Vintage Cafe on The Rocks

Hello,

        This Wednesday feels like a Thursday as the long weekend is just around the corner! While I'm counting the hours to the long weekend, I'd like to share my experience at Vintage Cafe on The Rocks last weekend. After a hectic 2 weeks, the idea of dinner at an exotic restaurant accompanied by live jazz/Latin music sounded very appealing. Since I was 45 minutes late, I was half running to the restaurant from the parking lot feeling bad for the gentleman who's been waiting patiently for me. To add to the chaos, I couldn't find the restaurant after walking around the block a couple of times. The gentleman kindly came over to pick me up and walked back together to the restaurant. The restaurant is located in one of the corners at Nurses Walk. The heritage designs of the buildings at The Rocks surrounding the alley ways made it a beautiful short walk to the restaurant. When we got to the restaurant, I noticed another restaurant right opposite Vintage Cafe on The Rocks looking similar.

        Vintage Cafe on The Rocks is exactly how I pictured it. It's cosy and romantic with rustic design, wooden furniture, and a middle aged Spanish singer with his guitar entertaining guests and having friendly conversation with diners between songs. Although the restaurant was full when we arrived, they managed to find us a table. In addition, they kindly moved the table and two chairs outside onto the balcony - helped by my friend, when I mentioned how warm it was inside. A waiter - who seems to be the restaurant manager - explained the menu to us. The menu is broad yet concise enough not to confuse diners with too many dishes although... much simpler than I expected from a Spanish, Mediterranean, and Portuguese fusion restaurant.

        We ordered the Patatas Bravas - spiced potatoes, Marinated Cheese with bread, Fish with Piri Piri sauce, and Roast Duck Breast with Fig and Pepper sauce. The first to come out was the Patatas Bravas. It was roasted perfectly with the skin on and slightly crispy giving great texture to the dish, which complements the exciting flavours of the spices combination. The next to arrive at our table was the Marinated Cheese with bread. They served a slice each of two different bread varieties, that are the wholegrain rye bread and the wholemeal bread. The bread was warm with full texture. The cheese was creamy marinated with pepper and served with olive oil.

        Then the highly anticipated Roast Duck Breast with Fig and Pepper Sauce arrived. The duck was cooked to the right texture, tender and juicy. The fact that they left the skin and a little bit of fat on the duck was great as most restaurants especially in fine dining trim all the fat and skin of duck and chicken. The fig was peeled of the skin leaving them small and soft. Figs were poached which brings out the sweetness of it. The sauce wasn't that impressive as it was oily and sweet with no pepper flavour in it. The dish was not as enjoyable as we expected. Then the last dish was the Fish in Piri Piri sauce. I enjoy the dish very much. The pieces of grouper fish cooked perfectly in oily but punchy Piri Piri sauce with the well defined flavours of chili, Piri Piri spices and subtle burst of lemon.

        The service and ambiance of the restaurant provided a nice enjoyable dining experience. The food was quite enjoyable for me although it's not the best I've had. The oily base of almost every dish they serve combined with quite generous portion for tapas dishes filled us up rather quickly and quite heavily. With the reasonably expensive price tags, the food was a while away from fine dining quality. Do they meet the Spanish/Mediterranean/Portuguese fusion they endorse? May be not so much considering there are hardly any dish on the menu that identify with Mediterranean and very limited Portuguese dishes.
        After picking up all those calories at the restaurant, we headed to Vivaz for a night of Salsa and Latin dancing. The club wasn't great. It's filled with sleazy guys staring their eyes out at exotic women and it smells like drunks. Luckily, the music was great and we got to move our booties quite wildly. As to my companion on the evening, he moves and leads as smoothly on the dance floor as he does at boardroom conversations. 

The Good Samaritan and Synchronicities

Hi Everyone,

        It's been two weeks since I last wrote in this space. Exciting and perhaps miraculous events have filled my life in the last couple of weeks including a car break-down. You might wonder why I would include the break down of my old car as a miraculous event. So, lets start with the beginning of my last two weeks in life and then look at the big picture at the end... I hope I'd bring back the light in the eyes and hearts of all you reading these real stories and perhaps... you can reflect it to others.

        A little over two weeks ago I picked up two jobs in the period of 3 days. It's such blessings and slightly overwhelming yet very humbling, especially after quite the tough times I'd had. I then got into the hectic schedule of working long hours and smashing the odometer in my car travelling around Sydney for my works. Time passed by in a blink of an eye. For someone like me who's always on the go since I was barely a teenager, it's great! The driving is also enjoyable for me, as strange as that might sound for some of you who loathe the peak hours traffic in Sydney.

        In addition to the adrenalin rush with my works is the intense spiritual journey with a gentleman that I happen to find quite attractive... As feminine as I could be, I'm more like men in my reluctance of  showing feelings. Although I love cuddles and am a passionate person, I'm not a big fan of fluffy romantic love. Only those closest to me have witnessed my deepest joy, sweetness, fears and pains. In the midst of organising my physical world to get into routines, I've also been trying to manage all the feelings that surfaced from this spiritual exercises in the little space of time I have in the evening before I fall into a deep sleep.

        Now, the story of the good Samaritans... Last weekend, my old car broke down. Luckily, it happened only a few hundred metres down the road from my home. Within five minutes of the car broken down, a good Samaritan came up to me offering help, followed by another. They pushed the car to the service station which happens to be only 20 metres away from where the car stopped. One of the good Samaritans is a mechanic. He stayed back trying to start my car. When that failed, he started calling his mates asking for help including a tow truck. He kindly pulled a favour from his tow-truck-driver friend by telling him I was a good friend. He organised a good deal for the towing and the place to tow the car to, which is a local workshop where he works. I got to wait for the tow truck at home, had it taken care of by the mechanic, and picked up the car a couple days later from his workshop for a mere cost. Throughout the whole process, I didn't need to make even one phone call to organise anything. The miraculous events didn't stop there. When I told my new boss of my situation, he organised to pick me up at the station the next morning and kindly gave me permission to use the company car until I get another car. A few days later I have a reliable, low-maintenance, very cute brand new car.

        While many people might forget about others when they're happy,  successful, settled down, and in a domestic bliss, there are still those who truly care and share their time and efforts in helping others and most important of all, without any judgements. I can only hope that most people get to know such wonderful human beings in their life as I have in mine whether it be family, friends, colleagues, or even strangers...

        For those of you who'd like to know who these honest and kind mechanics are, I have provided their details below:

The good Samaritan mechanic: Matthew

The mechanical workshop: Rocks Auto Care at 266 North Rocks Rd, North Rocks NSW 2151

Paddington Inn and Micky's Cafe

Hi there,

        What a wonderful weekend it's been with the sunny bright weather all weekend! I hope you all agree with me, as it's always good to imagine that everyone is having a great time on this earth.

        This weekend I got the chance to visit an old friend in the east part of Sydney city, the Paddington Inn. A few years ago when I used to work in the Paddington/Moore Park areas, I used to visit Paddington Inn with my work mates for lunch and Friday drinks. I have quite a decent memories of the place and the food. I remembered it as being a comfortable modern pub with decent food and good crowds. The pub was significantly renovated not long after I moved from the area.

        With the good memories I had of the old Paddington Inn, I was looking forward to checking out the new version. Since it was a weekend evening, it was packed when we got in there. My date and I went through the front room which seems to be more of a pub with classy modern setting and the TV tuned in to the sports channel like most other pubs. We then walked further into the back room which has the setting of a reasonably romantic bar/restaurant with the high tables, stools and sofa booths. We went up to the bar to order our food and pick up a couple of drinks. We then sat down at the booth closest to the bar, sharing with another lovely couple who seems to be enjoying each other's company as much as their food. It gave me a good feeling up to this stage.

        With approximately 10 minutes wait, our orders were delivered to the table - a nice service I didn't expect since it is usually self-service in most pubs. Another thing I realised from this pub is the fact that it doesn't have any game rooms, poker machines, and cigarette machines. I hope they're not hidden somewhere in the corners of the pub as I like the idea of a "clean pub". 

        After a light and very funny romantic comedy french movie at nearby cinema (he is a contributor to the idea of a romantic comedy for the evening) that hurt my stomach with laughter, I was hungry-as I am most of the times. I dug straight into the dishes, including his before he even started eating. It doesn't make me sound like the classiest date, does it? His order was the Harissa spiced chicken with polenta crisp, eggplant braise and green beans while I had the Rump steak with fries and salad. I prefer to skip the more adventurous meals in the pubs and stick to the more standard dishes.

        Lets start with the Harissa spiced chicken with polenta crisp. As much as I try to be the nicest critic I could be, I promised to present the most honest opinions of mine on every topic. Here we go... the chicken breast was dry and flavourless with slightly burnt grill lines on it. The polenta crisp is more like polenta cake with barely any crispy surface. The eggplant braise was tomato based with only original flavours of the ingredients. The only good thing in the dish is the fresh crunchy green beans. My date seemed to be fine with the dish. It's good to see an evident that may be this time I've met an easy going man who is not so fussy about everything, when it might just be them who's filled with issues. I hope he takes it as a complement when I said it's a relieve to meet someone who is easy to deal with...

        Anyway, back to the meals. My steak was better. The steak itself was cooked to the right standard of medium rare as I ordered it to be. The pepper sauce was creamy with good flavours of salt and the right amount of pepper to represent its name. The fries were thick cut and lightly deep fried with crunchy external texture and soft centre. The salad was less than average. It was salty with a big S! The only things I could taste in the dressing were lemon juice, a little bit of olive oil, and plenty of salt. I was disappointed with the fact that their dining standard has decreased significantly from the decent memories I had of the old Paddington Inn. Luckily, I had a wonderful company for the evening that kept me in a cheerful mood.

        For dessert, we went back to Micky's Cafe, a few doors away from the Paddington Inn. Prior to the movie, we stopped by this cafe for some drinks. They have good range of wines and beers. The iced coffee had good espresso taste without the bitterness of the two shots in the mix combined with good balance of the creaminess of milk and slight sweetness of ice cream. So when we went back to Micky's cafe for dessert, we were expecting a pretty good one. He ordered the strawberry pancake. When it came out, we were slightly-but-not-so pleasantly surprised with the plate of pancake, ice cream, and strawberries that has no sauce on it. They happily brought a small jug of maple syrup over at our request. The pancakes had the perfectly soft and fluffy texture. The strawberries were fresh and sliced with consistent thickness, the ice cream was the highlight. It was creamy, smooth with fresh strawberries flavour. To accompany the pancakes dessert, I ordered the Paddington Princess cocktail. It was fresh and sweet with plenty of passion fruits and light content of the Cointreau.

        While I will be back to Micky's cafe to try more of their dishes, I may visit Paddington Inn again only for the drinks. All in all, I believe we both had an enjoyable evening. Have a good week everyone!

Limelight Restaurant - Neutral Bay

Hello,

        It's Friday evening and I'm having a relaxing one at home. I hope you've all had a good week as I have. I thought I'll end the working week with some yummy reviews... 

        On a recent Sunday evening, I visited my friend who lives right on the harbour shore of Neutral Bay. When I got there, she and her boyfriend had just taken in a lost cat. Being very much a cat lover myself, I was excited to see this fluffy beautiful Himalayan cat. He was tamed and so cute! I wished he was chubbier tho... So before we went for dinner, we needed to either find the owner of the cat or drop him off at a local vet. After calling the local vet to get some information on the cat based on his collar, we went to knock on a few doors on the way out. Fortunately, we found the owner who lives just next door to my friend. Sadly, I had to return the cat to his very grateful owner. Having done something nice made me even hungrier.

        So, we finally got to a local Thai restaurant. It's called Limelight.  Interestingly enough, their website is called 62Limelight. I guess it is to represent the street number of the restaurant to more specifically identify it. Some of you might agree with me that the name sounds more like that of a club more than a Thai restaurant at the first instance. It is actually a local restaurant with relax and friendly ambiance in the corner of Clark and Kurraba roads. The place was packed when we got there. Kindly enough, without a booking they were happy to put together a set of tables and chairs for us by pulling the pieces from different parts of the restaurant. Since it was the second time I dined at Limelight, I was not surprised to experience their friendly service again.

        The decorations of the place take you back to the beaches in Thailand. The entrees menu is quite interesting. However, the main menu is limited to the most standard Thai dishes such as Pad Thai and a couple of other noodle dishes, standard Thai curries, and a couple of different grilled dishes. For the price tags, you would normally expect more advanced dishes. The dessert menu perhaps changes daily as there's only one dessert on the menu, however there were different sweets in the shelves on the decorative table in the middle of the front dining room.

        Lets start with the chocolate milk shake. Usually, I wouldn't get anything westernised at an Asian restaurant. Therefore, I was expecting a very sweet heavy drink. When it came out, I was pleasantly surprised. It was filled with real slightly-bitter-chocolate flavour and fresh whipped cream on top. For entrees, I tasted the Sitting egg. It's basically 2 seared king prawns each wrapped in egg nest. The prawns were crunchy with light coconut and punchy lime, ginger, shallots, and chili flavours finished with slightly sweet and sour tamarind sauce. 

        On to the main... my picks were the Roast Duck curry, the Peppercorn beef stir fry, and saffron rice. The Roast Duck curry had amazing balance of flavours, saltiness of the eggs combined with the sweetness and light acidity of tomatoes, pineapples, and lychees. The ducks were very tender. The Peppercorn beef stir fry was very flavourful. The beef was tender although slightly too thin and hence, a tiny bit dry. The sauce was quite spicy and the basil was slightly overpowering to me. However, the saffron rice was a great choice as it is the perfect match for the strong flavoured dishes. The saffron rice was fluffy and mildly flavoured, perfectly balanced with the slight sweetness of sultanas.

        Since we were basically so full with the explode-in-your-mouth experience with the savoury dishes and there was only one dessert item on the menu that sounds quite heavy, we decided to skip the dessert and called it a night. Will I go to Limelight again for dinner? With the very tasty dishes and great service, I will absolutely re-visit them. Will I go there often for Thai food? May be not... Only because their menu is pretty limited and I love getting new experiences with food and life in general.

Citizen Corner - Surry Hills

Hello,

        The first couple of days of this week have gone in a blink of an eye. It's now hump day. I thought I'd write about a pleasant experience I've had recently. I was invited by my friends to a restaurant called Citizen Corner on a Saturday evening. As usual, I check the restaurant out on line prior to visiting. The website gives a rustic and relax feeling with sepia colours. To me the website represents the image that comes to mind when you hear the name Citizen Corner.

        Stepping into the restaurant located in the corner of Devonshire and Holt streets, you are greeted with a warm and romantic yet relax ambiance in simple and elegant design. When I read through the menu, a couple of dishes caught my eyes. While their lunch menu is pretty comprehensive, the dinner menu is a lot more concise. The menu is well categorised with pre starters, entrees, mains, and sides. They have separate menu for desserts and drinks including wines. They have reasonable range of wines for the restaurant size. Nowadays, I find that such well categorised menu are only found mostly in fine dining. So I was quite impressed with the details of their menu. 

        Since we were all hungry and trying to catch a movie afterwards, we ordered straight to the mains. Two of us, including me, ordered the Pappardelle with a lamb ragout, olives, feta, and spinach. The pasta was made and cooked perfectly with soft and bitty texture. The lamb was tender with flavoursome tomato based sauce combined with the saltiness of olives and creamy feta that cut through the sweetness and acidity of the sauce, balanced with the freshness of spinach.
        Another dishes ordered were two types of risotto. When I dug into the Chicken and mushroom risotto, I tasted well cooked risotto, slightly runny as it should be. The breast chicken pieces were tender and mushrooms were soft while still hold the texture. All in all, it was a decent dish with the flavours of the ingredients shining through the risotto. However, a little more seasoning will make the dish a more satisfying one. I then tasted the Butternut pumpkin, spinach, goat cheese and sage risotto. Again, the risotto was cooked to standard, the flavours of the pumpkins combined with goat cheese and sage created a well balanced flavours of sweetness, creaminess, and saltiness with a slight punch of sage.
        The servings were just right for us girls. However, they may be a little small for some people especially as main meals. A couple of us still had the stomach room for dessert, so we ordered the Caramelised rice pudding with blueberry compote. Since it is a rice pudding, I was expecting heavy and sweet dessert. However, to my surprise the warm creamy rice pudding was light with just the right sweetness and the combination of cream with fresh blueberry compote made it a heavenly dessert. Overall, it was a pleasant evening of conversations accompanied by nice food and decent  wines. 

Human Interactions in Today's Society

Hi All,

        I hope you're all having a good weekend. I have a pretty decent weekend myself... and for all of us who do, we should be grateful. I'm sure not many of us, including me, think of being thankful for a good weekend. We often take such simple things for granted. So, I thought I'd end the week with a bit of reflections for all of us to read while sitting on our couches having Sunday roast. 

        I mean... How many times have we watched on the news or listened on radio or heard from others about a father who lost their job and struggle to raise his family? What about a son who has to work 2 jobs to cover medical bills then spend the whole night caring for his sick parent? What about a family that is burdened by severe illness (cancer, etc) and have no means of earning income? 

        Of course, every time we hear such stories, we feel bad, feel grateful for what we have, and even weep for them. Then we go into a restaurant and spend hundreds on alcohol. Now, before all of you start running towards me with baseball bats, hear me out. I firmly believe that you deserve to enjoy what you've earned. I do too. However, how many of us really understand the struggles or even sufferings that these people really go through? We feel good after giving donations and some us may even judge them for how they should live. 

        I am personally passionate about charity. I started visiting slumps, special hospitals, and community centres delivering donations and performing trainings for students in impoverished communities since I was still in high school. I used to cry after some of the visits to those places. I could never imagine having to live on bones for protein or eating only rice or bread with soy sauce. I could never imagine a lonely life without anyone to talk to who's not a medical professional. What about not being able to communicate at all and bed-bound for life while being fully awake and aware of the surroundings?

        Yet, in our great country-Australia, we hear about children committing suicide because of bullying and elders dying in their home without anyone finding them for days or even months. As the world progresses intellectually, technology advanced rapidly, and communication devices are made more available than ever, we lose the true communication within society. How many of us borrow sugar from our neighbours? How many of us knock on neighbour's door just to check up on them? Why do we need to have 'Are you Ok' day to tell us to check up on those around us? Have we really become so inconsiderate of others that we forget to accept them just for who they are or just lend a hand to our capabilities for whatever they need without justifications or judgements? And, why do we always need a reason to talk to each other?

        Strangely enough, even after so much life experience (and I'm talking Great experiences and those that you thought you'd only see as tragedies on TV or hear on radio), I still like to imagine a life where people using their skills to help each other is a normal thing-not a charity, a world where people accept differences without even noticing them, or just a world where people can just talk to each other without feeling uncomfortable. Yes, that sounds quite unreasonable... but if we all take the time to imagine such a life and try a little harder, we won't be too far from it. 

        

Dragon House Indian Chinese Diner

Hello again,

        A few months ago a friend of mine introduced me to this modest diner located in West Ryde, a north west suburb of Sydney. The diner is called Dragon House. From the outside it looks just like other Chinese diners. When you step inside, you are greeted by the friendly owner and sit yourself at any available old fashioned tables with clear plastic covers and modest chairs, as you'd expect from a local diner in most suburbs. My attention was then taken to the artworks and spiritual pieces hanging on the walls and at the cashier in front of the kitchen. The artworks and decorations show the mix of Indian and Chinese traditions. This is what this restaurant is all about, Chinese food cooked by people in India, a fusion between Chinese techniques and Indian flavours.

        When you look through the menu, you find Chinese food with Indian spices and flavours in the descriptions. After dining there a few times now, I have tried several of the Chef's specialties. My favourites are the Bombay style garlic prawn and Masala fried rice. Just thinking about them makes me salivate. First of all, let me point out that the servings are all more than decent size with lots of the protein ingredients and nice vegetables - not the kind of servings where you'll find more onions than the heros of the dish. Back to the Bombay garlic prawn, the prawns are big and juicy. They are cooked to perfection leaving them still crunchy with crispy light batter. The sauce is full of flavour, slightly sweet with the perfect consistency, not too thick. The garlic flavour is just right, not over powering like a lot of other garlic prawns I've had. Although it's not mentioned in the menu description, I can taste some Indian spices in the sauce and the prawn batter. Of course, it'd be a recipe if they described all the spices on the menu.

        The memorable side dish is the Masala fried rice. We got the combination version but you can pick your protein or the vegetarian version. It's similar to nasi goreng with similar ingredients plus the Masala spice. The other dishes I have tasted include the crispy chili beef, Manchurian chicken, and the coconut water. The crispy beef is quite dry for my liking, it's thinly sliced and deep fried than glazed by dark sauce. The chicken is nice and tender with Manchurian sauce which is onion based stir fry sauce with light spices. The coconut juice was refreshing and slightly sweet. However, it's not the freshest I've had. It taste a little like the frozen ones you get from Asian groceries.

        Overall, their menu contains mostly 10 or so different recipe bases with different proteins and vegetables together with about the same amount of different bases of side dishes in either rice or noodle. For the price tags, they have some of the best tasting food I've had even when compared to some of the popular restaurants I've visited.

        If you want that happy satisfied feeling from your food without putting a hole in your pocket, I highly suggest to try this little diner in West Ryde. I personally will go there every time I need satisfying cheap meals or just to try a few more different dishes they have. One more thing, being a local diner that the Dragon House is, you wouldn't expect the good service and options offered by the owner that I've experienced there.