Bramhall Travel Blog: Australia - Day 2

Day 2 has come and gone already. Having not adjusted to the time change properly yet, we crashed early and woke up early. Unfortunately, it was a rather rainy day, but perfect for what we had planned - The Sydney Fish Market, Chinatown and some shopping :). Upon arrival at the fish market, we weaved our way inside to the auction floor, but no photography was allowed. The area in the market with all the restaurants and seafood shops had tons of great photo opps, though:

Entrance to Sydney Fish Market

The market was really big, but nothing compared to the size of Tsukiji in Tokyo, however this one is the largest fish market in the southern hemisphere!

This is a seafood market called Peter's. Obviously, we had to get some oysters.

We think these were lobster-like crustaceans, but they called them "bugs", which is exactly what they looked like

Gorgeous, bright orange lobsters

Breakfast, round1: fried fish, fried soft shell crab, fried bait fish and sauteed shrimp on a skewer

Breakfast, round 2 - fresh oysters

The oysters here are good, but not nearly as briney and bright as the ones at home. These were actually kind of fatty-ish and more mellow in flavor.

Breakfast, round 3: more oysters, but these have black caviar and tobasco sauce on them :)

Hokey Pokey-flavored gelato?? (we didn't try it to find out what it tasted like)

After the fish market, we rode a tram to Paddy's station, near Chinatown. The plan was to have lunch in Chinatown, but it was rather early, so we found the nearby Powerhouse Museum and killed some time. There were really cool exhibits inside highlighting engineering design awards, lighting, cool furniture and clothing design and even global warming. The museum was built in an old power plant:

Finally hungry, we made our way to Chinatown and walked around a bit:

As soon as the restaurant opened, we sat down at Golden Century restaurant for lunch. They had all these large tanks of water with fresh seafood inside, so you could pick your lunch! We ordered a mud crab, which sound bad, but are really delicious. We also ordered prawns, cucumbers with garlic sauce and fried pork spare ribs. Everything was really great, but the crab was the highlight:

Mud crab in garlic and ginger sauce

Full of crab, we hailed a cab and headed to Paddington neighborhood for some shopping! I was too busy checking things out to take any photos, but Sylvie and I, unfortunately, didn't have any luck finding things. Everything was a bit too funky.

All the walking made for some tired feet, so we cabbed it back to the hotel for a nap; we had to rest up before our big meal. Momofuku Seiobo is one of the best restaurants in the world and the anticipation of the dinner had been killing us. I had to do some serious math to figure out what time it was in Australia compared to what time it was in the US and therefore what time I could log onto their website, since they had very serious rules about when you could make reservations. It all culminated exactly 20 days ago, when I logged onto their website at the exact moment their reservation bookings opened to try to get a spot. (A special shout-out to Ann for keeping me on time that day. It might not have happened without you, girl. And to Dana, Bekah and Carolyn, thanks for putting up with my incessant chattering about getting the reservation!) Anyway, all the hard work paid off.

After a quick nap, Sylvie and Henry and I grabbed a quick taste of wine at the happy hour down the way from our hotel:

The Sydney Wine Adventure bar

Cool door near the spot where we sat and tasted wines

Our reservation at Momofuku was at 8:30, but Andrew had a client call to attend to, so Sylvie, Henry and I sat at the bar at Momofuku and took cool photographs:

bar menu at Momofuku

Hendrick's and tonic

Art shot of the wine storage behind the bar

The meal was several courses, with a wine pairing. I managed to get a shot of every plate, but for the life of me can't remember what exactly was in each dish. There's a menu below, but it was an amazing journey:

Smoked eel combined with a sort of cheese mousse inside a "cigar" phylo wrapping with shattered apple dust

Classic Momokuku pork buns...pork belly, cucumbers, hoisin sauce on top of a pillow-y soft roll....mmmmmmm

Potato balls with salmon roe and parsnip discs

mud crab (for the second time today) with chicken-oyster broth, dill and something crunchy...

Red sake. Didn't even know they made red sake!

This just looks like radish, but underneath is a mixture of wagyu beef and burnt watermelon essence, for flavor, of course! (you could actually taste the burnt watermelon and it was so much better than it sounded)

Roasted cauliflower, fermented mushroom sauce and smoked egg yolk. SO GOOD!

Momofuku kitchen

Chef working the super busy meat station

All of us enjoying an unbelievable meal

Rock lobster (small crayfish-type crustaceans) with asparagus and "poor man's orange sauce". whatever that is...

Peas covering oxtail and some sort of custard. One of my favorite dishes.

Momfuku kithen

Sunflowers that were plucking leaves from for a dessert dish

Lamb with super fat layer

Cheese course (usually my fave). This one was a goat cheese with currant syrup and something crunchy. It was good, but not my most fave dish of the night