19 Dec - Sotos / Queens, Mount Lawley

Brunch before Christmas was supposed to be at Beaufort St Merchants, but due to them being busy, we headed down to Sotos instead. However, after ordering food and drinks (and receiving drinks), we were then told that the chef had chucked a tantrum and we wouldn't be getting our food.


So instead, we had food at the Queens, which was a short walk away. I grabbed the eggs benedict with ham. The bread was crunchy and had a decent chew to it. The ham was nice, leaner than bacon obviously, I wish I had more of it. The eggs had nice runny yolks, just the way I like them.

Pulled Pork

A week before Christmas, I smoked some pork shoulder and ribs, as a test run. Here's the result of a 10 hour smoke of pork shoulder. I lined the heat beads in a snake fashion, lit 8 of them and loaded up with hickory. I smoked two cuts of pork for Christmas, first brining it for a day. This one turned out better than the first, so will definitely brine again. However after eating pulled pork for nearly two weeks now, I won't be doing this for awhile hahaha.

12 Dec - Dragon Palace, Northbridge

Work colleague James and his fiance Delise tied the knot on this day, and their reception was held at Dragon Palace. Here are some of the things that I ate that night (as the banquet went on and the food started coming thick and fast, I didn't take photos).

10 Dec - Chutney Marys, Rockingham

As an end of year celebration and for project completion, the engineers at work all got together at Chutney Marys in Rockingham for a celebratory lunch. A group of us went for the non vegetarian banquet, which consisted of:

Starters: Chicken Tikka, Seekh Kebab, Onion Bahji
Mains: Butter Chicken, Rogan Josh, Dahl, Brinjahl Bahji, Rice, assorted plain and Garlic Naan, Pappadams, Raitha, Kuchumber.

All in all, the food was pretty decent. It was quite salty though, as with most Indian food. I washed it all down with a Strongbow.

1 Dec – Sydney Work Trip II Day 4

The day started off with waking up and packing my case ready to checkout after breakfast. After doing so, I headed down for my final buffet breakfast in Sydney. I was not hungry, probably due to all the meat consumed yesterday that I had toast, scrambled eggs and a little bit of bacon.

Even this was a chore to eat and I didn’t really enjoy it, because of my mood. Afterwards, I checked out of the hotel room and then waited for the others to do the same. We then headed back to Epping where the course was being held.

Today’s lunch consisted of a pesto cream based chicken dish, salty lasagne and a seafood tomato based dish. I ate late as I was calling Qantas and then our corporate travel agent to get my flight adjusted to an earlier time. The food was OK, but the salty lasagne put me off after last nights salt intake.

After the course ended, I went back into the city with the guys (they could not change their flights so ended up going around the city to kill time) and then took a taxi from the city to the airport. After a traffic jam due to an accident, I finally arrived and managed to secure the next flight back to Perth, although it was an hour wait. The flight was also delayed due to the weather.

 

Dinner was served on the flight, with my choice being the lemongrass chicken and rice. Notice the different tray? It seems like they ran out of cattle class trays, so I ended up with a crew’s tray. The main differences I noticed were that I got metal spoons/fork, different (nicer) cheese and no water. This dish had a bit of flavour to it, moreso than the meal on the way over.

30 Nov – Sydney Work Trip II Day 3

 
The morning started off with breakfast again. Today, they had crumbed poached eggs! Whoa, I had to try those with some bacon and mushrooms. They turned out to be exactly that, poached eggs with a slightly runny yolk, crumbed and deep fried.

I also tried the smoked salmon, mackarel and trout. They were OK, but I was thirsty afterwards.

To finish, I had some fruit.

Lunch today consisted of Asian food. I had rice with chicken curry and some stir fried pork and vegies. The curry had a decent bite to it whilst the pork and vegies were a little sweet for my liking.

After killing some time online, I headed off for dinner with the other guys. We walked up to The Rocks and sat down at the Lowenbrau brewery. I had a couple of their lemon flavoured wheat beers, which were quite mild and drinkable:

 

I had to try their schweinshaxen, served with mashed potato and saukraut. The crackling was really crunchy, but was overly salty for me. I had to eat it with some meat and mashed potato, but eventually ran out of mash. The saukraut was OK .. tart enough to cut through the fattiness a bit. Whilst I loved the texture of the crackling, I do prefer my bastardized version as it is less salty.

After our second round of beers, we walked off the food a bit by going down to Circular Quay and the Opera House.