If NYC was spectacular Korean and Mexican food, Sydney to me seems lately to be spectacular Italian food. It’s not fancy, but the flavours are so punchy, the execution of the dishes so great, and the prices reasonable: it’s got me all aglow.
Pizza Mario was awfully good. They got shut down by some problem with the tax office, and whaddaya know: Maybe Frank is a worthy successor. First of all, it’s just a fun place. Silly music, fun atmosphere, and they even took our booking for 8:15pm on a Friday night. The staff all have fabulous Italian accents too.
We ordered two types of pizza, a red one and a white one… a good contrast. The white one I believe was a Tartufo ($24) with mozzarella, porcini mushrooms, truffle oil and parmigiano… a creamy and rich combo. The red one was, I believe, a Marinella ($20), with tomato, anchovies, garlic, cherry tomatoes and olives. It was very heavy on the anchovies but I didn’t mind the punch of it.
We also had a Spaghetti Burrata ($26), and how can you go wrong with spaghetti over a fresh burrata, with some home made bread crumb, tomato confit and anchovy oil. It was heavy on the anchovy oil but I didn’t mind it. To pretend to be a bit healthy, we had a salad, but I reckon it was the least green and healthy of the four salads on offer: a panzanella salad ($13), the tuscan salad that mixed crisp bread, sweet spanish onions and cherrty tomatoes. I loved this, great combo of textures. The flavour, presentation, everything: awesome. Add to this that they have a perfectly reasonably costing and tasting house red ($36, apparently 2014 from Victoria) and we were happy campers. Impressive.
The playlist at Desnuda was the soundtrack to my teenage years. Not only the background music but favourite songs by A-ha, Human League, Stevie Nicks and New Order. It was kind of freaking me out.
We had fun poking around, and the store owners were extremely nice. No one worried that we were only looking (and many are wholesale only, so we wouldn’t be able to buy if we’d wanted to). One store had particularly lush flowers, and we went in, and I laughed to discover it was a fake flower store. They were pretty convincing when not up close.
For a quick lunch in Williamsburg before I head to the airport, I stumble across La Isla Restaurant (I was tempted again by Mexico 2000 but there was not a soul inside). All sorts of tasty greasy fried things in the window.
What was hilarious was that even if I do speak some Spanish, I couldn’t get on their wavelength. No menu was offered. I tried to say, cheerily, in English (thinking my Spanish wasn’t good enough), what should I have? The two guys just looked blankly at me, and then would look away and deal with other customers. All of the ladies on one side were having a sort of stew or soup with pork hock. Someone came in and asked how much the rice and beans were ($4) so I decided to go with that (yellow rice and beans of a brown colour rather than black beans) and some chicken stew.
It was delicious really, tender chicken stewed for ages, though again, too much food. I read on reviews on Yelp that I should have gone for the roast pork (pernil). And I’m curious what those fried things were!
Just a last adventure before I leave New York City (drizzling and cold, a good day to leave) and the adventure is food from islands where they speak Spanish. This 
Originally a Cuban restaurant, and taken over by owners from the Dominican Republic, it serves up humble, traditional food. So, a long line-up at the counter and then the difficulty of trying to figure out what to order. I often go for oxtail but thought I’d try their beef stew.
I didn’t think I’d get to eat Soul Food again before I left New York City, but I took an express train in the wrong direction and ended up in Harlem. Seriously. So, after chilling out at Mist with wine on tap and my laptop, I headed to … which Yelp told me was top rated, even higher than the famous Sylvia’s.
On Sunday night at 7pm, there was a short wait (of 15 minutes or so) and a woman who fainted or had some attack on the sidewalk. There were people all around her though thankfully, three of them were nurses. A fire truck pulled up eventually, and the siren kept flashing during most of my meal. With only one stomach, I was worried about choosing the right thing, but most reviews (and the waiter) confirmed that fried chicken is the most famous. You get to choose between breast and leg (I’m a leg man) and two sides.
As a devoted foodie, my regular recommendation is that people do a little research and follow trusted friends’ recommendations in order to not waste a food experience. Why eat bad food if instead you can eat good food? So, NYC constantly surprised me to find not just good but AMAZING food when I am not following my own usual advice.
This hole in the wall is minutes away from my AirBNB and after a play on Broadway (Sweat), I was rather hungry (even though I’d had matzoh ball ramen earlier). So, I stop in this place, playing Mexican or Latin American pop music, and darkly lit and looking like it could have the most terrible food in the world and instead the waiter introduces me to an excellent Mexican beer, Victoria (I asked for something Mexican but not Corona), I get free tri-coloured corn chips with a delicious tomato salsa and then. And THEN:
I’ve tried tamales before and not understood the appeal. Made of a corn-based dough and then steamed in a banana or corn leaf, I now understand that I’ve had these not quite at the right temperature. If they are microwaved or too cold then the dough is a little too hard. In any case, I’ve not found them pleasant. But this time, the filling tastes light and addictive and tasty, and then inside that was a perfect piece of fatty pork, the fat melting into the filling, and a generous portion of hot green sauce. Oh my god, it was good. In fact, it reminded me mostly of a Cantonese rice dish, Zoong, a triangle of sticky rice wrapped in leaves and steamed. They do put some corn mixture into it and it tastes of both home (an imagined home, a warm and cozy home) and the yummy savoury place that I like to hang out it (crispy pork belly, that’s my home, baby).
Yes, these were the best tamales I’ve ever had. I liked it so much I went back the next night and had the same thing (actually, I had the chicken mole, which was good but not as good). I also, the first night, had a huitlacoche quesadilla, this is some sort of corn fungus, and I mainly ordered it because it is not easily found outside of Mexico and certainly not in Australia, and is a bit unusual, but I admit that I couldn’t readily identify the flavour. It was nice enough, but the tamales… Those are to die for.