by Kate on April 22, 2012
Every now and then, something comes along and just changes everything. It’s a shift so great and so momentous, we just don’t want to go back to how it was. And that’s what’s happened in Sydney, with the opening of The Grounds of Alexandria. This is where I ended up (upon the recommendation of the wonderful Jill Dupleix, and then everyone else) this morning, with the rest of cool hunters and leisurely espresso cravers. I’ll post a proper post this week but I just wanted to do a sneak preview of sorts. The place is darned revolutionary. It’s a warehouse space turned into my future dream home of rustic, polished, spacious, light-drenched, and just awesome.
Drinks in jars may be more overdone than zeit geist, but here it works, and the rippled iced coffees done in a two-hand-to-hold jar is syrupy and not too sweet. There are vanilla and chocolate milkshakes and granola with yoghurt and berries so fragrant you’d think they were fake. And a little carrot cake topped with cream cheese icing had me pause for teariness. It is the best carrot cake I’ve ever had. And I like carrot cake. But actually, speaking of carrots, Peter Rabbit is outside.
There’s a whole garden out there. A whole sprawling brick-paved, pergola-topped garden with raised garden beds and raddichio growing amongst the strawberries (see fragrant strawberries earlier). There are tiny baby eggplant for heaven’s sake. Sitting perched on a rafter-sided garden with my carrot cake in one hand, strong soy flat white in another, and balancing some almond and plum compote-topped porridge there somewhere too, I was as happy as a duck in water. Yes, and there are ducks, and rabbits.
These kids wander around with towel-wrapped ducklings that squeak with concern, but it’s a cute sight. I’d like to see a more watchful eye over the critters, (nobody should be allowed to hang a rabbit in the air for that long), but I have no doubt the uncomfortable animal handling will be ironed out. Or I hope it will. The visiting children are overwrought with excitement, it’s a veritable petting zoo. But with good coffee.
Inside the place is immaculately designed, high ceilings, massive windows, the white railway tiles, copper coffee pots and turquoise cup and saucers just gorgeous. There’s a cafe, coffee roasting and testing facility and bakery, all housed in this massive warehouse. The coffee roasting facilities also incorporate a boutique coffee school, which includes a coffee workshop area to educate caffeine fascinators. But this is a game changer because of the garden, where The Grounds grow their own heirloom vegetables. The vegetable garden patch meets cafe makes us conscious that what grows around comes around. It’s an idea that Sydney will hopefully see a lot more of in the future.
At the helm of The Grounds is creative entrepreneur Ramzey Choker, as well as coffee expert Jack Hanna and interior design and events agency The Artistry.
Photography by Kate Gibbs.
BUILDING 7A, NO.2 HUNTLEY ST ALEXANDRIA NSW 2015.
by Kate on October 12, 2010
We love the packaging, we love the sweet roasted scented muesli with hints of orange, pecans and coconut, we love Farmer Jo, a stall at Eveleigh Markets. These smart little cartons hold five different flavours of cereal, using all natural ingredients. Farmer Jo roast all the nuts and dry the coconut and fruits themselves, and the pecans are truly fresh. We love the pear, pecan and spiced ginger toasted muesli, while the green apple and dried muscatel and grain porridge is full of almonds, vanilla and a hint of orange oil. Check out the other flavours here.
We spent last Saturday morning wandering through the glorious undercover markets, picking up chorizo to barbecue for addition to a tomato salad heavy with basil and cucumber, and flowers to fill the apartment. Kylie Kwong’s egg and shredded vegetable pancakes for breakfast, made by Kylie herself who works in streamlined efficiency at the end of a long queue. Toby’s Estate strong soy flat whites and cappuccinos were ordered and then seconds were reordered, a vanilla and chocolate ice-cream sandwich from Pat & Sticks was had on the way home.
See more on the fabulous and ever-changing Eveleigh Markets here and here.
by Kate on August 15, 2010
A Saturday morning at Palm Beach, where we dropped in to the decked and red-and-white stripe decked out The Boat House. Hands down, best fish and chips I’ve had in Sydney, all beer battered and crispy flathead. Sunny wintery Sydney on the Hawkesbury at this little cottage setting was refreshing and so happy making. Two little girls ordered two enormous strawberry milkshakes. After lunch, wandered down to Whale Beach, where the sand is extra grainy and the surf was up!
The Boat House: Barrenjoey Boathouse, Palm Beach
Open Daily 7.30am – 4pm
Alex Herbert, of Bird Cow Fish in Surry Hills fame, cooked me an omelette while I was standing right there in front of her. She used heirloom tomatoes tossed with the cherry variety, finely sliced Spanish onion and lots of parsley, all marinated in their own juices. And using three eggs she pulled together a perfect omelette in under 2 minutes as I made all efforts to catch it on camera. That’s not the sort of thing you can do at the Bird Cow Fish restaurant, but it is the sort of thing she’ll do for you, now, at Eveleigh Markets. Herbert (pictured below) set up the Bird Cow Fish stall at the markets almost upon their opening a year and a half ago. She’s always sold freshly baked Banana Bread Star Cakes, Toasted Zucchini and Walnut Bread, various buns and muffins (below), chocolate-dipped mega mega meringues (oh my goodness… see pic below) and hot porridge served with brown sugar in a cup. She’s trying out the omelettes and will gauge popularity, so it’s a good time to show your support of them. I bumped into the clever Simon Thomsen, who was also partaking in a Herbert omelette special.
Herbert told me she gets up at 4am on Saturdays to start the baking. She then arrives at Eveleigh Markets, chats to visitors, refills the baskets of baked things, and spoons out porridge to order. She then heads back to the restaurant at about 2.30pm, unpacks, and tries to fit in a little afternoon rest. What a woman!
Newspapers, double-shot soy lattes, honey on toast, a boiled egg, sun streaming through the window on to white linen sheets. Ahhh the day begins with so many lovely things. There might be nothing better than waking up next the person you love and planning a day together, really. And so in a tribute to all these things, I wanted to scribble-tap about breakfast and all its inspirations.
I’ve discovered these Belvoir cordials, my favourite being the Ginger and Lemon variety, which I have instead of tea (after coffee), using hot water on these cooler days. I am sure that’s how I’ve staved off a cold so far.
Not a fan of alarms full stop, but this Font Clock from Eden & Eden is so cool I wouldn’t mind rolling over to turn it off in the morning. A day should start with such good design no?
1. Egg Cube: Bone china egg holder with spoon, $38 from Eden & Eden. Made in England. 2. A Day at elBulli: new book from Penguin. 3. The Font Clock. Designed by Sebastian Wrong, a 21st century take on the British 24 hour clock design icon – $420 from Eden & Eden. 4. Honey bee from Delight. 5. Belvoir Fruit Farms cordial is available from good food and organic produce stores. 6. The Breakfast Club. Not breakfast really, but so so inspiring and uber cool for a whole generation.
One thing that would almost send me back to London are the Borough Markets. At that massive under-cover food market, French cheeses are piled up under the industrial-building-height ceilings, and pheasant, rabbit and other game hang from rafters. Pork pies, fresh custard, truffled sausages, crepes made to order.. the place is a veritable produce extravaganza. And really, Sydney’s never quite matched that experience.
But it is gradually doing so, albeit on a smaller scale. For the past year and a half, a definite forerunner in terms of grand location at least, has become the Eveleigh Markets near Darlington and Erskinville, in the Inner West.
And last weekend, as the heavens opened up in Sydney (despite some sunny patches), instead of hiding indoors, adventurous food-driven locals went to Eveleigh Markets and the Carriage Works gallery.
Fresh flowers, bunches of rosemary, salt-bush lamb, freshly baked artisan bread, cupcakes, those old-fashioned ice-cream sandwiches, pigs’ trotters, hot-smoked trout, organic wines, scores of mushroom varieties, for heavens sake it’s positively culinary.
I saw the incredible red ponytail first, and thought how well it went with the brown-paper-wrapped bunch of flowers. Fashion people do that – inspire some sort of colour coordination and just traipse through a food market looking like a dreamy fashion shoot. Rosie (above), the Fashademic blogger also doing a doctorate on style blogs, had bought some smoked trout and eggs, and was going to make an omelette with the two for dinner.
Bird Cow Fish, the Surry Hills-based restaurant led by chef Alex Herbert, for the first time offered three-egg omelettes this past weekend, made to order (more in an upcoming post). But Herbert herself also gets up at 4am on Saturday morning, she told me on the weekend, and starts baking for the market day ahead. Her early-birding means we get the worm at Eveleigh Market in the form of Chocolate Brioche, Banana Bread Star Cakes, Toasted Zucchini and Walnut Bread, various buns (below) and hot porridge served with brown sugar in a cup. Perfect winter wares.
The buildings themselves are enough to make you proud of your local council. Thank heavens some of Sydney’s older buildings are being reinvented for the public’s use. The old Carriage Works are a magical setting for the food market. Humans are dwarfed by the brick, arched buildings, making it all feel rather breezy and happy. Despite the early start, it’s all very happy, and it’s a place that makes you not think twice about pulling up a plastic crate to sit with a friend in the (currently) rare spots of winter sun. Maybe it’s the idea of spending the day cooking pigs trotters and organic greens bought at the markets, or maybe it’s that we’re surrounded by people who would wake up at 4am to bake for our breakfasts, but this is an awesome setting, where happy individuals and families start their weekends. Maybe I needn’t go back to London after all.
All photos by The Kitchen Inc.
Eveleigh Markets: Every Saturday at 245 Wilson Street Eveleigh, corner of Codrington Street
So I was standing at the counter in a tiny corner shop on Bourke Street, Surry Hills (Sydney), in a wee bit of a quandary. Not about whether I should be trying a sugary tiny cream-laden pastry, but deciding which of the extensive selection to choose. And then, before the words chocolate-and-raspberry-mousse-tart-please could leave my lips, a large tray full of brulee tarts was placed before my eyes.
My friend Lucy and I ordered one, and sat there on the corner with all the trendy people in tight black jeans – the girls with their hair in top knots and the chaps with various sorts of RayBans. But anyway, back to the pastry.
Bourke Street Bakery does these supremely well. I have the cookbook and will now endeavour to make them, but the real trick is not the creamy velvety centre, nor even the crispy sugary burnt top, but the slightly overdone pastry base. Lucy, a properly trained pastry cook, even marvelled at the quality of the pastry. The book recommends baking the pastry for 20-25 minutes in a preheated 200 degree oven, or until golden. It would need every minute of that. Actually, the word “golden” probably doesn’t do it justice – these are bordering on dark brown, bringing out a slightly burnt butter flavour that goes so well with the burnt sugar top.
I won’t give away the recipe here for fear of being charged with a drop in Bourke Street Bakery’s book sales, however if we can replicate what they do in the store, the $69.95 price tag is worth it.
Bourke Street Bakery itself is totally lovely, even if the line to go in sometimes wraps around the corner. Well actually it often does, and it’s almost not worth going on a Saturday morning. And this is not the sort of place that locals getting the morning paper, milk and bread would queue up in their pjs at.. It’s much more a scene than that. But with all its cool and queues, the place is becoming a Sydney institution, and rightly so.
Daily news, delivered in the form of a doily. Saves me leaving tea rings on my newspaper, while also being usefully amusing. Doily news.
Peter Bruegger presented his moustache mugs as part of the London design week last year. The fine bone china mugs are available in six tache styles. I might enjoy effortlessly masquerading behind a moustache while drinking my green tea.
by Kate on April 27, 2010
If the Hills are alive, they’re alive with a brunch going, sleepy set who get up at 11am and head to Crown Street for Fifi Foveaux big breakfasts, Bourke Street Bakery croissants, and Kawa coffee. The latter serves papa-bear-sized bowls of porridge in Surry Hills, and perfect poached eggs on potato rosti (Kawa, 346-350 Crown Street, Surry Hills, pic below).
by Kate on April 27, 2010
A newish haven for sweet-tooths is a perfect sort of urban Parisian outpost in Balmain – the Zumbo Chocolat Cafe. The cafe, a few doors up from the patisserie, stocks Little Marionette coffee, and serves breakfasts and light lunches, and chocolate. We had “Mighty Eggs”, essentially boiled eggs with vegemite soldiers, and a sticky thick slice of French toast with crispy bacon. The mighty eggs were a little overdone, but one can’t be too fussy on a busy Saturday morning when the queue for seating is getting longer and the beach is waiting.
Adriano Zumbo: Shop 5, 308 Darling Street Balmain. (02) 9555 1199
