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Weekend in The Cape

8/24/2018

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One of my last vacations this summer was to the Cape, my parents had a wedding and since none of us had been to The Cape we all went. We stayed with our friends the Whitehead’s and they lived really close to P-Town, so on our last night they took us to Victor’s. Victor’s is a restaurant that they had raved to us about and said that we had to go there. This restaurant was really fancy and they didn’t just have a menu where everyone would get their own individual meals they had lots of appetizers. So, we all ordered a lot of appetizers and we shared them.

The first dish we had was brussels sprouts with hazelnuts. The brussels sprouts were really soft and the hazelnuts gave it that nice crunch, so the textures in the dish were very pleasant. The taste of the dish was amazing and had so much flavor and overall I really enjoyed the dish.

The second dish was edamame, although edamame is very simple and is usually enjoyed with a little sea salt these ones had a burst of flavor. They tasted amazing because they were soaked in soy sauce because you didn’t just get the flavor from the pod you also got it from the bean itself. In addition to the soy sauce there was red chili and sea salt on top. The chili gave the beans that bang of spice and it is always nice to have some sea salt on edamame even with the soy sauce on it.

The third dish was calamari. I love everything about calamari the chewiness of the octopus, the crunchiness of the fried outer part, everything!!! This calamari was no different it was crispy and chewy and was so good I kept putting more and more of it on my plate because I couldn’t get enough.

The fourth dish were hand made pan fried pork dumplings covered in peanut sauce. Dumplings are definitely very different in the way they are prepared, what kinds of ingredients are in them, and the different sauces people dip, or pour on the dumplings. Personally, I prefer my dumplings pan fried like they were in this dish because they are super crispy and not doughy. Some people like it doughy, but I just don’t. The dumplings here met my perfect dumpling standards they were super crispy and although I would normally dip my dumplings in soy sauce the peanut sauce added a good unexpected sweetness to the dish and tied the whole dish together. The sauce was especially a good addition because the pork in the dumpling was salty so you had the balance of sweet and salty.

The fifth dish was sizzling Asian skirt steak. The steak was served to us in a little iron skillet that was EXTREMELY HOT but luckily we did not touch it so no one got burned. Steak can be very good if it is cooked right and has a lot of flavor because if steak is bland it is terrible. As you can see Victor’s has been very consistent with their amazing flavor and this time was no different. The steak had so much flavor and although it was on the hot pan it cooled off quickly and it was a nice medium throughout the meat. I don’t tend to eat steak very often, but when I do I want it to be good steak and this steak exceeded my expectations.

The sixth dish was macaroni and cheese. I know what you are thinking macaroni and cheese? That is for younger kids it isn’t something you should post on a food blog. Although mac & cheese is traditionally a children’s food it can be elevated in so many different ways and is one of my favorite comfort foods. This macaroni and cheese had a nice panko crust covering the top and also had truffle oil in it. Usually when you make kid’s boxed macaroni and cheese it comes with the cheese powder and is really watery. This mac & cheese was the opposite it was creamy, made with real cheese, and had a panko crust on top. The panko crust always adds a lot of crunch to the macaroni and cheese and really balanced out the textures in the dish. The truffle oil added a lot of depth to the dish and I love truffle oil, it always enhances any food and just makes dishes a lot more sophisticated.

This last dish was definitely the most impressive of the night. It was mussels. I do not have mussels very often and I usually like oysters more, but these mussels were off the charts. They were sake steamed mussels!!!!! The sake brought out all of the flavour in this dish as soon as you took a bite. POW!! You got that amazing flavor of the sake. There isn’t a lot to say about this dish because it was just absolutely on point. I think that the sake was the star of the dish because it made the mussels 100 times better than just normal mussels.

Overall Victor’s was amazing and I am so glad that our friends introduced us to this amazing restaurant!!

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An Australian Adventure - Part 2: Sydney

8/13/2018

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In my last post, I talked about the first part of our trip to Australia and the food in Melbourne. Our next adventure was in Sydney. On our first day we actually had a tour of Google from our really amazing friend Kim. We had breakfast at the Google cafeteria and that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I had Vegemite for the first time. Vegemite is this really salty paste that is extremely popular in Australia. The trick with Vegemite is to not put a lot on you have to put a thin spread so the taste isn’t overwhelming. It wasn’t the best thing I have had, but it didn’t make me gag or anything. After our super awesome tour of the Google offices we went for a little bit of sightseeing and then went to lunch at Mr.Wongs. 

Mr. Wongs, like Tonka, was tucked into an alleyway, but inside was super fancy and we happened to get lucky again and we got the last table that wasn’t reserved. Mr. Wongs was a restaurant famously known for its dumplings. Mr. Wongs was a super cool place and it was the kind of restaurant people went for a business lunch. Obviously, we got dumplings and since Lindsay had never tried soup dumplings before we ordered soup dumplings, string beans and beef, fried rice, and shrimp croquettes. Soup dumplings are amazing because you get the hot soup on the inside and the soft doughy dumpling after, two foods in one. At Mr. Wongs the soup had a lemongrass flavor in it and the dough was super soft. The next dish was the string beans and beef that was my favorite dish at Mr. Wongs. The string bean dishes were all amazing in Australia. It was ground beef stir fried with string beans, it was packed with flavor and spices I kept putting more onto my plate because it was so delicious. Next, was the fried rice. It was good fried rice, but it wasn’t super special. I mean it was just fried rice. The next dish was very special because it isn’t something that is very common like the other dishes. It was a crispy shrimp croquette. The croquettes were very tall and had these crispy strands sticking out of it with the shrimp on the bottom. They were super juicy and crunchy I got these crispy bits all over my plate. The last dish was again something you don’t usually find on a menu we had balmain bugs. Now you might be thinking that I already had bugs once, but balmain bugs are these tiny lobsters that they serve in Australia. We got the fried balmain bugs. They were very crunchy and really salty and the balmain bugs didn't taste like lobster at all. I didn't love them, but I think it was too salty for me. Overall Mr.Wongs was a nice place to have lunch and I would definitely recommend going there is if you go to Sydney. 

Australia is famous for a lot of things, but one of its most acclaimed desserts is the Lamington. A Lamington is a pound cake that is layered with raspberry jam, covered with chocolate, then finally rolled in coconut flakes. The bakery that we had decided upon was a quaint bakery tucked into a street right near our hotel. We walked in and soon ordered a Lamington along with a sparkling lemonade to wash it down. The Lamington was amazing! We didn’t really know what to expect, but it was moist and the chocolate and jam balanced each other out leaving a delicious cake. The coconut contributed a nice crunch and a nutty flavour that was needed to tone these two powerful components. The lemonade was very refreshing and paired nicely with the cake. After we had left the bakery we found at that the tiny little bakery we just went to contained the best Lamington in Sydney. 

This next restaurant we went to was a restaurant on the rocks which means it was behind the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We went to the Australian Hotel and it is famously known for its Coat of Arms Pizza. The Australian Coat of Arms is a picture of an emu and a kangaroo so I am assuming you can guess what is on the pizza. Yup, kangaroo and emu. I was really nervous to try it because who isn't a little nervous to try kangaroo and emu? The Australian Hotel was a bar and a restaurant so we sat more in the restaurant part because we obviously couldn't sit at the bar. We ordered the pizzas and when they came I got really scared because I felt a little guilt eating a kangaroo and also an emu. It just looked like meat on the pizza. So I took two slices one with the emu and the other with the kangaroo. I brought the emu slice to my mouth and I took the tiniest bite of it. Although I took a tiny bite I could still taste it and guess what, it tasted like chicken.  Ha ha just kidding it tasted more like beef. I took a bite of the kangaroo pizza and it tasted like beef just as the emu did. I was really scared to try it, but it is definitely worth going just to say you ate kangaroo and emu.

The next day there are two places we went that were amazing. The first was a little stand right outside a mall and it sold meat pies. Kim said that they had amazing meat pies so she brought us there. It was almost like a deconstructed shepherd's pie. The meat pie was ground beef inside a puff pastry, with mashed potatoes, mashed peas, and gravy. Normally I don't like gravy on my mashed potatoes but this was amazing the gravy brought out all of the flavor in the mashed potatoes and peas. The meat was tender, but the only thing was that the puff pastry was a little too tough Overal the meat pie was amazing it was a great snack right before we ate dinner.

We had dinner at this little cafe that was recommended by our friend Jimmy Wong who was a chef and he was meeting us at the restaurant. When we got to the cafe we met up with Jimmy and Jimmy’s partner Jay. We all sat down and ordered drinks most of us got this fruit juice, but it was more of a slushie with some of the fruit on top. I got passion fruit, my dad, Jay, and our other friend Nick got watermelon, and Kim got lychee. As a big fan of passion fruit it was soooo good. It was the best juice I have ever had it was refreshing and tasted fresh. There was no extra sugar it was just passion fruit. As we drank our drinks we ordered the food our order consisted of papaya salad, fried rice, pad thai, sea bass, and a spicy stew. The first dish we had was the papaya salad that was my favorite out of that meal. We got the mild for the papaya salad because Jimmy told us that the mild papaya salad was extremely spicy so the spicy papaya salad was out of this world spicy. Jimmy was right because when I took a bite of the salad my mouth started burning up and I had to drink a lot of my frozen passion fruit juice to calm my mouth down. Although it was really spicy it had lots of flavor and it didn’t have a flat flavor it was refreshing and really stimulated my taste buds. The fried rice and the pad thai were really good, but I have had pad thai and fried rice before so it wasn’t something I was swooning over like I was the papaya salad. Then came the sea bass it was super tender and they served the whole fish so we passed it around. The sea bass had a lemony flavor and was overall really tasty. Lastly was the spicy stew, there were potatoes in it and it was spicy, but it wasn’t as spicy as the papaya salad, but it was still really delicious. The base was coconut milk and it had curry powder in it. So it was very delicious. Overall the meal was absolutely fantastic and I had a great time with all of my friends. 

Australia was amazing and it is an experience that I will never forget and I hope that if you go to Sydney and Melbourne you go to all of these restaurants because all of them were absolutely fantastic.​
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    My name is Jordan. I am a 12th grader and I love food!

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