Sugaroom

Finally I am up to date now!

Last week was my birthday, so the night of my birthday Frankie took me to a restaurant that we have been meaning to go to for a while, and on Sun - Thurs it's byo ($10 corkage per bottle mind you) so it was perfect. We had booked a table to sit outside, but it was quite chilly, so we sat inside instead. If it was only a few degrees warmer it would have been perfect.

I had been here with my friends a few years ago for a Sunday lunch and remember the place having really great food and really good prices. I don't think the food has gone up too much since then, but the food wasn't as great as I remember it, still good but not excellent. The service started out really good too and then as more and more people started arriving the service started slipping. We were left with the glass from our amuse bouche on the table up until just before we got our dessert course. Overall it was a very good night though and left the restaurant feeling very full!

View of Kitchen from our table

The menu we chose from was their Autumn menu, which must have just come into place. I like a restaurant that has a seasonal menu. The food is in season and if you go back again you have a different selection of meals to choose from.

Amuse Bouche

As we were about to order our meals frankie looked at the kitchen bench and saw a tray of these glasses sitting there for another table. He was like "what is that?" to the waitress (as he was interested in ordering it) and she said it was the amuse bouche and everyone got one. So we were happy about that! It turned out to be a cauliflower and cumin soup and it was really delicious! Probably the best thing of the night..I got my mouth amused for sure!

Complimentary Bread

I love it when restaurants supply bread. I think all should. Maybe they think people will fill up on it too much and won't order as much food. This was sourdough bread and was very good. I personally prefer when bread is warm, but if it's sliced it might be a bit hard.

Oysters Natural - $18

We decided to share a couple of entrees. There was a special of oysters, so we got them. They came with a red wine vinaigrette which was very nice.

Shaved Bresaola Carpaccio w/ basil, Parmesan, and horseradish cream - $15

The flavour of the meat and cheese was very strong and overpowered everything else. So i couldn't really taste the basil or the horseradish which was a shame.

Pork Confit w/ roast fennel, cauliflower puree and salsa verde - $29

This was very tasty. It wasn't really what i was expecting as all the meat inside was kind of shredded. I would have really just preferred a nice fillet or something like that. Parts of the fennel were a bit undercooked as well.

Swordfish w/ eggplant salsa - $32

Frankie went with the special of the night which was the swordfish. I must say that I am not a fish fan but this was really good. It was seasoned perfectly as well.

Baked Peach Crumble w/ Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and Raspberries - $15

Usually we only get one dessert when we go out, but seeing as it was a special occasion we decided to get 2! The special was a baked peach crumble which sounded very good. I didn't expect it to be a whole peach, more like a cut up one and baked. It looked a bit like fried ice cream! It was cooked perfectly and everything really complimented each other.

Chocolate Pave w/ pistachio ice cream - $15

As chocolate is my favourite dessert, we had to get the only chocolate dessert on the menu. I didn't really know what a pave was but it was chocolate so it must be good! It was very good it tasted like a chocolate mousse, but firmer. Their ice creams were excellent as well, makes me want to go out and buy an ice cream maker!

Frankie

Me

Outside View

Big Ship

Sugaroom
Shop 2, 1 Harris Street
Pyrmont NSW
Ph: 9571 5055

Lagoon Restaurant Wollongong Take 2

Last time we went to Wollongong we had such a good and relaxing time. When we had nothing really planned for NYE, except at night, we decided to spend the day in the sun at Wollongong. Of course we had to eat something though, so we chose to revisit the Lagoon to try their a la carte menu.

When we got in there we were given a beautiful table right next to the window, although the window was open and there was a nice breeze, but a bit too breezy as the table cloth kept flapping and blowing and covering the table. Luckily they closed the window so it didn't happen all throughout the meal.

We were so tempted to get the seafood platter again but resisted. Instead we started with a mixture of oysters and some bread.

Wood Fired Sourdough - $6.90

Oh my god this bread was soo good and so big as well. Most places when you order bread it's enough for 2 people, but this could have fed about 6 people. It was beautiful and warm as well. I had to stop myself eating it so i wouldn't ruin my appetite!

View from our table

Mixed Oysters - $24.50

At around $2 an oyster, these were really good. We had 4 natural, 4 wasabi and white horseradish and 4 thai chilli and lime. I love oysters so much, I wish I could afford to eat them every day.

Saganaki Snapper - $27.90

I decided to go with the Snapper for main. Let me tell you they don't skimp on the sizes here. The mains are huge and very tasty. I could only eat half of mine. It was a bit different from what I expected but it was still delicious with the cheese and tomato (best combination ever).

Snapper Fillets - $29.90

I can't remember what Frankie ordered. I think it was the snapper fillets? Whatever it was it was very good and a massive serving.

Greek Salad - $11.50

We also ordered a greek salad, which I hardly touched as my main meal was like a greek salad anyway with the cheese, tomatoes and olives.

Frankie

Outside View

The Lagoon Restaurant
Stuart Park
North Wollongong
Ph: 4226 1677

The Codfather

My friend recently moved to Stanmore...well a year ago now! Across from her place we noticed this small restaurant, which was called the Codfather. She had never tried it, as she doesn't eat seafood, but it looked quite cool so Frankie and I decided we had to try it out one day.

We booked for a Friday night, on the actual Friday, so we didn't get a booking until about 8:30pm. We arrived around that time and had to sit outside while we waited for our table to become free...30 mins later we were in!

Now i don't remember too much of this food, as it was so long ago, but one thing i do remember was that it wasn't great, just nice. The maitre d wasn't the most attentive person either. He seemed like he was panicking all night about nothing and then when we were ready to hand in our bill, he made a gesture to just leave it on the table as he was too busy having a chat and drink with one of his friends! The waitresses were lovely though!

The price was a set deal sort of thing where you got 2 courses for $35 or 3 courses for $45 and there were some dishes that added extra onto the price if you got them. The price was something like that. Can't remember exactly.

Please excuse the photos too as they were taken with my mobile..

Amuse Bouche - Can't really remember what this was..

Cod Placemat

Zucchini Flowers

Scallops with black couscous and beetroot - Frankie liked this one

Frankie

Barramundi with Thai salad

Frankie's fish dish

Polenta chips with Aioli - these were really good!

Us!

The Codfather
83 Percival Street
Stanmore NSW
Ph: 9568 3355

Open Tue - Sat 5pm - 9:30pm
Sunday noon - 3pm

Serai on Cleveland

I am back! Well we will see how long for... I have been unmotivated and stopped taking pictures when going to eat out, but after hearing that a few people were wondering what had happened to my blog, I am going to try again and see how I go. I have a few photos from places that I went a while ago, so I am going to start with these...but will be hard pressed to remember exact details as it was so long ago!

Frankie and I were going out for dinner in Surry Hills one night. I think we had planned to go to a different restaurant but when we walked past this place we thought we would try it out instead! The place was empty except for us but the menu looked good and affordable and we hadn't had Malaysian for a while.

Satay Skewers - $8

We decided to start off with satay! You can't go to a Malaysian restaurant and not get satay. Usually the chicken is quite flat and small, but this was plump and juicy (just the way I like it). The sauce was excellent as well!

Satay Closeup

Rojak - $8

I had never had Rojak before and had seen it being made on Food Safari and thought it looked delicious. Although this wasn't exactly like what i saw it was still very delicious. I think I had a peanut sauce overload!

Beef Rendang - $13.90

As well as satay you always have to get rendang and this was delicious and so cheap! The meat was fall apart in your mouth, as it should be.

Salad - $1.50

We also got a salad, you may ask why, well it was $1.50! I have never seen a salad anywhere for that price, so of course we had to get it. The one behind was Achar Awak (spicy mixed vegetable pickle) which was also $1.50.

They have a few house specialties as well which would be great to try, like fish head curry! I think you have to let them know 24 hours before or something whether you are going to order it though, so make sure you do if that's what you're going to order! I would definitely recommend this place and would come back again. So good food and very cheap!

Serai
421 Cleveland Street
Surry Hills NSW 2010

Lagoon Restaurant Wollongong

On Saturday we decided to go for a day trip to Wollongong to have a nice seafood lunch. I had never been to Wollongong before (at least not that I can remember). We booked the restaurant on the Friday and as we were nearing to Wollongong we both realised that we had no idea where the restaurant was. We knew it was near the water, so we headed in that direction and luckily we saw a sign for it.

We arrived a bit early, but that seemed to be ok. The place was pretty empty, but was full by the time that we left. The chairs in the place were so comfortable. Chairs are really important i think and places that have really comfortable chairs get two thumbs up from me!


We knew exactly what we were going to get before we even arrived. The seafood platter for 2! We ordered a "few" drinks and waited for the platter to arrive.

The seafood platter itself was $155 which is probably the price that you pay in Sydney for a platter in one of the restaurants by the water there, but a lot of the restaurants in Wollongong were this price or even more expensive. It was worth it though, cause the seafood was perfect and there was heaps of it. A lot of platters are arranged with lots of fillers like chips and salads, but this only had a small amount of rice on it, which was beautiful rice by the way. Tasted like the hainan chicken rice, yum!

What I also liked about the platter was that everything had different flavours to it. The seafood wasn't just cooked plain and thrown on there.

There were oysters natural, oysters kilpatrick and oysters mornay, lobster mornay, moreton bay bugs, prawns fresh, in a cheesy sauce and battered in a herb batter, scallops with an Asian/lemongrass sauce, squid that was cooked in an Asian sticky sauce, salt and pepper calamari, smoked salmon, fresh crab and heaps more

The restaurant was beautiful as well with views out to the lagoon. Would be perfect on any type of day.

There are heaps of other seafood dishes as well as meat/poultry to choose from, and I saw a few of them coming out and decided we would have to come back again to try them out!

Lagoon Restaurant
Stuart Park
North Wollongong
Ph 4226 1677

Open for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner 7 days a week

Le Grand Chef

Every Friday night Frankie and I aim to go out for a meal for dinner as we don't eat out as much as we used to anymore, as we are trying to save a bit of money. So this Friday night we decided to keep it local and check out the new Korean BBQ in Marrickville. I can't really remember what was in this spot before, but all of a sudden there was a new Korean restaurant with the name Le Grand Chef (not your typical Korean name I am guessing).

The Charcoal Pit

I was a bit scared when they put this in actually cause it started spitting sparks a bit and I was scared Frankie's jumper was going to catch on fire or my hair would turn into a flame ball! Luckily none of this happened.

We ordered a couple of entrees to share which included jap chae (my favourite) and this egg roll dish, which didn't quite look like the picture on the menu..

Also every Friday Frankie goes to his local wine cellar near work and picks a really good bottle of wine for our dinner. This week it was Omrah

Very nice wine I must say. Being a shiraz it was quite bold and flavourful. Yeah I am not taking up any job soon of reviewing wines, don't worry!

We were handed a few of the traditional banchan which seem to be different in each restaurant, but always features the Korean staple of kim chi.

Kim Chi

Beans

These beans I had not seen before. They were just green beans with a sauce over the top, which seemed to me to be thousand island dressing?

Potato Salad

We also got a potato salad which I had never had before, which was ok, but could have used a bit more flavour.

Jap Chae - $10

The Jap Chae was very good. It's sort of like the Korean spaghetti bolognese. I am going to try cooking this one day cause i love it and it doesn't seem to be too hard to cook, just a lot of chopping of vegetables.

Egg Roll - $8

This just tasted like an omelette to me. It was nice, but nothing special. They actually brought us another plate, cause the dish didn't look anything like it did in the photo, although the replacement wasn't too much better, except that the replacement was hot!


Some places you can cook the meat yourself, but in this place they put it on the stove for you, which is nice, but if you go to one of those buffet type ones, it's always better to cook the food yourself. We got the combination A dish which was $30 which included pork ribs, and 2 other types of meat (which I couldn't remember what they were). The meat was beautiful and came with 2 dipping sauces which were great as well. There is nothing better than meat cooked over charcoal. Now where can i get one of these for my place...

We also got a free salad each and free fruit at the end of the meal which was a bonus. The staff were lovely and very polite as well, which I have seemed to notice a lot from Korean restaurants which I think is great. If you are in the Marrickville area I recommend you try it out.

Le Grand Chef
Illawarra Road (Just down the road from Pho Bac)
Marrickville

Recipe Site

I have just started a new site called Susan Cooks (original I know) which is very basic at the moment, but will be overflowing with great recipes soon :) So keep an eye on it and let me know what you think. Thanks!