LL Wine + Dine, Potts Point

Miss Piggy and The Boy dined as guests of LL Wine + Dine. The servings we were giving are much smaller than what you receiving when ordering off the menu (also it's quite dark in LL {and I had THREE cocktails} so apologies for the dark photos)!

LL Wine + Dine can be found nestled in the middle of Llankelly Place, one of my favourite streets in Potts Point. LL serves up delicious modern Asian food, cocktails and weekend yum cha and has been somewhere I've been keen to try out since...forever!

We start our even off with a few cocktails chosen for us by the friendly bar-tender. First is the

Botanical Fling - a Hendricks gin martini with St Germain elderflower, kaffir lime and lemon... shaken just like James Bond likes ($18.00). We also get to try the Limoncello Saketini with Yuzu sake, vodka and campari shaken with a fresh lemon and a burnt orange twist ($18.00). I love the sweet, sour and bitter flavours in this cocktail.

As we drink our cocktails we're taken on a tour of the restaurant. To say that the space LL Wine + Dine occupies has had a "colourful past" is the understatement of the century! The restaurant has had various incarnations as a sex shop, gambling den and "house of ill repute". There are secret rooms and exits all over the building and under the building is a tunnel that leads out to the harbour! It's fascinating.

 

Back at our table we enjoy a lovely glass of Mount Horrocks Watervale Riesling ’13 from the Clare Valley in SA ($13.00/glass). I'm not normally a fan of Riesling (too sweet) but I have to say this is a really enjoyable drop (I'm trying not to sound like a wine "snob" as I write that but I think I'm failing)!

The LL san choy bau of chicken with a spicy lime dressing comes served in an ice berg lettuce cup and is  topped with pine nuts and special croutons (normally 2 pieces for $11.00).  I really enjoyed this dish - it had all of the flavours of a traditional san choy bau with the addition of modern and surprising elements like pine nuts that gave the dish a nice textural element.

The roasted duck bun is a total winner! Pieces of lush, fatty duck are sandwiched in between a soft, doughy bun, and come coupled with cucumber, hoi sin sauce, shallots and sesame (1 piece for $6.50).

Next is a platter with crispy tofu with a black sesame and tahini sauce that is topped with snow pea sprouts, finished with seaweed and nanami togarashi seasoning (normally a large plate for $14.00).  Also on the platter is a little bowl with prawn and pork wonton with a chilli oil and aged dark vinegar sauce that is topped with silk egg, pickled mustard and shallots (normally 8 pieces for $16.00).

Our next tasty morsel is a little taste of the calamari  that is tossed with house blended chilli, sea salt and pepper served with a preserved lemon and gherkin dipping sauce and lemon wedges (normally $15.00 for a larger serving). Yes, gherkin dipping sauce! The flavour of the sauce isn't overwhelming, and the gherkins adds a little "zing"to each mouthful. Is there anything gherkins cannot do?

On the platter with the calamari comes a pan-fried prawn and scallop dumpling that is served with  wakame, chilli paste and a lemon mustard dipping sauce (normally $18.00 for 5 pieces).

There are a number of tempting looking mains on the menu but we go with the massaman beef curry ($26.00) as it's a firm favourite of mine. I love curries or stews that come with potato! The beef is fall-apart tender and comes with carrot, pototo and broccoli and is finished with crushed peanuts and fresh herbs. This is a perfect dish for the cooling weather - hearty and warming (and packed full of flavour too)!!

Our curry comes served with a bowl of tasty wok fried rice with BBQ pork, egg, garlic and shallot ($15.00). This is a GREAT fried rice and I have to be quick to get my share as The Boy is a fried rice lover from way back and declares this to be "excellent" as he scoffs most of the dish!

Who can resist a dessert cocktail - not me, even though there's work tomorrow!  The Clockwork Orange is a mix of vodka, Cointreau and white chocolate liqueur that is served martini style with an orange segment twist. It tastes exactly like a Jaffa...yum!

Speaking of dessert, the menu makes a sudden departure from all things Asian inspired and we're served jam doughnuts with raspberry sorbet! The donughts are filled with raspberry jam, though I think they would be pretty amazing with a more Asian filling such as Kaya Jam!

LL Wine + Dine is at 42 Llankelly Place, Potts Point. Phone them on 9356 8393.

The Village, Potts Point

Miss Piggy and guest dinned as guests of The Village.

The Village is a lovely restaurant tucked away at the beginning of Kellet Way in bustling Potts Point . Behind the facade of the courtyard's greenery you'd never know such a light, spacious, and modern restaurant existed. Potts Points best kept secret? Perhaps, but not for long.

My sister and I are here to try the "Ladies Lunch" menu on offer each Saturday. It's a great chance for a catch up and gossip over what turns out to be a lovely meal...and it's a great change for me to bust out of my Lite n Easy diet (tres yawn)!

Our lunch starts with a platter of beautiful mixed olives that are marinated with star anise giving them a lovely, but very subtle licorice flavour. The olives are accompanied by a generous sized bowl of mixed nuts that I try not to eat too much of as we've still got entrees, mains AND dessert to conquer.

Next up is a shared plate with: salt and pepper calamari with Parmesan aioli; a little jar of Sweet corn and basil cappuccino with tempura cauliflower (that my sister and I take turns in sipping from); a zesty salad of rocket pear and Parmesan with lemon oregano vinaigrette; and two bite sized butter nut pumpkin arancini w buffalo mozzarella and fresh basil. This a very generously sized platter and perfect for sharing.

With mains we get a choice of seared fillet of Huon salmon with marinated fetta, rocket and Parmesan salad or crispy skinned confit chicken with warm potato and shallot salad w red wine jus. My sister agree to get both and swap half way though our meals so that we get to try both options on offer. How's that for team work?

The salmon is well cooked, not too under and not too over...it's just right (Goldilocks would approve) and the skin is nice and crispy...though I would've liked it to be even MORE crispy (like, the salmon skin should be channeling it's inner pork crackling if you get my drift). The confit chicken is lovely and moist, again with a crispy skin. When I explain to my sister what confit actually is she agrees it's not exactly diet food...which is what makes it so tasty.

We're feeling very full by the time the dessert platter arrives, but it's too tempting to ignore. A little bit of everything is my favourite way to dine, less food envy that way!

The Village is at 1 Kellett Way, Potts Point.  Phone them on 8084 6057.

Harajuku Gyoza, Potts Point

Miss Piggy and The Boy dined as guests of  Harajuku Gyoza.

We're not long home from our week in Japan and we're really missing the vibrancy and kookiness of Toyko. Luckily for us a visit to Potts Point's newly owned Harajuku Gyoza transports us back to Japan...for an hour or two.

The Boy jumps right in and orders the kookiest thing on the menu, Frozen Beer ($7.00) and promptly gives himself a brain freeze. The beer is just regular beer that comes with a frozen, beer-flavoured slushie top. One for the beer fans I'd say.

I decide to keep things a bit more traditional and order a refreshing Iced Green Tea ($3.00). I like the tea isn't sweetened...it's a little bitter and perfectly Japanese.

We decide to order two types of Gyoza from the six or so varieties on offer. It's hard for The Boy to pass up an order of Grilled Pork Gyoza (5 pcs for $8.00) and the Grilled Duck Gyoza (5 pcs for $8.00) is too tempting for me not too order. I prefer the more subtle flavour of the Duck Goyoza as I often find the overtly porkiness of Pork Gyoza (or any pork dumpling, XLB included) a bit too...porky for my palette. Trying saying that last sentence in a hurry without getting tongue tied!

I really love the freshness of the Cucumber and Miso Salad ($5.00). The nutty tasting miso comes dolloped on top and is more of a thickish paste than the thin dressing we were expecting....not that there's anything wrong with that!

The White Sesame Salad ($6.00) is an absolute winner and gets two thumbs up from both of us and it comes with a few renkon chips hidden beneath the mound of freshly grated red cabbage and carrots. The creamy, white sesame dressing is so delicious I want to lick the bowl clean (I didn't, don't worry)!

The Chicken Karaage ($8.00) arrives at our table pipping hot and with a nice dollop of creamy Kewpie Mayonnaise on the side. Is Kewpie Mayonnaise one of the best things on the planet or what? What makes it SO much better than regular mayonnaise I wonder (besides the cute bottle I mean)?

There are two pork dishes on the menu here, but as we'd overdosed on Pork Katsu in Japan we decided to order a serve of Pork Belly Kakuni ($13.00). Thick, fatty pieces of pork belly wobble as we pick them up with our chopsticks.  The meat is so tender it breaks apart easily and it has a wonderful zesty flavour from being marinated in a mix of dashi, soy sauce, mirin, sugar and sake. Unlike the Gyoza I'm pleased to see they serve this pork in an even number so that we're not left fighting over who gets the last piece!

And last, but not least...a quick visit to the loos here reveals that this is truly an authentic Tokyo experience (honestly, I just don't get how these loos work - no wet tushy for me thanks Japan)!

Harajuku Gyoza is at 9-15 Bayswater Road, Potts Point. Phone them on 9356 3834.

Monopole, Potts Point

Miss Piggy dined at Monopole as a guest of Liquid Ideas and the City of Sydney Council as part of the #urbanOasisTour

Do you ever have a cafe or restaurant on your list even though you're probably never going to get there. Time and geography often conspire again me, so even though I wanted to go to Monople I just never thought I would...or not in the short-term anyway. Often places stay on my list for years, but thanks to a lucky break I got to lunch at Monopole as part of the recent City of Sydney #urbanOasisTour I went on.

We start our lunch with a chat from owner, Brent Savage. He tells us a bit about the philosophy of the restaurant including their focus on organic, bio-dynamic and preservative free wines - this gives them a more "earthy" flavour (a bit like raw milk cheese if you will). Monopole has focus on seasonable produce and they cure all of their own meats in house. As their space is so small this means a constant process of curing, us eating, and more curing. A labour of love I'd say.

We start of our lunch with a fantastic plate of house cures and pickles ($26 for a selection of 4 or $10 per portion). Here we have cured and smoked duck breast; pork neck; Rangers Valley tri tip (bottom of the sirloin); and also Rangers Valley cured beef brisket. I absolutely LOVED this plate of cures and it went perfectly with the glass of Prosecco we were quaffing. The meats were all so flavoursome and I enjoyed the fattiness of the duck that was offset by the zingy pickles. What a great lunch -- a plate of this with a wine is the perfect small lunch.

 

Next up is a mound of lusciously creamy mashed potato that is topped with meaty cubes of salt cod, green peas, pistachio and mint (normally $18). Marry this with some fresh Iggy's bread (normally $5.00) for a bit of carb-on-carb action.

The baby cucumber, celery, fennel and pine nut salad with rye bread (normally $16) was a lovely light dish, the flavours of which went really well with the stronger flavours of the cured meats.

I think the spiced leg of lamb, cherry tomatoes, Spanish onion and feta (normally $28) was one of my favourite dishes. The lamb was super tender with a nice char around the outer layer and the feta was so smooth and creamy. Superb.

Monopole is at 71A Macleay Street, Potts Point. Phone them on 9360 4410.

Harvest Monday: Wayside Chapel Rooftop Garden

Last weekend I was lucky enough to be invited on an #urbanOasisTour of Potts Point. The tour was organized by Sydney of City Council and PR agency Liquid Ideas and was run by balcony gardener extraordinaire, Indira Naidoo.  I'm in awe of Indira's balcony garden so if you've been following this blog for a while you'll already know I'm a {crazy} Indira fan and that she is the person who inspired me to start my own balcony garden.

On the tour we visited some of the gems in Australia's most densely populated suburb, including my beloved Room 10 Espresso, Monople, PoHo Florist and the Potts Point Market.  We were also lucky enough to pay a visit to Indira's garden - you can read about my other visit to her garden here.

I'm busting to share with you some of my photos from the tour of the INCREDIBLE rooftop garden at The Wayside Chapel.  The garden is so inspiring. The rooftop area is HUGE and there's even a beehive or two up there.  It is truly an oasis in this busy inner-city suburb.

This incredible space is maintained by visitors to the Wayside Chapel...many of whom are living rough. Some struggle with mental illness, drugs + alcohol. From what we're told life isn't easy, but these people have an opportunity to work in this spectacular garden - garden they've created. For some people it can be the leg up they need into a different life and some of the volunteers have found themselves gardening jobs with various councils and the like.

It may seem like a "so what" kind of thing, but I think involvement in a project like this garden possibly gives people a sense of belonging and ownership of a space and it's somewhere people can come that is tranquil and beautiful. There must be a HUGE sense of achievement when the visitors see their plants growing and thriving.

I love Alan's story -- from the Wayside Chapel website -- I met him on my last visit to the rooftop and he told us that this garden really has changed his life.

“The garden is a haven. A lot of hard work has gone into it and it’s a great little place to get away and relax. The garden has come to life over the last couple of months. I enjoy seeing it grow and the little vegetables are great. I’ve had a bite of the odd lettuce leaf and they’re full of flavour. I was homeless there for a while. I was living on the trains and I got myself into a lot of trouble and was in dire straits; my own fault. Wayside helped me. I became involved in the garden and I feel completely at home here.” – Alan, Day to Day Living Participant

 

I think there's a good message in this garden for all of us -- that connecting with nature, even if it's just one pot on your kitchen windowsill is important for your urban soul.