darling harbour

Mad Mex, Darling Harbour, Sydney

by Craig on January 5, 2012 · 5 comments

in Dinner,Food

 

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!  I hope 2012 becomes everything you want it to be!

Our first restaurant visit for the year is Mexican, and after reading about Mad Mex at The Food Pornographer, we just had to come and give it a try.  The shop in Harbourside at Darling Harbour is brand new.  We saw it a few weeks ago, but it was still boarded up and we said we’d come past again soon once it had opened.  It has now opened and is looking good.

The ordering process is similar to Subway.  Plenty of options and combinations to choose from.  Not as many as Subway, but still too many in my opinion.  What I reckon they should do is have a few pre-selected options so you can just ask for “Option A” and not have to go though the hassle of choosing each item individually.  The process is simple as long as you can decide what you want!  Step one is to choose your style.  Crispy or soft tacos, nachos, burrito, naked burrito (served in a bowl without a wrap), quesadilla or tortilla.  Next step two, choose your filling.  Chicken, shredded beef, steak, pork or veggie.  Then step three, add salsas.  Tomato, corn, tomatillo, roasted tomato, chilli and you can add guacamole for an extra $2.

We opted to share our meals and chose quesadilla, with chicken, corn & tomatillo salsas, and guacamole ($11.90).  Very nice taste.  I would have preferred it if I could pick up a slice and eat it with my hands but it was a bit too floppy for that and required the use of a knife and fork.  The corn was nice too, it comes with pineapple, onion and jalapeño, but it isn’t hot.  The tomatillo was nice, but I didn’t really get to appreciate it much as I didn’t really have anything to dip into it, or pour it over.  The star of this meal in my opinion was actually the guacamole, which I could have polished off myself given the chance.  (Which in itself is odd considering that a couple of years ago I hated avocado, considering it far too bland for my attention.)

Next we had the nachos ($10.90).  You can hardly see the meat for all the salad and salsa, but there was more than just the one piece you can see here.  This was very nice, particularly the cheese sauce, but I would have liked to have seen an option to have cheese grilled onto the top.  The salad and salsa was lovely and the nacho chips were fresh and crispy.  More guacamole was of course welcome!  The meat was wonderfully tender.

For drinks we chose the Mexican soda, Jarritos.  There are more flavours but I chose the mandarin, and Caro chose the Lime.  We each had half of each others, and both of them were highly enjoyable, and wonderfully vividly coloured!

For dessert we had a portion of churros with chocolate sauce ($5.90).  Very hot, very nice.  The sauce had a strange consistency, almost like gooey play dough than a sauce.  When you scooped a bit out of the tub with the end of the churros the whole thing would want to come out leaving the container clean.  Very strange, but very tasty.  For those not in the know, churros are a Mexican doughnut.

Mad Mex on Urbanspoon


View Larger Map

 

{ 5 comments }

This week was seafood night.  Despite Sydney being a great place for seafood, we struggled to find a decent place that was exclusively seafood.  In the end we decided to just head to Darling Harbour and see what we could find.

Even there most restaurants offer seafood, but out of 20, or 30 menu items, seafood is usually only 4 or so of them.  We went past Nick’s Seafood Restaurant who have an expansive list of seafood on their menu, but they were busy and loud.

We carried on walking towards the ferry wharf with the intention of going to Circular Quay, and potentially Peter Doyle’s restaurant, but came across Nick’s Bar & Grill.  They don’t have quite the menu that their seafood branch does, but they do have a fairly decent menu.  They were much quieter, both in terms on customers and loudness, so we went in and were seated.

For entrée we had the bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar ($5)

For starter we had the salt and pepper calamari ($19.50).  It was a bit dark and very slightly over-oily, but it still tasted good.

We decided to share mains.  We had the grilled Snapper ($38.50) and the fried Flathead ($37.50).  They came with a starch each, so we chose mash for one and chips as the other.

The fish were both very good and succulent.  This, I think, is the first time we’ve had Snapper and found it excellent, and I’ll certainly have that again in the future.  The mash was lovely and creamy, and the chips were crisp and nice and fluffy inside.

Service was pretty good until we tried to get the bill.  We had a ferry to catch and needed to leave, but the waiter was quite busy at the other tables.  Fair enough, but I think he could have spent just a few minutes checking on us every now and again.  We eventually asked a manager to get us the bill, after which he was responsive again.

Over all though I was quite happy with the visit and we’ll be back again.

Nick's Bar & Grill on Urbanspoon


View Larger Map

 

{ 2 comments }

Say hello to our new favourite food!  Ok, we love Asian food, but before coming to Australia we had never really been exposed to Malaysian food, which is strange since the Cape Malay people of South Africa are of Malaysian descent.  I suppose they have developed their own style and no longer cook the traditional dishes of their ancestors.

Malaysian food seems to me to be a bit of a fusion between Chinese and Indian foods (which we both absolutely love), with a bit of something else thrown in for good measure.  The result is amazing tasting foods that we can’t get enough of!

So we decided to head down to Tumbalong Park in lovely Darling Harbour to visit the Malaysia Festival and see what it was all about.  I’m happy to say that aside from some tourism information and some dancing that was happening on stage, it all seems to be about the food, which is great, because we like food.

So let me show you some pics that we took on the day, and a run down of the food we ate.

We got there fairly early and there wasn’t much going on yet.  People were starting to arrive but a lot of the stalls were not ready to serve, which was a pity since we had deliberately skipped breaky and were starving.  I took this pic so you can get an idea of the area.  Tumbalong Park is a grassy area, part of Darling Harbour, and right on the edge of the city.

Our first stop was to Papparoti for a coffee and one of their coffee buns.  Unfortunately they were having some problems with their coffee machine and the buns were still in the oven.  No worries, we’ll come back.

While there I took a photo of the Jackie M stall next door.  We would come back for a roti kaya a little bit later.

We ended up at Café Kasturi where we bought some curry puffs, Malaysian “cake”, and teh tarik.  The whole lot came to $10.

Mmm, look at that. Way better than a samo(o)sa.  (I will get used to calling them samosas eventually.)

Malaysian “cake”.  This violently green dessert is a jelly like custard made from pandan leaves on a base of sweet sticky rice.  Very yum.  They also had many other cakes.

Eventually we got our coffee bun from Papparoti ($4.40).  It was lovely and soft with just a hint of a coffee taste and aroma.  The outside was almost meringue like.  Soft, but brittleish, but with a lovely bready fluffy centre.

Time for some roti kaya from Jackie M ($8 for 2).  How many times can I say lovely in one post?  Unlimited apparently.  Jackie’s roti is lovely, her kaya is lovely.  The roti is different to what we’ve had at Mamak – it’s crispier and more flaky.  I like them both but as much as I like Mamaks roti kaya, I have to say that Jackie’s put Mamak’s to shame.  The kaya is clearly freshly made and has a distinctly custard-eggy taste, but the overall taste is just one of sweetness.  For those who don’t know what kaya is, have a look here.

Look at the oozy goodness.

Around about this time we decided to go for a little walk to look around a bit more, and to work off some of the food we’d consumed so far.  This is the new playground area at the new Darling Quarter.  Water fun, science based toys, and a 21 metre flying fox.  Oh did I mention this is all FREE?  Awesome.  I wish I was a kid again.

The new Darling Quarter precinct is beautiful.  And there are plenty of food options there for the future.

Back at MFest we get some Chicken Laksa from Jimmy’s Recipe ($8.50).  ChocolateSuze complained that it seemed to be a bit watered down, but the one we had was perfect, and one of the best “curries” that I’ve ever had.  Lovely (there I go again) laksa base with shreds of chicken, tofu, and both rice and egg noodles.  Super yum.

We also had some cendol from Aseana Food Village.  Wriggly green worms are yummy.  Red beans are yummy.  I just wish they wouldn’t use such big blocks of ice, it makes it difficult to finish.

Oh look it’s Billy from A Table For Two (oh, and MasterChef AU).

It’s a little fuller now than when we arrived.


View Larger Map

Malaysia Fest is finished for this year.  But keep watching their site for announcements of next years festival.

www.malaysiafest.com.au

 

 

{ 2 comments }

Hurricane's Grill & Bar on Urbanspoon

This week we decided to have something simple.  Steak!

Since we were in the city to recharge our Metrocard (Sydney monorail pass), as they have regular $2.50 days that allow you to top up your rides for $2.50 each.  Normally they’re $3.33 with a card and $4.90 without so it’s good value.  Harbourside Shopping Centre is one of the stops on the monorail line so we decided to go and get some good steak in Darling Harbour.  We ended up at Hurricane’s.

It wasn’t really the greatest from a blog point of view as we just wanted something simple, but the food was good and we enjoyed the view.

Who can resist an awesome city view like that?

And on the other side of us… TEH FIREZ!!1

The steak ($39.00) was good, the chips were good, although perhaps a few too many.  I like chips, but on this occasion I wish I could have just had some boiled baby potatoes, and some onion rings!   I could have had a baked potato but I didn’t feel like a big potato!  The steak was fillet, and we asked for it to be cooked medium-well.  What we got was possibly a little more like well done, but I understand that the difference is minor, and I’d rather have my steak overdone than underdone.  In fact the only reason that I ask for medium-well is to prevent getting a piece of charcoal instead!  I chose not to have a sauce because I’m usually quite happy with just the basting, and as expected I was happy.

We deliberately chose not to have a starter so that we could have dessert and not leave the place stuffed as a pig!

However we didn’t escape stuffed because the apple crumble ($14.50) that we ordered happened to be humongous! We could have shared one of those!

It was however, really, really good.

The total bill was $126.00, which also included two milkshakes and two flat-white coffees.

Hurricane’s Grill
Shop 434/436
Harbourside Shopping Centre
Darling Harbour
NSW 2000
Australia

Tel: 02 9211 2210

 


View Larger Map

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

{ 0 comments }