There are few things I love as much as my mum’s pavlova. She made me one last night – just because. Awww.
food
Chinta Ria – Temple of Love
I love love this place. We went to Chinta Ria for lunch to welcome a new work colleague – the perfect way to spend a Friday.
Roti – yummmm.
Vege hokkien noodles.
My teams chows down.
Wi Marn Thai Restaurant
Alec and I frequently get awesome takeaway from Wi Marn in Chatswood and decided to track them down to eat in-house on Monday night.
Wi Marn is located in Help St, Chatswood, near the station. It’s a delightful place, really traditional Thai decor and very polite attentive staff.
Alec ponders his menu choice.
Vege spring rolls. Crisp and filled with yummy things.
My vege fried rice. Lots of big chunks of veges hidden in there.
Alec’s lemon chicken. He said it was delicious and the sauce smelt amazing.
I would highly recommend this little gem of a place. Alec and I will be back.
Dinner At Longrain
For Brandon’s last night in Sydney we went to dinner at Longrain in Surry Hills. Longrain don’t take bookings (at least on Saturday nights like when we went), so we had to wait in the bar area for an hour and a half till they had room for us. The bar area was really funky and they served appetisers and amazing cocktails.
Longrain isn’t my fave restaurant – I tend to think it’s popular because it’s trendy, not because it’s amazing. I hate to be negative, but it’s just not the kind of restaurant I like. Firstly, I’m not a fan of the atmosphere – it’s quite loud, so I find it really hard to hear what people are saying. It also take s a long time to get food, so I would recommend eating in advance – we were there at 6, sat down at 7:30 and my food arrived at 8:15. By that stage I was so hungry I had eaten two bowls of plain rice out of desperation.
Longrain is a bit of a “sharing” restaurant, where you order big dishes between several people – except we ordered our own food, which arrived at stages, so some people got food straight away, and others had to wait 30 minutes. Not cool! I also didn’t think the service was great. Very poor in face, compared with other restaurants of similar price. I also thought it was over-priced. Alec ordered snapper – it was $50. For one fish – just the fish, with nothing else. He did say it was amazing fish though 🙂 Last thing I wasn’t impressed with was the lighting – really dark and none of my photos turned out after the sun went down.
On the plus side, we had a really great night. Really great friends and conversation.
Janice and Andy want their beverages. Stat.
Self-portrait.
Seb loves his beer.
More beer!
Janice’s cocktail.
Prawns.
Oysters.
Calman chugs back an oyster.
Dessert tray.
Valentine’s Day
Alec has been pampering me today. Breakfast in bed and cooking me dinner tonight – my favourite kind of pizza and salad.
Bocconcini, basil and Roma tomato pizza ready to go in the oven.
Yum. Ready to eat.
Spinach, tomato and feta salad.
Alec giving the salad a good toss.
Ready!
Sweeney Todd – The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street
It’s worth knowing before seeing this movie that is based on a musical and is extremely blood-thirsty. Interestingly, Wikipedia says this may or may not be based on a real story (minus the singing I would presume). Spoiler alert below, so be warned.
Sweeney Todd is set in London around the time of Jack the Ripper, and centres around the character Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp), a barber who is returning to London after 15 years of enduring some kind of punishment/banishment that we never find out much about.
Sweeney in his youth was called Benjamin Barker, and he was married to a beautiful woman and had a gorgeous daughter. An evil high judge however has his eye on his wife, and charges Benjamin with something false (I’m not sure again what this was – it was skipped over) to get Benjamin out of his way.
Fast-forward 15 years and Benjamin now calls himself Sweeney Todd, and is back for his wife, daughter, revenge and some random serial killing.
Sweeney meets Mrs Lovatt (Helena Bonham Carter), who has opened up a pie shop under his former apartment (how is it his apartment is still vacant after being missing for 15 years? ), who tells Sweeney that his wife poisoned herself and the judge adopted his daughter as his ward.
Thus starts Sweeney’s cycle of violence, blood shed and revenge – although he takes revenge in an interesting way – by slaughtering his customers and turning them into pies… This was the point where I started to feel quite ill.
The singing was also really off-putting. Some musical translate really well to film, like Hairspray, which incorporated the songs into the action. In Sweeney Todd, however, I found the songs dragged on and diverted the attention from the story. The music actually was really great – as you would expect from an award-winning musical, and the cinematography was similarly fabulous, recreating gothic London in all its dirty glory.
I was hoping in vain for a happy ending so I could go home and not have nightmares, but it wasn’t to be. I had to watch So You Think You Can Dance on TV when I got home to distract myself and get to sleep!
After the bloody massacre, we were feeling ill, but still needed to eat. We stumbled upon this little place near the cinema – Mr Wong’s Kitchen. What a find it was! We will definitely be going back again – it was super clean, great service and fabulous food.
My vege fried rice and Alec’s combination chow mein.
I’m having trouble finding the address of Mr Wong’s, but it is in a little arcade just to the right of the movie theatres on George St, Sydney.
Melbourne Long Weekend – Day 3
We booked into our hotel – the Grand Hotel managed by Sofitel on Spencer/Flinders Sts. It’s perfectly located, near the Google office and right near the shops, water and trams. It’s a really lovely old school hotel, beautifully refurbished with modern amenities. We had a problem with our hot water, but they were extremely helpful so no complaints here!
Alec takes a look from the balcony.
Our awesome room.
Out and about. The giant purse is awesome.
The heritage-listed Shot Tower in the middle of the shopping centre.
Alec takes a break in Fitzroy Gardens.
The museum complex.
Hot Rod show at the museum complex.
Cars with amazing paint jobs.
On a tram!
All aboard!
At the Melbourne Aquarium.
I couldn’t get this guy in focus, but he was super cute.
View of Melbourne from the aquarium.
Alec checks out a strange exhibit.
I don’t remember what this was …
Jellyfish … ewwww.
Blubbery!
Japanese spider crab. Freaky!
Giant happy ray.
The fish viewing room. Cool!
We met Alice and Jamie for dinner at the 100 Mile Cafe. It serves only food that has been sourced within 100 miles.
This bread was yuuuum.
Alec’s entree. No idea what is under that green stuff.
Alice’s seafood spring rolls.
My entree – I don’t remember what it was called, but it was full of vege stuff and had an amazing dressing.
My vege plate.
Alec’s beef.
Jamie’s vege dish.
“I’m not a tree hugger!”
Walking back to the hotel we saw all kinds of cool sculptures lit up around the city.
Wildlife Photographer Of The Year
What do you do on a rainy Saturday but go to a gallery.
Alec and I went to the Australian Museum for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.
We also saw a photographic exhibition called Face to Face while we there that was about gorillas and other monkeys. It consisted of 30 huge portraits of monkeys that lived in sanctuaries – the majority of whom were orphaned when their parents were killed for the meat trade or so they could be taken into the live animals trade. Many were kept as pets, many kept in tiny cages for years. So sad.
The WPotY exhibition was amazing. Here are a selection of my favourites.
After the great photos we grabbed some lunch in the Myer foodcourt.
I love Hokka Hokka – who says fast food can’t be healthy?
Lindt Cafe
I had a quick stop in yesterday at the Lindt Cafe with Bev. It was my first visit there actually sitting down and ordering something.
The menus – duh – mainly chocolate, but with a few sandwiches. I decided to go straight for dessert, and had a shake with milk chocolate and blended Lindt ice cream, and a Lindt chocolate cake. They wore both pretty expensive, but still really tasty.
I remembered my camera this time, but forgot the memory card. Thankfully my iPhone is always there to help me out. Bless you iPhone.
Mmmm $6 shake. This would not have gone down well in Pulp Fiction.
Very thick chocolate mini cake. It was $6.
Shop filled with chocolate goodies.
Enchanted and San Churros
Lisa and I have been dying to see this uber-girlie movie, so we met up in Chatswood today for a gossip session and emo movie fest.
Enchanted is such a Disney movie. It starts as a cartoon – very typical Disney, with a singing prince and princess and cute animals. Giselle and Prince Edward meet and fall in love. Edward’s step-mother doesn’t want Edward to marry and take the crown from her, so she sends Giselle to a place where there are “no happy ever afters”, which turns out to be New York City.
Giselle is completely lost and doesn’t understand the world into which she fell, so it’s very fortuitous when she runs into Robert (played by McDreamy – Patrick Dempsey) and his daughter.
While Giselle is trying to find her way home and adjust to life in reality, Prince Edward comes to NYC as well to find his “true love”. Some of the best moments in the movie come in these moments – with Giselle cleaning the house with the help of rodents and Edward riding on top of a us and stabbing it, to “kill the beast”.
Will Giselle get home? Will she even want to? A completely adorable fantasy movie that put me in a very cheery mood.
After the movie Lisa and I went to San Churro for … churros!
I tried a shake this time – a chocolate shake with cookie bits in it. It was delicious!
Churros with caramel dipping sauce. It was divine and even better than the chocolate. It had real caramel, rather than that sugary fake caramel that I loath. Yuuummmm!
