Attica

Alright. The big one of 2016 - Attica. Well, there was Noma too. It's certainly been an action packed year so far! I was super excited to visit and had made sure to book just as the month of July became available for bookings. Those tables of 2 went quick; halfway through the day they were gone already for dinners on Fridays and Saturdays!Too bad Ben wasn't there that week - he was instead in New York for the announcement of the San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants. And once again, did very well! I'm so happy for him.The decor here was so nice, every table had a basket with feathers and weird nutty things. All throughout the night (and even now), I have no idea what they were for.Pretty glasses, anyone?There was also a hay-type material weaved animal, which my friends and I were guessing for half the night. My guess was dingo!

Cook's leaves

After having taken our drink options (juice parings gogo!), the food started. Even though I'd watched Chef's Table  and read about dishes like potato cooked in the dirt it was grown in, I hadn't actually researched (stalked) much about what to expect on the night, so everything here came as a surprise.First up, garden pickings. A davidson plum, sorrel, chard. As soon as I saw the davidson plum, I realised I'd had it before in Adelaide! It's a very confusing fruit since it has two bulbs, of which one is a seed and inedible. This one certainly tasted better than my first experience with this fruit! Having had sorrel and chard and every which vegetable happened to grow in South Australia, this starter was quite familiar to me.

Whipped corn

Next up, textures of corn. Oh yes, sweet, sweet corn! This was so simple and absolutely delicious! I miss really good creamed corn.

Cucumber and pumpkin essence

The first part of the juice pairing. The pairings spanned across two to three dishes, and this one accompanied the first few snacks. Very refreshing and the pumpkin flavour came through as sweet.

Goolwa pippies

Ah, Goolwa pippies. I had my fill of them in Adelaide, and they are certainly very good! Ben's right to showcase them here because they're absolutely delicious!

Smashed avo on toast

Because I'm hipster on the inside, this dish was a nice take on avo on toast, but not the most impressive. I was, however, spoilt by the fact that there was a heaping of finger limes on this dish! And look. at. that. knifework. If there's anything about this dish that should have been impossible, it's the fine knifework on the avocado. Usually if they're firm enough to be diced as finely as that, they're not ripe yet. But the flavour here was great. THAT KNIFEWORK. WHAT. It's soo good I couldn't stop staring at it!

Fresh cheese and honeycomb

When you're the first table to reach this dish, and the waitstaff bring out a full, fresh board of honeycomb and scoop a dollop right onto this dish. Now that's heaven. This was so light and lovely! The beauty of this dish was unmatched as well. It's so delicate, pretty and fitting!

Smoked pork

Who doesn't love succulent slices of pork to be picked up with fingers and eaten just like that! An amazing piece of meat.

Wallaby Blood Pikelet

Oh this dish. I loved this dish. Not only were these the most adorable petit pikelets ever, they also featured offal! Mmm wallaby blood (which didn't have a trace of blood flavour at all) laid out delicately on a wallaby themed linen towel. Then there was the recipe! A copy of a handwritten, humorous recipe was also given to us - affectionately titled "Wallaby Pikelets Maaate" to keep. I love souvenirs! And yes of course, this dish was delish.

Tomato and Verjus

I love tomato juice. I love savoury tomato juices. Sadly, having written this about two months after the experience, I've forgotten the exact flavour of this juice :(

Chicken Carrot

I call this one, Chicken Carrot Taco. Chicken and vegetables in a sheet of carrot, and presented in chicken shaped glassware. How cute and awesome! The aroma that came out of this one was fantastic!

Gazza's Vegemite Pie

Mmm yes Vegemite! Incorporated into a lamb pie! I couldn't think of a better combination. Plus being presented on brown paper? That is so much nostalgia of a school canteen when pies were handed out in paper bags. Loved the flavour of this one! It's actually hard to go wrong with Vegemite (though I'm sure a lot of people would say otherwise!).

Lance Wiffin's Mussel

I spy karkalla! These were lovely fried morsels of mussel goodness, and the painted shell was a great addition too - it's a portrait of the mussel farmer himself, painted by a local artist. How cool!

Beef on the Bone

Ah, who doesn't love beef on the bone. I've also forgotten what beef this was. But it was delicious and so tender!

Aromatic Ripponlea Broth

Ah, the lovely Ripponlea broth, made up of 20+ different herbs from the garden at the back. So delicate and light, and it was great trying to taste out each one! I didn't fare so well, for me the only ones I knew for sure were watercress and fennnel!

Wattleseed Bread

And that marked the end of the starters. The wattleseed bread was great, and the butter was great, but the absolute best thing was the macadamia butter (I think) with saltbush! That was absolutely incredible and we ran out of that quickly!

Salted Red Kangaroo and Bunya Bunya

Now the first of the larger courses. This was one I've seen before, and is certainly impressive in real life! Such beautiful carrots and really lovely kangaroo tartare! The bunya nut cream was at the bottom, but if anything, I liked the whole nut featured in Noma Austrlaia's dish better, but who can really compare to Noma, right?

Rooibos and Houjicha

Well, I should start experimenting with tea flavours. Mixing green and white teas is so "safe" as this drink proved to me. Who would have thought the sweetness of rooibos went so well with that earthy, roasty aroma of houjicha!

All Parts of the Pumpkin

I like pumpkin, but not that much. This had an amazing beer foam topping some lovely soft pumpkin and and a healthy dose of pumpkin seeds. I didn't particularly like this dish (it was too... normal?) since I generally eat enough pumkpin, but my friends really loved this one. I would have preferred potato or cabbage (how cool is a name like 142 days on earth!) dish here.

Red Grape and Coriander

I'm so glad I don't have the "coriander tastes like soap" gene! This one tasted quite nice, loved the fact that the herb was in it!

Marron with Quandong and Pearl

Oh my goodness. This is what I've been waiting for. I saw pictures of this dish with various toppings, and I so desperately wanted it to stay on the menu on my visit. And here it is!!! What a gorgeous half marron! I loved the quandong and pearl mix too, this was just perfect! No nutcrackers here though; the staff said there was nothing under the shell.

But...

My teeth are/were "certified" nutcrackers, so we (yes my friends convinced me to, hence the "we" and ended up being slightly alarmed at the cracking noises from me crushing the shells) ignored the waitstaff's advice (at our risk! I very much doubt they would be pleased if someone broke a tooth or two!), and I was rewarded with some excellent leg and claw meat. Soooooo good! There were a few other tables that did this too. We ended up with a very cleaned out pile of shell!

Muntries and Grapefruit

Grapefruit juice is so wonderful! It went so well with the marron, and the muntries/quandong combination made the whole thing just work!

Emu's Egg

For me, it didn't get more nostalgic than this dish. It was my favourite (okay, so the marron was my favourite but this one has an entirely different reason) not for the flavour (which my friends said was a tad too salty, but for me was borderline and therefore bearable), but rather for the nostalgia. This dish took me straight back to primary school by the sole fact that it was served on a bed of grass. The grass is the very definition of an Australian playground/park - grass, eucaluptus and clovers. It transported me to an entirely different place, and after finishing the food, I continued playing with the grass because that's what I did as a child. I rummaged though the patch looking for four leave clovers and secretly hoped to find some bindis (those really annoying painful spikey things in the grass that you always ended up stepping or putting your hand on). It was such a tactile experience! I would come back again and again based on just how powerfully memory-invoking this dish was alone.

Cold-smoked Granny Smith Apple

Wow. There's apple juice, then there's this. That smokeyness was super intense in an incredible way. It gave it so much more "bite" and mouthfeel, and a lovely smokey aroma that filled the nose, kind of like the smell of bacon - to the point where since it was paired with the egg, was almost like green eggs and ham - yet another reference to my childhood (though I don't think I ever read the book?). It ended up savoury, tart and sweet at the same time, it was amazing!

Cuppa Tea and Bikkies in the Garden

There was a lovely intermission here, where we were escorted into the little garden past the kitchen. It was mighty cold on that winter's night, but that's nothing a good ol' cuppa can't fix! I can't remember what kind of tea it was, but I love tea so it was great. Then there was this cute little crocodile arrowroot biscuit! How adorable! And tasted infinitely better than an Arnott's milk arrowroot! Another trip down memory lane, that was...

You can also see tulips in the background, which was the purpose of us being here - tulip petals are actually edible (well at least a few varieties)! So here, our role was to pick (and snip) our own tulip for the next dish. My friends nominated me as a tulip picker. so here's the fancy fellow I chose:

Tulips DIY

After some magic in the kitchen, here was the first of our lovely desserts! A beautiful striking red, with rhubarb and some lemon myrtle cream. I love tart things (I can thank my Adelaide barista for that!) so I really enjoyed this dish, and I can add another flower to my (non existent) list of edible flowers eaten!

Wild Hibiscus and Davidsonia

If there was one downside, it was that the juice pairing was also quite tart, so the double sour was at the limit of what I could handle. It was delicious though!

Byron Sunrise and Fresh Coconut Cream

We saw chefs plating this dish as we were walking back to our tables after tulip picking, but it wasn't until it reached our table that we realised just how awesome it actually was. Look at that spiral!! How does it not fall over? What is this sorcery??? It was like the most intricate granny smith apple slinky volcano ever, with a bright red finger lime surprise inside! And the ash on the outside... it was just incredible. The coconut cream was definitely needed to offset all the acidity!

Native Tamarind, Pineapple and Vanilla

And of course, pineapple is the other half of coconut while being on the same sour strain to tie in with the finger limes. Such genius! Again, the only downside was all the sour. I could handle it, but my friends couldn't, so I did end up finishing their juices for them.

When one is offered coffee at a Melbourne fine dining restaurant not sponsored by Vittoria, one says yes to the coffee. And it was a cold brew! (They don't do espresso.) It was very lovely even though I don't have a particular fondness for cold brew. And even though my palate isn't calibrated for this stuff, I still took a pretty good guess at the coffee - always have to flex those tastebuds! I guessed "South America, not roasted by Seven Seeds". I believe my guess was Colombia, but the actual coffee was a Brazil, roasted by Proud Mary. Hey, that's pretty close! I was so proud of myself and I think I surprised my friends with that!

Attica Cheftales

Nothing beats this set of petit fours. Chef's tales, a take on Fantales. And the wrappers were so fun to read! There was that mystifying moment again when I guessed the chefs (not by name, but could describe exactly which chef it was) when my friends read out the descriptions.

My one was Rosia Sanchez, and I guessed it as "the lady who runs Hija de Sanchez" as soon as I read the line "I quit my job as pastry chef at one of the world's best restaurants... I wanted to bring good, humble Mexican food". I also guessed Christina Tosi as "the person who invented the Momofuku crack pie" as soon as I heard "I eat cookie dough every day" and the launch of Milk Bar. My friends were amazed! Too bad it's the only sort of trivia that lives in my head.

Attica was such an amazing experience. I'm so happy that there are so many places that use native Australian ingredients now that I don't feel that getting this stuff is few and far between anymore - which is great! It means that I tie this place, Noma Australia, and Orana as the same class of restaurants.  All of these are such great representations of modern Australian cuisine!

Sokyo omakase - take 2!

I have this thing for Sokyo and omakases. I like both! The sushi I have at Sokyo is always so good, I feel like sushi anywhere else just isn't as good! There are of course exceptions (like Umi Kaiten Zushi and all those nice restaurants in Crows Nest), but this is the one I keep coming back to.I didn't actually plan to have two omakase sessions in a year, this visit was all due to circumstance - I just happened to be in Sydney, and a winter omakase tends to be more interesting than a summer one - however, I missed out on truffle season by a few weeks. So close yet so far! Sano san remembered me which is always a plus. And since I was more familiar the second time around, I managed to look around and play with my camera more - like this shot of him plating things up before our omakase started.Since I've been so incredibly busy (I have a life!), I've posted this a couple of months after dining here, so my memory of how things tasted is likely hazy. Lots of one liners of "it was delicious!" will be seen here!First up, aged snapper and abalone. I think this is the first time I've had aged snapper, which was great! It wasn't too fishy at all, even though the ageing process increases fishiness (I think). Plus that abalone was so good!Cuttlefish noodles, uni, caviar. This was incredibly good. It's so hard to say if any single dish is better than any other dish - last time I had the marinated tuna which was a completely different flavour profile. But since it's winter - uni galore!I love the way this was presented. The golden bowl was so pretty and made this dish look so grand! Some lovely tuna belly.White fish first - NZ snapper. I absolutely love fresh snapper. I think this was the same as last time. I love the scoring!Alfonsino, another white fish. I think Sano said it was Imperador, but Google tells me it's the same kind of fish. Yellow fin tuna. A nice, lean cut. Always good.Big eye tuna (NZ). Sano was very happy about getting some big-eye tuna, and it was certainly delicious - made tastier by the marbling you can see here!Pearl meat. I liked February's visit of pearl meat better, but this was still good.Big eye tuna muscle. I think he said muscle.And of course, big eye tuna belly. So distinctly different from the other cuts!But this is the gold - otoro from Japan. It's so visibly different, and melts in the mouth oh so much more!More big eye tuna! This time it was grilled. My friend and I got a big chunk to share, and it was so good! As we were eating through it, Sano san did look a little concerned, as he spotted it being slightly undercooked. I didn't even care, it was so delicious! And a place like this has such fresh seafood, I wasn't the least bit worried about any risks associated with undercooking food - I mean, I do that a lot at home anyway!And then some mackerel - fresh stuff this time, with a healthy dose of citrus dressing, which was needed since it's such a strong flavoured oily fish. I love mackerel!Time for a different angle! And I thought this shot came out quite nicely. No salmon anywhere this time, instead this was ocean trout. Yay! I sometimes get tired of having salmon everywhere I go, so this was a nice change.This fried imperador wing was pretty cool, and very tasty! In fact because it was deep fried, I asked Sano if it was possible to eat the fin. He wasn't too sure, but I gave it a go anyway, and yes, it was great!I call this one the (uni)giri taco, because it's an uni nigiri placed in a seaweed shell. I love uni!Oh, I appear to have skipped a photo of our aburi scampi. But this one will do! Here's Sano flaming them to bits, but leaving them oh so tender and tasty on the inside!It was about this time that he paused the omakase to focus on making this - a really super fancy chirashi with some Yarra Valley golden caviar. Man, how does one obtain golden caviar??? And after looking around a little, I realised that Chase was in the house! I can't believe I recognised him! It was his day off and he was just walking about - too fast for me to prep my lens and shoot though. But that's ok - I got a picture of his food instead! Muahahaha.Cuttlefish - turns out I still don't like it. I guess it's the texture. I don't really like slimy stuff (which raw squid tends to be).Then it was the scallop taco-ception! The shot wasn't so great, but it's the same rice wedged in a scallop wedged in a seaweed shell - otherwise known to me as the taco within a taco. I always love this one!Aburi kingfish belly. I'm glad there was less kingfish this time around, for the same reason as my feelings about salmon - I get it enough everywhere else.My friend and I were both feeling pretty full about now, and Sano checked in with us. I said I didn't want the hand roll this time and to go straight to the tamago (I did refer to my previous blog post to track where we were at, and Sano said that there were more courses this time as well). So egg it was! That fluffy spongey cakey-textured goodness.And my cheeky dessert shot! Goma street, mocha, fruit panna cotta and my favourite, strawberry ice cream mochi.Thus ends my second omakase! It was still very reasonably priced so I was very happy. I would have to keep doing this every time I'm in Sydney! I love Sydney.SOKYOOOOO 

Eat Drink Perth

I think my blogging will slow down over the next few months, we'll see! I have become somewhat permanently poor so I haven't been going to as many cafes lately.Still, Eat Drink Perth happened as part of Good Food Month, which happens here in April instead of October (my Sydneysiderer strikes again!). I found out because one of the cafes I follow (rocks 2 Slayers but only open Monday - Friday) was running some coffee events during this time - how could I not say no!Fancy a Filter? The cafe is called Willie Wagtail, just a tad bigger than a hole in the wall, with two Slayers and coffee roasted by Pound (a local roaster). I was so happy that I had the opportunity to  learn more without committing lots of money and time - I considered this more of a hobby/enthusiast class than anything that I would become barista-worthy from.The first of their "masterclasses" was all about filter coffee and various brew methods - Moccamaster, aeropress, syphon, pourover (look at that shiny copper Hario!). It was awkward to explain that I wasn't really a home brewer but that I own an aeropress and v60....The class was an hour long and felt very introductory to me, and reminded me a little of a coffee class I didn't attend in Adelaide, and my barista said afterwards that I would have already known most of the stuff. However, the next course was more exciting....Pour Like a ProAnd it's espresso time! Another one hour session, this time it covered espresso and steaming milk. This one was still pretty basic. I liked it because I got to play with a Slayer and make my own espresso, but I would have preferred for a longer session (or having the focus on just espresso or milk, rather than both).There was an explanation as to what an espresso recipe was, and how adjusting different things would affect the flavour. Stuff I already knew, and I was eager to put it into practise. Also, tamping is such an interesting thing because of the mechanics that goes into it. Plus the whole time I was just thinking "keep it flat like a golf lawn, keep it flat!!!"This wasn't my extraction, but I took a shot of it anyway!And then the second half of the lesson - steaming milk and latte art! These were the owner's pours - so pretty!Even though I've steamed milk before, it had been many, many, many years ago. So this time, I totally freaked out every time I turned on the steam, and ended up making milkshake... oops! Not sure how I didn't all those years back. And then I completely failed at pouring my milk, too. No blobs, no squiggles... just... nothing. The blandest, most homogeneous brown coffee you can imagine!So, I guess my journey to being a barista will be very long....How to pull the perfect shotAnd then, serendipitously, came along the golden class - a 2 hour espresso lesson. No milk here! It was almost too expensive for me, but not much gets in the way of me and my coffee. So $75 it was, and it was well worth the money! We started off with three different coffees - house, El Limoncello Nicaragua, and some Kenyan that I don't remember. With several tasting wheels for our reference, we first cupped these coffees (no real cupping spoons, but who needs them!) before proceeding to work behind the machine.I couldn't help but identify that the Nicaraguan coffee was natural processed - it's just so obvious! Though I didn't know that they produced natural coffees, so I was second guessing myself a little bit.Next, a lesson in extraction. I remember the first time I was shown this demonstration and got to taste it, it was amazing! So this is actually one of my favourite parts of espresso learning. A shot of coffee is run indefinitely, collecting about 10 sec worth of coffee in each glass, so 40 sec in total here (anything past 50 sec is just disgusting water). All the oils and flavour are in the first, all the bitter compounds are in the last.And here is the first espresso that I made! It was kind of sour.... The house blend was made of Colombian, Brazil and Nicaragua (not the same as their single), so I would have liked more chocolateyness out of this one. Next, we had a choice of what coffee we wanted to extract. The Nicaraguan had an interesting recipe which required a full pre-infusion, which was a cool concept that I had explained to me for the first time - letting the basket fill with water, then allowing for full pressure and extraction. Apparently the El Limoncello ran really fast... it was also a massive bean. So that's good to know!I chose the Kenyan though, mainly because I know what Kenyans taste like (generally speaking). For some reason though, the coffee kept coming out way too fast and sour, and for me, severely lacking body. There was another group who also used the Kenyan - same recipe - and theirs came out nicer, so tamping was the only real variable. I guess I don't tamp hard enough? Even increasing the dose didn't help, but I absolutely loved the hands on experience!I love coffee!In Conversation with Gary MehiganWhile there were also some night noodle markets I attended, that wasn't all too eventful. Instead, what was really fun to attend was a talk with Gary Mehigan. It was a reasonably priced session so I decided to go. He's a very nice fellow and super talkative!It was just a general chat, where he talked about his childhood and how he was studying to be an architect/engineer until he found out his grandfather cooked. There was a great recount of how he loved his grandfather's cabbage because it had bacon and garlic in it, and that he hated his mum's boiled cabbage, but that he didn't understand why at the time to be able to articulate this.There was also talk about the hard hours of a chef, which I always love listening to. I love cooking, but I know that a chef's hours are hard and there's a lot of blood sweat and tears involved, so I'll never actually become one.There was also a focus on Masterchef - how he came to become one of the judges by passing auditions with George - they bounced ideas off one another rather than just present their own opinions. He also mentioned that most of the food they were tasting was indeed cold - with so many contestants, cleaning and camera crew during the cooks. The time is real! But he explained that since they were walking around, tasting things during the cook (and not being able to directly provide advice), that they had a rough idea of what the dish would taste like by the time it was served to them. That was pretty cool, and makes a lot of sense.The hour went by so quickly! He's such a chatty fellow. A very enjoyable session!I should probably do and attend more things, but the busier I am, the less I blog! So we'll see!

Wildflower Perth

I was very excited when I heard that Wildflower was opening because it seemed like my kind of restaurant. However, I ended up putting off visiting, mainly because I am constantly trying to save money these days, plus my recent Sydney adventure took priority.Of course, me being me, decided to spontaneously book a table one day. It's quite a nice place with that lovely gum tree wallpaper/painting, and looks out towards Swan River (though the lightining meant that I couldn't get a shot that didn't look horrid) with the Bell Tower in view.They didn't have a large non alcoholic selection, and they offered a sweet or sour mocktail. Most places seem to offer the sweet/sour flavours, though I was told I could order any flavour I wanted. I was so tempted to be silly and ask for an umami cocktail, but thought that'd be just a tad too silly. Instead I went sour, and got this lovely drink.I chose their five course degustation, which started with a selection of snacks.Beetroot marshmallow wrapped in beetroot. Quite delicious and light!Prawn cracker with ceviche, finger lime and other condiments. This was so tasty, but that's also because you can never go wrong with prawn crackers.The macaron thing at the back was a chicken liver macaron with cherry, however that wasn't particularly standout for me.Bread was served pretty early on, with hand churned butter with shaved macadamia. That butter was so good!The first course - raw Shark Bay saucer scallops with native basil and dashi cream, fennel fronds, apple and horseradish granita. I love scallops. These ones were incredibly sweet and had a lovely texture! I found that the granita was a tad too cold, but hey, it is granita. I tried to be smart here when I noticed that there were little light balls above the apple jelly layer, and so I asked one of the chefs if it was puffed amaranth. He replied saying it wasn't - instead it was some Japanese seaweed and rice sprinkle. I felt that it was a little bit of cheating to achieve umami addictiveness, but it was so tasty that I didn't really mind. Yet.This one was an extra course that wasn't listed on the menu. It was a beetroot and goat cheese dish, a classic. It reminded me a little of the textures of beetroot dish from my second visit to Celcius in Adelaide (which I never posted). Basically, it was a whole lot of beetroot and goat cheese. It's great, but a really boring combination for me. There was salt baked beetroot which was delicious, pickled beetroot and fresh beetroot accompanied with raspberries and goat cheese foam.Marron! Yay marron. But it looks a little odd, right? As soon as this dish was presented to me, I noticed something lacking... the weird sticky out bits towards the head, like the one from Orana. However, I was pleased when I saw where the rest of the marron was - the sticky out bits were actually under the saltbush pile! There was also some lemon myrtle jam which was absolutely delicious. The marron by itself was very plain, but went well with the brown butter. Far from my favourite marron dish though (Noma wins this right now).Up next was kangaroo with blueberries. Smoked kangaroo, blueberry, bitter chocolate, onion, seaweed. That smoked kangaroo was amazing, but it was wrapped in a seaweed crust that tasted a bit too similar to the one used in the scallop dish. It's weird, usually I happily accept seaweed since I love it so much, but here it felt a little bit like cheating since it automatically makes the food taste so much better? At least Automata made a very different seaweed dish from what I was used to. The blueberry sauce was great, but the blueberry sago-like stuff seemed unnecessary? There was too much chocolate and forcing myself to accompany it with the kangaroo only got me halfway through the quenelle.Arkady lamb - with warrigal greens, black sesame, sheep's yoghurt, dried olive. Now this one was tasty! That lamb was full of flavour, and the greens here tasted great too. I always love dried olive as the flavour of it is just amazing. So much more cohesive than the kangaroo dish!Bahen & Co chocolate mousse, baked banana sorbet, milk chocolate tuile, wattleseed. A really nice mousse log, though I was getting full at this stage. I believe the mousse was either super dark or had some alcohol in it, because it wasn't a chocolatey chocolate mousse. That banana ice cream was delicious with such a real banana flavour. Wattleseed made an appearance here with its crunchy coffeeness.And some petit fours. Look at that mini canele! Plus a cakey thing and a chocolate. Quite a nice end to the meal.I feel like I've been spoilt with the amount of amazing food I've had recently, and so this was an average restaurant for me. Perhaps it was just my timing, however the waitstaff were explaining to some customers that people tend to be hesitant in consuming kangaroo. There was also a couple that got full and couldn't finish their food (though I don't think they opted for the degustation), and the waitstaff were commenting on how they were impressed that I could finish all that food. Actually, now that I think about it, there have been a few restaurants (such as Hartsyard) where my fellow diners and I have been "complimented" on our ability to eat a lot of food.... Anyway, it just seemed like they don't get a lot of foodies and were catering more for wealthy people who wanted a meal (considering how classy Como the Treasury is).I should stop fine dining for a while, my budget requires recovery time. Plus I have more Sydney adventures planned already!

Another Sydney coffee crawl

Since my Sydney visit was a pure foodie adventure, it was important that I drank lots of coffee, this time without almost dying from caffeine overdose. It was a combination of old and new!Elbow Room espresso. Mecca's Blackforest blend and a Pedro Moreno (Santa Barbara, Honduras) on filter. Chapter Five espresso. A single origin from Peru, which was quite nice. I actually passed this on my way to Eveleigh Markets, wondering whether or not I should go in. On the way back, the barista said hi, and so I decided I may as well. He was suggesting iced coffee, when I mentioned I drank espresso. I guess I don't look like an espresso drinker!Some Gumption yeeah.Steam Tank. Mitch is a very talkative guy. Knowledgeable too! He likes his La Marzocco Strada very much because of the real time information it provides! I also learned what a quaker was from him, because apparently there was one in my coffee and I had no idea.Good old Single Origin Roasters. Never fails to impress - after everyone I knew from years ago had all moved on, they are still serving up tasty food and coffee. It's my old stalwart, especially if I need a good breakfast after landing!Handcraft Specialty Coffee. Serving up a lot of Proud Mary.Skittle Lane, a cute, minimalist little place.And good old Artificer. I have no idea what those things on the floor are. I took a photo of this bench because it hasn't been in that spot on every other visit. I love it because it's crooked but actually straight due to the sloping of the actual ground. Dan explained that it's the outside bench. I totally hadn't noticed!Their plant. I want to call it Wilty because it's a little less alive than when I first saw it, but would he get offended?Dan the hand model.YAY coffee