Cafe Strada - Summer Hill

From the outside, the place looks cold stark sandwich shop. The menu is simple and the inside is actually an internet cafe. Definitely not your run of the mill cafe, but they do serve some of the best food in the Summer Hill area!

Burger with the lot

First up, their burgers. Previously I talked about how I value a good greasy corner shop burger with the lot, and Strada falls straight into this category. Its not a gourmet burger made with sour dough bread and wagyu beef with goats cheese or anything fancy, but it is a good burger. Beef, lettuce, tomato, beetroot, pineapple, onions, bacon and a perfectly fried and still runny egg. Can't ask for much more than that.

Ontop of their burgers, Strada has some of the best chips I've ever had. The trick is to always order them "extra crispy". You can hear the clink clink clink of the chips as they get tossed in a big bowl for good salt coverage. You know those chips are going to crispy.

Big Breakfast

Mixed Grill

If you can wake up early enough, Strada also does a decent big breakfast. Its nothing to write home about, but its big, filling and good value. For an extra $1, you get a piece of steak as a part of their Mixed grill. Great value in my books.

Boscaiola

For such an unassuming shop front, you wouldn't expect Strada to do one of the best Spaghetti Cabonara's I've ever tasted! Unlike a lot of other Italian restaurants who douse their cabonaras with copious amounts of cream, Strada does it the traditional Italian way with eggs and cheese only. No cream. And the result is heavenly. The strands of pasta are lightly coated with a creamy eggy sauce so it won't leave you feeling bloated and gluggy after eating. Unfortunately I've only had it take away and don't have any photos :(

Their Boscaiola however, I've had eat-in and it was just as good. Whilst the boscaiola contains cream, its not swimming in a pool of cream. Another thumbs up from me.

Cafe Strada
12 Lackey Street
Summer Hill NSW 2130
Ph: (02) 9798 5691


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Giorgio's Cafe Bar - Belmore

"Dinner in a Mechanics Garage? What the hell did you agree to?!" I yelled at a friend. But the plans were made and we couldn't back out now. Driving along Kingsgrove Road, we eventually find the closed Mechanics shop and park in one of the side streets. The whole time we walked from the car to the Mechanics, we kept arguing about why we're going to a Mechanics for dinner, and why would it serve awesome Greek food?!



Turns out, we're NOT eating in the Mechanics Garage. The garage was apparently cut in half and converted into a Cafe/Restaurant. My friend having driven by many times, assumed it was just a coffee shack you sit in whilst your car gets serviced. Thankfully, with the encouragement of our Greek friends, we find ourselves seated at Giorgios Cafe. The decoration is a bit of a mish mash of assorted things, but was cosy and comfortable, even though it was freezing outside.



Since our friends frequent Giorgio's, we left all the ordering up to them. Apparently it was a very simple choice. Mixed platter for 4 (Minimum 2 people).

The wine is poured, conversation is flowing, laughter erupts around the table before dead silence when the food is delivered.


Errrrrr.....This must be the whole meal right? We're having a dinner of just salad and dips and bread right? I'm not complaining, because the soft warm pita bread went fantastic with the hummus, taramasalata and babaganoush. The Greek salad had a lovely soft and creamy fetta, not the hard blocks of chalk you usually get. But....look at the size of it? And look at the size of it compared to the second course:



The silence was punctuated by the gasps and squeals that was apparently coming from....me. This thing was HUGE. Its Gianormous! Its... its like being presented with a whole cow. Except the cow is wrapped with haloumi and calamari and more cow and then the whole cow is put on a bed of chips!

Once the initial shock passes, and we've finished taking photos to document this monster, we dig in. The mixed platter contains perfectly squeeky haloumi, rissoles, souvalaki sticks, sausages, fish cocktails, fried squid and potatoes. Heaps of potatoes in 2 forms. Crunchy shoe string fries and the most amazing hand cut wedges. Crunchy, yet incredibly soft and fluffy in the centre.

Now anyone who knows me, knows my weakness for chips. Especially hot chips. I don't care if they're crunchy, soft, limp, fluffy or hollow. Heck, I even love stale chips! And now I'm presented with a platter that contains roughly 2kgs of pure potato starchy heaven topped with a greek meat feast that's supposed to feed 4 people...and 2 of them are small eaters....what do I do? I almost fall face down into the platter and gorge myself til I was sick. Did I mention we though dinner was going to be crap (because it was in a "Mechanics Garage"), so we stopped by red roosters earlier to gorge on some chips first? Gosh I'm so classy.

As much as we tried, we didn't get half way through the food. I regrettably had to leave half of the chips behind even though I was about to explode from the potato expansion that was happening in my stomach. Not being able to move (Which is always a good sign of a Greek feast), our friends decide to teach me to play backgammon. It was an intense 1hr battle, and in the end, we won. I don't know how we won, but we won. And I still don't know what backgammon is about. I do know, however, that Giorgios has an iced coffee on the menu, where they write their name in chocolate syrup! But when I questioned the waiter if they 100% write the name on the coffee, he said no. So with a little pleading, he took our special requests to get the name written on the coffee:


The whole feast cost us less than $30 each and we practically had to waddle out of there. Looking at the other diners, they will have to do the same even though they didn't get the platter!

Giorgio's Cafe Bar
104 Kingsgrove Rd
Belmore NSW 2192
Ph:(02) 9718 8555 () ‎
http://www.giorgioscafebar.com.au



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Martin Place Bar

A quick catch up lunch with my friend led us to Martin Place bar. Since we were more concerned with chatting than eating, we ordered the standard fare off the menu.

Chicken Schnitzel, chips and salad

Tempura flathead, chips and salad

I was surprised how huge the servings are! I love my chips and almost never leave chips behind. But even this was too much for me and about half was left uneaten. The flathead was tasty, but the batter was a bit soft and tasted of oil. My friend really enjoyed the schnitzel, but again, left a heap of the chips behind!

Martin Place Bar
51 Martin Place (corner of Elizabeth street)
Sydney
Ph: (02) 9231 5575
http://www.martinplacebar.com.au


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Pondok Selera Indonesian Food - Eating World Chinatown

You would probably associate a girl's night out involving getting dolled up, consuming lots of girly cocktails and plenty of gossiping. Well, the gossiping bit is right. But instead of getting all dolled up and sipping on cosmos, we all met up at Eating World in Chinatown so we can indulge in a huge steaming bowl of....oxtail soup. Strange I know, but since I've gotten the girls hooked on it, we need to indulge in a bout of oxtaily goodness every now and then.

My friend who is lucky enough to get oxtail soup made by her mum, opted for a plate of Satay sticks with Ketupat (compressed rice cakes).


Looks good, but we're here for one thing and one thing only:

Oxtail soup

Its really quite an interesting sight, to see a bunch of girls huddled around a table, gripping slippery hunks of bovine tail between their hands and tearing into them like a ravenous dog. All form of table manners go out the door when you're wrestling precious chunks of meat from a knobbly bit of bone, but boy is it worth it. Not only do you get the melt in your mouth beefy goodness, you also get the most aromatic and tasty soup to go with it. All you need is a good squeeze of lemon and maybe a bit of chilli if you should so please, and you're good to go! Slupr away baby! The dish usually comes with either rice or noodles, but we always opt for neither. This is because we generally have these oxtail sessions on a Friday night, which means.....night markets!

Hahaha that's right, we never fill up during our oxtail sessions so we can hit the night markets for some street food! The most popular will have to be the takoyaki, because nothing warms you up like a molten hot ball of takoyaki!


For the more carnivorous of us, its skewers, and lots of them. Maybe some chicken wings or salt and pepper squid. If we're still feeling cold, some fake shark fin soup to warm us up. And depending on how caught up we get with shopping, we might stop by Emperors Garden and pick up a few dozen custard puffs as well. Definitely a great girl's night out and beats trudging in high heels all night to down cosmos!

Pondok Selera Indonesian Food
Eating World Food Court
25-29 Dixon Street
Chinatown, Sydney


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Ichiban Boshi - Bondi Junction

A girls day out shopping trip led us to Bondi. We knew we would need some serious energy if we were going to shop for the next few hours. We headed down to Ichiban Boshi for a quick meal so we could spend more time shopping.

Tsukemen Egg Ramen

I was actually expecting the dipping sauce to be cold, like with Zaru soba. But this is actually a hot dipping sauce with heaps of corn, bamboo shoots, shallots and soya sauce. I actually found the sauce very salty and overpowering after a few bites. I ended up picking the topping out of the bowl and putting it on the noodles instead.

Dan Dan Ramen

My friend opted for the Dan Dan ramen and gave it her usual thumbs up.

Green tea frappe and peached ice tea

Ichiban Boshi
Shop 1, 171-173 Oxford St
Bondi Junction NSW
Ph: (02)9369 3980
http://www.ichibanboshi.com.au/


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Umi Kaiten Zushi

I loved watching Wicked to much, that when another group of friends organised to go, I immediately put my hands up for a ticket. Last time we went to watch Wicked, I ended up Musashi. Wanting something slightly different, we opted to try Umi the sushi train.

Japanse Marble soda

I'm not sure what the actual name of this is, I just always refer to it as the Marble Soda, as they use a marble as a stopper! Ahhh the novelty value.

Cool pen dudes!

Pricing

Bonito

I've never had fresh bonito, only the dried stuff you find ontop of takoyaki, so it was interesting to try this. Its actually a very fresh and delicate soft fish, totally unlike the dried shavings I'm used to!

Grill salmon

Another grilled salmon

Sharkfin and jellyfish salad

Salmon sushi sandwiched between fried lotus roots

Beef tataki

Scallop

Tamago

Grilled mackeral

Grilled salmon and prawn

This was my favourite of the night. The salmon was lightly torched and wrapped around more salmon and cream, topped with a grilled prawn. A must have! We wanted another serve, but they were all quickly whipped off the train.

Raw prawn

Grilled scallops

Salmon wrapped around creamy seafood salad

Raw scallop

Special of the day

Prawn mince sandwiched between lotus roots, battered and deep fried

Ahhh I was content with a belly full of good sushi and ready to go all Wicked!

Umi Kaiten Zushi
Shop 1, Lower Ground Floor
477 Pitt St, Haymarket
Ph: (02) 9281 2006
http://www.umikaitenzushi.com.au


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Pier 26 Seafood Cafe - Summer Hill

Wow......this visit to Pier 26 is ages ago! We actually went to Pier 26 a few days before valentines day, which explains all the balloons and decorations. I really should sort my photos better...


Anyway, to the food! Pier 26 is on the main strip at Summer Hill and is usually packed on a weekend (On the weekends, they sometimes have a drag queen performance). Pier 26 is famous for being a seafood restaurant with huge platters of seafood. Having an entertainment voucher, we decided to give it a visit.

Complimentry bread rolls

Unless you're shelling out big bucks, you generally don't get free bread in any restaurant anymore. Surprisingly, Pier 26 greeted us with bread when we sat down. It may not be an organic sourdough or some other gourmet bread, but it was a nice touch. And it came with proper butter!

Calamari

We started off with Calamari, which came in a fairly decent serve. The calamari came in a floury crumbed batter, almost like semolina flour type texture. They were big and tender, and went well with the tartare sauce.


I love how they're not stingey with the sauces.

Barramundi and chips

For the main, we both opted for Barramundi and chips. We chose the fish after talking to the owner, and what came out was very different to what was described. We were expecting a big juicy pan grilled fillet of Barramundi, but it turned out to be a small, thin overcooked piece of fish. I really wished we had choosen to have the fish battered and fried instead of grilled. The up side was that their chips are awesomely thick and fluffy. I wish they would give less chips and a bigger piece of fish. There was twice as much chips as there were fish.

I've got the new Entertainment book, so looks like I'll probably give them another go.

Pier 26 Seafood Cafe
26 Lackey St
Summer Hill
Ph: (02) 9798 8886


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Sultan's Table

From the outside, it looks like a run of the mill Kebab shop. Walking in, you will find a large courtyard filled with tables for those who want to dine outdoors, away from the heat of the rotating kebab spit. We grabbed a lovely table by the corner and proceeded to order up a feast.

Mixed dips

From memory, the plate came with hummus, babaganoush, beetroot, cacik, carrot, spinach, chilli and something else.

Fresh turkish bread

My plate/palatte

Mixed grill

Smokey tender meat grilled over hot coals. What else do I need to say?

Chicken pide

Close up!

Juicy, meaty and packed full of flavour. A simple squeeze of lemon and I was in heaven!

Mushroom pide

Thumbs up from our resident vegetarian. The pide was so huge he could only get through half of it. Meaning more for us meat eaters!

Felafel

A bit dry on its own, but load it up with the dip that it came it, and it was perfect wrapped in pita bread.

We had actually ordered a Guvec as well, which is a Turkish stew. But the dish never came and we were already full by that stage so cancelled the order. We were more than satisfied with the fresh, vibrant and tasty food on offer and will definitely be back for more! I want that Guvec damnit!

Sultan's Table
179 Enmore Rd
Enmore
Ph: (02) 9557 0229‎


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