Journey to Zumbo's Part 2

So getting to Zumbo’s Patisserie proved a bit of a journey. Not that it’s particularly difficult to get to, but just because I’m a little bit of a terrible guide. In fact, all my food journeys seem to involve very long detours…

Anyway, this time we drove over to Darling Street and managed to park too far away. So we started walking out and about 5 minutes in realised we were about 300 houses away. But as She-Wears-Skirts helpfully pointed out, “they’re skinny houses”. So one 25 minute walk, a promise to return to Kazbah for a breakfast feast and yet another detour later, as She-Wears-Skirts and I bypassed the patisserie by almost 50 houses, we arrived. Was it worth it? Most definitely.

Destination found! Sorry we were a little too embarassed to take pictures of the inside...

The Patisserie is choc-a-block full of pastries, cakes and macarons, and completely stuffed. It’s tinily tiny and really doesn’t have much space for bad-decision makers and sightseers. But the staff are very nice and the cakes are absolutely beautiful. We decided on lunch in the form of 2 pizzettes – a roasted vegetable and pinenut one ($7) and a potato, rosemary and goat’s cheese one ($6). Of course, She-Wears-Skirts and my detour was not without purpose and we walked back for lunch in the park we’d seen.

Potato, Rosemary and Goat's Cheese Pizzette

The pizzas were both really delicious and filling. Between the five of us, we couldn’t even finish it! The pizza base was very thick and a bit chewy, almost like Turkish bread, and the toppings very generous and really yummy! My favourite of the two was potato pizza, which I will be attempting to recreate sometime soon. I especially liked the goat’s cheese on that one, and the sweet potato and olives made a really tasty balance on the vege pizzette. Taste and value wise, the pizzettes were really super! They were heaped with toppings, just the way I like it, so that for cold pizza, they were still delicious.

Roasted Vegetable and Pinenut Pizzette

The cakes at Zumbo’s are a little too pretty to leave Balmain without, so just before we left we picked up a few goodies for home… and some free Banana macaron samples! (very very nice banana filling) Yay for free samples! We also had a selection from Pancakes and Maple, Peach Tea, Chocolate and Macadamia, Dark Chocolate, Ginger Beer, Pine and Lime, Toasted Marshmallow and other flavours of macarons I can’t remember. We had a few of those and picked up a few cakes – a Pineapple version of the famous Pear Perfection called (It Tastes Sweeter which apparently is a dirty name according to the guy who served me???), a chocolate trifle (pronounced try-fle), a lychee, coconut and ginger cake and another passionfruit tart.

Of course those goodies are for our families so we haven’t quite tasted those ones yet… and photos may or may not be coming... (depending on when I get them and if I bother) But overall, our rather epic trip to Zumbo’s was well worth it! And rating-wise? I think I’d give Zumbo’s a 6 out of 10 for the actual café and patisserie (a 6 just because we got to see him). It was a bit too squishy and small for me. And an 8.5 out of 10 for the food – really yummy and really beautiful to look at! Definitely two thumbs up from me!

So until next time! Hope you all had a lovely chrissy and have a super duper New Year!

c.c.

The Journey to Zumbo's Part 1

Adriano Zumbo of Masterchef fame - famous for his crochembouche, making the humble macaron every cook's fantasy, the chocolate mousse cake, the V8 cake, his certain sexy-foodie appeal... Okay, okay, I'll stop there. Last week marked a milestone of a day. She-wears-skirts, The Omelette and I traversed the Gladesville and Iron Cover Bridges, cruised along the traffic-ridden Victoria Road and found our way to Adriano Zumbo’s Lab Café.

Zumbo’s new café is located on Terry Street in Rozelle, which is in the next suburb, but really just 2 streets over from his old café. Having been to the old café, I have to say I was a little disappointed. This “lab” was indoors, unlike the old lovely oudoorsy setup and extremely, and when I say extremely I mean can’t-breathe-in-here-I-feel-so-squished, small. Okay, maybe not that small, but once the more customers started arriving, people were squishing in to see the counter and we were being squished into the wall on our stools (which were almost too tall for She-Wears-Skirts haha). On the plus side, the staff are really friendly, the food is fantab, I love the little chopping boards as plates, and the window into the kitchen – and Adriano – is very cool.

Shall we follow with one of the few (only few!) stalker shots of Adriano Zumbo? Yes please! Courtesy of She-Wears-Skirts and my little brother.

Adriano doing his pastry thing

Along with She-Wears-Skirts and The Omelette, we also brought my little brother and cousin, so between the five of us, we managed to have (and share discretely) five pastries. I had the passionfruit tart ($5.50) – lovely creamy tangy passionfruit curd, very superb short pastry and absolutely beautiful, beautiful sunset-over-the-clear-ocean-in-a-tropical-paradise glaze on the top. We especially loved the three very specifically placed passionfruit seeds. Haha, gotta love that detail. This one was definitely my favourite.

Passionfruit Tart

The Omelette snapped up the pear and almond tart ($5.50), which was very nice. Other fruit and almond tarts I’ve tasted tend to have very little fruit and a lot too much almond (frangipane?), so I was a little apprehensive about this one. However, Zumbo’s is quite a winner, it had plenty of pear in it and wasn’t too almondy! And lovely flaked almonds on top! Two ticks for that! But being at Zumbo’s, I feel the pear and almond tart was a little bit just a pear and almond tart. Very nice, but not that special Zumbo zing, I feel.

Pear and Almond Tart

She-Wears-Skirts had a brioche and chocolate pastry ($4.50) which I’ve forgotten the name of, which was also quite delicious. It was sort of like a log of chocolate croissant, but with chocolate all through it. The three of us agreed while it was certainly yum, (and big!), it could have benefited from more chocolate. Otherwise, it was very nice and flaky!

Chocolate Brioche Thingie A.K.A. Log of Chocolate Croissant

My cousin had a pear and custard danish ($5.50). This was pretty much a normal danish but the custard was delicious! Really, really delicious creamy goodness mmmmmmm! Apart from that, it was a nice pastry, fruity and flaky. Yum!

Pear and Custard Danish

The Omelette and She-Wears-Skirts’s favourite was the raspberry and pistachio tart ($9). This one was just stunning to look at with all its raspberry-dinosaur-spines sticking out of it and that crushed pistachio! The pistachio cream was definitely brilliant, so so pistachio-y and creamy, I wished there was more – but maybe that was just my little tidbit. The pastry was also lovely and short and the raspberries nice and tangy – however my brother commented, a little stale tasting? Maybe we’re just being picky.

Raspberry and Pistachio Tart

Overall, the food was lovely, watching Zumbo (and team) cook was very fun, the decor was fun - I especially like the evil donut, but the jam-packed-ness meant we felt quite rushed and that we needed to leave quite soon.

You can also buy from here, so there was a nice selection of macarons (which we saw being made), pastries and tarts. But for the cakes, we made our way over to Darling Street in Balmain (which is really just the next street over)… This I will continue in the next post.

c.c.

The Calm before the Storm

c.l.

Glamour: Old and New*

Representing Generation Y: Megan Washington

Which Scene Kid wouldn't want to be photographer in B&W in an oversized (probs vintage) sweater?

Can't go past two-tone jumpers and multi-coloured fingernails. Oh and those ubiquitous glasses of hers...

From an altogether more different, refined, elegant era: Queen Noor of Jordan

On the left with Queen Liz and Prince Phil and King Hussein

*In my sartorially-challenged opinion: feel free to disagree. Also sorry the photos are so small, no idea why Macs do that! [edit: figured it out! but it'll take forever to change them all...]

c.l.

value judgements

in the first world

important: when you're sitting in a bathtub of boiling water and considering whether you should wait 5 or 50 minutes for your skinny jeans to remould themselves around your legs before you get out

not quite as important: when you're standing in a shop 3 hours earlier, trying to decide whether you should buy skinny jeans or a jumpsuit

in the 3rd world

important: when you're sitting at the sewing machine trying to work out whether making 100 skinny jeans in a day stretches to a meal for Granny as well, or if only feeding the nuclear family is your current priority

not quite as important: 'dismiss immediately'

[d.read]

lust and other non-fugs

Ever since that last post regarding attractive (read: terrifyingly hideous) men, I've felt that our standards took a bashing and were never quite recovered. I feel so strongly about this that I present to you the list as it should have stood:


Beckham

Your classic clothes-off-mouth-shut-at-all-times-please man.

Matt Bomer

Hey, it's a wet shirt and he's not a woman.

Alexander Skarsgård

Fangs sold separately.

Henry Cavill

My personal favourite exhibiting great range. Whether it be boyish charm,

rugged chap,

or the brooding sort,

he's got an angle for you.

and to throw in some ethnicity:

Sendhil Ramamurthy





Milo Ventimiglia as a bonus.

and then to prove that it's not all about looks, but in fact money:

Paul Allen

Co-founder of Microsoft.

And it's done - whatever unlikely respect this blog had garnered is now all but lost.



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