Amy, my foodie sister, who was introduced in my earlier post about Mudgee, was kind enough to inform me of a festival of gastronomic delights happening much closer to home. The Taste of Sydney Festival was being held in the lovely Centennial Park in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs for one weekend in March - and after looking at the menu, I leapt at the chance to go. A who’s who of the Sydney restaurant scene – including Becasse, Balzac, Berowra Waters Inn, and Jonah’s for those who like name dropping – would be serving up some of their classic dishes for very affordable prices (well, for this standard anyway). I almost fell off my chair when I saw Balzac’s bread and butter pudding on the list – my other foodie buddy Adrian (who recently took me to a 4 hour eating extravaganza at Rockpool) had taken me to Balzac for the degustation several years ago and I still remembered that phenomenal dessert.
Dark clouds loomed as we parked the car at 5pm and made our way across Centennial Park. After a few minutes of walking, the sky opened – and our little umbrella shared between three was no match for the downpour. Eventually we gave up and trudged through the pelting rain – me feeling very much like I was back in South East Asia in the wet season. The sun came out as we finally got to the venue, but it took many more hours for our clothes to dry.
However, the state of my clothes didn’t dampen my enthusiasm when I walked in. Not only were there numerous restaurants, but hundreds of stalls offering food, wine and beer tasting, books, cooking demonstrations…Amy and I watched as Thomas Schnetzler from the Lindt chocolate store made mouth watering chocolate mousse in a kitchen that looked like it had been ripped straight out of a high end restaurant and plopped in the middle of the park. But this was only a brief stop as we moved onto the more important things – namely, eating.
We had each bought a $50 pack for the event, which included a $20 entry fee and $30 worth of food vouchers. We carefully planned between us what we would buy and took turns leaving our table (which had been very hard to find and we were at pains not to lose) to get food. We tried tempura ricotta filled zucchini flowers with basil pesto sauce from Jonah’s. We tried prawns with peanuts, lime, ginger, coconut, chilli and caramel from Sailors Thai. We tried veal rolled in parsley, pinenuts, sultanas and garlic with fresh tomato from Buon Ricardo….and many more, all washed down with a glass of Blanc de Blanc from de Bortoli. However, as dessert loomed, we knew we had a problem. Too much food, not enough money!! So we ended up buying $60 more of food vouchers and having 5 desserts (including, of course, the bread and butter pudding). While I felt a little ill from that amount of money I had spent on food, I rationalised to myself that to spend only $50 to try 13 dishes from 9 of Sydney’s top restaurants was actually quite an achievement.
We spent the next hour wandering through the stalls, tasting some cheese here, some chocolate there. I was delighted to find an olive oil producer from Wagga (my husband is from Wagga, and every time we visit his family we stop by the Charles Sturt Winery for some cheese and wine – so now I have even more reason to go to Wagga!) I tasted once again the yummy cheeses from the Hunter Valley, and had some extraordinary chocolate that was infused with raspberry tea. I saw the stall from the cupcake shop in Surry Hills advertised in delicious a few months ago, and was reminded of how much I want to run my own bakery. However, after awhile, our wet clothes started to feel cold, and our pockets empty of money, and we decided to make our way back to the car. As we started to walk, it started to spit rain, and we put our own ponchos that we had been given as we arrived at the event (a little late for us by then…) and hoped for the best. Thankfully we were much more lucky this time – as soon as we stepped in the car it started pouring rain again!!!
I’m not entirely sure what the next post will be about – hopefully you won’t be waiting too long for it (although I can’t promise anything, as the last few weeks of my Masters degree is looming…)
[...] Original post by reviewsbysu [...]