Rusty Pig
Ah, the joys of dining out. Also, visiting a restaurant I haven't been to before. And best of all, cooking with fire! A triple combo that was so good!
It's a relatively new restaurant at less than a year old. Located next to one of my favourite cafes, I always noticed it but never really took time to go visit (plus I never seem to find the money to go!), but now seemed like the perfect time. Yes, what a fantastic night!
It was just myself and another party of 5 on a stormy Friday night. Usually I avoid Fridays, but I was feeling it this time. The max capacity at the time was 10 people, and already there were no shows! How crushing. It always makes me sad when people don't call to cancel.
Their non alcoholic options were almost non existent, so i was contemplating getting a glass of wine, but then I found on their list a green ant gin! Woah! Yeah, I definitely had to try that! It was garnished with lemon, making it harder to taste out the nuances of the gin, but since I've eaten green ants before at Noma Australia, I could use my imagination to sort of bridge the gin to the tonic and lemon. Good stuff!
Fired baked bread with lamb fat, confit garlic. Ooooooh yeah. Do you know how hard it is to get animal fat bread?? I recall having chicken fat with butter somewhere (maybe Automata?), and then there was the beef fat taro at Orana (ok so that's not quite bread, but you get the point), but it seems to be pretty uncommon? This was incredible. I don't usually like lamb fat but I suspect that this is because I never ate lamb growing up because my mum didn't like it, but since I've been experimenting with my own cooking adventures, I think I'm now used to the flavour so this was delicious! And that confit garlic too! It was just SO GOOD.
Corn ribs, chaat masala, charred lemon. Yeeah that spice on the corn is great! Plus I love corn so this was so good! There was so much corn too!
Abrolhos Island scallops, salted kombu butter. This is the crowd favourite, but I've had a loooooot of scallops, so this one wasn't actually my favourite haha (it was the bread). The salted kombu was super tasty though, so I can see why everyone loves this dish. But when I can get live Rottnest Island scallops for myself, this one's a hard call. Yes, it's great, but I've had many great scallops!
Grilled occy, charred corn salad, fermented chilli sauce. The rest of the menu were basically a list of their greatest hits, and this was more of a new/experimental dish. Not bad! I personally felt that it was a bit of corn overkill, considering how much corn I ate earlier, but I love corn so it was fine. The octopus was super tasty and it came covered in fermented chilli! Hmmm I still think Besk's house hot sauce was just that bit tastier, but this also had a similar tomatoey flavour. I feel like the octopus might pair better with a different vegetable? We could just go Spanish? and say potatoes but maybe it does well with other foods too!
Mottainai lamb, pomme puree, minted jus. Yeah wow that lamb. Such deliciousness! And sorry, but I'm going to call that mash potatoes. That was super tasty too! Thick and luscious. I'm amazed at how tasty that lamb was. The chef was saying how he can always taste it out from other producers - these lambs are fattened up with carrots from the carrot farm next door! So good. This was my second favourite next to the bread.
And lastly for dessert, sticky date pudding, bourbon butterscotch sauce, vanilla ice cream. Yeah I love sticky date pudding! It's one of those foods I wasn't terribly fond of as a kid, but started loving it as I grew up. I pretty much demolished this dessert, it was so good, with a great sauce to pudding ratio. Yeah! If anything I wished there was a bit more date? But that's a very minor thing and personal preference.
Overall it was a fantastic and great value dinner! Plus I loved the whole cooking with fire experience. Flames just make everything taste so much better! Because it was so quiet, I also managed to enjoy a lovely conversation with the chef, who seems to have worked at many restaurants! That's pretty cool! What a lovely bunch of people, and I think everyone's just happy to be out and about again. I've been having so much fun with home cooking, but having flavours and techniques constructed by other people is also very fun!
Tiny's Bar
It's been a while since I've visited a new restaurant on the block, and since my mid-year plans had changed quite suddenly, I decided I'd have the budget to be able to check out a new powerhouse created by some big name people.
Since I usually only go to highly sought after places, I had no idea if I needed a booking or not... and decided to try a walk-in. Yay, I was instantly seated!I was going to order a mocktail or pass on drinks altogether, but something on the list caught my eye. I've seen a bottle floating about called Doppelganger by Brave New Wine in some of the super hipster restaurants, and I absolutely love the name. Plus, it's an orange wine, the hip thing to drink right now. They had it available by the glass, so sure, why not!It was nice, but since I don't drink and my tastebuds are pretty poor, plus the fact that I prefer light bodied red wines, means that I have no idea how to describe the taste. Oh well!
The menu is designed to be shared, and features lots of things on sticks! But first, oysters. These ones were from Duck Bay, Tasmania. They came with condiments of sorrel (I think?) vinaigrette and hot sauce, so I put a bit of each on them. Given my recent Tasmania experience, I was pretty sure these oysters would be so-so (Tasmanian oysters taste infinitely better in Tasmania, as opposed to South Australian oysters which I find taste similar outside of South Australia), and yeah, they were okay, but I've been spoilt lately so I'll say no more.
Garden crudites with sunflower cream and yuzu kosho. What delicious veg! I especially loved all the pickled vegetables. I dipped everything in the sunflower cream, but to be honest, it was the flavour of the vegetables that I was enjoying the most. The beans were pretty boring so needed the crema, but the sugar peas were so good by themselves!
I agonised between the beef tartare and the fish crudo, and in the end chose the beef. For me, the beef was pretty standard - it didn't blow my mind so my favourite tartares are still from wherever it is that I mentioned it last. That being said, the potato crisps were fantastic! And the cured egg shavings! The crisps were super thin and crispy!!Also, this was on a bed of oyster cream. The oyster flavour was just right, and a nice touch to the dish.
Okay, things on sticks time! I really liked that they served "beef intercostals" but it makes me wonder if there's a more common name for it. The king oyster mushroom with soy cured yolk was a must for me, because I love mushrooms. In the background is an octopus stick with squid ink Kewpie. When these came out, I actually forgot that that the mushroom came with egg, so when I saw it in the middle of the plate, I asked how to eat it! The waitress said I could just dip the things on sticks in it. Because of how much the yolk had condensed though, the dipping didn't really work, instead I just scooped it onto my food. And wow, it was one amazing egg yolk. I don't think I've had soy cured yolk before, and I loved it!
And dessert was grilled pineapple with roasted rice ice cream. I knew I wanted this as soon as I saw the pineapple on the menu, and my mind instantly thought of Dinner by Heston's pineapple display in the kitchen, because that was an amazing sight. It was covered in a ginger sauce which worked so well with it!The ice cream was super melty (as opposed to me taking pictures of it since I usually am acutely aware of how long I spend between the food arriving, me taking shots and then eating it), and the flavour of roasted rice really came though. The feeling the ice cream gave me was a lot like the chamomile ice cream from Celcius - it was very "feel good" and an appropriate end to my meal. I was very pleased with this and it was my favourite dish of the night.I was really full after all that, but probably only because I ordered the wine - I dehydrate instantly from it so I had about a litre of water on top of all the food. I was a little surprised at the bill because it came in at over $100... which is fairly expensive! That being said, I don't usually order wine, and I don't usually order four oysters. If I deducted them from the bill, I would have hit my estimated spend of $70. Hence, I can't tell if this place is actually more expensive, because I don't know if I would have ordered an extra entree instead.Also, while the food was nice, there was nothing particularly standout about it (except for the dessert), so I kept thinking back to Petition Kitchen, which also does share plates, though the menu structure is different. I think I like Petition better because it's more my style, plus it's marginally less out of the way. However, if you're in this part of town, it's a great place to have a meal with friends.Hooray for trying new things!
DeLish Expo!
I'm so totally poor, but here I am, still doing food and coffee things. If it makes me feel any better, I did pre-pay for these tickets when I was also poor! The earlybird tickets were only $10, and there was going to be a latte art competition, so why not. It's an excuse to take pictures if nothing else.There were actually quite a few coffee stalls, and one was doing espressos and piccolos for free! I was lured in by a nitro cold brew sample, but since I don't like cold coffees, I decided to try out a pic, for a nice pic.
This was from the Cold Matter/Black Matter coffee stand. So pretty!
Explored some tea options too. Nice sencha, tie guan yin, and buddha's tears. Decided to skip the peppermint and the goji berry one.
Some nice takeaway cups and pretty lights!
Since this was in Crown's grand ballroom, you kind of have to look up.
I don't like the look of most grinders, but I think the Mythos is starting to grow on me. This is where the latte art competition was, and somehow I managed to end up standing right at the front. It was a bit of a pain getting the right lens for this, I was carrying all three of mine, but I found the 60mm performed the best here, though to take pictures of people, I did have to switch back to my 19mm quite frequently, but since I can do this quite quickly, I found this combination worked better than my original zoom lens.
See? Taking pictures of people taking pictures. The best!
Everyone was amazed at how calm these baristas looked, but when you saw their hands, you could see how nervous they were! The hands, so much shaking!
And of course I love taking pictures of hands, hands are really pretty because of how complex the joints are (at least to me since I know nothing about anatomy). Plus each barista has their own style of how they pour and hold their cups, which is super cool to observe!
So many pretty pictures!!! I love my barista's branding on his jugs, too. He didn't make it to the finals, but I still love his stuff!
I'm actually glad there weren't too many swans in this competition. I've found that most places in Perth pour swans to the point where I'm sick of seeing them, and I miss my several layer rosettas. This time, there were some nice flowers. And these blobs, which came out really nicely after etching:
I'm not a fan of etching, but I admit, you can get some cool designs out of it! This comp essentially became a battle of the dragons, and this fantastic round had double dragons!
Close one! The only round to have divided judges too, every other round was unanimous!
That concentration...
Runner up design was pretty cool!
And the winner :DI did look around some more and sample some ice creams and buy some cakes, but nothing that came out as really pretty pictures. So here are some shots of the Crown!
No escape! Muahahhahaha
And an obligatory celebrity chef photo.
Journey... to the not so West
Hello Perth!So nice to finally meet you, having first wanted to see you in all your glory many many years ago after your most amazing restaurant featured on Masterchef - Greenhouse.I had only known a week earlier that I'd get the opportunity to say hi, and had scrambled to shortlist a cafe and restaurant selection for only two days. The internet recommended Standing Room Only, plus some others, but I knew the key to the crawl lay in the charming baristas.
So there I was, after landing at about 9AM on a Friday. After a quick check in, I started my quest. The key is being super polite and inquisitve, but the biggest winner? "Hi, I'm new here. Oh, and I'm on a timed quest to find all the coffees of Perth." I ordered a filter - Kenya Thunguri pourover. I love super juicy coffees, however I went with a friend who is super normal and pointed out that she was ordering a NORMAL latte with two sugars. I personally like Patricia Coffee Brewers better - being located in an arcade doesn't do them justice! That being said, it's super cool to step through the non-existent glass wall to pick up your coffee. It also wasn't long before they gave ne a hanwritten list of cafes to go to! Wow! It definitely helped with my CBD crawl - so much so that by the end of it all, well... I'll mention it then!
Anyway, in my classically random way of getting around in an unfamiliar city, I walked around in circles until I found my next stop - Ristretto Coffee Roasters. Another little takeaway hole in the wall, I decided to try and order their namesake, but lucky for me they recommended espresso! I was very pleased. For those playing at home, that was coffee number two.My friend and I needed breakfast, so we decided to visit Small Print next - a place I had either not found or dismissed, but one which they had claimed was very good. They weren't wrong! It felt like a canteen but I eyed the bakery equipment and some guy sitting in a glass room, working away at his laptop, surrounded by coffee equipment and possibly a large piece of baking machinery.
AND THERE WERE COWS JUST CHILLING THERE. By cows I mean toy cows on top of the display cabinet. They had a nice selection of coffees - I was impressed by their range, and it turns out Perth has a decent offering for filter coffees. A Columbian geisha later, I was in warm peach iced tea heaven. They seem to really like using the Bodum french press beakers in Perth. I wanted to sample an espresso fron here too, but I had so much more to try. So off we went to Lowdown, a little coffee place in another arcade type place. This one wasn't so great, a little too dark for my liking.Next stop, Chik & Kent. Another espresso here, but this one for me wasn't as tasty as the baristas said it would be - out of all their recommendations, Small Print is the one I'd recommend to others. Somehow during this exploration process, we managed to find a cafe that I'd dismissed - Tiger Tiger. According to online reviews, it isn't as great as it used to be. It is however, located in a cute little alleyway and had tiger orange espresso cups, and also tiger toys on the windows. My eyeballs were starting to fuzz at this point, and my friend had experienced the "too much latte" effect of milky coffees.We were now approaching lunchtime, and I was eagerly anticipating the awesomeness that is Greenhouse, which, for the sake of keeping this post relatively short short, as well as ensuring I have an opportunity to shine that fantastic restaurant in all its glory, I will place it in its own post.There's a lot of nice artwork everywhere nowadays, but the first to really catch my eye here was the sea dragon with human hands:
After Greenhouse I had time to circle back to SRO to thank them... and have another coffee. Apparently, wondering if I've had enough coffee and continuing to comtemplate another coffee means I haven't had enough coffee! So espresso it was, and I got to hear some conversation with other people about coffee in London. It was then that I realised they serve double espressos where every other place had served singles. I counted that as two, for the purpose of sounding insane. I was then also lucky enough to sample another filter they have!So by the end of this, I had a total of just over 8 coffees between the hours of 9AM - 2:30PM So good, and a new record! I was all caffeined out and seriously felt like I needed a lie down. That's what too much coffee does to me past the eyeball fuzzing phase.The night was spent at a work party, so I didn't get a chance to go to anything fancy. However, I was up and ready to complete my adventure the next morning! I was awake way too early, so had to kill time out and about. I attempted to go to Greenhouse for breakfast, and along the way, the weirdest thing happened. As Iwas GPSing along, this guy walking next to me came up and said, "if you follow the guy ahead, you'll get to the right place." This confused me to no end! How does a stranger approach someone and say follow the person in front????? So I then said that I was actually looking for breakfast and wanted to go to Greenhouse. His then again puzzling reply was, "oh, you're here for the convention?" Woooah life is definitely stranger than fiction! There was some "Imagination" breakfast function going on at Greenhouse that morning, and I had to explain that I was a tourist who had heard about the restaurant's reputation and wanted to visit - and that it's impossible to miss the building. Then lo and behold, we were magically there, at which point I took the liberty to say that I, as a stranger to the city, had lead someone to a landmark! Or something like that.So now that I knew there was a function, I had to somehow kill more time before officially starting my morning-after crawl. I did manage to walk all the way to Ristretto Wall Coffee, but they hadn't opened yet, plus I wasn't particularly in the mood for coffee, so I took a look and must have looked so suspicious, before finally making it to Greenhouse for breakfast. On the way though, I concluded that Perth was a thoroughly weird place as it had cats on giant TVs.
They also do have some adorable giant dinosaurs and whimsical paintings.
It was then time - to head to the Crown in preparation for Rockpool Bar & Grill Perth. Having been to Sydney and Melbourne to compare the two, it was finally time to complete the trio. The Crown is located on the other side of the river in Perth, and I didn't get to catch the ferry. Instead we caught the train, and it reminded that train lines in Sydney are so complex. I love this side, the expensive, picturesque side of the city. Very nice statues and scenery. Some parts of the edge of the river looked like beach, so I got some very nice skylines of the Perth cityscape (does that sentence even make sense???).
It turns out Perth is also home to killer ducks. I was randomly taking pictures of ducks when one of them started swimming towards me! I thought that was a little odd... maybe it was protecting its territory, but I wasn't sure. It then got out of the water and continued to walk towards me at a very slow pace!! This was too much, so I turned and ran for my life.In all this rush, panic and confusion, I managed to eat at Bistro Guillaume. I've always wanted to go but never wanted it enough that I actually went, till now. I knew that there'd be a selection of nice restaurants at the Crown, and was hoping to eat at Nobu, but Guillaume captures my heart more - the beef tartare always wins out. I wanted a light lunch, so we only ordered a few dishes - a chacuterie plate, beef tartare, chips, and I couldn't resist sampling half a dozen oysters.
I didn't expect the tartare to be pre-mixed; and while it was tasty, I couldn't help but think that the entire thing was mixed in with some sort of tomato chutney. I personally prefer Felix's tartare - that was absolutely gorgeously delicious. So much so that I think I need to write down what serves the best things.The terrine on the chacuterie plate was WOW. WOWOWOWOW. So good! The cornichons on the other hand, were a little too vinegary, so that I couldn't breathe while eating them cause I started coughing when I accidentally did so. Sadly, not my favourite french eatery. Felix wins, and Vue de Monde still wins for best souffle- the disappearing raspberry ice cream act in this one was still no match!
I have posted some of this out of order, as I did most of the exploring around Crown after lunch, however I'm allowed to have a messed up sense of time, so it's straight to Rockpool Bar & Grill Perth! It has the most grand entrance of the three, with a candled hallway before you get to the reception. Both Melbourne and Perth seem to be more casual and don't have the bar sectioned off from the restaurant. In addition, they both offered full menus whereas Sydney keeps them exclusive. So, I did have access to the caviar and steak, but I had only one goal here: to compare the David Blackmore Full Blood Wagyu burger with my other experiences. I had a great Victorian pinot noir while I was at it. Oh Rockpool, you certainly have the best wines. I now fully understand and appreciate that each Rockpool Bar & Grill is its own identity. It means that they remain unique!My verdict? Sydney has the best burger. So tasty and just right. For some reason the other sites just don't have that magically perfect combination of flavours. That being said, Perth is notably different as they use a spicier sauce - that I had to eat it slowly. And I think the older I get, the less food gorging I can handle. That being said, while the burger didn't top Sydney's, the dessert was OMG THE BEST ROCKPOOL BAR AND GRILL DESSERT I'VE EVER HAD. Almond milk ice cream, strawberries, rose jelly, almond praline. Oooooh you beautiful, gentle dessert. The ice cream was soooo good and there was this amazing sprinkle of praline crunch on some super sweet strawberries that made them mindblowingly sweet, and the rose jelly was so subtle and not at all overpowering that added that extra bit of texture to the dish. So. Amazing. Gorgeous. Wonderful. Why can't all Rockpool Bar and Grills have this.There is only one thing I wish I'd managed to do, and that's go to Helvetica, which is a whisky den. I'd missed out on Whisky and Alement in Melbourne, so I had to go to Helvetica. But it was in a dark alleyway (which didn't really bother me), but it was still crowded and busy at 11:30PM so I didn't end up going. Turns out, it's not such a big deal because I can turn it into a thing - never managing to visit a whisky bar in my travels.All in all, the western hub of Australia was worth a visit. A very different city from Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide. Friendlier and more built up than Adelaide. Not as Melbourne as Adelaide is, and has to define dress code in a lot of city restaurants where Melbourne and Sydney tend to have unspoken rules - either that or I've never actually paid attention. And not like Sydney at all. I miss Sydney. I can't wait to go back.Rockpool, here I come!!!