Akaneya on King St in Sydney has long been one of my regular haunts.

The food is good, it’s not too expensive, and it used to be close to where I worked, which meant the occasional lunch, but more often I’d go there for a quick dinner, and quite often takeaway when working in the office late.

I have several friends who also independently love this place.  I went there last night for dinner with Jamela and Stu, two of the aforementioned friends.  This is the second or third time we’ve been there together, and it’s becoming almost a tradition!

We started off with edamame (salty whole steamed soy beans) which was still nice and warm when served, I hate it when it’s served cold.  I always find edamame so addictive, to use an old marketing cliché, once you pop, you can’t stop!

For other entrées, we also had the gyoza which is nice but pretty standard, the deep fried soft-shell crab which is always lovely, and nasu dengaku which is grilled eggplant with an interesting miso based sauce.  I’m not usually a big fan of eggplant, but this is one of the exceptions.  It’s always piping hot when you get it, too hot to eat straight away, and the sauce and the flavour is exquisite, enough to overlook the texture of eggplant that I don’t usually like!

Next, on to the mains.  I had the sushi & sashimi combo, which is quite a large wooden boat filled with different types of, you guessed it, sushi and sashimi!  It had two different cuts of kingfish sashimi, two different cuts of salmon sashimi, tuna sashimi, scallop sashimi, salmon nigiri, kingfish nigiri, prawn nigiri, beef tataki nigiri, cooked tuna sushi and salmon sushi.  What a mouthful!  It was also served with miso soup which I never drink anyway so I can’t rate it.

The sushi and the sashimi were quite pleasant, as they always are at Akaneya.  It didn’t taste as fresh and amazing as Kokoroya in Maroubra that I raved about on this blog recently, but it’s still a good, dependable tasty meal. Read more

Ribs & Rumps has long been a favourite with locals in Manly.  It wasn’t until my company shafted me out to North Ryde that I discovered it was actually a chain, as there is a restaurant here too.

Sadly it is pretty much the only decent restaurant nearby the office now, not quite like the city :’(

Anyway, it means we do go there a fair bit for lunches on Fridays and the sort.  I was there last Friday, and finally ordered something which I’ve been meaning to for a while…

Grover and I decided to go halves in the mixed grill.  You get an assortment of Ribs & Rumps meats, chips & an egg.  What a perfect lunch!  You get a half rack of beef ribs, a half rack of lamb ribs, a sirloin steak, two or three lamb cutlets and a great tasting beef snag.  There is too much food here for one, it even sounds like a lot for two, but it’s pretty much the perfect amount. Read more

We went to Chequers at the Mandarin Centre in Chatswood, on Sydney’s North Shore recently with Mikey’s mum, sister, brother-in-law and two nieces for yum cha on a Sunday afternoon.

We only had to line up for about 5mins which apparently is quite good for Chequers.  I don’t understand why.

The food was standard yum cha fare.  It wasn’t bad, in fact it was nice, but it wasn’t anything amazing.  There are dozens, if not hundreds of yum cha restaurants in Sydney, and this would be ranked amongst the nice ones, but doesn’t stand out from the crowd.

There were six of us (one of Mikey’s nieces is two months old so obviously wasn’t eating with us!), so we had a wide range of the available food.  The gow gee were nice, as where the combination seafood dumplings and prawn rice noodle rolls.  The vegetables were so-so.

If you’re in the area and feel like yum cha, this isn’t a bad choice, but it might not be the best.  Some friends have told me Fook Yuen is the best in Chatswood, so I’ll be checking that out soon!

If you want great yum cha anywhere in Sydney, check out Zilver in Haymarket or Phoenix in either Manly or Rhodes (Rhodes is bigger, Manly has a nicer view).  I’ve also been keen to check Fu Manchu in Darlinghurst for some time, as I’ve heard good things about this.

The damage: I have no idea, Mikey’s mum snatched the bill away and paid it for us!

Nick’s rating: *** (three out of five)

My friend Niazi is moving back to Melbourne with his wife Gill.  One of their favourite Indian restaurants in Sydney is Mantra, at Ryde.

We have been there before with them, but as they’re moving to Melbourne this weekend, this Tuesday we decided to join them for one last Mantra meal.

Mantra is decked out in very loud, very colourful Northern Indian décor.  Apparently on some weekend nights they have a DJ and bellydancers!

There were nine of us this night, and we ordered a few entrées to share, naan, pappadums, raita and maybe eight mains or so, with both chilli and mango chutney.

A few of the carnivores amongst us decided to be vegetarian for the night (who knows why!?).  This meant that for perhaps the first time in my life, the number of veggoes at the table greatly outnumbered us meat lovers (3 to 1)! Read more

It’s very quiet at work this week, and there are only three of us IT folk actually in the office (out of maybe 20 normally).  We decided this Friday to take a longish lunch and my friend Kev drove us down to a restaurant that he has been raving about recently in Maroubra in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, Kokoroya.

Japanese food would probably have to be at the top of my list of favourite types of food, and I figured it would be difficult to please me.  The way Kev has been talking about it though, I did have high expectations.  I never expected my expectations to be so amazingly exceeded however!

This being one of Kev’s favourite restaurants (and I can understand why), we ceded the ordering to him, and he did a fantastic job.

The deluxe sashimi platter consisted of salmon, tuna, kingfish, prawn and scallop sashimi, and each were so fresh, and so divine that I think they would have to more than top my nicest sashimi experiences (even beating sashimi bars at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fishmarkets!).

The tuna was absolutely amazing, like the rest of the sashimi, it was so tender, the way that sashimi should be.  It all tasted so fresh, and was cut so perfectly that I seriously do not have the vocabulary to describe it. Read more

Last night I finally had the chance to go to a restaurant I’ve been dying to go to for years, but have never got around to it.  Like Red Lantern, this was another recommendation from my friend Mark.  Mark is currently living in Laos, and he was in town for a few days so we decided to have dinner with a group of friends from work, and we decided on Pizza e Birra.

It is of course, Italian for “Pizza and Beer” and is quite true to its name.  It’s basically a pizzeria, with only three pasta options on the menu and a shitload of pizzas, and a relatively large beer menu.  Pizza e Birra is located at 500 Crown St., Surry Hills in Sydney.

Pizza e Birra is always crowded, and as they take no reservations, you’re almost guaranteed to have to wait for a table, particularly if you have a large group of people.  There were seven of us, and we arrived at 7pm.  They offered to take one of our phone numbers and call us when a table was available.  We went to the nearby Clock Hotel to have a few beers while we waited.

We wandered back at about 7:45, and had to wait another 15mins or so for our table.

It was worth the wait however.  Both the pizzas and the pasta were fantastic.  The house labelled beer, made by a microbrewery in Melbourne was actually quite nice and went well with the pizza. Read more

I was in Hanoi, Vietnam this Christmas.  Why?  Well, my mum decided to move there and work for a year or so, so I went over to spend Christmas with her (blog entry on the trip to come).

Anyway, she doesn’t really have much of a kitchen in her apartment, and neither of us were that keen on cooking Christmas dinner anyway, so we decided to pay a visit to one of Hanoi’s finest eating establishments, Restaurant Bobby Chinn.

Restaurant Bobby Chinn is located in Westlakes (it recently moved), an area very popular with expats living in Hanoi.

They had a special six course Christmas day degustation menu which we of course chose over the à la carte menu. Read more

Generally I try to keep my birthdays low key, and are never inclined to have parties or anything in my honour.

I think as each year passes though, I’m becoming more likely to actually do something for my birthday.  Siboun and I have the same birthday, and so this year we decided to go to Red Lantern in Sydney’s Surry Hills for a joint birthday and Christmas dinner with a few friends.

We had a table outside, which unfortunately is covered as this particular night was beautiful.  The setting was still quite nice, and contained many eponymous red lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Read more