Enter the Quaniverse

I had this on a list of restaurants to try after reading Terry Durack’s very positive review in the Sydney Morning Herald in June 2010. But it took me over a year to get there and not a minute too soon!

My pal, D., arranged dinner for six. I knew the restaurant was Italian but forgot it was Milanese. I’m liking this trend of restaurants that specialize in a specific region, rather than a whole country or indeed a whole cuisine. We were greeted with tiny glasses of complimentary prosecco, a nice way for us to lead into the wonderful negronis that they serve.

Saturday and the place was busy, and we were looked after by quite a few different waiters.

We were brought an amuse-bouche, a tiny (and I mean small, perhaps a centimetre across) reproduction of a fried egg – with smoked salmon. Cute. They arranged for us to have a mix of the appetizers – they were each and every one interesting and tasty, though I *loved* the chicken liver paté.

We all ordered differently for our mains. S. found his pork neck braised in milk the best pork he’d ever tasted, and I think D. gave his beef cheek with vanilla mashed potatoes high ratings. M’s pork cutlet looked superb but he wished it came with a sauce. S. teased me about ordering $35 meatballs, but c’mon. Look at these.

I was pleased with my choice. The meatballs were like none I’ve tasted, rich and dense, and the soft polenta bed was gorgeous.

The wine list was a bit pricey but we still managed to polish off a few bottles, and didn’t have any room for dessert. Still, we were brought two complimentary tiramisu (very nice, indeed).

So far, I’ve described the bringing of free things, as well as the good, if not great, food. But here’s the thing. Every person who served or interacted with us was charming and professional and went beyond the regular call of duty, refilling water and wine glasses, removing the glasses during the first course to make sure we had more room, checking to see if all was OK, and bringing us free things on a busy Saturday night. It made the good food even better, the cozy atmosphere even more charming and it made me certain to return.

A quick Sunday lunch and I wanted to check out this unusual little strip of restaurants on Broadway, not far from the Broadway shopping centre (or a short hike up from Railway Square). I’ve always been intrigued by the Indonesian place called Shalom and the Spicy Szechuan cafe, recommended by friends. Bling Bling Dumpling was empty when we passed it, but it’s got a good name.

However, just before noon, the Sunflower Cafe specializing in Taiwanese food was the only one open, so we decided to try it out. Half the menu has crepes, both savoury and sweet, and with Asian themes (i.e. Japanese eel, green tea). Does anyone know if crepes have been adopted into Taiwanese cuisine?

We went for the more traditional fare. A starter of bean curd wasn’t what I was expecting, neither bean curd sheets, nor a lighter tofu. These were hard, slightly rubbery strips of bean curd in a simple soya sauce. Taiwanese sausage turned out to be the pink-red sausage that my mom used to buy at the same time as buying char siu (barbecued pork) or roast pork belly. Slightly sweet, it reminded me of home.

We ordered two mains (too much for lunch with the starters). Rice and beef brisket. I’ve rarely had a beef brisket that I didn’t like, and this was perfect – I liked the extra spicy bits of meat on the rice, and the pickled veg – the flavours felt authentic. The spicy dumplings were not particularly nice. Crude and doughy, like the frozen ones I buy sometimes in Chinatown for home use, but the sauce was more garlic than chili, and I found the flavour a bit off.

S. loved his mango smoothie, even when it gave him brain freeze. My cold sweet green tea latte was just fine.

I reckon this strip of restaurants mainly appeals to students from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), so it’s relatively cheap (ours was about $40 for the two of us, and we did order a lot), filling, and tasty. It also tastes and feels authentically Asian – except for the weird artwork featuring white Americans from the 50s and the letters c-r-e-p-e-s coming out of a a cartoony surreal backdrop.

Service was efficient and friendly. Order at the cash register. Pay in cash only.

Glad I went. Wasn’t tasty enough to go again – though perhaps I should go back for the Japanese eel crepe…

Caffe Sicilia, a fairly new restaurant on Crown Street in Surry Hills, confused me. When I first read about it, an Italian restaurant specializing in Sicilian food, I was interested. The reviews were good. When I saw that it had taken over from the Thai restaurant, Yai (a perfectly decent Thai restaurant but I wondered how they could manage to pay the rent of such a large space in Sydney’s centre), I was impressed. The place has completely transformed: into a bistro that could be found in Paris or Rome, and when summer arrives, when they can leave the entire front of the restaurant open to the weather, it will be glorious.

But reviews from friends in the area were mixed. Each rave review was matched with a negative one. A few friends had recently raved about it, but then when I told them I was going on a Monday night, they revised their review: lunch is terrific, they said, the dinner menu is completely different.

Still, I was game. I was hoping for a great meal. Why would you ever go to an eatery without expecting it to be satisfying? But the food wasn’t the problem. We were seated at our table for two, right next to the sidewalk, underneath a slightly too-hot heat-lamp. The waitress, possibly Eastern European, was efficient, and trying to do her job well. But asked us if we were ready to order only minutes after we’d received the menu. We decided to order wine, and asked advice, but she needed to refer us to an Italian waiter, who was decidedly unimpressed when I told him that I wanted a recommendation from among the $50 wines. We were asked three times if we were ready to order… when we were not ready – and it’s not as if the restaurant was busy and needed to turn a table.

Our appetizers were a soft goat’s cheese drizzled with honey and with almond flakes, and whitebait fritters, round disks of fish-flesh served with a home-made aioli. Both were good, though not special (and both about $15). The wine, which we were assured was very good by the waiter, was drinkable and plain. OK but possibly not OK for $50 (none of the wine on the menu, including Australian, was for less than the high-40s. Really an expensive list). My companion had the special of the night (mains were generally $20-25), John Dory fillets, rolled, crumbed and fried with an eggplant mixture. It looked spectacular. But he said it was only OK.

My main, however, was fantastic. A ‘swordfish tart’, instead of a pastry crust, a thin layer of swordfish made into a crust and hidden beneath, a perfect combination of sweet, rich, soft eggplant and tomatoes. So, the olive garnish was the same as the free olives we’d gotten for the table. This was a tasty and unusual dish!

We passed on dessert, but then were given a box with a muffin and a brioche to take home with us. I didn’t try the brioche but the muffin, with a sweet cream cheese filling, was delectable.

The promise was there. With service a bit more charming and  a reasonable wine list, I think we could have been pleased with a fun night out, eating regional Italian cuisine, homestyle and honest. But with awkward and abrupt service, overpriced wine, and only 1 out of 4 dishes outstanding, the $140 bill for the two of us felt too much. I’ll probably try it for lunch, to see if my mind can be changed. Otherwise, it’ll be two, rather than three, strikes and they’re out.

Wow. What happened to Annie’s Bar? In my wayward youth, I know I stopped by the back bar of the Carrington Hotel for a drink or two. And it was a trashy place. Fun, but trashy.

Now, completely transformed into Surry Hills chic, it is riding an exciting new wave of food trends: fancy bistro food, Spanish and Latin American cuisine, ‘nose-to-tail’, no reservations… Check out the website here.

But while I like the idea of a busy, buzzy place, I prefer not having to wait, so with my trusted dining friend, J., we had a Wednesday lunch there. There were only a few tables filled, which allowed for personal service, including both the waitress and chef asking us, sincerely, how our food was.

We ordered a white wine from South Australia’s Running with the Bulls vineyard, very tasty, a Spanish varietal I’d never heard of: Vermentillo. Clean and dry. I liked it.

An appetizer/amuse-bouche sort of thing was a paella onigiri. I loved seeing a Spanish word next to a Japanese one (for rice ball) but didn’t expect the perfect crisp fried triangle of paella topped with crispy battered squid. Check this presentation:

It was perfect. Light, crisp, tasty, flavourful, interesting. We followed it up with a tasty chorizo dish with apples instead of potatoes. It gave it a lightness of flavour, and how can you go wrong with chorizo?

And finally, the masterpiece of our too-short lunch. Squid stuffed with Morcilla (blood sausage) with a very flavourful tomato sauce. The squid was slightly firm with a crunch, all about texture, and with a neutral flavour to offset the rich, earthy, slightly creamy and slightly grainy texture of the sausage. With a perfect bright bite of spicy tomato paste. Magnifico!

The cocktails sound fantastico too – I’m thinking I’ll try the ‘Single Mother’ next time I’m in. J. looked up from his food in his pleasure and said this is the kind of place you could just sit in the sun for the whole afternoon and try everything on the menu, it’s so good. I think we’ll do that next time.

And since it had a rave review in Good Living, and seems to me Surry Hills newest hotspot (the chef smiled when I said I’d heard it was packed and said “we’ll see in six months”), I recommend arriving early.