Midtown Cafe - Sydney

A chic cafe located just next to the George St. cinemas. The main appeal of this place is its convenient location and they open till quite late, so if I'm feeling peckish after watching such blockbusters as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen or Eatlikeacow: the Movie (oh, ha ha very funny. I'm soo creative), you can bet that I'll drop by.



Oh, wow. What a cool effect, huh?

It's actually a photo of chandeliers in the cafe taken with a very, very shaky camera. How did I achieve this cool effect? I won't reveal how. Sorry. Amateur photographer's code. (note to self: it's not like I'm a magician with magician's code). Oh, okay - I'll speak, I'll speak.
Actually, my camera was broken and it vibrated a lot. So, when it vibrated like crazy, I used the opportunity to take this like, totally super awesome shot.

Okay - enough randomness and let's get to the food ASAP!




Okay. Maybe a couple more non-food photos and THEN I'll get to the food!!

Bruschetta

-> This is simply the BEST bruschetta I've tasted in a long time (time to go to Italy, I guess?) LOL. Anyway, it has a kick-arse avocado salsa and very high butter content (which equals total yum-ness). It's such a satisfying treat

(BTW, "kick-arse"?? "yum-ness"?? what happened to my vocabulary? A few months of not writing a blog really takes a toll on my fantabulous vocabulary. Oh my. How utterly derisory and farcical. THERE! I can still remember a few big words!)

Rating: 7/10

The artworks and posters on this cafe is so delightful and amusing. It's really my kind of stuff. Just look at this poster by Mauzan. Impressive! Very 1920s. Very Art Deco.





-> My oh my. I don't even remember what this dish is called. Okay, let me explain it to you instead. It's basically a firm-fleshed fish (Barramundi or John Dory) baked inside layers of mashed potato, mozzarella, and what tastes like either Bearnaise sauce or slightly savory Bechamel. This is a VERY piping hot dish (because it's baked, duhh). The texture is a delight, but taste-wise it's a tad bland because as you can see there's no strongly-flavoured ingredient in this dish. After a few bites, this dish does get a little bit tedious on the stomach.

Rating: 6/10

Tenda - Haymarket, Sydney

A new-ish Indonesian restaurant just a teeny tiny bit outside Chinatown (I honestly have no clear idea of the exact boundaries of Sydney's Chinatown - as far as I'm concerned the whole Sydney City CBD is in fact, Chinatown) LOL. Anyway, I really think that the term "Chinatown" should be gradually phased out and changed into "Asiantown". It's kind of unfair to call them all Chinese since there are so many Asian ethnicities in Chinatowns...LOL

Any new Indonesian restaurants in the City should be warmly welcomed, IMO. Most Indonesian restaurants in Sydney are concentrated in the Randwick-Kingsford-Kensington-Maroubra area (also known as the Indonesian Colony or Indonesiatown). Kind of make sense, really, since most Indonesians live in those 4 suburbs in Sydney. However, for us City / downtown kids (what the...how corny and ostentatious) it's such a hassle if we have to travel 30 minutes just to grab a bite of ridiculously overpriced, somewhat fake-tasting Tempe (soybean cake). Note: Tempe in Sydney costs a whopping 15 - 20 times more expensive than in Jakarta.

Gado-Gado
Steamed vegetable salad with peanut sauce dressing

-> Words cannot describe how BAD this Gado-Gado is. I'm really sorry, but even I can make a much better Gado-Gado. Heck, even my servant in Jakarta (who's notoriously bad at cooking) makes a better Gado-Gado. To make things worse, this dish costs 9 bucks. Oh well, I guess rent in the City is expensive.
BTW, this is a Gado-Gado Siram (a type of Gado-Gado in which steamed vegetables are arranged on a plate, then splashed / covered with dressing) as opposed to the IMO superior Gado-Gado Ulek (the whole dish, including the sauce, is prepared on a large stone mortar and the sauce is made from fresh peanut & herbs / ingredients ground with a pestle)

Rating: 2/10

Mie Ayam
Indonesian Chicken Noodle

-> A quintessential Chinese-Indonesian dish. The original fusion food that preceded any fusion Indonesian food. Whatever. Served with a tiny bowl of bakso (meatball) soup. Funny thing: on the menu, this dish is described as "Indonesian Ramen". What the?? Well, even though it's TECHNICALLY correct, I don't think they should use that description. Kind of SAD, really - Indonesian food is so unpopular in Sydney they have to use that sort of description to attract customers.

Rating: 7/10

Bakso & Pangsit Goreng
Fried meatballs & fried wontons

-> Comes with the noodle set. My foreign friend was so reluctant to try the meatball thing because it resembles nothing he's ever eaten before.

Rating: 6/10

Sate Ayam, Sate Sapi, Sate Kambing
Assorted satay (chicken, beef, lamb)

-> Ah, finally a decent dish. Averaging at around $1.70 per stick, I STILL think it's a tad pricey (sizes are small-ish). But it's good nevertheless. I especially like the lamb satay - I almost NEVER eat lamb in Indonesia because for some people...Indonesian lambs can be very strong in aroma (or should I say odor). That's why some Indonesians consider lamb as 'dirty' meat.

Anyway, that's not the main point. The main point is, Australian lamb comes from those cute fluffy and not-so-odorous-depending-on-the-situation SHEEP. Indonesian lamb comes from those skinny, dirty, catastrophically-odorous GOATS. Sheep's meat tend to be more tender and less odorous than goat's meat. Also, Indonesian goats have bad image compared to Australian sheep, and let me explain why. You see, the only chance you can see a live goat in Jakarta is around the Eid-al-Adha, which is an important festival in the Muslim calendar. During this celebration, people would buy a hewan qurban, which are live animals for offering, usually goats (for the middle-class people) and cows (for the moneyed). These livestocks are displayed on various spots in the city, usually near market complexes or open fields transformed into makeshift livestock display areas. Every Eid-al-Adha, whenever I'm driving around the suburbs passing at those poor goats waiting for sembelih (to be slaughtered), I can't help but feel terribly sorry for them. I can't bear looking at those melancholic eyes, and looking at their skinny bodies, it's not like they've had a GREAT life, they should just die naturally, I reckon.
Whereas in Australia, the only chance I get to see live sheep is at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, a festival in which farmers from around Australia compete to show their fattest, greatest, cutest, plumpest, stoutest, most beautiful and prized livestocks. Looking at those cute, fat, smiling sheep makes me feel hungry. They've had a great life. It's okay to eat them.

Rating: 7.5/10

Ikan Goreng
Fried fish

-> Someone please ID this fish...this...overpriced tiny fish. It tastes okay, but look at that face! So annoying...

Rating: 6/10

Wagaya - Haymarket, Sydney

A few days ago, I realized that I was probably the only Asian in Sydney that have never been to Wagaya before. Well, I've BEEN there five times, but I never got to actually DINE there. For you hikikomori-s (shut-ins) out there, Wagaya is that immensely popular, always packed, uber hi-tech (in Sydney's standard anyway) izakaya in Chinatown that opened their doors for business in the beginning of this year. Cla has been there before, and on her post, she mentioned that one should get a reservation when one wishes to dine there - even on weekdays - but silly me, I decided to ignore her tip. Five times.


Well, they say sixth time is a charm, so on the sixth occasion that I visited Wagaya, I actually get to eat there, too. It sure helped to book a table in advance (I don't believe in luck. In my life, I've never been significantly lucky).

It was a full house, with superfluous amount of people waiting to get a table. After smirking smugly at those poor, hungry and hopeful potential diners *suckerss*, my companions and I proceeded to our table. Well, I'm sure all of you dear readers have heard about their fabled automated ordering system using touch-screen computers (if not, refer to Cla's Wagaya post). Press a picture of a sushi boat, and the said item will be delivered to you in no time. Press a picture of a glass of water, and a nice, smiling waitress would be ready in front of you holding a pitcher of iced water in a matter of seconds. You get the drill.

It's all fun and novel, and apart from the fact that one of my companions kept on talking and talking about the OS (Operating System) behind their automated touch-screen device *yawn*, I'd say that my dining experience was moderately pleasant. Pleasant, but a little bit impersonal. I don't know...I mean, call me an old grampy, but it's as if I was dining in a restaurant operated by robots. I'm all for technology (in fact, that's my line of business), but I much prefer a human being taking my orders, thank you very much.

Chicken Karaage

-> Standard. Predictable. But not bad. In fact, I often order chicken karaage in a restaurant I've never been to before because I know there's little chance a restaurant can screw up a karaage. You know, in case the other dishes are bad, at least there's a standard-tasting karaage.

Rating: 6.5/10

Sukiyaki

-> Err...hit-and-miss. The beef is good, but somehow the rest of the ingredients fail to 'cohere' with each other. In nabe (skillet) dishes, it is important that different ingredients are used, but there must be some sort of 'cohesion' between them. I especially object to the over-mushy tofu and the fact that they add carrots and bean sprouts to the dish - which IMO do not cohere with the rest of the ingredients. It is also worth noting that carrots and bean sprouts are almost never used in cooking a traditional sukiyaki.

Rating: 6/10

Ox Tongue Nikomi

-> A nice, innovative dish. Tender, melt-in-your-mouth ox tongues combined with a pleasant medley of curry-tomato-ish sauce, topped with grated parmesan. No wonder they recommend this dish.

Rating: 7.5/10

Chicken Nanban

-> Not the best I've tasted in Sydney (that distinction belongs to Azuma's and Takeru's delicious chicken nanban), but okay. I love how the tartar sauce is light airy.

Rating: 7/10

Ishikari Nabe

-> A typical Hokkaido dish. Very nice, especially for me who just LOVE eating 'difficult' portions of a fish. By difficult, I mean fleshy parts of fish that are obscure and requires a skill to actually extract the meat part and eat them. Think fish head curry (love 'em).
Anyway, the soup is delightful. It's kind of like akamiso, but slightly sweeter.

Rating: 7.5/10

Grilled Salmon

-> Nice. From the texture, I can tell that it's slowly grilled in open fire.

Rating: 7.5/10

Tokyo Ramen

-> Slightly below average. Be careful when ordering ramen, especially when you're not in a ramen restaurant.

Rating: 5/10

Turquoise

-> Minty, sprite-y, and turquoisey. Can't complain. (better still if it is spiked, LOL)

Rating: 8/10

*Burrrrrp*

La Brasserie - Darlinghurst, Sydney

Gigantic posting: My birthday dinner!
(now with extra descriptions and pretentious French words to bore you all!)

Continuing our French odyssey, what more suitable than to have some French fine dining soiree to celebrate this...this...'joyous' occasion (of me getting older). *sob*

La Brasserie in Darlinghurst is the venue of choice - often cited as one of the best French restaurant in Sydney, it's certainly très charmant. The decor is very Parisien, rather dramatic even - dark red drapes reminiscent of cabarets at the Boulevard de Clichy, menu specials scribed on mirrors, Toulouse-Lautrec posters, very chic - very Moulin Rouge.


Most of the staff are French, and that means service is impeccable. Prompt, friendly, attentive, without being too pretentious. Most of the crowd that night were French, too - and they are quite the delightful bunch - albeit the occasional raucous laughter. In short, atmosphere-wise, it's like I was transported to a brasserie on rue de la blablabla in the city of light itself.

The Bread Roll

-> France has a plethora of exquisite wines and cheeses, but that's not all. If you think that the only bread the French eat is the baguette, think again. They've got tons of different types of breads. That's what fascinates me about French cuisine - the variety of their foodstuffs is literally endless. I honestly don't know what this bread is, but if my guess is correct, it's a Pain brié, which is a traditional bread from Normandy.

2005 Château Laroche, Graves
Sémillon (Bordeaux, France)

-> The wine list is quite excellent here in La Brasserie - with an adequate selection of French wines. As usual, I decided to go for white because I feel that white wine is more 'universal' considering that we ordered different types of food. This Sémillon comes from Graves, which is a commune in Bordeaux, France. It is delightfully crisp and earthy. It even goes well with our desserts, too.

...at least that's what I think, LOL. I still maintain that I'm not very knowledgeable about wines. I always try not to ask the sommelier when choosing wines because I want to learn more about wines myself...

Rating: 7.5/10

Civet de Calamar
braised squid with saffron pain perdu, sauce nero

-> Ho ho ho, for those not in the know, 'pain perdu' may sound fancy-schmancy, but it's none other than good ol' French Toast. The saffron, however, pimps this thing up to the level of gourmet food. LOL! It's a delightful interplay of flavor and texture - the pain perdu serves as the perfect base for the rather strong sauce nero (squid ink sauce).

Rating: 8/10

Soufflé au Fromage
twice-baked Gruyère soufflé with cauliflower and salsify

-> My, how posh. I don't think I've eaten salsify before (it's a root-like vegetable) - at least not that I'm aware of. Anyway, this souffle is simply stunning. Rich, tasty, amazing texture due to the fact that it's twice-baked. I love Gruyère cheese, it's one of the Swiss cheeses I'm actually quite familiar with - Ever since I'm little, I remember whenever I'm in Amsterdam and went to one of the cheese markets, my dad always insisted on buying at least two types of cheese - the very aged Dutch Gouda and the Gruyère. We don't go to Amsterdam that often (yeah, 'cause we live in Indonesia!!), but somehow, my mom always manage to have a steady supply of Gouda and Gruyère (either she buys them abroad herself or at local gourmet supermarkets, or by asking someone to buy it for her from abroad). Her famous (and world's BEST) macaroni and cheese is baked to perfection using Gruyère. Mmmm...

Rating: 9.5/10

Escargots à la Bourguignonne
snails baked in their shells with garlic parsley butter and sliced baguette

-> Très délicieux! What can I say!
Instead of sprinkling the butter with some chopped parsley, they actually puree the butter and parsley to create this amazing sauce. The snails are delightful - tender and tasty. Here's a little-known fact: Snails in France (for consumption) are imported mainly from Indonesia.

I must say, it was escargots that made me fell in love with French cuisine. I remember when I was 9, my aunt (a.k.a. my food guru) took me to this Italian restaurant called Maxis Cucina Italiana at Plaza Indonesia. They served mainly Italian food, with a small selection of French food as well. In fact, at that time, there are not many French restaurants in Jakarta - and Maxis is perhaps the only place you can get escargots at that time. I fell in love with escargots the minute I sank my teeth on them. And it's not easy for a nine-year-old to be convinced to eat snails, mind you - especially when my idea of snails were those slimy, crawly things that used to give me nightmares when they infested my garden every rainy season!

Rating: 9/10

Terrine de Campagne
country-style pork and rabbit terrine with onion confiture and sauce gribiche

-> A cold hors d'oeuvre. I really wanted to have some terrine in Sydney - this one is okay, but I was hoping of having a more complicated, elaborate terrine (like those uber-expensive and impossibly decorative terrine served on French restaurants in Japan). However, it is understandable - since La Brasserie is, after all, and old-school French restaurant, and Terrine de Campagne (literally means country-style terrine) is the quintessential terrine. The green stuff is the sauce gribiche, which is a sauce made from oil, capers, and pickles among others. Very nice.

Rating: 8/10

Saumon grillé
crisp skin New Zealand king salmon with étuvée of leeks and savoy cabbage, pomme sautée, watercress sauce

-> Okay - for those who aren't quite knowledgeable about the terms, here we go: étuvée is a method of cooking in which a tiny amount of water is added to the ingredients, and then tightly covered and cooked over very low heat. Pomme sautée is a fancy-schmancy name for stir-fried potatoes.
Anyway, this dish is so pretty. The watercress sauce is splendid - a surprise at first (because of its contrast to the flavor of the fish - the fish salty and tasty and the watercress sauce is fresh and slightly bitter) but pleasantly compatible. A memorable dish!

Rating: 8.5/10

Coq au Vin
red wine braised free range corn fed Thirlmere chicken, Brussels sprout, girolles and lardons

-> What a magnificent dish! Thirlmere chicken is a premium free range chicken from Thirlmere, Southern New South Wales - and what a difference does it make. Succulent, tender, perfect - and that's just the chicken. The sauce is amazing (notice the cutely-arranged girolle mushrooms), the combination of the chicken, sauce, and lardons (bacon strips) are to die for. Couldn't imagine a better Coq au Vin.

Rating: 10/10

Poitrine de Porc
crisp pork belly with wild boar chartreuse, duxelle and cabbage

-> Today's special. Strictly speaking, this dish, to us Chinese, is like a glorified siew yoke (Chinese roast pork!!) LOL LOL and the way they charge 40 bucks for siew yoke may bewilder some Chinese patrons. LOL!! Anyway, in all seriousness - it is somewhat different from Chinese roast pork - I'm not saying that it is tastier, but it's just...different.
Ergo, the wild boar chartreuse becomes the highlight of this dish - delicious, slightly spicy, totally cured and marinated shredded wild boar wrapped in cabbage leaves. Duxelle is basically chopped mushrooms cooked with butter and wine.

Rating (not considering the resemblance of this dish to siew yoke): 8/10
Rating (considering the resemblance): 7/10

Confit de Canard
crisp maryland duck confit with carrot cumin puree, orange-glazed endive, and sauce Rouennaise

-> After some research, I found out that Confit is a specialty of Gascony, France - whereby meat such as duck is preserved using salt and slowly cooked in its own juice. Again, another resemblance to a common Chinese dish - this time, it's the Hakka-Chinese delicacy lap ap (preserved duck). Not as salty, but the texture is very similar. Lap ap (in Mandarin: la ya) is a Chinese delicacy mainly produced by the Cantonese and Hakka people in which duck meat is preserved in salt and oil. It is so salty - my family only consume it once a year - during Chinese new year on which we always order some lap ap from China. This dish, Confit de Canard, however, uses considerably less salt. The puree is sweet and delicious - the cumin gives this puree a hint of curry taste.

Okay. Now I'm going to talk about the Sauce Rouennaise. Remember my whole lecture about French sauces and how HELL it is to make them? Refer to this post:

http://eatlikeacow.blogspot.com/2008/07/kttbullar-by-erique-fat-owl.html

You see, this sauce, Rouennaise, is a step BEYOND Bordelaise sauce. This means, in order to make Rouennaise, you need to make Bordelaise, Demi-glace, Espagnole, Glace de Viande, and Brown Sauce. Each sauce requires more than 3 hours to make, so in order to make this Rouennaise sauce, you need...oh, say...3 YEARS?? No wonder French food are expensive.

Rating: 7.5/10

Fondant au Chocolat
soft-center dark chocolate pudding with coffee foam & hazelnut brittle ice cream

-> Apparently, delicious enough to make my lady friends let out orgasmic screams. Gawd, women DO love chocolate. Warm, gooey chocolate pudding encapsulated in coffee foam. It IS incredibly indulgent.

Rating (according to me): 7.5/10
Rating (according to the laydeez, apparently): 10/10 *AAAaaaHHH*

Gaufre
Belgium waffle with vanilla ice cream and hot chocolate sauce

-> I love this one. Belgium waffle, as you know, is far heavier than normal waffles, and that's why a tiny piece is enough. The chocolate sauce is to die for - warm, just the right viscosity, melts in your mouth...mmm.

Rating: 8/10

Crêpe Suzette
orange crêpes with rhubarb confiture and yogurt sorbet

-> Now this was rather disappointing. Crêpe Suzette is actually one of my all-time favorite dessert, and I was looking forward to traditional Crêpe Suzette. This one, however, is a slightly modified version. It's still very good, though - but the traditional Crêpe Suzette should be completely soaked in sauce and served immediately before the crispiness has gone. That's why Crêpe Suzette should always be made in FRONT of the guest - every five-star French restaurant should have full Crêpe Suzette service, which consists of a cart, portable stove, and suitable pans and utensils. Making the crêpe, flambé-ing it, and serving it right in front you is part of the excitement of having Crêpe Suzette. It's been a long time since I had real Crêpe Suzette served in such manner...

Rating: 7.5/10

Conclusion:
So, another year gone by. I'm getting old, life is so short, blablabla.
French food rocks. Gotta have some more. But for now, as I quote Voltaire from one of my favorite books he wrote, "Candide":

bien amicalement, et mille tendres adieux!
(Best wishes, and a thousand tender good-byes!)

Sizzler - Kogarah, Sydney

First of all, 4 words: what was I thinking.

Look, I haven't been to Sizzler for a Looo-ooong time (last time I went there was when Sizzler was still up-and-running in Jakarta's Pondok Indah Mall - twelve years ago. It was my birthday party with some of my friends). Then, Sizzler was THE place in Jakarta for great all-American salad bar, thick hormone-infused tenderloins, and fluffy waffles and pies with saccharine-sweet syrup just like dear Aunt Jemima made 'em.

Look, back then, Sizzler was awesome. I used to go there with my family at least twice a month. My dad hated it - said it was crappy, and back then, I couldn't understand why. I mean how could a place that lets you self-serve your own sundaes with UNLIMITED amount of M&M's topping possibly be crappy??

Fast forward 12 years later - Sydney, Australia.
Had a BRILLIANT idea to revive a family tradition by going to Sizzler. When I asked my brother if he wants to get a bit of nostalgia by re-visiting the very place that we used to look forward to visiting as children, all he said was "Sizzler? is that thing still around?"

Granted, my insensitive brother is not one of the most sentimental person around when it comes to nostalgia. However, he did agree to the proposal. Sydney has a couple of Sizzler restaurants, and the closest one from the city (where I live) is at Kogarah. This place is like the middle of nowhere. Local Sydneysiders may have heard of the area before, but for us expats, Kogarah sounds like it may as well be near Timbuktu.

So anyway, we went there, walked 20 minutes from the train station, and finally discovered a very American-looking restaurant. Seriously, this Sizzler outlet looks like it's been hand-picked from Anywhere, USA and dropped right at a Sydney suburb.

Mega Bacon Cheeseburger
-> Cold buns. Beef: dry as a bone. VERY salty bacons (hello, high blood pressure and clogged arteries!). Totally inexcusable. I mean, it's HACKED FLESH for goodness sakes, how on EARTH is it even possible to make a DRY burger???

Rating: 2/10

Continuing the story...
As we entered the restaurant, I felt uneasy straight away. For a start, it's filled with obese people constantly hovering around the salad bar. They don't even look like Australians. They REALLY looked like Americans, with their oversized novelty tees, loud sweaters, and trucker caps. And oh, don't forget their equally obese children gobbling up some chocolate sundaes with mountainous amount of M&M's topping.

Look, I'm not saying that I'm skinny, but these people really ARE big. Seriously big. And they don't eat their food, they INHALE their food with wondrous speed. My brother and I got full just by looking at their mounds of food. They're really serious eaters. I turned to my brother, and asked him, "My goodness, did we look like these people when we used to go to Sizzler all the time back home??"
My brother answered, "No - don't be silly. We used napkins when we slurp our spaghetti and eat our sundaes. But I kind of understand why dad hated this place now..."

Oh, dad...bless his heart, it must've been tough on him.

Mini Seafood Platter
-> It's cold, sad, and DRY. The only redeeming part is that I liked the bite-sized calamari. Australians tend to serve those hugeee slices of calamari rings that's just damn hard to eat. Don't you hate oversized calamari rings? I mean, it's not like you can BITE through calamari rings - it's way too chewy and you can't bite it off against the grain.

Rating: 3/10

BTW, the salad bar was HORRIBLE.
Processed chicken, soggy pastas, artificial blue cheese dressing, watery ice cream, bland pumpkin soup. HUGE Croutons the sizes of TEXAS (yeah, like those big people would be stupid enough to fill up on BREAD). And the pièce de résistance...the NASI GORENG SALAD. Sweet Jesus, I can't even imagine how WRONG that is - on so many levels.

...and oh - they put RAISINS on the nasi goreng salad.

By all means, I'm not judging American cuisine here - but I can't help but be reminded of how BAD American junk food can be. No wonder Sizzler has been ridiculed everywhere. It's one of the many faces of obese America.

Now that's one less family tradition that won't make its way to MY family in the future.

I just hope my kids would appreciate going to Sushi Tei or Tonkichi because that's where I'm taking my kids for 'fun weekend brunch with daddy' in the future (mmm...gourmet...).

Man, they're going to have a SUCKY childhood, aren't they...

*come on son, eat your wakame salad with yuzu dressing!*
*No, dad, I want chocolate sundaes with M&M's!!!*