More Food!

Very little gives me comfort these days except for food. And even though I really shouldn't be eating carbs after 6pm in an attempt to shed a little weight before my first dress fitting, I've had so many stressful days over the past week that I just don't care anymore! Although I have been going to yoga more than usual to make myself feel a little less guilty.

Anyhoo, back to the food.
I've been wanting to try The Meat & Wine Co for the longest time now and so Mr Ng and I made a very spur of the moment decision to give it a go one night last week at the Darling Harbour location. First impression? I never realised this place was so huge! It spans over 3 levels and by the time we left at about 7.30pm it was really starting to fill up.

my Evergreen mocktail

Pork Belly entree

Mr Ng's Grilled Chicken Breast

my 200g Fillet

The service here is a little slow probably due to the size of the restaurant and the fact that we were sitting in a little hidden corner on the 2nd floor. But if I were to go back I would probably go when I'm a little more hungry and able to fit in some dessert which looked really good judging by the table next to ours. The Darling Harbour branch is open from 12noon-10pm Sunday to Thursday and 12noon-11pm Friday and Saturday.

The next night my little bro shouted us all to yummy German at Essen. I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Mr Ng's Farm fresh duck

my Mum's Crispy skinned porkbelly

my Jaeger schnitzel, also ordered by my bro, sister and Dad lol

my sister's Cherry strudel dessert special

my Apple and pear strudel

my bro's Schwaerzwalder (white chocolate mousse)

In short, I LOVE Essen. It is open 7 days for both lunch and dinner.

And most recently, the crazy busy Mamak at Chinatown:

An interesting bit of history about the place from Gosstronomy: The idea for the restaurant started back in 2004 when a young ABC (Australian-born-Chinese) account manager for Pfizer named Julian Lee (who is super cute btw) visited a Malaysian restaurant in Melbourne’s CBD and wondered why there wasn’t an equally good Malaysian experience in Sydney. So he and two friends, Alan Au and Clement Lee, decided to open up their own restaurant but when attempts to recruit a trained chef from Kuala Lumpur proved too hard, the three decided to quit their jobs – Alan was a risk manager for Macquarie Bank and Clement a software engineer for Optus – and move to KL to work in restaurants and learn to cook authentic Malaysian food. Can you say best decision ever?

Mamak opened its doors at Haymarket in 2007 and just 2 years later received a Chef's Hat in the coveted Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Awards. On the auspicious day of 10th of October last year, a second branch was opened in Chatswood. If the queues are anything to go by it's obvious that Sydney has fallen in love with the fare here lunchtime, dinnertime, every day of the week.

I haven't been to the Chinatown branch in a while now but Mr Ng and I happened to be in the area just before the restaurant was due to open (which is the best time to get there if you don't want to wait in line for more than 30 minutes) and decided to gorge ourselves:

the emptiest I have ever seen the place

but it was only 5.35pm at this time, all the tables were filled within 20 minutes

no Rojak on a Monday night so opted for Mee Goreng

Ayam goreng

Chicken roti murtabak

Roti bom for dessert

Very SHIOK! (loosely translated as super yummy)

Now I have to be honest and say that the first time I tried Mamak in its first year of operation Mr Ng and I had just come back from Singapore having had tasted the best roti prata all at a cost of a few Sing dollars. Needless to say, we weren't super impressed. But absence makes the heart - or in this case the tummy - grow fonder =).

Both the Chinatown and Chatswood branches are open 7 days a week from 11.30am-2.30pm for lunch and 5.30pm-9.30pm for dinner. Additionally, the Chinatown one is open until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays for supper.