Lockdown has put a serious dampener on the fancy food aspect of my life. Whilst there are plenty of good take-home packs being bandied out by the trendiest spots around town, very few of these places are within a distance that I can travel out to in good conscience. However, I did manage to luck out with the Sixpenny General Store, which is once again open from 9am-3pm on Fridays through to Sundays for all your baked goods needs (and a cheeky bottle of wine as well, if that’s what you’re into).
Picture this: pizza, but deep fried. But not that horrible American thing where they coat it in a thick layer of batter before dunking it into vat of oil. Think instead Neapolitan-styled pizzas filled with gourmet ingredients, flash-fried until golden and puffy. Intrigued? So was I, and that’s why I’m here at Pizza Fritta 180. Every time I wander through the area, I can’t help but notice Pizza Fritta. Located right on the corner of a busy intersection, the bustling al fresco dining (bolstered cleverly by pedestrians waiting at the intersection) and vivid mural seems to promise a great time, and that’s not even taking into account the fried pizza bit.
I’ve been out clubbing exactly once in my life. Twice, if you generously count the time where a mate booked out a small dive bar for his birthday party. And that one time was enough to teach me that my penchant for good food does not stop after midnight. Unfortunately for me, the one time I went proper-clubbing was in Sydney, and by the time we emerged on the wrong side of 1am, kebabs and Maccas were the only options available. Growing up in Melbourne meant that I was used to wine bars and supper clubs open to the crack of dawn on weekends, if not around the clock, this came as a rather unpleasant shock. But once place I…
I first came across Westwood Pizza via my favourite way for discovering new restaurants; that’s to say, completely accidentally. We were on our way out from a delicious dinner at Continental Deli when I spotted the tiny little shop across the road with a pizza oven tucked into the back. It certainly didn’t look like much, but one peek inside at the succinct menu scrawled onto the chalkboard changed my mind – honey, smoked eel, black garlic – the pizza toppings (not all on the same pizza of course!) read like the shopping list for a fancy deli, and doubled my resolve to visit.
I love vegan food – there, I said it. But I feel like this turnabout is less due to any personal development on my part, and more attributable to the fact that vegan food in Sydney is a little magical. Ramen, Pizza, Laksa – you name it, and they can do a vegan version that tastes miraculously similar to its animal-containing alternative, and probably taste better to boot. I will take a little credit however; it wasn’t so long ago that I was denouncing vegan food in favour of fried chicken.
I was craving some easy sushi, and seeing as Sushi Hotaru has been leaving me wanting more often than not these days, I decided to expand my horizons a little. Armed with an old recommendation for Sushi Wow in Newtown, I decided to get over my mental block for the name – seriously, what kind of name is Sushi Wow? – and actually try it based on its merits as a sushi train. When I first walked in, I was quite impressed (wowed?). But it’s not the interior that caught my attention; the place basically looks like your standard sushi train restaurant, albeit a clean and welcoming one. What I was impressed with was the sushi train itself, which tottered…