Life Lesson #242 : When eating out, don’t go with a big group of ravenous friends, because they won’t give you enough time to take photos before demanding to start eating everything in sight.

They will elbow you out of the way as you’re trying to shield the dishes from their invading cutlery. They will sneak off with one spring roll, reasoning that there are still three left on the plate for you to take a picture of.

If you don’t believe me, well, I have proof : The only clear photo I yielded the night we visited Jimbaran in Randwick, was of a dish that not many us touched. It was the “house special” called Bandeng Duri Lunak. The fish is pressure-cooked until the bones are soft and edible, then deep fried for a crisp finish, and served with a tomato and soy relish. Nice flavour, but the flesh was soft and dry at the same time. Sometimes it doesn’t always pay to veer away from the predictable favourites.

Favourites such as Beef Rendang, Sate, Kwetiau, stir fried KangKung and two glorious Terung Belado – eggplant dishes – a salty green chilli and anchovy dish, and a sweet tomato and red chilli variation. All of them were so well received, it rendered our group silent (albeit briefly) for the first time since we entered the restaurant.

Jimbaran is an Indonesian restaurant that I’ve heard and read a lot about, but never got round to visiting until yesterday. I went with a few people who were in the know as to what to order. Between the ten of us, I think we managed to taste a decent selection of what the restaurant has to offer, including tasty crispy starters like spaceship-sized fried wontons, vegetable spring rolls and Murtabak Telor, described as a beef pancake. The evening ended sweetly with black sticky rice with coconut milk for one, and Es Cendol – a green jelly drink served in a parfait glass – for others.

Life Lesson #243 : When eating out, do go with a big group of friends so that you can try as many dishes as possible, and most importantly, pass the bowl of rice around a group of people you really enjoy spending time with.

Jimbaran
129 Avoca St
Randwick 2031

(For excellent photos of the evening, check out Mir’s Flickr site.)

The results of both the Age and SMH Good Food Guide are finally out. A few surprises, good and bad. In the SMH Forums, the editors, Simon Thomsen and Catherine Keenan were met with some criticism regarding decisions that had been made this year. How, for example, could Bilsons be a three-hat restaurant, and why was Restaurant Balzac demoted to a one-hatter. The standard response was that unfortunately not everyone’s dining experiences are the same. This is something that those who work in the hospitality industry try hard to prevent. Consistency is the name of the game, but sometimes you’re just unlucky enough to have it all unravel under your nose.

So I think (and hope) that it was just bad luck that Mir had an unimpressive time when she recently went to Sambal, a restaurant I had visited and loved. Undercooked rice is a definite no-no! While I have heard similar criticisms of the place before (such as the service – a point acknowledged even by people I know who frequent it because they love the food), the one time I was there, I had great food and no trouble with the service.

Reading about the various restaurants however, brought back to mind some good dishes I have tasted from places B and I have visited in Sydney and Melbourne this year. Here are a few of them :

1. Yabby Gazpacho at Pier Restaurant.
The waiter pours the gazpacho at the table. Take in the cuteness of the micro leaves perched on top of avocado cream, taste a spoonful of the fresh gazpacho, look up at the view out the sunny windows and you can’t help but smile.

2. Seared swordfish at Pier Tasting Room

3. Truffled poached egg on soft polenta at The Botanical.
A warm poached egg sitting on top of the softest, creamiest polenta, with a curl of parmigiano hiding a bit of shaved truffle. Very very more-ish. Jaci had a meal here with her parents and was unimpressed, but I really like the space, location and food of this restaurant.

4. Pain perdu at Circa

5. Sea urchin at Shoya.
Four floors of eating. Plus karaoke rooms, as I discovered later – I kept wondering why random people were accessing a door up a set of stairs near us, and had to ask the waitress. (Silly me, I thought it was just a bunch of people with strong coke habits or something). It’s a bit overwhelming to order from the menu without guidance, but I think we managed to choose an assortment of dishes that worked well for us – even though we kept seeing dishes go past that looked even better. They proudly state on their menu that the restaurant was visited by an Iron Chef and he thought it was so good he returned the next day.

This week I entered a new decade. To celebrate, B got me a box of chocolates, a couple of DVDs and a stack of books that I look forward to devouring, whilst inspecting the chocolates.

We have already marked out the chocolates we like the look of : I picked the pink heart, and B went for the lion. Cliched as it sounds, it does sort of say a thing or two about us. I’m the silly, frivolous one; the one with a penchant for Marc Jacobs, Trelise Cooper, cartoons, and dessert as the main course. B is pretty good at the Minister of Silly Walks, at laughing til he’s crying when watching Family Guy, and he once hugged a road. Which leads me to the whole thing about him being a grounding force. He is the one who organises our trips, who drives me everywhere, who calls the oven people when my oven breaks down (my oven broke down. I haven’t been baking for two weeks. Starting to feel jittery). If we eat gai lan, he likes the leaves and I like the stem, so it all kind of works out well.

So thank you, B, for my big box of chocolates, and thank you for being you 🙂