Saturday, October 29, 2011

Baroque Bar - Bistro - Patisserie

This has been on my list for some time and I thought let's go and try it out. this I am sure used to be a bar maybe even a pub in the rocks area of Sydney. It is right on the corner of George St as it begins to wind up into the rocks area. Just across the road is the Quay restaurant . This was a Saturday night and a nice night not too hot and not too cold, so finding a car park is nearly impossible, however we found one under the Harbour bridge which is not too far away. I had eaten at Felix bistro on Friday and was looking forward to comparing the two.

We turned up and I was somewhat surprised that it was so casual and a patisserie to boot. However we were shown to our table ( no tablecloths) of course. The menu is not exhaustive and they were already out of most of their specials. But we were able to choose some excellent dishes. I started off with a scallop dish which I had never seen before. the scallops were joined together to make it look like one large scallop and it was served up with mushrooms and pea. The other entree was fresh asparagus with a poached egg, not very inventive but was cooked to perfection.







Because there were no specials left and neither of us felt like fish so we both had the beef cheeks which were very good and served with mash, again nothing out of the ordinary but what they did they did well.



The deserts were more exciting than the rest of the menu and you could ether choose something from the menu or what was in the patisserie we chose a couple of macaroons and a white chocolate berry Mouse cake.






The service was good and friendly, the food cooked very well, the menu was unexciting and ordinary as was the wine list. I would rate this a 5/10 only because there were limited items on the menu for us to try. would I go back, probably for lunch.


Baroque | Bistro Bar Patisserie on Urbanspoon

Saturday, October 1, 2011

SpiceTemple -Sydney

This is a place I hadn't been before and many people have given it a great wrap, so I decided to try for myself. I have only in the last few years begun to love chili and this was going to be a hot experience. Accompanying me was a very good friend and work colleague. Firstly, when you arrive the front door is a video screen with curtains giving you the impression you are entering somewhere mysterious. A great start. Once you enter you go down three flights of stairs remembering you enter at street level.

At the bottom of the stairs it is dark with each table with their own small downlight, dark wood and an ambiance which tells you this is going to be special. We are shown to our table and immediately start reading the menu which is chinese /asian based.

There are many options to choose from all of which sound great. The waitress advises that we should share each dish and that for two people we should look at two entrees and one main as the entrees are quite large. There are dishes in red writing which signify that it is a very hot dish. We decide to stay with the normal dishes.

We started with squid in five spices, Chilli, and other spices with a dark Chilli sauce. This was very tasty and quite hot for me. We then had the scallop dish with flat noodle and peppers. Again this saucy dish was not as hot but the scallops were cooked just right.

For our main we chose the hot prawns which came with some Chinese vegetables, this was reasonably hot but we decided we would go for a second main and one written in red, so we went for the chicken with Chilli done 3 ways. The chicken itself was not hot but the Chilli was bringing tears to the eyes of my lunch companion, a seasoned Chilli lover. This was washed down with a Grosset riesling.

After lots of water we decided to have desert to cleanse the pallet. We had a cherry jelly and peanut chocolate dish and a chocolate, peanut, caramel ice-cream, which was like a giant snickers bar for you chocoholics.











It turned out to be a wonderful experience and we have already booked to go back again to try some of the other dishes. The service was excellent, the menu was creative and well written, the lighting was fine even though it was very dark it added to the experience. I would rate this 9/10 for service and 8/10 for food.

My suggestion is try this Neil Perry establishment and you won't be disappointed.

Spice Temple
Bligh St Sydney 2000

Spice Temple on Urbanspoon