They say sequels are never as good as the original. But I think this particular sequel is going to be a runaway success. For the next two days, food bloggers around the world will be gathered around the proverbial campfire at Chez Pim, drumming up support for Menu for Hope III, in an effort to raise funds for the United Nations World Food Program. Last year, a whopping US$17,000 was donated to help earthquake victims.

This year, for a measly US$10 per raffle ticket you stand a chance of winning many fabulous donated prizes. My contribution is a mystery box. It’s a ‘boite a biscuits’; a cute french biscuit tin, purchased from the Bay Tree in Woollahra. The tin alone is worth AU$45, and I will be filling it with as many mystery ingredients as can fit into the box. Items will be mostly biscuit related, and will include things like my favourite tea, etc. The code for this prize is AP36, which you will need to specify on the donation form when you make your donation. Donate today, and make a biscuit happy!

But if a surprise box doesn’t really float your boat, there are tons of other prizes you could try to win instead. So go on, check out the list of prizes available, and you have until the 22nd of December to make a donation or two! (For more information on how to make a donation, check out Chez Pim or Grab Your Fork, where Helen is hosting the Asia Pacific section of this fundraiser).

A visit to Bentley Restaurant & Bar has been on the cards for a long time now. A chance encounter with a day off mid-week, finally enabled the impossible. Down busy Crown Street we go, envying all the Surry Hillers, their plethora of decent restaurants at every corner. Bentley is no exception.

For me, the strength of this place is in their tapas menu. It features a decent selection of well-priced dishes (starting from $3.50) that are interesting both in presentation and taste. First up, two lollipop-looking things; actually white anchovies on a stick, coated in pistachio praline. Sweet, salty, vinegary, crunchy, delicious! We also had gazpacho 3 ways : tomato, dill and almond milk. All 3 had a well balanced flavour with a slight vinegary kick that was very pleasant and refreshing. The crispy fried chicken with aioli, which looked like dregs from the bottom of a packet of salt ‘n’ vinegar chips, tasted so moreish I want to lick the plate. Not pictured but also sampled, was a main dish of slow-roasted pork loin with kohlrabi and crackling.

The best of the two desserts we tried, was the chocolate ‘aero’ – a bar of bubbly chocolate topped with tiny flakes of salt, served with apricot sorbet, foam and sweet basil puree. The mast on top of the sorbet was an apricot wafer; a bit like a thin roll-up. It’s not as pretty as the cherries with smoked vanilla ice-cream, peanuts and cumin, but there was something delightful about that textural aerated chocolate. The first spoonful makes you think it’s cakey, but then it dissolves in your mouth like chocolate would. I kept taking tiny spoonfuls of it to try to describe it, then suddenly, together with the not-too-sweet sorbet, it was all gone.

One thing to note, what with the hardwood floors and bare walls, Bentley is incredibly noisy. Not in the kids-these-days/no-pianos-after-11pm type of way, but loud enough to make it hard to hear your dining companion, who is only sitting centimetres away from you. Give me two tin cans and a piece of string, and I’ll be back in a frilly dress, with a cocktail in one hand, to try more of that wonderful tapas. (And it’s not the dress that would be made of tin and string, of course!)

Bentley Restaurant & Bar
320 Crown Street
Surry Hills 2010

Nothing would have stopped us going to the Fat Duck. Even if you had told me beforehand that it would cost us an outrageous £40 to get back to Reading from Bray, I would still have gone.

B and I got to Bray (via train and feet) about two hours early so that we could do a bit of exploring. The restaurant itself is so unassuming that we walked past it twice before realising. As we were pausing to have a sneak preview inside, there was a couple next to us checking out the menu. They were laughing at the mention of douglas fir and snails, and turned to us, saying that they wouldn’t fancy eating in a place like that, expecting nods of agreement. We replied, grinning, telling them that we were actually eating there that evening, and they laughed again, wishing us good luck. Later we met up with Rod & Clair for pre-dinner drinks at the Hinds Head before the four of us then proceeded across the road.

Visiting the Fat Duck is a bit like going on a theme park ride. Unlike most theme parks, the bathrooms are clean, the food is great, and the staff very polished and knowledgeable (it was our waiter who told us about the mind boggling number of quails that go into making 1 litre of the quail jelly, and of the “meat glue” used to create the invertebrate of mackerel). A few dishes didn’t really work for me – in particular, the salmon poached with licorice. The slimy nature of the licorice gel coating the salmon was actually quite unappealing and the licorice flavour also seemed to overpower that of the fish. My favourites were the nitro-green tea and lime mousse, mustard ice-cream with red cabbage gazpacho and bacon and egg ice-cream with earl grey jelly (along with the hot and cold tea, it was the best earl grey I’d ever encountered – and I’ve tasted quite a few ever since Picard ordered his from the replicator).

Despite this, it isn’t a place that I would return to for repeat visits. The jokes wouldn’t be as funny the second time round, and the surprises, wouldn’t be… surprising, once you already know that they’re coming. But as a dining experience, it made for a very memorable night. And if that couple who stood next to us as we peered through the window, ever decided to book themselves in for a meal, I think they would have been very pleasantly surprised by how the Fat Duck simultaneously meets and confounds all expectations.

The Fat Duck
High Street
Bray
Berkshire SL6 2AQ