Holy Basil 2, Sydney CBD

Wanting to see the Vivid Festival, my family decided to eat out in the city beforehands. Holy Basil always has great food and close by to where I work so I headed off there right after I finished to meet the fambam!

It was my grandparents' first time eating Thai food and they requested nothing be too spicy so I definitely ordered on the mild side of the menu. And of course little pots of green tea for them!

Kai Yang (Laos charcoal BBQ chicken), $13.90

 The first to come out was the grilled chicken which had a lovely marinade that had been grilled to little charcoal-y bits. Delicious on its own, but you could always dip it into the sweet chilli sauce or chilli sauce if you're after that kick. We didn't expect the bowls of rice we ordered o be quite that large - it could easily have served three people per bowl!

Pad see ew (with chicken), $12.90

After enjoying the pad see ew last time, along with the fact that it's a favourite of my sister's, it definitely was a must order! The smoky flavour that permeates the noodles is what makes it so special and I really do like it, albeit the fact that it's just a tad too sweet for my tastebuds.

Gang masaman (beef masaman curry), $16.90

Massaman curry is a very mild curry that's quite creamy from the coconut milk in the recipe as well as the final drizzle on top. It's the best stirred through rice!

Som tam (green papaya salad), $10.90

I definitely wanted to introduce my family to the Thai papaya salad, requesting it to be very mild. I love how my grandma still found it extremely spicy haha! They were surprised that it was actually green papaya, as it's not something they've ever tried before.

Crispy fish (with green mango salad), $44.90

This was what I was looking forward to all night though! I could seriously have eaten it forever...They fillet the fish, cut it into individual pieces which are then crumbed and deep-fried. Nothing is wasted as the head and tail is given to you as well! The batter was very crunchy and extremely moreish as they definitely weren't shying away from the pepper :D It went very well with the green mango salad on top which was my preference over the papaya salad. I thought it was the perfect balance of sweet, sour and salty. I didn't get any hit of chilli, but that wasn't missed with any of my relatives! The family also enjoyed how refreshing this salad was. I think they just couldn't quite get used to the slight pungency of the crab paste used in the papaya salad!

I don't think any of us were particularly in the mood for any dessert so we passed on their house special deep-fried icecream. I should probably check out the rest of their dessert menu next time!

Holy Basil
Shark Hotel 127 Liverpool St
Sydney NSW 2000
http://www.holybasil.com.au

Opening Hours
Daily
Lunch Hours: 12:00-3:00pm
Dinner: 5:00pm-12:00midnight

Eats lately via iPhone #2

Uni has been keeping me busy lately so I've gathered snapshots of bits and bobs I've been eating!

Clockwise from top left: apple & cinnamon, lemon meringue, strawberry, black forest, carrot, hummingbird

Cupcakes from the Cupcake Bakery! Cupcakes are just so cute and there was plenty of icing - my favourite ;) I really enjoyed the apple & cinnamon, along with the lemon meringue! I was expecting something special from the hummingbird but it just tasted like plain old banana to me. Which isn't a bad thing as I love banana bread/cake/muffins!

The Cupcake Bakery
320b George St
Sydney, NSW , 2000

 

Muesli and yogurt

Top Juice in Westfield Sydney has tonnes of fresh juices but I went for something heartier. Fresh yogurt is the best and this was the super thick kind swirled with a delicious mix of oats and raisins :)

Top Juice
Level 5 Cnr Pitt St Mall And Market St
Sydney, NSW, 2000

Sweet taro and red bean crushed ice, $8.00

I have a thing for taro in desserts - especially the sweet marinated kind they have at Meet Fresh! Taro and red beans is a classic Asian flavour combination which I love :)

Meet Fresh
175 Rowe Street
Eastwood, NSW, 2122

Pork roll, $4.00

I love porks rolls. This place has my favourite pork rolls! Crunchy bread? Tick! The carrots and daikon are pickled just to my liking and the sauce they use here is what I think makes this pork roll number one in my books.

Ashfield Vietnamese Rolls
222 Liverpool Rd
Ashfield NSW 2131

Grilled Portugese chicken salad, $15.00

Decided to buy lunch at uni for once while waiting to meet a friend and went for the char-grilled chicken with piri-piri spices with coral lettuce, rocket, tomato and chilli sauce. The salad was average at best and not worth forking out the $15.00 (costs extra to sit in). Unfortunately you don't feel comfortable staying there for too long as the waiters continuously hang around and watch you like a hawk, even swooping in multiple times to try get you to leave quickly. Hard to have an enjoyable lunch when they're acting that way. I've had the baguettes here which are pretty good. Go for the lemongrass chicken!

Taste Baguette
City Rd Law Building The University Of Sydney
Sydney, NSW, 2006

Guava, biscotti & green tea froyo

Taro, biscotti, green tea & blood orange froyo

Noggi recently got renovated and they now have a lot of new flavours on rotation. Yes I know, I have a teeny tiny obsession with frozen yogurt. And Noggi has always been my go-to place for biscotti and blood orange (when they do have this flavour). I always top my frozen yogurt with mochi, coconut chips, blueberries and other fruit if I get extra toppings :D

Noggi
2/2 Albert Rd
Strathfield, NSW

Half roast pork knuckle, $28.00

Probably a bit silly of me to get half the pork knuckle when the entire thing costed just $5 extra! But I know I would not have been able to finish it without being waaay too full so I decided to skip the whole knuckle, go for half, and spend the rest on beer! I asked them to replace the mash with sauteed potato because while I do love mash, I've had it many, many times in my life and I wanted to try sauteed potatoes! The pork knuckle had such a lovely crackling, and the sourness of the sauerkraut plus sweetness of the apple compote brought out the best of the pork.

Bavarian Bier Cafe
24 York St
Sydney, NSW, 2000

French toast, $7.90 + $3.00 extra for bacon

My sister and I decided to have brekky in Newtown before class one day and we settled for a cafe next to the art store I bought some supplies from. I so badly want to say that I loved this but it was much to eggy for my liking. But yay for bacon and maple syrup!

Fringe Cafe and Restaurant
199 King St
Newtown, NSW 2042

Massaman beef curry, $6.95 during lunch

I order Massaman curry way too much, but this non-spicy Thai curry is so comforting that I can't help but be drawn to it each time. Hooray for multiple Thai restaurants in Newtown with cheap lunch specials!

Newtown Thai II
105 King St
Sydney, NSW, 2042

 

Hehe made myself a Vietnamese inspired salad for lunch at uni :)

And also breakfast in a jar so that I could transport it :D Greek yogurt, nectarine, berries, muesli and maple syrup mhmm.

Also baked some potato wedges with greek yogurt and sweet chilli sauce. Chucked in a tonne of different spices. Loved using the greek yogurt as it was just like having sour cream but less fat and higher protein :) Chobani's the best!

It was my brother's birthday recently and all good birthdays must end with cake! So a mango cheesecake was bought from Michel's Patisserie. He absolutely loved it despite the fact that he normally isn't the biggest fan of sweets so thank goodness :)

So there we have it! A little too much food everywhere haha.

Chat Thai, Westfield Sydney, CBD

I think I have a bit of an obsession with coconut. Which is why I have such an intense love for Thai food! There's just something about coconuts which seem to scream holidaying in a tropical paradise. Chat Thai always seems to be one of my go-to restaurants because the food is always nice. And the desserts there are to die for! But before we skip to all things sweet, we do have to get some proper food into our bellies (:

L to R: coconut milk with silky pandan dumplings, $4.50 ; fresh homemade coconut juice, $5.00

Drinks to start off with. I definitely fell in love with both these drinks for different reasons. The coconut milk drink contained pandan dumplings and jackfruit pieces which were beautifully the sweet. The drink itself was really like a liquid dessert. The young coconut juice contained pieces of coconut and was very refreshing.

Fresh spring rolls with smoked fish sausage, chicken and crab with caramelised taramind relish, $12.00

These were like healthier versions of spring rolls where the same outer skin was used but they weren't deep fried! Obviously, the flavour profile was also different with the fish sausage dominating the more subdued flavour of chicken and crab.

Green papaya salad with peanuts and dried shrimps, $11.50

Whoever can say no to spicy salads? I love the sweet, sour and spicy elements that shine through in this one salad. I almost always order this when eating out because I seem to have trouble balancing the three flavours myself at home! What a shame. Anyone have any tips? I love the saltiness that the dried shrimp provide to give this dish just that little bit extra. This salad is best eaten with sticky rice to take away the heat!

Padt si-ew, $12.50

Loved the smokiness the wok provided for these noodles. Definitely on the sweeter side, but I enjoyed it nonetheless (: The greens make you feel like you're eating something relatively healthy ;)

Crying tiger, $12.50

I was expecting something that would be crazy spicy and leave your entire mouth tingling and burning from this dish. That's what you would expect when you call a dish "crying tiger"! Though this was a far cry from the spiciness I was expecting and it was definitely mild. The beef was quite chewy and hard to eat so this wasn't one of my favourites.

Fried green curried prawn mousseline, $14.00

These were interesting enough. Had a texture reminiscent to fish cake that you buy from Chinese supermarkets. The taste didn't stand out for me though.

Coconut jelly, $3.50

This coconut jelly is amazing! Not like your usual supermarket jelly. It's not bouncy and harder in texture. There were pieces of fresh coconut hidden inside that just made it that more delicious.

Clockwise from top left: tup tim grob, $6.50 ; khanom busing, $2.50 ; pandan sticky rice and mango, $6.50

The tup tim grob had tapioca coated chestnuts that had a slight bite on the outside which gave way to a small crunchy chestunt piece. The soup was quite aromatic with jasmine and coconut, and was quite sweet. Which is where the ice came in to break the sweetness up!

I was curious about the khanom busing because of the meringue filling which was topped with threads of candied egg yolk and candied herbs and shrimps, encased by a thin, sweet wafer. I was interested to see how the sweet and salty would work together. I guess I could definitely see how people could like this dessert, but I don't think I'm used to it quite yet! Dried shrimp tends to be very strong in flavour after all.

We specially asked for a mix of pandan sticky rice and normal sticky rice for this dessert. I love how fragrant the pandan sticky rice was! I think they were pretty heady with the jasmine as well which I have no complaints about because I love jasmine. Coconut cream, fresh juicy mango that is sweet, and sticky rice. Absolutely nothing wrong with this flavour combination and everything right!

Coconut ice-cream, $6.90

So many textures in this one dish! We have the chewiness of the pandan sticky rice, the sweet and savoury crunch from the palm seeds and peanuts, and the smooth creaminess of the coconut ice-cream. The coconut ice-cream was sweet and not at all icy, and definitely did not skimp out on the flavour. I hate it when ice-creams at restaurants are on the icy and bland side. Luckily it was not the case here! I think I have found a favourite out of all the desserts :P

My friends and I left clutching our bellies after this feasting. There were only five of us girls after all. How did we manage to devour all this food? I guess we were misguided about the capacity of our stomachs ;)

Chat Thai
Level 6 Westfield Sydney, 188 Pitt St Mall
Sydney, NSW, 2000

Opening Hours
Monday-Sunday: 10:00am - 12:00midnight

Holy Basil, CBD

Sorry I've been neglecting my blog lately! Too many assessments all catching up to me. Good news is I only have one left and then I am free! Until summer school anyway. That still gives me a bit more than a month for a break (:

Today after handing in our museum guides for studio, a group of friends and I all decided to go out for lunch. They all had a fantastic experience at Holy Basil so they were up for another trip there to try this apparently awesome avocado shake - something of great curiosity to me and I really wanted to try!

Holy Basil is located in an unassuming location on top of the Shark Hotel, so hidden it was! And check out that awesome 3D nose. The interiors were actually quite nicely decorated with dim lighting. Something I didn't expect as this used to be the location of a club which closed down. We were seated immediately and the restaurant was relatively quiet despite being lunch hour.

Lychee shake and avocado shake, $6.50 each

My, my, my was that avocado shake good! For some reason after avocado has been blended with icecream and sugar, the resulting flavour was surprisingly reminiscent of pandan. I just knew it was amazingly creamy, decadent, and of course delicious. The lychee shake tasted like fresh lychees and was very refreshing on a hot day like this.

Chicken pad see ew, $12.90

I love flat noodles and this dish was definitely one of the better ones I've had in Sydney! The sauce wasn't too heavy and the noodles had been tossed in the wok just long enough so there's that distinct smoky flavour without going overboard into burnt tasting which is the worst!

Holy Basil Fried Ice Cream, $13.90

Let's be honest, this is what we were really looking forward to. A creamy vanilla icecream encased in phyllo pastry that has been deep-fried! There were so many layers of phyllo pastry that were layered on with evaporated milk in between to create a flaky exterior. So different from the typical floury batter on the outside. This one provided a beautiful crunch and went wonderfully with the caramel that had been drizzled onto the plate as well as the coconut, dried fruit and nut muesli.

Next time I go, I'm ordering the fish with mango salad! It looked awesome on the other end of the table and I definitely had some food envy after trying a small piece with the salad that originally looked like a mountain covering the huge fish!

My only complaint would be that the service wasn't too friendly. When we asked for the bill at the end of our meal, the waitress just stared at us before snapping that they didn't print receipts. She didn't even try to help or offer any other options! We were shocked that they didn't cater this simple request that is common everywhere else. So we proceeded to look through the menu to figure out what everyone ordered as we had a large group of 10. Halfway through sorting everything out, another waitress comes by and gives us the receipt. At least she was decent enough to consider how annoying it was to look up the costs of individual dishes. Pity the rude service dented what would have been a lovely lunch.

Holy Basil
Shark Hotel 127 Liverpool St
Sydney NSW 2000
http://www.holybasil.com.au

Opening Hours
Daily
Lunch Hours: 12:00-3:00pm
Dinner: 5:00pm-12:00midnight

BTS & Ted

It was Saturday night and I had just finished work and what better way to relax than to eat dessert with your boyfriend? Especially one that is labelled Better Than Sex. Big claim!

Better than sex, $15.00

As soon as it hit the table, I was really excited. I mean, look at that MASSIVE scoop of pandan coconut gelato! And all that oozy palm sugar caramel!! The brioche was tooth-achingly sweet, just the way I like my desserts ;) I think I died and went to food heaven, dancing on all that sugar. So needless to say, I was one happy girl.

The boy and I then walked up to George St cinema where we watched the newly released Ted.

Isn't he cute?! I thought they would have used all the funny parts in the trailer already, so I didn't expect it to be better than that to be honest. But it was actually hilarious! Lots of dude humour though and the bear was so incredibly rude for something so cute!

This Thunder song they sang was definitely one of the highlights of the film, it was pretty damn funny. Don't expect any cute and fluffy words coming out of the bear's mouth though!

Home Thai Restaurant, Haymarket

Since I finished work at 5pm, and my boyfriend had a group work meet up at 9pm, we decided last minute to hang out and waste some time before he had to venture off to UNSW. Le sigh, it is indeed hard to meet up with him during uni semester.  I wanted to eat at Home Thai because I love Thai food and I was very tempted by the desserts I saw online and lets face it, who can ever have enough dessert? ;) We strolled in before 6 and managed to nab one of the last tables. Granted, it was right next to the door which I didn't mind BUT the table was so small I was wondering how any dishes would fit on the table at all... But they did so it was alright (:

Moo Kum Wan, $11.90

My boyfriend was very keen to eat this after he saw the picture on the menu despite me telling him that beef tends to be quite chewy after they cook it at Thai restaurants and is often very, very, VERY spicy. Of course he doesn't listen to me and orders it anyway haha. This grilled marinated beef salad with shallot, coriander, mint, tomato, lemongrass, cucumber and chef’s dressing does taste quite good but is indeed quite spicy and the meat was chewy as I expected so wasn't too big of a fan. It was nice but I definitely did not want to fill my stomach up with this when I had ordered the other salad!

Pu Nim Yum Mamuang, $16.50

Now this baby was what I had decided I was going to order as soon as I lay my eyes on the menu! I was too excited and ate a piece of the soft-shelled crap as soon as it hit the table before I realised I was meant to take a photo... Whoops! The mango salad was a perfect balance of sweet, spicy, and sour and I loved the prawns and cashews throughout the salad. I adore cashews.
 

Sticky Rice with Mango, $6.50

My god this was good. The rice had different flavours and from what I discerned, the purple was taro, the white was coconut, and the green pandan! All topped with a delicious coconut sauce. Did I mention that I love coconut? The sweet mango paired perfectly with the sticky rice. I order this a lot when I eat Thai. With the other dessert options at around the $5 mark, I was very tempted to order more but I was already full and did not want to burst at the seams. Gives me an excuse to go back next time! They are definitely cheaper than the dessert options at Chat Thai (I have also tried an extensive amount of their dessert menu).

We then proceeded to spend an aimless night wandering the city and purchasing 99c Kinder Bueno chocolates at Woolworths (I love that stuff even though I'm no longer a kid!) before going our separate ways for the night.

Home Thai Restaurant
Shop 1 - 2
299 Sussex Street
Sydney NSW 2000
9261 5058 

Trading Hours:
Lunch: 11am - 5pm
Dinner: 5pm - 10:30pm