Restaurants, Part I

This post is more for my record, but I figured there's probably no better spot than here to mark down the restaurants I've been to (and will get to) while I'm down here.  The food situation has improved, but I think that's partly because I've accepted the price tags and am more surprised when something isn't sweet than when it is (ie, ketchup, salsa, pasta sauce, etc).

Fix St James
I've been here a few times now and some of the wait staff recognize me.  The food is good, but nothing too original.  The wine list is probably their speciality.

Rockpool Bar & Grill
Australia doesn't do burgers very well, but Rockpool B&G does put up a nice full blood wagyu hamburger.  However, I would suggest getting the pickles, beetroot and ketchup on the side because of the sweetness.  If they have a roast pork sandwich on special, that is definitely worth getting as well.  This place has a strong wine list as well.

Spice I Am
Thai restaurant that wasn't anything special.  It seemed more like a mass produced chain restaurant than an authentic (though I haven't been to Thailand yet).

Kammadhenu
I'd never had Sri Lankan food before, but this was fantastic.  It may have been the 2 for 1 cocktails before hand, but of the 8-10 different courses we tried, only the salt cod missed the mark.  We went with everything from Roti's, to baskets, to curry's.  I'll definitely to back for more.  And, it's BYO which makes it all the better.

Baravian Bier Cafe
They have a schnitzel special on Tuesday's.  Haven't tried anything else here other than copious amounts of beer.

Belgian Beer Cafe
This cafe has half priced mussels on Wednesdays.  Good after work spot for drinks and a heaping pile of mussels.  Solid Belgian beer list as well.

Il Baretto
This is a small italian spot down the street from me (BYO as well).  The specials looked pretty good when I was there, but by the time I got there around 8 they were all sold out.  I'd probably try it one more time if I could get the specials, but everything else was pretty basic.

BBQ King
Good peking duck served in two courses.  Not the classiest of joints, but worth it for the duck.

Gumshara
Excellent japanese ramen, in a food court no less.

Prasit's Northside Thai
Small Thai takeaway place around the corner from me.  I've only had the curry's so far, but they've been good and reasonably priced.

Pompei's
This is a well known pizza spot in Bondi.  I haven't had much pizza here yet, but it was definitely better than the looks of the fast food pizza places I walk past on my way to work.  Though, they could do a bit more with the toppings.

Hurricanes
Stopped here for ribs on the 4th of July.  The ribs were good and the sauce wasn't too sweet (the complete opposite of what I was expecting).  It was a little cool, but sitting next to the high powered propane heaters made it feel close to summer.

Sean's Tapas
Good, though probably not 100% authentic.  The paella was extremely small and could have had a bit more flavor.  The pork belly squares were pretty spot on though.

Now for the bucket list of places I want to get to:
Marque
Berta
Buzo
Wine Library (judging by the wine by the glass list, charcuterie plates and this is almost exactly halfway between my place and the beach, there's a good chance I'll have my own seat at the bar by summer)
Bentley Bar and Grill
Quay Restaurant

Surf School, Here I Come

It's been a pretty low key past couple of weeks.  The rain has stayed longer than I would like which has hindered some exploring.  I've also realized that of everything I bought before I left, the one thing I forgot to pickup was a Sydney/Australia travel guide.  I need to go pick one of them up this week to help me find places to explore.  The weather did ease up this weekend at times.  So I took advantage of it and went out to Bondi to meet up with some friends for lunch and spend the day near the beach.  They had the Winter Fest going on and actually setup an ice skating ring just above the beach.  If you look to the far left of the picture, you can kind of see people skating (by the white globes).

I also spent some the afternoon walking around the area and stopped to watch a group of surf schoolers.  While the water is cold this time of year, maybe low 60s, watching the class is really making me want to start taking lessons.  I was initially shooting for a weekend surf school in September, but now I'm thinking I might have to brave the cold to take a few lessons first.  I figure I should get some training in before summer when the beach is packed with 30,000 people.

I'm hoping to get to the zoo next weekend to start to see some of the crazy poisonous animals this country has just crawling around, from a distance of course.  I'll make sure to bring the camera for that trip.  One one local animals that are everywhere are Flying Foxes.  I didn't want to grab a picture from the internet and ruin the surprise of what these things look like for everyone before I can get picture myself.  They're pretty creepy, rather large and just about everywhere.  Search if you want, but I'll try to get a picture of these creatures.  Let's just say I haven't been keeping my window wide open in the event one of these things gets close.

What I learned this past weekend

I know, it's been a while.  It's just been pretty boring.  Not much going on.  You know how winter is.

But, on an upside I am starting to feel like more of a local.  I stopped by a restaurant last week and some of the people working there actually remembered me, and what I ordered (that was a little weird).  I feel like I have the starting of a new Franklin Cafe, only it's not as good of value and there's no bar to eat at.  I tried their "Winter Wine."  I wasn't really sure what it was, but since it came from a large glass fermenting cask I figured it had to be fresh.  I wish I had a picture because it seemed like the wine equivalent of bath tub whiskey.  It was a big glass jug (like what I used to ferment homebrew in) with a long tube that they used to siphon the wine out.  There was also a litre of olive oil floating on top as a protective layer to keep the oxygen out.  Pretty ingenious and made about an hour or two away.  To top it off, it was a pretty good house wine.

But on to the list of things I learned over the past weekend:

• I still don't fully understand Aussie Rules Football.  I went to my first Sydney Swans game last weekend (yeah, they all have horrible names like swans and roosters).  Every time I thought I understood the game something strange happened and the ball went to the other team.  Out of bounds is only a concept.  Half the time the ball crossed the line play continued.  There are also quarters but they ran anywhere from 27 to 32 minutes.  Sure there could be stopage time, but there were never any injury timeouts or anything that had a long pause in the game.
• Hot dogs here is a general term.  I went with the Aussie Dog instead of the meat pie at the game because I had to try one.  And it will probably be the last time.  It had a bright red casing but was white on the inside (definitely not answering to a higher authority).  Plus add on raw onions, sweet ketchup (it's not called sweet ketchup, but it just tastes really sweet) and tasty cheese.  I think it's just cheddar, but all the shops call it tasty.
• When at an outdoor bar with a pool (the upside of winter), stay away from the edge, no matter what.  Now I didn't go all the way in or frankly how it happened, but I definitely had a wet leg for a part of the night.  Thankfully it was more of a roof top kiddie pool, but my food definitely hit the bottom.

Hotel Hoffman is Open

Hotel Hoffman is officially open for business, taking reservations through email or my old cell phone number (now rings to my apartment phone here).  It's located a short 25 minute walk to the Opera house and Darling Harbour, 10 minute ride to some great beaches and a 10 minute walk to some of the best restaurants in Sydney (or so the locals say, I can't vouch for all of them yet).  Room service is limited, but with the small farmers market outside on Saturdays it will have fresh, local food.  Pictures will be posted later this week.

I did do a little venturing out a few weekends ago and went up to Watson's Bay to do some walking around.  Watson's Bay is right on the head of Sydney connecting the ocean to Sydney Harbour.  It's a quick ferry ride from Circular Quay through the harbour, which was quite a nice view of the shoreline (and the houses that line the shorelines).

Once I got up to Watson's Bay I grabbed some fish and chips and then walked around for a bit.  There was a great view back to the city as well as the jagged cliffs along the shore.

Today was the coldest day in Sydney over the past few years (a brisk 41 degrees) so I'll have to hold off on the bridge climb until it starts to warm up. 

I have a few more pictures, but I'll post them on my flickr site later this week (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbhoffman/).

International Haircuts

There's something nerve wracking about getting a haircut in a new country.  I remember getting a haircut in Rome a few years ago and getting a euro mullet and then having to figure out how to get it fixed when I spoke zero Italian and the girl spoke zero English.  While I didn't come out with a euro mullet here, it was just as scary.  The girl cutting my hair this go around kept going shorter and shorter and shorter to "get it even."  The problem is that if it goes too short I end up looking like Alfalfa after a few weeks.  So, it's been a few weeks and guess what.  Yep, Alfalfa.

The weeks wrapping up and it was a rough one.  Not the work as much as the "meetings."  I knew going in that the Aussies liked their beer, but I completely misjudged what like meant.  We hit up a Bavarian bar on Tuesday for beers and schnitzel (I think the schnitzels is the national food of Australia) with a vendor.  Beer turned into more beer and turned into more beer.  Then last night, we met up with some other people in the industry down here for some drinks.  Those beers of course lead into more beers.  At least after all that we ended up in Chinatown for some peking duck and dumplings.

Thankfully, the weeks over.  Not much on tap for the weekend.  The Wallabies are playing Wales on Saturday so I'll probably end up at a pub with a few people to catch the game (rugby union, that is).  Trying to find a place to go on holiday in August sometime, so we'll see if anything else pans out.  And if the rain holds off this weekend, hopefully I'll be able to go out and sightsee a little more.  Hopefully something interesting will happen that I'll be able to report back on.

My hope for food is restored

My hope for food in Sydney improving has been restored, finally.

With the World Cup in full swing and games at god awful times down here, we've been forced to stay up till the wee hours of the morning to catch as much of the US games as possible before crashing.  Friday/Saturday's game was at a reasonable midnight here so a bunch of us went over to Start City Casino to catch the game in the sports bar.  We stopped off for a few drinks at Darling Harbour and then grabbed some food at Ken's Tapas bar in the casino.  The food was, all in all good.  Portions were a little meager, but the food had some decent flavour to it.  Now, this could be because I was able to clean up at the tables in a scant 45 minutes, but I'd consider checking out a few other restaurants there.

I also ventured around Chinatown a little bit yesterday.  I think Chinatowns around the world are probably one of the safest (if you're adventurous) bets for a good meal.  Sure, you'll find a bunch of new and odd items on the menu (if they even post the menu in english) but if you take a gamble you probably won't be disappointed.  And the prices are so much more reasonable than other lunch spots, especially around Sydney.  I stopped off at a local food court and found Gumshara.  It's a small ramen noodle shop that had no one waiting in line.  Usually this would be a turn off, but after reading the signs, I took a gamble.

And boy did it pay off.  Apparently, the chef is "classically" trained in Japan to make ramen.  He takes 120 kilos of pork bones (260 pounds) and water to make his stock.  Nothing else.  The marrow and collagen in the bones give it a very intense flavour as well as turning it into a thick broth.  If he sold that alone, I'd probably take a few litres home to keep in the freezer.  One of the items on the menu was a pork spare rib ramen.  Now, I didn't ask why but on the menu it says only two are available each day.  I figured by 2pm they'd be gone, but thankfully there was still one left.

Other than crisping up the skin on the spare rib, I'm not sure how they cooked it.  But frankly, it didn't matter.  The only thing left in the bowl at the end was the bone.  I'd be hard pressed to try anything else in that food court after having that for lunch.

I've also started to venture deeper into my neighborhood to see what's around.  I've been taking different routes to the gym each night to see what's around.  And in just this past week I've found 3 or 4 worthy restaurants/wine bars that I've added to the list to try.  The neighborhood has a very strong cafe culture on weekends, but there are also quite a few small restaurants with only 20-30 seats.  Hopefully I'll be able to get to a few of them these next few weeks and hopefully the food quality continues to go up.

Summer : George : : Winter : Matt

One of the local TV channels this past weekend had a Seinfeld marathon.  They played every episode back to back. to. back. from the first season to the last.  One of the episodes I caught was the Summer of George.  To help me get the seasons straight in my head when talking to locals, I've decided to proclaim this the Winter of Matt.  To really try to get my butt in gear for the marathon, I signed up at a local gym with a CrossFit program.  I'm new to the whole CrossFit thing, but from what I've gathered is that it is intense, non-stop circuit training with trainers constantly yelling at you to go faster.  I'm pretty sure I could pay someone to work out for me at Equinox for what I'm paying here, but I've come to accept (but still won't stop complaining) about the costs here.  Seeing as though when I hobbled into the grocery store on my way home last night after the first training session I found a PINT of blueberries for $9.99.

Now that I finally have internet at my place, I'll try to post some pictures over the next few days.