good life: The Good Life in Sydney - a 'cookbook' weekend

On the top of my list of my favourite 'Good Life' things you'll generally find travel, good food, and sharing great experiences with friends.

The Sydney landmark - unmistakable

A few weeks ago fit the bill perfectly. Not only is Sydney one of my favourite cities, (I lived and worked there during my backpacking days so I guess I'm a bit partial), but it's also home to 3 amazing restaurants for which I have the cookbook, and where we ended up eating at in one weekend! There are plenty of other things to do in Sydney (and the shopping was great) but this trip was really about the food.

Ok, this was no ordinary food weekend. It was for a big birthday and for the last many years Mark and Cath have raved about 'Tetsuya's', one of the world's best restaurants, so 6 months ago we made our reservation (because it pays to book this far in advance!) and organised a whole weekend to Sydney around this 1 meal. Crazy? Yep! But oh so worth it. So Tet's was at the top of the list, but we also made it to Spice Temple and Bather's Pavilion to round out the cookbook trifecta.

In addition to cookbook destinations, we also found another amazing bistro called DOV, which Cath found through her diligent cross referencing of multiple 'best of Sydney' lists.

There was also one other new foodie thing we discovered which deserves a mention and that's the coolest butcher I have seen in a long time that we just stumbled upon in the suburb of Woollahra called 'Victor Churchill'. There was a big, aged, hunk of meat in the window, beautiful butchery inside and a meat smell which cannot be adequately described in this blog and which drew us all inside for a closer look. Unfortunately we had other lunch and dinner plans so we didn't buy anything.....

Cookbook number 1 - Tetsuya for lunch:

Cookbook1: Tetsuya

Tetsuya's was pure magic and food perfection, from the immaculately starched table clothes and waiter's uniforms to the perfectly symmetrical dots decorating the plates on the signature dish of ocean trout, as perfect as the picture in the cookbook. The food was simply extraordinary - art on a plate and not a single piece out of place. Our sommelier was a real star and Cath's desert came complete with gold foil and a candle. It is definitely a special occasion restaurant and the bill for the 9 course degustation with matching wine (or 10 if you want to try the Tasmanian oysters which we did of course) would definitely generously cover the grocery bill for a month. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually thought I got what I paid for.

Cookbook number 2: Neil Perry Balance and Harmony: The Spice Temple for dinner

Cookbook 2: Neil Perry

Balance and Harmony is probably one of the most beautiful cookbooks I have. It comes in a box with a ribbon, the photos are beautiful and it's an experience just to finger through it. We've been to the Spice Temple in Melbourne already but I think the food at the Spice Temple in Sydney was actually better. I really like spicy food, but in Sydney I tasted the food more and not just the chilli. The 'balance' Neil Perry speaks about was somehow better. It is a beautifully dingy, poorly lit space and you could easily imagine being in an opium den somewhere, but the food gives it away.

Cookbook number 3: Serge Dansereau's The Bather's Pavilion, Balmoral Beach.

Cookbook(s)3: Serge

I accidentally bought Serge Dansereau's autobiography a few years ago called 'For the love of good food: a 20 year journey through the Australian food scene'. It was an online purchase that seemed like a cookbook so I was disappointed when an autobiography landed in my mailbox, but I couldn't help reading it - a really interesting story! (Maybe it was his Canadian roots, but that's just by the by...) It was good enough that I also bought the Bather's Pavillion cookbook. In the autobiography he speaks of his project of renovating a run down Bather's Pavilion, so it was really neat to go there on a sunny Sunday morning for brunch. The building is stunningly restored, the food was great and 100's of nippers on the beach really brought what I had read to life.