Beers at South Head

A couple of sunny Sundays ago, we ventured across the city to Watsons Bay/South Head. After a confusing start (in which we nearly trespassed on a navy base and then almost fell on a small child while climbing down a dirt track), we managed to work our way past the throngs of tourists taking pictures of middle-aged men's junk on the nudist beach and secure ourselves a secluded clifftop spot  (far from any pale buttocks cheerily quivering in the cold ocean breeze) in which to enjoy some afternoon beers (because day-drinking is the best*). There are a bunch of neat things at South Head, including the cute candy patterned Hornby Lighthouse (build after more than 100 people died in shipwrecks off the coast in the 1850s) and a bunch of old gun emplacements and tunnels, not to mention awesome views over Sydney Harbour on one side and east towards NZ on the other.

Watsons Bay is super easy to get to, only about 20 minutes by ferry from Circular Quay, and the South Head Heritage Trail is an easy walk which can take anywhere between 15 minutes and a whole afternoon depending on how strongly your inner meerkat urges you to play in the tunnels.

* Disclaimer: don't try this at home or elsewhere, kids. Climbing up and down cliffs to drink illegally in public is for stupid irresponsible adults like us, not sensible people who don't want to fall to their deaths and/or be fined^. 

^ Seriously though, if you insist on drinking in public, you'll probably be fine as long as you're not trying to get totally wasted and aren't making a dick of yourself and/or littering.

I'm on a thing

Our group had a paper published recently - go Kelly! We had champagne at a meeting at about 10am, because that's how we roll. I feel a bit bad that my name is on it because I did next to no work on it - just optimised some primers. However, not gonna say no to upping my publication record! 

City Lights

I really am the most terrible blogger. Once I let one week slip by without a post, the others just sneak right along after and by the time I notice, it's already over a month since I last touched any photos! The worst part is, I have all these posts planned in my head but I never get around to setting fingers to keyboard or remembering to take my camera with me when I go out. I'll try to be better, but only time will tell if trying is enough.

Following on from the topic of my slackness, I finally got around to looking through my photos from Vivid several months ago. Vivid is a festival held annually in Sydney in May/June where the city is decked out in interactive light-based art displays. Most of the major landmark historical buildings are lit up, and the displays change every year.

This is the third Vivid I've been to, with the first being the week after I moved to Sydney - a great introduction to a new city!

They really outdid themselves withe the Customs House building this year, with vines breaking through the brickwork and bursting into an exuberant display of the magic of nature.

This year, they also extended the light displays to Chatswood, with a nautical theme incorporating one of my favourite creatures, the jellyfish!

Despite all my complaints about Sydney, stuff like this makes it a pretty interesting place to live in.

Drunken Restaurant Reviews #2: Kammadhenu

We headed out to Newtown one cold and rainy night in search of some delicious spice-laden food to assist our bottle of wine in warming us up, because there's nothing like a good curry to make you sweaty and disgusting and satisfied (three adjectives for which I aim in all things in life). King Street is dominated by Thai places, while Indian places are few and far between (I think there are like a total of three Indian/Nepalese/Malaysian-Indian places on the whole street). We chose Kammadhenu using the very rigorous scientific process of basically walking into the first Indian restaurant we came across, because we are very lazy. The extremely purple interiors exuded the kind of slight scunginess usually associated with cheap deliciousness and questionable service, both of which we received in plenty.

The waiter brought us wine glasses while I mentally gave praise to Dionysus that we brought our own wine instead of having to resort to their wine selection, which consisted solely of that awful one with the picture of birds on it that you can get for about $6 at any liquor store. I gulped back my first glass as I gazed in despair at the menu - so many delicious-sounding things! I look helplessly first at Jeremy, then at the super religious cow on the front of the menu, hoping that one of them will offer me some spiritual salvation. Or, you know, just help choosing what to eat, which is arguably more important. My stomach gurgled as the wine splashed in, and it sounded like "pooooorrrrrtttttteeeerrrrrttttttooooooo....." - the belly has spoken, so potato it is.

Masala Dosai - $9

Wow this thing was long. Like longer-than-Jeremy's-hairy-forearm-in-the-background long. I'd filled up with more wine in order to try and stave off my hunger (it didn't work, pretty sure my stomach lining had started dissolving by then). Thankfully, this delicious tube of soft soft lightly spiced potato wrapped in a paper-thin crepe arrived to save my gastric mucosa from dying a sad, lonely and wine-soaked death (much like the one which I will likely one day succumb to). All the best things in life somehow incorporate carbs and sauce, so carbs wrapped in carbs dipped in chutney ranked pretty highly in my list of "good things that happened to me today". This dosa was big enough to be a light meal for one, and I'll definitely be back for more next time I get a bit peckish while wandering around Newtown. Together, we polished this off in about 1.7 seconds.

Lamb Rogan Josh - $13.90

Average. Don't bother.

Manchurian Chicken - $12.90

This dish is pretty much why multiculturalism is awesome - great things happen when one culture puts their own spin on food from a different culture. A weird delicious hybrid creature with aspects from both, yet tasting like something unique gets created. Such is the oddness of the chimera that is Manchurian chicken. I'm not the biggest fan of sweet and sour, especially the way it's done outside of China (i.e. in order to accomodate for the weird-ass tastebuds of white people). However, the addition of spices and a more curry-ish texture, while cutting down on the sweetness makes this dish awesome. This was a pretty decent take on the Manchurian - the chicken was nice and vaguely crispy outside, and the sauce was very flavoursome. Jeremy's mind was blown by the existence of Indian-Chinese food. Or maybe he's just really easily impressed while drunk.

Overall, food not too bad for the price, service as average as what you'd expect, and we managed to get pretty drunk and may or may not have gotten sidetracked on our way home and had several more drinks at a pub and severely regretted it the next day. Next time, I may or may not just get 3 dosas instead.

Seriously though, eat a dosa.

Kammadhenu Newtown
171 King Street, Newtown
(02) 9550 2611

Cover Girl

A paper I worked on made the front cover of the journal :) Quick, someone stick it on their wall so that I can say I'm a pin-up!

A walk

Although I have practically no inbuilt insulation, I tend to prefer cooler temperatures than the crazy heat that seems to engulf Sydney for half of the year. After 2 years, I think my heat-intolerant body is finally acclimatising to the Sydney weather a little, in that this winter has seemed as freezing (if not more so) than winters in Auckland. However, unlike the perpetual sogginess of Auckland, Sydney winters mean plenty of clear skies and gentle breezes. This creates fantastic opportunities for doing outdoorsy things at a temperature that doesn't make me want to melt into a puddle of goo.

We headed out to Manly (thank you, free Opal trips!) on Saturday to get some nature and such in us on the Manly Scenic Walkway, a panoramic track that winds past several nice beaches, through some bush and past a bunch of  beachside mansions where millionaires probably eat hookers or whatever it is that rich people do on the weekend.

The Council website lies - the stated 4-5 hour walk only took us 2.5 hours or so, including a detour where we decided to clamber over the exposed rocks at a couple of beaches during low tide rather than walk a track like sensible people. I can't deal with beaches easily accessible by public transport in the summertime (because of this), but maybe I need to reassess this situation next summer with beaches that require an hour's hike to get to. This was a relatively busy walk, as it's probably one of the more popular day walks in Sydney, but there were still many pockets of tranquility where the strange squawkings of the avian inhabitants were only interrupted by the humming of ferries from far across the harbour. On the whole, not a bad way to enjoy a lovely sunny winter's afternoon.

Photos taken in Sydney in July 2015.

Drunken Restaurant Reviews #1 - Izote Mexican, and an introduction

So a while back, I had the "genius" idea that I would attempt the monumental and hugely misguided task of eating at every single establishment on King Street in Newtown. Why? Well, why not. I like food, Newtown has lots of cheap food, and trying to eat at every single place is like attempting a collection. Jeremy suggested that I blog about it, which was a fantastic idea in theory, until we remembered three important facts: 

1. The majority of restaurants in Newtown have cheap or free BYO
2. We are boozehounds
3. I'm a lightweight, so half a bottle of wine moves me beyond the tipsy zone into the next-morning-regrets zone

As a result, these restaurant reviews will come in an extremely untimely fashion, as I tend to forget that I took pictures while I was drunk. Also, my drunken photography sucks even more than my normal photography (I can't aim straight and Jeremy's hairy arms keep sneaking into frame), and my memories of what things taste like are somewhat vague. HOWEVER I contend that these reviews are still valid, because despite lack of flavour memory, my drunken memory of emotions is pretty spot on, so if I remember being ecstatic about my food, chances are it was pretty damn good. Drunken reactions to food don't lie. Nevertheless, perhaps these so-called "reviews" should be read a more of a chronicle of my adventures in inebriated eating, rather than detailed analyses of cuisine. But hey, if you are ever in need of a drunken munch, this may serve as a decent guide.

So one Friday night a couple of months back, we grabbed a bottle and headed down to Izote Mexican, at number 6 on King Street, chosen partly because we'd  eyed it up previously while walking past on our way to other places, and partly because it was the first open restaurant we saw after walking from our place and we're very lazy. This is a cozy little restaurant which always seems pretty busy. As we cracked open our wine, a person at the table next to ours got super excited because she hadn't previous realised the place was BYO, and promptly took off to the bottle shop down the road, returning with more bottles than there were people at her table. We were impressed.

We crack open the wine and have our first glass while we peruse the menu. The interwebs suggests that this restaurant may be pretty authentic Mexican, but we're plebs who have never been to Mexico so you could probably serve me a cookie wrapped in a tortilla and I'd still 80% believe you if you said it was authentic (hence my ongoing life plan of eating in every country in the world so I know what everything is "supposed" to taste like). We're 2 glasses in and I'm tipsy by the time our entrée arrives. 

Queso Fundido al Chorizo - $13.90

"Holy shit this is huge and incredible", drunk KZ thinks to herself. This dish consisted of corn chips served with some kind of intensely cheesy mashed bean dip, with chunks of delicious chorizo and jalapeño. The dip is rich but not overwhelming and the soft beans contrast and compliment the super crispy chips. By the time we're down to the last few chips, I'm hissing at Jeremy like a bobcat over the last slice of chorizo. Always the gentleman, he lets me have it while I cackle gleefully.

The mains roll out fairly quickly, and even in our lightly-pickled state, we're aware enough that we have made a huge mistake in not reining back our eyes which were far far bigger than our stomachs.

Beef Enchilada Verdes - $22.90

Mole Poblano - $25.90

My mole poblano consists of an entire chicken's worth of breast coated in a smooth sauce which supposedly has chocolate in it. The sauce is tasty and only has the slightest of kicks to it (to my heat-resistant tongue tempered in the fires of hell), as the chocolate mainly serves to counteract the spice rather than provide any strong flavours itself. A pretty solid dish - not incredible, but definitely enjoyable. I'm only about halfway through my chicken and pretty much finished the wine when my stomach's decided that I've shoved a sufficient volume of food into it, and I'm internally having a drunken cry because I know that I'll have to surrender this poor tasty dish to the cold, cruel world instead of enveloping it in the welcoming embrace of my digestive tract. Word to the wise - share this between two people. I managed to force myself to eat about 60% of this before I died.

What Jeremy remembers of his enchilada (quoth he, about 20 minutes ago): "It was pretty fucking good". He finished his entire dish, but was too full to have more than a bite of my mole poblano. This is a man who habitually eats enough food to feed a family in one sitting. I kid you not, the portion sizes at Izote are huge. Be warned.

I sighed at my mole in defeat and we asked for the bill. It was a little bit more than we usually spend on a casual cbf cooking type of night, but we probably had enough food to comfortably feed 3 people, so I guess it's fair enough. We rolled out of the restaurant drunk and well satisfied, somewhere between pleased and painfully bloated.

Izote Mexican
6 King Street, Newtown
(02) 8084 9651