Sea Salt Cafe Albany

August 17, 2011 by Andrea 2 Comments

The Sea Salt Cafe in Albany (in Australia’s south west) is one of many cute little cafes dotted around the city. It’s located towards the end of York Street (the main shopping street) near the water on Stirling Terrace which is the main road to take you around to Middleton Beach. In other words it’s in a great location easily accessible from both the centre of town and the beach area as well as a being just down the road from a couple of backpackers hostels.

The menu is quite basic with things like fish and chips, garlic prawns, Thai fish cakes and salt and pepper squid. At around the $18-20 dollar mark it seems a little expensive for a small town cafe, especially when you consider the portion sizes but I guess that’s the thing with Australia, it’s expensive.

F had the grilled chilli butter prawns with chips ($20). He loved the prawns but said the chips had no flavour

I had a chicken panini. Bland and dry. I never should have ordered it, especially seeing as I had some garlic bread to start. Bread + bread = bad.

I did love the chilli garlic bread but wouldn’t have minded a little extra chilli on mine.

When I first drove by this place I thought it was a restaurant rather than a cafe so was a little surprised by the menu and the fact that you have to order at the counter. I know I’ve eaten here once before but I don’t remember it being so casual. I’d say this is a good option if you want a light meal or even better just stop by for a coffee which you can enjoy looking out over the water.

Filed Under: Australia Tagged With: albany, australia, cafe, seafood

Dinner By The Beach in Albany

August 16, 2011 by Andrea Leave a Comment

Even though I spent six months in Australia recently, I didn’t do that much travelling, preferring to stay in Perth with my family. I did manage to spend a few days ‘down south’, as we say, visiting Denmark (the town, not the country) and Albany.

Not many people go to Albany for a weekend away, most seem to prefer going to the Margaret River and Busselton regions but neither of those have ever had any appeal to me. I’ve always like Albany though. It’s so much more than just a commercial centre. It’s a great place to go whale watching and you’ll find one of the most beautiful beaches in the world 10 minutes drive from the city centre.

Albany also has many great places to eat, most of them are quite casual but there are a few upmarket places too. One place I quite like is Calamari’s at Beachside. Depending on what you feel like doing, there are three different places to eat within the one establishment. You can grab takeaway fish and chips and eat on the beach which is about 20 metres away. This is one of my favourite summertime activities and a popular choice with just about everyone.

Unfortunately Albany isn’t warm all that often so when the temperatures drop you can either eat in the casual bar/cafe or head next door to the seafood restaurant. We enjoyed happy hour and a snack one evening in the bar and another night we ate at the restaurant where the seafood was great.

F loves his seafood so started with half a dozen oysters. I don’t get the appeal of oysters but he loved them and said they were better than the Croatian oysters he tried last year.

For his main, F had grilled fish and chips. I can’t remember what the fish of the day was but that was a huge piece of fish.

I’m not crazy about fish and seafood, even though I’ll eat it occasionally, but on this night I stuck to the vegetarian option which was a creamy pasta with broccoli. It was a little boring unfortunately but F was happy with his meal so I was happy.

This is a great setting for a quiet dinner for two. The restaurant is right on the water so you can watch the waves roll in or even watch someone skinny dipping as we did that night.

Filed Under: Australia Tagged With: albany, australia, restaurant, seafood

44 King Street

August 15, 2011 by Andrea Leave a Comment

44 King Street in the Perth CBD has been around forever and even though it is gets mentions in all kinds of food and travel guides they still deliver top quality food. We stopped by for brunch one weekday morning after the breakfast rush and enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and great organic (at least what we ordered) food.

I was lucky enough to be sitting opposite the open kitchen so got to see the chefs preparing everything fresh. I love watching chefs working and these guys seemed to enjoy what they were doing.

Our drinks came out quickly and then there was a little wait for our mains but we weren’t in a rush so that was fine. I only wanted something light so ordered the tomato and avocado on toast. It’s a simple dish which was nicely presented using quality ingredients. This was perfect for me.

I must admit I was a little jealous when F’s breakfast arrived. He ordered the organic omelette with mushrooms and Spanish onion which came with toast and a slab of butter. I would have ordered it myself but I hate onion so that was out of the question. It looked delicious though and F confirmed that it indeed was.

44 King Street is the kind of place you can hang out in while enjoying a coffee or late breakfast. I know it gets packed at lunch times and for breakfast on the weekend so it’s probably not quite so relaxing then but our timing was perfect. You’ll find a lot of locals here as well corporate types and tourists so it’s pretty much anything goes. I have never been here for dinner but I hear it’s good so I might give that a go next time I’m in Perth.

Filed Under: Australia Tagged With: australia, breakfast, cafe, perth

Athenian Greek Restaurant

August 14, 2011 by Andrea Leave a Comment

We arrived in Sydney quite late and had no plans for the evening. We quickly checked into our hotel and then headed out to find something to eat. I had a huge list of places in Sydney I wanted to try but after a long flight I was ready to eat anything.

Walking down George Street you’ll see loads of different cafes and restaurants. Haymarket is chock a block full of Asian restaurants including the famous Tetsuya’s but we were looking for something else so kept walking until we got distracted by the Apple store. It’s funny how even though we were starving we had to stop and play with the Ipads and drool over the latest Macbook Pros. After that we continued down George Street until I spotted the Athenian Greek restaurant. We both love Greek food so were happy to chance it.

It was well and truly late by the time we sat down and most people in the huge restaurant were finishing up their meals and the waiters were starting to clean up. At first I thought they weren’t going to be happy to serve us but it turned out we had the fastest service ever, possibly even a bit too fast.

We placed our order, the waiter took it back to the kitchen and came straight back with our entrees which included pita bread with this very unappetising eggplant and feta dip. We looked at each other like ‘what the…’ but luckily it tasted a hell of a lot better than it looked. Again I have to apologise the crappy iPhone photos. My phone clearly does not work well in low light. Time to upgrade I think (or remember to take my DSLR with me).

Before we had finished our entrees the waiter brought out our mains. F got the chicken souvlaki with chips and salad and he was quite happy with it but $23.50 for souvlaki seems a little pricey to me. The menu says the souvlaki is served with pan fried chips. I have no idea what that means, pretty sure they were regular deep fried chips. Weird. In this photo the chips look hardly cooked but they were actually done perfectly.

I ordered from the menu labelled Today’s Specials but looking at their website now, I see that is their regular menu which hasn’t changed since I was there months ago. I went with the roasted Greek lamb with baked veges. Again they need a little help with plating but the meat was tender and the potatoes weren’t bad although they were probably lacking a little seasoning. This was a huge portion and even though I was famished I wasn’t able to eat it all. Priced at $26.50 this was probably better value than the souvlaki even though I know I could easily cook this at home for much less and with more flavour.

The Athenian is a traditional Greek restaurant with home style cooking. There were a lot of families and large groups dining there and clearly many of them were regulars so it’s definitely a popular place. I think I’d go back if I was looking for a hearty meal in the centre of Sydney.

Filed Under: Australia Tagged With: australia, greek, souvlaki, sydney

More Cakes in Sydney

August 1, 2011 by Andrea Leave a Comment

It may look like this blog is turning into a cake blog but I can assure you I do eat other food too! Here are a couple more cakes from one of our afternoon breaks in Darling Harbour, Sydney. Firstly F’s favourite, black forest cake and then my all time favourite, lemon meringue pie. This is going to be the last of the cake posts for a while, I promise!