A 28th birthday with flying photos

Since me and Will don't get our annual overseas trip together this year, we decided that we needed something to make up for it. I booked a room for the two of us at the Novotel at Brighton with our own private balcony with a view of the beach. This was part of Will's birthday celebration and we thought we should live it up!! It cost a bit, but it was well worth it! Since Brighton is only about 10mins drive from Kogarah, we figured we can both drink our asses off and just cab it back to the hotel at the end of the night.

King bed

The view from our balcony

We dumped our bags and headed out to grab a Souvalaki Pita roll just like we use to do in Mykonos to line our stomachs. I mean, we had already been drinking for about an hour!


And drinking means insaneness, and insaneness means we needed to do a mail drop.....

What's that in his hands?

The same thing we had scattered all over the hotel:


Want a closer look?

Oh yeahhhhhhhh! Its like my 2007 B'day all over again!

Kaan dropped by to help pose with the photos

We catch a cab to Chelsea's restaurant in Kogarah. We walk up to the reception where we get stopped by security and told to wait for the manager. Next thing you know, about 4 people are running up and down the stairs like it was a code red alert. Gees, what did we do?? About 5mins later, the manager comes running down to let us into the restaurant. A heap of mezze was already on the table when we arrived, so I could dig right on in.

Hummus, babaganoush, labna, fetta, bean salad etc

Spicy chicken wings - Which tasted surprisingly asian?

And...spring rolls?

My drink...

Their drink...

Which was coke with our smuggled in vodka! Kaan gave me alcohol poisoning from all the vodka he was serving me! Between the 3 of us, we finished 1.5L of vodka!! Things started to get a bit out of control after that, which was a bit strange as only the 3 of us were drinking??

I think it was still alive.....?

Next thing you know, we had photos flying through the air!

That's one disgusted look

I had everyone on the table go: ?What was going on? What's happening? What's this??". It was like I was surrounded by 20 Karen Walkers. Luckily I got saved when the birthday cake came out!

We had to make a minor correction

Eating from the new plate

The plate

Some time during the night, a belly dancer came out and it was all downhill from there onwards...

Still "soberish"

Smashed, drunk, fairly sober

We basically got kicked out of the restaurant at 2am, except we couldn't get a cab. We asked the owners to call us a cab, and instead of calling the taxi company, they called a friend to see if they could drive us. Damn, this is sounding a lot like that time in Pammukale where we got stranded? Except we didn't have our 30kg suitcases with us. We eventually flag down a taxi, even though I almost had to throw myself onto the road to get it.

We get back to the hotel where I go to the toilet to get changed for bed. I come out 5mins later and Will is completely passed out.

The morning after was NOT pretty...

We had 2 shots of coffee to cure ourselves

Hidden big breakfast

I grabbed myself a big breakfast which had bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, eggs and toast. Except you can't see any of it as its covered by the eggs and toast.

Tomato, eggs and toast

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.

Allysons Family Restaurant - Lebanese

I've never had Lebanese twice in a week. But I was up one night suddenly wanting to find out what was happening with our old family restaurant, when I found out about Allysons. Allysons is actually a few shops up from where our old restaurant used to be. Looking at the reviews, it sounded promising, so I conned a friend into going with me (So I can walk past our old restaurant to see how its doing).

As we walked in, I noticed a big table of about 20 people celebrating someone's birthday. To the right hand side, there was another room with a table set up for about 40 people. Luckily I had made a booking and was seated in no time. The decor is very simple, almost a bit sterile. But I was there for the food.

As I looked through the menu, I spotted Kibbi and knew I had to order it. Kibbi is the Lebanese version of Icili Kofte and it one of my favourite middle eastern dishes.

Kibbi

Crunchy on the outside, filled with a spicy lamb mince and pinenut mixture. It was sooooo good. Luckily, our platter came out and I wrapped these up with some dip an bread.

Mixed platter for one

We ordered a mixed platter for one to share. It came with a chicken kebab, shish kebab, kafte kebab, hommus, babaganoush, labne, garlic dip, tabouli and lots of lebanese bread (Both fresh and fried). I didn't think this was a lot of food shared between 2 people, but I was really really full by the time we finished this platter off. Which was a good thing, because the pizza we ordered was a complete disappointment.

Seafood pizza

I've never had a seafood pizza made almost entirely out of seafood stick. We actually counted before eating, that there were 2 prawns, 1 piece of fake crab meat and the rest was all seafood stick. The base was quite nice, but the excess seafood stick made the pizza almost sweet. And the cheese was strange in the sense that it didn't melt properly.

I would probably go back for the Lebanese food, and maybe the pizza again. But I'll definitely check what pizza other people are eating before ordering.

The suicide before Zenobia

A few of us met up in Leichhardt for the Spanish film festival. We had prepurchased tickets to the suicide club. It was an amusing film, but I guess I had much higher expectations. I kind of expected it to be like something me and Moishii would make. But honestly, not many people are as screwed in the head like us. After the movie, we were all starving. We decided to find the closest indoor place for dinner, which happened to be Zenobia.

Moishii had been there before and said it was pretty good, but he's only ever had the banquet at a party. As we walk in, we spot Brian McFadden standing outside having a cigarette break. We didn't bother chucking a fuss as Delta Goodrem wasn't there. We walk in and get seated. It took us a while to figure out what we wanted to order, which wasn't a bad thing since the waiters basically ignored us (Even though our table was RIGHT next to Brian McFadden's table).

We eventually flag someone down and place our order. About 10mins later, our dip and some bread finally come out. We're ravenous at this stage and start to devour everything.

Babaganous

The babaganous is really nice and smokey, but I reckon I make a much better babaganous. We decided to go easy on the dip and bread as we wanted to save our stomach for the mains and possibly dessert. 20mins after we finished the dip, Gus's fish comes out:

Grilled fish with a nutty sauce

The sauce was really nice on first taste as it was rich and creamy with a lovely nutty texture. A few more bites into it, it starts to get a bit sickly. Since everyone else ordered the same thing, we told Gus to start so it doesn't get cold. Its a good thing we told him to as well, because it took almost 30mins for the rest of our meals to come out. And when I asked the waitress what was happening with our food (After half the table started flapping their arms for attention), I got a "Are you stupid?" look followed by a "WELL! YOU ordered the chicken. Of course it takes longer than the fish!" followed by a "Moron" look from the waitress.

I tried to explain that my friend is sitting there eating by himself whilst we wait. And again "Chicken takes longer than fish to cook". Gees woman. I know that. Any moron knows that. So maybe, you should cook the fish when the chicken is almost done? As opposed to cooking them at the same time? Now THAT would be a logical way to do it don't you think? Instead of having one person eat 30mins before everyone else. They didn't even bother telling us when we ordered, just expected us to wait. I can tell you, if Gordon Ramsay Kitchen nightmares this place, that would be the first thing they would get beaten about.

And it wasn't just the waiting time for the food, it was them completely ignoring our table because Mr McFadden was in the house. Every waiter/waitress was fwapping around the table like bees to honey hoping for a big tip. Their table had at least 4 people attend to them, whilst us, sitting right next to them practically had to wave a flag and blow a trumpet for a nod of acknowledgment. I know he's a celebrity, and you may get a big tip. But think of it this way, who pays the rest of your salary for the rest of the year when he's not around. Ignoring everyone else for one tip is plain stupid.

As for our long awaited chicken. It was ok. Certainly not worth the wait. I would happily drive the extra 20mins to Bankstown for Habibs and pay 1/2 the price for twice as much food and a much better garlic sauce. Atleast Habib's sauce doesn't taste of raw garlic and sting your tongue.

BBQ Chicken with garlic sauce

We were actually all looking forward to dessert, but after the service we've received and how long it took, we decided to just grab the bill and leave.