cheaper than the pork. It’s just as tender, maybe a touch drier expectedly but don’t let that detract from anything. Make no mistake. This is good meat cooked bloody well. You’ll get some of those crispy charred bits of fat, skin and flesh/fat combos that are just woah. If you like lamb, order this and nothing else. If you don’t like lamb, grab a knife, sit down, insert knife into your abdomen on one side. Using both hands, drag it across to the other side as your guts spill onto the floor.

We have a debate but succumb to ordering dessert. They’re quite good but I can only imagine most people having like none of it given what had come before. If you even get just one portion of the pork or lamb, you should be stuffed, without bread/sides etc. Me. I had 1.5 entrees, bread, a whole main and now a whole dessert. To be honest I could actually go Kobayashi stylee on dis shit but Imma responsible adult for now. This one above is a burnt cream custard with chocolate ice cream, orange jam and some popcorn. The caramel glass on the custard cracks up nicely but the custard itself is somewhat bland. Eat it with the jam and ice cream though and it’s quite bloody good. The popcorn brings in a slightly salty element.

Postre Chaja, a Uruguayan style pavlova with meringue, dulche de leche, peanuts, sous vide mango and some soaked sponge with in this case. Quite bloody good, bright and light.

Overall, I’ve already planned my next assault, if that’s anything to go by. Definitely wanna drop in for some skirt steak, fried veal sweetbreads, empanadas, pickled veal tongue, bbq eggplant, chorizo, fried brussel sprouts… Wait. That’s a bit much for a single meal huh. Oh well. Make it a couple more assaults then. I waved and gave Elvis a thumbs up which he acknowledged. Dude, Imma come back soonish.