Sailor's Thai

Two unusual things happened this Friday night - 1. I went to the gym after work instead of going straight to the pub 2. by the time I got to the pub at 7ish, the decision had been made to go for a meal instead of carrying on drinking.

That's how we ended up in Sailor's Thai, a fantastic thai restaurant tucked inside The Rocks, one of the main tourist spots in Sydney and not where you'd expect to find such a great place.

The dining format is a long table where people are fitted in where there's room, so not really intimate but very efficient! There were four of us and we shared plates. We had stir fried fish, green papaya salad, spicy rice balls and marinated whole trout, all served with steamed rice and a bottle of pinot noir. Every dish was excellent and far more interesting than the usual green curries and chilli jam stir fries of the average Thai meal here - that's not to denigrate them, as the standard is generally really good, but just to say that Sailor's Thai is a real cut above the norm. I was still remembering the flavours the next morning and will definitely go back - top marks!

Beer & wine makes you feel fine

Some of you might not believe this, but last week as an unusually alcohol-based week for me.

Mon & Tues I spent pretty much recovering from last weekend's excesses, which combined with a heavy workload, left me feeling pretty sluggish for the early part of the week. But by Wednesday, I'd got back into the swing of things and was very much ready for taking part in the informal book club I've become part of. It's more of a dinner & chat club than a book club, to be honest, but it's great fun and I've picked up a few books from it that I've enjoyed. We were round at my friend E's on Wed night for a lovely roast chicken, veg & potato dinner, followed by a gorgeous chocolate & mandarin cake (all home made). Yum. And obviously a few glasses of wine helped to wash it all down.

On Thurs, K and I joined another couple, L & P, at a 'boutique beer tasting' evening fundraiser for Sydney Children's Hospital. To be honest, I was only there for the beer tasting as I'm not a big fan of fundraising events, and I'm especially not that keen on the whole 'tugging the heart strings' approach for children's medical care, which in my mind shouldn't really be funded through charity in the first place (but that's probably a whole other blog...) This one was particularly toe-curling, especially as for some reason, the organisers thought it would be a GREAT idea to have a) extended speeches and b) an auction right in the middle of the whole thing. Note to fundraisers - either get the formalities over with at the beginning or leave them till the end, but never get between a thirsty crowd and their beers!

After my weekly day 'off' on Fri, which admittedly this week did involve me staying in my pyjamas till about 3pm (although I did also do lots of research into my potential career change...), I went for a run and then met up with K and his work pals in the pub (the Bavarian Beer Cafe, continuing the week's theme really). We grazed on pork crackling, sausages and the like, eventually taxi-ing home some time around 11ish.

Sat was a quiet one - we were supposed to be having dinner with friends but that was cancelled due to illness - and we couldn't even be bothered going to the cinema!

And finally, Sunday rolled around, a beautiful day albeit with a bit of a cool wind. K was up bright and early, induced by a state of anxiety about the Man Utd - Arsenal game and a need to get up and find out the result. They won = K good mood = good day for me! We thought we should probably do something with the day, so we headed over to Watson's Bay, a v pretty spot, and had lunch at Doyle's, a "Sydney institution". We'd not been before and weren't sure if we'd get in without a booking, but we did, and it was very nice, although definitely a premium price paid for the "institution" status and the views out across the harbour. The fish and chips was good, but not sure it was $40 worth of good. I had lots of good intentions about only having one glass of wine with lunch, but K was a bad influence on me (honest guv!) and we ended up splitting a bottle. We strolled around the head for half an hour or so after lunch, then ended up having a few afternoon beers before catching the ferry back to our place. All in all, a lovely Sydney day, and great to feel summer just around the corner.

Have got a fairly full-on week at work this week, lots of travelling and my regular freelancing gig on my 'day off', so suspect there will be far less beer and wine and feeling fine this week!

Possibly the worst restaurant in Sydney?

Last night K and I had by far the worst meal / eating out experience we've had in Sydney, where generally the standard is pretty high and you usually feel like you've had good value. Not this time.

The culprit - the Coachmen in Surry Hills. It's a Russian restaurant which may not be instantly attractive to everyone, but was the appeal to us as we still have very happy memories of the fantastic Russian place in Glasgow's East End.

Sadly this was a complete letdown on all fronts:

Service - appalling. Slow and totally incompetent. Long wait to ordering, then once we'd ordered, the waiter came back not once, but twice over the next ten minutes to tell us that first one of our starters, and then one of our mains wasn't available. Then he brought the wrong bottle of wine, then he took ages to bring the right one. We had to ask twice for tap water, then we had to stand up and search the place to get our bill at the end of the night (the waiter was found in the bar chatting to his mates).

Food - mediocre at best. 3 out of 4 of our first choices weren't available. K's borscht and beef stroganov was ok apparently. My crepes with caviar were ok, but my cabbage rolls with beef were pretty disgusting and I had to leave half of it. Our selection of pickled vegetables had come straight out of a supermarket jar as far as I could tell.

(Note when waiter came to clear our plates, he asked how my cabbage rolls had been and I said 'hmmm, so so', to which he replied 'oh well, at least you've left some for my dinner' - cementing him in my top 5 bad waiters of all time list!!)

Atmosphere - non existent. The place was cold (the advertised 'roaring log fires' were piles of ash), the music was dodgy, the 'decor' consisted of shelves lined with cheap Russian dolls, the bar / lounge area where you're supposed to relax with a vodka was full of staff loafing around and/or shouting at each other.

Price - shocking. We chose the place partly because it's in the list of places we can use our Sydney Entertainment Book (various discounts & offers), so we got one of the mains free. But by the time the $5 per head charge for the 'floor show' (some dodgy singers that we could hardly hear or see) and the 2.5% credit card surcharge was added, not to mention the pretty exorbitant prices in the first place, we'd paid $120 all up (about £60). For Sydney that's expensive and you'd really expect to get fantastic food and service for that.

Please never, ever, ever go to this dive of a place.

Sat 27 June: Birthday paragliding & fireworks!

I celebrated my 31st birthday today in two parts, with another part to follow next weekend (trip to casino with $200 to gamble with from K – should be fun!)

Part 1 saw me paragliding on the South Coast of New South Wales, about an hour’s drive south of Sydney. This was me finally managing to use a ‘red balloon day’ voucher given to me for last year’s birthday by my pals. Although the wind conditions weren’t great, there was enough wind for me to do a short glide from a clifftop down to the beach (and I get to go back for a longer flight some time which is a bonus). There wasn’t much to learn – I was strapped in to a tandem harness with the instructor and told to “run towards that big cloud”, which I did and before I knew it my legs were in the air, the ground was disappearing underneath me and then I was floating out to sea. It was strangely peaceful and relaxing, not at all the adrenaline rush you might expect, and I could have stayed there all day really!

Click here for a link to the paragliding photos.

Part 2 of birthday treats was a meal out in Darling Harbour, the waterfront part of Sydney city centre. I’d chosen Jordon’s, a seafood restaurant. Quite randomly we were treated to a fireworks display on the water, part of the Sydney Winter Festival, which I thought was very nice of them to arrange just for my birthday, ha ha…

The meal was good but the service was very disappointing – we were seated for 20 mins before anyone came to take even a drinks order, and then we practically had to beg for our bill at the end of the meal as what seemed like hundreds of staff were busily buzzing around us while completely ignoring us at the same time. Given that it wasn’t the cheapest of places, it was a definite letdown and we filled our customer feedback form in accordingly! No tip for them…

After the meal we wandered along the harbourside in a pleasantly tipsy manner, and so to bed.

All in all, a lovely day.

Friday 23 January: Melbourne

Having been in Melbourne for a few days for work, we started our holidays with an evening out for drinks with a group of social enterprise people that we both know. Melbourne is completely different from Sydney in its pub & going out culture – and much more like what we’re used to at home. In Sydney, licensing laws have historically meant that it’s difficult to open anything other than a fairly basic ‘beer shack’ (and they all have the ubiquitous ‘pokies room’ – an even bigger shed filled with games machines, which are huge money-spinners for the pubs, but obviously not for the punters). Melbourne, on the other hand, has a really vibrant, lively pub and club scene – it makes me think of a slightly diluted version of New York (not that I’ve been!). This evening we went to a place called Cookie, which was on several levels, including the rooftop (but there was a massive queue for that!). After a few beers, and as the numbers dwindled, K and I grabbed a quick dinner with another guy, James, in a really busy Chinese place, where James assured us the fried dumplings would be to die for – and he was right! It was the kind of place we’d never have known about without him and it was exactly what we needed to soak up the beer!