Bills - Surry Hills

For his birthday, my friend decided to round everyone up for a nice chillaxy brunch at Bills. Whilst Bills is super famous for it's breakfasts, this was one place I have not been yet - maybe I didn't want to try and find out that it was anything but awesomeness.

Although there is a 'no-bookings' policy, we only had to wait around 15-20 mins for a table of 9. Being seated, we were met with a small yet adequate brunch menu and slightly over-busy staff. Waiting time for the food to come out, however, was a different story - we waited and waited and waited, and looked around at the other patrons in the restaurant who likewise waited and waited and waited...

My partner opted for a cappuccino whereas I ordered my usual skim mocha. The coffee was decently good. They give you real chocolate buds for the chocolate bit of the mocha (as well as in the hot chocolates), which I thought was a nice touch.

Cappuccino

Mocha

In terms of food, a few of us ordered breakfast-type food, some ordered lunch foods.

The wagyu beef burger ($21.50) was a tempting option. It came served with a small bowl of fries. The salad bit of the burger (ie. the beetroot, lettuce, tomato, tomato relish, and zucchini pickles) was served on the side of the large patty of meat. Unfortunately, this was not up to my friend's standards. She described the burger as meaty, but lacking in kick. No real outstanding flavours - relatively bland tasting. Her fries were also luke-warm when she got them.

wagyu beef burger - $21.50

Another of my friends decided on the free range chicken schnitzel ($22.50). Lightly golden brown parmesan crumbed coated chicken served with a kohlrabi slaw and "green goddess" dressing, it didn't look super impressive. My friend did not mutter any good words about it nor did he seem to dislike it in any way. I can only infer that it was OK.

free range chicken schnitzel - $22.50

One of the best smelling dishes of the day was the prawn and chili linguine ($24). The aroma wafted from this dish - albeit a kind of small dish - and it seemed fresh and light and aromatic. It came served with rocket and lemon juice was drizzled for taste. Perhaps because of the size of the dish, or because he had waited so long for the food, his plate was cleaned up in no time.

prawn and chili linguine with rocket and lemon - $24

The birthday boy wanted ricotta pancakes but also the scrambled eggs with toast... and hence, to solve the problem, he made others order ricotta pancakes so he could steal off them. The ricotta pancakes ($17.50) came served in stacks of three. The pancakes were super light and fluffy and was served with honeycomb butter and banana. I'm not a pancake fan... my friends seemed to appreciate it just fine... but by the end of the three pancakes, my friends were still hungry.

ricotta hotcakes - $17.50

My hubby ordered the calamari ($19.50). Super lightly crusted in semonlina and served with a lemon, parsley, green beans and fennel salad, my hubby said that the whole dish was a bit too light - encroaching the bland side. Salt and pepper had to be heaped on for taste. I guess this is as healthy as deep-fried calamari can get~

semolina-crusted calamari - $19.50

The birthday boy and I ordered the same thing - scrambled eggs with sourdough toast ($13.50). And ofcourse, we didn't stop at simply the super light fluffy creamy scrambled eggs with yummy toasted crunchy bread, we added stuff to it. My friend added avocado salsa ($4.50), cured ocean trout ($5.70) and ricotta cheese ($4.50) whereas I opted for the avocado salsa and button mushrooms with garlic confit ($4.50). The scrambled was excellente - as was the avocado salsa. The mushies were just so so. All up, the whole thing felt fresh and healthy.

scrambled eggs with sourdough toast - $13.50

All up, Bills seems to offer a light healthy feeling to brunch - at times, at the expense of taste and spice. It was an alright meal but I think for the same price, the same items can be purchased at better tastiness elsewhere.

Ratings:

Food - 7/10

Service - 6.5/10

Ambiance - 7/10

Value for money - 7/10

Overall - 27.5/40

Bills (Surry Hills)

359 Crown Street

Surry Hills

NSW 2010

Tel: (02) 9360 4762

La Disfida - Haberfield

Super awesome piping hot wood fired pizzas on a cold winters day?

I'm all for it!

La Disfida is a cozy little Italian pizza joint in Haberfield, didn't allow us to make reservations so hence, we got there at 6pm to guarantee ourselves a seat. A good selection of entree, pizza menu and blackboard selection, we had a hard time trying to refrain from ordering everything on the menu.

After a long deliberation, we decided on 3 entree dishes: the calamari e zucchini fritti ($17), deep fried polenta with a blue cheese dipping sauce (from specials menu), and the porcini fettuccine (also from specials menu).

The zucchini and calamari came out in decent proportion. Smelt amazing! Tasted good too (until it cooled down) but I found the batter a little too floury and not crunchy enough. But that's probably what they were aiming for. Good thing was, it didn't feel too oily :)

lamari e zucchini fritti - $17

I'm not a polenta fan, but my friends were - and they absolutely loved this dish. Deep fried perfectly cut rectangular prisms of golden brownly crumbed soft mushy polenta in a hecticly strong and flavoursome blue cheese mixture. If I were a polenta and blue cheese fan, I can imagine that this would be perfect - but sadly, I'm not.

deep fried polenta with blue cheese

The creamy fettucini with porcini mushrooms and rocket, however, was absolutely perfectly up my alley. It came out smelling delicious - getting all those stomach acids going - then lived up to its promise by providing al dente pasta with aromatic porcini and tasty rocket leaves. YUM. If I wasn't dining with friends, I would have absolutely hogged this dish and claimed it as mine.

Porcini fettuccine

So this restaurant is famous for it's wood-fired pizzas. They have a huge brick wood-fired pizza oven on the bottom level and hard working pizza makers spinning dough, topping the dough and ovening the round disk of goodness. We ordered 2 pizzas - the quattro stagione ($22), and the barletta ($22).

The quattro stagione (or, 'four seasons), was a thin crispy chewy tomato pizza base topped with artichokes, olives, ham and mushrooms. The mozarella was a little bit scarce and the pieces were cut a little be large anf uneveny, but it was definately very very tasty. My favourite bit of the pie was probably the artichokes which were soft and juicy and deliciousness~

quattro stagione - $22

The barletta was again, a tomato-based thinly crusted pizza, this time, topped with prosciutto crudo and basil, pepper to taste and olive oil drizzled over. Again, I would have preferred a little more mozerella, but it was very yummy anyway.

Barletta - $22

After those epic savoury dishes, we were all up for a sweet change. I ordered the tiramisu ($10). This was really light, richly coffee-flavoured, with a uber awesomely dusted chocolate coating. Seemed authentically italian to me! (but what would I know?)

tiramisu - $10

My friends ordered from the desserts special menu ($11 each). There was a cannoli with ricotta stuffing and a sticky date nutty biscuit thing. They seemed to think that this was alright. The cannoli was very crispy and the ricotta was really creamy but I'm not a fan of sticky date fig thing.

dessert special - $11

pannacotta - $11

The other dessert was a pannacotta. Very smooth, silky looking wobbling thing that my friends seemed to enjoy muchly.

All up, the food here was pretty awesome. Service is good and friendly enough, although at times, they speak a little too quickly. Ambiance is cozy and chillaxy - just the way you'd want it for a catch up with friends.
gs:

Ratings:

Food - 8/10

Service - 7/10

Ambiance - 7/10

Value for money - 7/10

Overall - 29/40

La Disfida
109 Ramsay Rd

La Disfida

Haberfield
NSW, 2045
Tel: (02) 9798 9299

Jean Georges - New York City

2 course lunch meal at one of the best 3 michelin star places in NYC for just $32 per person? Why not?

During our honeymoon on our non-budget, I was researching all the good restaurants and cafes to check out in NYC. I came across Jean Georges which had really good reviews from heaps and heaps of blogs and seemed like AMAZING value! And hence - we just had to try it.

Located opposite Central Park and in the Trump, it felt like a really chillaxy type restaurant. There were two sections in the restaurant, one appeared more casual, and the other, slightly more dressed up. As I had mentioned in the reservation that we were on our honeymoon, we were quickly and effortlessly escorted to the more formal side of things the moment we got there.

Complimentary bread - a choice of a few, but the ciabatta was the winner for me. Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside - perfectly accompanied by creamy room temperature butter :)

complementary bread

The amuse bouche came out not long after we were seated. I have to say, my memory slightly escapes me. As much as I recall, the orange liquid was a chilled carrot soup with some fancy vegetable salt encrusted on the rims of the small glass. The carrot juice was really really sweet but then because your lips and tongue are touching the salt, there's the element of that melting and melding in with the sweet carrot liquid. It was slightly wierd - something that you don't really like at first, but then the taste grows on you and before you know it, you've downed the whole thing. I think the others were a crunchy raddish bit on buttered wholemeal bread and a ricotta pasta thing? I have to say - I don't remember anything about them ... which probably means that they weren't bad nor outstandingly good.

amuse bouche

As the first course, my hubby chose the foie gras brulee. This was a really well oiled, perfectly browned, really rich and smooth foie gras cylinda accompanied with a blob of pineapple-meyer lemon jam, just to balance out the richness of the foie gras. It smelt amazing. And I think it tasted quite delicious as well.

foie gras brulee

Mine was a little bowl of sea trout sashimi, which is hidden below a lemon, dill and horseradish dressing (which was nice and thick) with a heapful of trout eggs and crispy tiny bits of deep fried trout skin on top. It was asthetically pleasing and a whirlpool of flavours. It was sour (due o the lemon), rich, smooth yet subtley fresh and sweet (due to the trout) then you get the saltiness from the trout eggs and the crispiness of the bits of skin. It was altogether a bit confusing... but in a good way. Odd yet beautifully so.

Sea trout sashimi

As for the main, my hubby and I both opted for fish. I ordered a salmon and him a snapper. My salmon was slow baked to perfection. A warm potato salad with liquified horseradish sauce and sugar snap peas accommpanied the fish which made it uber palatable. Really well cooked fish!

slow baked salmon, warm potato salad, sugar snap peas and horseradish

My hubby's red snapper was encrusted with nuts and seeds and was swimming in a sweet and sour jus. I believe that his fish was cooked to perfection too! (though I thought mine was better)

red snapper crusted with nuts and seeds, sweet and sour jus

After all this (for lunch)... we were both stuffed. However, I still kind of wanted something sweet and the dessert menu was so enticing! Luckily, we decided against it because we were soon met with a massively tempting array of petit fours.

A variety of chocolates were presented - the best is probably the caramel one - with lavendar macaroons. Wow! To top it all off, we got super fresh fluffy marshmellows...So fresh that they cut it at your table! Hecticness!

petit fours- macaroons, assorted chocolates, fresh marsh mellows cut at your table

Service here is impeccable. The value speaks for itself. Everything was just as it was meant to be (apart from the epicness of the tips you're meant to give in US restaurants). Definitely would recommend it, and for the value, definitely worth a return visit.

Ratings:
Food - 9/10
Service - 8/10
Ambiance - 8.5/10
Value for money - 9/10
Overall - 34.5/40

Jean Georges
1 Central Park West
New York 10023
Tel: (212) 2993900

Cheesecake Factory - San Francisco

The Cheesecake Factory.
I have to say, the name of the restaurant was very enticing.

The first thing I noticed about this place was that it was absolutely PACKED! Located on top of Macy's at Union Square, there were people waiting everywhere for a seat. The next thing that caught my eye was a huge cabinet of cheesecakes. There were so many on offer (and I think there was even more than that which met the eye).

Cheesecake Factory

We ended up eating... later. I decided I didn't want to wait. Hence, we went walking, shopping, then came back close to 11.30pm only for find that we still needed to wait to be seated. Hectic!

My hubby ordered a steak. And since I felt like mac and cheese, we ordered that as his side. Because it felt weird for us to just order 1 main and 1 side dish after waiting so long to eat here, I decided that I wanted a soup of the day too.

We were greeted by 2 warm fresh bread rolls - white and chocolatey wholemeal. The bread was quite nice and soft... so good infact that the table next to us had 3 lots of these bread roll baskets (between the 2 of them)... hectic.

yes... there are two bread rolls in here

The mac and cheese was absolutely heavenly. Smelt amazing. Came out lightly charred on top and super super super cheesiness. It was soooooooooooooo good! But because it was essentially carbs and fat, it was really really filling. I got through less than half of this, and I was pretty much done.

baked mac and cheese

Whilst the side was amazing, the main was very much not so. My partner's steak was tough and tasteless. The onion rings were HUGEness but so stupidly floured and again, tasteless. The chips were pretty good though :)

rump and chips

My soup of the day was a cream of chicken and mushroom soup. When the waiter asked me if I wanted a cup or a bowl... I was stupidly thinking normal cup and bowl sizes. What came to my table was epic! A diameter of 35-40ish cm bowl dish came out filled with soup. ZOMG. It was really really creamy and really really rich. I could feel my arteries clogging up. So not the "healthy" option I thought I was up for.

cream of chicken and mushroom soup

I couldn't fit in dessert. Dinner was too epic. But being at the Cheesecake factory and not eating a cheesecake felt wrong... and hence, we got it takeaway. I got a chocolate cookie dough cheese cake. With a chocolate brownie base, it was really rich, really sweet but really kind of yum. Not bad at all.

chocolate cookie dough cheesecake

In America, we get charged a 15% tax to everything. On top of the 15% tax, there's another 15-20% tip. And for the first and luckily, the only time we were in America, we got charged a "healthy eating tax" - a fat tax~!!! ZOMG.

Ratings:
Food - 6.5/10
Service - 6.5/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Value for money - 6.5/10
Overall - 26.5/40

Cheesecake Factory (San Francisco)
251 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
Tel: (415) 391-4444

Lori's Diner - San Francisco

As part of the American experience, my partner really wanted to eat at a diner. We chose one of the many many Lori's diner which lined San Fran streets.

There were duke boxes and vintage cars and other random stuff scattered throughout the diner. Pretty interesting - kind of like hogs breath but slightly classierish and less cluttered. Foodwise, we decided on a main each and a loaded potato skins to share.

The potato skins were thick. Slightly crisp on the outside and loaded with bacon and cheese. These were tasty but somehow, maybe could have been better ish.

loaded potato skins

I opted for an Edsel Burger. This was a super nice and juicy patty smothered with sauteed mushrooms and melted jack cheese on top with lettuce, tomato and onion in between 2 soft potato buns. I went for coleslaw as a side as requested by my hubby.

Edsel Burger

My hubby went for something different - the meatloaf. This was interesting. I think I'm a bit asian, but I've never had this type of ground meat combination. Not 100% sure what meats in here but I guess it was okay. I liked the mash - it was super creaminess.

meatloaf

Eating at diners is pretty good. I wouldn't mind having some diners here in Sydney. I did forget to tip them but... as they gave me the change in my hand and they didn't have a tip jar available... and since not tipping is a super nono in America - we ran for it!

Ratings:
Food - 6.5/10
Service - 7/10
Ambiance - 7.5/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 28/40

Lori's Diner (Sutter location)
500 Sutter St,
San Francisco, CA 94102
Tel: (415) 981-1950

Ginger and Shallots - Eastwood

I was dying for congee one day and hence, to satisfy my cravings, we decided to go to Eastwood to hunt for some.

Stepping into 'Ginger and Shallots', it was pretty populated with the lunchtime crowd. I noticed that everyone else got "lunch specials" but unfortunately we were just dealt with the normal menus. Nonetheless, the thing I was looking for was there - lean pork and preserved egg congee in hot pot ($9.80). It was definitely a lot more expensive compared to normal congees... must be because it's served in a hot pot rather than the normal pot. The congee was tasty and smooth and really hot and boiling. There's a decent amount of preserved egg and meat in it. All up, it was like the normal congee but possibly kept warmer for longer. Is that worth the price premium?

lean pork and preserved egg congee in hot pot - $9.80

My hubby opted for beef brisket with rice in hot pot ($10.80). It was completely loaded with beef brisket. The rice was also cooked decently well. There was hardly any veges in this - which suited my hubby just fine. Not bad at all.

beef brisket with rice in hot pot - $10.80

Service and ambiance isn't hot flash - it's just an asian place. The food is also decent. A bit pricey for congee but the other options are reasonably priced. If you're an asian show fanatic, there's TVB playing on large screens throughout the place.

Ratings:
Food - 7.5/10
Service - 6/10
Ambiance - 6/10
Value for money - 6.5/10
Overall - 26/40

Ginger & Shallots
Shop 25, 1 Lakeside Road
Eastwood
NSW 2122
Tel: (02) 9874 8066

Luce - San Francisco

We were staying at the Intercontinental on Howard Street in San Fran and in our hotel was the 1 Michelin Star Restaurant - Luce. Capitalising on the opportunity to dine here, we opted for a hearty breakfast. Whilst not too many people were in the restaurant at the time we were here, the atmosphere was almost nice and quiet - almost - because the waiters were relatively rowdy and were mucking around the whole time we were there.

Scanning through the menu, it was a pretty tough choice but ultimately, my hubby chose the Niman Ranch short rib hash. The pork short rib came with 2 superly well cooked organic poached egg in a hearty stew with root vegetable cubes and weiser farm fingerling potatoes. It was really tasty - the meat was fall-off-your-fork tenderness, the root veges were a good mix of mushiness and crunchiness, and the egg was perfect runniness.

Niman Ranch short rib hash

I couldn't resist but to order my usual - eggs benedict. Lightly toasted muffins topped with a generous stack of smoked salmon, spinach and yet another duo of perfectly cooked poached eggs. Light and creamy hollandaise sat in a little pot on the side and a generous portion of cucumber and fennel salad with farm fingerling potatoes complemented the dish. Really really delicious. Yet, it gave off a fresh, clean taste - not oily or dense or anything like that at all!

smoked salmon benedict

The food and the decor in this place is a must. Crazily deliciousness - I could have breakfast here like every morning!

Ratings:
Food - 9.5/10
Service - 6/10
Ambiance - 8/10
Value for money - 7.5/10
Overall - 31/40

Luce
888 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA 94103, United States
Tel: (415) 616-6566