Sydney Madang and Mizuya Japanese Restaurant and Karaoke for Dessert!?

I had stupidly bought tickets to The Lovely Bones on the day of the Australian Open Mens Finals! ARGHHH!!! Luckily, the movie was supposed to end around 7:30pm, so our plan was to run to the nearest restaurant that has a TV and is also showing the Australian Open!

We met up at 4pm and was walking towards the cinemas when I suddenly spotted a sign. I was so excited I couldn't even speak, just point and went "UH!! UH!!!!!". What got me so excited? Outside Mizuya (The newly open Japanese Restaurant/Karaoke bar where Maloneys and Bar Ace used to be) had a sign outside saying "Green tea soft serve for 50c". UH!!! UH!!!!! Meanwhile, my friend wasn't paying any attention to my grunting because she was too busy checking out people walking around with a green tea soft serve in their hands!

We both detoured into Mizuyas for a bout of dessert before the movies:

Green tea soft serve

I hate "green tea" flavoured things that are more green colouring than green tea flavoured. This however, was a punch in the face GREEN TEA. The intense taste of green tea, almost slightly bitter in taste was heart stoppingly good. Even better that you can pick up a green tea anything for 50c! We were so happy with this I took a photo and MMS my friend who was supposed to join us for the movies but piked. HA!

After the movies, we dashed out of the cinemas, met up with a friend and went straight to Sydney Madang. There was a huge crowd outside, and we almost turn tailed and left. Luckily we grabbed a number because we had waited less than 10mins before we got a table, right infront of the TV.....that was showing the Australian Open! Oh yeah!! Tennis and good food at the same time!

Banchan

Madang has some of the best Banchan that I've tasted in Sydney. Today's offerings were fish cakes, wongabok kimchee, choy sum kimchee, potatoes and a lovely salad with a grated apple and onion dressing. I think we has 3-4 rounds of banchan.

Seafood Pancake

Most of the time I get the kimchee pancakes, this time my friends insisted on the seafood one. And boy am I glad we ordered this. The seafood version is quite different to the kimchee version. Not only in taste, but in texture as well. Whilst the kimchee version is slightly crispy on the outside, it was soft and chewy on the inside. The seafood version however, had a wonderfully crunchy outside, almost tempura batter like. It has a much higher crunch to chewy ratio. I think its the few Korean restaurants that cook it this way. I am definitely ordering this over the Kimchee version from now on!!

Spicy Octopus, beef and tofu stew

When we order individual pots of soup, most of us stick with a seafood soup. When we order a hotpot size stew, we NEVER get a seafood stew. This is because it usually contains prawns, crabs and chunks of fish. All require you to pay attention to bones, shells and the use of hands. Most of the time we're all too lazy to wrestle the meat from the crab when there's so much other food to eat we actually leave a majority of the food untouched.

Madang has a wonderful octopus and beef stew, giving us the sweetness of seafood, without the trouble of having to eat with our hands. This pot was filled with bulgogi beef, octopus, rice cakes, udon noodles, tofu and heaps of veggies. Between the 3 of us, we barely finished this pot. I was actually sickly full after eating this as I was too busy concentrating on the game rather than listening to my stomach, that was screaming NO MORE!!

We waddle out of Madang and decided to swing past Mizuya again to introduce our friend to the green tea soft serve. We walk up to the bar and order 3 softserves and this is what happened:

Us: 3 green tea soft serves please
Him: Sorry, that offer is only available before 6:30pm.
Us: NOOoOoOoOoOoooooooOOooOoOoooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Him: *panicked look* errrrr......er......I can sell it to you, just not at the promotional price. I'll have to charge you full price
Us: *collective sigh of relief*

The full price for the soft serve is $2. A huge jump from the 50c we paid a few hours earlier. But we were all craving for a fix and coughed up the money. Honestly, I would've happily paid $2 every time if I didn't know there was a 50c special offer! Oh, the soft serve is also around for a limited time only! So go grab yourself a serve before they discontinue it! I'm hoping if its popular enough, it'll be a year long thing!

Mizuya Japanese Restaurant & Karaoke Bar
Basement, 614 George St
Sydney
(Ph) 02 9266 0866
http://www.mizuya.com.au/


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Sydney Madang
371A Pitt St
Sydney NSW 2000
(Ph) 02 9264 7010


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The start of the eating spree

After getting rudely woken up at 9am with a hangover, I managed to pack my bags for a night out with the girls and headed into the city. After dumping everything at the hotel, we caught a cab to my favourite Jap restaurant Don Dons. (I'm not giving the address as its crowded enough and I don't want the prices to go up!!) All of my friends who have been to Don Don's absolutely love their udon noodle soup. Whenever you order a meal, they generally give you a piece of sushi, or a small bowl of udon noodle soup. We always swap the sushi for their udon. ALWAYS.

Entree udon noodle soup - the best you will ever have. I guarantee it.

After their udon noodle soup, their seaweed udon salad will have to come a close second. This is a must have in Summer, and a must have most of winter as well.

Seaweed udon salad

After completely stuffing ourselves, MnMs had to meet up with some friends to go to the Human Body exhibition. As I knew I'd be nursing a hangover, I decided to skip that and go to the Paddington Markets with Cookies instead. After a lot of impulse buys, we decided it was time for some cookie ice cream sandwiches!

Mochaccino - Chocolate cookies with espresso ice cream

Chocolate cookies with strawberry ice cream

God these were so good! And such a great way to celebrate our impulse buys! We really wanted their strawberry shortcake version, but they were all sold out. Oh wells, we both had bags of chocolate coated coffee beans (Creme brulee and mint flavours) and that should tide us over til dinner time.

We caught a bus back to the city, and stopped by World Square to pick up some snacks and ice cream for the night. After we got back to the hotel, we freshed up and decided to take a nap whilst waiting for MnMs to show up again. It was this time, when the both of us were in bed together, that house keeping decided to burst in. God this looked really REALLY bad. I swear there were no wandering hands under the covers!!!

When MnMs finally showed up, we did some DVD shopping before going to our favourite Spanish Restaurant, Encasa. Ever since we took MnMs here, this has become a "must visit" place. We decided to forgo the paella, and focus on the tapas. I think we got a bit greedy...

Octopus marinated in Lime

Spinach and pine nut omelette

King prawns in a saffron tomato sauce

Bread rolls to mop up the sauce

Fried potatoes with spicy salsa and garlic mayo

Chorizo fried in a herb butter

Garlic mushrooms

We were soooooooo full by the end of the meal! I wanted a lot more bread rolls to mop up all the delicious sauce, but I felt like my stomach was going to split open! But the food was so good!! I think the jug of sangria really pushed us over the edge though.

Because we were so full, and MnMs was so trashed, we decided to take a walk around the city and ended up at Darling Harbour. It was inside the shopping centre that we spent an entire hour in the shoe store because some people can't decide what shoes to buy! We actually got locked into the store because someone also insisted on fixing the shoes and rearranging their shelves!!!

After walking off all the food, we headed back to the hotel room and thats when the snacks and shot glasses came out:

Cowboy shots!

Lets just say we had a very interesting night. Lots of gossiping, LOTS of laughing, and there was an incident that involved ice cream and a window. We finally crashed into bed after 1am.

Zna's farewell

Our Melbournian Zna Warrior Prince finally decided to leave Sydney for good and move back to Melbourne. After 2 years of whinging about how much he hates Sydney, he's finally gone. Of course, the only way to farewell Zna is with food. And since Sumalee was not open yet, we headed over to Thai Pothong. The last time we came to Thai Pothong was on my 25th Birthday where all had a near death experience. No wonder we haven't been back for so long!!

One of our favourites at Thai Pothong is their Steamed Mixed Seafood (Hor Mok Talay), which is a delicious combination of seafood in a curry sauce flambé.

Of course, I'm always immensely amused by the flames!

Burn baby burrrrrrrn!!

Green Curry Chicken (Gang Keaw Warn)

Yellow Curry Chicken (Gang Garri)

Roast Duck Salad (Pla Ped Yang)

BBQ Pork (Moo Yang)

Papaya Salad (Som Tum)

Chicken with Cashew Nuts (Gai Pad Mamoung Himmaparn)

The food was wonderful. I absolutely love the Roast Duck Salad at Thai Pothong. Probably one of the best ones in Sydney. The Chicken Cashew Nut was also gorgeous! The BBQ Pork is a bit of a disappointment when compared to the ones at Chedi. The service at Thai Pothong was also excellent, except when it comes to serving the rice. Don't get me wrong, having someone scoop rice onto your plate is great service, except when you want refills. Every time you reach for the pot of rice, a waiter will come sprinting over to grab it off you and serve you. You either get too much, or you don't get enough and you're embarrassed to ask for more. We got to the point where we had to scope out where the waiters are, and once the coast was clear, we'd grab the rice pot and try to fill our own dishes. We almost got away with it once, until the waiter spotted us at the last minute and wrestled the pot out of our hands!

The funniest would've been when the waiter was refilling Zna's dish. Zna kept asking for scoop after scoop until the waiter went all bug-eyed as to the amount on his plate. Zna cleared the whole pot of rice! hehehe

Of course, no farewell for Zna will be complete without stuffing ourselves until we were sick. So after eating half the restaurant, we all waddled over to the French Riviera.

Chocolate Crepes

Rainbow

I can't believe how much we ate. No, seriously, I cannot believe how much we ate! Even with the help of Zna, who eats enough for 4 adults, I still cannot believe how much we ate!! Good thing he's moved back to Melbourne, we can't eat like this on a regular basis!!!

Pizza, pasta and ice cream

As thanks to my cousin for the lovely gold bangle she gave my niece for Christmas, we had decided to take her out to dinner as well as have a family outing. My sister left the lovely job of picking a place to us. My nephews are picky picky eaters, my parents are sometimes against certain cuisines. In the end, we just decided to find some place at Liechhardt. Park and then look for a place:

I've been to Gioia once before for coffee. It was after my last birthday party where it was just too early to call it a night. Ok, it wasn't too early, but we were going through that stage where anything before midnight meant we were getting old, so we would force ourselves to go have coffee and stay out past midnight. Talk about a quarter life crisis.....

Anywhooooo, as a group of 12 people without booking, they were great in accommodating us. Within minutes we're seated and given menus. We decided to grab some entrees, pizza and pasta to share amongst everyone:

Garlic Pizza

This was a bit too hard and chewy for my liking. Since we had wanted to share that between 12 people, it took ALOT of effort to try and cut them into smaller slices since it was so hard.

Salmon and avocado salad

This was quite nice and refreshing. The salmon was nice and creamy and not too salty and went perfectly with the avocado.


My nephew wanted to order the kids pasta all for himself. $5 for a bowl of penne bolognese isn't too bad.

BBQ Grilled Octopus

Some of the tentacles were very burnt, but was overall quite tender. Definitely needed a good squeeze of lemon juice for the extra flavour.

Pesto Penne

I don't like pesto. I've tried it numerous times and I don't like pesto. But this pesto was absolutely delicious! Has it always tasted this good and I just didn't like it before? Has my taste buds changed? Either way, I couldn't get enough of this! Even my mum, the one against all things creamy, loved the sauce. They must be doing something right!

Spaghetti Marinara

There was a lot of seafood in this dish. The seafood was very nice and tender, not too overcooked. Nothing fancy in the sauce, but simplicity sometimes tastes best.

Penne Siciliana

A very simple sauce of tomatoes and eggplant mixed with the pasta and then grilled with a layer of mozzarella on top. Too bad I didn't get much of this pasta, otherwise I would love to recreate it at home. Another excuse to go there and eat again! hehehe

Norton St Special

MmmMmm this was good! Lots of mushroom, olives and thinly sliced ham.

Hot and spicy

This wasn't as spicy as I would've liked it. But then I would've liked it REALLY REALLY spicy. The kids enjoyed it even though they wanted more meat on it.

Leichhardt special

This was my sister's favourite. She's been brainwashed by the large unnamed pizza corporations where a super supreme means everything you can find in a fridge thrown onto a pizza. This was topping overload for me, but hey, she liked it meaning more Norton St special for me!

After eating all of that, we were being greedy and decided to order ANOTHER serve of the pesto penne and a spaghetti bolognese since my oldest nephew likes to stick to the traditional dishes. (Meaning he doesn't like trying new things!)

You'd think we'd stop after that, but considering the disappointment last time at BBQ City, we decided to take the kids to the French Riviera anyway. Strange how everyone was moaning about how full they were, but still ordered massive amounts of ice cold goodness!

Rum & Raisin, hazelnut and chocolate

Coconut and walnut

Espresso

Chocolate and rum and raisin

Kiwi fruit and coconut

After the kids finished their ice cream, me and my brother scooped all the cream from our bowl and dumped it into their empty bowl. Then the kids decided to mash up the whipped cream, add water, add sugar, add the remains of our espresso cup and mixed it all around. Then there was a big round of us daring them to drink it, them daring us, us offering money and so forth. Somewhere along the line, my youngest nephew stuck his head into the circle and drank straight from the bowl! EWWWWWWWWWWW!!! Someone forgot to tell him it wasn't melted ice cream inside!!

Just another typical outing for our family! hehehe