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…
Being back in Melbourne after a whole year of Covid restrictions is no insignificant event. It’s the longest I’ve ever been away from my family or friends, and just thinking about all the restaurants I didn’t get to eat at absolutely breaks my heart. So between spending as much time as I can with my loved ones, I’ve had the difficult job of deciding on where to eat in my short week-and-a-half in Melbourne. Thankfully K had a good idea of what he wanted to eat; having been in strict lockdown for about 3 months, he hasn’t had Japanese food for almost as long, and that’s how we ended up at Ima Project Café for brunch.
Here’s to the end of 2020 (well, at the time of writing anyway)! Although I can’t speak definitively for everyone, I’m pretty sure most people absolutely cannot wait to bid goodbye to this strange and uncomfortable year. And what better way is there to celebrate the end of this long, hard slog than with a pizza party? I don’t have a whole lot in the way of pizza options around my place, but a quick 20 minute drive towards the city gets me to Pizza Madre, which consistently makes its way onto best-of lists, despite being an entirely vegetarian operation. And although its name suggests something familiar and cosy, Pizza Madre is less of a mother, and more of an…
Today, I continue on my journey to try out every single café within a 10km radius of my house, and today my adventures take me to Bare Witness. Sitting right at the edge of the Rhodes waterfront, I first noticed Bare Witness when I was lining up for Left of Field, and was rather taken by its expansive glass walls and waterside location. Pleasingly, the interior of the café was just as pretty as the outside suggested, the glass walls making the most of the daylight, whilst the high ceilings and concrete walls were softened by greenery and strings of Edison bulbs.
Malaysian cuisine was the first I ever fell in love with. It cemented my now-undying love for street food, and was the catalyst for my first ever overseas with friends. And although I don’t have it nearly as often these days, having gotten the obsession out of my system with 2 weeks in Malaysia, I still very much have a soft spot for the eclectic, multicultural cuisine. Ho Jiak is one of the first restaurants that really put Malaysian food on the map in Sydney. Although there were plenty of places to get your Malaysian fix, most of them were cheap and cheerful eateries that served up just a few of the more well-known Malaysian dishes. Not Ho Jiak. Sure,…