A new Mezerama
Mezerama was our local Turkish restaurant that was sold to become a dodgy pizza joint. We are still very sad about this.
However our lives have been brightened since we visited Sumac restaurant in Darling Harbour yesterday. This is a bizarre mixed Mediterranean restaurant (from the book obviously) including dishes from every country around the Med: Italian (pizza), Spanish (chorizo, paella), Turkish/Greek (grilled lamb chops, falafal, shish kebab) and North African (harissa, tagine).
I had a bit of a tizzy moment when ordering. I had decided to order the calamari stuffed with chorizo and halloumi (too exciting) but was distracted by the Moroccan rabbit stuffed pastry cigars at the last minute. This confused my brain so much that I actually ordered the falafal! I had whole baby snapper for my main course and Sean had grilled lamb chops, followed by swordfish.
The falafal were great and Sean commended the lamb chops as well. My fish came in a kind of herb crust, which was delicious and also with a kind of creamy chilli sauce, which was good in small quantities (I think it may have been a bit sickly if I'd eaten all of it). I also tried Sean's swordfish, which was heavy on the cumin. I mention this as a good thing.
The whole atmosphere was very "Mediterranean", it reminded me simultaneously of Turkey and Tunisia and by the time it came to dessert I was gasping for baklava. In some ways this was a shame as the desserts were extremely exciting: turkish delight, turkish coffee or halawa (not quite sure what this is) ice-cream and loads of other exiting things including at least two that I had no clue what they were. Perhaps next time I will order the dessert tasting plate, but as it explicitly says "for two" on the menu and I know I can't rely on Sean to help me so it seems a little ambitious.
The "baklava and petit fours" option also said "for two" but I reckoned I could manage two servings worth of petit fours. In this case I may well have been wrong but we will never know as Sean ate his whole half of the baklava! I was astounded. We got 6 large assorted pieces of baklava and cut them all in half. They were all fantastic although I had a couple of favourites. I have no way of indicating which these were though as I'm not even sure what each was made of, let alone what they are individually called.
We finished with mint tea, which was surprisingly (and pleasingly for me, not so for Sean) unsweetened with complimentary turkish delight. The service was a little crazy throughout the meal but the food was so good I could forgive them anything.
In other news: I made chocolate truffles (and hence myself very sick) and we visited a local Italian (also in the book) which was OK but a bit disappointing.
Mezerama was our local Turkish restaurant that was sold to become a dodgy pizza joint. We are still very sad about this.
However our lives have been brightened since we visited Sumac restaurant in Darling Harbour yesterday. This is a bizarre mixed Mediterranean restaurant (from the book obviously) including dishes from every country around the Med: Italian (pizza), Spanish (chorizo, paella), Turkish/Greek (grilled lamb chops, falafal, shish kebab) and North African (harissa, tagine).
I had a bit of a tizzy moment when ordering. I had decided to order the calamari stuffed with chorizo and halloumi (too exciting) but was distracted by the Moroccan rabbit stuffed pastry cigars at the last minute. This confused my brain so much that I actually ordered the falafal! I had whole baby snapper for my main course and Sean had grilled lamb chops, followed by swordfish.
The falafal were great and Sean commended the lamb chops as well. My fish came in a kind of herb crust, which was delicious and also with a kind of creamy chilli sauce, which was good in small quantities (I think it may have been a bit sickly if I'd eaten all of it). I also tried Sean's swordfish, which was heavy on the cumin. I mention this as a good thing.
The whole atmosphere was very "Mediterranean", it reminded me simultaneously of Turkey and Tunisia and by the time it came to dessert I was gasping for baklava. In some ways this was a shame as the desserts were extremely exciting: turkish delight, turkish coffee or halawa (not quite sure what this is) ice-cream and loads of other exiting things including at least two that I had no clue what they were. Perhaps next time I will order the dessert tasting plate, but as it explicitly says "for two" on the menu and I know I can't rely on Sean to help me so it seems a little ambitious.
The "baklava and petit fours" option also said "for two" but I reckoned I could manage two servings worth of petit fours. In this case I may well have been wrong but we will never know as Sean ate his whole half of the baklava! I was astounded. We got 6 large assorted pieces of baklava and cut them all in half. They were all fantastic although I had a couple of favourites. I have no way of indicating which these were though as I'm not even sure what each was made of, let alone what they are individually called.
We finished with mint tea, which was surprisingly (and pleasingly for me, not so for Sean) unsweetened with complimentary turkish delight. The service was a little crazy throughout the meal but the food was so good I could forgive them anything.
In other news: I made chocolate truffles (and hence myself very sick) and we visited a local Italian (also in the book) which was OK but a bit disappointing.
posted by Zoe at 6:19 PM
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