Royal Treasure Seafood Restaurant, Sydney

It is a testament to the quality of food at Royal Treasure Seafood Restaurant that I went back. My first yum cha experience there was chaos of the Faulty Towers variety.

My friend Dash recommended it highly: loads of dumplings packed with fresh seafood and greens, sweet and sticky pork buns, great salt and pepper squid and plenty of other hot, crispy delights. Sold.

As we were walking up to the restaurant Dash warned me:

“There is always a queue, but don’t worry, it always moves quickly. 10 mins max.”

Famous last words.

We pushed through the 20 plus people crowding the little desk where the maître de assigns tickets for the waiting list. They had all been assigned their numbers but were still looking very stressed, waving their tickets and barking in Chinese at the poor young girl. I did not envy her job.

We got to the front of the queue and were told it would be a 30 minute wait. We decided to sit it out. We’d driven 45 minutes to eat there so we might as well, right? Wrong.

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Automata, Sydney

I can always rely on the Meat and 2 Veg to be brutally honest when it comes to food. Fine dining is not really his bag – he’s more of a, well, meat and 2 veg kind of guy. The problem, he readily admits, is that he can’t help letting the price influence his opinion.  In his words: “if it’s expensive, it has to really make my balls tingle”. Which is why I can be completely objective when I say that Automata, where one of my best mates is restaurant manager, was by far the best meal we had in Sydney when we visited over Christmas and New Year. His balls were tingling from beginning to end.

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Short & Sweet: CHISWICK restaurant, Woollahra, Sydney

Style: Modern Australian

Budget: Mid-range – expensive (depends what you order). 

Venue and atmosphere: Set in an old Victorian house with thatched windows all the way around, this tasteful, elegant dining room is filled with natural light. Walking through the dappled sunlight and calm of Chiswick Gardens, set back from busy Ocean St, one expects an oasis of calm, but the food is far too good for that. It is is very busy and full of chatter. If you prefer a quieter experience, sit in the few tables in the shady courtyard, which were inexplicably empty when I dined there.

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A humongous helping of Sydney scrumptiousness

This post has taken a while to come to fruition. I got back to the UK in mid-January but it's been straight back in the deep-end with my Masters and work. Plus I have recently started a new blog about Food Anthropology, check it out.

Mostly, though, I have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of food photos I took in Sydney. I worked out that in the 26 days I was there, there were only 3 days when I didn't eat out. One was Christmas Day, the next was Boxing Day and the other was on my last day, when the hangover I'd managed to avoid all holiday, despite drinking everyday, hit me like a ton of Jagerbombs. I spent the whole day in bed with the blinds down, but my sister brought me gözleme in bed so I'm not sure if that day even counts.

I'd love to talk you through each and every dish I tried, but if I attempted that you'd be waiting till 2015. Instead, I have selected around 3 photos from (almost) every restaurant I visited to give you a little flavour of my culinary escapades in Sydneytown this time round.

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Orto, at last

In April 2011, over two and a half years ago, my sister’s boyfriend, Chris Low, and his business partners, Anne Cooper and Louise Hunt, opened Orto Trading Co. This week I finally got to eat there.

It was top of my list coming home to Australia for the first time in 3 years, and it did not fail to impress. OK, I am biased, but Chris really does know what he is doing in the kitchen. His food is interesting, imaginative and inventive. Chris spoiled us rotten, with oysters as an amuse, 6 starters, 3 mains and 2 desserts, all washed down with 3 expertly chosen bottles of wine.

White anchovy and sobrasada fish fingerMarrowbone, parsley, lemon and garlicCape Grim beef tartare and frites

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