Taiwanese Fried Chicken has come to Sydney! I’m not sure I even knew it existed, except that suddenly there appeared an intriguing shopfront on Liverpool Street, heading into the City that often had a line-up. I decided I had to try it. At $8.50, I thought it might be a small, manageable piece of chicken. My better half ordered the original, and I opted for the spicy version. 
What it is, apparently, is a large flattened chicken breast. It still has some bones in it (so you can tell it’s real chicken, maybe) and is crumbed and then deep-fried so it’s super-crispy. I have decided for 2016 that my food rule is to never eat something larger than my face (which means that the schnitzels at Una’s are out, sorry Una). This was huge, but smaller than my face, so I think I’m OK. 
My chicken was soooo crispy and delicious, it felt rather sinful to eat it. I thought the spicy powder on it was a bit artificial tasting, and would advise against it, but overall, I thought this was an amazing tasty treat.
Rather than just hoard these notes to myself, I might as well put them on the blog. It would have been useful for me to read something like this before this short trip… though we were so busy preparing other things that I didn’t do much (enough) preparation…
I would also plan, on another occasion, to stay AFTER New Year’s rather than arrive a few days before. Why? Because the sales start on 2 January, and shopping in Japan is awesome!
As a treat, we went overnight to Shima Onsen where we stayed at Kashiwaya Ryokan, a family-run ryokan with private onsens (many have public ones only) including a great one in our room! They also spoke English pretty well and had a great level of communication. I think staying in a traditional Japanese inn (with hotsprings, amazing multi-course dinners and breakfasts, and rooms with tatami mats and futons) is a must for a trip to Japan. But it can be hard to organise and communicate with the owners. Kashiwaya Ryokan did a great job of this.
Other tips from this trip:
The original Café del Mar opened its doors in Ibiza as a bar that played great chill-out music at sunset; it morphed into a music brand with famous chill-out music compilations that became popular in the 90s. So, it’s an interesting concept to transfer to Australia. I wonder whether it will work. Remember how popular all those Hard Rock Cafés were at one point?
I was happy to be invited to my second Zomato meet-up, and meet some other bloggers and instagrammers, and didn’t quite know what to expect. And it’s hard to be objective when being treated to free food and some very fine wine. But I really didn’t expect the food to be so good. I had assumed the restaurant would be all about the view and the vibe. Apparently, they get lots of folks from offices after work on weekdays, and a buzzy social Darling Harbour crowd on the weekends.
But from the amazing starters – sweet, fresh watermelon wrapped in Jamon Serrano with Persian feta; a soft quail egg and potato skordalia wrapped up in a thin piece of wagyu bresola; and the very rich pork jowl cigars – and onwards, the quality of the food was evident.
The executive chef, Ben Fitton, has a great pedigree from restaurants such as the Bennelong, Macleay Street Bistro and Sean’s Panorama. The mains were a melt-in-your-mouth lamb shoulder with a great chermoula paste; a very luxe seafood bouillabaise; and a roast chicken, which combined a home-cooked feel (stuffing and crispy roast potatoes) with a very elegant execution.
After all that food, their special martini (coconut, pineapple and basil), and some VERY fine wine (Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc and a Cape Mentelle red), I was too full to appreciate the desserts, though I sensed they might have been the favourite course of most of the meet-up group.
On Friday night, 27 November 2015, LP’s Quality Meats and the crew from Pinbone restaurant (currently without a home, so doing events and pop-ups) hosted the Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson from the famed restaurant Fäviken.
The various dishes were interesting and tasty. And though I’d brought my fancy camera, the lighting in the restaurant wasn’t quite right to get good shots of the food. I reckon my iPhone would have done a better job. Oh well.
dairy cow sirloin with fungus was a nice combo. I liked the taste of the rye flour, in both the crepes, and possibly the pretzel underneath the tuna, our very first course. Ah, the brussel sprout roasted crisp and black on the outside, with avruga was pretty great too.
The food just kept coming and coming! Dessert was a jam drop, and jelly, as well as wattle seed ice cream. As you can tell from the photos, this really was a feast. The cookbook is apparently as much a record of Nordic cooking as it is a useable contemporary cookbook… (seal intestines, anyone?) but I’m sure I can try to find something to try making…
So, sit yourself down for a long read (with some good photos). For the story of my best meal ever, I might as well take my time, no?
Let me just say before we get to the food that the service was impeccable. It seemed very prescribed in terms of a hierarchy, the attractive wait staff smoothly moving around from place to place, perhaps in an orderly presentation to remove cloches (the only other time I was in a restaurant that used cloches was in Durban, South Africa and was done quite awkwardly). There was one beautiful woman whose role it seemed was just to ask whether all the courses were OK. Chef Michel made his rounds and came by and said hello, which we loved. He seems a lovely, gentle soul. HIs wife, Christine, who I think has taken the main role in running both the accommodation and the management of the hotel seemed a little shy, perhaps of foreigners speaking French badly!
We decided that the meal would best be accompanied by a different glass of wine with each course, and we could leave it up to the sommelier to choose for us. The wines were wonderful, though I didn’t write them down. The Pouilly-Fumé that accompanied the lobster, with body and a smokey flavour, was a particularly amazing match. We didn’t ask the price of the matching wines beforehand so were pleasantly surprised at the end when it was about what could be expected.
S’s delight had a name we couldn’t decipher at the time. It was ‘Un Soufflé Époustouflant à la Verveine du Jardin’, the breathtaking garden verbena soufflé.
It had a little chocolate soufflé, with a perfect crisp skin, soft and unctuous and not too sweet, a little chocolate mousse or pudding, some more rich and fudgey chocolate topped with coffee granita (the clean texture of ice a perfect contrast to the richness of the chocolate) and a perfect little apple tart. Each was wonderful, and as a gourmand rather than gourmet, I liked being able to try so many different things. The sommelier chose to serve it with a Don Pedro Ximenez sherry… from 1927. I still can’t get over that. Five years before the year my Dad was born. It was rich, sweet, dark, smooth and grand and matched with various types of chocolate was… just… too… good.
(lovely, as well with a candied orange and a chocolate biscuit). At 10 euros, it was the most expensive espresso of our trip, but it was part and parcel of the experience.
So, now, we’ve tried a three-star Michelin restaurant.
courses each, but each dish here was substantial, and special.
Dear reader, I had no idea. First of all, the timing on the recipe says something like 30 minutes of preparation and an hour of cooking. But once you add an hour of chilling, and another half an hour of freezing, and hey, I’m a cooking conundrum: it looks like a hurricane has hit whenever I’m making something but I’m actually moving at a snail’s pace, just faster than an escargot. All up, this took HOURS.
It’s strange to say that I miss Caribbean food when I can’t say that I’m all that much an expert in it. Jamaican patties in Vancouver (possibly not the best) and superb rotis in Toronto (oh my god, these were amazing). I’ve tried various ‘jerk’ seasonings. In any case, with a weird Caribbean renaissance in my neighbourhood (now THREE restaurants), I can’t say I’m lacking now (though none of them have Caribbean rotis). However, our Thursday night meal at Jonkanoo was… amazing. I wasn’t expecting it to be soooo good, and now give it a high recommendation.
With a tropical beach shack feel, and staff who all have authentic accents and looks, the thing is: the food was amazing. The fish fins were a highlight: perfectly spiced, salty and crisp, what a surprise. I loved the goat curry, matching perfectly to the spiced peas and rice. The salad was tasty (usefully balancing so much rich flavour). And the jerk pork: my god, this was beautiful, fatty, charcoaled, salty. So this is why one makes a fuss over jerk seasoning, not just the spices but the technique.
Matched with a bottle of white wine that came in the fanciest wine cooler we’ve ever seen, and this was really a wonderful meal. But wait: there’s more. With Dimmi reservation 
system’s $50 voucher, the already very reasonable prices became ridiculously cheap. We tipped generously, and deservedly as the waiter advised us that we were ordering too much food. Now, when do you get a waiter who can give you honest advice like that?