by Kate on December 2, 2011
Mochi sweets, those glutenous rice balls, are traditionally filled with sesame paste, cream or red bean paste. But the wagashi parlour and cafe, Higashiya, has overhauled the culinary tradition, filling the doughy balls with the likes of peach, edamame paste and blueberry. Rolled balls of gelatinous rice are gem-like sculptured pieces, pretty morsels of silk and goo.
There’s pumpkin and cheese, mashed chestnuts and brandy jelly, ginger, orange and chocolate, sweet potato and black sesame butter, macadamia and sweet potato, rum and fermented butter, cashews in mashed sweet potato.
The powder-coated or polished bites are served with the spirit Shochu instead of the traditional thick green tea. Though eating any any of the stores still feels like some ancient Japanese tea ceremony.
by Kate on October 6, 2011
Review of Manly Pavilion, published in February 2011 in Sunday Life magazine.
by Kate on August 22, 2011
Fresh off a one-star Michelin nod in 2010, Longman & Eagle, a restaurant that does snout-to-tail pork and all meaty good things in Chicago, decided to start its own hotel as well – as a place to sleep off food comas perhaps. Jared Wentworth is the chef here, and he offers a regularly changing menu that includes small plates like smoked Becker Lane pork rillettes with cornichons and mustard, and roasted marrow bones, red onion jam, and sourdough crostini mains.
In an Americanised menu that meets Asia and France half way, Longman & Eagle does a grilled Berkshire pork chop with head on prawns, hush puppies, bacon braised Swiss chard and black pepper shrimp sauce. Wentworth does wild boar sloppy joes and things like pork shank with collard greens and grits. A great restaurant it might be, but it’s the chance to stay late and elbow wrestle with other local chefs in the wee hours over a dram of whisky that really gives the place deserved mention. Early breakfasts help recovery with the likes of sunny side duck egg hash with duck confit, Nichols Farm spring onions, Yukon gold potato and a black truffle vinaigrette (a culinary hangover cure, to be sure).
Longman & Eagle has six rooms available for overnight stay, casual yet completely beautiful offerings for seasoned travellers. Rooms vary in both price and proportion, and start at $75 a night.
Longman & Eagle
2657 N. KEDZIE AVE / CHICAGO, IL 60647 / 773-276-7110
www.longmanandeagle.com
The Barbican in London has recently launched the Food Hall and Book Bank. Market stalls, a deli and sweet counter contained in this extensive arts centre, which has more than 18 different stores and nooks. There’s also a Book Bank – a bring-and-take-away bookstall stocked by Pan Macmillan. The formal restaurant upstairs boasts a macaroon mixologist – truly. It’s a man who matches macaroons to cocktails, of course.
.PSLAB collaborated with architects and designers SHH to create a site-specific treatment for the project. Light fixtures were conceived to suit the rough style of the building fabric and also to abide by the restrictions of the listed building. The ground floor is spatially divided into multiple seating areas via low ceiling levels; due to the duct system and various seating layouts. Floor-to -ceiling shelving structures hold multiple glass jars holding energy-saving light bulbs. The result if a twinkling gorgeous place, where a lacquered steel metal structure complements the rustic space.
The jar-shelving structures were then adapted into ceiling suspended modules to provide functional light. And then smaller modules of these shelves are repeated into wall-mounted fixtures over the seating booths. Pretty lovely.
Barbican Food Hall and Lounge; (barbican.org.uk).
by Kate on January 26, 2011
The early bird catches the sesame seed bun. Hanging out today with my wee friend Atticus in Melbourne, traipsing around and making lamingtons and finding distractions instead of going for a run around Albert Park lake. We made an early stop at the South Melbourne version of Grill’d, the burger spot. Walls are amusingly scribbled and chairs are fire engine red. The burgers, his a mini with cheese and lettuce and mine with mustard, pickles, sauce, are soft and actually juicy.
Grill’d is all over Aus, but I went to this one..
278 Clarendon Street
South Melbourne
(03) 9686 6866
by Kate on December 13, 2010
Love these things from creative design studio Ma + Chr, who have done restaurant and bar interior designs as well as their own happy little pictures you can buy. It’s based in Paris and was founded by Mathilde Aubier and Christine Delaquaize.
by Kate on December 10, 2010
Kangaroo Island is not just about kangaroo and other cuddly things, a new culinary world is burgeoning as enterprising islanders take on pursuits other than the traditional wool farming. Abalone and marron farming, samphire pickling, rare breed farming and Ligurian beekeeping are bringing travellers across from the mainland as epicurean adventurists. First stop off the ferry from Adelaide is Penneshaw, where we find the best fish and chips on the island.
Sue Pearson’s Fish attracts tourist buses and locals for her whiting fillet in a beer batter. She also does more intricate local marron with a lamb chorizo risotto when I am there. Here are some pics, including the view opposite of the Adelaide ferry coming in.
by Kate on November 23, 2010
If Sydney’s Japanese restaurants’ menus could be lined up in a row, we might be excused for thinking it is a case of the usual suspects. Salmon avocado rolls, crispy fried soft-shell crab rolls, beef teriyaki.. sigh. But a New York style Japanese fusion restaurant, Monkey Magic, is setting a new agenda. Suzuki jewfish with dashi and lemongrass consomme (below), a salted caramel semifreddo with pineapple chip … New head chef Shea Crawford (above, right) has joined the restaurant having worked at New York’s acclaimed Nice Matin and Oceana Restaurant, where he worked under the tutelage of Andy D’Amico.
Now as head chef at Monkey Magic, Shea has collaborated with Tsuboi and head sushi chef Michiaki Miyazaki to create a new menu flush with European influenced Japanese fusion fare. The so-named Crab Leaves is crab meat bedded on a betel leaf with a touch of ginger, chilli and lime, not a bad thing to go with a tall lemongrass julep (above), a gin and lemongrass cocktail. The slow cooked pork belly is braised and served with apple and ginger puree, salad of fennel, chinese cabbage, orange and chives ($27).
The usual suspects are still here, but the soft shell crab roll ($15) comes with flyingfish roe, tomato, mizuna, fried leek and spicy mayonnaise. And then it can be followed by the wonderfully unusual silken tofu cake (above), with white lemon sorbet and tuille ($13) or the sugar cinnamon beignet, which comes with a chai latte and sweet cream ($13).
Monkey Magic: 3&4, 410 Crown St. Surry Hills (02) 93584444
by Kate on September 8, 2010
Sydney is getting all unearthed about where its food comes from. It wants to know what’s organic and how many bugs had to die by force of chemical to get that beetroot on the plate. It makes perfect sense to know your pinot gris came from the right area, and that the little box of cherry tomatoes were not trucked across the country, in the wrong season, to get into the bruscetta. So it makes perfect sense too, then, that chefs and restauranteurs are getting behind the where-did-it-come-from malarkey. It was with some interest then that I jumped on the earthy, switched-on bandwagon on the way to Bécasse.
Justin North, the man who won the SMH Good Food Guide chef of the year in 2009 and whose restaurants include Sydney’s Bécasse, Etch and Plan B, has set out to introduce the passionate people behind some of Australia’s finest ingredients to Sydney foodies. The Bécasse producers forum and lunch brings together media, producers and industry figures to share their passion, give an insight into their experience and participate in an open forum to discuss the issues facing the fast-evolving industry.
Local growers, farmers, fishermen and producers talk about organic, ethical farming and sustainability. Octopus farmers, Ross and Craig Cammiilleri from Fremantle Octopus, show an octopus-catching contraption. Sustainable-food-minded wine producer, Sam Atkins and Tim Burvill from One Planet Wines, show how tetra pacs are the new wine bottle, preventing breakages and being more sustainable to produce (indeed Bécasse serves the wine at the event). Barbara and Cliff Penniceard, from Ash-Elle Park, show the extraordinarily delicate process of hand picked saffron (while guests were served saffron, spice and rind brioche with their meals).
North himself believes chefs and restaurateurs have an important role in bringing awareness to these issues by embracing the notion of good eating and smart shopping – not only for the environment, but also the ultimate quality of seasonal, locally grown produce.
Like an increasing number of restaurants, North has opened up his kitchen, letting diners in on the action-packed slick. A keyhole view into the kitchen, from which waiters three-plate balance with ease and North himself keeps a close eye, offers a unique view of the creations coming together. It all makes sense, besides, as North well knows that Sydney wants to know exactly where its food is coming from.
The Producers’ Forums are held every six weeks, see Bécasse website for more details. A seasonal producers’ lunch is also available every day at Bécasse for $35 including a glass of wine.
by Kate on August 1, 2010
This rustic, sort-of English, sort-of French bistro cum industrial restaurant is as creative as Sydney restaurants get. Arras, in Walsh Bay just up from the Sydney Theatre, had our party reeling. I’ve posted already with some gushing about the desserts and petit four, so won’t harp on, but I promised something on the mains tout suite so here ’tis.
The charcuterie plate includes chef Adam Humphrey’s Brit-inspired pork pie (see Brit explanation here), his own blood sausage (including other things he prefers not to go on about for fear of dissuading eaters), a little pot/jar of potted pork, topped with a voilet, and a deconstructed piccalilli, set on a slate platter. I am going to do little pork rillette or potted porks in little jars like this for some quaint little get together when I feel like impressing. Just so sweet to eat such a thing out of a little jar.
Fish and chips always seems like a good idea. And then after you’ve had all the batter and realised it’s physically and emotionally impossible to stop eating chips until they’re all gone, you feel ill and down on yourself for accidentally slipping off some ridiculous and also impossible diet. The Arras fish and chips main is different. It did seem like a good idea, yes, but the grilled mulloway (fish changes seasonally, cleverly), with butter pan-fried shrimp and wafer cones filled with a pea foam and another with mushy peas, and then all vaporised with an totally cool spray of vinegar, was completely amazing. I know the fried things were replaced with buttered things, so am really not suggesting this is a healthier option to the English-seaside staple. But somehow the guilt was not there afterwards, while it still evoked that summer meal. The only thing missing was it being served wrapped up in a sheet of newspaper.
And then comes the cheese, which rotates seasonally but will generally include a bitey sheeps cheese that I forget the name of. But it also comes with a series of little chutneys and jams, also made in-house.
{All pictures by Kate Gibbs}
