Saturday 11 October 2014

Sydney April 2014 - Part One

About six weeks after my last trip to Sydney, I was back again. This time Leigh and I were excited to get our fan girl on at a Benedict Cumberbatch convention!! As the convention was in Sydney, this of course meant that there was much more food to be enjoyed as well!

I got in on Friday evening, so our first stop for dinner that night was back to the now-closed Revolution. We shared a starter (I can't remember what these were called, but one had black beans and one had something mince-like), and they were great. Not too spicy. The black bean was my favourite. I followed this up by trying some of their nachos, which had a generous topping to chip ratio (I didn't end up with any dry chips at the end). I picked off all the chili (forgot to ask them to leave it off), but I enjoyed the cashew sour cream and the cheesy sauce. It just could have done with more avocado! But couldn't everything in life do with more avocado? Leigh ordered a fish salad, which I think was crumbed seaweed-wrapped tofu on a bed of salad with some tartare sauce.

Revolution Foods


Nachos - Revolution Foods


Fish Salad - Revolution


The next morning we had a day trip planned, so we headed back to Suzy Spoon's Vegetarian Butcher for a hearty breakfast. This time I had the Mushroom Breakfast (roasted mushrooms, avocado, tomatoes, basil, toast) with a side of white beans. Their mushrooms are really outstanding, so I enjoyed this a lot. The only thing was that there was a bit too much oil drizzled over it for my preference. Leigh had the Polenta and Beans Breakfast. Their baked white beans were one of the best things on the breakfast menu, but sadly I have heard that they are now longer available.

Mushroom Breakfast - Suzy Spoon's


Polenta and Beans breakfast - - Suzy Spoon's


For our day trip we hopped on a train and headed out to Rubyfruit, a vegan cafe out in Leura (in The Blue Mountains). Our trip out there was mostly for the food, though we did have a wander through the little main street and poke around some arts and crafts and homewares stores. But we didn't do anything in the mountains themselves. To be honest, it was freezing (from my perspective) so I would not have been to keen to explore! We got to Rubyfruit right in time, as it is a fairly small venue. We were able to grab a table as someone was leaving.

I warmed up with a gingery chai, which was not bad. For lunch I ordered a puff pastry roll with tempeh, quinoa, spinach and cheese along with a rainbow salad. This was delightful, I could have eaten several of those rolls. A perfect flavour combination! The rainbow salad was beautifully light and fresh as well. Leigh ordered one of the specials for her lunch. I can't for the life of me remember what it was, but I think it was some sort of tofu with quinoa, vegetables and a chutney. That's what the picture looks like! Other options included a variety of soups, salads, wraps and pies. They also had some takeaway wraps made up in the cabinet.

Chai  - Rubyfruits


Leigh's lunch -  Rubyfruits


Rubyfruit's claim to fame, however, is their amazing sweet baked goods. We got some cheezecakes to take away, and a piece of chocolate peanut butter cake to eat in. The cake was sadly far too sweet for us, the icing just about killed us with sugar. We ended up not being able to finish it all, which was sad.

Peanut butter chocolate cake - Rubyfruits


The cheezecakes (which we ate later that night), were much better. We got a piece of turkish delight (I had been dying to try this for over a year, ever since I first heard about it), a piece of chocolate peanut butter, and two pieces of lemon raspberry. The turkish delight really was very lovely, I just love the flavour that rosewater gives to things. But the real star was the lemon and raspberry - a true classic that manages to be refreshing while being an amazing treat.

Turkish Delight Cheesecake - Rubyfruits


Raspberry lemon cheezecake - Rubyfruits


After lunch we went back to Sydney. It was a bit of a trek each way on the train, so during this time Leigh taught me how to play Cribbage, which was a lot of fun. Once we were back in Sydney, we went back to Leigh's place to watch some more Twin Peaks (I had been watching season 2 at home, but we saved the final episodes to watch together) before heading out for dinner. Dinner found us back at Revolution for burgers! Leigh got their burger with a lot of salad, chips and gravy (the gravy is kind of thick and weird, but tastes good). I got one of their specials - a four cheese stuffed mushroom and bacon burger! This was amazing, though sadly as I was eating I realised they had forgotten to put the bacon on. I had mine with a side of kale and some chips.

Veggie burger - Revolution


Cheezy stuffed mushroom burger - Revolution


On the way home we also brought several things to take along to the convention with us the next day, as we were going to need enough food to fuel us through a good eight hours of Cumberconning, but I will show those photos tomorrow!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post

Squeak


No trip to Sydney to stay with Leigh is complete without being judged by a glorious Squeak!

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