the cake + the knife, a love story

Tacos + The Truth (aka, El Loco Surry Hills)...

2011-08-02T20:20:00.000-07:00

Even though it has been happening for a while, Mexican is soooo in right now. Now. Like right now. Not a minute ago, not a second ago. It's in Now. Like, right this very split nanosecond now. It's so hot it's flammable. So cool, it's unbearable. So uber-super-duper-taco-trooper terrifyingly...vogue. Even Flynn Bloom (the rosy-cheeked newborn offspring of the elf and the DJ's model - keep up with your celeb gossip, people) is passe by its standards. Don't get me wrong, this is a good, great thing. I fell in love with Mexican cuisine later in life at the same time I fell smack bang - via an Air Mexicana flight where I barely got checked for any contraband at customs - into the whirr and wonder of Mexico City in 2007...

My body weight in guacamole, a scorched cockroach or two, some riot-rich flamed meat and roughly 2783 corn chips later and my alimentary canal swore its allegiance forever. Whether it was street-side Puebla pork or steak at the best restaurant in Oaxaca, or papaya and lime for 30 cents off the back of a truck on the Southern Pacific Coast, I was in a cafe de olla coffee spun food flickered haze of joy. It was almost holy, damn it. You just can't find bad food in Mexico. So i'm glad that in whatever form I can get it Mexican is starting to hit a little bit closer to home. That's the cake. Now, for the knife...

Colour splashed? Check. Cheap-looking but cheery trinkets? Check. Punk-peckered postered walls? Check. In yo' face attitude? Check. Young? Rebellious? Freestylin? Check. Check. Check. Crates out front for a bit of Melbourne cool? Like, Double Check. El Loco isn't what i'd call absolutely original in terms of decor or concept, but it's really on the money with what's happening now (right now!). 'Street' anything - whether it's Thai or Mexican - is just packing out. The street is so bloody happening parking inspectors will soon be cool. I arrived at the morphed Excelsior before the crowd so I could get in some good snaps without being antisocial. As I sat there in the middle of all of the bearded muso-metro-punk-who-uses-aesop-shaving-cream-Louis-Vuitton'd crowd and in the middle of the denim-dunked staff who look like the last time they cracked a good solid smile might have been the last time they ate a good solid meal (a while ago), and to admit it, in the middle of my own middle agededness...well, the coolness of it all made me just a wee bit uncomfortable. Dining in Sydney has felt less of something to explore lately and more something that you need to keep up with or stay ahead of, like email and old age.

Food has always been status driven and there have always been what you would call trends going on, but it's just gotten to be something else completely different lately. You know, when I was a young girl...Seriously, though. There I sat, at El Loco, thinking we've all gone completely fucking loco. For newer. Bigger. Brighter. Whatever the next thing is. Don't get me wrong, I am glad that Sydney is finally waking up to its potential and that there are lots of new start ups around, but some times it tends to be a little more style than substance. It's still the solid older players who really impress me - like Buzo - restaurants that are smart with flavours and manage to hold their own while gently reinventing what they do - rather than pandering to the fickle foodie drum.

The truth, as always. Sitting there, alone, perched on my little high horse, silently bemoaning the fate of the Sydney dining 'scene', I was completely ready to dismiss El Loco as overrated. The next big thing, all bark very little jalapeno bite. But then food came, and I fucking loved it...Props where props be due.

Normally I don't advise that you mix, but a bull-raged-red can of tecate and at least a sip of one of the tangy slushed vegetable magaritas is a playful way to tickle your liver before you start to lay into your stomach.

We kicked culinary things off with a quirky quesedilla. The mix of melted cheese and perfectly chewy dense-but-somehow-light tortilla was right on the moneda. Most quesedillas can be a bit intense, this one was subtle and smoky and just delicious. And properly portioned, not too much filling or cheese to tortilla and not too big as a whole. Then upwards and onwards, into a place on a plate where pigs really do fly...

The raging al pastor pork torta sandwich is as lethal as a Mexican drug run: dangerously spit-cooked pork dripping into sluices of chili spiked salad and flaked dreamy cheese, sorta melted sorta not. Normally I hate soft, sweet bread but the gentle bun was the perfect balance to the salt-meat fury of all of that pork and cheese. Coriander and cabbage offered a shimmer of green and just a little pungent-fragrant respite and then the salsa flickered mayo comes in and makes your eyes roll into the back of your startled head. It was a dead tie for equal favourite for me between this and...

The Excelsior Hot Dog. This unassuming little dish created a bit of a Montague/Capulet sitch at the table. I was on the side, let's call them the Montagues, who thought it worked: Johnny Cash Deep Rich mouth-mind-saturating frankfurt bleeding thick-oiled-slightly-charred flavour into a soft bun with globs of pickled peppery-smack jalepeno and pico ge gallo being murderously smothered by a jaw dropping bacchanal rainstorm of fairy-floss cheese and mute-renderingly majestic mayo. Intense, luscious and completely edifying. One bite and you actually feel like you wake up. The capulets come from the much straighter old-school-hot-doggers who think you don't mess with the basic sausage set up. They found this a little too pork-rich and complex. Pussies.

Corn chips and guacamole...just cause we felt like we hadn't consumed just quite enough carbs and fat...

And there you have it. Cheap and cheerful Mexican, perfectly textured tortilla, spicy tacos with burgeoning fillings such as the luscious lemongrass beef, killer hot dogs and raging pork. The saladish sides of shredded cabbage and spicy corn were colourful and lent a welcome kick of fresh to all of that loco-richness. I liked that loco steered clear from burritos, rather doing all the basic Mexican, it does a few things well and then funks them up a bit.

Loud, rollicking and service by slightly indifferent people who are way cooler than you, what's not to like? Even if it's not your scene, the food, the drinks and the value do justify a drop in - maybe earlier in the night or for a more sober lunch if you don't do crowds so well. The meat fillings tended to be more amazing than the seafood, but that could've been just the night we tried it. El Loco happens at 64 Foveaux Street Surry Hills. No bookings - far too hip for that. Website here. The menu changes a bit but the hot dog and pork sandwich look like they're thankfully here to stay.

So, if you're not already behind on the 10, 000 other places you simply have to try in Sydney before they all close down in 5 minutes, and you just plain want to know what the hell is going on when talking to your friends and colleagues about what they did (ate) on the weekend, then put El Loco on the lengthening list. It does deserve a visit. Danny reckons this is the first Merivale place he tried that he actually thought stood up to expectations, and Danny is a clearly a man of impeccable tastes!

I am about to post this right now, bet you in the 2 seconds it takes for this piece to publish another 3 places will probably open up on the same block in Surry Hills and another three will've closed up shop. I know we've all gone loco, but i'm getting too old for this.

Come on Sydney, chill-aaaaaax.

Melbourne, Miscellaneously.

2011-07-22T19:54:00.000-07:00

Thanks for many other magical Melbourne moments to the following places:

Brother Baba Budan at 359 Little Bourke

Cumulus Inc. at 45 Flinders Lane

Il Fornaio at 2 Acland St, St Kilda

Pope Joan at 77-79 Nicholson St, East Brunswick

and always, always thank you to home away from home - a place that is so comfortably perfect for writing and people watching and far too many cups of tea that somehow photos never ever seem to get taken here, all these years long

Journal at 253 Flinders Lane...

big bright Red Inked, Ruled Page Love at you

See you all in 3 months - and not a moment too soon x

Punk Rock Palate

2011-07-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

Hosier Lane is a little cobblestoned vein that runs its course from the throbbing heart center that Flinders Street Station and Federation Square make of Melbourne's lane-laden CBD. Out of the way and with a slight uphill slant (or downward, depending on where you hit it from), the bricks that line its walls are vivid with verve and the movement of so many spiraling colours. It kind of looks like a rainbow went on a massive bender, dropped some acid, blared The Dwarves and then went and threw up in there. Textured with bleary undertones and splashed with ribbons of punk pink-red, it's gritty, edgey and absolutely livid with life. The kind of street scape that makes you want to flash a nun and swear at a cop. You know what I mean.

The graffiti that screams off Hosier's walls doesn't just end there, inside at the fly Spanish red-red-red Tapas-Temple MoVida, the street art finds its way into a crazy kitchen, through a quirky menu and smack bang in yo-face-onto to a rollicking plate. My CakeKnifeHermanos, if your tongue aint already pierced - then it's probably about to be...

MoVida does what it does, and it does it damn, damn well. Amazingly priced, quality tapas-style food high on energy and rich with flavour - mostly Spanish, but a little not. Punchy, rustic and rebellious. Pour yourself a fiery Tempranillo, grab a spot at a table or bar-side and ease your way into the frenzied foodie flamenco that has had young and old Melbourne tongues dancing since it first opened its doors in 2003. It's a bit like the running of the bulls, someone's going to get hurt...

Starting with this creamy oyster special thing which was a lovely shimmy of salty milkiness I dove straight into a truffled boiled-egg special that was divinely rich and decadent and simple. Small but punchy morsels that were full of colour and body and whetting my escalating appetite for all that was to come.

The anchoa - hand-filleted Cantabrian artisan anchovy on crouton w smoked tomato sorbet is a hell of a beauty for only $4.50. A salty sliver of whimpering barely-there anchovy lazing upon a wafer of olive-oil drizzled crunch is the perfect oily-dry brackishness that falls in deep flavour love with a good herbed-helping of cool, sweet smokey tomato ice. Subtle and piquant and entirely surprising. This was an incredibly elegant bite for a place so big on brawn.

Ditto the rottnest island scallop w garlic soup, although it wasn't quite garlickish enough by Arab standards, the little gentle island-jewel of a perfectly pale fresh scallop, spangled with a few shards of green and suspended in liquefied garlic was lovely, smooth and silky to taste - with a bash of oily-richness that gave it some grounding. Like a hand of cards being deftly dealt, it was then onto the next morsel...

This insanely incandescent pork-stuffed calamari w squid ink dressing was a squeaky textured, meat-fueled wonder immersed in shimmering, hazy ebony. The flavour was deep like sin and the contrast in textures between the gentle pork and rubberish calamari kept giving me something to think about. All of this mouth-Gaudi (mixed with the Tempranillo) was giving me enough of a mouth-rush that I thought I had fully come to terms with the wiles of MoVida's ways, but then the next plate happened and things just got a little bit crazy after that.

Ay Dios Mio! Seriously. Come hither and have yourselves a weepy gander at this here wonder: the famed MoVida cecina - air dried wagyu w poached egg + truffle foam. Up until I sampled this wonder I was still functioning under the mistaken impression that Javier Bardem was the hottest incarnation of flesh to ever hail from Spain. Poor Javier. It was a good run while it lasted, mate, but it had to end sometime...

Painfully pale scarlet curls of richly glistening meat blossom outward over a stunned plate beneath the slightly wobbling weight of a topaz yolked yet-to-be-spiked, epically poached orb of an egg, positively besieged by an airy-frothy-contrary tutu of truffle foam masquerading as edible gauze. Take this diaphanous form and picture it ordained with the holy squirting of a full, true olive oil, and you will understand the pain. Maddening, glossy salty meat spiked with eggy-orange swirls dissolving in all of that truly truffled foam. My god. Depth, richness, lightness, all in such perfect balance. It is just the right amount of wagyu that grounds the egg and truffle, no one ingredient overshadows the other, it just all hovers there in some kind of crazed chemical bliss...

The pan seared quail w fried bread + red grapes, although it could never trump what had happened before, still managed to hold its own. This is a dish for those of you who can handle your food 24 K gold-rich. The sweet-oiliness and crunch is restrained by the sobering saltiness of a smattering of black olives. And at this point you have someone who is very, very full.

A sip of mineral water...

Some colour to revive...

And there you have MoVida. Thanks to Nissa for the card that introduced me and my belly to Hosier and MoVida and a formula that keeps most of Melbourne coming back. There are quite a few ways to MoVida, should the need ever arise (and it really, really should). There's the original, then there's MoVida Next Door, MoVida Aqui and MoVida Terraza. For bookings at any or all of them call (03) 9663 3038, website here.

Thanks MoVida, the graffiti on the plate has definitely made its colourful - and indelible - mark. Now, for the love of God, come open up in Sydney.

A Cave In The Clouds

2011-07-17T23:34:00.000-07:00

Shhh. Come closer, now. Sit here. Right there, next to me. I'm going to tell you a secret. The universe is dark and deep, a swirling, whirring mass of planets and stars and dancing dust. Godless or not, it's black and bright and mesmerising with meanings we can never know. All a kaleidoscope of burning, brilliant chaos. There's a planet suspended somewhere in that sparkling gloom, an orb in shimmering blues and greens. Transfixed, it spins around the axis of a sparkling star, blindingly burning brilliant ocherous. It's a world. A world heavy with colours and noise and weight and worries. It's a world that holds everything we are, and everything we could ever hope to be. It's a world where far away from all of the space in which you stand, the air becomes the ground, and where imagination - beautiful, fragile imagination - can sometimes become washed away in a gutter bound for nowhere.

If you could stand in space and zoom in on this world for just a moment, you would be able to make out the shape of a humming city. Grided with wide streets and people crossing them, lines and lines of crisscrossing life. If you focused, further still, the other lines would blur away and you'd see Collins Street, clear and sharp, all the way up from where you stand. If you were a body, you would cross a threshold and be met by a guide who would usher you into a brilliant black box, mirrored darkness with splashes of striped neon white. A moment, it wouldn't be much longer than that, and you would feel your body fall away. You would feel gravity leaving you, a slight dizziness and your jangled nerves and your quickening blood would only have one moment, two moments, three in which to recollect themselves before you, stunned and a little bereft of breath, found yourself standing on something solid again. Yes, you would arrive. 55 Levels up from where you were only a few seconds ago. You'd walk in, and upon the polished surfaces of so many reflecting shades of black there - in an open, endless glass you would see it - the world - polished and perfect, the world, all yours, smiling back up at you.

Okay, I realise you have to be an especially food-crazed wanker with highly poetic pretensions to describe walking into Shannon Bennett's newly done and dusted Vue De Monde restaurant in Melbourne's Rialto along these lines, but you know me, and I know me, and let's face it - that's exactly what I am. When I packed my dispirited little Sydney-self and my ever curious foodie-boots into some carry-on luggage for a little three-day jaunt to Merry Melbourne (with not a ball of wool or a French tune in mind) - I had no idea that I was about to fall in love. It had been months of nothing much in Sydney, despite some very expensive non-eventish lunches (coughQuaycough), the palate was down and the soul was weary. I was amiss in the world. But that is how love always, always finds you. And turns you. Love. Madly, truly and deeply, 55-levels in the clouds, breathless and tea-soaked, among sticks and stones and freedom and choice, with some of the best stuff that ever happened on a pretty plate. Turns out Belinda Carlisle was right all along, heaven is a place on earth, and I managed (in the short window of opportunity afforded by 3 days) to get in not once, but twice, for a dinner and an epic lunch. Pour yourself a red, sit back and get comfy, this is probably going to hurt...a lot...

Like any good and proper fairy tale, before the protagonist is allowed to have the magical experience, she must first make a very important decision. One that reflects on her character and says something about who she is. Two black, heavy, perfectly folded sheets of paper sealed in golden wax lie before me on my leather clad table which is dappled with heavy stones and blackened pieces of driftwood, they offer me two doors, and I can only walk through one at a time. The little, magical golden lettering spells it out: freedom or choice? Choice at 55 levels up is a la carte, freedom is a 10 course degustation. Sorry to be predictable but I didn't select one, I went with both. Freedom, for the 5-hour-long-lunch of my life, and Choice for the quick-ish dinner I managed to squeeze in before my flight back to Sydney.

With not a decision to be made, I sank back into the leather and fur trim of my majestic seat, surveying a view that kept winking at me over the expansive black table decked in seamed, textured leather. So many surfaces and textures and contrasts. You want to run your fingertips over the lot of it. Beyond the gentle hues of pale pink that croon Sinatra-smooth through the lustrous Johnny-Cash-Black darkness of the bar and entrance, is an intimate space finished in natural textures that all at once Walks The Line between private, hidden, secretive and luxurious. And magical, too. Like a cave, quiet and dark, the space holds you in solid colours and grounding, heavy furnishings. The dining space, which holds no more than 60 people, wraps itself around you and draws you deep inside like a satisfied sigh. The open kitchen that shimmers in silver stands a little like a mirage in the middle of all that hushed black. This solid interior brilliantly contrasts with the sheer glass from which spills out the captivating view of Melbourne by daylight or, even more spectacularly, twinkling into the length of a deep, dark night. The space draws you in and out, and back again like a pendulum, you feel safe but also ever so slightly on the edge of falling. Safe-danger. The drama of it is astounding. Polished silver against wood and stone, gentle champagne-filled glass flickering against thick, worn leather. You feel silenced in a room that seems to say so much. And it is from the quiet heart of this stark opulence and the heightened feeling that it all creates that Shannon's food creeps in, and through all of its myriad colours and flavours, pushes you right over the edge and casts you - stunned and silent - into the gentle world of the culinary clouds. Get ready for it, Cake+KnifeKids, Shannon's is not only food that speaks - it is food that has something to say. When you're this masterful at your craft, the only thing left to do is have some fun with it...

After whisking in a stunning little chip and dip number that reminds me of a miniature potato-Guggenheim, my waiter informs me that it's completely fine to double dip, and I am pleasurably reminded that no moment in life is so perfect that it can't be enhanced by a Seinfeld reference.

Scorched-edged translucent waves of blazed potato crisps with surfaces of frozen crunchy blistering-bubbles play as beautifully with the light as they do with the mouth.

The salty crunch crashes and liquefies into the creamed embrace of a luscious, mooshy dip that doesn't just please my taste buds, but actually grieves them with delight. Such a simple combination, so tarted up, is a wonder for a startled heart. It also hints at what is to come, smart, witty food, with personality and if you'll pardon me: balls. Food that rather than being afraid of being different, completely and utterly revels in it.

Next are the 'amuse bouche'. It seems I paid just enough attention in French class to know to expect that something good is about to happen to my mouth. Tres Bien, Amanda...

On polished slabs of heavy, gray stone, like little jewels lying in patient wait are a crispy venison sandwich - oh my deer! So good in salt and meat with a crackle of deep, dark red crunch -

Oysters + lemon, in some kind of viscous edible swathe...

...a biological looking concoction simply labelled 'pumpkin'...and smoked eel w white chocolate + caviar which, please forgive me, I was far too busy decimating to actually get a good shot of. Thoughtful, simple flavours, big on texture and quirk, and then heartbreak...

Marron + beef tongue sandwich w beurre noisette. Divine. Gently salted flesh with cream and a side of crisp. I died. Then I came back to life and devoured it, this was unbelievable. I was still recovering from how sublime and subtle the flavours were, slightly discombobulated by a swooning, searing joy that was quickly taking hold of my balance and sanity - when this contraption appeared before my weeping eyes.

This old-school coffee gizmo was used to deeply infuse a broth that promptly anointed a forest-like mass of pine mushroom, walnut + bird's cress. Gentle, deep and warm mushroomly broth, light and dancing above the richness of the walnut. A good balance between formed and formless. But before I go on with the food, I have to tell you about another love story that was quickly unfolding in skies of cupid's arrows before me...

As if between the surroundings and the food I wasn't already on the verge of becoming completely undone. As if all of this wasn't enough to push me into a harrowing pit of joy-induced madness from which I might never return...Vue De Monde has....wait for it....a tea...sommelier. !?@$#^. Holy Hell. Jesus Mary Mother of Gobsmack. So ooh-lala-long. Tea Sommelier. Two words could not in all of the language that man has ever uttered since dinosaurs been of more music to my half-deaf ears. Tea Sommelier. They're better than any other two words put together. Better than 'marry me'. Better than 'dark chocolate'. Better than 'crispy pork'. Better than 'free parking'. Better even than 'Daniel Craig', especially since he went and got married.

Her name is Sarah Cowell and she is a wide-eyed seraph of camellia sinensis-spun tea pouring fury. She loves tea and she lives tea. It was all I could do not to actually squeeze her and take her home with me. From an epic list of greens and blacks and reds and whites, Sarah lovingly introduced me to three of finest teas I have ever had brewed, two of them from Taiwan.

Between mouthfuls of airy-creamed butter..

smothered upon inelegant chunks of leatherbound, stone-sitting bread...

I was mesmerised by the depth and flavour of a fruity Taiwanese white, a divine serpent-green Japanese Yuzu, that sung like a lyre bird in citrus, and the #18 Hong Cha - a blisteringly ethereal liquor of ebony-red that blazed a spiraling web of stunned smokiness down my truly startled throat. I couldn't cope. It was too much. My toes started bobbing up down secretly in my boots and i think my left eye even starting twitching a bit. How to handle all of this tea?

Showcasing all of the delicate and beautiful teaware at Vue, dainty glass pots that swallowed pools of luscious light were exchanged with wonderfully earthen-textured traditional Japanese ceramics, a teagustation in heaven was taking place among perfectly timed brews and tangles of prized leaf and gently swimming swirls of precious, rich fragrance. Each cup was perfect and drawn out, I breathed it in deeply as I sipped, trying to remember each and every note and its own unique movement of flavour.

Alas, I did not delve into the $1000 priced, 3200 year old Pu'erh of which Vue only possesses one serve, or the other $250 reserve brews they have in stock. I am going to save that kind of tea-ing for when Dad is shouting me, which will be damn soon if I have my way. From the melting warmth of the precious tea,

...to a liquid nitrogen splashed cucumber sorbet w crushed herbs. Exclamation point on a plate! Culinary Curve ball goes a little something like this:

A cheery mass of herbs and blooms tangles itself in the bottom of heavy ceramic painted in a pale, grey-blue. As the liquid nitrogen swarms and bubbles on top and freezes all of that suddenly halted colour, you crush it, with all of your desire and fury and longing, with a wooden pestle. And then, on to this multicoloured mess is dolloped a gentle, cooling and blissful blessing of cucumber sorbet. This is definitely one for those of you who think you've seen it all. Delicious and iced and maddeningly fragrant with flavours that keep coming and going. An ice princess in a perfect arc of ceramic, with flavours rising up from the rubble. Tactile, curious and winsome to taste.

More tea, lots of it. Several trips to the bathroom, and then...

Breakfast at lunch: fried duck egg, pickled onion + shaved truffle. Rich and full and earthy, bright yolk spilling against the pale of white and crashing with a sonorous crunch into chunks of crispy bread. Salty and rich and heady and beautiful.

Watching the bright yolk slowly spill onto the blue-white swirls of the plate was stunning. One of the things I loved best about the lunch was how varied all of the plates were, heavy and expensive but with ever changing patterns and colours, it's a bit like Shannon's food: as long as it's good, anything goes. From sunny side up, to ocean deep...

Southern blue fin tuna, fennel, wasabi + beach herbs...

a poised blade, a stone and a sigh...

more tea, always more tea, more trips to the ladies', and then...

kangaroo, radish, swede + turnip. I never knew something that gets run over so often could taste quite so good. A pale pink, sharp and sure flavour, perfect flesh and the sweetness of the vegetables, all tied together in a dizzying glaze. This was gorgeous and perfect to taste, the vegetables gave colour, texture and sweetness to the salty gentleness of the lightly cooked meat. I was in hopping heaven and understood perfectly for the first time why this delicious animal is in fact our national emblem. Moo-ving right along...

...Blackmore wagyu beef, chestnut + wild garlic. Forget about it. This killed me. Honestly, it's like it stood up, punched me right in the face, and I was sitting there in the wake of it all left absolutely senseless. Gorgeous little dollops of aching well massaged wagyu against crisp wafers of chestnut massage your taste buds into some kind of frenzied messed up ecstasy.

Pungent and poignant and lots of other good words beginning with P that I can't really think of because i'm too flooded with the memory of how this tasted. The gentle frothing pools of bubbling green gave a beautiful freshness and lightness to the deep pinkness of the dish. It was a fantasy in taste and colour and a great final note before my palate shifted gear towards the end.

Take a moment and collect yourselves. Try to be composed, even if you aren't.

Cheeses christ. This is the bit that's getting really hard to write. I don't quite want to remember how good this was. It was painful-good. Wreck-your-soul and tear into your innermost being good. I don't like the idea that a border separates me from this cheese.

This hard salty stinging cheese.

This soft dreamy, creamy, obscenely-teeming with meaning cheese.

Little dollops of sweetened, jeweled jam globs against slivers of aching goats cheese, the crunchy, glowing seeds of incandescent fig aloft the strong, pungent and tumultuous rage of a gorgeous blue. Deep and rich and full and true. Sharp flavours. Soft flavours. Coming and going and sinking and falling. Sticky, thick, soft, crumbling heavens of cheese. Sticking to plate, to knife, to the roof of my mouth and sticking forever onto my deepest imagining. I cannot dislodge myself from the memory of how good this was. I was dreaming of it that night at the next day. To know what this tasted like was suddenly a visceral part of what it meant for me to be alive!

I was almost reduced to a pool, to a puddle of the former human who walked in hours ago never knowing that the earth was about to fall out from under her. And there it was, in the same vein that was present throughout the entire meal, the embodiment of all of that playful, crazy culinary-bird-flipped-towards-ho-hum-boring imagination...

the house made lemonade w frozen toffee apple + popping candy. Jesus Christ. The kid in the 31 year old in me sat right up, bolt up, to full attention, rolled the frozen little apple with wide-eyed wonder into the soon to be exploding shards and splinters of apoplectic sugar, dipped it into the lemonade, dipped it into my mouth...

Fireworks. Sweet and bubbling and fizzing and erupting. It was so so so so SO so good. Worlds were colliding beneath molars and under fangs. My teeth didn't know what was going. I didn't know what was going on. Even my tongue stood still and stunned in the center of it all. Opera and magic and dazzling lights. I closed my eyes and became my mouth, which was a good thing given what was headed its way...

A very deconstructed lemon meringue w white chocolate + parsley. Most dessert just tastes good, it offers you a play on sweetness mixed with body and bashes you around a little when it comes to texture. It looks pretty. You want it, you have it, it's over. This did that, all of that, sure, there was crumbling and melting and lemon squidgey sting-sweetness against the tempering balm of some gentle parsley, crashing into the wanton richness of deep white chocolate. But then there was more, there was intelligence and desire. This dessert actually stimulated my mind. Someone sitting opposite me at this time would have seen a silver spoon disappearing down my lemon struck mouth and each of my frontal lobes bulging through the small space in my forehead with evident, rhythmic, delight. This dessert was einstein. It had IQ, damn it! I was stung by its sweetly melodious genius. There was a sobering moment of tea (again) before the final and most painful plate of the day found its very welcome way before me.

I saw it. On the plate. Sitting there. It saw me. We looked at each other, there was a moment, a quickening of the pulse, a bolt of silent thunder in the air between us, there might have been some music playing far away. I could have lifted the plate with all of the energy created from the concentrated desire between us. Above us, I am sure planets were colliding and beneath us continental plates were probably antsy in their pants, but I noticed none of it. It was just the plate and me. I am convinced that I not only had to have this dessert, it had to have me...Seriously, we were made for each other.

Enter into Amanda's life: tonka bean souffle w smoked cocoa ice cream. Shoot me. Shoot me now. Shoot me now and I won't fight you, shoot me because I have lived and already sampled the sweetest of joys this life has to offer. To taste this molten light frothy haze of smoked chocolate brilliance is to live an age of happy dizzying and electric moments all within the space of one silver spoon. It is like being born and dying and falling in love and falling over and spinning and hate and love and unrequited love in the rain with tea. It's like snow storms and thunder storms and raging electric skies and anger that boils in hidden ventricles and aortas. It is like longing and leaving and coming back again. It is like forgetting who you are and remembering all at once. It is death and it is life and it is smoked...fucking...chocolate!

Why? How? Who? Where am I? Who are you? What's happening?

Folds and dips and voluptuous curves. Oh, bending, relentless cocoa. Richness and lightness dancing together in one maddening waltz. Whiteness and darkness and spinning-spinning falling gasping dying chocolate. I'm sputtering as I write this. I am not kidding you. This is hands down the best thing that's happened to me in about 3 years. I was very slightly shaking as I held the spoon and dipped it into depth after depth of pure delight, it's livid raging chocolately sweetness running from the spoon to my fingers, through each and every one of my stunned metacarpals, over my wrist, through firing nerves to light up, one by delicate one, each charged little hair along the skin of my arm, up my arm and through my shoulder, over my neck and along the tingling of my jaw up, up, up and behind the eyes, explosions. Exploding. Dying. Mad mad mad true love. Smoked chocolate ice cream. Kill me. Please, kill me. And let it never be said that I didn't live...

And into the startled space that followed the souffle, a chocolate mousse masquerading as a lamington, a minty marshmallow, a lemonish drop and a sweet, wee little gaytime on a toothpick. Can I get an Amen?

Above the clouds, up, up and away. This was the best lunch I have ever had. Between the theater and the food, between the view and the plate and between this world and something else. Shannon Bennett, take a bloody bow.

Please Vue De Monde at least once in your life. The experience is magical. The attention to detail, the design and the fun to be had completely redefine eating as an experience. There is so much to marvel at in the way everything has been put together, and the space and the service are absolutely impeccable. Polished and unpretentious. This is the very, very vivid product of so much able skill and imagination. I am speechless (I am without speech). Vue De Monde is at 525 Collins St, Melbourne. Website here. And, for the booking you will probably need to make ph: (03) (how I wish it was (02)) 9691 3888.

Vue De Monde, I think I left my heart in the lift...Thanks for two amazing experiences have to go to Sarah, Garrett and Brian and all of the lovely staff who I must have spent hours yaking to between courses. I will be back, please don't take the smoked chocolate ice cream off the menu, I need to know it still exists, even if I never try it again, I want to know it's out there in the world doing its own magical thing. Congratulations to Shannon on finding a space that lives up to his food, and for creating an experience that is so uniquely perfect that I don't think it can fairly be compared to any other. Rather than being just randomly unusual, there was something very consistent and considered in how all of the meals surprised - you got a sense at the end that every dish had its place and belonged, each plate like a charm on a bracelet that made the whole look much more complete and perfect. Stunning.

Vue De Monde is not just dinner and it's not just lunch, as far as I am concerned it's the greatest show on earth. All those number plates don't lie, when it comes to some things Victoria really is, the place to be.

Thank you, thank you, thank you x Signed, Starving-In-Sydney.

A Tea Cup In a Storm...

2011-04-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

There is a singular beauty to a foreboding sky. The rising chill and the quickening black. Portentous clouds fast-forwarding across such a pregnant void. You can feel it just before it happens, there is knowing. Knowing, something electric and then the first few full bodied drops on the nape of a neck or across the pale of a cheek. A hush, a rush up the spine and then it comes: rain. And if you're lucky it comes fuller and faster: an ardent, flashing storm. The glory and force of a wrathful sky is something welcomed not only by drought-stricken farmers, goths and first-year philosophy students who are still perfecting their gloomy outlook on the world (from the back of a bookish coffee house somewhere in Glebe). No, they're not the only ones. There is a special subset of people today who crave the celestial torrents and the heavenly deluge, the cloudbursts and the darts of rain like an arrow from a cupid hidden somewhere in the skies. Yes, to the urban tea drinker a bit of an Autumn storm is more than a backdrop, more than a setting and much more than mere mood, it's the ultimate accessory to that fine-porcelain-china-dainty-painted-silver-spooned-steaming-fragrant-steam-swirling-from-a-well-worn-pot ritual of taking tea that is quite simply our way of being who we are. Tea is not alternative to coffee, nu-uh. It is it's own curious, quiet and pretty-rose-blushed-beautiful world. And sometimes this world doesn't exist only in our imaginations, on a page in Jane Austen or down a rabbit hole that Alice fell through, sometimes all you have to do is step through a curious door. And sometimes that door is in Redfern. Shall we, then?

The first feeling you have upon spying Tea Parlour's unassuming little nook near the corner of Cleveland and Elizabeth is one of hesitation. Is this the right place? Is it open? Well the answers to both of those questions (respectively) are yes, and, well, it depends what time you go. I push the heavy door open and step into a wonderfully, painfully curiously-cute space that sets my heart gushing. A tiny room cluttered with lots of lovely anachronisms: tea potted-flowers, plates, cups, saucers, doilies, heavy furniture with quirky cushions, faded silver spoons, cloth-draped ceilings with tangled chandeliers and a peacock and a deer head jutting out of the wall - that sort of stuff. Much more a living room in eccentric grandma's house than a cafe, the space is frankly breathtaking. It feels so genuine and sincere and unstyled. Cosy, inviting and, even with funky music cranking: peaceful. As I shut the door behind me I feel like I seal back up the special feeling inside, it seems like a violation to let the reality and the rush of Surry Hills traffic break through into this dusky sanctum that shuts out the noise as effortlessly as it shuts out the present, modern, expensive and shiny iWorld. Every now and then a lonely tea drinker discovers a kindred spirit, and who did I find sitting alone, in the quiet of her own tea room, sipping a brew while the storm raged outside in a sodden Sydney, but Tea Parlour owner and founder, Miss Amelia Ruby.

As Amelia's boyfriend was to discover when later he dropped by, I Love Amelia. It's pathetic to still own up to this feeling even after you've turned 30, but she is exactly the kind of person you meet and really, really spontaneously decide you want to be friends with. Forever. Sincere, peaceful and soulful, her passion for tea, cakes, little de-crusted sandwiches and pretty-itty-bitty tea trinkets is as obvious as it is silent. She is a gentle and kind host and the room feels like a larger emanation of her beautiful presence.

Her thoughtfulness and intelligence is hanging on the walls and in the details of the way that everything comes together.

Even an hour into taking photos my lens still nosed out a curious thing I hadn't yet noticed...

Antique tea jars...

lace and chalk and china...

Unlit candles ready to flare up the darkness...

Girlie-pretty-sweet plates suspended like thoughts on a wall...

A sudden plume of green-blue-blue-green vividness...

Feathers...

An empty picture frame that looked like it was taken from The Ring...

Friendly flowers springing out of rusting tin...

An ode to Empire...

A bit of ribbon-tied Bambi...

A gothic rose...

Siamese cushions...

A very antique, stapled cup...

And some Chanel thrown in for extra good measure. Am I the only one swooning and sighing my head off? As if Amelia weren't already perfect enough in her nature and in her love of tea, the girl can bake. Break your heart-ache bake. Bake with a capital B-Bake. A teeny menu that changes every day offers simple but sumptuous plate-pretty cakey-sandwichy-sconey creations with enough clotted cream and berry-red jam that even a Jane wouldn't notice if a Bingley walked in. The occasion for the tea party was a meeting between Laura + Claire of My Grandmother's Kitchen fame. The afternoon tea we enjoyed with Lauren featured treats that Amelia had had taken from the precious pages of this lovely book, plus a few of her own delectable creations. If It hadn't been the guillotine which did off with Marie Antoinette's cake-filled head, then this little line up courtesy of Miss Ruby definitely would have done the job.

Seated on comfy cushions by the glow of a lamp, steaming, tall silver polished-pots of an elegant jasmine pearl, chamomile lavender and french lavender were strained through fine mesh and poured slowly into worn, hollow china. The tea was unbelievable, smooth and fine and quickly warming. The fragrant gold of the chamomile lavender was my favourite, so unusual and balanced.

Our wooden table quickly filled up with all of the glorious clutter that comes with tea. Little plates with gold-rimmed edges and patterns of flowers mismatched with other flowers, I was already doing a lamentable job of following the conversation at the table because I was distracted by all of this beauty. Then the cake came, and I gave up all hope of keeping up with the talk...

The only way these artful little shapes of wondrous sugar could have been any more homemade was if Amelia actually put bits of her house into them. They were all stunningly imperfect and not too glossed, so honeyed and gentle and full of buttery sweetness.

This is the famous Keetley Family 'To Die For' Baked Cheesecake by Grandmother Cherie Keetley (aka Marnie) which appears on page 216 of My Grandmother's Kitchen. It is a furiously dense buttery-oaty-nutty based cheesecake, smattered with cinnamon and vanilla and sour cream. It was gooey with its own greatness, I don't think I have enjoyed a better cheesecake, taste or texture wise. Cherie passed away in April of 2010, it's special that her recipe is being enjoyed not only by her family but by so many people she never met.

Cake. Could there be any better legacy in this world?

We also enjoyed morsels of the delicious Scottish Apple Cake and a pecan studded chocolately roll, as well as some divine little creamy tart I was too busy gobbling to discover the name of. With all of this dessert I thought it appropriate to ingest something that vaguely consisted of vegetables...

The Zucchini Tart (also from the book)...

And some incendiary spiced but cooling creamy cucumber sandwiches - also the best I have ever had at afternoon tea. Slivers of cucumber and the warmth of the cream cheese are perfect against the smooshiness of the baby-white bread. I am coming back for these.

Tea Parlour happens at 569 Elizabeth Street, Redfern (the 'fern). Ph 0414 335 224. Website here. It is Open Thurs/Fri 5pm - 9pm, Sat/Sun 12pm - 8pm and other times by appointment. Especially if you plan to go in on weekends, book, Amelia does a lot of functions such as birthdays and hen's nights. It's best to book anyway as the place seats 20 and gets very busy. BYO means you can add a bit of your own sparkle to an experience I don't think you can find anywhere else in Sydney. I've tried almost all of them and this is standout afternoon tea, or just plain tea and cake. Even if you were to only come in and spend a tiny earthly while sipping a pot of something fragrant, Tea Parlour justifies any trek you have to make. Away from the rush and drama of Surry Hills it is a quiet spot to bask, to tea and to cake. The cakes, scones and sandwiches are made fresh every morning by Amelia herself.

To Amelia, thanks a million for a great chat and for having the guts to take an incredible idea and run with it. I am going to be an annoying regular and bring back everyone I know. You are simply as wonderful as your cake and your tea - and your taxidermy. In fact, if I die any time soon, stuff me and seat me on one of your arm chairs for as long as you are open, that's exactly how I want to spend eternity. I can't believe Sydney has had an authentic tea place for 7 months and I just found out about it!

To Laura and Claire, the lovely ladies behind the stellar book, thanks for introducing me to my new favourite haunt and to all of the recipes in this book. Have still not recovered from how intensely blistering to body and mind that cheesecake was. If anyone wants to kill two birds with one stone, My Grandmother's Kitchen is on sale at Tea Parlour. It was also lovely to meet Lauren from Madison, who, like me, is going to live vicariously through the grandmothers in this book.

I hope it's autumn forever.

Earl Grey Serendipitea

2011-04-25T14:10:00.000-07:00

Movies. For the Love of God. Sometimes I just don't know. They can be amazing. Two hour time slots where life is held up to art. Sometimes, they're a quick-red celluloid match struck across your imagination in the light of which things suddenly seem full of flare and hope and promise and many golden tomorrows (confer: Muriel's Wedding, The English Patient, Wayne's World, Godfather Part II, The Departed, The Breakfast Club, The Secret of The Grain and, if we're being honest, The Sound of Music, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink and Mean Girls). Movies like that are wonderful, they allow you to question life the way you should (just a smidgen) and everything in them always goes where it belongs and ends up where it should be.

Only You is a pretty lamentable 90's flick starring the very lovable Marisa Tomei and the considerably less lovable Robert Downey Jr. I won't subject you the details of the plot, that would be both unnecessary and cruel, suffice to say that it's a film all about fate and destiny. Just in case the theme might have been lost on us, the lead characters name is Faith and the advice of a fortune teller eventually leads to her discovery of her 'one true love'...you get the idea, bulimics should probably (definitely) give this one a miss. Anyway, as we were driving down through Berry the morning after en route towards one of my favourite mouth-in-the-South cafes: The Woodfired Sourdough Bakery, I was lamenting life's lack of great fate, as of late. Yes, that screwed up movie had messed a little with my head and the soggy contents of my brain were whirring over all of those mystical what if's and I wonder what could be's. I wanted some movie magic of my own, it seemed. I even went so far as complaining to Dan that life hadn't been fateful enough. Careful what you wish for, eh...

It was smack bang into this little mid long-weekend malaise that Laura Clarke walked right into my life. The usual wait for a coveted bakery table ended at exactly the same time for Laura as it did for Dan and I. We were both seated outside on adjacent tables, I took my Canon out ready to fire off at all of the pre-breakfast table textures, when before I knew it: Magic. Our eyes met across the salt and pepper grinders... aka food-blogger sits next to self published cook-book co-author who is about to launch an amazing new title that said food-blogger had accidentally discovered a few weeks earlier on a time-killing jaunt whilst waiting for a tardy smoothie from a Hippie outlet in Manly. Sad, But True. It took us about eleven spoken words a piece before we realised I already knew of her precious book which she and her partner in savvy-go-get-em chutzpah Claire Wallace (who Laura met in the lift of their apartment building in 2007) compiled, wrote and published - all on their lonesome.

Coincidence much? I was already in love with Laura before I whipped out a little jar of my personal earl grey stash for the bakery to brew up for me (a tea hound leaves nothing to chance) but when Laura asked in on the said pot because earl grey was her leaf of choice as well, well let's just say the incredulous girlie-foodie-tea gushing-flutterings got a little bit awkward for poor Danny. Then when we discovered that we use the same pen, well, things got downright whack from that point. Turns out Danny had more than enough testosterone to see him through, because this was the beginning of a two hour long tea party that centered around the story of how an absolutely, positively, doily-sweet and cinnamon-sprinkled-gorgeous full of homely-heart cookbook came to be. It's called:

My Grandmother's Kitchen,

recipes for love, life and happiness from Grandmothers around the world...

Both Laura and Claire had especially close relationships with their grandmothers and with the adoptive 17 grandmothers whose family-secret-handed-down-from-generation-to-generation recipes, wisdom and portraits line the beautifully tactile, thick-antique-like-paper pages that make up this treasured compendium. Goat curry, Norwegian waffle pancakes, Scottish apple cake, Chilean meat pie, St. Clement's bread and butter pudding, 'The Keetley Family To Die For Baked Cheesecake and Nan's enormous victoria sponge birthday cake. Every recipe is precious because of the simple, humble and beautiful idea that binds the book together: Grandmothers and the way they love us through our food. Normally when I read a cookbook I scrutinise glossy pictures and try and cancel out what looks really amazing from what looks just good. You can't approach this cookbook that way, every recipe is special. The fact that the grandmothers of the book have chosen to share it (and the way that Laura and Claire have presented it) makes a history and a story out of all of those cupfuls of flour and all of that whisking of eggs. It's just so sincere. You want to make everything, not because it's new and magazine-page looking or made by someone you've seen on TV - you want to make it for precisely the opposite reason: because it's tried and true, because it's come from homes and been fed to families that you will never know and especially because each recipe carries so much of the pride and personality (and the love) of 19 wonderful women. Cooking has become so styled and so marketed and marketable, it's a rare moment when you find something that skirts all of this (fun) nonsense and goes back to roots, to the well-worn tables and to the mismatched, cluttered and colourful kitchens where many of us first learnt to love food. It's all soul.

I love this book. If you want to love it too you can buy it at Arial Bookshops in Paddington and some selected smaller book stores and cafes, the link below allows you to buy it online. It will have a few tv appearances this week so keep your eyes peeled if you want to know more about Laura and Claire's amazing idea, and the story behind them putting it together. Claire + Laura's website is at http://www.poynterandwallace.com and the book's website is at http://www.mygrandmotherskitchen.net you can buy the book from this link and it also lists where it's stocked if you would like to browse through it first. There's an empty chapter at the end of the book for you to fill in with your grandmother's recipes.

And the setting of all this magic is no less magical itself. The Woodfired Sourdough Bakery sits a little back from the main road through Berry. A heritage-barn-like space is the busy backdrop for full-bodied coffee and all things beautifully baked.

But beyond sourdough loaves...

and macarons...

and soon to be sold out wholesomely spiced and so-so nice hot cross buns...

and beyond sticky little cakes...

and rich chocolately tarts...

...beyond flaky-buttery glazed croissants...

And yes, we can go beyond those things, is a killer menu that has cranked out some of the most spectacular food I have ever fallen head over mouth for in any cafe. Ever! Last year I had a spoonful of an amazing, creamy white soup that someone at my table had scored the last bowl of, and half of one of the most splendid sandwiches that ever lived.

There's beautiful bircher and omelettes with goats cheese and tomato. Thick wedges of sourdough smeared with ricotta and layered with profoundly buttered wild mushrooms are a breakfast favourite. There's toast so divine that it all it wants is butter and milky tea or coffee. The menu keeps changing but the wow-factor always stays the same.

With an obvious emphasis on local produce and beautiful oils, cheeses and fresh baked breads used in all of the dishes (and some for sale, as well) this place always justifies the drive to Berry - even if you live in Perth.

Berry Woodfired Sourdough Bakery happens at 23 Prince Alfred Street, Berry, ph 02 94464 1617. Get there earlier on weekends as most things sell out (on the menu and in the cake and bread department), and also be prepared for an entirely justifiable wait. They close Mondays and Tuesdays.

Strong coffee, crusty baguettes, solid eggs and morsels of fragrantly-sweet oranged-chocolately-apple-spliced somethings are more than enough to command every ounce of your attention. But don't let that stop you from striking up a conversation with the person sitting next to you, you'll never know who you're likely to meet.

Thanks to Joost and Jelle Hilkemeijer the inspired owners of this phenomenal bakery, and to their Alan Scott oven that keeps turning out all this deliciously flaming flour.

Deep, indebted thanks to Danny, who kindly tolerates (and occasionally encourages) my devotion to cafes and conversations with random strangers/soon to be best friends.

Thank you especially to Laura, for opening up so easily about your life and your past and for giving me this wonderful cookbook that I can't wait to start playing with. But most of all, thank you for a timely reminder (in bergamot) that movies get their magic from life - and not the other way around! See you at our Thursday tea date.

Thanks to you, too, dear reader, if you managed to plunder through all of this jabbering. There were quite a few ways of telling this story, but I wanted to tell it the way it happened*.

*sincere apologies to any bulimics.

The Very Illustrated A Tavola (aka, No Time To Write)...

2011-04-15T01:55:00.000-07:00

Words? This Way...

Always (aka, Manta Woolloomooloo)...

2011-04-10T20:02:00.000-07:00

This rare black angus eye fillet's bleedin...

But you can't see his blood

It's nothing but some rare meat

That this old chef cooked up

Chips soaked with parmesan-truffle

Man, I'm drowning in the flood

You see i've always been foodie

But you're so good, I could throw up

- You see, I can't sing a love song

Like the way it's meant to be

Well, I guess I'm not that good any more

Like your acorn fed black pig, that's been cured for years 3

Sorry to come all out of Jersey like you on that out of nowhere, but how else on God's green earth do you expect me to begin telling you about a little Sydney wharf-side Blaze-Of-Culinary-Glory that has none other than the man himself, Jon Bon Jovi getting his stonewashed knickers in a knot about? You heard it right, Manta at Woolloomooloo has the singular honour of coming with the blonde-tousled-hairsprayed, rocker-thrashed, clef-chinned and puppy dog-eyed thumbs up from from one of soft-rocks prettiest pretty boy thumbs. If Signor Bon Jovi thinks Manta is a kitchen that's Keepin' the faith, who are we to disagree?

Grab a beer, or, if you're living on a prayer you might want to go for a Sinatra smooth glass of Torbrek's 'The Struie' Shiraz from the Barossa that will wreak a beautiful blood-red hell on your liver while you taunt your belly and your mind with a menu that likes to keep things simple, but very, very exclusive...

The dirty delicious dozen tasting Oysters from different regions was honestly as unapologetically luxurious as it was wonderful. Glistening globs of sea-salty oysters, small and succulent and full of flavour are a good preview of the Manta style of cooking: produce driven dishes that emphasize quality over complication. I know oysters are supposed to make you exuberantly amorous (aka horny), but the real aphrodisiac was what happened next...

The Joselito Iberico Jamon del Bellota is not a long dead Saint or an obscure romantic maneuver from Latino parts of the world, no, it something much greater and far more sinful than that. This little piggy, which subsists on a diet of pure acorns and nothing less, is cured for three years before it makes its way to you under some breadsticks and on a big white Manta plate. Salty shavings of tender marbly meat wrapped around an excited fork just might lead you to make a bit of a pig of yourself. Cured for 3 years and gone in 3 minutes, such is life. But who could argue against life when it contains...

...the raw sharing plate: Hiramasa kingfish carpaccio having a sicilian caper with shaved fennel, radish and orange, ocean trout tartare w lemon oil, trout roe + horseradish creme fraiche, a king prawn ceviche and a yellow fin tuna swimming in some wasabi mousse and pickled ginger. This was a surprise. I generally steer away from raw fish that isn't being made by a Japanese restaurant I know and like. Very few places can actually bring out the simplicity and freshness of raw fish without the overkill, Manta does, though. Absolutely surprising slivers of pale pink and white quirkily garnished and finished were stunning starters - the trout in particular saw the sharing plate become the scene of a little bout of intense fork hockey.

The lemon + pepper seared yellow fin tuna w lime, wasabi, avocadao mousse + gazpacho salsa was light and sharp...

The seared atlantic scallops w pancetta, chardonnay vinegar, green pea mint + eschallot salad was a beautifully colour-dappled and composed offering of fresh scallop with the warmth of mushy peas and the richness of the pancetta playing well with the seafood.

The macadamia + herb crusted scampi w roasted shellfish aioli + salsa piccante finished the sharing plate beautifully. The scampi were perfectly oiled and salty and searing. When fresh, they are much subtler and more delicately flavoured than prawns or lobster. Dr Zoidberg would go nuts over this plate.

Some shimmering greens, some phenomenally epic hot, oiled angel chips w parmesan + truffle that tasted a little like the culinary equivalent of an imaginary love child between Snoop Dog and Queen Elizabeth: all noble and rich, but gloriously trashy with hot chipliness, and the steaks are about to be raised...

Lord + ladies of Carnivordom, I give thee the 600 gram black angus eye fillet w roasted bone marrow, field mushroom, mixed greens + hand cut chips, from Northern NSW and made for two hungry, lucky non-vegans, this is gorgeously tender slice after slice of rare divinity that cuts incredibly close to the well roasted bone.

Gentle and melting meat, a richer-deeper red-brown that I have seen in so, so long. Cooked as though all of the kitchen had nothing else to do but watch and fawn and fuss over it. Splashed with some fierce mustard mouth-paint and you are on to a bloody fine thing.

Dip your spoon into the bony hollows to retrieve the roasted marrow and it's as close as fine dining comes to Man vs Wild.

Dilated umbrellas of richly roasted mushroom fanning out on the plate are the perfect fork fodder for undulating away from the meat and then back into to it again. This dish is stunning, all gentle, gentle richness and so luscious and filling.

Not filling enough to deter us away from a dessert tasting plate. A huge white, heavenly sphere painted with the candied-sugar forms of an amedei chocolate fondant w blood orange ice cream, burnt orange glaze + sesame tuile, an opera slice of espresso cream, amedei 70% dark chocolate ganache w vanilla sponge and the caramelised banana fig + passionfruit pavlova w raspberry jelly + baby mint is a highly recommended and decadent way to poke your tongue out at the modern day fear of dessert.

Manta happens at 6 Cowper Wharf Road, ph 9332 2822 and web here. For a celebration or a special meal where you want to spend a little more to get something special, Manta will serve you (like it did Jon Bon Jovi) very, very nicely. The service is pretty remarkable, all of the staff were very friendly and relaxed, and some even come with a highly charming Scottish accent! Especially for overseas visitors, Manta's menu, view and style is as Classic Sydney as you can get - but without the parking tickets.

Thanks to everyone who made this such a fun night. To Dan for making sure we got the steak, big juicy thanks, and extra thanks to Jamie for busting me on the 3 years/3 mins line + to the lovely Janine - the creme de la creme of chocolate co-conspirators.

Thanks to you too, Mr Jon Bon Jovi.

I will love you, Maaaaan-taaaa, always

I'll be there forever and a day, always

I'll be there til the skyline doesn't shine

Til my skinny's burst

And i'm out of rhyme

And I know, when I die you'll be on my mind

And i'll love you, always...

Unreported Crimes (aka Buzo Trattoria, Woollahra)..

2011-03-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

It happened just across the road from the police station in Woollahra, and still, I did nothing...I choke up when I think about. It's been a few days but the memories still haunt me. They follow me in my sleep and into my fretful-fist-clenched nights like a stranger's shadow through a dark, cold alley in my heart. I am a victim, it would seem. I didn't scream, I couldn't shout. There were people around who saw it all unfold, heck, it happened to them as well. But no one could say anything. No one did anything to stop them. I can't believe it, even now! Everyone just let it all happen. We were robbed. We were beaten. We were absolutely aggravatedly assaulted. Alas, it's true. Maybe you'd expect this sort of thing late at night or out in the Cross, but we were in Woollahra for God sake - and the most dangerous thing to happen around here is when Herringbone runs out of stock on its Waren Weave Trouser in beige. Look. I don't want to give them a bad name or anything, but Buzo Trattoria was the scene of all these heartless crimes - and I guess it's time you knew.

Knew of crimes of Hatred. Hatred against bad taste and dull food, hatred against restaurants who are all talk and no walk, hatred against diets and hips and thighs. Hatred against it all. We were robbed like shmucks! Robbed of our hunger and beaten like a parsley and parmigiana frittata, and then smoked like the house smoked eel. We were assaulted by a menu more crowded with glorious flavour than neurotic thoughts inside of a Costanza head. Our boredom and dining dullness was embezzled. Our appetites were murdered, our desire was stalked, and our peace was most definitely disturbed. After a little chat with uber-chef and co-owner Todd at the scene of the crime, I even think they might be guilty of insider trading, as well.

The look on Dad's face says it all...Why, Hello belly-pleasure! Great food is the simplest thing to be happy about, and this night at Buzo tickled us a porkly proscuitto pink. 17 plate-crimes later and I could have sworn I saw bacchus winking at us from the heavens...If on the odd chance you have some chilled champagne handy, pop the cork on it and sink into its golden bubbles while you gather round to hear these foodie tales...

Exhibit A was a proscuitto crudo w fresh ricotta + parmigiano. With sharp and perfectly fleshed pale pink proscuitto peaks this looked like an edible cross between a lady's hatted head on Cup day and the Opera House died pink. Wonderfully parmesan-snow topped proscuitto was a cool meaty salt slap to the warm, gentle and creamy flaked ricotta beneath. We were all-a-sigh when the next dish walked into our bellies, and into our lives: the savoy cabbage w pine nut, raisin, pecorino + pangrattato! Jesus. Jennifer describes this as one of Buzo's most revered sides. It is a ragingly tart heap of moist cabbage sweetened by a swarm of raisins and rounded out by the pine nuts and pecorino, the breadcrumbs (which really do sound more impressive if you call them by their Italian name, pangrattato) add a rough, warm-oiled depth to all of this verdant salad-spiked coolness. The flavour is divine, strong and sure and rustic, it tastes like something someone's long dead grandmother came up with and passed down through generations - and I mean that in a good way!

Onto the tomino in cartoccio - the baked cheese in parchment w garlic, thyme + toast. Jesus Christ. This is your grilled cheese on tip top reinvented a little, and tasting entirely more divine. Peeling back pastry-like layers of browned parchment to reveal a beautiful baby of molten thyme-spiked and roasted garlic dappled cow's cheese, and then taking a silver blade into it and watching it drizzle and drip as it dizzying oscillates from toast to plate to toast to plate is a pendulum so mesmerizing I am swaying in front of the screen.

This is a fair and subtle cheese that gives itself up wonderfully to the thyme and garlic, and fully infuses itself from their flavour. The generous slices of sourdough on the side come heavily toasted with a sublime scent of semi-charredness and are sprinkled with oil to give the whole cheesey-garlic-thymed-breaded-smooth-on-crunch shabang the most toe wriggling taste you can possibly imagine in your wildest, hungriest moments.

The cheese just keeps coming with a sweet offering of grilled figs, stracchino, mint + vin cotto: edenic orbs of slippery-fresh fig bleeding sweetness onto the plate and suffocating under melted stracchino in a dark-golden and rich vin cotto - peppered with a very subtly sobering smidgen of mint is the kind of mouth-kaboom life needs more of.

The house smoked eel, parsley + parmigiano frittata was as salty-heavy-eggy and full as the garfish carpaccio was light. Between dizzying forkfuls of all of this we still fit in a snail or two...

The pan fried veal sweetbreads w snail, swiss brown mushroom + vin santo is the kind of meal that would have made me wrinkle my 15 year old nose. I am clearly getting longer in the tooth, but a long tooth isn't such a bad thing when you are wrapping it around this garlic drenched delight of veal pancreas and thymus and snails. Dad and I loved this as much as the cabbage, but we are Lebanese and the presence of garlic in this dish tipped the balance very strongly towards our Middle-Eastern favour.

What? You think we're done? Pfft. You guys are welterweights, those were just the starters. The main event of the main events was for me the naughty, little porcini mushroom, proscuitto, truffle + parmigiano lasagne, the vincisgrassi - vincisgrazie more like it, because thankful I am for rustic layers of proscuitto-mushroom heaving pasta, baked in parmesan and trifled with truffle. My God. If this little italiano dish were a person I would do whatever it told me, it's like having Benito Mussolini on a plate.

I got a little bit jealous over my boyfriend's reaction to Buzo's pappardelle w braised lamb, chorizo, tomato + parmigiano. Tomato spun kisses with slow-gently cooked threads of lamb and chorizo. Lovely, and light and rich all at once.

Dad died over the pan roast spatchcock sugo del vinattiere (w grapes white wine parsley + garlic). Again with the Lebs liking the garlic, how predictable are we? This was wonderful, supple flesh inside and lolling in roasted juices and garlic. We didn't flip the bird, it flipped us. Add incendiary sides of fried potato, green beans + salad - all of which you really must try, and dinner was beginning to last as gloriously long as the Roman Empire.

Yeah. We had dessert. I know. We shouldn't have. There was no room , it was like Noah's Arc in our stomachs at this point, but still we strived, and we did, I am proud to say, prevail. This lemon-licked gelatoish cup was a pure and milky palate cleanser and we braced ourselves for what a kitchen that had already come forth with so much could possibly do next to our startled stomachs.

The fading light says we have been at this table for hours upon hours, but you can still make out the lines of this smart-quirky-sweet date, pistachio + candied lemon tart w double cream. Not as sweet as most dates desserts are, this is tamed by the lemon and the cream.

The warm baked chocolate w almonds + vanilla gelato - despite its failure to include any garlic, pleased all of us. A warm cocoa-heavy heart with almond flake crunch smooshes wonderfully against rich vanilla ice. I usually don't fancy heated chocolate desserts (apart from a hot chocolate), what you usually taste when chocolate is heated is an insipid floury-ness that dulls the chocolate rich-drown-punch - this was the molten exception. But my favourite...

The torta di verona - mascarpone, pandoro, blueberry + almond trifle. In fair Verona where we lay our scene...where civil blueberry stained cream makes civil hands unclean! So gorgeous. Invisible sweet Italian bread lacing into a barely there beautiful mascarpone and crowned with icing-sugared scorched almond flakes. Cool and sweet and white like snow. Such an innocent dessert that killed us all.

Oh My God. Buzo, where have you been all my life? Buzo happens at 3 Jersey Road, Woollahra (opposite the Cop Shop), phone 9328 1600, web here. Open for dinner from Tuesday - Sunday. The red wine and champagne we had were amazing, and the cosy upstairs and downstairs makes this the perfect place to come together around a table in Autumn and Winter.

Buzo is simply stunning. Not many restaurants can go for so long (ten years) without dropping the culinary ball or getting a bit stale, but here you have it. A wonderful place owned by three friends who clearly know what they're doing. If you're keen on trying every new thing and sometimes get a bit disappointed by fickle Sydney fooding, this is a place to turn to for solid classics and a kitchen that does its own thing - and superbly. Jennifer who has been with Buzo for 7 years gets a massive thanks for taking care of us and helping us choose everything. It can hardly be called a choice when you've ended up trying 2/3 of the menu. Thanks to Todd for withstanding a table-side drilling and for all of the skill and dedication that is so obvious on the menu and the plate - thanks also to James co-chef and co-owner who we didn't get to meet, and also much thanks to co-owner Traci. Friends and business!? How do you get them to mix?

Buzo, baby. Even if they put me in the witness protection program, I hope that vincisgrassi can one day find me again, one sweet truffled and parmigiano day.

Brave Nu World (Nu's Restaurant, McMahons Point)...

2011-03-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's a fact or not, but I have it on good authority (hearsay at the pub when I had an ear infection) that South Australia has more serial killers per capita than anywhere else in the world. And, factual or not-ual, that's how I like to picture them: taking a stroll through a vineyard, biting into a well aged brie, sipping an exceptionally spiced and full bodied merlot - and then grabbing their axes and secretly, gleefully offing each other. Chef Nu Suandokmai spent a fair bit of time in the old SA, which just might maybe perhaps be why his brand of authentic lime-sliced-chilli-snapped-tamarind-twisting-homemade-middle-kingdom-authentic-curry-paste-kaffir-laced Thai is positively, absolutely killer.

This isn't Thai Fast Food, no, no. Not the kind of Thai we Australians think of if and when we think of thai. This is clean, schmicked up local, seasonal and largely organic produce which is lovingly put together according to middle kingdom recipes and plonked down on a lucky lively plate. It's authentic thai fine dining but elbowed in by a little French and Italian. Even though Nu's stands on a chandelier-light dappled sandstone corner on Blues Point Road, there's nothing to get the blues about. Life at Nu's is always wonderful.

This flaky crisp prawn wonton seed speckled with chilli-lime twine and a syrupy black-bean peanut-poked dipping sauce was the first hint we were onto a very good thing. Despite being fried, it was so delicate and light and full of discernible prawnliness. The sauce gave it a salty-sweetness that made the whole dish run the gamut of every kind of wonderful flavour.

The rice paper rolls were reviving logs of chilled, sober crunch. Salady and textured with seeds and a little chilli. The sidekick pot was ridiculously fragrant and fresh: dip and bite and double dip (no one's watching). All of these pleasant tapas style dishes still couldn't prepare me for the gauzed glory of all that came next.

Nu's vegetarian (or chicken) pad thai w tamarind peanuts + lime in an egg net. Sometimes I am difficult to impress but just the look of this dish had me smiling and clapping like a 5 year old at The Wiggles. I was caught in the egg net, happily, and I hope I stay trapped here forever. This was just unbelievable. So contained, so sculpted, so ready for a good right cracking. I took a fork to the net and tapped hard. Once, twice, three times and the egg shell broke to release a warm and wonderful tangle of gently baked vegetables (pumpkin included) and perfectly textured rice noodle and egg. Threading fresh coriander with sparky sprouts and darts of fire-engine-red chilli through the glorious mass (before adding a squirt of fresh lime and a pretty peanut spattering)is pretty much the best Thai-related experience I think I have ever had. The lightness of this dish was amazing, it hovered off the plate in a fragrant fresh and not-at-all oily heady haze. The egg gave it a bit of richness but never too much - we were looking at ourselves across the table stunned.

Thin slices of crispy barramundi + water spinach wok fried in Nu's chilli + kaffir lime sambal is basically a pescetarians crisp pork belly. Beautifully textured slices of fresh fish, rough and chewy chilli-licked edges tangled in fired green, oily in a good way and just magnificent to eat. Nu doesn't make the mistake of going so, so spicy that you can't taste anything else. This is one of his spiciest dishes but the chilli keeps its proper place and doesn't do a Gaddafi all over the rest of the dish.

Sweet like youth and gone twice as fast was the gaeng te po tamarind curry w king prawns, kaffir lime + water spinach. Oh-my-lord lovely. A rich, thick and furiously aromatic red curry swamp with lazy and unbeheaded prawns lolling around in all of that coriander smashed water spinach. The prawns were fresh in a way that made the flesh so perfect and salty soft and the tamarind is almost a physical presence at the table, it hovers all over this plate and draws you unrelentingly into the rich, round folds of coconut spiced oblivion. Jesus, Nu. Well done.

Nu's pedigree which includes having worked in some of the best French and Italian restaurants the whole world wide might explain why his dessert menu is a bit of a beautiful Brady Bunch of different influences. Don't be surprised to have to decide between a young coconut creme brulee or a tiramisu. The banana fritters w house made icecream + palm sugar dressing would have had my vote, but I was sadly outvoted on dessert that night. An amazing range of alco and non-alcoholic cocktails sits pretty with a full range of black and herbal tea infusions. Oh, and there's wine as well - most of it from alleged serial killer heartland.

Nu's is simply lovable, i'll be back as soon as I can. It happens at 178 Blues Point Road, McMahons Point. Phone 9954 1780 and Web with full menu and wine lists, Nu's history and bookings here. Nu's is also open for ladies and fellas who lunch, and if you do, it's here you should. Lovely service, swanky, comfortable interior and gobsmacking ethical and wonderfully flavoured homemade sauces, pastes, preserves, sorbets and ice cream. My boyfriend's mother who isn't that impressed by restaurant food said she's glad she's found this place, so you should definitely find it too! Thanks to Dan and Wendy for a lovely late night and to everyone at Nu's for the magic in the belly.

As an Old Dog, please let me be the first to say that I simply and irrevocably, love Nu's Tricks.

The Day Traders (aka Stockmarket Cafe, Leura)...

2011-03-26T14:24:00.000-07:00

It is with great regret that I concede that we all have to be honest with ourselves, every now and again anyway. I don't want to shock you or anything, really I don't. So sit down and brace yourself for a big one. As it turns out, it kind of sort of seems that I just might perhaps on occasion be a wee bit of a... yuppie. A yuppie. Oh, God, can you imagine? Well, I said it. Said that Awful Dirty Y Word. I feel as though I only ought to whisper it very low and check over my shoulder before I do. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with yuppies myself, I think we're shiny, lovely, empty, well dressed, great examples of trifling humanity - but the yuppie pride movement is still definitely a few decades away (at least). We're still a bit of a persecuted lot, it's true, we have to hide behind our soy green coffee lattes, our pricey woolen ponchos and our seriously overpriced mustard in this crazy little thing called life. Yuppiekind needs a break. Damn it!

And as such, I offer a wonderful tip of where you can get your wild and wanton yuppie on all in the comfort of a single Blue Mountains block - now you will have to travel up the M4 and through Penrith, but you can always pull the windows on your Beamer up and pump your surround sound and AC. So, CakeKnifeYuppieHeads, put your expensive jeans and designer sunglasses on and drop Juan the poodle off at doggie daycare - we're heading to Leura. We are. And after you've browsed in Megalong Books and bought something on modern art that you'll never even open again but will put on the coffee table for guests to see, after you've popped into Whisk and purchased a ceramic French cooking pot, after you've snagged some dark chocolate truffles and orange spiced coverture hot chocolate from Josophans - walked passed all those gimmicky tourist brekkie traps the time is here and the time is true for heading into Leura's true and tireless cafe stellar: Stockmarket Cafe.

Ah. Stockmarket. I have been coming to Leura with family, friends and Dan for years just to eat here. Right here. Right here in this tiny, wooden rustic coffee-sandwich-cake spot. It is always wafting with exactly the sort of aromas that say it's the weekend: strong coffee and freshly baked bread. With a Tetsuya trained chef as the genius behind this cosy cafe, the myriad of magic on each and every plate should be no surprise whatsoever, yet still, it is.

The menu is painful: lusciously toasted panini such as the leg ham, tomato, gruyere w dijon and wild rocket or open rye sandwiches dancing with chargrilled chicken, tomato, lettuce basil + lemon chive mayo and homemade pies enough to make a yuppie yelp. We started with the roasted vegetable stack drizzled w yoghurt dressing. Well, it wasn't drizzled as such because (like any good yuppie) I asked for the sauce on the side. Beautiful seasonal vegetables, gorgeously oiled and voluptuously gentle: the mushroom was simply intergalactic. So fresh and woody and deep. Twirling vibrant green asparagus through the creamy-cool white dressing was beautiful. This dish was stunningly more than the sum of it's parts - it relies on nothing trickier than amazingly good produce paired well. If it's a little light for your palate, never fear. Meet the dish that Danny loves as much as me...

Stockmarket's famous BLAT - a saucingly sandwichy saga of bacon, lettuce, tomato + avocado w chive mayo (and if, you so choose - a fried egg). Bitching bacon, aching bacon, simply foresakenly baconly grilled in salty-crunch-fat-searing raging against shards of lettuce and dollops of pale green cream-cool avocado with whispers of chive-mayo'ed tomato all bundled for eternity within a beguiling poppy seed speckled toasted turkish. This BLAT is the stuff of urban yuppie legend. You hear about BLAT's this good all the time but you never really try one. If you only came to Stockmarket once and if you only ever ordered one thing, even if you're a Muslim vegan, make it this BLAT. It exists in a world of pure poppy spangled joy, beyond regret, cholesterol and calories. Become one with a Stockmarket BLAT and your life will suddenly start making sense to you again.

Shoestring fries w fresh rosemary and aioli (and mustard and yoghurt dipping sauce if you ask, nicely, for them). Oh my lord. These are the sort of chips to make you cross your legs. They're Stockmarket blue chip chippe stocks. They are burning and brilliant and entirely alive. Crunchy and golden and fired in a beautiful, quality oil, starry with sea salt and dancing in waves of burnt rosemary. They are light and crunchy-salted divinity. Dunk into dijon, absolve in aioli and yield them to yoghurt. Perfectly pretty painting pots of colour and flavour for your delectable hot chip canvas. These are some of Sydney's best chips. They're so elegant and refined but still everything you want a hot chip to be. They're stout, sure, crispy and true, none of those soggy, sorry chip-bastards that go all weak-kneed and wilted when you try to pick and dip them. No, these are like potato soldiers going bravely into battle inside your mouth. Salute them.

And salute the moroccan lamb pie w orange infused yoghurt, salad + fries. If you can say no to the chicken and leek with house made chutney, this is your other pie-hole bound pie option. Bold and steaming and gorgeously poppy seeded, full of deep, intense colour spiked flavour. Oh Pie God, you'll be chuffed. Healthier people who still pack a raging appetite would do incredibly well to go with...

...the open rye egg salad deluxe. A salad cyclone of sorts, this is a truly imposing structure of peppered boiled egg and fresh lettuce avocado capsicum spanish onion cucumber beetroot tasty cheese and tomato. Furiously, ragingly fresh but not at all dry, the rich avocado sliced cheese and egg give a beautiful, collapsing, comforting mouthfeel to all of that fresh, cool, calm and collected cucumberish crunch. Add the slight warm-sourness of a gloriously baked rye and you have whimsical wow on a plate.

Factor in solid coffee, a range of teas to inspire both the hippies and the yuppies alike and sweet sticky treats that we were entirely too full to even contemplate on this day, and you have the perfect saturday or sunday morning experience. Try and snag the VIP-like window nook which can seat four (or just a romantic two), pull up with the paper, a magazine, a great book or a yuppie ipad 2 and just linger as long as you possibly can - if you're a good yuppie and you did your pilates in the morning, where else could you possibly have to be?

The Stockmarket Cafe happens at 179 Leura Mall, Leura. Phone 4784 3121. Open Daily from 7am - 2pm. This place is everything a cafe should be, it's one of the few places that I still go to years on. Somehow they have never dropped the ball and the quality has stayed as amazing as it did that first time I tried it. There are wonderful eggy breakfasts, pizzas and enchantingly rustic soup specials that will keep you coming back even once you think you've tried everything. Because Stocmarket doesn't have a view out the back, tourists tend to pass it by which makes it even more of a treasure for knowing locals. It's always busy but still private - even at the long communal table. The service is always warm and friendly, mountain people are usually lovely.

The Stockmarket cafe at Leura. This is the only Stockmarket that involves no gamble whatsoever and gives you guaranteed returns every single time: absolute and consistent foodie satisfaction, always, sideways and forever.

Eating In The Library (aka The Wine Library, Woollahra)...

2011-03-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

Dana Banana, an otherwise blessed morsel of curly haired ebullience - is generally a lucky girl. She can usually get her way, in life, love and almost anything. And what a way it is! Quick mouthed and sharp witted with an old-man-in-a-Russian-bath-house sense of humour, she doesn't generally settle for the same things the rest of us do. Yes, Dana could can get away with almost anything: speeding fines, cover charges, scarily opinionated directness that has left many a law lecturer not quite knowing how to reply. The lot of it doesn't raise a single worry line on that smooth Mediterranean skin of hers, she's fine. There is however, one man in all of Sydney who seems resolutely impervious to Banana's charms. She can't win him over. Can't scare him. Can't stop him. He's the only one - possibly in the whole wide world.

This singular specimen of manhood, this kryptonite to Dana's Supermanesque feminine wiles works in the Freehills Library at Sydney Law School. With a shy smile, a bald dome and some seriously kitsch taste in heavily patterned shirts, he always manages to find Dana when she's molar deep into a juicy, crunchy illicit apple. Doesn't matter what time of day or how subtle she tries being. Doesn't matter if she's hiding behind a contract law textbook or under a table in the Thunderdome. Time and time again, he finds her and he warns her: no eating in the library. Time and time again, she gets busted doing just that. Poor Dana. I could tuck into oysters kilpatrick and a steak diane without getting busted. I could munch popcorn and soft shell crab all day long and he would never say a word to me, but poor Dana.... If she so much as imagines nibbling half of half of an almond sliver, there he appears. Stern, unimpressed and threatening. They must be connected in some deep and soulful way that keeps screwing up her ability to stay nourished while she studies - either that or it's CCTV.

Not one to back down, Banana stands her ground, argues for the right to an occasional apple: law school is hard, hungry work after all. What's a girl to do? If you ask me, Dana's been pulling too many hours in the wrong kind of library. She should get her tuchus out of Usyd and into Woollahra's itty, bitty sleek slice of Sydney-but-all-grown-up drinking and dining Pow-Wow-ring: The Wine Library. A dusky, styled, tinkling and buzzing little jewel box of a bar/restaurant space that boasts a full bodied and hot blooded menu to accompany a veritable ocean of plonk and doesn't need to rely on a water view to sell it? Is this Melbourne or Sydney? It's Woollahra, baby. So pull your socks up, brush your hair, tuck in your polo shirt to a beige type of pant, prefabricate some casually informed opinions on the property market, stocks and modern art and, in the words of my good man Swearengen, act civilized, even if you ain't. The Wine Library isn't a kid's club, and thank god for that.

If you're expecting a token bar menu, shame on you. You should know better by now. The Wine Library has a cosy, dark nook of a restaurant at the back of it's Oxford Street fronted bar and you just might need a solid understanding of the Dewey decimal system to work your way through the generously proportioned menu that runs the glorious gamut from black truffle through english mustard-smacked pork pie and all the way to a beguiling blood plum + pine nut tart. The menu is hot and heavy, get ready to froth at your made-up mouth...

The moment I locked eyes on a little saucy something they like to call the toasted Stracchino + Black Truffle Quesadilla I knew this was a menu to get lost in. Forget all of your culinary parameters. Forget the no bread and cheese stuff. Forget the way your nose wrinkles when you think of Chicken Liver Parfait. Throw caution (and cholesterol) to the wind, it's time to eat the way the gods intended. A menu this wild and reckless is a bit of a challenge, a bit of a come hither to your darker side. Man up and take it all on. This thin, savoury black-truffle tortured toasted cheese seraph-sphere was a warm, molten and sultry Once Upon a Time to what became an absolute fairytale of a meal. Salted cheese with a black truffle bass line booming from beneath a perfectly diaphanous and floured quesadilla quilt: if your gob isn't smacked then i'll smack it for you.

Once you've said cheese once, it's time to say it again with the grilled haloumi + lemon. Forget America and it's claims to be the leader of the free world. Forget Russia and its communism. Even forget Rome and its long, straight roads. History needs to remember Cyprus for inventing haloumi. Haloumi has done more for the pleasure of females all over the world than men could ever hope to do. Some men like haloumi, but ladies simply love it. This gorgeous Wine Library version is hellish: you don't want a haloumi that's smaller and perfectly cut. The more rustic looking square like shape should be a sign that you're about to embark on a truly epic cheese. Salty-squeaky-burnt-gorgeous. A squirt of lemon and you close your eyes and dream.

Danny, who is a partial to a good pate, went as gaga over the Chicken Liver + Vin Santo Parfait w Toasted Sourdough as a laid back surfer boy with a permanently sleepy nature and a Barry-White-deep voice can. Watching him smear thick and swriling knifefuls of pale, creamy pink onto beautiful bread that had a slight and subtle smokiness was nice plate drama. Given that animal's livers aren't the most appetisizing things i can countenance, i consider it a great compliment to the chef that the bite I tried honestly didn't make me want to wretch: must've been amazing pate.

We sparked up all of this bread and cheese with an exquisite saladish side of cabbage, white balsamico + Parmigiano w mint. Tart, fresh, ferocious and alive. This was a gorgeous melange of cool, crispy cabbage with little shards of creamy parmesan that lent little dollops of delectable depth. It left a tart and terrific sheen on the palate and the mind.

Cured artisanal meats...

Green beans + red onion moshing in a mustard vinaigrette...

And then we arrive. It hurts. It hurts to relive this and not have it in front of me now. Oh My God. Vishnu and Apollo and Buddha and Jarvier Bardem. Oh-my-every-god-there-ever-was-and-is: baked polenta, fontina + duck ragu (pasticciata). This isn't a dish, no, not at all. It isn't a meal or a main or any other such pedestrian thing. What this is is a portal into the inner recesses of flavour. Every full and fabulous flavour you could ever imagine must have crawled into this little white dish, lay down side by side and gone to sleep under a scorching oven for a sweet, earthly while. This salty, steaming, messy, cheesy, molten, tender-aching duck shredded spectacular in baked polenta is the kind of meal that makes me violently happy. Riotous and salty and creamy and textured and full and oozing and dripping and strong and rich and well baked and set and smooshingly satisfying. Steaming spoonful after spoonful and the whole table was getting into it. This is alive. Incendiary. It is a very wonderful thing to do to each and every taste bud you have.

As is rita's eggplant parmigiana. Scorched devil in a pot. Layers of slippery baked eggplant drowning in cheese and tomato and burnt and scorched into its own inner self.

Lord help me. This was sweet like springtime and cosy and flaming like a fire inside on a blustery autumn day. The tomato had no acidity whatsoever, it was so full and flamed and gentle. I kept going between this and the ragu and all the while the circuits in my body were darting between my eyes and my hand my brain and my heart and my mouth and my toes.

I am surprised this menu didn't self combust. With an all day panini line up that features aged salami and mozzarella, spiced lamb, caramelised onion and gruyere, fennel pollen maionese and kippered herrings on toast, The Wine Library dining is absolutely anything you want it to be. The Brunch until 4pm section took the ends of both of my thumbs and raised them firmly and decidedly up. The idea of random huevos rancheros or fruit toast + butter or pikelets w blueberries well into the late afternoon tells me louder and clearer than anything else in this world ever could: there is a god, and he totally has my (pudgey) back.

Dessert? Duh. Treacle + Walnut Cheesecake. Scream, no one can stop you. This was a sublime little cylinder of heavy, sultry cream cheese sepia-sweet with sticky treacle and invisible walnut. Firm and glazed and glowing. Brilliant to lay into with a silver spoon and fork. Silver into cream cheese heart and spiked against perfect, crumbly-nutty-golden base.

A moussey detour into frothy chocolate and then...

The vin santo baked custard + caramel. There was no was something that sounded like this was ever going to taste bad. But the delicate little glass pot bearing baked custardly-caramel-kissed cloud swirls still surpassed every height of sweet-tooth imagination. Saucy and clinking and sweet and creamed. Ivory smudging into and against glassy caramel, luminous and luscious and so, so dainty. Not that the boys would describe it this way. Ahh. Dessert. What have I become, My sweetest friend. Every cake I love goes away in the end. When all else fails the only thing you really count on in this world is the ability of a phenomenal dessert to remind you why you are here and where you are going. Blood plum + pine nut tart and the raspberry and lambrusco jelly w vanilla ice cream are also there to show you the sweet, sure way.

Dizzy with wine. Drunken on soft caramel sugar with a belly full of polenta baked duck. Edges were blurred, shoulders were liquefied, sighs were rolled off the back of loosened throats and we all agreed that this was one of the most surprising and, I am sorry for the cliche, but also most seductive places to get your supper on.

The Wine Library is winning hearts, livers and mouths at 18 Oxford Street, Woollahra. Ph 9360 5686. The opening hours during Weekdays + Sat from 9am - 10pm with Sun from 9am - 12am make this a curious option for all day eating in a Sydney done to death with cafes and coffee bars.

One of my favourite things about The Wine Library is that it isn't too trendy. Rather than trying to appeal to fickle youths (god how I sound my age and/or like Vincent Gambini in My Cousin Vini), they've gone for a classic and sophisticated menu and feel that doesn't march to the beat of how we are used to eating in Sydney. There are lighter options but this is really a place to go when you want a good, solid old-school meal that will truly break your heart with joy.

Special thanks to go to the wonderful Sabry who guided us effortlessly through the menu to a damn amazing meal and to Dan and Dad for waiting 5-10 minutes before being allowed to try anything so I could get the perfect photos. Extra special thanks to bibliophile JB for tolerating a library with no books in it.

Get into The Wine Library. Go on, do it, if only because you won't find many places in Sydney were you can eat something delicious at 10am or 3pm.

The Wine Library: they're rewriting the book on how to eat out. Shhhh.

Butterhead (aka Ad Lib Bistro, Double Bay)...

2011-03-10T18:21:00.000-08:00

What do commitment, Lady Gaga smiling, income tax, the thought of your parents 'making love', the mental image of John Howard in a tutu and heels, David Hasselhoff's chest making a comeback, making small talk with strangers in lifts and butter all have in common? A: they seem to make most people very, very afraid. Julia-just-add-cream-Child understood that most otherwise rational people seem to lose their heads when it comes to butter. Can you imagine? Beautiful, bountiful innocent smooth-salt-speckled spreadable-breadable-incredible butter. Dutch or French. Organic and rich. Searing, smoking-burning brown-liquid-churning-bubbling-troubling caramel-bound butter. Butter, butter Flutter. Butter is a wonder. A churning for any culinary yearning. Butter is sinking and falling, it's a sudden loss of gravity for the mouth and for the mind. If ordinary ingredients speak the language of flavour, then adding butter is the precise moment when voice becomes song.

If it's wrong to think that butter adds something to food that gives it a life beyond its parts and takes eating from the realm of robotic anatomy and into something much, much more divine - then I don't want to be right. And the good people at Ad Lib Bistro, Double Bay can certainly keep me company. Former 41 Chef-above-above-the-clouds Dietmar Sawyer might have come back down to earth, but his food still floats way up in the stars of my culinary heavens. Taking its cues from the bistros of Paris, the Ad Lib venture is bringing back relaxed, remarkable dining - voluptuously and unapologetically classic - to a Sydney gone mad with monotonously fashionable foodie-whim. Classic, produce-centric and butter fueled Modern French is a tune Dietmar knows well, which might be why each every plate refuses to ever miss a maddening beat...

The Portobello mushroom stuffed with snails in garlic + parsley crumbs is a very happy thing to happen on a big white plate. Gorgeously buttery-garlic infused snail, slightly salty, blends so well with the deep portobello. The woody mushroom and parsley with a shock of rocket green makes for deep, rich mouthful after mouthful. This entree seems to squeeze in so much flavour for its size. Toes will crunch and foodies will swoon.

The barramundi meuinere w almond, green beans + beurre noisette is a sparkling brown-buttered, parsley spangled and lemon spiked way to take your fish. A breathless barramundi drowning in sublimely rich buttery sauce and textured by perfect slivers of almond and green bean crunch is the stuff of pure magic. The salty-silver-browned barramundi skin gives way to a moist, flaky flesh - plump and perfectly cooked, and absolutely radiant. This Ad Lib signature is brilliant, fish this incredible is extremely difficult to do well. As most places know not to overcook fish, the genius of fish really shines through in the way it's garnished. You want a balance between colour and texture, and especially with a dish as light as barramundi, you need a grounding heaviness that anchors the lightness without upstaging the delicacy: wanky, but true. My tongue became its own exclamation point after falling on a forkful of this - between buttery tomato dappled almond flickered not-too-crunchy thin and slippery green bean chaos, was a barramundi I will simply never forget.

300 grams might not be much worldly weight, but this grilled sirloin steak w beurre cafe de paris is a whole entire heaven and earth of flavour. I had a bite. Oh My God. It is romeo + juliet as butter and meat, so absolutely perfect in every possible way.

A drama on a white plate atop a bed of wilted spinach. Wouldn't you wilt if this sat on top of you? Order this rare, you must do the calibre of meat the justice it deserves. The pale, pink tender flesh beneath the faintly mustard-dill-marjoram-chive-thyme-tarragon twirled butter on top is the perfect voluntary union of two flavours, for life - to the exclusion of all others. Danny - fresh from a miserable beach house detox - was actually beside himself with sirloined joy. And then the baby carrots came out...

Ad Lib's baby carrots w butter are vegetal Shakespeare. Hamlet would've been able to answer his question resolutely if ever he tried this, and Ophelia still would have drowned. Sublime lengths of honeyed-orange carrot, glowingly lazy and slippery and docile, so tender and gentle and warm, are a singular side-struck astonishment. I know it's slightly ridiculous to lose your shit over carrots, but you've got to try these to know what I am talking about!

This whole time, Bugs Bunny might have been onto something. The sweetness of these baby carrots killed me, they were so simple and startling and true. The butter coaxed out their flavour wonderfully and we almost forgot our mains as we tussled in a carrot-grabbing joust to the death.

Eating carrots is supposed to strengthen the eyes, but I tell you, just looking at these again without even tasting one is having the same effect. Try these carrots, really, really do. The cauliflower gratin which was bestowed onto the lucky buggers at the table next to us while we were in throes of some serious dessert also looked worthy of devouring. Don't shun anyone of the Ad Lib sidekicks - they're exuberant footnotes to a phenomenal meal.

A beautiful penelope sach leomgrass + ginger infusion, a chocolate truffle and then...

a vanilla ice cream laced thin apple tart. Ad Lib is latin for At Pleasure, and at perfect pleasure I was when once a spoonful of this sinful, sticky, saucy vanilla spun Venus spiraled sheer dessert agony down my happy throat. Luscious, thick-drizzled caramel - incandescent and buttered...

Chilled, poised, liquefying vanilla tears spilling onto a golden warm tangle of beguilingly baked apple. Subtle. Spiced. Deliciously defiant to fork and knife sticky. Shards of slashed caramel tattooed onto ceramic. This was classic heartache, full and sultry and deep - the Jessica Lange of the dessert world. The toffeed chaos it makes of your mouth is not something to be gotten over lightly or quickly. This is the perfect kind of dessert, its taste and its touch linger far after the plate has been taken away - at least until the next plate arrives...

Devil-may-cry try it if you dare dark chocolate mousse goes a little something this...a single, solitary scoop on a set surface of dusted chocolate...

Two crispy wafers, to anchor - a dollop of DeepRichDreamy cream to soften - and then: Chocolate.

Dark, angry, vivid and crashing against your stunned tongue: frothy furious mousse, cocoa drenched and kicking. Smooth and so rich even the chocoisseurs will slow down and take pause. If you don't pace it it will be too overpowering. This is an unbridled black beauty - darker than sin and none too sweet.

Watch it cling to a spoon, to the roof of your mouth and to the pristine white of the plate, it absolutely stains your senses with rich, reckless chocolate. It's a wee bit of a calorie challenge on a plate, and the brave will take it all the way up.

Between the butter, the fish, the steak, the apple baked caramel and the chocolate, you have a world wide tour of Ad-Lib flavour that docks in at all the major culinary capitals. This place is a new favourite, and incredibly well priced for the quality and attention to detail. Ad Lib manages to be warm and welcome in an suburb that most in Sydney still consider extremely exclusive - in the negative sense. And without any pretension at all. It's 41 without the lift - and the stars you'll be seeing when you try the carrots are view enough as far as I am concerned.

Ad Lib Bistro happens at 21 Bay Street, Double Bay. With breakfast, lunch + dinner (AND afternoon tea) on offer, they'll be lucky if I don't start sleeping right outside the front door. Ph 9988 0210 to book, website will full menus here.

Ad Lib, and joyfully, don't be one of those miserable people who lives this life without butter.

Blood Spatter Analysis (aka, Welcome to Chophouse)...

2011-03-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

I don't know what you and your boyfriend spends your days and nights doing, but at our place the last few weeks has been all about Dexter. We've drawn the blinds. We've silenced the phones. We've eschewed friends, family and social obligations. We've forgotten the mail. We've made tea, brought snacks and set ourselves up on a mountain of pillows, simply fixated, and sucked in episode after nerve throttling episode, to the point of actual backache and potential bedsores. And then beyond. If you haven't had the pleasure of acquainting yourself with the fictional and very murderous goings on at Miami Metro, then leave it to me to fill you in. Pick a donut and get comfy. Tonight's the night.

There's the sisterly sliver we all know and love as Debra Morgan. The detective with the mostest invective. The only thing badder than her fabulous-one-'fuck-me'-a-minute-foul mouth is her taste in men - Quinn?! I mean seriously Deb, how could you! There's sweet, protective Angel Batista, forever searching for that misplaced la passion and all the while searching from beneath those funny little hats. Got to love LaGuerta, with her struts and her lollipop coloured suits - but not everyone does. And last, littlest but not least, Vincent Masuka. I don't know what sums him up more, his nerdy, shy Vince-laugh, his penchant for lemon custard donuts or these two words: 'autoerotic mummification'. And then... there's Dex. Dexter Morgan of the Broad shoulders and the ingenious strategy. Soulfully soul-less Dex. Daddy Dex. Hubby Dex. Professional Dex. Dex and his Dark Passenger. The Dex of The Code of Harry. The hero of those tactile, vivid credits who fries his bacon real close up and laces his shoes in marvellous macro but never, ever, ever learns to put his phone on silent during a kill! Dex. Obsessed. I love the plots and the characters and the knives and the gore and the splashing red. Mostly, I love the blood. Ahhh, the blood. The blood. Red. Red. Redder.

Blood, sometimes it sets my teeth on edge. Other times it helps me control the chaos. CakeKnifeKillers, the only snag a pescetarian like me has with watching Dexter is that it really, really makes me want a bloody steak. Did I emphasize the want enough? I want a steak. I want a sharp, silver blade. I want The Steak + The Knife. I want to cut and chop and watch blood seep from beast onto an innocent but willing white plate. A rare, bloodied, bone dangling slab of scarlet-seared flesh. Oh, if only Dexter Morgan really existed.

If Dexter Morgan really existed I would (after clearing it with Danny first) take him to lunch. I'd have no trouble deciding where. It would have to be someplace dark, hidden. Cosy and intimate and dusky. But stylish and sleek. A place where his Dark Passenger could feel at home. It would need to have knives, sharp, sharp knives. And amazing steak. It would need to have some nice, cold beer and be faintly redolent of an early 19th Century abattoir. Yeah, I know exactly where i'd take Dex, Bligh Street's clandestine black star, a place so good I almost want to keep it a secret: the New York inspire Chophouse. Yeah. Chophouse. Dex would not only appreciate the irony in that, I bet he'd also find lunch here well and truly up his ali(mentary canal).

Former Quay man and now Chophouse executive chef David Clarke's menu is a fictional serial killer's foodie dream - but even the non-homicidal among us can appreciate damn epic meat and we-thought-of-absolutely-everything sides. The produce driven line up is about as brutally raw and saucy as carnivoredom can get. Think: free-range tender stretched double lamb chops with mint jelly, picture crumbed pork chop saddled with hazelnut sage and applesauce, think 380 gram pasture fed rib on the bone. Fancy without being fussy. But before we stick a knife - at a deft, dark 90 degree angle into any beast's heart, there's something you ought to know first.

Chophouse ain't just a meat packing boys club: The ceviche of hiramasa kingfish w european radish, organic flowers + avruga caviar is about as pretty and delicate (and dare I say, girlie?) as Rita - but twice as deep and way more interesting. Pale pink, shimmering oily fish beneath a flowery tangle in purples and greens and reds is as charming on the mouth as it is on the eye. The delicate and muted kingfish is sharpened by the radish and filled out by teeny tiny droplets of caviar that add a spark of salty-oiled snap. Twirl it around your fork and decorate your mind with it, it's edible whimsy.

the butter poached W.A rock lobster w roasted spring onion + fennel risotto sounded like something we would kill for, but we opted instead for the coconut tempura rock lobster w green mango, papaya, asian herbs + spiced coconut. Straight like a love knife through the heart. The rich and crispy faintly-salted coconut skinned lobster plays wonderfully with the bang on mango-papaya relish type salad. Spiked and sharp and spiced. It spins between vaguely Vietnamese and Thai flavours - but amiably commits to neither.

The market fish was a brilliantly executed red snapper grilled like Doakes after Lila lit the fire in the cabin - and just as satisfying. It came with a labna dappled, black oil spiked salady garnish that almost made you wish you slept with fishes (or with red snapper at the very least). Read between the lines: Chophouse isn't just a steakhouse offering token seafood for the good-fat gobbling, carb-watching ladies + gents, it's as dedicated to the crustaceans as as it is to the cows. Right. Moo-ving along.

The Dry Aged Delmonico pasture fed striploin on the bone was a rare, tender, dijon dazzled thing of a true and unequivocal beauty. Luscious melty sweet-salt-meat that draws you into each momentous mouthful and takes you far, far away. It comes with a nifty antique-like blade that slices through the slippery red sinews so quickly and effortlessly that you find yourself at bone's edge far too soon. To see the steak come out all on its lonesome is perfect plate theater. You want nothing but a shallow circle of white to take in all of the bright red, grilled brown, ivory bone-lined beauty of the striploin. This is an epic main, very, very exciting to fall into. From the blood stains on the plate, I would say Danny attacked it from the front, at an elevated and alacritous downward angel. The mess would indicate he was in a hurry and the gnawing teeth marks on the bone should be able to bring back a strong DNA match. With only a bite of his steak in a rare flight of pescetarian deviance, I stayed put on the otherside of the table - and a whole entire world away. Watching the smile and the speed and the glint in his eyes.

Both of us in the unfortunate throes of soul destroying detox meant that we only eyed off the shoestring fries and the cauliflower gratin w sourdough and gryuere. Please don't make the same mistake we did and put your liver before your stomach. We did however cave when it came to the dessert menu. Dessert. I know. It's a battlefield where many brave soldiers full of good intentions and barrels of will power have gone down - a bloodied, blithering defeated mess. Keeping our detox in mind, we only had one teaspoon of each. Fuck me. Do you want to know what a teaspoon of delectable dessert and a fingertip's breadth of a smidgen of soul-blazing chocolate tasted like? Do you?

The caramelised almond-studded banana cheesecake w butterscotch. Oh my good God. It's like someone drove up into Northern NSW, took the Big Banana, somehow made it real and ripe and full, and then took all of that gargantuan bananay expanse and condensed it into the single, teeny, tiny silver teaspoon of cheesecake I ate. The texture isn't as firm as most cheesecakes, those of you who like to sink a fork into a stiff set creamy-cheese depth will have to cast expectations aside. This baby is far more delicate. The caramelised banana infuses all the way from fork through mouth - to brain, it has a gorgeous burnt-sweetness to it that still manages to taste exactly like the real, ripe fruit. In a Canon-induced stuff up, my camera died before I could snap the 150 gram Chophouse branded swiss milk chocolate bar w caramelised hazelnuts. Sad But True. This heavenly chocolatey brick is brought to the table on a chopping board and bashed senseless in front of you with a miniature cleaver: spewing golden nut-flickered splinters and fragments of gleaming chocolate everywhere. A frenzied flash of sweet, smooth Umber-brunette-brilliantly-brown-cocoa. Looking at the reflective chocolate surface beneath Chophouse's honeyed lights... I believe Deb said it best: Sweet Mary-mother of fuck that's Good! Just. Kill. Me. Do it now. Dexter or anyone. This in-house chocolate is funky like the 90's, fabulous like a mink coat and quirky, beserky dessert genius. So simple and so different. The chocolate itself is amazing but just the idea of it was enough to actually wound me with approval and joy. It's probably a good thing I don't have a picture, i'd be going mad, and so would you.

Finished off with a glimmering and scintillating penelope sach lemongrass + ginger infusion, I was as happy as Masuka on star trek night at a strippers club.

Chophouse is at 25 Bligh St, Sydney. Ph 1300 246 748. Website here. With private dining rooms, one of Sydney's most dramatic spaces and impeccable food and wine, where else would you be from 12 - late Mon - Fri or from 6pm on Sat?

Every night's the night to take on Chophouse. Well, maybe not Sunday when they're closed - but every other night at least. If I could see that caramelised hazelnut slab of swiss Chophouse chocolate again, oh I will see it again. I have my eye on it. And what else will there be left to say before I take it into that dark dangerous oblivion that lies beyond my mouth but... You're mine now.

The Otherside (Introducing: Paper Cup, Stanmore)...

2011-03-03T21:03:00.000-08:00

I'll never forget the first time I heard it. You'll have to narrate this in a Wonders Years voice to get the full effect. It was June 1999, life was young and pure and unfastened, with all of the spinning colours of vital, vivid youth. I remember waiting for months before it came out, praying it would be good and wondering what type of sound they would have. Frusciante was back with the peppers and in the reunion of these painfully separated parts, riding high on the winding lyre-bird vocals of a kiedis in full possession of a new voice (and a cropped platinum do) - Californication found me. It seized onto everything I was at 19 and everything I knew I would ever become. The first time I heard the otherside it was like hearing someone else telling you the story of your life. My ears were smiling, my mind was suffused with johnliness and with flea and chad and anthony, stripped down and exposed to the bones and to the pith, and still to this day whenever I hear that song I feel a freedom and a happiness that makes the ground fall away.

All the way across the ramshackled muck of Newtown and Glebe, in a quiet corner of a still Stanmore spot, all the way across and over to the otherside is Paper Cup. Sparse, bare and brutally broken down, it is a concentrated quintessential of the urban cafe experience.

A place to come and to sit and to take it all in. I heard your voice through a photograph, I thought it up it brought up the past. Once you know you can never go back i've got to take it on the otherside... Centuries are what it meant to me, a cemetary where I marry the sea, stranger things will never change my mind i've got to take it on the otherside... Pour my life into a paper cup, the ashtray's full and i'm spillin' my guts...

Pour my life into a paper cup. Pour it smooth and black and spiraled and splashed with steaming SugarCream. Beneath red-wire draped lights and within the stripped bare walls of the uber-sleek industrially inspired four corners that make up the edible architecture of cafe wunderkind Adriano Matteoni's latest Sydney venture, something is happening. Like a master at the top of his game, Adriano is stripping it all bare. Don't get your hopes up. I don't mean literally, ladies. I mean figuratively. Paper Cup is a little like Clipper + Clover, but all grown up...

Adri has mastered the art of the perfect cafe. He knows that the most astounding experiences (space and food and coffeewise) are usually the most simple. He has pared it all back to a tiny select precious menu, a few choice beverages and a space that rips you open and apart - deep into its very own viscera. With so much thought and brilliance put into the look, we have to linger just a moment to appreciate the wonder that paper cup sprinkles over everyone who walks in.

Anachronistic and simple. Plain wooden benches, cushioned crates, white letters against a black board and muted streaks of faded green, spun with a ceiling sliver of FireEngineRed. Step inside, fall prey to the design and let a simple mid morning coffee take you away from daily life and into a world where rather than just being you, you actually feel as though you are observing yourself. Paper Cup is a stark and stunning example of cafe theater, but then again, what is style without the substance?

Breakfast and batshit seem to have a lot in common these days: they're both really boring. On the right side of bed is Paper Cup's baharat beans w maple syrup spiked labna. This musically Middle-Eastern inspired answer to the most important meal of the day involves beans, different-not-your-average-bean beans spangled with the warm-sweet-pungent tones of minted rosebud with cinnamon dappled black pepper. The exotic little bean moosh dervish dances from the cute glass jar it comes in and all the way into your startled mouth.

A crowning dollop of creamy, thick labna (Lebanese style yoghurt) swooning with a glaze of maddening maple is a tart-sweet-smooth-luscious tongue trick. The warmth and texture of the beans and the coolness and smoothness of the labna is even more balanced that Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man doing downward dog on a ladder. From savoury sweet, to sweet-sweet we eat...

Forget what they tell you about men. A good bircher, a truly, really, really great bircher - is a damn hard thing to find. Adri has always had the bircher touch. Eh. Scottish. If he wasn't going to get his oats right, who was? Paper Cup's bircher is bitchin: arabian bircher w honeycomb + poached fruit. A glistening ruby-red tangle of frenzied berries and dreamy-like-sleepwalking meredith dairy cream writhing against soaked oats, iranian dried fig, hazelnut and pistachio. Add a decadent, lazy-woozy glob of incandescent honeycomb to what is already strawberry laden splendour, and you just might have to put your fork down, take a moment, brace yourself...and scream.

A great bircher. Now, now. Let's not rush along. Bircher is a difficult food to do well. Most places tend to overdo it. You only need very few ingredients and you need to balance them in the right amount. Anyone who understands bircher knows two things: if you must put raisins and dried fruit in don't overdo it (birchers are usually sickly sweet) and never, ever, ever serve too much. Nothing is less appetising than a chilled massive heap of heavy oats sloshed on a plate before you - and I do say this knowing that Shane Warne exists. Bircher is delicate and delectable, a well made cup-size is more than enough. It is a dalliance, a barely there thing. The more of it is in the less. If you can find a better bircher than Adri's, then you know something I don't.

Sweet, sticky, sinful smalls... all you need is something hot and frothy to savour them with...

Hello, Joe. Phenomenal, epic, agonisingly rich and deep coffee is alive and truly well at Paper Cup. It's the right balance between rich and sweet. And it's nutty too. And never burnt. And warm. And embracing. And delicate. And reviving. And strong without being too strong. And with a thick, dense perfectly levitating froth - and a dancing dusting of sprinkled chocolate.

Whether you latte or long black or short black or mac, it's time for you to be a little bit more of a drip...Cold drip coffee has found its chilled, honeyed way from Japan, all the way across the Pacific and to our own local shores. This Garabito single (+ fabulous) origin coffee from Costa Rica is purer than a churchgoer's first born son - and significantly more sweet.

This beautifully 19th Century looking contraption drips out 42 drops of pure water through a coarser grind of sterling bean. It takes about an hour for a decent amount of shimmering liquid ebony to filter out into the funnel of the jug beneath.

The slow-drip process removes all of the acidity from the coffee. Without the acidity the full, inherent and natural sweetness of the bean simply burns through like a falling star in a black night sky. This is OhMyGod as coffee.

Served short and on ice it's rich, dark, handsome and honeyed. It is so delicate and nuanced and beautiful. You don't need any sugar, you don't need anything at all. Just a few quiet moments to really mull over it and appreciate its flavour.

It's frozen, forbidden kiss as beverage. Watch the dark black staining the surfaces of the ice and savour it sip after slow, languid sip. So glorious and exotic and refreshing: don't let it pass you by.

Teatotallers are totally taken care of with select black teas and a wonderfully authentic genmaicha. This brown-rice roasted green is sublime. The warmth and nutiness of the rice cancels out most of the grassy acidity which turns people who aren't used to green tea off the flavour. It is so nice to see authentic Japanese tea somewhere other than at a sushi place. Tea lovers have to thank the influence of Adri's lovely wife, kana for the very welcome and unusual addition. But beyond tea, coffee and a seriously splendid menu, there is one other very special reason to pop into paper cup...

Natsu is the painfully gorgeous progeny of Adri and Kana. More surprising than the cold drip, more beautiful than the maple syrup labna, and twice as sweet as the bircher. She has funky pink leggings, a sloppy toddler kiss and some of the most intensely peaceful eyes that will ever take you in. She breaks my heart every time I see her and especially when she smiles. She can usually be found on a perch out front, looking more styled than most of the people who stagger in. Natsu is stealing all the attention from Adri these days, and it's about bloody time.

Paper Cup, kids - it's alive and kicking at 151 Cambridge St, Stanmore. Join the facebook page here, go to their website here - and get your butt in as soon as you can. It's a Mon-Sat setup and gets going at 6am and closes up shop at 4.

Poor Nissa might have to get used to a 4.30am Bay Run if we're going to be the first in for brekkie. Thanks to Adri + Kana for being so lovely and for keeping the genmaicha flowing, and for having Natsu. To Natsu for being the perfect breakfast date, for wearing pink leggings and for giving me the best open mouth kiss (on the cheeks) that I ever had. To EB and JoJo, thanks for letting me be part of the first day of the last year!

Paper Cup might be all the way across from where you're used to getting your cafe fix, but believe me (and Kiedis) when we tell you: I don't, I don't believe it's baaaaad, slit my throat it's all I ever...

Adriano Matteoni, I do believe it's time for you to take (another) bow. Well done champ!

Oui, Oui, Oui - All The Way Home (aka Tabou, Surry Hills)...

2011-02-26T15:41:00.000-08:00

Delusion. Don't listen to your friends, a little bit of delusion goes a long, long way. That guy you slept with on the first date (before you threw up all over him) might call you back. You could very well win the lottery next week. And just maybe, hopefully (God willing) Shane Warne and Liz Hurley might both become celibate some time soon and go to live on separate sides of the earth, far away from each other, cameras and all of disgusted society. Yes. Delusion is what gets us up, what keeps us going and what holds us together. Like a quick nip of vodka when the day has been a little too long, delusion blankets us from the harsh westerlies of unbridled reality. Like a glue for the divided self.

I mean, if you ever stop to think about it (and the paranoid among us often do) we're all going to die one day and in the meantime we sit in our cars on traffic logged highways headed towards jobs we can't stand so we can all afford houses with people we secretly want to kill on some tiny corner of a universe that is constantly expanding into God knows what and God died in the 20th century. I mean, really. What's a girl to do? Delude herself into a happy, cosy, fuzzy little corner of her mind and go on, that's what. Everything will be okay in the end. Delusion, people. That's what i'm talkin about.

If anyone were to ever ask me I would say that I hardly ever eat bread. That I steer away from cheese. That I only have hot chips and chocolate once in a wee lithe, little while. That I only go through stages with coffee. I believe all this. Delusion was doing its deft little job and to myself (if not to others) I felt like my alimentary canal was mary magdalene sweet. Shit catches up to you in the end. And like let-'em-have-cake Antoinette this idea of myself was guillotined in one fell swoop. She lost her head for treason and I lost my head (and my foodie amnesia) at Surry Hills maison d'awesome feed: Crown Street's Tabou.

After years of wanting to try this stylish little slip of Surry Hills Francais for years, Tat's farewell from Sydney lunch became the excuse to collage a la fromage. Tabou is a classic little dining spot that hasn't changed much in its time. While Crown St twists, cavorts and gyrates to ever happening foodie trends, Tabou has remained true to its origins: classic, stylish and simply tres bien. It's not where you eat in Surry Hills if you want to be seen. It's where you eat to see: the cheese-dripped light.

After exquisitely buttered chunks of biblically baked sourdough, I get the closest I am ever going to get to skydiving in this life. I don't often do reckless, but what other word is there for the souffle aux fromages? Taste Bud Translation: the twice baked gruyere and goat's cheese souffle. Calories, who? You know it's going to hurt, but you also know it's going to be totally worth it!

This steaming, saucy little concoction is cheese meets dripping, light frothy so-so-souffle warmth. This meal is decadent, classic and unapologetically marvelous. It might also be genius, as well. The lightness of the souffle is perfect, like a prayer on wings it is winsome, gentle, fully formed and fledged from it's own mousse-esque levity. A dalliance in twice baked cheese. This is creamy, soft-burnt-dripping and utterly startling. Smooth and rich and light and heavy and all at once. A nose-in-the-air-blue-blood's answer to the humble cheese toastie.

The only feasible way to consume this entree is either while on treadmill or doing squats. Or possibly doing both, if you can muster the balance. Reckless and ruinously ravenous, try it once in your life at least. Or have it once a merry month and let your Delusion collect the tab. With an entree like that, I opted for a more frugal of calorie, but nonetheless delicious main.

The Roast Mulloway w Saffron Tomato was a delicate and brothy fish. Beautiful and light and crispy skinned. It was paired with flavours that Tatsu thought tasted quite Japanese (subtly sweet). Hai! The plate was bursting with reds and oranges and greens, generous and pretty and lovely.

Tats said au revoir to Sydney with the Darling Downs Angus Grain Fed Scotch Fillet perfectly sauced, succulent and tender and medium-rare with divine exclamation points as fries positively burgeoning from the side of the happy plate. Fries. Oh my Fry. No matter how arrogant the French are, every iota of that arrogance becomes justified when you have the perfect frites salting up your maddened molars. The mass of the serving made me love Tabou. They seem to understand that fries and moderation, like John Howard and G-strings, don't really go together.

Crispy and thin and oily and golden. Crunchy and a little soft. Perfect to paint with mustard and pepper sauce and ketchup, but most bloody beautiful in a bearnaise malaise. Humanity achieved perfection in the hot chip. I really don't understand why we are still trying.

Almond spangled broccoli is our token and tantalizing green, as is a little smart-sharp salad, alive and perky and perfectly finished with all of the oiled-vinegared spirit of a great French dressing. The greens were the reprieve. That little moment when you think the storm has passed, but the eerie calm tells you you're standing right in the eye of it...And then it strikes...

There are several ways you can choose to die. Hanging, jumping off a bridge, sleeping pills, telling your conservative relatives you're living with your boyfriend...but none of these are as deliciously death defying as tabou's truffled potato puree. This is the rolex of sides. It is heavy, creamy, gently salted potato, writhing in burnt butter and twirling around in a dizzy dance to a triumphantly be-truffled tune. This is oh-mon-dieu on a silver spoon. Each breathless bite unleashes a potato-pureed electricity upon your tongue and throughout your shattered being. So deep and rich and buttery, so gorgeously heavy. Each tiny bite weighs you down. You let the puree melt into you, you close your eyes, you sigh, you swoon, you falter, you recover. And then you go again.

That oily, ghostly orb that the truffled potato puree left on the paper-topped table says it all. This is for the brave and for the true and for no other. The perfect meal is a like a Chanel suit, you want to accessorize well. We kept it simple and chic with the following:

An immaculate Single Origin short black (Tatsu raves about the long blacks here)...

...A complimentary chocolate jewel of a chocolate coated truffle...

...a powdering of the nose and you have everything you could ever want in life: cheese, potato, cheese, bread, butter, cheese, chips, steak, chocolate, coffee. If this one doesn't get le diable to respect you, then nothing will.

Tabou happens at 527 Crown St Surry Hills, 9319 5682, website here. The wine list stands up to the menu and any experience here should be something to remember. Especially when you can't really eat again the next day. Try what I have heard is an amazing steak tartare and flicker through some sweet finishes a la creme brulee, chocolate mousse or an apple tatin bathed in iced-melting vanilla cream. Remember to forget. Food and Delude. You'll have a happy belly and a clear, clear conscience.

Tabou: It's tres francais, all the way.

Sticking It To The Man

2011-02-07T21:54:00.000-08:00

I really do hope that it's not only myself I speak for when I say that there's something really, really cool about stuff being impaled. There just is. I don't care what it is, but put a stick through it and it suddenly becomes more interesting. Picture the most boring thing you can think of. For me, it's listening to an interview with an Australian cricketer. Cricket kills me. Cricketers kill me again. Borrrr-ing. Now, picture that same interview, but where the cricketer and the interviewer (pick any annoying current affairs personality) are both doing exactly the same thing, but impaled: much better. What it is about the idea of a sharp, straight, metallic length piercing humble flesh that is so agreeable, we'll probably never know - but when The Flavour of Brazil in Leichhardt offers those who want a beastly churrasco-fiasco in 20 speared courses, it's like cupids arrow through a foodies heart...

The Flavour of Brazil offers a slightly more upscale/quality version of Brazilian all-you-can-meat. It's practically every animal on El Old MacDonald's rancho, marinated, charred and sliced, plate-side, off a skewer that is attached to a tall, dark Brazilian waiter. What's not to like! In an age of veganism and sustainable eating, churrasco is about as wonderfully inappropriate as food gets. At $42 per carnivorous, environmentally-oblivious, cholesterol infused head, you get...

Garlic Bread - pao de alho

Rump Cap (in yo ass) - picanha

Beef Sirloin - contra file

Beef with mustard - fraldinha na mostarda

Beef ribs - costela

Pork ribs - costela de porco

Prawns - camarao

Octopus - Polvo

Beef w Garlic - picanha no alho

Pork neck w Honey + Chili Marinade - Paleta de

porco com mel e chili

Rump tail w Butter - maminha na manteiga

Beef flank - fraldinha

Pork leg - pernil de porco

Chicken Maryland - sobre coxa de frango

Lamb w Mint - carneiro com menta

Chicken Hearts - coracao de frango

Lamb w Orange - carneiro com laranja

Pork Sausage - linguica

Grilled Cheese - queijo grelhado

BBQ Pineapple w Brown Sugar + Cinnamon - abacaxi

EEiiiEEiOh my God. That has to be pretty much every animal that roams the earth, and every part of those animals in one gobsmacking, bile-threatening, chargrilled, bird-flipped-towards-vegetarianism luscious, fiery line up. It is flame licked lashings of luscious meat in amounts that are supposed to hurt you. Don't worry, the stomach is designed to expand, you're just giving it the excuse to. A word of advice to delay the onset of heart disease by 8pm, there's a swathe of tempering salady-sides such as Brazilian rice, tomato salsa, cinnamon crumbled banana, potato salad, cassava chips and mixed greens. The problem is that these are all you can eat as well. This is definitely the type of meal where there's safety in numbers...

Jamie, Dan and my own, personal South American Authenticity Police: Janine, vouched for the meat I could only watch. Janine vows that this is the best churrasco she's tried, with a quality of meat that puts a stick straight into the competition's heart. Salted, oiled, sizzlingly-skinned torsos of ill-fated, flamed beasts still makes my mouth water, even if it only ever touches my eyes and nose. It's a good thing I have a large nose. The aromas were unbelievable. Smoky and deep and full. To watch a dazzling blade cut into golden-sable-flickered skin and reveal the gentle pinkness of tender, juicy, marinated flesh makes life as a pescetarian seem really, really unfair. Maybe I should be chowing down on goldfish instead of Barra, at least that way I probably wouldn't have the memory of all that meat still twisting and turning in the part of my brain that dreams.

Between the golden, cinnamon-speckled sweetness of the burnt-crumbled banana, rice and salad, I barely had room for the menu's consolation prizes of prawns and cheesy-tomato-eggplant. The moqueca de camarao is a Northeastern Brazilian offering of coconut-milked king prawns with palm oil, capsicum, onions and spices. If the Devil served appetisers, this would have to be one of them. It's an edible hot tub, a furious confusion of deep, dark, orange-red milky, spicy tomato-spangled soup and seafood. Salty and rich and kicking like a bull.

The sides were laid out like beautiful archipelagos of flavour. Vividly varied in colours and textures and (with all of that cheese and meat) somewhat resuscitating to the body, the spirit and the will. Churrasco is an art. A bit like approaching a relationship with a man who waxes his chest, you have to take it slowly and steadily and figure out how much you can handle in order for the experience to not be tragic. Set your foodie nose a couple of degrees closer to the ground, get over the fact that it's all you can eat (quantity is usually the enemy of quality), get over the fact that it's in the Italian Forum (shudder). Contrary to every pre-conception I had, The Flavour of Brazil is seriously amazing food - if you're yet to churrasco, let it be here.

Come in a big group and leave over 2 hours for the meal, you have to be able to settle in between courses to make the most of it. The staff is lovely and attentive and if you pace yourself, you really will get a lot of moo, oink and baa for your stingy little buck. Unfortunately, we didn't get to try the legendary BBQ pineapple with brown sugar + cinnamon, everyone raves about this so do like we didn't, and make sure there's room enough for it at the end.

The Flavour of Brazil happens at shop 20, 23 Norton St Leichhardt. Call them on 9572 9479 to secure a spot on busy, busy Brazilian weekends. Nissa tells me her lovely Zumba teacher puts a very flashy show on for diners on Friday and Saturday nights. I don't think it'll actually burn any calories watching someone else rip up the restaurant floor, but hey, it can't hurt, can it?

Churrasco. Jesus Christ! Prometheus might have given the world fire, but it's taken those amazing latinos to do something really special with it. There are too many overpriced, crappy places in Sydney. It's refreshing (in a flame-grilled, parmesan crusted-fat dripping kind of way) to experience affordable, fun and exotic quality. If you're ever going to let anyone stick it to you Brazilian style, make sure it's these guys.

when my belly, when my belly smiles at me I go to Rio...

Why Did The Chickens Cross The Road?

2011-02-04T22:53:00.000-08:00

I've given up chicken in real life, so it kind of seems right to let them go from the banner. the cake + the knife will be getting a much needed face-lift and (even more needed) banner reduction surgery over the coming weeks. Talented friends have been enlisted to tart the site up, I can't wait to see the results, even if you can. Until then, there's bound to be some unsightly swelling, but I know you're not superficial. Tell me it was the personality you were after, and not the looks x A.

Shot Through The Mouth + You're To Blame...

2011-02-02T23:05:00.000-08:00

Annandale. A post office, an intersection that inspires multi-lingual profanity even on a good day, a pizza shop and a busy roundabout adjacent to a purveyor of well priced manure. Let's face it, Annandale was never where anyone ever went to rock or roll. It used to be where recently married 30 year old somethings with a slight artistic bent who (in the hopes of a different kind of enrichment) traded in spectrum for the domain and went to have well adjusted, dairy-intolerant children behind moderately sized white picket fences. But that's just the edifice, step into a little backstreet off Johnston and you might find a little revolution afoot. Shot through the mouth, and you're to blame ...(Revolver), you give other cafes...a baaad nammme.

CakeKnifeWives, it's time I took you for a little turn, roughly 360 degrees around, all the way towards Revolver, Annandale. All the way behind and deeper into the chirpy suburban backstreets lies this renovated little denizen of drool that houses some of the most intense caking, coffeeing (and pickling) the Sydney cafe scene has to offer. It's a secret the locals were trying to keep under well-fed wraps, but word about revolver is definitely out-and-very-about. If you haven't gotten your molars dirty, Revolver style, then you're just not being very nice to your teeth. Well. What are you waiting for? Are you ready to Yumble?

In a culinary epoch that offers the dubious virtues of soy cheese, vegan chicken, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and people who count the calories in their spittle, think of the existence of the ultimate cheeseburger w smoked mozzarella old school pickles + rosemary salted chats as Foodie-Soul-Redemption. There is something so 70's/80's about this burger. It reminds me of milk bars and pocket money and pinching boys you liked. It belongs to an era when the only artificial thing that touched a cow was a milk maid's hand cream. OldSchool and real. Its intense meaty, smoked-cheese-tart-homemade-pickled-relishedness isn't for just anyone. Like war, love, and the manual settings on an SLR camera - it's only for The Brave. Who among you will answer its call?

Celeste did. And she testified that it was a gorgeous gob-glob of earthly juiciness. Luscious meat and fresh, wet tomato packed in oh-so-delightedly-tightedly with a good honest slice of garish beetroot makes for old school burgering that will possibly make your eyes drool more than your mouth. It is foxy, creamy and stunning, the bread is the perfect cradle for the beautiful slab of not-too-cooked beef and salad and sticky sauces. The epic amount of smoked mozzarella layers the deep, rich meat in clouds and clouds of salty, subtle creaminess. Upon returning again to revolver I tried a big section of burger without the meat... and died. These are singlemouthedly the most exciting pickles I have ever had. They make them in the kitchen and they should feature within the top 5 on any list of things to do before you die. You honestly won't believe that the depth of taste that emanates from the slithering saltiness of one of these home-made pickles actually belongs to what was once a humble cucumber. If a burger before 10am isn't your style, then how about this:

Dad and Dan were both man enough for revolver's big brekkie. On wooden slabs in heavy black pans is exactly where you want to wake up. It's a cosy bed of two baked fresher-than-a-fourteen-year-old-at-the-movies eggs in house-made baked beans, with honey cured bacon, roast tomato, pork-fennel sausage and toast. Vegans and Muslims. Don't even think about it. You'll hurt yourself, you will. Delicious and sizzling, it's absolutely divine to watch the intense orange of a burst yolk spilling into the tomato and beans. The veggified version with danish fetta and hummus is a more pig-friendly option that doesn't sacrifice anything in deliciousness.

Summery special salads abound as well. This was the trout-flickered brown rice with roast vegetable and papaya. A chilled, oiled, gorgeous mess of rice and fish, with the roast vegetables to break up the colour and flavour. Salty and crunch speckled with the cool, chilled pink of tantalizing troutliness.

The tasmanian trout on sweet corn rosti w caramelised onion, avocado + lemon fetta was like finger painting on a plate. The tasmanian trout probably heard about how nice the rostis are at Revolver and decided to swim directly across the Bass Strait and up the East coast all by its forward-thinking-self.

The corn-spangled rosti plays cheeky hide-and-seek with you under layers of peaceful avocado, parsley-speckled-trout and dreamy dollops of fetta. And the purple splash of caramelised onion is perfect.

This is delicate and light and beautiful. One of my favourite things about this dish was the composition. Each flavour and colour kept to its own little section, it made the contrast wonderful and allowed you to work your way through different textures and tastes without having to suffer a standard bite of everything. It's so lovely and rustic to serve food this way.

The eggs benny are pretty famous, as well. As is the 9 hour roasted lamb bruschetta. However, both of this dishes suffer from one common, fatal failing: they're savoury, not sweet...and sweetness (at some point in every good girls day) just becomes down right necessary...

Rodney, the man behind the Revolver gun, knows a good cake. He does after all claim the earthly fortune of calling the baker-heart-breaker Barbara, Mum. All you have to do is see one of these taunting, tawdry treats to be glad as hell that they kept it in the family. The desserts are unapologetically classic: 1960's OldSchool mouth-pow-wow. We all go in for the pannacottas and the tirimasus, its so-souffle and beacoup-bruelee to do foreign sweet-somethings these days. We might have forgotten our cakey roots, but thank god Barbara hasn't...

Australians all, let us rejoice. The Vanilla Slice. It's back, Barbara style. The humble pie-shop smoko treat has gotten a new lease on its cakely life under the masterful direction of this woman who knows how to make an incendiary, frenziedly texture cream.

As soon as the vanilla slice appeared at the table (like prince charming on a gilded plate headed for the fairy tale of my stomach) I had the girls at the next table asking if it was my first time. Yes, yes it was. I was about to be touched for the very first time. The Vanilla Slice Groupies started frothing at the mouth about how unbelievable this treat was and advised me to fetch a sharp knife - posthaste - so I could cut into the almost bovinely dense pastry-body of this sweetly saccharine seraph.

Think stodgy, sticky, tricky vanilla insanity as cream. It is dizzying sugared-velvet on a stupefied tongue. Denser than denial but twice as custardly-comforting. Real whipped eggs. Layers upon layers of honeyed confusion. Lightness and heaviness all swathed in a sure, strong vanilla mouth-slick.

The crowning layer - like Colin Firth's Darcy's brooding brow - almost defies penetration. A dumbstruck butter knife has to beat into it with ever quickening force to separate the gorgeously honeyed velour of those syrup-sticky-stuckity-stuck layers. This spins on your fork. It dances and sparkles and smiles. Barbara's addition of real passionfruit in the icing is the culinary equivalent of being on an operating table and moving slowly towards the light: intoxicating, overpowering and celestial. Glorious, glorious passionfruited vanilla heartsong. The SharpSlapTang of the passionfruit laces the sugary-vanilla-cream with just the perfect amount of twist and spike to leave you in a dizzied jumble of your own abandoned passions.

The orange syrup cake is just as lovely. Dipping a sly fork into a wedge of this will leave beautiful spider-web-like strands of syrup tracing behind the dazzled fork in the shy morning light. Sparked with orange, zesty and fresh and moistly-rich, astounding cake. Celeste loved the no-nonsense chocolate cake with chocolate icing, and Mum and Dad edge closer and closer to a diabetic coffin with ample helpings of the daily muffins.

Chuck one of the best lattes I have had (and consistently) into the mix with some home-made tea blends, fresh juices and quirky sodas, and it really is enough to make your toes scrunch. This is an impeccable translation of dream into reality. You can tell that the owners have put all of their ventricles and aortas into the design of the menu, the design of the space and the way they bring it all artfully together. Here's to taking your imagination out for a walk in the real world! Well done, Rodney + Crew.

Revolver happens at 291 Annandale St, Annandale. Ph 9555 4727. It's Monday - Sunday 8am to 4pm.

Seriously, get here. Even if it's just for the coffee alone. This is a great place for breakfast and lunch, the more mature crowd is actually a nice change from SurryHillsBondi tweens and their partially exposed punk-rock derrieres. Besides. Older crowds make me feel younger! The prices are pretty impressive when you consider how ample the serves are - and how superior the ingredients. The space has a really lovely feel, clean and buzzing but peaceful outside, and with a very attentive, cheerful service. The love is there in the coffee, in the food, in the did-it-themselves renovations and in the fact that Barbara is usually around giving Rodney a helping hand on busier days. Aww, shucks. Where would we be without our mums? Come, then, come one, come all, and come now.

Revolver: it's totally Bang-Bang!

Catching Fire at Porteno, Surry Hills...

2011-01-28T18:48:00.000-08:00

Che Guevara fought, and he stood. He stood for many things. The good man was all about standing. Standing up to - and standing up for. He even said it is better to die standing than to live on your knees - well it's certainly better for your kneecaps at the very least. Che. Brave, fearless and good. Who doesn't love the man? This Argentinian would-be-doctor, Marxist-Revolutionary who tore through history and inequity on a ramshackle motorcycle is still there, young and beautiful, frozen in the faded mists of our starry imaginations. Che was a good many noble things, I know, but by God, whatever else he was... the man was bloody Hot. I have to capitalize the H, that's how Hot he was. Not just sort of hot. I am talking damn fine. Drop-Dead Striking. Dreamy-Starry-Beret'd Beauty. Even my (straight) father can't talk about Che without alluding to his deep-eyed, bearded, revolutionary handsomeness and burning up somewhere in the confines of his heterosexual subconscious. It seems we are always, always (like a moth)...drawn to the flame.

And everything inspired by Argentina, like Che, seems to be born of the flames. Hotter-than-hot Surry Hills HotSpot - Porteno - sizzlingly continues this incendiary tradition from the hollows of its hallowed hearth to the cool, white world of the pristine plate. Word about Porteno has certainly been spreading like wild fire, and it was at 6pm with no booking on a Friday that Tats and I finally found our way into the Cleveland St foothills, ready to scale the culinary heights of a truly edible Andes. A huge Spanish style white-washed edifice with a dark interior leads to a light and rustic space where authentic Argentinian tiles, light fixtures and wrought iron transport us, to the sinuous strains of a tango, very, very far away...

...we couldn't possibly still be in Sydney, could we, not when the waiter looks like this. CakeKnifeAmigos, meet Eric (aka Eduardo). Styled, dappy-dappa-dapper (in blacker), with a quick, easy smile and a cavernous belly-laugh, he was every bit the charming-Che-esque part. I can't say whether it was the black bow-tie, the attentive service, the earring or the slicked back do in which I could've probably seen my own inner-awe reflected if I had ever cared to look - but both Tats and I were absolutely smitten. Under the groomed guidance of that epic mustache (which I think we should christen El Stacho), Eric deftly guided us through a menu as rustically charming as it was sufficiently lavish enough for el presidente. Hola! What. Have. We. Here?

Sydney dining is finally enjoying a revolution. One comes to Porteno not to eat, but to feast - and no less. Marinated Olives and Spiced Eggplant have a Mexican Standoff with Fruit-Woodfired Sufolk Lamb and Blood Sausage w Red Peppers + Garlic. This is heady, sensuous, voluptuous food - fired, marinated and Argentiniated. And with all of the glorious aesthetics of unapologetic, Roman-Emperoresque carnivoredom. Food got too pretty for a while there. Too styled, too sterile, too White-Table-Cloth+Silver-Spoon. That's not how they roll at Porteno, not at all. This is the dark side. And delicious carnage goes a little something like this...

Splayed meat on metal contraptions burning like black-black sin within open woodfires, a startling apparition in flesh and flame and brick. If you watch closely enough, you might even be able to see Satan. Bones and skin and whole carcasses parade before your twinkling eyes. Porteno is medieval magic. The Restaurant/Bar is brilliantly conceived. It's a showcase of fire and skill - you watch the meat burning and being sliced and taken apart. The process draws you in and makes you feel welcome and warm and generous and relaxed. It's entirely sharp but not at all formal. There's a natural friendliness and ease that emanates from the quick footed, suave staff. The open dining hall is supposed to make you feel that even at a mere table for two, it's really a party with everyone else - laughing and drinking amidst the quick, silver glint of wooden-handled blades carving into succulent strips of ragingly roasted flesh. Good Restaurants should be theater as much as anything else, and this one's Evita.

Tats gets his merlot on while we plot the best way to line our bellies. So many courses. It all began with the ensalada palermo viejo, this dish might actually be the most fun you can have for fourteen bucks.

Simple and Beautiful. This is what happens when BBQ eggplant, pearl barley, tahini and preserved lemon decide to hold cool, spicy tomato-spangled hands. Although it could have been just a little more burnt, the eggplant is soft and glisteningly oiled beneath the barley, parsley and tahini. Chilled and plump and salted, with a recurrent echo of preserved lemon punch and startling in red vs green.

Spoons and forks easily slip into the eggplantiness, dollop it with some of the rich tahini and the smoothness of it all contrasts wonderfully with the little shards of gentle, pearl barley. Tomato and onion for crunch, a little chili powder like fairy dust, parsley for GreenFresh and it's a chilled, creamy beauty, alive and rich and full, but, like a tawdry romance before the love of your life: soon forgotten in all that ensued...

The bonito w palm heart, avocado + pickled celery is probably the reason that the human throat even learnt to gasp. Gasp. Do it. Actually practice your gasp before you come to Porteno and lay claim on this little wonder, you want to be able to say you got it just right. Anyone who knows you were lucky enough to sample this dish will not cry for you, Argentina. The plate is a perfect mess of glistening greens and crunchy-whites and pale-fish pink - drowning in a tarrying tangle of dizzying dill. It is infusion gone decidedly and delectably: bonkers.

Cross my heart and hope to die, this was a paranormal phenomenon. Different fish. The gorgeous flesh of the silky-striped bonito is yet to gain the acclaim in Australia that it has overseas (kind of like Tania Zaetta). Bonito is the protagonist in any good dashi and you've probably eaten it in Japanese food without knowing it is wonderful in its own fleshy right. It's oily without being as overpoweringly fishy as salmon or trout, it is subtle and smooth and salty and deep. And at Porteno, it is cooked to Wow.

These little slivers of smoked bonito were swathed in dreamy-tart sauce into which the bountiful dill blended into and out of seamlessly. The fish had such a crazy, delicious smokiness to it that you tasted as much as you felt.

The Palm heart and pickled celery were just about the best garnish I think I have ever had. The celery was tart, crunchy and North-Shore cold and the palm heart so subtle and smooth with a vegetabley denseness that was almost unthinkable. Each bite was so varied, it was more collage that food. To you I must hiss that this is the most original fish dish for which you could ever wish. Salty-flaky-oiled-fish-dallying-in-dill-smart-tart-smack-prickle-tongue-lip-fresh-pickled-celery-palm scream. Go on, let it out. It's not healthy to keep it in. If El Stacho was a meal, he would definitely be this.

Knife up, kids. Gets your blades sharp and your forks poised, chanchito a la cruz (the woodfired suckling pig) is about to get crackling, and I know you don't want to miss out...

Hey pig, yeah you, hey pig piggy pig pig pig

All of my fears came true...

Nothing can stop me now

I just don't care...

Hey pig, nothing's turning out the way I planned

Hey pig, there's a lot of things I thought you could help me understand

What am I supposed to do,

I lost my shit because of you...

Okay, I know Reznor wasn't talking about Porteno's suckling pig when he penned those lyrics, but they perfectly describe my feelings towards this poor, sumptuous porker that suckled on its mothers milk and wouldn't have lived to see 7 weeks of life in this pork-frenzied world. Eating baby animals is like eating nutella from the jar: wrong and so, so good.

Porteno's woodfired piggy is something else. It's definitely one piggy to get into your middle sometime soon. Putting a wee pause on pescetarianism, I had to try a bite, I couldn't help it. It was divine: subtle, flaky, smoky pork, so flavoursome and salty I almost oink'ed. I couldn't bring myself to try the crackling, but Tatsu (with his Japanese Metabolism) was in double-crisped-salty-pig-sizzle-skin-fat heaven. So rustic and beautiful and vividly piggy. It comes on a no-nonsense slab of wood with and a pot of green-hot-oiled Argentinian sauce to spoon all over.

If suckling pig isn't your thing, there's no going wrong with Coorong Angus sirloin and beef short ribs. There's even a beef inside skirt you might do well to look up.

Sides sparkle in antioxidant islands alongside ample mounds of sumptuous meat. There's the Crispy fried brussel sprouts with lentils + mint. If your mum knew how to cook sprouts like this then she never would have had a hard time getting you to eat them. The Roasted beetroot w blood orange, witlof and radish speckled with walnuts made an appearance at the table next to us. Despite how beguiling it looked, we were definitely Too Full.

But when someone like Eric suggests a sweet finish in the form of the peanut smashed postre chaja - what's a gal to do? Think desconstructed LatinoPavlova w peanuts, sticky-tricky-pretty-dirty dulce del leche and shards of meringue spiked sponge with hidden pockets of custardly cream.

Caramel white-spiked-sugar-crunch-nut mess in sticky OhMyGod. If you're currently single/celibate this is definitely a viable substitute. It's light and fun and brassy caking, with luscious creaminess and poached fruit softness slipping into dry-crunch, crumbling into soft, silken, spongey-cream.

Ben + Elvis...thank god you didn't leave the foodie building with Bodega. Porteno is punk-rock BBQ for people who know good food, by people who know good food. Sweet, sweet Sarah of the ethereal flaxen-40's curls, runs the floor with such an amiable sincerity that you know no matter how smart they run the shop, it's all food, love and family behind the scenes.

If you don't get in early you can hang ten (x 4) in the soon to be relaunched bar upstairs, dusky and in black with deep-dark-blood-red and finished with paintings of Argentinian football players. There's even an antique foosball machine in the upstairs nook - perfect for anti-social boyfriends who wouldn't mind burning off some crackling indued calories with all of that swift, cardiovascular wrist action.

Porteno happens at 358 Cleveland St, Surry Hills. Ph 8399 1440, Website here.

Sarah and Eric, you are walking testimonials to the food, the fun and to your hairdresser. Thanks for a rollicking night x, we'll be back. To Tats, I think you're going to miss me when you're gone.

Porteno: real, roasted and rocking, and not just another brick in the Sydney-restaurant wall. Get your hair oiled, get your suits pressed, get every friend you ever had and head in for an experience that is made for a hungry, happy crowd. The hype is completely justified. Porteno is freedom fighting as food, it's a revolution on flames, it's a slaying of the beast and it's edible Che - all of the way.

Single + Fabulous (Exclamation Point)...aka Single Origin Cafe, Surry Hills.

2011-01-25T19:40:00.000-08:00

Punctuation. It changes everything. You know what I mean! You know what I mean? Every now and then something comes along in life that can only be expressed in proper punctuation: Johnny Cash! Shane Warne? Lethal body odour on public transport on a hot day... Earl Grey Chocolate!? Life; Garish. Prominent. Breast. Implants. On. 50. Year. Old. Women. Who. Could. Be. Your. Grandmother. Punctuation: where would we be without it?/. I first came across the Single Origin brand on a 2008 stint to Perth. All the way across the other side of this sunburnt country was where I was lucky enough to fall mouth first into a gasp-worthy little latte in an inner-city cafe. I was promptly informed, after promptly inquiring, that it was the beany, caffeinated brain-child of a boutique roaster in Surry Hills: Single Origin. And Being Single really is better, especially when any roasters worth their grind no longer merely bean, they toastie and bircher, as well - and to very, very delicious effect. Single Origin Cafe has been a happy and welcome part of my life ever since I dropped in, there's no question (mark) about it...

Single Origin Cafe is Single + Fabulous, exclamation point. A bit like our good friend Tats. Not only is it rocking an eponymous beatific-brew of consummately warm, nuttied full-bodieded bean, but it has a breakfast and lunch lineup that it is as thoughtful as it is scrummy. At the S.O cafe, poise meets punch: the food is equal part discerning, equal part ballsy. Different and delicious. A little bit cafe, a little bit fine dining, like a ballerina in a white tutu donning worn out black cons and some smudged mascara. It's perfect and it's punk, but it's all grown up.

The lunch menu is something of a seasonal celebration. Keeping ourselves cool and calm in a lavishly minted iced tea, we sussed out a menu that offered way too many delectable paths diverging in what was an extremely yellow wood. Options options options. Beauty really is the beginning of terror: a duck liver parfait with stone fruit chutney and pulled bread...smoked wagyu beef burger w green apple, daikon + wasabi cream? Or a late January Christmas turkey sanga w cranberry stuffing + gravy? We definitely aren't in Kansas any more, Toto. Lunch is a brave affair at Single Origin, and like it or not...you will try something different - and love it.

Tatsu settles on the Watermelon Gazpacho w Cucumber Sorbet, Jalapeno + Prawn. Cooler than the recent offspring of the Kerr-Bloom's, this is a crimson-frozen wonder waltzing in winsome watermelon. The little globs of studded prawn are fresh and salty and succulent, and perfectly puncture the chilli and cucumber sorbet. This is delightful and surprising and so welcome on a Summers day. Icy and spicy and nicey in a pale red-green puddle with specks of crunchy purple - so seamlessly sensory.

My curiosity was not going to shut up until it got it's fill of the Kooky CoconuttedLimed Kingfish Tartar w Betel Leaves. This dish is a wee, dainty little lunch-world all unto its own salubrious self. It arrives on a wooden chopping board, sectioned up in disparate elements for you to compose into exotic little betel-wrapped, munch-worthy morsels. It looks precious and pretty.

This oily, chillied relish is deep and firey and tomatoish. It adds the necessary heaviness to ground the cool, wet kingfish in. Diced and delectable, like a sashimi bruschetta, the textured pocket of slippery fish is herbed and dressed to perfection. The texture is beautiful, creamy and smooth with little islands of toothsome crunch. Dolloping cloudy spoonfuls of mesmerizing fish onto a stunned betel leaf, rolling it up like a dark, pretty secret and dipping it into a little of the chilli adds a whimsical touch of exotic ritual, redolent of distant palm trees and paradises, to an inner-city lane way lunch. Being warned that this was one of the smaller dishes on the menu provided the perfect pretext for doing a very naughty thing...

The breakfast menu was sitting there, all lonesome and wallflowerish at 1pm. They'd stopped serving it over an hour ago. Poor Little Breakfast. You shouldn't be restrained to a particular time of day. Your roasted-muesli-beguiling-bircher-bouncing-toasted-handmade-nutella-sandwich-with-banana beauty should be available all the good, burning day long. What is high noon, what is a clock and time and all of God's whirring history when there are homestyle beans, curried kedgeree, hollandaise and slow roasted tomato to be had? Time, you fickle bugger. You might wrinkle me, paint me grey and take away everyone I know and love, but you'll never get in the way of a good lunch. Nu uh. Not on my clock. I'll take whatever breakfast I can get, even at 1pm.

The Four Cheese Toastie probably wasn't the wisest thing for someone who really hasn't been sticking to her gym schedule with quite the vigour and consistency she should be to order. But hey, I tried ordering the Bircher and they couldn't do it after 11.45, so the four cheese toastie seemed the only way to go. I could've asked for one cheese, but that would have been so lost and lonely, just one cheese between two slabs of enveloping sourdough. Two cheeses is more Romeo + Juliet, but whereforeartthou, Mercutio? And then three is an odd number, so I may as well let them add another. Four Cheese Toastie: you dirty, delicious sticky-salty-mustard-licked-little-cheese-filled, grilled transgression. Sin as Sandwich. Tangy and creamy and with thick-crunchy OldSchool bread - and with an inch of token green on the side. Cholesterol honestly never tasted so damn good. You must try this sandwich. Go onnn...do it! Your gallbladder can pick up the pieces later. That's what it's there for!

A sublime, milky latte - beguiling of bean, and you have everything you ever came into this wonderful life for: a good brew, a killer sandwich and some great company. You simply can't put a fussy taste-bud wrong at Single Origin. The food is so intelligent it probably has a higher IQ than you, but don't take that personally. Single Origin, we love you and everything you touch turns to yum.

Alas, as if they were actually taunting us, they only open weekdays. I guess when you're this good, it's definitely your pretty, little prerogative to call (and brew) the shots. Single Origin is a great Sydney story, from humble (single) origins into the oft fickle heights of Starry-Sydney-Foodie-Heaven. An ethical, solid stellar. Lovely, attentive staff mean that you shouldn't be deterred by the inevitable crowds you'll probably run into at peak lunch and brekkie times. It's worth an itsy bitsy wait.

Single Origin Cafe happens at 60-64 Reservoir St, Surry Hills. Ph: 9211 0665, Website here.

Great Coffee + Epic Food. Exclamation Point!