yaokui: Sydney Food

Address: 20 Campbell St, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Phone: 61 2 9211 1808

We wanted to have dinner at Siam I am initially, since I read that the restaurant is considered the best Thai restaurant in Australia. Unfortunately, it was closed on the day we went there, so our friend Kris, who lives in Sydney, brought us to another Thai restaurant around the corner call Chat Thai instead. We could see a crowd gathering outside of the restaurant as we were approaching it, which is always a good sign. We joined the waiting crowd and waited for about forty minutes before we were seated.

The food at Chat Thai was good, slightly more authentic than the food served at most of the Thai restaurants in NYC (except Sriprapai of course). We ordered pad grapow (minced meat with basil and chilli), panang chicken (red curry), beef satay and a tamarind soup. We really liked the pad grapow, in fact it was the best I have ever eaten, but the tamarind soup tasted a little funky, even for me. I was very excited when I found out that they also served mango with sticky rice dessert. In case you haven't heard, mango with sticky rice is one of my favorite desserts, ever since I tried it in Phuket. It was totally to die for!

Chat Thai was worth the wait. Thanks again Kris for meeting up with us and bringing us there!

Crowds of people waiting outside of Chat Thai restaurant

my glass of Thai ice tea

BBQ Beef + awesome dipping sauce

Tamarind Soup

Pad Gra(Kra) Pow minced pork

Panang Chicken

Mango with sticky rice dessert

Address: 359 Crown Street, Surry Hills NSW, Australia

http://www.bills.com.au/restaurants/surry.htm

Phone: 61 2 9360 4762

We wanted to check out another restaurant for breakfast after arriving in Sydney, but a couple detours later (road closing because of the Sydney Marathon), we discovered Bills at Surry Hills. Since I have read some pretty good reviews on the restaurant before going to Australia, I convinced Gan to stop by Bills for breakfast.

Apparently Bills is a restaurant named after the owner Bill Granger, a Melbourne born food writer who moved to Sydney and ended up opening his own restaurants there. For a person who is not trained as a chef, he is doing pretty good. He owns two other Bills restaurants in NSW area. He also has a cookbook and he also appears frequently on tv/magazines. But I don't see what's the big deal though, the food was just ok.

Since we were there for breakfast, the menu focused on healthy and organic ingredients ie. sunrise drink of orange, banana, yogurt and berries, ricotta hotcakes with honeycomb butter, sweetcorn fritters with roast tomato, spinach and bacon, scrambled organic eggs with organic sourdough toasts etc. Yea, the ingredients were fresh but it was not worth the price. That was one of the more expensive breakfast that I have had, the bill came up to 58 bucks. Honestly, it was not even as good as Norma's in NYC.