The Corn Exchange - Four Points Sheraton

It's been a few years since I've visited the Corn Exchange. I used to come here quite regularly with my family when they had the buy 1 get 1 free offers every few months. But they haven't had that offer for quite a few years. As a part of the Enliven Sydney Promotion, they're offering the buy 1 get 1 free offer again! Woohoo! I immediately dragged my friend with my for a bout of seafood feasting! I thought I should test the place out before bringing my family here again.

I'm always well prepared for visiting The Corn Exchange. Minimal breakfast and lunch. Don't drink anything fizzy or full of dairy. Order hot water when at the restaurant (So I'm not tempted to drink heaps of water). Get plenty of prawn chips/papadums and some hot soup to counteract the slimey cold seafood I intended to gorge on.

I decided to combine all the photos from both my visits into one big post. So don't worry, I didn't eat ALL of this in one sitting. But even if you average it out....... *Cough*

Cold seafood section

Smoked salmon

Cold prawns

Mussels, sushi, sashimi

Some lobster/prawn/bug type thing

Anti pasto/Salad section

More salads on another night

Let me firstly explain what type of person should go to the Corn Exchange. The buffet is catered for those who love their cold seafood and dessert. The hot food on offer is minimal and very disappointing for those who don't eat seafood. Whilst for those who like their seafood, this place is HEAVEN. And I mean HEAVEN. Huge amounts of oysters, sashimi, smoked salmon, prawns, crab, balmain bugs, mussels, octopus and sushi. And that's exactly what I intend to eat.

My DIY seafood platter

My 2 favourite things, oysters and sashimi

More oysters, sashimi and prawns

Oysters, crab, prawns and some sashimi hidden in the bottom

More oysters, sashimi, smoked salmon and mussels

Moving onto the hot food. Confit of duck, saffron pasta and more seafood

To be honest, the total amount of hot food I ate was limited to that piece of duck confit and about 1 tablespoonful of pasta. I also sampled 1 or 2 pieces of other hot food, basically they were all quite terrible. Gluggy, salty or flavourless. "Hot food" selection includes things like white rice, roast potatoes, pumpkin, green beans and occassionally some sort of roast meat/fish/stew. Basically, nothing appealed to me. I'll have 1/2 a bowl of soup to warm my stomach up and move onto the dessert.

Dessert

More desser offerings

Orange cream, creme brulee, fruit tart, portugese tart and strawberries and chocolate

I was really disappointed when I found out that they no longer did their gorgeous sticky date pudding with hot vanilla bean custard. It was my absolute favourite dessert at The Corn Exchange. I almost liked it more than the seafood. They've replaced it with a huge vat of melted chocolate which you ladel over strawberries and marshmallows.

I tried a bit of everything on my plate, but I quickly gave them all up for one thing. The creme brulee. OH. MY. LORD! Their creme brulee is AMAZING! Its extremely smooth and creamy. Totally decadent even though the burnt sugar had melted by this stage. Infact, I liked it so much, the first time I went, I ate 6 of these babies!

Second time I went back, I warned my sisters to get out of my way if I'm getting creme brulee. I WILL hurt them if they fight me for it. Luckily, the had the dessert section well stocked with creme brulee. So well stocked in fact, that between the 4 of us, we ate a total of 36 creme brulees. 36!! It was quite embarrassing whenever the waiter came to collect our dirty dishes and it was all creme bruless dishes.


The good thing about us eating all the creme brulee was that they had to keep bringing out more. We ate everything they put out so they had to make a fresh batch where the sugar was lovely and crunchy! What a perfect way to end our meal!

Extra crunchy top

The Corn Exchange

161 Sussex St
Sydney NSW 2000
Ph: (02) 9290 4851

Cafe Mix

I've always heard so much about Shangri-La's Cafe Mix and I couldn't wait to try it. However, I found the price tag of $58 was a bit much to swallow. ($58 is the cheapest price, Mon-Thur. $85 Sat. $68 Fri & Sun). However, when I spotted Cafe Mix on the list of We Love Sydney restaurants offering buy 1 get 1 free, I just had to book myself in. I personally don't like cold crab or lobster, so opted to go on a Thursday night where it's cheaper since they won't be offering any lobster. I mean, why pay extra for something you won't eat?

We arrive and we're quickly seated, after having to walk past the dessert bar which practically gave me a sugar high just breathing in! Once we were seated, we did a quick recon around the place to suss out what was on offer, so we could plan out what was the best way to attack the buffet. There was a Cold Bar, where the prawns and oysters were, along with antipasto and the DIY Salad. A western section, a Japanese section, an Asian section and an Indian section.

Japanese section

Cold seafood section

I didn't really look too closely at the hot food since my main victims were the prawns and oysters.

I had atleast 2 plates just like this

Moving onto the hot food...kinda

Once I had completely overdosed on the cold shellfish, I headed off to the hot section to find something to warm me up. I did about 3 laps, going from station to station, when something hit me. The variety.....sucked? Let me list out exactly what was on offer.

In the Western Section:

- Steamed Vegetables
- Potatoes
- Roast Lamb
- Fish

Roast lamb was just roast lamb. No sauce, no gravey. Just roasted lamb sliced. The fish bain marie only ever contained a maximum of 2 fishes, each one slightly bigger than my hand. If you're not there when they refill it, its gone. It didn't help that people will scoop up an entire fish and plonk it onto their plate. But even then, the fish wasn't that big, so you couldn't call the person a glutton. They just really like their fish.

In the Japanese Section:

- Miso soup
- Potato and Roasted Garlic Soup
- Sushi

The sushi section was very disappointing for me. Most of them were chunky rolls filled with heaps of rice. When the chef bothered making the nigiri sushi, they were quite good in making the rice quantity quite small, so you didn't fill up. Except he was making them one at a time, and placing them on the tray, one at a time. That unless you were standing right there, with the only pair of tongs in your hand ready to swipe up whatever was laid out, you get nothing. There was always plenty of rolls, but the amount of rice on them just screamed FILLER. And that was the extent of the Japanese section. Rolls, a few pieces of nigiri, soup and pickles.

The Asian Section:

- Sago pudding
- Some form of sweet glutinous rice with sultanas
- Stir fried green beans
- Tom yum soup
- Roast Pork
- Boiled rice
- Steamed buns
- Dim Sims

The Asian Section was probably one of the better hot food sections there. I'm only saying this because I love tom yum soup and dim sims. Whilst I really loaded up on the dim sims...they were of the frozen variety. The big dim sims had the exact same texture, and almost the exact same taste as the ones I get at the local fish and chips shop (Soft, lots of shredded cabbage and grated carrots). The only difference is that these are steamed, whilst I usually get mines deep fried and doused in chicken salt. I didn't mind the dim sims, but I'm usually paying $1 each, vs people who would pay $60 for this buffet? The prawn dumplings were incredibly floury, and the prawns almost had a mushy texture. Something you usually get when you steam poor quality frozen prawn dumplings. There were also a few mysterious dumplings that surfaced during the night, each one was mushy and you had to pull the whole thing apart to see what the fillings were.

Funnily enough, the buns and the dumplings were placed in the Indian section of the restaurant. Strange you would think? Not really....considering what they had on offer in the Indian section, they had to put a few decent things there to make it worthwhile.

The Indian Section:

- Naan bread
- Basmati Rice with a bit of saffron mixed in
- Tandoori chicken
- Lentil curry

Where is my beef vindaloo? Or butter chicken? Or Samosas? Is there nothing else in the Indian cuisine that they could've offered??

We had been strategic to lay off all the starch and carbs to make sure we had plenty of stomach space, but after doing a few laps, we realised that the variety of food on offer was so sub-par, that we just started eating the buns, rice and even the naan (Which was incredibly tough, as if someone had over microwaved it). I half heartedly loaded up on the dim sims before I gave up on the hot food and went for the dessert bar.

The dessert bar was probably the highlight of the night. Chocolate fountain, creme brulee, creme caramel, tiramisu, macroons, cheese platter, ice creams etc. Even I went back for 2nds and 3rds.

Dessert section

Choc dipped strawberries, macaroons, creme brulee, creme caramel

With the discount, dinner came to $29pp. If I had paid the full price, $58, I would've been really annoyed. And I mean REALLY ANNOYED. Maybe bordering on pissed. Even though I only ended up paying $29pp, I was still really disappointed. I have gone to many RSLs, where you paid less than $29 and get twice as much variety and pretty much the same quality. You still get the prawns and the oysters (Probably not as much oysters as you would get at Cafe mix as some of them limit you to 6 at a time. BUT, unlike Cafe Mix, you don't get a mouthful of grit and crushed oyster shells), but you also get a whole grilled salmon, mussels, salt and pepper prawns, swimmer crabs, heaps of deep fried seafood, stir fries, sushi, salads, a huge carvery bar with ham, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, pasta and other stuff. The desserts will not be able to compete with Cafe Mix, but I'm not a huge dessert person, so it doesn't make a huge difference to me.

I don't know, maybe if I went on a Fri-Sun, I would've enjoyed it alot more. But I couldn't really see what they could offer to make it worth the $85 you have to pay on a Saturday? Or maybe I am being picky?? Maybe there was just too much hype and I had expectations that was too high....but I was really disappointed. And so was my friend, so I guess we'll just have to go to one of my favourite buffets to make up for it. Stay tuned!

De Malaya - North Ryde

My brother in law loves Singaporean and Malaysian food, luckily, so does most of our family. So when his Singaporean friends recommended De Malaya, we just had to give it a go. A last minute decision meant I had to leave work early to get home in time, so we could try and beat the peak hour traffic to North Ryde.

45mins later, we finally pull up to De Malaya. Luckily my brother in law knew roughly where it was, because I would've driven right on pass. De Malaya is situated almost in the middle of nowhere, with houses on either side and not another restaurant in sight. There's a small car park next to the restaurant making it easier for us to usher the kids in and out.


We were the second table of people there and practically had the restaurant to ourselves (considering we outnumbered the other table 2 to 1!). This is a truely a no nonsense buffet style restaurant.

Plate #1

Chicken curry, otak otak, ham and chicken roll, paper baked chicken, chicken satay, fried chicken wings and hainese chicken rice.

As you can tell, I love my chicken. A lot of the food was really nice and authentic even though the quality suffered a bit being in a bain marie. Since we were the early group there, some of the food had started to get cold. But as the night went on and more food came out, everything was piping hot and so fresh. My absolute favourite would be the fried chicken wings and the fried baby fish (in photo below - bottom left corner).

More fried stuff

Salt and pepper prawns, char kuey teow, satay chicken, cold mussels, fried chicken wing, spring roll, fried tofu, ham and chicken roll and fried baby fish.

Laksa

There were heaps of other non-fried dishes available, like DIY Laksa, Bakuteh, heaps of salads and other cold entrees. I didn't bother taking photos of everything, I was too busy eating!

Anyway, I was so stuffed by the end of the meal, that I barely had room for dessert:

Dessert

Fruit, pickle, fried banana and agar agar

De Malaya
122-124 Wicks Rd
North Ryde NSW 2113
Phone: (02) 9878 3833

Day 11 - Vivo City and the meat coma

Today, my brother in law offered to take me to Vivo city, which is across the bridge from Sentosa Island. It's a new shopping centre that is trying to compete with the highly popular and touristy Orchard Rd and Suntec City.

Well, by the looks of it, they weren't doing too well.....



We split up and went abouts our own shopping. We met up 2 hours later, ravenous for some food. There was a new Brazilian Restaurant opened there called Carnivore. We get a table and hit the buffet salad bar. You gotta get some vegetables into you before all the meat comes out:

My veggie plate - with Feijoada (Black bean, pork rib and sausage stew)

The meat hits the plate - Round 1 of many

We sat and gorged for an hour until my stomach was going to burst. We decided to spend another 2 hours shopping since we've covered less than 1/2 of the shopping centre. When we go meet up, I'm still stuffed like a Turkey.

We go and pick up my nephew again, and this time, he's ecstatic to see me. He literally throws himself into my arms and then runs off to grab his bag! Hehe.

We get home and my sister is cooking dinner. I honestly can't put anything in my mouth right now. Instead, I take a nice long long walk to Junction8 where I spend a few hours just walking around and around and around.

On my way back, I grabbed a heap of snacks and drinks for the family as I promised I'll bring something back. I also stopped by the local hawker centre and got a small bowl of yong tau fu noodle soup for dinner. Something nice and light and also low on meat.

Yong Tau Fu rice noodle soup

Day 5 - Science centre and the buffet

It is absolutely bucketing down rain again. As I deliberately coincided my holiday with the kids school holidays, we decided to go to the Science Centre. Completely indoors! My sister has a membership there that gives them unlimited entry. She also had a membership for the zoo, but unless I'm a maid, I can't use their free membership. So today, at the Science Centre, I'm the maid.

I wasn't too fussed with all the exhibitions, the kids were way more excited than I was.

If only I really COULD turn it on....

We also went to their omni theatre, which is a massive dome like theatre. Kind of like IMAX. But much bigger.


After 2 hours at the Science Centre, we decided to have lunch at the buffet outside the Omni Theatre. Japanese buffet! There is even a kitchen section, where you can order food made to order and delivered to your table!

Clockwise: Whiting, abalone, squid, king fish, tuna, salmon, octopus, ginger
Centre: Tamago (Egg)

Paper hotpot - Black chicken soup

Prawn and black chicken herbal soup

Grilled chicken chop

Baked oyster with ketchup and cheese........
Tempura prawns

Satay chicken sticks

Black pepper pork chops

Stuffed bean curds, siw mai, glutinous rice, corn, chickpeas

Me gorging on siw mai, steamed dumplings and tempura prawns

Laksa

Cold Cha soba

Taro and sweet corn ice cream

Eclair

After stuffing ourselves to the brim, it was time to head home and pack for Vietnam tomorrow. My sister was busy packing the kids school bags, sleepover bags, swimming bags, bowling bags, golfing bags, movie bags etc etc. I was busy packing my stuff for the trip.

I convinced my sister to share one suitcase and one hand luggage thinking it'll help us pack light. My sister had filled the suitcase before I even had a chance to put my stuff in! She even packed a chopping board for crying out loud!

It was a wet and dreary weather.

The clearest day I've had

Instead of going out for dinner like we originally planned, we sent my brother in law to go bring us back some dinner:

Hainese chicken rice with bbq pork

Fried hainese chicken rice with bbq pork

Hokkien Char Mee - Malay style

After dinner, we had to rush the kids over to my sister's friend's place where they're going to sleep over for the night. We then ran around trying to find a money exchange to make sure we had money to spend when we got to Vietnam! We also picked up a few buns for breakfast before crashing into bed after midnight.