A good shopping day for Sean

We went out for breakfast at Bill's this morning. There are two of these establishments in Sydney, started by celebrity chef Bill Granger (who has gone even further than Jamie Oliver in celebrity endorsement by releasing a CD of "songs Bill likes to listen to") and which, according to the New York Times, serves the best scrambled eggs in the world.

Given this, I was surprised to find that it wasn't in The Book and a scan of online reviews showed the service to be considered poor and the food mainly average. As usual the knowledge on the web proved to be more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica and a) the dishes recommended were very good (scrambled eggs, ricotta hot cakes and hot chocolate) and b) the service was abysmal. A poorly managed no-booking policy, staff who seemed to have been instructed to ignore the customers and a slow kitchen explained all the poor reviews. However the fact that my ricotta hotcakes were so good I would consider going back despite this explains why the cafe was full.

We moseyed back through town, past (and via) the games shop where Sean found a cool retro backgammon board of the type he usually has to bid for on eBay. There was only one so I'm not sure whether they are being manufactured wholesale or it was a relic of a previous run.



Coca Cola board - closed



Coca Cola board - open

Sean then bought a pair of trainers (ostensibly what we were shopping for) and we finished by going to the guitar shop to "buy a new microphone for the computer".

This is the result.



Sean plays his new Strat

A new backgammon board and a new guitar. What a day!

p.s. Broadband is currently working. But who knows for how long?

It continues

No more fluffy posts about nice things we have had to eat, I'm afraid. It looks like all future posts are going to be regarding the absolutely poor state of our internet connection.

After being down all weekend, it started to work again on Monday at 7am. No word from AAPT regarding this and as it was fixed overnight on Sunday evening I doubt that it was because a Telstra engineer was fiddling with something to actively fix it.

By yesterday there was still no word from AAPT regarding why the broadband connection had broken, which I thought was pretty poor. However, since it was working I just couldn't muster the energy to sit on hold and tell them they were rubbish.

Until last night, when it broke again just after I finished work (I suppose it could have been worse....). I called this morning and apparently there is a big problem with the exchange and Telstra don't know when it will be fixed. The problem is analogous to our Tube escalators; apparently the machines are so old that Telstra have trouble getting parts. Good.

I accepted their offer of a backup dialup connection so we are connected, but slowly. They are going to chase Telstra today and then I need to call them back to check what happened. Why can't they call me? Well the guy on the phone said that he could tell the admin team to call me but they're very busy so they might not get round to it.

With Telstra's monopoly of the lines and inability to deliver, it's hardly surprising that wireless internet is so popular in this country. If only it wasn't so expensive....

Internet problems

The Tuesday before last, which was Melbourne Cup day (everything in Australia stops for a horse race; in Melbourne it is a public holiday) my internet connection broke in a strange way. This was mildly inconvenient but I went to Starbucks to check my email and connect to my work network and it wasn't too much of a disaster. I had called AAPT support and was told that it would be "escalated" and someone would call me when it was fixed. No one called, but I noticed at 4pm that the magic light was flashing on the modem and sure enough, it was working. AAPT had no idea how it had been fixed.

Today, it has broken again. In the same way, without any explanation. Today it is not mildly inconvenient. It is a bit of a disaster. That is because today I have to upload a 250MB file to one of my customers. This is definitely too big for Starbucks (my laptop would run out of power first) so I have had to follow a convoluted plan.

I checked my emails, did some final testing and searched on "internet cafe" in Starbucks. I then went to Everywhere Internet, which conveniently lets me plug my laptop into the internet. This is better than Starbucks and next time (!) when it breaks I will go there instead.

I connect and ask it to upload my file. Expected time 8 hours. Hmmm. 8 hours sitting in an internet cafe. Do they have a faster connection? No.

I sit down reluctantly and then the assistant performs a most amazing piece of customer service. Did I want a faster internet connection? Global Gossip have ASDL 2 and are 1 1/2 blocks away. I packed up and the assistant gave me my deposit back without charging me for the time I had already spent trying to upload. What a result.

Global Gossip would let me connect my laptop, but it turns out that I need to go to a different branch to get ADSL. This is not far, but they may not have a machine and I cannot connect my laptop there (because the ceiling has fallen in in the part of the shop where I would do that). The guy helpfully emails the other store to see whether they have any machines free and I set off.

Luckily I can cope with not connecting my laptop since I have precipitously (I am not sure that it is correct word) copied the file onto a CD and I am allowed to put that into a machine. (I thought they didn't let you do that because of viruses?)

I have to use IE to upload, rather than Filezilla. This is not good, the connection has already reset once. But it is underway now and I have my fingers crossed.

Broadway Jazz

I just made a mistake that cost me two hours of my life.

Sean is out with work this evening and I couldn't go dancing this morning so I thought I would make up for it by going this evening.

At 6:30pm I went to a class by Ramon very similar to my usual class. All well and good (in fact it was an excellent class). As Sean wouldn't be back until late I thought I'd stay on and do another class.

There were two available: Funk or Broadway Jazz. Hmmm. Funk. Broadway Jazz. Looking back the choice seems obvious. I know what Ramon would have recommended if I had asked him (like I would have done if I hadn't been too scared). However I chose Broadway Jazz.

The class seemed a bit odd when I went in. It was mainly young girls and a lot of them appeared to be dancing in heels. Zac (the teacher - I had him once before as a Ramon stand in) did a 10 minute warm up (with Ramon we do almost an hour warm up) and then said let's go through a routine.

OK, so we didn't do a proper warm up and it was to Broadway music but a routine must be quite normal, right? Well.... I hadn't done a lot of the moves for a while (flick your hand a bit, step on your toe and put your knee up) so I wasn't expert, but Zac seemed to just do them and everyone got them instantly. I was confused until I realised that they were practising a routine that they had been doing for the past few weeks for the dance show at the end of the year.

The whole thing was a complete disaster and as I didn't know the routine and can't go to the show anyway I felt like a bit of a wolly. Had I been 13 I probably would have cried. However being an adult, I got on with it and tried to enjoy myself and counted the minutes down.

Still 2 hours gone, no dancing fun and no exercise (it was more posing to the music than dancing). Next time, funk. I console myself by thinking that the funk class was probably practising for the show too and their routine will have been hard.

Lunch at the Fishmarket

Yesterday we finally went for lunch in the fish market. We got up and had breakfast early so we were hungry at just the right time.

The weather has been a bit temperamental lately but this weekend it has been lovely and warm (too hot for Sean, but I'm starting to get used to it). We walked to the fish market and were pretty warm by the time we got there. We had a look around and decided to get lunch from Christie's as they are well known as the best place for buying raw seafood in the fish market.

We decided to get a standard seafood platter for two, comprising fish, octopus, scallops, prawns, oysters and calamari. We had a problem once we'd bought it though; there was only one table free and it didn't have any chairs. We went outside to look for a table but they were all full with some people having resorted to sitting on the grass and many others hovering. We went back to our chairless table and managed to secure a single chair.

The platter itself was pretty disappointing. The fish was OK but not great, similarly the calamari. The prawns were drowned in thick batter and the octopus was in a sweet chilli sauce. The scallops were cooked in garlic butter and the best thing on the plate. The chips were also good - but we didn't come for chips!

We got two different types of cooked oyster to try, which was very exciting. The first was Oyster Mornay. I had seen these available uncooked to take home and also lobster mornay. This had led me to hope that in fact it was not the thick, slightly tasteless mornay sauce that I learnt to cook at school but more like a thermidor sauce. It was the former. However the other oysters - Kilpatrick - were fantastic. Topped with a mixture of tomato and worcester ("Kilpatrick") sauce and chopped bacon they were really tasty.

So although not a spectacular lunch we learned a couple of useful things: always get a table before ordering and choose what you want rather than having a mixed platter. I'm just looking forward to next time....

Cupcake

I finally bought myself a cupcake from Cupcakes on Pitt the prominent cupcake store in the centre of town that has been tempting me since not long after we moved here.

The choice was pretty vast and has put me off before. I was just thinking that I couldn't decide between the ones in the window when I saw a white chocolate cupcake section inside the shop that wasn't in the window display. It included a chocolate coated strawberry. I was sold. On my way out, I decided that next I would try the choc-jaffa and tiramisu cakes.



White chocolate Cupcake

Looks good huh?

It didn't taste good. In fact it tasted almost exactly like a couple of reviews I had read on the internet. I had discounted the reviews (optimistically) as lots of other people had said the cakes were OK.

The most relevant reviews were (I think they put it better than me):

• The cupcakes are dry and the frosting too airy and sugary and tasting of artificial flavours.


• I'm sure the cake is not prepared from scratch (bit of a shame), but the icing is really unpleasant - it should lovely soft frosting but I think they use 'mock' cream with sugar in it - not nice!

You can read the full list here. Looking back there seem to be quite a few that say that the cakes are rubbish. I think I was possibly a little over-optimistic. Who are these people who said they were good though? They clearly know nothing about cake.

Quay

We've ticked off another three-hat restaurant from the book. This was is called Quay and is round the corner from the Opera house in the Overseas Passenger Terminal at Circular Quay.

I picked it as the best restaurant to visit next on the grounds that it won best restaurant in Sydney in 2003 and 2005 and a dessert from there is featured on the front of The Book.

We went with the UK chief executive William, so I have three sets of dishes to report on rather than two, although Sean and I spoiled that somewhat by having the same main course. My choice was slightly limited by the superabundance of mushrooms (all fancy ones) on the menu.

William had spring vegetable salad with flowers and herbs, goat's curd cigars and lemon jam to start. I had been tempted by this but it seemed a little unexciting compared to the other starters. It looked very exciting when it arrived though - the "cigars" were pastry cigars and the salad looked good as well. I had the mud crab congee, which contained very little rice and a lot of crab. It was absolutely delicious - as soon as I started eating it I wanted to order another one! Sean had one of the most complicated starters, this was "Crisp confit of rare breed suckling pig belly, gentle braise of green lipped abalone, cuttlefish, handmade silken tofu, Japanese mushrooms" Sean said it was nice, although the tofu part only got an "alright".

For main course Sean and I both had "Roasted John Dory, gentle braise of sea scallops, spring vegetables" and William had the complicated one: "Crisp skinned Murray Cod, shaved baby squid, abalone, congee rice, shiitake, fresh water chestnuts, black moss". The John Dory was fantastic and William similarly complimented the Cod. All of William's accompaniments were in very small quantities, we struggled to find the black moss but eventually did (it did just look like black moss but I have no idea whether it really was a moss).

Sean had cheese and so I had the five-texture chocolate cake to keep him company. Unfortunately none of the textures was actually "cake"; there was chocolately, biscuity base, chocolate mousse, chocolate layer on top (it was exceptionally nice chocolate), white chocolate ice-cream in the middle and then chocolate sauce poured into the middle (melting the ice-cream and forming a pool) for the fifth texture. It actually provided a sixth as well - towards the end it started setting. The pudding was OK, lots of restaurants do chocolate puddings of this ilk and I'm rarely impressed (although strangely unable to not order them) - I prefer a simple home-made chocolate torte. Next time I will have the "Caramelised raspberry and rose scented mille feuille", which is the dish featured on the front cover of the SMH Good Food Guide. The cheese looked fantastic. I missed the exact descriptions as I was having chocolate sauce poured at the time, but one was a sheep's milk cheese, one was Roquefort and on a soft French (-style?) cheese. They went pretty quickly.

We were also brought petit fours with out tea, although disappointingly there was only one type and it was a rather sickly chocolate cigar with caramel cream. Still, I managed to eat my two and Sean's two.

Canberra and Catherine de Medici

So much to do and so little time to blog!

Last weekend we went to see our friend Carrie, who since we last saw her has moved to Canberra and become a famous published author.



Carrie in the Paper!

We flew to Canberra with Quantas and despite being kept on the runway for half on hour on the way out, I thought that the flight was pretty painless. The check in times are really short for domestic flights and the actual flight itself is only half an hour. By the clever use of food, Quantas render it seemingly instantaneous. You lift off and put your seatbelt on. Then they turn the lights off and give you a snack (biscuits and tea on the way out, dried fruit, nuts and fruit juice on the way back) and then all of a sudden it's time to put your seat belt back on to land.

We had a bit of a snooze when we got to the hotel and then Carrie and Daniel (Carrie's partner) came and met us about 4pm. We then went up the Telstra tower, which is very similar to the tower in Sydney; it even has a revolving restaurant! The view is a bit different though, look at all those trees!



View from the Telstra tower in Canberra



Man made lake designed as part of Canberra

We had tea in the Telstra tower and then went for a drink in the Phoenix, described by Carrie and Daniel as the only real pub in Canberra (it was a good deal more real than any of the ones we've been to in Sydney) and for a Canberra curry.

On Sunday, we got up early, had a fabulous breakfast in the hotel (I had: a fruit course including whole poached plums, a yoghurt course, a Bircher muesli course, an English muffin course and cake - pain au chocolate, danish pastry and American muffin - course) and went for a look around the parliament buildings.



Australian Parliament

We then went to the National Art Gallery. We thought it was the National Portrait Gallery, but it's just as well we went to this one as it was great. We didn't really have time to look at everything and we will go back if we visit Canberra again. It had a cool silver ball thing outside. From the right angle it looks as if it is suspended in mid-air.



Cool silver ball thing

We had lunch with Carrie and Daniel at Sammy's, their local Malaysian restaurant. I tried a laksa for the first time - I've been meaning to do this for a while as it seems to be almost the national dish in Australia. It was very tasty and exactly how I was expecting: very similar to Thai soups and Malaysian/Thai curry. And then we had to go home....



Carrie, Daniel and Me (Sean is taking the photo)

On Tuesday night we went for a meal at Coast restaurant in Cockle Bay Wharf. Cockle Bay Wharf is really just part of Darling Harbour so only 10 mins walk away. I saw the dinner, entitled Catherine de Medici: Teaching the French on the SMH website as the last event of good food month (they're big on food here). I recognised the restaurant as being in The Book, but I hadn't realised it was so close.

I took the camera and once again took zero photos, but I did take a menu home.



Menu (click to enlarge)

They were very good to me, they replaced my mushroom salad with an asparagus one and left the truffles off the soup. The food was all delicious; both of our favourites were the spuntino but the artichoke and broad beans came a close second for me. The cheese was more to my taste than Sean's (much like a second dessert course) and the pudding was not to Sean's taste at all so I got two. Result!

It was really interesting to see all the components of classic French cuisine that came from Italy, including onion soup, fois gras and duck a l'orange. She also insisted on separating salty and sweet courses; apparently everyone else at that time at sweet and savoury food together, American breakfast style. If you're interested, email me and I'll send you a scan of the blurb that they gave us to read (it's too large to upload).

Another restaurant success close to our door. It's getting hard to choose where to go when we go out!