Parlour Burger, Sydney CBD

A few Fridays back, I ordered a burger and fries to go from Parlour Burger, an offshoot of the Morrison. The waitress mentioned that they offer a choice between medium and well-done patties. Not wanting to risk contracting salmonella, I opted for the latter. And so we waited. And waited.

20 minutes went by, and the people who had ordered before us were still waiting. They started to check on their orders, and we did the same. "Yes, it's coming" was the general response. Another 15 or so minutes later, our takeaway bags were passed to us. Nearly 40 minutes for a burger and fries.


"It's black! Why is your bun black?!" a friend exclaimed. All other reactions to the black widow burger were similarly incredulous. Thankfully the bun didn't taste like carbon, and the addition of charcoal seems to have purely enhanced the aesthetics/ novelty. The bun was quite fluffy inside, but otherwise fairly ordinary.

The burger was probably smaller than average, but I'm a small eater so it was filling to me. Chipotle mayo was creamy and lightly spicy, while the burger patty was... alright. It wasn't bad, but there were little nervy bits inside that required me to spit discreetly into the paper bag from time to time.

Was it worth waiting for? I don't really think so.

Black widow burger ($10.00)

Well done patty

The duck fat chips cost nearly as much as the burger. And there's not much. While the angle of the photo might enhance the minimalism of the chip numbers, it's actually quite an accurate portrayal. The chips were also quite limp, and being fried in duck fat as opposed to normal oil seems to have done little to the taste. Certainly not something I want to pay $8 for again.

Duck fat chips ($8.00)

I was really ticked off at the time, considering you can get a burger and chips with bigger portions from a food court almost instantly for less than $10.

BLACK by ezard, Pyrmont - Good Food Month 2013

Having trudged through 26 days in a row of uni classes (i.e. no weekends!) and battled through 3 final assessments, I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Amidst all of that learning, I drowned my sorrows in eating - more particularly, in those new honeycomb Magnums with their crisp, nutty, chocolate exteriors... Sadly, there was minimal time for Good Food Month. I did, however, manage to sneak in one lunch at Black by Ezard in the Star with CC.

The deal? 2 courses with a glass of wine/ beer/ mineral water for $38.

CC asked about the cost of adding on a dessert, but the waitress, with a cheeky wink, suggested that one of us order an entree/ main and that the other opt for the main/ dessert combination. We're glad we followed her tip, as the portions were pretty substantial considering it was a fine dining restaurant.

One of the Brown Brothers' reds

Complimentary bread took the form of a mini loaf served with (unsalted) butter and a sprinkle of salt. Though a little dry, it still bore the trademark buttery richness and soft textures of brioche. As far as breads in restaurants go, this was probably one of my favourites due to the novelty and taste. When offered a second loaf, I was sorely tempted to accept. However, my appetite felt a little suppressed that day and so I reluctantly declined. I realised later that I'd overlooked the fact that CC might have wanted some. Social faux pas aside, she mentioned later that she was glad we didn't have that second loaf.

Brioche

 The entree was a pretty assembly of thinly sliced kingfish, sesame custard, edamame puree and chardonnay & shallot dressing. Flavours reminiscent of dried seaweed suggested Japanese cuisine, in contrast to the encrusted dollops of... cheese? Pulps of sweet citrus added little bursts of moisture with each biteful - CC thought it might be grapefruit, but surely grapefruit would have been noticeably sour. In any case, it was a fun dish to polish off.

Hiramasa kingfish sashimi

The chicken was a surprise for me, as it's one of those ingredients that I'm so used to eating that it kind of fades into the background of the menu. The pungency of charcoal from the use of the wood-grill, creamy farro risotto, blueberries and mushrooms made for a really comforting meat dish. Chicken is boring no longer.

Corn fed chicken

 We finished off with a sphere of chocolate ganache that was situated on crushed chocolate biscuit and raspberries. Liquid chocolate was then poured over the top to reveal a scoop of mint ice cream. CC voiced my inner sentiments in her exclamation that "the mint ice-cream doesn't taste like toothpaste!"

Chocolate dessert

It's a pity that Black removed their tasting menu, but I'm definitely keen to return.

Marque, Surry Hills

I haven't been posting anything the past month or so because work (and my social life) has been absolutely torrential. However, I figured I should actually post something before my "Places to blog about" list becomes even more extensive when I head out tonight.

I visited Marque during lunchtime to taste their 3 course Prix Fixe menu. At $45 (+$5 for water), I thought initially that it was an absolute steal to be eating at one of the best restaurants in Sydney. Some might think that it's well worth it, regardless of what they serve (due to the intricate procedures employed for the preparation of the ingredients, etc.), but after my visit I didn't feel tempted to return.

We had booked for 2pm, so the 12pm lunch crowd was still withdrawing when we arrived. The premises are small, but I did not expect the restaurant to be so loud and busy - they were, in fact, so busy that they forgot to give us napkins. I had to attend a meeting that was scheduled for 4pm, so I was worried that I would have to cut the session short - my friend assured me that they normally finish up within an hour and a half, giving me plenty of time. Marque proved him wrong.

Anyway, first up was the amuse bouche - squid ink pillow with Buddha's hand (a citrus fruit with the appearance of a grotesque bright yellow hand) and pumpkin filling. The "pillow" was light and crisp, accompanied well by the sweetness of the pumpkin and zest of the Buddha's hand. Unfortunately, it set high expectations for the rest of the meal, which went downhill from this point.

Amuse bouche

 The entree of cured salmon arrived, accompanied by (very dried up) dill, beetroot and horseradish. It was a really fresh dish and I loved the combination of dill and salmon (almost counteracting my dislike of cold entrees/mains in general). At the same time, part of me thought it was too simple for what a 3 hat would be expected to offer.

Cured salmon

 They came around with bread. I picked sourdough. It was soft and did well to mop up what little sauce there was.

White sourdough

The second time they offered bread, I went for the rye, which contained what I think tasted like cumin (it looked like cumin, but it could have been caraway for all I knew). Sadly, the butter was still chilled and difficult to spread.

Rye

 Next we had a beef short rib dish with boudin noir, broad beans, pickled pear and hazelnut. The beef was slightly rubbery, though at least it was far from dry. The broad beans, pickled pear and hazelnut surprisingly went pretty well together, though I would have preferred the pear to be a tad less crunchy (the generous amount of hazelnuts contributed plenty of that already). The boudin noir provided a nice amount of salt to the dish - I personally have a gag reaction to anything involving blood and offals, though, so there was only so much I could swallow.

Beef short rib with boudin noir

Having been forced to face one of my fears, I was looking forward to a comforting chocolate dessert by the time I was done with that second course. It wasn't that comforting. If the impression they were aiming for was that of a clump of soil/ rock with bits of grain, I guess they succeeded very well. It certainly looked better than it tasted - although "Chocolate, malt and mandarin" sounds alright, the mandarin was intensely bitter and the chocolate wasn't much better.

Chocolate

 By this time, it was nearly 4pm and I was desperate to leave. We asked for the bill and were given custard. I shovelled its entirety into my mouth and hurriedly paid. It tasted like my mum's creme caramel, except with a hit of alcohol (hence named after the dessert wine, Sauternes). Not the biggest fan of creme caramel, but it was uniquely presented and a whole lot better than the chocolate dish preceding it.

Sauternes custard

Based on my above experience, I'm not inclined to re-visit to sample their degustation menu. I might return in 6 months to give their Prix Fixe menu another go, as (according to one of the friends eating with me on the day) their food is normally a lot better.

And yes, I just managed to make the meeting.

Hobart, Part I

Over the Easter long weekend, I abandoned all responsibility and escaped for a few days to Hobart, Tasmania. Although various people had tried to prepare me for the chill (and kept reminding me to pack warmly), I didn't quite believe them when they said it would be cold. I was also bemoaning the limited size of my sports bag, which was one third full when I threw in my towel - so regrettably I couldn't bring any of my fluffy marshmallow socks! Fortunately, I survived the biting cold, strong winds, and occasional rain, thanks to my favourite woollen winter coat and trusted scarlet umbrella.

Mures Lower Deck

Arriving in Hobart on a public holiday meant that no retailers were open and that our food choices were limited. As it took longer than expected sorting out the car rental, it was way past lunch time and we were starving. This meant finding food was our number one priority, which was quite an arduous task, what with interpreting the GPS's garbled messages and navigating through the various one-way roads. We happened to come across the 200-over-year-old Victoria Dock, home to numerous fishing boats and fish and chip vendors that were actually feeding the hungry.

My full bladder demanded that we eat somewhere with indoor plumbing, so we retreated into Mures Lower Deck, a cafeteria style eatery with a fancier component on the upper deck. Mures Lower Deck is family and group friendly, with large tables, stuffed toy souvenirs, and ice cream for the kids. As a random note, I thought the water dispensers were peculiarly sophisticated, with chilled and room temperature options.

Furniture!

 Ordering is at the counter and they give you a buzzer, just like in a food court. I won't elaborate too much on the food - it's standard fish and chips, except pretty fresh. Also, I was ravenous at the time and all I remember was devouring my share in an absolute frenzy.

Fisherman's basket: $14.90 (snack), $19.90 (meal)

Breadcrumbed scallops: $11.90 (snack)

Greek salad: $7.90 (small)

Battered fish: $14.90 (2 pieces)

Shark/ fish heads and stuffed animals.

Next on our agenda was grocery shopping! With technology what it is, we whipped out Google Maps and looked up our nearest Woolies, which was an easy 10 minutes' walk from Victoria Dock. Having paid for 2 hours of parking, we had plenty of time to walk over to Woolies to pick up a few necessities and walk back.

Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens

 It was evening by the time we settled into our temporary home and we figured there was time to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing. We decided on the botanical gardens, as its website stated that it's open all year round. Being the last day of March, we were fortunate enough to have until 6.30pm instead of 5.30pm to look around. I have to say that the gardens were pretty impressive. Though smaller than Sydney's botanic gardens, each exhibit was carefully designed to suit a particular theme. I also really appreciated the considerable variety of plants and flowers. Sadly, I didn't get to see the whole garden because we ran out of time, but there was an arbour of rose plants that reminded me of smaller scale European gardens.

Entry fee: Gold coin donations

Opening hours: 8am to 5.00pm, 5.30pm or 6.30pm, depending on the time of the year

Time spent: approximately 2 hours (you could spend half a day there easily)

 

  Prince of Wales Hotel

 We decided to head to Battery Point for dinner, which was interesting to look at as a suburb. The houses were cottage-style and had so much character. Battery Point also had a vintage-looking independent petrol station and a convenience store that charged exorbitant amounts for their biscuits.

Cool petrol station!

Prince of Wales Hotel (I keep nearly typing out the word hospital) is located on 55 Hampden Road. The restaurant is located further inside, past the area with locals on bar stools catching up with each other on beers.

I ordered a whole-baked rainbow trout stuffed with herbs and lemon. It came with a side of mango salad and thinly sliced rosemary potatoes. I was actually not expecting much from this meal - simple but hearty pub food, perhaps, but nothing that tasted as good as what was actually served.

The trout was pretty bony, but the flesh flaked off easily, and it was quite easy to avoid any unpleasant stabs to the mouth as long as you avoided the head of the fish. They added just the right amount of lemon to the stuffing inside - a good amount of acidity to kill any fishiness, but not so much as to make you pucker your lips in distaste.

The rosemary potatoes were sliced thinly as if in a gratin, but baked until golden and crunchy. The mango salad was moist from the generosity of the dressing, and it tasted light and tangy from the mixture of mango, spinach leaves, capsicum and french onion.

Rainbow trout ($22.50)

Below is what my travel companions had:

Seafood chowder

The seafood chowder came out burnt (you could smell it from across the table), but they replaced it without a fuss. The garlic bread was lovely and soft.

Cheese platter

 The calamari came drizzled in coriander and lime aioli and served with vegetables.

Panko rubbed calamari

Tasmanian scotch fillet steak

Bentley Restaurant & Bar, Surry Hills

Bentley Restaurant & Bar is nestled amongst a host of vintage shops and other eateries on Crown Street. Despite the overcast weather (and intermittent rain), Surry Hills was buzzing with activity. When we arrived, however, we were the first ones there (having made a booking for noon). Business soon picked up, though, and I was glad we had the first pick of tables and snagged a window seat!

We opted for the $55 fixed price lunch and then proceeded to observe the lunch crowd, which consisted of a healthy mix of young couples, girlfriends on catch-ups, more seasoned patrons, and a young family. We were soon served complimentary sliced sourdough bread with olive oil. The olive oil was subtle and complemented the fresh bread well. It was somewhat awkward breaking off pieces of the bread because we weren't given bread plates. Genius I am, I didn't think to do it over the bread board and ended up getting crumbs on the table.

Sourdough bread with olive oil dip

Anyway, I digress. The first course was octopus flavoured with garlic and almond. This was one of my favourites of the day. I barely had to chew the pieces of octopus because the meat was so well-tenderised and the creamy sauce was so mouthwatering I wanted to lick the plate. I thought I could taste basil and cheese in the sauce, but the main star was the chopped garlic. My lunch buddy thought the garlic was a bit too strong, but I'm a massive fan of it, so it didn't phase me.

Octopus

 The second course was a vegetarian dish made up of a thin, crispy sliver of eggplant (the brown bit sticking up), with salsify and baby turnip. What exactly is salsify? Turns out it's a white root vegetable. The salsify was pureed and presented slightly warm on the plate, which was nice as my stomach tends to become unsettled when I eat cold dishes. The texture was slightly starchy and the taste was akin to potatoes. The other vegetables were slightly crunchy and pretty fun to eat because they looked so delicate and pretty. The course on the whole was fresh, light and tangy with great textures, but I have to say that the meat dishes stand out more.

Eggplant

 The third dish was poached tuna with amaranth, artichokes, ice plant and bisque sauce. The theme of the ocean really sprang out, with the use of not only tuna, but octopus (a tie-back to the first course) and mussel. The amaranth was slightly grainy, reminding me of chewy cous cous, and there were bits of seaweed made in different ways. The dried, darker seaweed was crispy, which contrasted nicely with the rice-like mound of amaranth. The bisque sauce provided the sodium and moisture necessary to flavour the dish and reminded me of the oily layer of minestrone soup.

Poached tuna

 The final savoury course was pork cheek and belly with sprigs of fennel, black garlic and calamari. Eaten alone, the pork cheek would have been too salty, but it was just right with the dollops of green and black sauce. The mini slabs of pork belly were rich and I had to repress another urge to lick the plate. The tiny mouthful of calamari was tender (just like with the octopus). A beautiful main.

Pork cheek

 Finally, we were served a melon sorbet with fresh slices of melon, coconut cream and liquorice. I'm not a fan of liquorice, so thankfully it wasn't too strong and it actually went nicely with the coconut cream. The dessert was refreshing and tasty, but compared to the mains, it wasn't outstanding. It was nevertheless a lovely way to polish off the meal.

Melon sorbet

The lunch is well-paced and it takes a little less than an hour and a half to eat through the lunch menu. The waitstaff was observant and took care of us really well - I've found one of the best indicators of good service is when they clear dishes/ replace cutlery/ refill your water glasses unobtrusively throughout the meal, and they passed that particular test with flying colours. All in all, the combination of mouthwatering dishes and friendly, attentive service made this visit fantastic value for money. I've definitely made a note to return when their seasonal menu changes!

Rice Den, Chatswood

If you're a traditionalist looking for authentic Chinese food, I suggest you ignore this part of Archer Street and take a stroll along Victoria Avenue - there are plenty of other Chinese eateries around Chatswood. It is evident that Rice Den targets the more adventurous, with its bare, hanging lightbulbs, wooden stools, and newspaper wallpaper. It does Asian fusion-style, tweaking Aussie favourites (such as Peking duck pancakes and salt and pepper squid), as well as introducing obscure menu items like crocodile meat. Although unconventional, the flavours are mouthwatering and they actually don't stuff up the rice!

Interior

The menu is presented in two ways - a wooden clipboard with pretty font, and an iPad displaying their specials for the day. The appetisers looked so mouthwatering that we decided to order a bunch of them tapas style.

Having had a heavy breakfast beforehand, my friend decided not to have rice, which left me with the whole ceramic pot to myself. That small pot was deceptive and managed to store a fair bit of rice - it was a good thing I was pretty hungry and managed to eat it all! The rice was fluffy, soft and cooked perfectly - neither undercooked nor allowed to become gluggy.

Jasmine rice ($2.50)

I'm no stranger to quail eggs (my mum adds them to a certain type of tong sui - Chinese dessert soup) and am familiar with the higher egg yoke to albumen ratio. Many people consider it strange that I have a slight aversion to the yoke, which I attribute to being discouraged from eating them when I was younger. Despite this quirk, I kept an open mind and proceeded to bite into the quail eggs. They were quite enjoyable, encased in a light crisp batter and accompanied by sweet teriyaki sauce drizzled over the top (it was so tasty that we wished that they had given us more sauce). Definitely a must try for people who love their egg yokes!

Tempura quail egg skewers ($8.00)

The chicken satay was moist and had just enough fat to make it tasty but not so much that I was spitting out the majority of the skewers' contents. The satay sauce was sweet and had fairly large chunks of peanut in it. I can't complain.

Satay chicken skewers ($8.00)

I didn't know what to expect from the school prawn stack - I ignorantly imagined large king prawns stacked on top of each other! Alas, school prawns are tiny prawns. They were very tasty. Imagine soft shell crabs, except in the form of prawns. The lime and sweet aioli were refreshing and provided moisture while preserving the crunch of the prawns.

School prawn stack ($12.00)

Having polished off all of the above, we decided that we still had room in our stomachs for dessert! My friend ordered glutinous rice balls with black sesame sauce inside, served in ginger syrup with star anise (and a spoonful of peanuts). I stole one off of her plate. As with a lot of the items I had on this particular lunch outing, I am not a fan of glutinous rice balls. Normally, the skin is too thick and starchy for my liking. Here, the glutinous rice layer was thinner. I'm also a sucker for good black sesame paste, so I was pleasantly surprised by this dessert. The ginger added a hot twist and helped to balance off the starchiness of the rice balls. It is possible that if you were to visit at a future date, it won't be on the menu, as it was listed as one of the specials.

Black sesame glutinous rice balls in ginger syrup ($6.00)

My dessert was deep fried green tea ice cream with raspberry and chocolate syrup. This was my least favourite dish. The outer layer was sugary sponge cake, which my friend really liked but which I wasn't a huge fan of. That in itself wasn't so bad, but I felt that the syrup clashed with the green tea. I love green tea ice cream, though, so it was still a fairly positive end to the meal.

Green tea fried ice-cream ($6.00)