Asian Food Time

Similar to SF, there are HEAPS of Asian restaurants in Sydney. It even makes more sense than SF, since Asia is so super close to Australia. Most recently, I went to a delicious ramen noodle place called Menya with Kali and her coworker. The next night I met up with Jarrett, who just moved out to Sydney, for Thai at Spice I Am. Both restaurants were really cute little treasures. 

Here are my delicious noodles at Menya.

After Menya, we walked over to an Asian dessert place, where we got a giant mountain of shaved ice, mango and mango ice cream. It was really interesting and delicious.

 

The next night, Jarrett and I shared a couple dishes at Spice I Am, which were super flavorful and tasty. It was also great to catch up with an old SF friend!

I've really enjoyed the Asian cuisine here in Sydney, and am sure I'll be eating much more of it while I'm still here!

Georgia's Farewell and Amy's Birthday!

A couple weeks ago, we sadly celebrated (is that an oxymoron?) Georgia's farewell from Burson. Weirdly, I don't have any pictures of Georgia from the night. We also were celebrating Amy's birthday weekend and I have plenty of pics of her.

We started our night with wine and beer at our weekly BM Bar at the office. Here's Freya and Amy with Charli hanging in the background...

and Ben, Dionne and me.

Next, we headed to a bar in the city called Mr. B's Hotel where we all enjoyed the $5 Corona deal.

For dinner, we ate at En Casa Restaurant. This place kept the tapas and pizza coming like crazy.There was a LOT of food and I'm pretty sure we all did a great job of consuming it.

Luckily, we still looked great.

Next we went to a random pub called Maloney's, where we happened to have a dance off with a random group of foreigners. Unfortunately, the video footage of that event will not be uploaded here. This was my first real night out in Sydney and it was with my wonderful coworkers - super fun!

After a late night, I had a lot of trouble getting out of bed on Saturday. Finally, I pushed myself into the shower around 5pm to get ready for Amy's birthday dinner. This was at Love Supreme, a great Italian place in Paddington. YUM, pizza!

Me and the beautiful birthday girl.

Blowing out her candles! Her friend Lou made those baby cupcakes and brought them to the restaurant early in the morning so they would be a delicious surprise.

After dinner, I headed home and on Sunday spent a good part of the day planning me and Sameer's trip to NZ and Aus in July. All in all, a great weekend.

Spit to Manly Walk

A couple weekends ago, I went with a few of my lovely Australian coworkers up to the north shore to do the walk from the Spit Bridge to Manly. This is a beautiful walk. A sunny day with clear blue skies, it was absolutely perfect weather to do this walk.

This was a great, athletic day. I see the girls each day at work, but it was so nice to hang out with them outside of the office and get to know them more. Especially because they are real, live Australians!

Here's Freya, Georgia and me on one of the beaches that the walk goes through.

And Katie, Georgia and me at one of the viewpoints looking out to the city.

The beautiful cliffs of the north shore.

Another beach along the way.

I love all the hibiscus here - they are everywhere and all sorts of different colours.

We stopped about 20 minutes short of Manly at a cute little cafe that Georgia had found previously. This toasted ham and cheese croissant was really freaking delicious.

The view from the park where we ate our snack.

These saltwater pools are pretty common around the beaches of Sydney - I don't think I've seen these anywhere in the US and I just love them. Have yet to swim in one and not sure it will happen this trip, the water's getting too cold!

Breakfast to Dessert

Here's a mix of eating out experiences from over the past month or so.

About a month ago, Amy and I met at Bills for brunch. A very popular brunch place located in a few different places in the city, it's known for a few favourite dishes including corn fritters and ricotta pancakes. I was a bit boring and got soft boiled eggs with sourdough soldiers and bacon, but it was still delicious. Amy's corn fritters with bacon and spinach were great, too.

On Nancy's last day at Oneness Cafe, the girls and I visited her at work to have our last brunch together. This time, I got the eggs bacon benedict with spinach, a flat white and a berry smoothie. Yum yum!

Nancy also had us try dandelion root coffee, which was surprisingly delicious!

Our token vegetarian, Whitney, took me and Christina to a restaurant called Nourishing Quarter, which was an interesting mix of vegetarian, Vietnamese and Latin American.

We shared these 'pretty dumplings.' I have no idea what were in them, but they were good especially with a nice soy sauce dipping sauce.

Christina got lettuce wraps with tofu and veggie stir fry.

 I got this veggie soup with tofu, it was like a pho with tomato broth. On the side were crispy tofu sticks, which were delicious.

Whitney's dish was like my soup sans the soup part.

For Whitney's going away dinner, we went to The Winery - another popular spot in Sydney. So popular that Whitney Port from The City and her Aussie ex-boyfriend Jay something or other was there having a drink with friends right next to us. We were wondering how much they were paid to be there for an hour!

I had giant pumpkin ravioli, with cherry tomatoes, burnt butter and pine nuts. These were AMAZING!

A few weeks ago, Christina came over for dinner and brought a couple cupcakes - one sticky date cupcake with caramel frosting and the other is pineapple frosting and banana cake. Here's to a sweet end to this blog post.

Farmers Market and Goodbye to Nancy!

This past weekend, Christina, Whitney and I headed to the Eveleigh Farmers Market, which my coworker Chris told me about and has been on my list for a while. The market is in an old carriage house and takes place every Saturday. We ate enough samples for a meal...literally we didn't need to get breakfast after just walking around the market for a while.

 This pic gives a bit of a view of what the carriage house looks like.

Got some coffee from this nice lady.

Who knew there were so many kinds of potatoes??

I loved this arrangement of carrots - looks really cute in the basket and with the chalk board sign.

Outside the market.

 KALE!

 A guy walked up to us and handed his puppy over to Christina...random!

Here's what a bought - whole wheat ciabatta, hummus, kalamata olive dip and a huge things of mixed olives. I really love olives, if you can't tell. We had a little picnic in the Redfern Park afterwards.

Huge loaf of bread.

After the market and picnic, we walked over to Messina for some gelato. I tried the strawberry this time. Delicious, but I did kind of miss my normal coffee flavour.

Later that night after going home to refresh, I met up with Nancy for her going away party. Bittersweet event - Nancy and I have had a wonderful past 6 weeks hanging out in Sydney and I'll miss her terribly. BUT she'll be in SF when I'm back, which is super exciting!