Cafe Giulia

Cafe Giulia is a popular haunt for Usyd students due to its proximity, HUGE portion and small price. Most of the menu are under $10, with some around $15. The portion size will satisfy any growing boy.

The menu is very extensive, from egg dishes to any bread stuff to pasta to salad to muesli.

The poached eggs were cooked perfectly, with runny yolks and all mmm... And boy, those were the biggest eggs I'd ever eaten! (yes, the plates were pretty big and piled high with stuff). They were very generous with the bacons too. The smoked salmon breakfast had a nice balance of flavour and I liked the potato hash. Lastly, the scrambled eggs (with extra hash) were massive! The eggs covered pretty much the whole plate. I guess they must've used at least 3 of the same mega big eggs. This will satisfy any cravings for scrambled eggs.

Overall, a nice all-rounder cafe, a must for egg lovers like myself. Will definitely be back soon with a big appetite! Since they have an open kitchen, be prepared to smell like a fried egg after your visit there.


Cafe Giulia 
92 Abercrombie St
Chippendale NSW

Trio Cafe

It's the Queen's birthday long weekend! For me, weekends are synonymous to a nice brunch in some fancy cafe. I have been going to Trio Cafe in Bondi Beach for a while. Yes, it can be hard finding a parking spot there, the food is not cheap, there is always a long queue (book your table if you don't wanna wait for an hour or so), but the food never disappoints.

Boss eggs - scrambled eggs with fetta & truffle oil served with sourdough toast, avocado & prosciutto ($21)

Big breakfast - two eggs (any style) with toast, bacon, mushrooms, sausage, oven-roasted tomato & a hash brown ($21)

My absolute favourite is the Boss eggs. I like the scrambled eggs here better than Bill's cafe. The feta and truffle oil combination is divine, along with the creaminess from avocado and saltiness from prosciutto. You can really taste the truffle here, and the portion is pretty big. My brother, on the other hand, always seems to order big breakfast wherever we go, what a guy! He opted for both sunnyside and scrambled eggs, along with all the other condiments that were well cooked. A substantial portion indeed.

Overall, one of my favourite brunch spots in Sydney and I will definitely be back soon. I might also try the dinner menu.


Trio Cafe
56 Campbell Parade
Bondi Beach NSW 2026

Erciyes Turkish Restaurant

I had this Middle Eastern food craze a few months ago. All I wanted to eat was the colourful dips. So much that they boy took me to Erciyes Turkish Restaurant in Surry Hills for the Valentine's day dinner. I was expecting somewhere more romantic but at least that means he listened to me! From the outside, this place looks like a dodgey takeaway joint, but they actually have a nice and spacious dine-in area next to that. 

We wanted to order the banquet but it's for at least a group of four, fine.... so we made our own 'banquet'.

Small mixed dips ($14)

Hot, toasted turkish bread

Small Greek salad ($10) 

Mixed grill ($29)

Sucuklu - Turkish sausage with garlic, egg and spices (spicy) ($13)

As you can see, we kinda went overboard with the ordering! The owner was really nice and he actually told us to stop ordering when we initially wanted more since he thought that it would be wasted. 

We started the feast with the small mixed dips, that came with a pretty big pile of freshly toasted Turkish bread. The 'small' mixed dips was actually a lot! It could've easily fed at least 4-5 people. Nothing beats freshly toasted bread with the dips. We also ordered a small (ie pretty big) Greek salad to create the illusion that we're eating healthily. The mixed grill was a mixture of lamb cutlets, kofte, lamb and chicken shish. Each one of them was really tender and well seasoned, one of the best mixed grill plates I've had. By this time, we were clutching our stomach only to realise that we still had another plate coming... no wonder the owner had to stop us from ordering more! The sucuklu (pide) was very flavoursome too, but unfortunately we couldn't even finish half of this. 

Overall, a very nice dining experience with reasonable price. We ordered so much and paid around $30 each. I am keen to try the banquet menu with a bigger group next time. I heard that there are some belly dancers performing on Friday and Saturday nights.

Erciyes Turkish Restaurant

409 Cleveland St

Surry Hills

Cheese fondue at Eiger Swiss Restaurant

One cold day I was craving for cheese fondue and a search in google took me to this restaurant in Parramatta Rd. As with most restaurants along that street, the front of the restaurant looked very run down but don't let that put you off.

The decor of the restaurant looked very homey and authentic. The owner was being very friendly in a strange way but it's not for me to judge I guess. Onto the food!

Snails in garlic butter (1/2 doz) ($11.50)

Crusty bread for the dipping action

Cheese fondue for 4 ($25/person)

Cheese porn

We started with an entree of snails in garlic butter. They were yum and we used the bread provided to mop up the sauce. And then a HUGE bowl of the molten cheese came in for our dipping pleasure. The cheese used was really sharp with strong alcohol flavour, which I think what an authentic cheese fondue should taste like (Emmenthal, gruyere, and lots of wine + kirsch lol). One of us was actually not a huge fan of sharp tasting cheese and he wasn't fond of that. I, as a proud cheese lover, absolutely savoured this! The 3 girls managed to mop up the whole bowl!

Some rules of cheese fondue that I know of:

- No double dipping!

- Each piece of bread must have the crusty part

- Use the crusty part to mop the different side of the bowl each time you dip it in to prevent the cheese from burning

- At the end of the dipping action, there will be this crust of cheese left in the bottom of the bowl, try not to fight for that.

Eiger Swiss Restaurant
552 Parramatta Road
Petersham
NSW 2049
(02) 9564 1160

Vacanza Pizzeria

I recently had a catch up with my dear vegetarian friend. We were planning to check out Iku wholefood in Bronte, but the food looked too healthy for us and we spotted a new pizzeria a few doors down the road. After a quick look up in eatability, this place had a whooping 8.7 ratings! So here we go :)

The place was like a bistro with a nice ambience, but low lighting so pardon the quality of the photos! It was a really nice place for a girly catch up though.

They have a large selection of vegetables, cheese, and cured meats for antipasto that can be completely customised. One portion (50g) costs $5.

Baked ricotta, basil & garlic grilled capsicum ($10), plus foccacia crust ($6) 

The friendly waiter suggested the foccacia crust so we can spread the baked ricotta on them. The foccacia crust came out warm and crusty on the outside and soft on the inside, it was one of the best I have had so far! The baked ricotta was nice and creamy, a perfect match with the foccacia crust.

Villa Verde - tomato, fior di latte, char grilled eggplant, fresh roasted tomato, provolene & basil

For me, pizza = meat, so this was actually my first time eating a vegetarian pizza and I thought it would have been fairly bland. But oh boy, how I was mistaken! I don't even know how to start describing this pizza, but the crust was the same as the foccacia crust we had for the entree, crusty on the outside, soft and pillowy on the inside, not too thick or too thin. The tomato base was really fresh, I could tell that it wasn't made with the canned tomatoes. The creamy cheese went really well with the slightly tangy tomato base. The star of this pizza was actually the roasted tomatoes! I am no vegie expert but I could tell that they were insanely fresh. When I bit into them, they burst in my mouth with all the freshness and flavour. The char grilled eggplant gave a nice touch too.

We were eyeing on the nutella calzone, but we were too full by the end of the meal, next time my babies! I will try the meat based pizza too next time.

Upon further research, it turned out that this place was voted as one of Sydney's best new pizza joints by Timeout magazine. Hopefully they can maintain the quality for a long time to come, unlike most other good restaurants.


Vacanza Pizzeria
261 Bronte Rd
Waverley, NSW 2024

Volcano Roll at Sushi Train

It's been months since the last time I updated this *gulps* Life has been hectic around the end of last year and laziness got the better of me :P Anyhow, happy new year 2011, happy chinese new year and happy early valentine's day! ;)

I believe Sushi Train was one of the first conveyor belt sushi places in Sydney, which is why many people refers to other sushi establishments with conveyor belt as 'Sushi train'.

It may not be as popular as when it first started because of the competition these days, but I have a firm favourite that I will always order everytime I go there - the Volcano roll!

If you have been to Kobe Jones, you must've tried their divine volcano rolls, for like $30 per portion. Sushi Train has the smaller version at $5 each!!! They taste almost as good too.

Volcano rolls - mini cream cheese rolls slathered with grilled scallops and crab sticks in mayonnaise and teriyaki sauce topped with fish roe

That blob of fish roe was supposed to be on top of the 'volcano' but it fell down when the waiter gave the plate to me. The volcano rolls is a nice balance between the sweet teriyaki sauce, savoury cream cheese, and the creamy mayonnaise. The whole thing is then blowtorched to give it a nice smoky flavour. MUST TRY!

This is only available in selected Sushi Train outlets (most of them should have this I think), and normally only for order. I'm sure they will get snatched away the moment they enter the conveyor belt :P

Sushi Train

Various location