Greek Islands: a little piece of paradise

One of the most beautiful places on the planet has got to be the Greek Islands.  M and I visited Mykonos and Santorini for the first time last year and I simply cannot forget how unbelievably gorgeous they were.  Sparkling blue water, white sugar cube houses and fabulous (and relatively cheap) food…  If there’s any place in Greece that will make one forget about the bailout, this surely must be it.

Greek frappé by the Mykonos coast

We’d heard all about Mykonos – the beaches, the partying, the hedonism…  Before our trip, we weren’t sure it would be the kind of place we’d like – so you just lie on the beach all day and then go clubbing all night?  Hmmm, not really our scene.  But we went anyway.  And it was great.  Actually, it was better than great – Mykonos was fabulous!

Fresh seafood aplenty.

For starters, the island is stunning.  It’s so different to any other place I’ve been to, with its narrow laneways in Mykonos town, the pretty white buildings with their royal blue domed tops and the rustic old windmills facing the turquoise water.  We were there at the start of the season and it was so peaceful – there were no crowds and it was actually a bit difficult to imagine that this little island transforms into the thumping heart of the European party scene during the height of summer.

We stayed at the Belvedere Hotel, which was perched just above the town centre.  The view from their pool deck was amazing – totally can’t-take-my-eyes-off-the-view amazing.

View from the Belvedere Hotel.

The Belvedere.

There were restaurants aplenty and, because it was low season, plenty of empty tables.  From fine dining to a quick gyros, the food was excellent – really fresh ingredients and beautiful flavours.  I was particularly fond of chargrilled octopus and made a point of ordering a serve each day!

M’s colleague had recommended ‘Jimmy’s‘ for a good, cheapie gyros, but his only directions to this place were ‘it’s near the bus stop‘.  After searching high and low, we finally found this place (which wasn’t all that near any bus stop!).  Yes, the gyros were good – they’re not blow-your-mind awesome, but yummy-in-my-tummy good!  For future reference, Jimmy’s is near the centre fork of Mykonos town.

We encountered so many furry friends in Greece.  I gotta say, a dog or cat’s life on the Greek Islands doesn’t look too shabby!

On his way by ferry to Delos.

A table with a view?

From Mykonos, we ventured south to Santorini.  Santorini was just as stunning, but in its own different way – the sheer cliffs, the black sand beaches and the sprawling, low growing vines.  We stayed at Zannos Melathron in Pyrgos, which was up high on a hill and away from the tourist crowds.  Zannos is the former residence of a sea captain which has been converted into a boutique hotel – it’s a gorgeous old mansion with 360 degree views of the island below.

Zannos Melathron.

The breakfasts at Zannos were amazing!  In addition to having a great variety on their a la carte menu, they seriously had the best chocolate croissants ever.  No, really – like ever.  The pastry was warm, flaky and buttery and the dark chocolate filling was soft and rich.  Mmm-mmmmm…

They say the sunset at Oia is world famous for its gorgeousness, but I reckon the sunset from Zannos can give Oia’s a run for its money.

The view from Zannos.

The view from Oia.

Santorini is known for its wine and a trip to a winery was on the agenda.  We visited  Santo Wines, located within a walking distance from Zannos and one of the larger operations in the region.

The view from Santo Wines.

Yep, I reckon you would have to try pretty hard to find a spot without a gob-smacking view in Santorini.  As for the wines, well, I can’t say the wines were as amazing as the views!  I didn’t mind some of the Greek wines, but there are definitely others that I prefer.  Actually, there are many others that I prefer…

We continued to experience some wonderful Greek food in Santorini.  A couple of other favourite dishes from our trip?  The calorific saganaki and the indulgent baklava – talk about fat and sugar overload!
I really loved the Greek Islands.  I had incredibly high expectations from flipping through all those glossy magazine pictorials of crystal blue waters and glowing amber sunsets.  The reality?  It was even better.

Waiting for the sunset at Oia.

Oh, what a life!

Fish Face – upmarket casual fabulousness

Gosh, it’s been over a month since my last post!  How time flies…  There are several reasons for my absence.

Firstly, I’ve been less inclined to take photos at restaurants these days as I’m aware that some restauranteurs are a bit wary of amateur foodies critiquing their food.  My take on this is that food blogging has been around for awhile and doesn’t seem to be a trend that would go away anytime soon, so restauranteurs better get used to it unless they want to spend a chunk of their time shooing away camera-wielding customers.  Besides, if their restaurant delivers quality meals and excellent service, they shouldn’t have anything to worry about.  However, I also think that they deserve respect and, although you are a paying customer, you are dining in their restaurant so their rules have to be followed.  Even if they don’t have a rule against food photography, sometimes leaving the camera at home is just the polite thing to do.

Secondly, it’s just generally nicer to have a meal without interrupting conversation or making your dining companions hold off on starting their dishes so that you can take snaps of their food!  It’s more relaxed, more polite and more enjoyable.  Oh, and my camera doesn’t fit into one of my favourite little handbags and sometimes making the right handbag selection is more important than documenting my meal!

Thirdly, I was overseas again for a bit.  M and I went to Thailand, the land of the scams smiles scams for a couple of weeks.  I was there 10 years ago and remember really enjoying my time there.  This time, not so much.  As tourists, we felt like massive targets for the money-hungry locals who lurk around all the tourist spots (and yes, I know not all of them are native Thais, but I consider them to be locals if they actually live and work there).  Okay, so that’s no surprise in many countries, but I’ve never been anywhere where there were so many people going out of their way to try to scam you when you’re just minding your own business.  In Bangkok and Phuket, it was just constant.  And they do it with a smile.  Like they’re your friend.  It’s just plain annoying.

Anyway, so it was really nice to be back in Australia where if people were friendly to you, it’s usually because they are just friendly people and where you feel the protection of the rule of law.  While in Sydney recently, M and I made a last minute booking at Fish Face.  We weren’t quite sure what to expect, given that their website isn’t exactly heavy on details, but it had a number of good reviews and was BYO.

The verdict?  Absolutely fantastic.  It’s a small space, set up like an upmarket fish and chip shop – lots of stainless steel, dark wood and white walls.  We were squeezed behind one of the counters facing the street, bumping elbows with our dining neighbours.  But the food was sublime.  They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so the below should save me a whole lot of typing…

Bonito sashimi with mayo and tempura seaweed.

Please excuse my bad memory, but I think this was kingfish capaccio with ponzu.

Sea urchin sushi.

Smoked ocean trout 'pie'.

Crab meat, enoki and egg noodles in broth.

Everything was fresh, fabulous and beautifully presented.  The least exciting dish was probably the crab meat noodles – it was still tasty, but it didn’t blow us away like a few of the other dishes did.  The bonito sashimi was a favourite, with its balance of creamy mayo, crunchy tempura seaweed and tender fish pieces.  The ocean trout ‘pie’ had a lovely, dainty smoky flavour and was complimented by the taste of the salty sea bursting from the pearls of roe.  The sea urchin sushi, which was wrapped in a thin sliver of daikon, was perfectly delicate and not overly fishy.  It was also very reasonably priced at $10 for 2 pieces.  In fact, the whole meal was very good value for the quality at less than $70 per head (including dessert and corkage).  Yes, it might seem a bit expensive for a ‘fish and chip’ style place, but the food being served up at Fish Face is many notches above your local fish and chip shop.

Strawberry and peach frangipane tart.

We finished our meal with a slice of their strawberry and peach frangipane tart, a perfectly delicious summer dessert that almost seemed healthy (hey, it has fruit!).  Our wine for the night was the beautiful 2007 Bannockburn S.R.H. chardonnay.  Seafood and chardonnay – my favourite food and wine match!

Our meal at Fish Face is so far the best meal we’ve had all year.  Superb produce, expert cooking and attentive, professional service.  The only thing that could’ve made the night more enjoyable would’ve been if we were less squished in where we were sitting.  Other than that, it was fabulous.  Upmarket, casual and fabulous.

P.S.  Apologies for the slightly blurry photos.  I wasn’t planning on blogging about this meal, so I didn’t bring my usual camera.  But the food was so awesome that I had to take some snaps from my phone!

Orita’s: returning for my favourites

There aren’t that many restaurants in Melbourne that I keep returning to.  Even when I love a place, it’s not often that I make a return visit because there are just so many other places to try.  Afterall, variety is the spice of life.

However, there are a few places that I return to more frequently than others – Orita’s is one of them.  M and I came across Orita’s by chance quite a few years ago – we were around the Hawthorn area and trying to find a nice-ish place for dinner at the last minute.  Flipping through the Entertainment Book, we noticed Orita’s – a Japanese fusion restaurant with a decently priced menu that was just a short drive away.  Since then, it’s become our go-to Japanese restaurant if we felt like something not-too-casual, but not-too-extravagant, with BYO.

Not much has changed at Orita’s over the years – the dining room has maintained the same, warm, minimalist decor, the service has remained efficient and polite and the menu is pretty much unchanged.  Some might call it uninspired, but the standard has certainly been maintained and I quite like being able to order all my favourites each time.

To start off the meal, there is a complimentary amuse bouche – a dollop of creamy, Japanese potato salad on a crisp prawn cracker.  Simple, yet delightful.

M and I never fail to order the Orita’s appetiser platter for 4 – for $66, you get an assortment of tasty morsels that look as good as they taste: slices of salmon and tuna sashimi, fish cakes on skewers, prawn springs roll, cooked salmon and tuna maki rolls, cured salmon with carrot sauce and wonderful, melt-in-your-mouth cubes of stewed beef.

Because we order the large appetiser platter, we end up sharing a main.  Our favourite?  The duck saikyoyaki – tender slices of duckling breast drizzled with miso sauce and accompanied by seasonal vegetables.  We also order the garlic fried rice, which goes beautifully with the duck and is more than enough food for the 2 of us.

Our wine on the night: the 2006 Pierro chardonnay.  An oh-so-lovely wine from the Margaret River and one of my favourite chardonnays.

We don’t usually order dessert at Orita’s – we’ve always found the selection unexciting, the portions not very large and the prices not cheap.  Although, to be fair, what they do offer is actually very nice for what it is.  So if $13 – $15 for 2 baby scoops of green tea ice cream or a smallish slice of chocolate mousse cake is what you’re after, then you won’t be disappointed.

Orita’s is the kind of place where I’ll keep returning for my favourites – I know exactly what I’ll order and I know my expectations will be met each time.  I suspect that it’s the type of restaurant where one’s experience might differ depending on the dishes one orders.  My recommendation?  Order the appetiser platter – even if you don’t love everything on it, I’m sure there’ll be something on there that would please your palate.

Salted caramel macarons

It’s been awhile since I made my last batch of macarons.  Generally, I’ve been pretty successful with my attempts at making these fussy little cookies, but this all changed a few months ago when I dared to attempt the Ispahan.  Feeling ambitious (and, looking back, a little deluded about my macaron making abilities), I gathered all the ingredients together and spent the next couple of hours beating, mixing and piping.  The result?  A dismal failure – my macaron cookies didn’t even have feet.  They were weird looking domes (some even dared to crack), a strange shade of faded red and tasted like airy, sugar meringues.  The rose flavour in the filling tasted artificial and the lychees made the whole mess so sickly sweet.  With my tail between my legs, I decided to take a break from macarons…

Then a few days ago, I had the urge again.  I was thinking, maybe green tea macarons?  They have been my most successful macarons to date and I was keen to relive that glory!  I was all set to make green tea macarons when I had a sudden change of heart – I wanted salted caramel.  Salty sweet, gooey caramel…

Following the recipe from Laduree’s ‘Sucre‘ book, I quickly whipped up a batch…  To my relief, they turned out great!  So much so that I felt the need to share pics of them with the world!

I’d overmixed the caramel filling just slightly, so you can see that some of the butter and the caramel had split.  However, that didn’t really affect the taste or texture and could’ve been easily rectified by melting the mixture down again… I just couldn’t be bothered cos they tasted yummo just the way they were!

Thank you, macaron gods!  : )

Zuma (Hong Kong): champagne-licious

I don’t usually like buffets.  Being a small eater, I don’t think I ever eat enough at these things to get my value.  And because these places (probably rightly) assume that their patrons will be people who, uh, have hearty appetites, I feel like they generally compromise on quality in order to provide quantity.  However, a buffet with free flowing champagne is a different story.  Now, I might not be able to eat much, but I am ready, able and willing to drink (responsibly!) my share.

When I was in Hong Kong recently, I did a bit of research on places that serve a buffet brunch on weekends for my rendezvous with Mr B.  I was tossing up between Hullett House in Tsimsy and Zuma at the Landmark.  Mr B, being an Island boy, picked Zuma.

I arrived at our table on the terrace and waited for Mr B.  The buffet at Zuma included unlimited Perrier-Jouet champagne, so I ordered a glass… and waited… and then ordered another glass while I waited some more.  Finally, Mr B arrived, apologising profusedly and explaining that he had overslept as he had been working till 4 am.  Sure, sure… now, less talking and more feasting!

On Sundays and public holidays, Zuma offers a Japanese buffet for HK$550 (plus 10% service charge) per person.  Also included in the price are free flowing champagne, a choice of main dish (some with a surcharge), a dessert platter and unlimited wine and sake!

The buffet was fantastic – several kinds of sashimi and sushi, beef tataki, oysters, salmon with salmon roe, seared tuna slices, soft shell crab rolls, yakitori and various little hot bites.  It was oh-so-fresh and oh-so-tasty.

I chose the tempura as my main, but had to leave half of it untouched as I was way too full by that point.  We finished off with the dessert plate, which we washed down with a carafe (or 3) of sake…

For some reason, Mr B decided that it was time to move on to another place for… an afternoon tea dessert buffet.  WTF?!  We’d just gorged ourselves senseless and he wanted more food?!  I followed him, but wisely declined to indulge further.  Not so wise was my decision to order a martini whilst I watched Mr B stuff his face with cake.  Champagne + sake + martini + foot massage ≠ good idea.

I was really impressed with Zuma.  The restaurant was airy and modern and the food was really good quality.  Combined with the free flowing Perrier-Jouet, it was also one of those rare buffets where I actually got my value!

Noir: fine dining without the fuss

Firstly, apologies for the lack of postings – despite not working full time (or more accurately, not working any time), I’ve actually found plenty of interesting things to do with my free time and blogging has been on the back burner!

My post on Noir is long overdue… M and I visited Noir a few months ago and I’ve been so slack that I didn’t even get around to downloading the photos I took until recently.  Anyway, let’s begin…

Back in the BYO-day...

I can’t remember exactly when I first heard about Noir.  I think I might’ve read a little article about it somewhere which said it was a new favourite amongst the Richmond locals.  Then I read a bigger article that raved about this place, which was followed by my friend, J, mentioning several times that he wanted to pay Noir a visit.  Even M was keen to try Noir, no doubt swayed partly by their (now redundant) BYO policy.

Although intrigued by their surprise tasting menu, we opted to order a la carte.  We started with a couple of Pacific oysters with Champagne granita.  The oysters were perfectly sweet and plump and went beautifully with the refreshing granita.  Great start!

This was followed by a couple of entrees that were simply superb.  It appears that their menu has changed slightly since, but our entrees were probably 2 of the more memorable dishes we’ve had all year.

Scallop, cauliflower, truffle.

Kingfish carpaccio, blood orange...

I ordered the scallops, which were juicy and its flavour well balanced with the mildness of the cauliflower puree and the delicate flavour of shaved truffle.  I must apologise, because I can’t remember exactly what M ordered (sigh, this is why I should do write ups sooner, rather than later!), except that it was a white fish (I think kingfish) carpaccio with blood orange and simply spectacular.  M couldn’t stop raving about this dish!

For my main, I decided to go a second entree-sized dish and went with the pork belly, whereas M went with the lamb.  In short, I thought my dish didn’t quite work.  The pork belly was dry and the pork, prawns and peas kind of sat on the plate as individual elements and just didn’t do it for me.  I must admit, I was slightly disappointed after having had my expectations lifted from the fabulous entrees.  M was happy with his main, which had the lamb cooked to a lovely pink, but wasn’t wowed by this dish like he was by his entree.

Pork belly, prawns, peas.

Lamb

But we didn’t finish our meal underwhelmed.  For dessert, we shared the salted toffee cheesecake and… oh, my!  Despite what its title would suggest, it was neither too rich nor too sweet and I can almost taste it again from just looking at the photo – the smooth banana ice cream, the delicate balance of salty sweetness, the crisp apple slices and the stewed winter fruits.  So, sooo good.

Salted toffee cheesecake.

We’d brought along the 2006 Dexter pinot noir to dinner, which had aged beautifully (but still had a few more years to go) and absolutely yummo.  I’ve said before that I love Mornington Peninsula pinot noir and that Stonier is one of my favourites.  Well, Tod Dexter, the man behind Dexter wines, spent a decade making wines at Stonier, so it’s not that surprising that I’m a bit of a fan of the Dexter pinot.  Oh, and Tod Dexter was also super nice both times when I met him!

Anyway, back to Noir…  Unfortnately, I think the restaurant is now fully licensed and no longer does BYO.  Fortunately, when we had a peek at their wine list, we found the wines on offer to be relatively interesting and reasonably priced.

Noir serves up fine dining in a non-stuffy environment and the experience is made all the more enjoyable by its friendly, efficient and knowledgeable service staff.  The food has more hits than misses and is definitely worth returning for…. even if it’s no longer BYO!