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

Black Star Pastry

We went to this little pastry shop tucked away from the hustle and bustle of King St in Newtown after being intrigued by this article (yes, we came here a looong time ago). The owner, Christopher The, was also a former pastry chef at Claude's - all the more reason to check this place out!

Pretty looking cakes

The famous chocolate eclair that made it to Terry Durrack's list! Sadly this list didn't exist back then and we were too distracted by the other colourful goodies around them, so we didn't get to try them. Next time, my lovelies.

More traditional looking pastries; chocolate and caramel tart spotted!

The famous ginger ninja and naked ninja

We bought a ginger ninja too but I forgot to take a photo of it since we were too busy dissecting the ninja heh.

Strawberry, rose, watermelon cake ($5); lemon curd biscuit ($2?)

The strawberry, rose, watermelon cake tasted as good as it looked! This cake was layered with almond dacquoise sponge cake, cream, and watermelon slices sandwiched in between - very light and refreshing. I could've eaten 5 slices of these for myself. The lemon curd biscuit came in a bite size with tangy and smooth lemon curd on top of the crumbly and buttery biscuit base, moreish!

Custard tart ($5)

My friend ordered the custard tart. The custard filling was not overly sweet, but nothing to rave about.

Chocolate and caramel tart with a pinch of sea salt ($5)

The innards - photo courtesy of Ange

The chocolate and caramel tart had an awesomely gooey caramel layer sandwiched in between the chocolate cookie crust and the chocolate ganache. It was a sweetness overkill but oh so good! The sprinkle of salt in the middle helped to cut back (a bit of) the sweetness and accentuated the bittersweet flavour of the chocolate. This tart was my favourite along with the strawberry, rose, watermelon cake :)

Black Star Pastry

277 Australia St 

Newtown, NSW 2042