As you may have guessed, I am of the firm belief that a girl has to eat. By that I mean good food. Hopefully of the gloriously delicious kind: the kind so wondrously tasty, so mouth-wateringly yummy, so tantalisingly good that on first contact with your taste buds it stops you dead in your tracks and sends you immediately to high heaven.

At Floridita’s (a bar-cum-club-cum-restaurant), one gets the sense that it isn’t the kind of place that is about the food one eats. Floridita regularly showcases live Cuban bands, flown in all the way from Havana, that churn out sexy, sultry, seductive tunes. Lots of guys and gals float around the bar, downing copious amounts cocktails (starting from £7.50) and other beverages of the alcoholic kind. Those that are deft at salsa dancing demonstrate their spicy Latino moves to the beat of the hypnotic Cuban rhythms. And for those who don’t make it onto the dance floor early on in the evening, as the night wears on some inhibitions are invariably lost, and the dance floor becomes a concentrated mesh of human flesh. In the context of this setting as backdrop, it therefore seems rather appropriate to paraphrase my favourite saying to describe the kind of intentions at Floridita: “men are meat”, and yes, yes, “a girl has to eat”.

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Some say cookbooks are the new porn. I personally find them quite entertaining, if, and only if, there are lots of photos, and only if the photos are all of hot and steamy dishes. Visually stimulating, they can arouse my senses and heighten my desire for that nourishing-looking morsel on the page, immediately transporting me into a heavenly world of exquisite comfort eating.

As I scanned the menu at Champor-Champor, a fixed-price affair (2 courses, £25; 3 courses £29.50), I also wondered whether menu porn could be considered the new porn too. A good menu can be a titillating promise of the tasty things to come. It can occasionally be a tease too, making you want all that is offered when all the while you know it won’t be possible. On this menu, sandwiched in between the starters and the mains were the interestingly entitled inter-courses (with a £2.80 supplement). Porn anyone?

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Pork belly at The Restaurant at the 3 Weeds

In a few days I am sadly due to leave the glorious sunny and temperate Sydney shores to traverse my way over many seas back to the onset of autumn in London. Like a good movie, a splendid ending was called for. I wracked my brains, wanting a memorable story with a grand dining finale. So like a good location scout, I searched and searched and think I found the spot. It’s called The Restaurant at the 3 Weeds, and here is my story…

The story:
The story begins when, as a little six year old girl, I first registered the existence of the 3 Weeds Pub in my young consciousness. Back then, it was known as the Rose, Shamrock and Thistle, a pub situated roughly somewhere halfway between where I used to live and where I went to school. There would be many occasions when I’d walk past it, realising it was a place where those big grown ups would go to drink and be merry.

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Mini vanilla cupcakes with chocolate icing

Things have gotten desperate. I was only half an hour away from having lunch and I found myself in dire need of a cupcake. This time I decided to try The Cupcake Bakery, one half of the cupcake duopoly in Sydney’s city centre (the other half being Cupcake on Pitt). Unlike Cupcake on Pitt where there are over two dozen flavours, there are only 12 flavours on offer at The Cupcake Bakery, predominantly the perennial favourites such as vanilla on vanilla, chocolate on vanilla, chocolate on chocolate, etc. They are perhaps not as creative or as prettily decorated as the cupcakes offered at Cupcake on Pitt, but a cupcake is a cupcake after all, and I was unable to stop myself, lunch or no lunch.

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Note: Sadly this restaurant closed in 2012.

Sirloin steak with garlic butter

Many moons ago I was beckoned to Bird Cow Fish on the back of some glowing reviews when it first opened in the trendy inner-city Sydney suburb of Balmain, although no doubt I’d have paid it a visit anyway on the sheer ingenuity of its name alone. For me, that particular experience was surprisingly memorable. I do not profess to be an amorous gnocchi fan, sometimes finding even superior versions to be a little starchy and heavy. So it was surprising to discover on that visit that it was the gloriousness of the gnocchi at Bird Cow Fish that wowed me, their version proving so incredibly light and delicate as to have the effect of melting in my mouth. Two and a half years ago, Bird Cow Fish relocated to a new farmyard, to another trendy inner-city suburb of Sydney, Surry Hills. Again I was beckoned, this time to see if I could recapture the taste that was.

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The fresh sashimi selection at Musashi

My modus operandi when perusing a Japanese menu is usually one of indecision. Having many favourites, I want to eat and order everything, from the sushi and sashimi to all the various different types of cooked foods. My Japanese food palate was well honed by a three-month home stay in Tokyo as a high school student when I was studying Japanese at school. My housemother was a wonderful cook, and extremely versatile, providing me with a tremendous introduction to Japanese cooking. There were many dishes that she made which I still reminisce about today. Not only were they delicious, they were also home-styled dishes, some of which I have never come across in a Japanese restaurant since.

Japanese was on the menu tonight as we headed to Musashi Restaurant. Named after one of Japan’s most famous Japanese samurais, Musashi Miyamoto, it is located towards the Chinatown end of town, on a not-so-trendy corner. However that certainly didn’t appear to have undermined its popularity. I could see from a distance as we walked towards the restaurant that there was a long queue and it was barely 7pm. As is my habit, I moaned about having to wait, but at least its policy of numbered ticketing for waiting customers allowed me a 25 minute wait time to overcome any indecision I may have had about what to select from the menu.

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What is it about Korean BBQ that always draws in the crowds? There is something about sizzling meat on the table in front of you that is so mouth-wateringly appealing. Korean BBQ is perhaps the most well known aspect of Korean cuisine, but travelling through South Korea a few years back opened my eyes to how expansive Korean food actually is, and it is not limited to barbequing meat. There is incredible variety, all tasty, and generally spicy with an abundance of garlic, ginger and red chilli paste. It’s also filled with lots of vegetables, so also extremely healthy. I loved my trip to South Korea, and for the most part it was due to the discovery of my love for Korean food. It’s interesting how memories of a holiday are often largely shaped and influenced by one’s memories of how much one may have enjoyed the food.

A fairly recent addition to the Sydney dining scene is the Korean restaurant, Live. Focusing mainly on barbeque, it also serves a range of different cooked Korean dishes. My favourite Korean dish is bibimbap, a dish with a rice base; it is topped with minced beef, finely chopped sautéed and seasoned vegetables, and a fried egg. When brought to the table, all the ingredients are then mixed through the rice. The rice is also flavoured with sesame oil which makes the dish quite fragrant. Wowed by the taste of bibimbap the first time I tried it in Seoul, I’ve never been able to resist ordering it at a Korean restaurant since.

Bibimbap

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One of the great things about dining out in restaurants in Australia is the BYO concept (bring your own). It is quite commonplace in Australia, although at the higher end of the dining scale, a corkage fee is usually charged. BYO makes dining out more affordable and of course ensures that your choice of wine is available. And should you forget to bring your own bottle or simply wish for only a cheeky glass, most restaurants have a wine list too. When dining out at a pricey establishment, this can help to ease the final heartache of the bill whilst allowing you to maintain certain dining standards.

So it was with this in mind that my sister and I tried to decide on which fine dining restaurants we wanted to feast at whilst I was in Sydney. However, we are both born with a foodie DNA, and both quite particular (although some might choose to say fussy). So indecision struck, despite a revamped approach to our dining budget, and I was left to busily browse through the Sydney Good Food Guide (2009) to try and secure a restaurant for a Friday night. Fumbling, I finally stumbled across the entry for Claude’s French Restaurant.

Claude’s French Restaurant opened in 1976, and as one might deduce from the name, serves French cuisine. I last visited Claude’s some ten years ago when it was revered as a destination restaurant. Since then it has placed a new head chef at the helm, so the Claude’s of yesteryear is no more. According to the Sydney Good Food Guide, the new chef Chui Lee Luk is the leading female chef in Australia, ‘bringing vigour and a new level of experimentation to the food’. Surely this promised to be one of the top restaurants in Sydney? My expectations were high and we set off with our own bottle in tow.

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