Moveable Feast #6

Moveable Feast #6 . . . J & S were the brainchildren behind the idea - start with a core group of people and go for dinner to a new place each time. And each time we're to bring a friend that the others hadn't met. Really just an excuse to try new restaurants and meet the people that our friends like. J & S did a great job of organising the nights out. But sadly the call of old blighty dragged them both back to the motherland. I didn't want to let the idea fall by the wayside so I helped reconvene and add new recruits. So I'm pleased to report that last night at Favela was the first Moveable Feast for 2008!

I think the consensus was that the rating would be 3 out of 5. Or 5.5 out of 10. We haven't rated restaurants before. The white lounges and white-cheesecloth draped waiters were nice to look at and good to sit on (the lounges, not the waiters). It seems to be a good place to bring a first or second date - the 3 couples we spied in the candle-lit shallows of the room had to contend with all 7 of us ogling and giving a running commentary. We almost should have held up scorecards. The rest of the populous in Favela seemed to be female - including a table of gazelle-like beauties to our left.

Having pushed my clubbing days aside in favour of wilder pursuits like writing and baking, it was fun for me to see inside the popular club without having to press myself against sweaty bodies or endure stilletto stabs as I would if we were there on a Friday or Saturday.

The food was good but not great. 6 courses for $40 is good value: for entree - crab cakes, san choy bow, salt & peppar cuttlefish, crispy spring rolls; and for main - spicy cod and a really creamy mild comfort-food style curry. Based on the words I added to describing them - obviously the curry was my favourite. The bill took forever and there was some confusion about our Club VIP cards which gave us 30% off.

But in all it was a calm, stylish, evening out with great company.

Bring on Moveable Feast #7!

Suggestions are:
Oy, Potts Point - (brand new just opened this week sister restaurant to the ever-popular Sailors Thai)
Holy Cow, Surry Hills
Busshari, Potts Point
China Doll, Wooloomooloo
Firefly, Pyrmont
Forbes @ Burton
Bird Cow Fish
Astral, Star City

I'll put up another post/email Moveable Feasters next month!

FYI - Here's where we've been before:

2007
#1 Ripples, Milsons Point
#2 Encasa, City
#3 Garfish, Manly
#4 Oscillate Wildly, Newtown
#5 Ju Ju's, Kings Cross

2008
#6 Favela, Kings Cross

A little zumbo magic

Word on the street in blog world is that Adriano Zumbo is the hottest patissier in town. So much so that he named the Meying after Sydney blogger Raging Yoghurt. Choosing a pastry from his take-away only Darling Street store is like having your nose pressed to the glass of a pet store window. Which one is your favourite? Which one begs to be taken home? His macaroons are notorious - the day I went in there were rose, mint or passionfruit-yoghurt to choose from (the flavours change frequently). I had stopped in on my way to my parents house for dinner, so opted for the truffle eclair which actually had truffles stuffed between the chocolate cream and sandwiched by the chocolate pastry. I loved the joker-hat style of the passionfruit meringue - we couldn't eat it after dinner and my stepmother teased that I would wake up in the middle of the night and the alien-like sweet would be on my face trying to suck out my eye. Instead of an evil brain I discovered symmetrical perfection and meringue construction phenomena when I dissected the beast for breakfast in the morning. And heaven at the base with the passionfruit tart. You can see more (and better pics) at http://www.notquitenigella.com/2007/11/19/adriano-zumbo-at-balmain. I'm still a luddite who can't get her links working . . . Oops - seems I can't find the photo for this post as well. Oh dear.

Yum Cha at dawn

Well, not quite. But almost. Crystal chandeliers and rouched sheer curtains at 10am makes sense only when there are mature chinese ladies pushing around stainless steel carts loaded with steam baskets, leaving a trail of drooling diners in their wake. Yum Cha at Kam Fooks in Chatswood rates one of the better reviews for yum cha in Sydney. And with good reason - $20 each brought us steamed sweet doughy pork or chicken buns, dim sim densly packed with pork and steamed in its wonton paper wrapping, spinach dumplings with little shrimp suprises inside. The breaded and deep fried shrimp balls in the picture and the sweet donuts were favourites when I was a kid, but after all the steamed goodies they seemed too dry, too fried, tasteless. We eased the dumplings down with green tea and diet coke. After a frenzy of eating, pointing through fragrant steam and lifting dumplings from the pot-sticky paper we all sat back, stuffed like a fois gras geese. Yum Cha for breakfast is a sort of parallell universe of the foodie kind.