Restaurant Review: Le Grande Bouffe

A couple of Saturday's ago I went to Le Grande Bouffe in Rozelle for breakfast. I'd previously walked past the restaurant a few times and it was featured in an article on French Sydney that I read (in the ever so grand Qantas in-flight magazine), but I had never been in before.

When in France I never look past croissants and baguettes for petit dejuneur. What is the need in the country that makes the world's best bread? However, I have a rule not to eat croissants outside France (always a disappointment) and wanted something a bit more substantial to reward my cycle ride.

I went for for the croque madame with duck egg, which as you can see above looked amazing. The French dressing on the salad was lovely (you might think this is a strange first observation, but I love a good French dressing), the rest of the croque madame didn't quite live up to the early standard set. The duck egg was on the cold side. The toasted ham and cheese sandwich was good, but could have done with a more even coating of the tangy mustard.

The vanilla rice pudding with rhubarb looked fantastic and was a treat to eat. The homemade granola and mushroom omelette also went down well. Two dishes that went close to getting my vote were the baked cassoulet beans and the braised ham hock with lentils.

They have prix fixe menus in the evening which could well be worth a try.

Restaurant Review: Wolfie's, Sydney

On Wednesday night I had dinner at Wolfie's in The Rocks with some friends from work. The restaurant is located in a converted sandstone warehouse nestling in between the International Ferry Passenger Terminal and Park Hyatt hotel. The location is very impressive with sweeping views of both the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

With the location ticking all the boxes, I was fearing that the food might be more reminiscent of an over priced tourist trap. I should not have worried as the food drew universal applause from around the table. The restaurant styles itself as a grill and the main courses reflect this with steaks, grilled meats and pan fried fish dominating the menu.

I haven't had a steak in a while so went for the 150 day aged New York Strip Steak. It was perfectly cooked, flavoursome and I devoured all of it. Around the table the surf and turf was served with most theatre, coming served on a skewer hung vertically on a stand. The pan fried baramundi drew praise, as did the other steak and mixed grill (containing kangaroo).

The deserts were also a triumph. I had the strawberry crumble and vanilla ice cream which was very good. There wasn't a drop left on the plates from my fellow diners who made enthusiastic noises about the gelati, sorbets and chocolate that were all devoured.

The one blemish of the evening was the supposed damper bread we shared as a started. The bread we got was very good, but it certainly wasn't an unleven damper. However, that would be splitting hairs. Even the service was pretty good.

I hadn't realised before that this little corner of waterfront existed. It is definitely somewhere that I will consider taking friends who come to visit me in Sydney. The views, atmosphere and good food, offer a combination that are hard to beat.

Night Noodle Market

The Night Noodle Markets have just finished in Sydney's Hyde Park, another part of the Crave Sydney Festival.

The concept sounds perfect. A few dozen Asian food stalls take over a section of Hyde Park serving up tasty treats to the eager crowds for a fortnight. I went one evening with a few friends and I am going to come right out and say that I was a bit disappointed. In many ways the market it is a victim of its own success, there were so many people that it is was difficult to get to the stalls and virtually impossible to find a table.

I also think some of the food stalls were to blame. The genius of the street stalls and food courts in Thailand is that each stand only sells a limited number of dishes that they do to a very high standard. Some of the stalls at the night market were offering whole menus (I might be exaggerating slightly, but not much).

The success of the evening for me was the desert we bought from Poffertjes Please. A rare stall serving only one dish, delightful balls of pastry/dough. Part donut, part cake they were lovely.

I'm pleased that I went, but I am not sure I'll be rushing back again.

Restauant Review: Big Rig Diner, Paddington

On Friday night I had an excellent evening with my friends Penne and Clint. A concoction of good friends, great venues and a giddy outlook all made for a fantastic night. I wish to state for the record that my good mood had no relation to the limited amount of alcohol that passed my lips.

I started with walk through Hyde Park to see the Sydney Life photo exhibition. A collection of photos hanging from the tress designed to depict Sydney life. The photos wee submitted by local amateurs and professionals. I wasn't keen on all the pics, but some were very good.


After meeting Penne and Clint we went for a drink in the Beresford Hotel. Many pubs in Sydney have been ruined by modern renovations, but this one has retained a lot of charm and character while being given some modern cool.


We ended our evening in the Big Rig Diner on Oxford St. As ex-New Yorkers (sort of) we fancy ourselves as Diner connoisseurs and judge everywhere against the benchmark Summit Diner. It is much smaller than I expected, but the decor (as you can see above) is fantastic. The booths, bar stools and pressed aluminium are all very reminiscent of the USA.


The menu is much smaller than your classic US Diner, which seems to serve everything, and has definitely been tailored to the local market. We all went for burgers and I really enjoyed mine, the betroot relish / chutney really made the burger. We could see from the grill that the burgers were getting quite heavily charred and I feared that they might get burnt. Mine wasn't, but Penne complained of eating bits of carbon.


The only downsides for me were the prices (not outrageously expensive, but a bit more than a burger should be) and the tomato ketchup. It was cheap and horrible. Have people never heard of Heinze?

Bike Review: The Yellow Banana gets a ride

In the blog about the purchase of my new bike I promised a follow up review. One of my cycling minded readers has even chased me up!

The mishap I teased you all with at the end of the last post, was that when I got my bike home I realised that they had given me he wrong frame size (they'd given me a 56cm instead of a 53cm frame). This was especially annoying given all the fuss in the shop about frame sizes when I was buying the bike.

I thought this would be a real test of the service levels of Cell Bikes and to their credit they visited to my flat one evening to do the exchange. I am still a bit dubious as to how good their customer care will actually be, and have a free service which should give me some more reference points.

I have only been for two rides on the bike so far. On the plus side the bike is nice and light and seems rigid. The Shimano Tiagra parts are smooth. On the downside I am still getting used to clip in shoes and fell off at a set of lights on my first ride! Today was a lot better and I managed to do an emergency stop and unclip my shoes in one movement when someone swerved in front of me.

I think buying a road bike with clip in shoes was slightly impractical for a urban setting. I am going to go fo a few more rides to get my confidence up and then plan to join one of Sydney's cycling clubs to go on weekend rides.

Herbies, Rozelle

A while ago my friend Clint introduced me to the wonderful Herbies shop in Rozelle. It doesn't take too much imagination to work out that Herbies is a herb and spice shop, selling an amazing array of spices from around the world.

They seem to have absolutely everything. When did you last see your local supermarket with three different types of turmeric? They also had chipotle chillies that I needed for the pork carnitas I recently cooked.

The staff are very friendly and helpful and in addition to the individual spices they also have lots of blends, spices and recipe kits. Lots of the packets contains a couple of recipe ideas.

A real gem of a store.

Whisky Night II

On Saturday night I went to the second meeting of the Distant Thunder Whisky Club (DTWC), following up from our first meeting and Whisky Live.

The event was hosted by Mat W, who I have to say put on a fantastic evening. Matt has a hot tub in his garden and a few of us started by relaxing in the tub, while sipping a beer and nibbling on some delicious homemade canapés. Just to give you an indication of the effort Matt had gone to there was some homemade orange infused ricotta. And I don’t mean Matt added orange to some shop bought ricotta, he was separating the curd and whey himself!

The whisky of choice for the evening was a Japanese Yamazaki 12yr Old. Those that have read my previous posts about the DTWC will know that I am somewhat reluctant whisky drinker. I would say, however, that my tastes are evolving. I quite liked the Yamazaki which was nutty and sweet, compared to the harsh spiciness of the Glenmorangie I also tried.

After two whiskies I retreated back to beer. I can only evolve so quickly. Everyone else present continued sampling the various whiskies that had been brought along to try and share. Everyone was a bit more restrained than the first meeting which will have been good for the heads the next morning.

*Hat tip to Clint for the photo.

Offline

Regular readers will have heard the grumblings about my laptop this year which I think is on it's last legs.

Last week it took another turn for the worse. One evening I downloaded a few podcasts, a TV show and installed the latest version of Messanger, and noticed that my hard drive was virtually full. I didn't get any warning messages, and everything seemed fine, but I made a mental note to move some files onto my external hard drive next time I fired up the computer.

The next time I turned on my PC it was moving at a snails pace. I have painfully managed to delete some files, defragment the hard drive and run a virus scanner. However, it still takes 10-15mins to open an application or do anything. I've decided that when I go back to the UK (and get my recovery disk) I am going to completely format the hard drive and try a re-install. If that doesn't work I will have to buy a new laptop.

The most annoying thing is that my wifi network went down in sympathy. Without my PC I can't reset it. A shame as my iPod Touch would have been handy for getting online while at home. The trials of modern technology.......

Riding the Yellow Banana

I've been missing cycling on my excellent Specialized Sirrus that I used to commute on in the UK. Missing it so much that I decided to buy myself a bike here in Australia.

Logic would dictate that I should have bought another hybrid bike very similar to the Sirrus and I should probably have also considered a second hand bike as I won't be using it daily. However, I put all rational thought aside!

I decided that I wanted to get a bike to compliment my Sirrus so that when I get back to the UK I have two different bikes for different purposes. I've also had a secret yearning for a while to own a road bike and to try out cycling shoes where you clip into the pedals.

I started doing a bit of research on bikes here in Australia and US imports (Scott, Trek, Specialised and Giant etc...) are really expensive compared to America or the UK. I discovered Cell Bikes during my research which is an Aussie brand of bike. If you believe they hype, they buy frames from the same factories in China/Taiwan as the big brands and them assemble here in Oz, giving you an equivalent bike at a lower price.

I went to the store last week to check out some of their different bikes and returned yesterday to make a purchase. Armed with some advice from my friend Olivier to check the stiffness of the frame. I was intending to buy a Blade, but they didn't have my frame size. Despite insistence from the salesman that I would have been ok with the frame size below, I didn't feel comfortable during the test ride. After a bit of agonising (and negotiating) I decided to get the model above which is the Swift.

When I described the bike to my friend Penne she replied "so we're going to see you ride a yellow banana?" I think I've just found my new bike a name.

I've already had a small mishap that I will update you on in an subsequent post.

P.S. In Australia the concept of getting a discount for cash seems to be a real negotiating possibilty. When I decided that I wanted the bike I asked "can you give my a discount for cash if I buy the bike right now?" and I got nearly $200 off. Can you do this in the UK?