Boston Baked Beans
Boston Baked Beans - Serves 2-4
250 grams of cannellini beans
1 teaspoon of mustard powder
2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons of maple syrup
1 tin of tomatoes
150 grams of pork speck
1 onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves
1 bay leaf, torn
Salt and pepper
Heat oven to 180ºC. Soak the beans overnight. In a large saucepan,
fry the onion, speck, cloves and bay leaf until the onions are
transparent. Add everything else except the beans and simmer for 10
minutes to reduce the liquid a little.
Drain the beans and add. Put a lid on the saucepan and bake for
three hours, stirring occasionally. Serve.
No salmon for you! @ Varga Bar
I ended up with a sandwich. Luckily it was tasty but given it was a bacon sandwich ($10), a little light on the bacon.
Bacon, Avocado, Tomato and Lettuce on
Sourdough @ Varga Bar
The Daily Grind @ The Peppermill Cafe
Peppermill Café, Milsons
Point
At a recent contract I went out myself and failed miserably picking
the Kirribilli Village Café and Restaurant. I tried their steak
sandwich and it was just awful, chewy, tasteless and very
overpriced. $25 off for the sandwich and a coffee. That’s when I
asked. The team I was working with and I went around the corner to
The Peppermill Café in Milsons
Point, their coffee is a little to be desired considering it’s
Campos Coffee, but it
almost always seemed burnt but the service and food was always
pretty good.
The first day I went I was recommended their regular special, a
chicken and leek pie. Not what I expected in the presentation
department but it was tasty. An individual baking dish with mashed
potato on the bottom, a regular chicken and leek filling and a
square of golden puff pastry balanced across the top. Almost every
day since then I went to Peppermill for either lunch or breakfast,
often for both. When I had breakfast, brunch, or afternoon tea, I’d
pick up a smoked salmon, ricotta and avocado croissant, the
combination of the soft buttery pastry and the oily smokiness of
the salmon was a winner.
Smoked Salmon Croissant @ Peppermill
Café, Milsons Point
They serve an all day breakfast here,
and the majority of the menu was based around breakfast but almost
as often as I’d see someone have a burger I saw someone else have
either the pancakes or french toast, both served with either bacon
and maple syrup or a mixed berry compote. Delicious stuff and well
worth a try if you want a bit of extra energy before hitting either
the Kirribilli or North Sydney Markets one weekend (I worked
weekends too). The beef burger is nice, standard fare, but the
chicken burger was the winner, chicken, bacon, avocado. Damn
tasty.
It’s also licensed and they won’t pass judgement if you have a
Bloody Mary on a Monday!
Chicken & Bacon Burger @
Peppermill Café, Milsons Point
The Peppermill Café
30 Glenn Street, Milsons Point (map)
Monday to Friday 7am to 6pm
Saturday and Sunday 8am - 4pm
T: (02) 9954 1444
F: (02) 9954 1444
www.thepeppermillcafe.com.au
For once, I had a healthy breakfast
The texture of this was pretty interesting with the soft succulant fruit and sticky honey and the chewy turkish bread and it’s carbonised toasted edges it made of a quite satisfying meal. It just goes to show that simple fresh fruit is really worth while.
Turkish toast with banana and
strawberries, honey and mint
Perfect Porridge from ilseum
ilesum Porridge
I asked the hot guy what it was like and he said he’d not tried the
porridge yet but likes the ‘sweetly toasted’ variation of muslie -
slow roasted oats, almonds, saltanas and honey.
The porridge is quite nice, surprisingly light in flavour for
something that’s traditionally seen as very heavy. It’s probably
got something to do with the great variety of fruit mixed in with
currants, granny smith apples, cavendish bananas, nectarines, mini
golden raisins, saultanas and peaches. Having said that though, it
was a little light on the fruit for what I was expecting. It still
needed a bit of cinnamon across the top and a bit of added sugar or
honey across the top.
La Cachette
After I got back from the meeting I headed off to the Victoria’s Basement outlet in Alexandria with a pit-stop at a little café I’d spotted once before that seemed a little odd out on it’s own on an otherwise desolate strip of Mitchell Road.
I took a gamble and went for the salmon egg benedict roll, an unusual presentation in itself but buoyed by the fact that it looked delicious. Tasted good too! The only thing I was annoyed with was the poached egg was hard, not runny at all - but then, given that it was obviously meant to be eaten by people with a well defined palate with out any time it made sense. I won’t mind stopping in again one weekend and picking up a quiche or something else to see how that goes. Stay tuned.
Salmon Egg Benedict Roll @ La Cachette Alexandria
With the exception of the coffee (burnt and bitter, what a surprise
there), I was pleasantly surprised. Stop by if you’re going past
the area and peckish.
Food, 7/10 - Better than you’d expect
for what looks like a workman’s lunch-bar
Service, 4/10 - The girl was training and seemed
lost
Coffee, 0/10 - It was undrinkable
Value, 6.5/10 - $10.50 for a brea-roll and a
coffee, but what a bread-roll
Location, 4/10 - In the middle of
nowhere
Bills Chicken Club Sammich
Bills - 359 Crown Street, Surry
Hills
Bills second restaurant in Surry Hills
opened 12 years ago and has been going strong ever since, full to
the brim from opening till the end of brunch, easing off through
the day and picking up again for dinner. It’s a great place to come
despite it’s incredibly short menu, one of the shortest in Sydney
with usually ony a dozen items to choose from, most of which are
staples that are always there such as the sweetcorn fritters with
guacamole and the chicken club sandwich, which is what I had today.
Now this isn’t your typical three tier sandwich, it’s a chibata
roll with roast tomato, baked chicken thigh, roquett and a light
spread of dijonaise. It is delicious, but for $17.50 you’d want it
to be. Don’t count on the coffee, it’s always just a little
burnt.
Club Sandwich and Herbed Fries -
Bills, 359 Crown Street, Surry HIlls
If you’re after better coffee and cheaper sweet corn fritters (also
$17.50) try Lemon Twist a little further south on Crown
Street.
Corelli Sure Liked His Waffles
Corelli's Café - 352 King Street,
Newtown
Being
the heart of Newtown it manages to still have that feel of
Bohemia
about
it, which is odd because Arcangelo
Corelli was
Italian not Slavic; nor was he gypsy. In fact he was long dead
before the French even coined the phrase. The point though, is that
Corelli’s has that aire of real Newtown about it with it’s cramped
tables, mismatched paintwork and staff that will get around to
taking your order when they’ve stopped day-dreaming as they watch
the foot traffic.
As for the food, the menu seemed skewed towards breakfast, proven
by dinner there tonight with my pick of the menu being the bangers
and mash (not too bad but simple as it should be). For that
breakfast though John had the generously portioned eggs benedict
with an obviously not
store-bought hollandaise sauce.
You could tell it was made with fresh egg and
lemon.
Eggs Benedict @ Corelli's
Newtown
To
satisfy the need for sugar and fat though I couldn’t turn up the
made-to-order Belgian waffles with strawberry and rhubarb compote,
maple syrup and fresh cream. Good lord it hit the spot — then
stomped around on it for a while. The waffles themselves were light
and fluffy with just enough sugary-caramelised crispiness, balanced
with the sweet and tart compote and the lusciousness of the cream.
I think John’s arse clenched when he tasted some! Are you reading
this John? :P
Waffles with Rhubarb and Strawberry
Compote @ Corelli's Newtown
The ironing is delicious
Missed Train Croissant. Cold,
unmleted cheese. Damn.
Scoozi, la prima colazione?
This little black duck though had to walk for hours around the centre of Adelaide CBD to find somewhere that was open and serving breakfast.
Scoozi - Big Breakfast
Batteling Turks seemed an easier way to get my croissant
Macro Café, King Street,
Newtown
Unsurprising for the neighborhood, the
post-hippie generation feminist matriarchal vegan families seem to
be flocking to this place in numbers as large as the uni-students
taking advantage of the free wireless internet. If you can at all
avoid it while queuing to place your order (no table service),
don't stand behind one of the aforementioned feminist vegan
matriarchs placing her order especially if they're heavily
pregnant. Instead of picking something off the menu board that
meets their stringent dietary requirements they seem to instead
rattle off all of their dietary restrictions and the reasons why to
the poor waitress trying to find something they can eat. 10 minutes
later she settled a garden salad with a hard boiled egg. Obviously
she's not a real vegan. I bet she doesn't even pocket-mulch. If I
wasn't afraid of loosing my seat I'd have tried to sneak into the
kitchen and slip some bacon into her food.
As far as what I ate, I settled a simple ham and cheese croissant
and a pot of byron chai. $4.50 for the chai I could understand, but
I was a little concerned at the $9.50 for the croissant! If it
wasn't for the fact that I'd already queued and there weren't many
more options for breakfast in the direction my travels were taking
me I'd have probably left and found something else. WIth a bit of a
surprise I ended up being presented with a substantial croissant
with either emmental or jarlsberg cheese, good quality ham. tomato
and baby spinach. It really was a meal in itself. I did think it
odd that the menu board didn't mention it. Now I understand why it
cost so much.
Croissant from Macro
Café
I tried to make croissants from scratch many moons ago and even
though they tasted okay, they were a right pain in the arse and I
vowed never to make one again. I might give it another go some time
but no. Real hand made croissants can easily take a professional
days to make, mine took four days and another two days to
clean the kitchen! There are plenty of rumors as to the origin of
croissants, including Polish bakers hearing the early morning
tunneling of Turkish soldiers whom alerted the local authorities
and ambushed the Turks. To honor the victory in the battle, the
bakers supposedly made croissants in the shape of the crescent moon
on the Turkish flag. All this in the 700's, nearly a thousand years
before the earliest reference to puff pastry! They are more likely
a French variation of a Viennese pastry. I'd still rather cross an
armed Turkish soldier than cross the feminist vegan to ask her to
hurry up and order.
Tea, toast, blogs and some sunshine
Bitton Gourmet's Strawberry Vanilla
Jam
Oh, and the muisic, The Tellers'
More
Intercontinental, Burswood
I had a room-service dinner with my brother and sister-in-law and all of us were blown away with the quality and value. We had two soups, two fillet steaks with prawns and a sirloin with roast veg, all for around $135 and that really is great value.
My sister-in-law had a tom yum soup ($15) that was perfectly balanced hot-sour, not too much oil and with giant prawns resting as a surprise on the bottom of the bowl while I had the wonton noodle soup ($13) that was amazing; the broth was clear, golden and delicately flavoured and the wontons were the best I’ve ever had. The wonton skins were perfectly white, delicately thin and a perfect mouthful of prawn and I think scallop meat. When I saw it presented I was a little disappointed that there weren’t any egg noodles in the bottom and no seafood free-floating on top but once I tasted it all of that was forgiven. I can tell that I’ll be trying all winter to re-create this soup.
Wonton Noodle Soup, Intercontinental
Burswood
As for the main courses my
sister-in-law and I both chose the fillet steak with prawns and
wedges and my brother had the sirloin with roasted vegetables (all
around $35). All of us, as with the soups were extremely impressed.
The steaks were generous, all over 500g and the sirloin I’d suggest
was pushing 750g and even with the ride up from the kitchen to our
room they were perfectly cooked just how we’d ordered them and all
butter soft.
Sirloin and Roast Vegetables,
Intercontinental Burswood
The only thing I missed from the meal,
not that we’d ordered it, was a bottle of water on the table; for
an order this size it would have been a nice touch but I won’t
fault them for not providing one. The one litre bottle of Evian in
the mini-bar was $8.
The next morning I ordered the “Burswood Breakfast” from room
service as the buffet breakfast wasn’t included in my rate. It was
$35 and again I couldn’t find fault with it. My family had
breakfast at the buffet and the report was they would have been
more than happy with just what I’d received. A choice of eggs with
a mountain of bacon, sausages and tomato, fruit platter, toast,
several spreads a croissant and a Danish with juice and tea or
coffee. Each morning I had it I could only get through half. If
you’re a light eater, you could possibly split this with someone
else if you ordered an extra pastry and juice. Some how, the
poached eggs on my first morning were delivered perfectly cooked
with soft runny yolks and the scrambled eggs on the second day were
tender, rich and creamy while the bacon was a good mix of soft and
crispy.
Burswood Breakfast, Intercontinental,
Burswood
Next tim I head to Perth I’m going to have to stay again, hopefully with a little more forward planning I’ll be able to book a club room and check out their lounge.
Newtown Cafe
Café Newtown, Newtown
As for the coffee and food though, it was great. The coffee was a
little off but I think that was just the blend, it was a bit too
dark for my liking but I still drank it and enjoyed it. Mel had the
Eggs Benedict with a side order of baked beans that was so big she
struggled to finish it which is great considering most eggs
benedict is just an english muffin and not much else. The big
breakfast I ordered was big and it had everything you'd want,
except baked beans but I didn't miss them; I only got through two
thirds of mine. With the very generous serves and low costs (my big
breakfast just crossed over the $15 mark) it's great value.
Eggs Benedict @ Café Newtown
Big Breakfast @ Café Newtown
Food, 9/10 - Very
generous serves of well cooked food
Coffee, 6/10 - Darker roast than I'd have liked
but still good
Service, 7/10 - We didn't have a problem with it
but other tables struggled to get their food
Value, 8/10 - Pretty darn good for what you
get
Location, 7/10 - Very convenient location across
from Newtown Station
Sofitel Brisbane - Overwhemlingly Under-whelmed
Sofitel Looking from Post Office Square and across Anzac
Square
By no means was Michelle from the front
desk the only pleasant and friendly staff member at the Sofitel.
The staff in the club lounge were excellent, happy and cheerful and
even remembered Miles and I when we came back over a month after
our first visit. Heck, they even smiled while they cleaned up the
plate of scrambled eggs Miles dropped on the floor half asleep one
morning. Speaking of the scrambled eggs, the club lounge breakfasts
are quite nice in their own right; they have all of the basics, but
then, only the basics. Fronting up for breakfast are scrabbled
eggs, mushrooms & bacon in the bain-marie and a good selection
of fruit, yoghurt, and a few cereals and juices and some pastries;
plus champagne on weekends. I’d liked to have seen more but I’m
happy with what they provided. I guess if they did have more no one
with access to the club lounge would fork out the $30 for the
“interactive” breakfast at Thyme² which had everything from eggs
benedict to custom made omelettes.
Club
Lounge Breakfast at the Sofitel Brisbane
Evening drinks and canapés at the club
lounge were much better than the breakfasts, a good selection of
cold items, sushi, an antipasti platter, petit fours and some warm items
ranging from samosas, spring rolls,
curry puffs etc (two different hot items per night, cold items are
the same). The hot food again wasn’t anything extraordinary, all
from a packet, but I guess the fact that there were free wines,
beers and spirits made up for it considering the prices at the
Cuvee Bar downstairs. The view on dusk can't be beat too! The club
lounge is a perfect way to start an evening and I would highly
recommend a visit here.
Lower Level of the Club Lounge
Upper Level of the Club Lounge
As for the $6 million dollar upgrade of
the hotel recently; the lobby,
restaurant and bar as well as the club
lounge were extensively upgraded and a quite nice with clean
lines and lots of natural materials, the rooms though need some
improvement. Sofitel has a concept called “myBed”
which is meant to provide a night sleep that will change your life
forever, apparently. I understand what they’re trying to achieve,
most beds in Australia have hard and overly firm mattresses, but
really what you need is a fairly soft mattress that will conform to
your body and support it, the bed I have at home is like that and
it’s like sleeping in a warm hug. What I got out of the beds here
were sore necks and shoulders and the feeling that all of the
mattresses were worn out, less like a hug and more like a school
camp.
The
corner suite we stayed in on the first visit seemed quite tired
despite the new furnishings while the
club room I stayed in the second time suffered less; though it
could have used thicker walls. The couple in the room next to us
seemed to enjoy their room quit a lot. They enjoyed it at 3:00am,
again at 3:30, 8:30 and 9. They enjoyed it so much that the bottle
of water on MY bedside table fell off.
On the whole I’m disappointed with the Sofitel Brisbane,
particularly because the few times I’ve stayed in their Melbourne and Sydney counterparts I’ve
never had a problem, the beds were huge and comfortable, the staff
were excellent and the food was great and well priced. The Sofitel
Brisbane is definitely the poor cousin to their bigger city family.
When I head north again in a couple of weeks I think I’ll try the
Hilton but I’m
worried that like the Sofitel, it’s going to be suffering from it’s
hurried Expo ’88 construction
and lack of a through refurbishment since. I really am worried that
the Sofitel Brisbane may still well be the best on offer. If the
Hilton doesn’t prove any better Miles is going to have to start
coming down here instead. I’ve got a more comfortable bed, a
quieter room and better food at home.
Hartley's Goosebery Jam
I wouldn't be in a hurry to buy another jar, probably more because I hardly eat jam in the first place but I'll keep an eye out for a better quality or a home made gooseberry jam next time.
The Worst Breakfast Ever
We found our table at 'Northern Bites'
on Manly's South Styne beachfront by walking past a row of cafes
and went to the one that smelt the nicest, I think we smelt some
french toast. I wish one of us had ordered it but cést la vie. I
hate to start a review so poorly, but there were so very few good
things to say about our experience here, what was good had more to
do with the scenery walking past to and from the surf carnival that
was on that day. It took 20 minutes for someone to take our order
and another 20 more minutes for my coffee to arrive which I'd
finished by the time my food did and Mel's meal didn't arrive until
after I'd finished eating mine. Appalling.
Of my big breakfast, everything was cold, except the baked beans
(cutely serviced in an espresso cup), and some how, even though the
food had been cold, the butter hadn't warmed up from being taken
out of the fridge. The hash brown was from a packet and so was the
bread. It's very disappointing because it still cost in the order
of $17 when the cafés on the same block had similar meals with
potato rosti, organic sourdough and organic lamb sausages... There
really wasn't anything to say that stood out from that meal, I
stopped eating half way through. Heck, they even just served slices
of tomato instead of the grilled tomato everywhere else does.
Saturday morning breakfasts are meant
to be a casual affair, but if it was any more casual I'd still be
waiting. Again, I'm sorry to sound so negative about it, but the
excuse were given about why Mel's eggs benedict being an hour was
because the guy they went to Coles to *BUY* the hollandaise sauce
hadn't come back yet. What cafe BUYS hollandaise sauce, and then
admits it to their customers? Even though I got mine faster 15
minutes before Mel, my food was only just warm, to the point that
the fat had started to congeal.
Food, 3/10 - their big breakfast had everything
you'd expect, but the lowest quality possible
Service, 2/10 - only because two of the waiters
were good looking, and one of them very obviously wasn't wearing
underwear
Coffee, 5/10 - it arrived 20 minutes after I
ordered but it was hot and good quality
Value, 1/10 - I'd only give a zero if they took my
money and didn't feed me
Location, 8/10 - nothing you couldn't have gotten
from anywhere else on the street
It's only saving grace was the coffee and location, but I am sure
any other cafe on the beachfront in Manly could do better
Oeufs En Cocotte (Baked Eggs)
Given I was making this for dinner, and that I don't own any
ramekins, I made a fairly large one and it was just about the right
size for a meal in itself, for a start her suggestion 1 egg per
person would have been perfect. Come to think of it now, it would
have been nifty in my espresso cups with some steamed
asparagus.