The Corn Exchange - Four Points Sheraton

It's been a few years since I've visited the Corn Exchange. I used to come here quite regularly with my family when they had the buy 1 get 1 free offers every few months. But they haven't had that offer for quite a few years. As a part of the Enliven Sydney Promotion, they're offering the buy 1 get 1 free offer again! Woohoo! I immediately dragged my friend with my for a bout of seafood feasting! I thought I should test the place out before bringing my family here again.

I'm always well prepared for visiting The Corn Exchange. Minimal breakfast and lunch. Don't drink anything fizzy or full of dairy. Order hot water when at the restaurant (So I'm not tempted to drink heaps of water). Get plenty of prawn chips/papadums and some hot soup to counteract the slimey cold seafood I intended to gorge on.

I decided to combine all the photos from both my visits into one big post. So don't worry, I didn't eat ALL of this in one sitting. But even if you average it out....... *Cough*

Cold seafood section

Smoked salmon

Cold prawns

Mussels, sushi, sashimi

Some lobster/prawn/bug type thing

Anti pasto/Salad section

More salads on another night

Let me firstly explain what type of person should go to the Corn Exchange. The buffet is catered for those who love their cold seafood and dessert. The hot food on offer is minimal and very disappointing for those who don't eat seafood. Whilst for those who like their seafood, this place is HEAVEN. And I mean HEAVEN. Huge amounts of oysters, sashimi, smoked salmon, prawns, crab, balmain bugs, mussels, octopus and sushi. And that's exactly what I intend to eat.

My DIY seafood platter

My 2 favourite things, oysters and sashimi

More oysters, sashimi and prawns

Oysters, crab, prawns and some sashimi hidden in the bottom

More oysters, sashimi, smoked salmon and mussels

Moving onto the hot food. Confit of duck, saffron pasta and more seafood

To be honest, the total amount of hot food I ate was limited to that piece of duck confit and about 1 tablespoonful of pasta. I also sampled 1 or 2 pieces of other hot food, basically they were all quite terrible. Gluggy, salty or flavourless. "Hot food" selection includes things like white rice, roast potatoes, pumpkin, green beans and occassionally some sort of roast meat/fish/stew. Basically, nothing appealed to me. I'll have 1/2 a bowl of soup to warm my stomach up and move onto the dessert.

Dessert

More desser offerings

Orange cream, creme brulee, fruit tart, portugese tart and strawberries and chocolate

I was really disappointed when I found out that they no longer did their gorgeous sticky date pudding with hot vanilla bean custard. It was my absolute favourite dessert at The Corn Exchange. I almost liked it more than the seafood. They've replaced it with a huge vat of melted chocolate which you ladel over strawberries and marshmallows.

I tried a bit of everything on my plate, but I quickly gave them all up for one thing. The creme brulee. OH. MY. LORD! Their creme brulee is AMAZING! Its extremely smooth and creamy. Totally decadent even though the burnt sugar had melted by this stage. Infact, I liked it so much, the first time I went, I ate 6 of these babies!

Second time I went back, I warned my sisters to get out of my way if I'm getting creme brulee. I WILL hurt them if they fight me for it. Luckily, the had the dessert section well stocked with creme brulee. So well stocked in fact, that between the 4 of us, we ate a total of 36 creme brulees. 36!! It was quite embarrassing whenever the waiter came to collect our dirty dishes and it was all creme bruless dishes.


The good thing about us eating all the creme brulee was that they had to keep bringing out more. We ate everything they put out so they had to make a fresh batch where the sugar was lovely and crunchy! What a perfect way to end our meal!

Extra crunchy top

The Corn Exchange

161 Sussex St
Sydney NSW 2000
Ph: (02) 9290 4851

The Cheesecake Factory

One of the days in Houston, me and my friend decided to head to The Galleria for a bout of shopping. The minute the cab pulled up the front, I screamed "OMG! THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY!!!". The plan was to hit the shops and work up a serious appetite before coming back!

And boy was I glad we did! The menu was huge! I was half way through the menu when the waitress came back to take our order. I'm in hysterics going "OMG! The menu is so big, I feel like I'm reading Lord of the Rings! And I haven't even gotten to the cheesecakes yet!". She decided to give me another 10mins. Good thing...cos I got stuck at the cheesecake section! SO many choices!!!

I opted for an apptetizer, to save room for the cheesecake. So I ordered a chicken quesadilla and out came this monster.

This was huge! I was seriously struggling to finish this without all the salsa and sides. By the time I was done with this, I wasn't sure I could fit in a cheesecake. BUT. MUST. EAT. CHEESECAKE.

White chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake

This was sooo decadant yet not overly rich as the sweet and sour raspberry gave my tastebuds a bit of relief. The only thing I couldn't stomach was the cream.

That's A LOT OF CREAM PEOPLE!!!!

Chocolate oreo mudslide cheesecake - My takeaway goodie!

Original Strawberry cheesecake

I tried my friends strawberry cheesecake and had cheesecake envy! It was incredibly light and fluffy! I'm definitely ordering this next time!

And of course there is a next time! We dragged a few friends with us so we could go back for cheesecake!

YOU. ARE. MINE.

Frozen Iced Mango with a swirl of raspberry

Having eaten at the Cheesecake factory before, I knew I had to be very careful with my lunch selection to make sure I still had room in my stomach for dessert!

Crabcake sandwich

Jackpot! Delicious and a good size!



One of the better crabcake sandwiches I've had!

"Lunch size" serving of Meatloaf

"Lunch size" serving of shepherds pie

"Lunch size" fish and chips...with 3 fillets of fish

Someone was smart and got finger food - Stuffed mushrooms

Keylime cheesecake and Fresh Strawberry cheesecake to share

Since the Cheescake Factory virgins loved the food so much, we had to go back a third time! haha

Spicy Ahi Tempura rolls

Buffalo wings - Appetizer size

I've truely realised at this stage that I DON'T like buffalo wings. My taste buds seriously object to the vinegary taste of the buffalo wings. I'd much prefer a sweet and spicy wing, than a sour and spicy wing. It looks like most of us Aussies didn't enjoy this dish either. I much prefer the honey soy wings I make.

"Lunch Size" Spaghetti Arribiata

If I got served this in Sydney, I would've went "Wow! The restaurant is quite generous with their serving size!". Except this was supposed to be a 1/2 portion / Lunch size. I'd be scared to see normal size.

Roadside Sliders

I fully cracked up laughing when this was delivered! Check out the description of these sliders under the appetizer section:

Bite-sized Burgers on Mini-Buns Served with Grilled Onions, Pickles and Ketchup

HA! Bite-sized my butt. These were the size of Maccas cheeseburgers! hahaha

Lemon raspberry cream cheesecake

Fresh Strawberry cheesecake - My favourite!

Lemoncello cream torte

Chocolate peanut butter cookie dough cheesecake

Cafe Mix

I've always heard so much about Shangri-La's Cafe Mix and I couldn't wait to try it. However, I found the price tag of $58 was a bit much to swallow. ($58 is the cheapest price, Mon-Thur. $85 Sat. $68 Fri & Sun). However, when I spotted Cafe Mix on the list of We Love Sydney restaurants offering buy 1 get 1 free, I just had to book myself in. I personally don't like cold crab or lobster, so opted to go on a Thursday night where it's cheaper since they won't be offering any lobster. I mean, why pay extra for something you won't eat?

We arrive and we're quickly seated, after having to walk past the dessert bar which practically gave me a sugar high just breathing in! Once we were seated, we did a quick recon around the place to suss out what was on offer, so we could plan out what was the best way to attack the buffet. There was a Cold Bar, where the prawns and oysters were, along with antipasto and the DIY Salad. A western section, a Japanese section, an Asian section and an Indian section.

Japanese section

Cold seafood section

I didn't really look too closely at the hot food since my main victims were the prawns and oysters.

I had atleast 2 plates just like this

Moving onto the hot food...kinda

Once I had completely overdosed on the cold shellfish, I headed off to the hot section to find something to warm me up. I did about 3 laps, going from station to station, when something hit me. The variety.....sucked? Let me list out exactly what was on offer.

In the Western Section:

- Steamed Vegetables
- Potatoes
- Roast Lamb
- Fish

Roast lamb was just roast lamb. No sauce, no gravey. Just roasted lamb sliced. The fish bain marie only ever contained a maximum of 2 fishes, each one slightly bigger than my hand. If you're not there when they refill it, its gone. It didn't help that people will scoop up an entire fish and plonk it onto their plate. But even then, the fish wasn't that big, so you couldn't call the person a glutton. They just really like their fish.

In the Japanese Section:

- Miso soup
- Potato and Roasted Garlic Soup
- Sushi

The sushi section was very disappointing for me. Most of them were chunky rolls filled with heaps of rice. When the chef bothered making the nigiri sushi, they were quite good in making the rice quantity quite small, so you didn't fill up. Except he was making them one at a time, and placing them on the tray, one at a time. That unless you were standing right there, with the only pair of tongs in your hand ready to swipe up whatever was laid out, you get nothing. There was always plenty of rolls, but the amount of rice on them just screamed FILLER. And that was the extent of the Japanese section. Rolls, a few pieces of nigiri, soup and pickles.

The Asian Section:

- Sago pudding
- Some form of sweet glutinous rice with sultanas
- Stir fried green beans
- Tom yum soup
- Roast Pork
- Boiled rice
- Steamed buns
- Dim Sims

The Asian Section was probably one of the better hot food sections there. I'm only saying this because I love tom yum soup and dim sims. Whilst I really loaded up on the dim sims...they were of the frozen variety. The big dim sims had the exact same texture, and almost the exact same taste as the ones I get at the local fish and chips shop (Soft, lots of shredded cabbage and grated carrots). The only difference is that these are steamed, whilst I usually get mines deep fried and doused in chicken salt. I didn't mind the dim sims, but I'm usually paying $1 each, vs people who would pay $60 for this buffet? The prawn dumplings were incredibly floury, and the prawns almost had a mushy texture. Something you usually get when you steam poor quality frozen prawn dumplings. There were also a few mysterious dumplings that surfaced during the night, each one was mushy and you had to pull the whole thing apart to see what the fillings were.

Funnily enough, the buns and the dumplings were placed in the Indian section of the restaurant. Strange you would think? Not really....considering what they had on offer in the Indian section, they had to put a few decent things there to make it worthwhile.

The Indian Section:

- Naan bread
- Basmati Rice with a bit of saffron mixed in
- Tandoori chicken
- Lentil curry

Where is my beef vindaloo? Or butter chicken? Or Samosas? Is there nothing else in the Indian cuisine that they could've offered??

We had been strategic to lay off all the starch and carbs to make sure we had plenty of stomach space, but after doing a few laps, we realised that the variety of food on offer was so sub-par, that we just started eating the buns, rice and even the naan (Which was incredibly tough, as if someone had over microwaved it). I half heartedly loaded up on the dim sims before I gave up on the hot food and went for the dessert bar.

The dessert bar was probably the highlight of the night. Chocolate fountain, creme brulee, creme caramel, tiramisu, macroons, cheese platter, ice creams etc. Even I went back for 2nds and 3rds.

Dessert section

Choc dipped strawberries, macaroons, creme brulee, creme caramel

With the discount, dinner came to $29pp. If I had paid the full price, $58, I would've been really annoyed. And I mean REALLY ANNOYED. Maybe bordering on pissed. Even though I only ended up paying $29pp, I was still really disappointed. I have gone to many RSLs, where you paid less than $29 and get twice as much variety and pretty much the same quality. You still get the prawns and the oysters (Probably not as much oysters as you would get at Cafe mix as some of them limit you to 6 at a time. BUT, unlike Cafe Mix, you don't get a mouthful of grit and crushed oyster shells), but you also get a whole grilled salmon, mussels, salt and pepper prawns, swimmer crabs, heaps of deep fried seafood, stir fries, sushi, salads, a huge carvery bar with ham, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, pasta and other stuff. The desserts will not be able to compete with Cafe Mix, but I'm not a huge dessert person, so it doesn't make a huge difference to me.

I don't know, maybe if I went on a Fri-Sun, I would've enjoyed it alot more. But I couldn't really see what they could offer to make it worth the $85 you have to pay on a Saturday? Or maybe I am being picky?? Maybe there was just too much hype and I had expectations that was too high....but I was really disappointed. And so was my friend, so I guess we'll just have to go to one of my favourite buffets to make up for it. Stay tuned!