Silk Road Chinese Restaurant, Haymarket Chinatown

Egg wrapped meat in spices with special sauce $11.80

There are two things that linger in my memory after eating at Silk Road, a cheap eats noodle house festooned with hanging carpets and under immiment attack by plastic grape vines.

The first is the smiling service by our gracious hostess. She is pleased when we show an interest in the grape vines, in the cuisine, in her culture, in her home town. She leads us to a map on the fridge and points out her village in Xinjiang, in the north-west of China. "Very beautiful, my home" she says with an air of wistfulness, her eyes shining. "Famous for jade and grapes and oil."

The other memory is one of lamb, and lots of it.


Fried pancakes with Chinese spring onion $4.00

The egg-wrapped lamb in spices [top pic] is an unusual dish, the lamb is soft and springy in texture, almost reminiscent of a lamb yeeros. There's plenty of cumin in this dish, and the egg wrapper is denser than I'd expect. It's a strong flavoured and rich dish, designed specifically for Mongolian winters, one suspects.

Fried pancake with Chinese spring onion is light and crispy. The spring onion is relatively mild in flavour (although perhaps our tastebuds have already been overwhelmed by lamb and cumin). We're happy about the portion size (six pizza wedges) and impressed by its non-oiliness too, all things considered.


Cucumber salad $3.00

Side dishes always provide a welcome palate cleanser, especially at $3 per serve. The cucumber salad is sweet and crisp, and mixed through with tomato slivers. Shredded potato salad is cool and surpisingly but deliciously garlicky.


Shredded potato salad $3.50


Fried hand-made noodles with lamb $8.50

The fried handmade noodles with lamb is the last dish to arrive. It even arrives with a pair of scissors so we can cut the long strands into more manageable lengths.

The noodles are wonderfully chewy, doused with an aromatic sauce and strewn through with plenty of lamb, onion, red capsicum, celery and green vegetables.

There's plenty of lamb and plenty of smiles too.



Silk Road Chinese Restaurant
QG13 Prince Centre
(street level on the Quay Street side, near Thomas Lane)
8 Quay Street, Haymarket Chinatown Sydney
Tel: +61 (02) 9281 9658

Open 7 days 10am-9pm

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Good Food Month Sugar Hit: InterContinental Sydney

Tasting plate [l-r]: Caramel Walnut Cognac Slice,
Passionfruit and Strawberry Gelee,
Triple Chocolate Hennessey Pyramid.


It's Good Food Month!

We've always loved the concept of Sugar Hits, a dessert platter and dessert wine offered at Sydney city hotels between 9 and 11pm during the month of October.

Last year Sugar Hits were available for $15, a relatively inexpensive way to participate in Good Food Month, and easily scheduled with friends after dinner or a movie.

This year Sugar Hits are now $20 (and one friend reported a charge of $22 at the Sheraton). Admittedly your 33% price hike now includes a new option of Hennessy Cognac (or the usual Brown Brothers dessert wine), but it could make a teetotaler wonder whether they'd be better off ordering from the a la carte dessert menu.

In any case, we did enjoy an excuse to prolong our evening by indulging in a little more sugar, for thy stomach's sake.

The clear winner of the evening was the caramel walnut cognac slice, which was studded with nuts and layered with cream. Our helpful waiter also gave some hints on how best to enjoy the cognac: it really does taste better if you cup the glass in your hands and swirl it around to warm it a little.



Sugar Hit at the InterContinental Sydney
First floor bar
117 Macquarie St, Sydney
Tel: +61 (02) 9240 1369

Available: Every night in October from 9pm-11pm

Cost: $20
Includes a dessert plate
and a glass of Brown Brothers dessert wine or Hennessy Cognac

More Sugar Hits available here

Related GrabYourFork posts:
GFM 2007: Sugar Hit #2 at the Sofitel Wentworth
GFM 2007: Sugar Hit #1 at the InterContinental Sydney

GFM 2006: Good Living Growers' Markets
GFM 2006: Hats Off dinner at Becasse
GFM 2006: Night Noodle Markets Week 3
GFM 2006: Night Noodle Markets Week 2
GFM 2006: Night Noodle Markets Week 1
GFM 2006: Spring Picnic
GFM 2006: Sugar Hit #4 at the Sofitel Wentworth
GFM 2006: Sugar Hit #3 at the Intercontinental Sydney
GFM 2006: Sugar Hit #2 at the Four Seasons Hotel Sydney
GFM 2006: Sugar Hit #1 at the Park Hyatt Sydney
GFM 2006: Sydney Food & Wine Fair

GFM 2005: Good Living Growers' Markets
GFM 2005: Night Noodle Markets
GFM 2005: Spring Picnic
GFM 2005: Sydney Farmers' Market
GFM 2005: Sydney Food & Wine Fair

GFM 2004: Twilight Trail: Cocktails and Sugar Hits

Hurricane's Grill, Bondi Beach

Ribs. I love ribs. I love people who love ribs.

It's about marinated meat cooked over charcoal. About burnt edges that have caramelised to a delicious sweet crunch. It's about the juiciness of cooking on bone. About scraping off every morsel with the edge of your teeth. About getting your fingers dirty.

Rib lovers understand.


Mediterranean salad $17.00
Mixed fresh leaves, olives, fetta cheese, spanish onion,
cucumber, tomato, capsicum and Mediterranean dressing

And so we've ended up at Hurricane's Grill in Bondi, a huge dining room filled with the smell of charring meat and stooped diners huddled over caramelised carcasses.


Pork ribs full rack with chips $30.00

Whenever I'd spoken with rib lovers in Sydney, Hurricane's Grill had always been spoken of in breathy reverent tones. I had high expections and thankfully, they were fulfilled.

The pork ribs are fantastic. The flesh is tender, fall-off-the-bone and marinated long enough to sustain the tastebuds. I'm pleased, too, that the marinade is without the tomato-ey tang of its American cousin. These taste only of smoky barbecue sauce, and they've been cooked beautifully to a caramelised finish.

The full rack is a feast for a king, and yep, yours truly polished off every single one of them.


Lamb ribs full rack with chips $30.00

The lamb ribs aren't as tender, and the strong smell of lamb is rather all-pervading, but the portion of chips is generous, and a small pot of tomato sauce is provided once we ask.

Our salads (mixed Mediterranean $17 and a mixed fresh garden salad $15) arrive in huge cavernous bowls, both disconcertingly garnished with tufts of alfalfa, about as subtle and attractive as an ill-fitting toupe. The fetta is disappointingly bland and soapy in texture but then again, you don't come to Hurricane's for the salad; you come for the ribs, and those will leave you in definite smiles of carnivorous satiation and finger-licking happiness.




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Hurricane's Grill
130 Roscoe Street (near corner of Gould Street)
Bondi Beach, Sydney
Tel: +61 (02) 9130 7101

This has been included as an Intrepid Eat on Grab Your Fork's Top 10 Sydney Eats for Tourists. Read the entire list here.

Open 7 nights for dinner 6.00pm till late
Lunch on Sundays from 12pm

Hurricane's Express Takeaway
Tel: +61 (02) 9365 3450
Open 7 days 12.00pm till 10.00pm

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Le Metropolitain, Wellington

Okay I promise this is the final post on Wellington. Sure my trip to New Zealand was bordering on two months ago, but this meal, the last hurrah before my taxi to the airport, was so delicious and good, I remember it like yesterday.

Besides look at the photo above. Plump Toulouse sausages, how they glisten so! This meal, long since digested, deserves to be shared.



Le Metropolitain was a cute little French bistro halfway up Cuba Street. For someone who eats at a French restaurant perhaps once a year in Sydney, this was to be my third French meal in Wellington in a matter of six days!

Frosted glass windows let in plenty of light to the dining room. Ochre red walls, polished floorboards, dark wood bistro chairs and Parisien prints set the mood. The menu, typed in typical French curly cursive script, was a hungry wishlist, but it was hard to go past the value of the formule dejeuner, two courses with coffee for only NZ$20!


Flat white coffee

The charming French waitress manned the coffee machine after delivering a complimentary bread basket with a dish of olive oil and salt flakes. The sourdough was soft yet dense; my flat white coffee was robust and sweet with crema.


Potage forestier
Wild mushroom soup

Potage forestier was a huge soup tureen of wild mushroom cooked in cream and brandy. Soup isn't usually my thing (unless it's winter and the soup is homemade with chunks of carrot and smoked ham hocks) but I finished every last spoonful of this rich and elegant offering resplendent with leeks and mushroom.

Even the waitress smiled with surprise when she collected the empty vessel.


Saucisse de Toulouse, Lentilles, Confit d'Oignons et Lardons au Jus
Toulouse sausage with lentils, onion confit and lardons jus

The saucisse de Toulouse arrives in heady plumes of steam, sturdy plump pork sausages gathered on a mound of aromatic puy lentils. The smoked bacon, wine and garlic in the sausages is mirrored in the flavours of the lentils, firm yet yielding, and garnished generously with lardons (smoked pork belly) and meltingly soft ribbons of caramelised onion.

It's a glorious end to a gastronomic high in the tasty streets of Wellington. And in spite of the altitude I'm brought back to earth with my return flight dinner on Qantas: curry chicken with rice anyone?


Qantas dinner: curry chicken with rice, salad and bread roll



Le Metropolitain Restaurant
146 Cuba Street, Wellington, New Zealand
Tel: +64 (04) 801 8007

Monday to Friday: lunch and dinner
Saturday: brunch, lunch and dinner
Sunday: brunch and lunch.

Formule dejeuner / lunch set menu NZ$20
2 courses with coffee
Available Tuesday to Sunday 11.30am to 3pm




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