the hungry duck Sydney restaurants

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Cru54 Kitchen & Bar, Spanish, Surry Hills

Cru54 Kitchen & Bar


54 Foveaux Street Surry Hills
02 9281 1054

http://www.cru54.com.au/


Cru54 is a small funky tapas bar located a stones throw away from Central Station. Its just down the road from the Excelsior hotel so the area was buzzing with people. The food was quite good although personally I didn't think any of the dishes were outstanding. However this is a great place to share some food and sangria on a Friday night with friends. We ordered a number of tapas, mains and a salad to share.

Patatas bravas con aiolo (Potatoes with brava relish & aioli)


This was okay but fairly average. Actually I think the kitchen forgot the aioli..





Jamon Serrano, aged 22 months from Spain


Ever since the 'meat plank' from Jamie's I've been craving for some jamon or bresola. This had a deep flavour  and was delicious.




Warm Goat Cheese Salad with Orange & Asparagus


First of all, the goat cheese was incredible. Nutty, creamy and melt in your mouth. However the actual salad was so salty that even the orange failed to make an impact.




Paprika dusted crispy chicken wings with Tequila Salmorejo


Tequila and chicken?? Hell yeah! Unfortunately we couldn't taste (or feel the effects) of any tequila. Perhaps they forgot that as well? Haha. But actually this was a really tasty and probably one of my favourite dishes of the night.




Seafood Paella 


This was quite good, definitely recommended if you're dining at Cru54.




Pork Belly with marmalade braised red cabbage & aioli


This was the dish that we were all waiting for. Personally, I loved it. The crackling.. omgg.. delicious! But I think it depends on the piece of pork belly since the other people I dined with found this quite average. I liked it though :)



The bill came to $25 per head since we used a 25% off ent book voucher.

Cru54 Kitchen & Bar on Urbanspoon

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Sushi e, Japanese, Sydney

sushi-e


Level 4, Establishment
252 George St Sydney

9240 3000

http://merivale.com.au/sushie/

"Imagine you’re in Tokyo dining at an enclave of modern Japanese expression. At the centre of a huge marble bar you watch head chef, Nobuyuki Ura, and his team serenely at work, precisely turning fresh fish into edible works of art. Welcome to sushi e."

Sushi e promises and delivers. From the moment we stepped into sushi e we knew that this was something special.

We started with a selection of three sashimi. The flavours were so delicate. I definitely recommend these, they were incredible.  Kingfish topped with slices of ginger, chives and sesame seeds, drizzled with garlic oil immersed in ponzu and seared with smoking hot olive oil. 




Snapper topped with sesame seeds, chives, lime juice sprinked with english sea salt and drizzled with white soy based dressing.



Spicy scallop flame seared under black mountain chilli and spicy mayo, baby leaf salad



If you dine at sushi-e you must order the sashimi. Everything is of the highest quality and oh so fresh. We ordered the scampi and salmon belly nigiri and requested them to be lightly seared. Best scampi sushi I have ever had in my life.






The Dragon Ash roll is very popular amongst diners and I noticed that several other tables had also ordered the same roll. This was seared salmon inside-out wrapped with prawn and mayo flame seared topped with fried onion and ponzu dressing. I also tasted some really fresh crisp pickled ginger.



We had the fried chicken kaarage and the prawn siu mai as sides. The prawn siumai was fresh and pipping hot and delicious. The kaarage crispy and succulent.





By this stage we were extremely full but the main act was still to come. For our main to share we had the balmain bug tempura which is bug tail tempura tossed in a rich spicy chilli dressing and chives and served with dressed salad greens. This dish actually really reminded me of tofu adegashi.. but instead balmain bug adegashi! I loved this, incredible flavours. A must order.



Overall- a great dining experience. If you want outstanding Japanese, this is the place. If you also want to impress someone this is also the place to take them.

The Good: Incredible food and attentive service. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

The Bad: Pricey but then again past diners include Kanye West, Jason Derulo and Leonardo Dicaprio.

Sushi E on Urbanspoon