Boon Chocolates, Darlinghurst

When the city you live in is so well-mapped in your head - with every laneway and street corner worn out by your autopilot gaze - it's nice to be revived by something new. I love it when a discovery jumpstarts your enthusiasm for the geography around you; how finding a string of unfamiliar gems in your own town can make you feel like you're on holiday in an entirely different city.





I had one of those days recently, chancing on a lot of great unknown places - and one of the best was Boon Chocolates. It's a lovely chocolatier that reminds me of being in Europe - thanks to its luxe touches, eye-stunning displays of handmade chocolates and relaxed, opulent feel. It's a trend that I wish was as wildfire-popular as, say, Darrell Lea. Not that I have deep pockets, but I love places that feel decadent and fancy - where chocolates are handled like luxury goods and you walk away feeling like you've spent a million dollars (even if it's only a few notes from your wallet).





The European feel isn't accidental. Fanny, who makes the chocolates, learnt her craft in Belgium and the boutique is named after where she studied. Her brother, Alex, is a food science graduate who also works at Boon. Each time I've been there, he's kindly given me a small cup of hot chocolate to help "soothe" my brain into choc-deciding mode. It's an awesome shot of cocoa and definitely fires my circuits.

Once done selecting, I skip out with a beautiful box of handmade chocolates ($10 for small, $30 for large), slung in a pretty bag. It's swish and so are the sweets slotted inside. One stand-out is the Mira, a striking red dome that looks more like jewellery than something you eat - it hides a creamy white chocolate ganache, and a subtle dash of mountain pepper berries and strawberries. Also flavoursome is the Nataly, a lively burst of peach and cardamom and the popular Balsamico, an adventurous blend of strawberry and balsamic vinegar. My favourite so far is the Saigon: not so much the taste of a fallen city, but the zestiness of lemongrass tucked inside a milk chocolate ganache.





I once asked how long you can store the chocolates for and Alex said four weeks - which seems unusually long for handmade chocolate. But, in the end, it doesn't matter: on my first trip, I cleaned out my box in two days; on my second, I finished half of my stash within three blocks of Boon's doorstep.





There's a tea salon upstairs too, if you like to savour your sweets with a cup of cocoa goodness or tea. You can also pick a chocolate tasting plate (you'd be a steel-hearted person to say no to that) and Belgian waffles. The chocolatier stays open fairly late - 10.30pm on Friday and Saturday nights - making it a nice alternative to a seedy bar for an evening date. I think it'd also be a fine place for an afternoon treat (or, if you have a super-friendly office, a work meeting where the first agenda item is your sweet tooth).

Boon Chocolates is my new favourite store: an idea transported from a European city that - hopefully - will thrive and spark in this home town.

251 Victoria Street, Darlinghurst NSW (02) 9356 8876, www.boonchocolates.com.au

Patisse, Waterloo

The other afternoon, we zipped into Patisse for afternoon treats. I spent an hour scanning and re-scanning my gaze over every pastry, chocolate and cake in the display case, unable to loyally stay with one choice. So, in the end, I went with two. (My more decisive - and better-researched - friends already knew they wanted meringues as soon as they walked into this lofty industrial space in the PYD Building, near Danks Street Depot.)

I'm sure I wore out the glass in the cabinet with my constant re-looking and re-inspecting. In the end, I was won over by (what I naively assumed were) orange-glazed custards, and asked for one. "Do you want to know what they are?" the staff asked helpfully.
Being overconfident - and way under-informed - I looked at the tropical-topping and guessed it contained mango or passionfruit. Nice try, lady. I was totally off the mark. The dessert was Buttermilk Pannacotta with Rosewater & Caramel Jelly ($2.50 for small). And while my brain had completely failed me, my eyes proved more reliable - this was a lovely choice. The panna cotta had a lively, semi-sour tang to it (think lime or cardamom) - curbing the sweeter-than-sweet gelatinous halo on top. And just so I didn't walk away sugar-deficient, I had a Spicy Chocolate Truffle ($2) too.




Meanwhile, my friends had blood-orange-streaked meringues as consolation for the pistachio ones that Vanessa had been plotting to have from the very moment we mentioned coming to Patisse, hours before. The citrus meringue didn't compare with her anticipation-amped favourite, but maybe that's reason to visit again - fingers crossed it will be the same day the kitchen shells those red-green nuts and rains them into that airy meringue mix.

On a totally unrelated note, there's been a game of run and tag going on in food blog world. I'm embarrassingly hopeless at this sort of thing, but you can check out the fun and games at Citrus and Candy and The Delectable Delight.

Patisse, G01 PYD Building, 197 Young Street, Waterloo NSW, (02) 9690 0665, www.patisse.com.au

Black Star Pastry, Newtown

Instead of gingerbread men, you can get kick-ass Ginger Ninjas ($4) at Black Star Pastry in Newtown. Yes, ninjas. They don't come with ninja stars, but they are clad in a thick identity-disguising coat of chocolate, which is more enticing than the sparse button-only gear their traditional friends get around in.

There are many other likeable things about this squeezing-room-only bakery, now neighbours to the ever-popular Oscillate Wildly restaurant.





You can get Toast ($4) sweetly slathered with Rose Petal Jelly, Seville Orange Marmalade or Strawberry Jam. And if you'd like any of these condiments to safeguard your breakfast table, the jams are available in cute fabric-topped jars, for $10 each.





There are intriguing variations on sweet-tooth favourites - Elderflower Cheesecake ($5) and Mango Panna Cotta ($5) to name a few. If you need a cocoa fix, you can search out the tray of handmade chocolates. And if you need something crusty for dinner, there are stand-bys like baguettes and sourdough loaves to choose from. Sandwiches and galettes are provided for the lunchtime crowd.





The staff are very nice and patient, despite my embarrassing case of can't-decide brain-freeze. In the end, I get a box that includes a Handmade White Chocolate with Lemon ($2), a Handmade 'Espresso' Chocolate ($2), Lemon Melt ($2) and Saffron Mango Shortbread ($3). I especially like the latter's spunky strands of dried mango, all haphazardly strewn about like a rock star's perfectly windblown hairdo.





The white chocolate was fabulous - it wasn't shriekishly sweet (as white choc can be), just creamy and lush and well-paired with the zesty lemon hit. In fact, everything I had was moment-pausingly good. I guess it's no surprise given Black Star Pastry's pedigree - it's run by Christopher The, a former pastry chef at three-hatted Claude's in Woollahra. He's also worked at Quay (another triple-toquer) and renowned bakers, Sonoma and Victoire.

This is probably one of the star reasons why, even on a drizzly Wednesday afternoon, the bakery was buzzing with people. The flour-dusted and sugar-sprinkled treats on the shelves and counters complete the argument - this is a bakery worth crowding into. I left with my arms full and a smile on my face. Next time, I'll just have to remember to get a Ginger Ninja for on-the-street protection ...

Black Star Pastry, 277 Australia St, Newtown NSW, 2042, (02) 9557 8656

Time consuming

The last four months have been brain-blitzing. Work got a little wild and overwhelming and days ended faster than I thought possible. Now, panic doesn't set the metronomic beat of life as much - things have slowed down to a breathe-easy pace. Which is nice.

It means not rushing home, scarfing down cold takeaway and going to bed. I can have more time to cook (like that pasta dish above, which I improvised with tomato, shiitake mushrooms and shavings of parmesan). I can - maybe - do something about those stories I keep planning to finish. And I can linger in cafes and delicatessans a little longer (without the guilt kicking in so quick).

Not that I'm going to start some heady gush about slow food. I like the idea of it, but let's not get too misty-eyed about the soul-altering goodness of lagged out cooking. It is a luxury. A single mother juggling two jobs to feed her family would probably put slow food in the dream-on category. And fair enough. Not all of us can afford to spend three days standing over a simmering cassoulet. But hell, if I was offered life in an alternate universe, where I could afford to potter over a dish for half a week in a postcard-pretty French town, why wouldn't I say yes?

Right now though, I'm happy to live with some accrued days in lieu (which will be spent fooding it up!) and a hugely generous voucher from work for dinner at the out-of-my-price-league and much acclaimed Bennelong restaurant at the Opera House. I feel pretty lucky.

Bodega Cafe, Surry Hills

It's nice to have a place that you can think of as a lunchtime lifeline. The kind that's worth the extra walking distance, worth blanking out the convenient eateries more closely located, worth becoming momentarily amnesiac over how much you really should be spending on a workday meal. The kind that jacks up the rest of your day a good notch or two.



For me, the Bodega Cafe in Surry Hills is that place. It's the daylight cousin to its ragingly popular evening equivalent - Bodega Tapas Restaurant, run by Elvis Abrahanowicz. The lunch canteen has a more casual menu and is run by his parents, Hilda and Adan. Hilda is super-sweet - sugarcoating all her conversations with "darling" and other genuine endearments. She remembered that I was vegetarian after my first visit (even though I'd never even tipped her off on that fact) and was always suggesting off-menu flourishes she could serve me if I wasn't so into what was available.

Of course, I'm totally into what they offer and I can't stop ordering the same three things whenever I go in. There's the obligatory Spiced Pumpkin and Feta Empanada ($4), which is also on the night-time Bodega menu. Then the awesome Tortilla Espanola ($6) - peppery, sweet and topped with two ribbons of roast capsicum. It's nothing like its Mexican flatbread namesake, but similar to a fritatta - without the overpoweringly eggy taste. The ever-crispy golden potato chunks wedged inside the tortilla are the not-so-hidden stars of this dish. Crunchy, perfectly fried potato is a dreamy thing, worth the inevitable guilt (and worth the "guilt salad" I order to make up for it).



And this is where the menu gets fuzzy. There are three salads on offer - red cabbage, bean or potato - but they're always fast-gone before I get there. The potato salad must be like the first-row tickets to an an impossible-to-get-into concert, because it never seems to exist.

In fact, my question about it is almost like delivering a line from a play ("Do you have the potato salad today?" "Sorry, darling"), with the dialogue repeated according to script, ending in the staff adlibbing on what they can offer. It's the kind of place where, even if they run out of things, they'll come up with a good stand-in instead. Sometimes I'll ask for a salad with pickled eggplant (if I feel like something tart), while today I got a potato salad consolation prize - it was piled nicely with crispy fried potato. I love that the salad was meant to erase my guilt, but only compounded it. I guess I'll have to have a potato-guilt amnesty to make up for it.

The only drawback about Bodega Cafe is that it's only open for two hours a day (from midday), and items can sell out before closing time. But there's an easy remedy for that. Go early and go often, as they say.


Bodega Café Shop 2, 216 Commonwealth St, Surry Hills NSW 2010, (02) 9212 7766, bodegatapas.com.

End of an era for Oscillate Wildly in Newtown

It's hard not to get keyed up about Oscillate Wildly. After jumping through the barriers of getting a booking (phone-wrangling a date for many months ahead - if you make it through the unending engaged signal), you end up having an incredible, ambitious dinner in a cosy, relaxed setting that will chart highly on your list of great restaurant experiences. All that super-bureaucratic organisation pays off in the end.

There's no doubt a key part of Oscillate Wildly's success has been Daniel Puskas, who has been head chef at the restaurant since he was 23. Now, he's leaving to start his own place, along with "right-hand man" James Parry (both are winners of the Josephine Pignolet Award, which honours young chefs). As Good Living reported, Puskas says, "Whatever I do it'll be similar food but a little more refined, using organic and biodynamic ingredients we can't afford to use at Oscillate." If you were hoping to dine at Oscillate Wildly before he leaves in late December, it's too late - the joint is booked out until next year.

I didn't get to go to the restaurant as much as Tabitha - considering most people can't get a booking at all, she managed an impressive three sittings in a very small amount of time - but I feel a little sad to have missed out on going once more before they change the stars in their kitchen.

Our last time there was a huge amount of fun, and I was impressed that they not only put out a fine vegan degustation for Tabs, but catered to my vego restrictions and Will's weird anti-seafood policy, all without grumbling, and all with impressive culinary invention (no second-rate salads or afterthought risottos for us).

My memory of the menu swirls from Tomato & Watermelon Gazpacho with Tomato Snow to Eggplant Creme (hidden in an eggshell on a bank of salt) to Wild Mushrooms on Pumpkin & Amaretto Puree and Chocolate Soil (which made Chris ask, "where do you dig up this chocolate soil?").

I'll always remember that unlikely savoury dish with Donut, Chickpea Puree and Vegetable Confit (the donut flourish divided people, but totally had me waving its flag) and the ever-awesome Apple-thyme in Sorbet, Sweet bread and Apple Soup. The crisp bite of that thyme biscuit, I can still recall in a snap.
And those toasted milk marshmallows and hibiscus jellies... ! If I ever get stuck in Groundhog Day moment, I want it to be during this dinner...!

Of course, you can't get all hopelessly crusty about the past. Oscillate Wildly will get a new chef - Karl Firla from Est who is "a little more classical in flavours but still modern in technique" and there's undoubted excitement (from me, at least!) about whatever new venture Daniel Puskas and James Parry end up opening next year. As long as it's not a steakhouse.

Oscillate Wildly, 275 Australia St, Newtown NSW 2042, (02) 9517 4700

Sydney Food and Wine Fair & Blogging on The Radio

On Saturday, I caught the tail-end of Good Food Month . I'd missed all the sugar-dusted, napkin-crumpling, spoon-sucking fun of October, thanks to bad luck really: I got stuck in a work-coma (which left me a social vegetable), and then I got slugged with a bad cold, only allowed pots of soup and tissues for company.

But I was glad I'd at least made it for the Sydney Food and Wine Fair, which is the grand finale of Food Month (even though it technically spills onto the next calendar page and doesn't take place in October at all). It sees Hyde Park clustered with stalls from Sydney eateries, gourmet magazines and more. It's a good chance to try picnic-sized meals from fancy restaurants - such as Otto, Bathers Pavilion and Wildfire - as well as more affordable eateries such as Spice I Am (that iconic Thai joint had a stunning bouquet of fruit to lure the ever-roaming eyes of passers-by. With so many stalls around and the rush of people hyper-scanning what each stand had to offer, this flourish of colour was enough to slow some people in their path).


I'd learnt from three important rules from past Fairs:

-turn up early because all the great dishes run out FAST. (I couldn't make it until 2pm, and of course, Bourke Street Bakery and Central Baking Depot were some of the many stalls that had already sold out of goodies.)
-never buy your coupons from the first ticket-stall you see - you'll get snagged in a long queue, you'll feel growly and impatient and belted by hunger. The middle stands are the quickest way to get your voucher.
-do a speedy reconnaissance mission through the whole grounds before deciding what you want. Otherwise, you'll prematurely blow all your vouchers and still get stuck with food envy.
-the vego options, if they exist, are truly lame and you're better off just getting lots of dessert.

So after forensically scouring Hyde Park, I decided to lay my coupons down at the The Tea Room stall, a much-loved establishment that has a spot in QVB and also at Gunners Barracks. I ended up with a plate of tea-stand goods: a Finger Sandwich, Chocolate Negress (why do I feel weird typing the name of that dessert?), Orange and Almond Slice, Lemon Meringue Barquette, Viennese Biscuit with Coffee ButterCream and Leek and Gorgonzola Tart. I can still taste that zesty cloud of lemon from the barquette (cutely named because of its boat-shape). It reminded me of how great the high tea is at the Queen Victoria Building. And the plate was the perfect equation of sweet and savoury.



I squeezed through the human gridlock caused by the Slide burlesque/circus show and the Pink Salt cupcake stand (above) and totally got suckered into buying a Delicious showbag. It had a block of Pear Intense Lindt in it, I was feeling weak, it was inevitable.

Before the Fair, of course, I'd dropped by the FBI studio to do my second segment on Weekend Lunch, the FBI radio show presented by the super-talented Anna Burns. (Side note, Anna has a documentary airing on Radio National this Sunday, you can check it out here. It might win an award like her previous effort!)

With all the talk of financial doom and gloom, we ended up doing a segment on budget eating. I wanted to combat the idea that the only way to economically feed yourself was to hole up in your kitchen for three months, slowly depleting a 10kg sack of rice that you bought half-priced 'cos it was close to expiration.

So I came up with some tips on how to eat nicely and socialise, without making your wallet self-incinerate.

-Eating on a budget is a good excuse to have a pot luck dinner or a progressive dinner party. The latter doesn't involve coming up with Trotsky-inspired menus, but rather it means having a dinner party that moves from house to house over the space of three courses. So it means you get three dishes for the price of one, a chance to walk (or bike!) off the food in between, and importantly, there's equal dishwashing distribution at the end. Plus, the fact everyone gets to fuss over just one course means that each part of the meal is definitively kick-ass. And you don't have the dinner party freak-out that inevitably happens when you decide to invite everyone over for a long and complicated meal. You can relax and savour each dish.

-Picking your favourite cheap and cheery Chinese or Vietnamese joint - the kind where the restaurant budget is definitely not going into the quality of the tablecloths - and inviting lots of your friends to come along, because it will make the dinner extra-cheaper and bonusly cheerier. I remember once eating dinner with a billion people at Sea Bay in Sydney - we ordered enough food to collapse a table, and it ended up only being $10 a head.

-Having half-serves in Chinatown. Anna suggested the budgetary greatness of the half-serve, which you can get at the ever-evocatively named Chinese Noodle Restaurant on Quay St. Getting a fraction of the dish is not only wallet-friendly, it also cures food indecision and food envy!

-Even if you don't have a lot of money to throw around, you can still splash out on gorgeous bread and it will last you a few meals and still feel special (instead of like budget martyr food, yuck). A very beautiful Potato and Rosemary Sourdough loaf that I recently bought from Bourke Street Bakery added a dreamy touch to a dinner (and breakfast too).

-Speaking of bread, there are some great places dishing out mutant super-sandwiches that are big enough to give you lockjaw (a la The Simpsons). The Seasonal Vegetables sandwich at Kings Lane Sandwiches and Malibu is so big that it sometimes doubles as my lunch and dinner. And it's not one of those limp "here's a sundried tomato and lettuce leaf" sandwich affairs either. Crammed full of creme fraiche potato salad, sweet potato salad, snap-fresh snowpeas, eggplant spread, tomato, red lettuce, rocket and enough vegie-architectural stuffing to make it hard to actually grip your hands around, it is value. Anna says you could say the same of South Dowling Sandwiches.

-Sometimes tumbling out of bed in the afternoon can pay off. On a few occasions, because we've had breakfast so criminally late and have been the last to leave A Little On The Side, they've actually sent us bundling home with raspberry muffins. It's real kind of them - I guess it's a win-win situ, because they need to clear their counter for the next day's fresh-baked goods and well, we get an armful of muffins even if we're lazy-asses who shouldn't be rewarded for sleeping in so late. It's true that mooching around closing time is an easy way to save money in several instances - you can get half-priced food at malls and many other places.

-Eating well and wallet-watching doesn't mean you always have to be a saint. Some fancy restaurants have bars where you can sample some of their more affordable yet tastebud-stunning items. Bentley Restaurant and Bar has the head-blitzing Gazpacho 3 Ways which is only $11 and their dreamy Toasted Banana Marshmallow and Warm Banana Milk is $6. Which is pretty accessible for a two-chef-hatted joint.

So, avoid the pantry prison sentence of just eating rice, and enjoy!


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The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry on FBI 94.5FM Part 2

I just had my second radio segment on Weekend Lunch, the FBI radio show presented by the amazing Anna Burns. If I haven't updated with relevant details for the segment, it means I'm still at the Sydney Food & Wine Fair, which is on right now.