(Good Living Growers? Market, Aqua Bar, Bondi Beach, Sydney Harbor Bridge, Chinese Noodle House (again), Passionflower, Bentley Restaurant and Bar)
Day three in Sydney was extremely busy and of course, food-filled. We started off early at the Good Living Growers? Market in Pyrmont, right on the harbor. Bonnie, a classmate of mine, suggested I check out this market, and I am so glad she did. I love me some good farmers markets, and this one was no exception.
Actually, it was more of a gourmet food and sort of farmers market, to be exact. Farmers were there, but not the focus. But these items were: organic and free range poultry, wagyu beef, local olive oils, chocolates and breads, fresh squeezed juice, smoked fish?you name, they probably have it here! And free samples galore, which of course made a lovely first course of breakfast.
Here are some chocolates we bought at the market as a gift.
We wouldn’t get to eat them, so we had a burnt caramel truffle that was really nice. Not a heavy burnt flavor, just a touch, and rich chocolate surrounding it.
And maybe the burnt caramel was in the gift box and we bought another flavor to swap with it. Maybe. Shh.
This is where I bought some hand ground sesame paste?it tastes great over spinach and carrots, and I was just in the buying mood. Just look at this view from the center of the market…the entire skyline of Sydney! Love it love it love it. Did I mention I love it? Cuz I do.
We went from one view of the city, to another. We met up again with my partner?s friend from work, Sal, and he took us sightseeing in area that I think is called South End, but I could be totally off. The old memory’s not as sharp as it was before I went to university…three times.
As the Aussies say, how good is this, eh? In one spot, we could turn and see the Sydney harbor and the city skyline, and turn the other way and see the ocean.
It was so gorgeous up there. This is one of those sights that just makes me happy we live in Australia. This picture proves it–me, happy, in Australia, surrounded by so much blue. I like blue.
Sal wanted to show us Bondi Beach, so he took us up to Aqua Bar, a breakfast joint literally in front of the beach.
The place was all windows, and you could tell when it gets warmer, they open those windows up to have an open restaurant. and check out the view from the windows.
The menu was small and simple, with a few surprises here and there. Sal got the tuna salad that came with a huge hunk of avocado and a really great balsamic dressing that Aqua Bar is apparently known for.
I tried it and he was right?the tuna paired perfectly with the zingy vinaigrette and the creamy avocado, but I personally would have preferred a nice seared piece of tuna, still red in the middle. Instead it was more like tuna from a pouch, but still pretty good. Adam went for the French toast with grilled banana, and they were also good, sweet with the hint of fruit and then a maple syrup kick.
I went for the potato and leek pancakes with smoked salmon and mascarpone.
I really liked this?the salmon was not too fishy (something that scares me from time to time with fish), and I liked the play of the salty fish again the savory pancake, the peppery arugala and the creamy mascarpone cheese. The pancake was a bit dense with the slices of potato and I almost wanted it more pancake like, you know, fluffier. I had expected shredded potato pancake, like a latke. But it was still really good, and hey, with a view like this, you can?t really complain.
See? We?re a happy group when you fill our bellies. Since the beach was right across the street, we went for a stroll to watch the surfers who were hard at it, despite the nippy weather.
Look! I ate an entire beach! It tasted like a lot like sand.
The walls surrounding the beach had the most colorful and interesting graffiti I have ever seen.
Tons of scenes from the 1970s, and almost all of them about having safe sex. Way to go Bondi Beach. Way to draw them in with flashy colors and then hurl an after school special message at ?em. Those kids won?t know what hit them. Adam and I wanted to go see the Sydney Harbor Bridge up close?like really close. Like the guy who scratches himself a lot and stands right next to you in the elevator sort of close.
They offer a package where you can walk across the entire bridge for a mere $150. Sadly, being a student and poor married couple, we could not afford this. But we did go up the pylons, which are literally right next to the bridge, for a mere $10 a person. Obviously the view wasn?t as great as it would be on the bridge, but we really couldn?t complain.
If you look real closely at this shot of the bridge, you can see tiny people climbing up the sides of it.
We had some time to kill after that, so we went back to Chinatown/Haymarket area. We grabbed a quick snack of dumplings from the Chinese Noodle House again because I was craving them sooooo badly. I couldn?t stop talking about them all day, so it was nice to get my fix while I could. In search of a little dessert, we decided to check out Passionflower, an ice cream place in this little side mall that another food blogger, Chocolate Suze, suggested to me. Thanks, btw!
They specialize in Asian ice creams and desserts,
so I was pretty excited when I got try the black sesame ice cream (delicious and nutty), the durian ice cream (tasted like onions and scrambled eggs) and the best damn coconut ice cream I have ever had in my life. It was creamy and had flakes of real coconut in it?it almost tasting like a coconut pudding!
Passionflower is inside this sort of mall type thing, where the bottom floor was all restaurants and the top floor had an Asian arcade. It was so colorful and filled with way too many photo sticker booths that we were unable to use because all the instructions were not in English. We did, however, come across a DIY fairy floss machine, which was so freaking amazing, it deserves a blog of its own, so look for that shortly in the future! Suffice it to say, it was a most kick ass experience. We went back to our room to relax a bit, and then headed off for our fancy meal at Bentley Restaurant and Bar in Surry Hills. I love Surry Hills. It is so cute, with all these trendy yet adorable shops and a ton of restaurants?it sort of reminds me of an area in Chicago called Roscoe Village, another very cool place to live. I wanted to go to a restaurant that was fairly reasonable (in other words, no $150 degustation menus) but still known for what they call Mod Oz here, or Modern Australian cooking, which combines Asian flavors with Australian and European cooking. I had read that Bentley was still a bit new, but provided a diverse menu that tends to push the limit culinarily speaking. This excited me, so that?s where we went.
We arrived and the room was really dark?granted, it was 8:45pm, but still, it was so dark, we could barely see the d?cor or read the menu. We certainly could not see our food when it arrived. This bugged me, but I did my best to ignore it and make do with the lovely tea candle on my table. The room itself was a bit funky, with reds, browns and black all over the place. The front of the room had small tables for people to drink and eat tapas at, and a decent sized dining room that allowed you to have a fairly private meal. The menu features tapas and then your typical a la carte food, appetizers, mains and dessert. We started off with a mix of tapas in place of appetizers, and were fairly pleased with what we had. We started with a soft free range egg with almond bread crunch.
This was great. The egg was perfectly cooked and still nice and gooey on the inside, with a garlicky breadcrumb crunchy topping. Next came the chicken liver mousse mille feuille, which is traditionally a dessert of sheets of puff pastry layered in between a filling. The pictures from here on out are a bit blurry…sorry. Its hard to use a camera in the dark.
This one was obviously filled with a light chicken liver mousse and served with a side of poached pears that made a nice sweet contrast to the liver?s saltiness. Okay, this is where my descriptions get a bit dicey, because the flavors were not that memorable and I forgot to snag a menu and can?t find one online. This was scallops, topped with fried lotus root and some other delicious bits.
It was okay, the topping made it taste a bit like ceviche. We also had the crumbed chicken with aioli, which was basically just little tiny strips of fried chicken with a nice garlic-laden aioli.
It was good, but something I did not expect to find on the menu. Sort of KFC meets silver service. It was good…that was some nice garlic laden aioli. Just not expected. Right as our mains came out, one of the waiters slipped and spilled water all over Adam.
Then, instead of changing the table cloth, they place foil over his wet spot on the table and then another linen napkin on top. We found this very silly, because it looked unprofessional and wouldn?t have taken very long to change the entire cloth. Ah well. It was nice for hiding stray food particles under.
My main was lamb, and I want to say lamb neck, but I could be totally off.
It had white asparagus, and the package at the back of the plate definitely was phyllo dough with spinach in it. It was so hard to remember what I had ordered and we had to literally take a photo to the food just to see what it looked like in person. I remember the lamb being tender and tasting pretty good, but nothing terribly amazing. Adam ordered the braised waygu beef cheeks, and once again, we are not quite certain what it came with.
This was generally our complaint for the evening. The food was good, but nothing stood out or was memorable. We ordered a side salad and it was good as far as salad goes, and they brought us complimentary sides to make up for the spilled water (although money off our bill would have been better), so we also had chickpea fries rolled in polenta with some mysterious dip and roasted pumpkin with Greek yogurt.
The pumpkin was great, a nice blend of sweet and tangy, but the fries just lacked something?
as you can see, the dip was the same color as the fries, and really did not add anything to them. They both tasted bland, and I was really hoping for some sort of strong dip that could give the fries more flavor. With all the extra sides, we were so full we could barely eat dessert. Thankfully, the menu had a small dessert on it, so we each ordered a toasted marshmallow, one raspberry flavored, the other passion fruit. This was a nice dessert.
It was warm and crunchy on the outside and smooth on the inside. The passion fruit was the best, with that nice tart kick of passion fruit all throughout it. A lot of passion fruit desserts wimp out and barely add any real flavor to it, but this marshmallow took care of that. And that was that. It was an okay meal, but not really worth the price, which came out to be around $130 for two people, three courses and a few glasses of wine. But thankfully, our trip to Sydney had been packed with delicious food, so one not great meal didn?t kill us. But it did make Adam?s pant soggy. Thanks Sydney, and all the food bloggers and friends who suggested places for us to go! ~LTG Read More: Sydney Trip Day 1, 2, 3 Good Living Growers’ Market 1st Saturday of every month In Pyrmont Bay Park, across from the Star City Casino 7am-11am Aqua Bar 266 Campbell Prd Bondi Beach, NSW 20206 02 9130 6070 open for brekky and lunch 7 days a week Passionflower Cafe Dessert Bar Shop G12, Capitol Square 730-742 George Street, Haymarket Sydney, NSW 02 9281 8322 Bentley Restaurant and Bar 320 Crown St., Surry Hills 02 9332 2344 Open Tuesday thru Saturday, noon-11pm.
