The BEST Birthday Party EVER - Tharen's Fancy Dress Restaurant

I heard about Tharen's Fancy Dress Restaurant last year from a friend. Since I left my birthday organisations til so late this year, I decided to give Tharen's a go since it seems like they have every thing handled. Just show up and have fun. Originally I wasn't going to get people to dress up in costume since it's a friday night after work, but everyone really got into the mood, so costume it was!

The restaurant is located in some back street of Kings Cross, at first I was a bit apprehensive going, but the minute I got to the restaurant, my jaw dropped. We were greeted by people in costume, a red carpet and a fire breather!!! We got into the restaurant and immediately went into the toilets to get changed. What did I get dressed as?

Sari!

Once I was dressed, we immediately hit the bar, with a drink in hand, we observed the surroundings better. Every chair in the restaurant had a hat, and the walls were covered with more hats! There were coat stands full of wigs, masks and boas. We started picking and switching hats around and trying them on and trying them on other people. Within 5mins, the madness started! There's not much I can say, except the following photos have already been HEAVILY censored:

Pirate!

This is what happens when you don't bring your own costume

My cheerleader and sexy cop!

Gus learning how to use scissors!

We actually had a magician come to our table and did a whole heap of tricks with us! It was amazing! 1 foam ball in my friend's hands turned into 2 balls which turned into 4 balls!!

Hungry people

OMG!!!

My turn for revenge!

At this point.....things started to get at little.....out of control.....

Trailer Trash Willy Wonker?

We had to stop with the madness when the food came out.

Moroccan Lamb

Spatchcock

Veal

After the entrees, me and Moishii decided to go through with our plan. The plan? Costume change! I couldn't decide what costume to wear, so the best thing was to wear both! And what did I wear?

My belly dancing outfit and my "supporters"

Close up of my Supporter #1

Closeup of support #2

One of the reasons I couldn't go for lunch with my workmates on my birthday was because I had to go buy bike shorts to wear under my belly dancing skirt. I only realised the night before that it was completely see through!!!!!

One of the many waitresses

Dinner was a 3 course meal including entree, main and dessert. There were 6 choices for each of the course, but for dessert, you can let each person choose their own dessert, or go with a Bomb Alaska. I told them I've NEVER had a Bomb Alaska in my life, and they needed to make me an extra bomby alaska!

FLAMES!!!!!!!!!

Sparklers!!

Bomb Alaska with a cookies and cream centre

After dessert, the madness continues.......

And part of the madness was me going around taking photos with random strangers!!

I think I took about 10 photos with her

Who is she?

And him?

Errrrrrr......?

Maybe we're related???

Moishii decided to get in on the action as well

This party was seriously insane. Nonstop costume and hat changes, cheesey music for singalong and dance along. Even the waiters were urging us to get onto the tables and chairs to dance! Most of us were acting as if we were drunk, but most of us were completely sober! The place was just sooooooo much fun everyone got into the mood!!

This is officially the BEST birthday party I've EVER had! EVER. It was worth every cent I paid! By the end of the night, I had foot cramps from dancing nonstop and jumping around. Infact, I pulled a hip muscle when we congo lined our way around the restaurant, up the stairs, over furniture and back downstairs again! I can't recommend this place enough! I had an absolute blast!!!

Thanks to all those that came and helped me make it the best birthday party I've ever had!!!

Tharen's Fancy Dress Restaurant
13-15 Kellet Way
Kings Cross
http://www.tharens.com.au
Ph: (02) 9326 9510

The start of my birthday week

I've been a bit slack with my updates lately, but life has just been absolutely hectic. Since I've started my new position, this week has been the busiest week ever. Weekend work, late nights, tight deadlines etc. Probably the worst week to be busy as my whole week was already jam packed with events to celebrate my birthday!!

The day before my birthday was spent at BBQ City for some Korean food with my family with one of my favourite Taro cakes. The best thing about the whole dinner would be the fact that I got birthday kisses from my Nephews! I think its been a good 5-8 years since I've gotten a kiss from some of them. They are getting to the stage we're they're a bit too cool for school, and definitely too cool to be giving their Aunt kisses, but they did! All 3 of them! And I got phone calls from all of my nephews and neices from overseas as well.

Thursday was my actual birthday, when Moishii showed up at work with a bunch of flowers!!!


I LOVEEEEEEEE Flowers! Especially pink flowers, and especially lillies and roses! And for a change, these flowers were really fragrant, perfuming my desk the whole day! Thanks Moishii!!! Except I had to explain to the whole office that I don't have a secret boyfriend on the side! LOL

Work also got a birthday cake for me and a belated one for my other workmate. They also offered to take me out to lunch, but I had to many errands to do at lunch I just couldn't make it. After work, we all went off to a Trivia night organised by work to raise money for the Meningecoccal Violet foundation. This is the first proper Trivia night that I've been to in agessssss and we had a hoot! Surprisingly, there was a bar tab and food, but it only cost us $20 for the whole night. But there were heaps of other ways to donate money to the foundation, so hopefully they raised quite a lot of money. To make things even better, we came second place in the whole comp! Woohoo!! We also raised a heap of money auctioning off things, including people's clothes! lol someone actually wanted to bid for my flowers! I had to tell them to lay their hands off them! They're MINE!!!

I didn't end up getting home til about 11:30pm, so I had to rush around packing and preparing for THE party on Friday night....

Collapsable sandwich.....box

My manager had organised to take the whole team out for Go-Karting one day followed by dinner at the Bank Hotel. What better chance than to try our my collapsable sandwich box?

The box has vents on the side to ensure the bread won't go soggy

Here's the collapsed box

And this is what it looks like when its all folded up

To test out the anti-sogginess feature, I decided to make some hot sandwiches, but that means I've got to get up early to make it. GRRRRRRRR

Toulouse sausage sandwich with cheese and lettuce
Salami with cheese, lettuce and bread and butter pickles

The box does seem to help with the sogginess factor. There were a few soggy pieces, but I think thats because I CRAMMED the sandwiches into the box when it was still really hot. No box would've saved me ;)

Back on the Japanese Bentos

I decided to stick with something Japanese for the last few bentos, just because I've been going out a bit at night, and haven't had the time to do something more creative.


Top left - Ham, lettuce and nori roll. A riceless sushi.
Bottom left - Tomato, lettuce and cucumber salad, really good to dip into the soba sauce
Right - Zaru Cha Soba


Gyudon...kind of. I mixed some oyster and inoki mushrooms with the beef and cooked it in a light sauce with egg over it. I put a bed of sugar snap peas under the rice, to stop it soaking up all the yummy broth. And that big black blob? Its supposed to be a star ;)

Leftover bento boxes

I was being really lazy and decided to basically raid the freezer, fridge and the leftovers. All really simple to make, the most time consuming would be the tamago.


Beef rissoles on rice, courtesty of my mum and the freezer. I used the leftover carrot sticks from my leb bento box to dice up along with some celery and fake crab stick to make a salad with mayo. The leftover sugar snap peas was just throw in for decoration along with a half mangled capsicum. I also added a few slices of tamago (the sweet type you get with sushi) and takuan.


Teriyaki chicken on rice with a carrot border (again, leftovers from previous bento box). Note to self, always check chicken for bones when deboning it yourself. I'm sitting here with stomach pains because I'm still trying to digest a chicken drumstick bone I accidently swallowed at lunch. Anyone ever see that episode of House, where a dude swallows a toothpick, and the reason he was getting these stabbing pains was because the toothpick got stuck in his intestines pierced through them??

The rest of the box was the tamago and crab stick salad. I bought a few blood oranges at the markets so I added a few slices as dessert.

Bento boxes gone Lebanese

Since its a Sunday, it means I have a lot more time to prepare the bento. So I thought I'd try something a bit different and go Lebanese.


Left - Sugar snap peas, carrot sticks and tabouli
Top right - Hummus and tzatziki
Bottom right - Beef rissoles and cumin spiced lamb
Not shown - Lebanese bread cut into quarters

This is a fairly simple bento box even though its a bit more time consuming.than it looks. The tabouli was made using bulgur soaked in water, drained and then soaked in lemon juice. The parsley and mint was washed, drains and wiped dry with paper towels. I then chopped up the herbs finely, added diced tomato and onion, the bulgur and more lemon, salt and pepper. Mix and its done. The washing and drying of the herbs took the longest.

Hummus, theoretically should be super simple to make, if you've got a food processor. Since I don't, and my mortar and pestle is a bit too small to do it manually, I used a blender. Except my blender doesn't handle chickpeas well and it took me 10mins of shaking the damn thing whilst the blades are going to try and make it blend! It was worth it though. The end result was a smooth, creamy dip that has a lovely lemony kick. I made a big batch and froze quite a bit of them to eat another day.

The tzatziki should really be called cacik, which is the Turkish name for it. Simply rougly chop a cucumber, mint, add yoghurt and salt. Stir.

Sarah's Birthday at Encasa

To celebrate Sarah's first birthday in Sydney, we organised to go Encasa for dinner. We ordered the tapas and pizza banquet, more than enough to stuff our face 3 times over.

Ensalada Mixta - Lettuce, tomato, cucumber, onion, capsicum, olives

Ensalada con Queso - Lettuce, roasted red capsicum, goat’s cheese, olives

Patatas Bravas (fried potato with garlic mayonnaise and spicy tomato salsa)

Garlic bread

Gambas Sevillanas - Peeled king prawns in spicy tomato salsa

Chorizo a la Plancha - Grilled Spanish sausage

Champiñones al Ajillo - Sizzling garlic mushrooms

Happy Birthday!

The birthday girl got a slice of cinnamon cheesecake whilst we finished the rest of the pizzas off. No photos of those, I was too full to care by that stage.

Easter Island statue...I think?

Sharing the cake.....I think?

After dinner, we headed up to the Art House for cocktails, and on the way we saw this?

Ok...

Gus with his Gold Member.....

Close up of the Gold Member

A concubine and something else.....I can't remember. Too much sangria ;)