ragingyoghurt

Author Archives: ragingyoghurt

2
Posted by ragingyoghurt on 26 June 2010 – 12:07 am
Filed under cake

i thought i’d escaped the cold that the kid brought home from school the other week, but i was fooled. it was just biding its time, and when it finally struck last thursday, it gave little indication that it would be sticking around for more than a week, and certainly no warning at all that it would turn into a raging sinus infection that would block up my nasal passages for two whole days, and then cause alternating numbness and pain (though mostly pain) in the entire right side of my face, as well as a disconcerting and piercing ache in my right ear. this is day number three of pain beneath cheekbones, dizziness, and funky rainbow snot. not to mention the green goblin gunk that i still keep coughing up from my lungs.

at least i can breathe through my nose again. aside from that, i was especially happy to get my taste back.

because this afternoon i got to fully appreciate the cereal killer from adriano zumbo patissier. it looks like a glass topped in frosties, does it not? but they lacked the caustic sweetness of this most cherished childhood breakfast cereal. instead these comforting layers of vanilla-flecked creme anglaise, condensed milk jelly, “milk bottle chantilly” — variations on a theme of soft — and yes, crunchy cereal, were the perfect mild and milky pudding for this convalescing correspondent.

i have been remiss in eating my way through the latest zumbo collection, but bel has been taking inventory over here. nice job, lady!

5
Posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 June 2010 – 1:58 pm
Filed under drawn, kid, tv

ok, fine. we watch “masterchef“. even though i hate the clunky musical cues, the repetitive editing, the explanations and narrations by the contestants even as the very events unfold right before our eyes… the kid does not really mind — she usually gives her own running commentary over the top of the soundtrack anyway, though the appearance of the burning m logo and the cut to ad break at dramatic points sends her into conniptions.

last year, we went through a stage of playacting “masterchef”: i’d serve up breakfast, and she’d say, “now tell me, poh, how did you make this jam toast and hot chocolate?”

“well, first i got a piece of bread…”

this year, she has been documenting the action with the occasional masterchef drawing. here you see the judging of the recent onsite afternoon-tea challenge. we were very impressed with callum’s crown jewels rendered in the medium of macaron. so were the judges. WAW!*

*pronounced: WOW!

7
Posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 June 2010 – 11:52 pm
Filed under around town, kid, snacks

we don’t get to ballast point park often enough; it’s just that bit further than a regular after-school jaunt. also, it’s not quite your regular park in the traditional sense of the word, with trees and grass and playground. what there is, on the site of the former caltex fuel depot, is a lot of architectural history — isolated walls from where buildings used to be; enormous tanks still standing proud like monuments to fuel storage; boundary walls made of broken-down rock and tile from the old structures, contained within a frame of thick steel wire…

i don’t know how or when it began, but those of the romantic persuasion have been attaching engraved padlocks to the metalwork. two of the ones i found yesterday must have been added only minutes (or y’know, hours) before we got there, their dates freshly etched. the one from last year has already corroded in the salty air.

we picnicked up on the hill overlooking the harbour — an apple and an orange to share, and an iced donut each from the discounted supermarket selection we had bought earlier in the day. and we explored the many complex levels and hidden pockets of grass that make up the site. the kid had dressed up as supergirl for the occasion, and valiantly defended us against the gulls.

there’s a little bunker built over the edge of the water, with three tiny portholes addressing various vistas. just shy of sunset, the sky over the bridge was the softest pink. all this i will miss, one day.

7
Posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 June 2010 – 12:11 am
Filed under around town, lunch

last friday, i thought i’d partake of an experiment in which i try to ascertain if it is possible to have lunch across town in the few short hours when the kid is at school. i’d been interested in the modern british food at bistrode for a while, and they launched a $30 two-course lunch deal a short time ago, and deborah‘s clever sister had recently been appointed head chef, hurrah, so that’s where we went.

walking up the leafy back avenues of surry hills reminded me how much i miss this part of sydney. back in the day, i walked these streets for treats: a greek biscuit here, a plate of 30c pastizzi there, a bit of sauce on the side, a magazine at the taylor square newsagents, a mosey in the pop shop on oxford street —

say! did you know that the pop shop, which closed down a few years ago, has reopened on crown street? it was totally my favourite shop on the oxford drag back in — sigh, the 90s — and my heart sang like the rainbow flag out front when i got off the bus last friday and saw it right there in front of me. it is a smidgen smaller than the original shop, but still chock full of tchotchkes, pop cultural references galore, bacon-flavoured mints and bandaids… i picked a constructible drinking straw set for the kid, and when i got to the counter i asked the counterman how long they’d been open there. “almost a year,” he said. “wow,” i said, “that means i haven’t been this way in at least a year.” “well,” he said, “then you should get out more.”

quite. treats were still here for the taking.

we were seated just a whisper before noon, at a table by the front windows. we were offered a smile, a bottle of water, and warm bread and butter. the restaurant is a small, welcoming space, elegant yet utilitarian, all dark wood and white tiles befitting the old butcher shop it once was. as the room filled up over the next hour, the shiny surfaces threw the sounds of lunchtime back in a most cacophonous manner. we took advantage of the early calm to consider the menu.

“i think,” said deborah, “that i need to try the brains.”

a suggestion that i approached with an open mind.

my first ever experience with a brain — we had a hemisphere each; that’s them up top — was… surprising. i was surprised by how creamy it was, and what a mild flavour it had. i was surprised too, when i cut it open, and there, almost imperceptibly white on pale grey, were the perfect petals of the cerebral structure. i wasn’t quite grossed out, but the sturdy shell of tasty crumbs and a good smear of the luscious tartare sauce certainly made it more of a treat. the furthering of my food education, courtesy of the chef.

next out was a portion of hot-smoked eel perched daintily on a bed of thick-sliced beetroot. oh it was delicious: all at once salty-fishy-sticky-smoky, perfectly balanced and well served by the barely dressed salad and the knob of sour cream.

we moved effortlessly into the set lunch proper. there were two choices of starters: a salad of roasted jerusalem artichokes and oranges, and a rabbit and pancetta terrine. so we ordered one of each to share. both were some kind of wonderful, but the terrine was perhaps more wonderful, with its tender chunks of meat interspersed with whole hazelnuts.

at this point we were four courses into our two-course lunch, and although everything was light fantastic, we were starting to feel the tinges of satiety. so we were thankful for the pause in the service before the main courses arrived. but then i checked my watch, and discovered — horrors! — that it was five minutes to two. i wondered how quickly i could eat a plate of food.

i must admit that when i read the menu, i was somewhat underwhelmed by the options for mains: sausages and mash, and fish and chips with mushy peas. good winter grub, sure, but darned our luck that day was sunny and warm. we picked one of each anyway, and were pleased to discover that the two fat sausages were herbed and meaty, and the mash was velvety.

the fish — a generous serve of three fat fingers — was firm and meaty beneath the crunchy crumb, and the chips were a large potato cut into four. i wish i could have eaten much much more of the mushy peas — their verdancy belies the amount of butter i’m sure must have been whipped into them, albeit with a light and skillful hand.

in fact, i wish i could have eaten much more of everything, but the combination of too many appetisers and rather a lot of meat and — crucially — the fact that when i next checked the time it was twenty past two (!) meant that i was suddenly saying goodbye in a great hurry, and slipping out the door, and running up to the main street to hail a cab that would take me through the city and across the bridge (anzac, not harbour) to the school gate to retrieve the kid, phew.

so, um, yeah. i guess my experiment was… not exactly a failure, but i’m kicking myself for missing out on the flourless chocolate fondant with dark chocolate sorbet (i think the other dessert option might have been gruyere and oat biscuits). well fine, i doubt i could have fit it in anyway.

5
Posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 June 2010 – 1:57 pm
Filed under breakfast, something new

i’m not much of a twitterer (tweeter? twit?). that whole twitter scene is far too noisy for me. of course, it has its uses: i did get that chocolate bar from @thirdrawerdown.

and just the other day, a tweet by @grabyourfork alerted me to the existence of scone toast. i have been mildly curious every time i’ve been to the supermarket and noticed the crumpet toast, but have so far managed to not buy it due to my general meh-ness about crumpets. but scones — scones are different: warm and fluffy vehicles for copious amounts of jam and cream. in fact, what i twittered back was “any excuse to eat thick cream on bread”. and then i went out to the supermarket and bought myself a loaf.

scone toast is part of tip top’s café range, which you may remember from café raisin toast, which i had dismissed as being ridiculous because it appeared to be normal raisin toast, only sliced thicker. scone toast, according to the website, “has been inspired by the taste and texture of traditional scones, and is presented in a thick cut, flour dusted loaf.”


thick slices indeed! 2cm blocks of spongy white bread. once toasted, i ignored the pitiful serving suggestion on the bag — note paltry dab of cream attached to the toast with a tiny puddle of jam — and slathered the slice with raspberry jam, several dollops of whipped cream, and sliced strawberries. and it was… ok. it had quite a light, chewy texture, and a fleeting taste of an actual scone, but in the end it was more bready than crumbly-cakey. quite a bit more enjoyment was to be had from the berries and cream.

the next day i had another slice with a good smear of home-made lemon curd, and i couldn’t help but think that there were other, better breads that i’d rather be eating.

so yeah, it wasn’t terrible by any means, and i can’t even say i’m disappointed. i mean, if it had been delicious and sconey then i would have been truly surprised and pleased. for now, i’ll save my stomach space for real scones, and half-heartedly await the next installment in the café series. maybe a sub-par banana bread?

speaking of twitter, i recently added @farmtable to my stream, a restaurant in san francisco about which i know nothing; it was mentioned randomly on someone’s blog. they mostly post their daily menus, which makes for quite a delicious stream-of-consciousness:

chocolate cake w edible flowers
about 7 hours ago

prosciutto butter sandwich w scallion oil. chicken posole soup. little gem salad w cherry tomatoes zucchini radish & creamy basil dressing
about 8 hours ago

hb eggs over baguette w smoked salmon capers zucchini yogurt dill sauce. dt=ww w panir honey strawberries boysenberries. apricot bcakes.
about 11 hours ago

pm: roasted zucchini w housemade hummus & mint oil on sourdough, chicken pozole soup, mixed greens w tuna salad
4:45AM Jun 17th

spicy tuna salad sandwich w eggs. moroccan chickpea soup. mixed baby green salad w nectarines pecans chevre & vinaigrette. cherry pie!
4:36AM Jun 16th

hb eggs on baguette w summer squash, leeks, pantaleo cheese. dt=pan de mie w white nectarines fromage blanc blueberries. cereal is back!
1:50AM Jun 16th

pm: farro salad w basil spring onions baby carrots & avocado, moroccan chickpea soup, pulled pork on challah, yogurt cake, cardamom palmiers
5:02AM Jun 15th

am: cherry brioche bread pudding, hb eggs over baguette w burrata carmalized spring onions basil oil, dt-mascarpone bananas toasted pecans ww
2:02AM Jun 15th

white peach bread pudding, roasted white peaches bacon chevre on pan de mie, dt-pan de mie mascarpone cherries pecans, coconut chard soup
4:32AM Jun 13th

little gems blue cheese radish lemon walnut dressing, yogurt cake, fromage blanc tart w mixed berries, orange blossom olive oil cake
4:32AM Jun 13th

pm: meatloaf friday! coconut and red chard soup, mixed greens strawberries walnuts balsamic vinaigrette, pecan rounds, fudgy brownies
4:58AM Jun 12th

pm: bacon arugula ascutney mt cheese on baguette, carrot & german butterball potato soup, mixed greens w strawberries chevre walnuts balasami
4:58AM Jun 11th

pm: egg salad on sourdough, creamy tomato soup, rooftop greens baby carrots radish spring onions w housemade green goddess dressing
6:21AM Jun 10th

am: dt-pan de mie fromage blanc mixed berries honey, hb eggs over baguette mixed sauteed summer squash fresh chevre, polenta maple b cakes
2:30AM Jun 10th

4
Posted by ragingyoghurt on 2 June 2010 – 3:55 pm
Filed under at the movies, werk

still busy! here’s what i’ve been up to: designing all manner of stuff and ephemera for the arab film festival. it’s traveling around australia in july, but the website‘s just been launched and will tell you all you need to know.

what i’ll tell you is that across the road from the sydney (read: parramatta) venue, there is a lebanese pastry shop selling treats in all manner of sticky – flaky – nutty – sweet. that is all.

this is totally one of my favourite jobs i’ve done in a while. truly, the postcards arrived back from the printers, and i felt like an actual graphic designer, and not someone who works at home for five hours a day while the kid’s at school (and another two or three after she goes to bed for the night, yawn).

2
Posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 June 2010 – 9:42 am
Filed under around town, art, breakfast

that last sunday before the rains came, we slathered up with sunscreen and walked into rozelle to meet family for brunch. i’d been curious about rosebud since before it opened months and months ago — a year? two? i’d watched its evolution from big empty space to slick cafe, but somehow had not made it past admiring the french aluminium stools on the footpath, and the big red mural above the pass.

inside is a big, open, sunlit space with bare lightbulbs on languid wires strung from the ceiling. inside is a big white plate with golden slabs of french toast, hewn from a brioche loaf, all soft and moist inside its caramelised crust. there are flaked almonds, sour cherries and a generous dollop of mascarpone. there is an artful pouring of maple syrup. it may be the most delicious thing you will eat all week.

i stopped short of licking my plate clean. accompanied by a tall glass of sweet, rose-infused egyptian tea, it was all the energy i needed for an afternoon on cockatoo island.

yes, the sydney biennale is on again. two years sure went by quickly! i don’t know what it says about me, but the attraction in heading out to cockatoo is the return trip through the harbour on the vintage ferries, and the island itself with its collection of old buildings and industrial relics.

the art, i found to be a bit hit and miss — in fact, there is a whole cluster of buildings on the south west end of the island that i missed on purpose, because every room housed a video installation. much too tedious for this philistine.

the turbine hall held most of the big statement pieces, though i didn’t photograph my most favourite of the lot because i didn’t think i could do it justice. french artist kader attia filled a hall with a recreation of a shanty town — actually, the roofs of a shanty town — with corrugated iron sheets going every which way, and tv aeriels and satellite dishes protruding haphazardly. walking across it was inexplicably moving and humbling.

another of my favourites was robert macpherson’s “chitters: a wheelbarrow for richard, 156 paintings, 156 signs”, which is just what it was. a larger-than-life celebration of the vernacular of roadside signs the artist encountered around australia. yes, yes, hand-lettering — i cannot go past it.

i was impressed by the spectacle of cai guo-qiang’s “inopportune: stage one”, which filled an entire cavernous warehouse space with a series of cars, in suspended animation, exploding with light. totally like watching a john woo movie.

there was whimsy, too, amidst the aging machinery. for example, the ornate dr moreau robot sculptures by rohan wealleans. they were fenced off from the public, so i never resolved the question of whether they commanded hugs, or fear.

i remember feeling a rare squeamishness in encountering the room of dead communist leaders, life-sized and waxen, lying in state. i may have whimpered and recoiled when i realised that fidel castro was still “alive”, his chest rising and falling with each mechanical breath.

and i could go on about the life-sized model of the hubble telescope, crafted by one peter hennessey out of nothing but sheets of plywood… but i won’t. instead, i will show you this sign with its jarring punctuation.

now that raises a shudder.

but it’s true: there were lots of plugs.

used to light up artwork like this:

oh wait, like this:

hm.

let us pause, and take ourselves outside, where we can tread on the grounds that have seen the footsteps of convicts, labourers and shipbuilders over 150 years. let us picnic on bagels and hommous. let us wonder at the state-of-the-art shower block — all polished concrete and stainless steel and the most elegant of utilitarian ceramic toiletware — that now services the well-appointed campsite. let us admire the jaunty stripes of this bench that looks over the historic tennis court by the caretaker’s residence up on the hill.

ahhh… all better.

3
Posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 May 2010 – 2:17 am
Filed under around town, art, bookshelf, cake, kid

i’ve been juggling projects, and the fairground music (metaphoric) in the background is at a pace that is at the same time jaunty and unsettling, rather than frantic and horrifying. i have new spectacles, with a new — lower! — prescription, which has made it such that my left eye no longer feels like it’s being wrenched out of its socket after a not unreasonable amount of time in front of the computer. the constant rain has also been a help, keeping me inside, hunched beneath my mossy green poncho, with my trusty oil heater close by. really, i can’t complain; it’s all good.

it’s been raining for just over a week now. last sunday, we stepped into the grey and wet, and onto the slick deck of a sydney ferry bound for circular quay. we were there mostly to go to the MCA zine fair, and indeed we must’ve done four or five laps of the trestle table maze, because the kid has a girl crush on sonya gee and spent much of her time at the fair nestled in sonya’s lap behind her stand of ‘kind of like a party bag for the unwell’ — “zomg you’re sick”.

in between, we delved into the MCA proper and made a half-hearted attempt at appreciating the biennale, and headed out across the road for lunch and pastry in the drizzly courtyard at la renaissance patisserie.

we started off sharing a baguette filled with poached chicken and aioli, and it was pleasant and all, but we knew we were just passing the time until dessert. unfortunately, there were no rose cream macarons on offer that day (my number one favourite, you may remember from before), so we made do with a trio of jasmin (number two favourite), passionfruit-chocolate, and cassis. the la renaissance macaron is consistently perfect: i have never encountered a brittle hollow shell, and the plump, moist biscuits hold a good amount of well-flavoured filling.

at the counter, the kid had also requested this sunny dome of a gateau — the mango-jasmin mousse cake. beneath the golden jelly skin, it was lush and light, and the two separate mousses atop a thin sponge base burst with fruitiness. not quite halfway through though, the kid stopped, quite bewildered, and whispered urgently, “there are strange beans in here.” upon investigation, i uncovered an entire nest of pinenuts hidden in the mousse, which is all fine and good if you like pinenuts… but we don’t. here’s a fun rainy day activity: pick all the covert pinenuts out of your otherwise enjoyable mango-jasmin mousse cake.

the rainy day fun continued once i got home with my bundle of swag:

two issues of vanessa berry‘s “disposable camera”, each one a rambling little freeform narrative. one has an intriguing recipe for red rice involving a whole tomato, and i will surely give it a try. the other has an amazing fold-out thought map and a reference to the one bit of “microserfs” that i remember: where one of the characters has a meltdown and locks himself in his office, and his colleagues, concerned, slip flat foods like cheese slices under the door to him. i also got some sweet mini comics from miss helen, to whom we were recently formally introduced and with whom we shared pizza and table-top drawings of kawaii cupcakes.

a couple of aisles down, i got a tiny and adorable japan guide from dudley redhead, and the heartfelt memoirs of one girl’s relationship with tamagotchis. (the girl’s name is zombetty.)

from the table of georgia perry and my candy castle, i procured “nu yoik”, a dazzling technicolor tribute to new york, in photographs and hand-drawn type. the kid picked the hilarious “kitten club”, full of cheesy cat pictures improved through the power of collage.

from the same table, i got a two-pack of mini posters: “things to know”, containing such hand-lettered gems as fetes are fun, and absolutely everyone should own a yellow + white striped beach towel, and everyone has two stomachs. one is solely for dessert. so true.

and then, from, uh, the same table, i could not go past the little compendium of illustrated junk food, nor the “save room for cake” colouring book, whose page of macaroons (sic) you would have seen beneath the macarons i told you about earlier.

i found a bunch of typewritten stories from maddy phelan, of which “ladybeard” — about her physical and psychological struggles with, and eventual embracing of, her hirsuteness — was particularly engaging; i still don’t know quite what to do with my hair. i also really liked “POTATOES” (much the same way i like potatoes), with its quirky little drawings and its potted history of… potatoes:

back in my day, everything was made out of potatoes.

we had to walk 15 miles to buy a sack of potatoes and they only cost 5c. or perhaps it was 5 shillings. i can’t remember. and i’ll have you know, our shoes were made out of potatoes.

and so on.

the bumper zine of the collection is lee tran lam‘s sold-out “speak-easy #11: the french issue”, really a magazine of interviews and recollections interspersed with photographs stuck down using ribbon and decorative masking tape. i’m still savouring my way through it, but i especially liked the list of memorable food experiences over lee tran’s four visits to france. the aisle of decorative sugar in the bon marché food hall in paris holds a special place in my heart too!

9
Posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 May 2010 – 4:14 pm
Filed under chocolate, packaging, trip

i thought i was done with london posts, but no. i don’t know if it’s the sudden pocket of werk i find myself in, but these days i find myself thinking about –– yearning for –– chocolate. i eat too many squares of cheap supermarket lindt, or contemplate a second (or third) tim tam. and then i start reminiscing about the little paper cup of amazing i encountered down camden passage one afternoon.

paul a young makes the best salted caramel truffles ever, and in the winter, a fine hot chocolate. he makes brownies as well — thick black slabs of fudgy chocolate cake with pecans or caramel, but i find these rather too intimidating. as the weather warms up, the hot chocolate dispensary in the corner by the entrance becomes a little outpost for sorbet. there is regular chocolate sorbet, and then there is salted caramel chocolate sorbet, which is what we chose, me and my sister, as we waited for our mother to finish her rounds at the antique stores. the amiable shopgirl arranged a scoop in the pristine white paper cup, and then asked, would you like the toppings?

yes, please!

she poured a stream of liquid chocolate over the sorbet, and then sprinkled chocolate shavings, and cocoa nibs, and little chocolate balls over that. she popped two spoons in, and moments later outside the shop, as i tried to take a spoon of sorbet, i found that the molten chocolate had solidified into a sturdy chocolate helmet. ice magic!

yes, the baubles up top were enchanting and all — a real riot of texture — but the real magic lay below. the sorbet was impossibly smooth and light in texture, while the taste was serious and dark. at first i found myself searching hard for any caramel flavour, but a spoonful or two later, i hit an artery of thick sticky caramel. a jolly good idea to keep the two separated, mr young. it was sublime, and i’m glad we were sharing. i might otherwise have fallen over in the street, twitching and gurgling.

some days later, i bought myself a toffee chocolate bar from peyton and byrne — toffee-nosed chocolate, according to the pleasing white paper wrapper sensibly typeset in gill sans, and adorned with nothing more than a tiny toffee-coloured flower. but the spare aesthetics reveal a somewhat more spartan affair. this slim bar shatters under your teeth, and the rigid grid of crests yields a rather severe burnt sugar flavour within the dark chocolate. the sour aftertaste was definitely not delicious. perhaps it is an inbuilt mechanism to keep you (me) from eating it all in one go? i much prefer the caramel with sea salt bar that i found in singapore on the way back home.

(this is where my london post officially becomes a chocolate post.)

back in singapore, i stumbled upon chocolate research facility, just hours before i had to get on the plane back to sydney. i must admit, i was not overly excited about the chocolate — south-east-asian chocolate always seems a bit too floury, or claggy, or sweet — and my stance was not helped by my good mother, who popped a sample into her mouth, grimaced, and then called undiscreetly over her shoulder while rushing out of the shop, “don’t buy me any. that is really horrible — much too sweet!”

indeed, the first ingredient listed on the box is “sugar”. but what a box! in fact, a hundred different boxes — a unique design for each of as many flavours. i found myself with an armful of bars: last minute presents mostly, in flavours like almond, tiramisu, stout, black sesame and durian.

besides the caramel bar, i also picked for myself, “new york” from the spring/summer ’10 city series (the durian bar represents singapore), with a slick map graphic. this was a bar of milk chocolate with crunchy little pretzels — salt crystals and all — embedded whole. yum.

the caramel with seasalt, from the autumn/winter ’09 series, was adorned with lovely peranakan tiles, and was a moulded shell of milk chocolate with a runny caramel filling. double yum. the chocolate was smooth and mild, and no, not too sweet for these tastebuds.

these are small bars — only 70g, and even though you might find it easy to eat the whole thing in one go, the $12 price tag will probably slow you down. there is also the confounding configuration of the grooves along which to divide your chocolate bar: there is pretty much no fault line to engineer a clean break, unless you begin by snapping it lengthways right down the middle. maybe they do want you to eat it all at once, after all.

i arrived back in sydney to find a chocolate bar sent to me as part of an easter twitter giveaway by the kindly folk at third drawer down. offerings of chocolate really help keep the back-home blues at bay. the chocolate edition that i received was a special edition strawberry stripe bar, with fat, free-form stripes of dark chocolate and white chocolate with “natural strawberry ingredients”. indeed, the strawberry portion was not a lurid pink, and tasted mostly natural. its creamy sweetness was broken up by little bits of tart freeze-dried fruit. in contrast, the dark chocolate was noticeably less creamy, and infinitely less sweet, and had a slight blackened flavour like that of an oreo. it’s like two chocolate bars in one, definitely handy for sharing with a sugar-junkie kid due home from school any minute now.

3
Posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 May 2010 – 12:21 am
Filed under around town, art, cake, lunch

back in sydney, i wasted no time in recapturing a little bit of european je ne sais quoi. a week after touching down i talked singapore girl into a spot of luncheon at le grand cafe. we have figured out by now, that the best time for lunch at le grande cafe is “early”. just before noon, there are no queues, several empty tables, and a glass case full of options.

all morning, i’d been thinking of the terrine and cornichons that i’d enjoyed on a previous occasion. i considered maybe branching out and trying the duck liver parfait with brioche. however, once i discovered that the baguette on offer that day was filled with duck confit, my choice was made.

they showed up at the table a little while later, one for each of us. the sandwich had been freshly toasted, and there was a satisfying crunch to the baguette before it gave way to succulence: i was pleased to find that the bread was generously buttered, and the filling dressed with mayonnaise, and of course, to start with, there was a good amount of naturally occurring duck fat. it all made for a very moist and tasty mouthful. the slices of crisp, sweet onion provided a good foil to the fat, as did a little dimpled bottle of orangina.

we had planned ahead and picked our desserts when we ordered our sandwiches at the counter, to save us from rejoining the queue when the lunch crowd eventually swept into the cafe around 1. the attentive waitstaff brought them to the table as soon as we were done with the baguettes.

for me: the caramel tart, which turned out to be more of a very nice pastry shell filled with a sort-of creme brulee. the surface of it lacked the crackly, sugary shell of a proper creme brulee, but the mild caramel flavour and light custardy texture was pleasing all the same. the jaunty little beret of a biscuit bore a striking resemblance to a cookie from famous amos.

singapore girl had the petit pot au chocolat, which turned out to be too much chocolat for a girl who had just eaten a baguette filled with three kinds of fat. beneath the nutty crumble topping was a deep expanse of rich, dark, chocolate. at the bottom of that, was a puddle of thick caramel. perhaps she should not have also ordered a hot chocolate as a postprandial bevvie; there was still a good amount of pudding left when the waitress came to clear the table. (by contrast, the caramel tart was completely gone.)

we rolled out the door then, and had barely gone ten metres when we came across gaffa, three floors of art space / shop / cafe housed in a handsome pink heritage building. downstairs it’s little rooms of covetable and affordable contemporary jewelry and objet d’art; upstairs it’s galleries (and studios) around a central sunlit airwell.

one of the exhibitions we perused most appreciatively was food&company, an unprecious curation of food-related stuff: photographs, drawings, tiny interactive installations, and some lovely crockery. here’s the flourishing, by gemma o’brien.

ahh… so nice to see the flourishing of unstuffy, inspiring art space in the heart of this grimy city.

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