My birthday weekend, 22 - 23 June 2013

Today I will be sharing some photos from my birthday celebrations over the past weekend, which was spent with my family and my wife. It was a great weekend, filled with loads of good food of course, so I definitely felt spoilt. Plus my wife had been in Japan during the week taking her family around Kyoto and Osaka and she flew back Sunday morning just to be back for my birthday! What a great birthday present, I feel thoroughly blessed to have such an awesome wife. Only bummer was that I had to wake up at 6.30am in the morning to pick her up from the airport and it was friggin’ cold. Would have been nice to stay in bed, but you gotta do what you gotta do for the wife!

Eastwood BBQ Kitchen, 22 June 2013

My family (sans my wife who was on a plane back home) took me to Eastwood BBQ Kitchen (Shop 32/1 Lakeside Road, Eastwood) for dinner the night before my birthday. Eastwood BBQ kitchen is basically one of those Hong Kong style BBQ casual restaurants where you see rows of roasted meats hanging from the window. My parents usually come here for lunch, where they serve HK style lunch sets (soup, main, drink). There is also a branch in Chatswood (funnily enough it is called Chatswood BBQ kitchen). 

Menu

Expect your dishes to be dished out in rapid fire succession, which happened here for us. I reckon all our dishes came out within 10 minutes of us putting in our order with the waiter. Don’t come here expecting personable service or to be friends with the waiters. Just be happy that they take your order and get your food out quickly, the way that traditional Chinese folk like it. For me it is way too quick as I like to devote an adequate amount of time to enjoy each dish.  

Live mud crab

Hot chilli mud crab

The food here is fairly standard fare. My favourite dish was the chilli mud crab. The chilli flavour was quite dominating much like Singapore chilli crab, but it was a pleasure to get my hands dirty and eat all that crab covered in lots of hot, spicy sauce. The crab was quite big so there was lots of sizeable chunks of crab meat to go around. The crab itself was well cooked, so the meat was quite sweet and delicate, without any hint of rubberiness. Definitely a great dish to enjoy with your family.         

Here are the rest of the dishes:
 

Peking duck

Pancake with Peking duck, cucumber, shallot and hoisin

Deep fried coral trout with tofu in garlic sauce

Braised coral trout with green vegetables

Chinese green vegetable

Steamed "hoi tong" bean curd

Diced fillet steak in black pepper sauce

Qoo01 is back! 23 June 2013

So I was saying before I had to get up at 6.30 in the morning to go to the airport. After conquering the ridiculous morning traffic to the international airport, I picked up my wife who was already waiting for me at the public pick up area. And she gave me this singing birthday card:

Cupcake birthday card

If anyone wants to sing along, here are the lyrics:

Well, I’m cupcake,

I sing and shake. I’m here to say

I hope your birthday’s great.

If you eat me,

You’re gonna gain weight,

Another year older,

And a stomach ache. 

Breakfast at Cornersmith

Cappuccino

And in what seems to be a MAB – Qoo01 tradition after going to the airport early in the morning, we went to Cornersmith in Marrickville to have breakfast. Cornersmith is one of our favourite cafes in all of Sydney and they certainly make great food using high quality local produce. They do a great poached egg with some yummy sides to go with it. And they do a really good coffee too using Mecca Espresso beans. I will be writing another review to talk about Cornersmith, so look out for that in the next few days. In the meantime, here’s the link to a previous visit to Cornersmith (http://foodmab.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/cornersmith-marrickville-11-may-2013.html).

 
Lunch at Sixpenny  

MAB with extra chocolate mousse dessert course

For lunch my wife and I had an awesome 6 – course lunch (plus 2 extra courses courtesy of the kitchen). I won’t say too much now, but Sixpenny is my favourite restaurant in Sydney, with all things considered (quality of the food, service, atmosphere, value etc.). I will be writing a review of Sixpenny in the next few days as well. The highlight was the 2 extra dessert courses we got (the chocolate mousse dessert is pictured here). That meant we had 4(!) different desserts. There is no such thing as too much desserts of course!

UPDATE: Review can be found here http://foodmab.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/sixpenny-stanmore-23-june-2013.html

Birthday cake and presents

Swarovski dog

Here is the cute Swarovski dog that my mum bought for me (since as you might have probably worked out, I was born in the year of the dog). That’s going straight to the pool room! OK, I don’t actually have a pool room, but it is going into my display cabinet. 

Another JB Hi Fi gift card

And from my brother, I predictably got a JB Hi-fi gift card. Definitely not complaining, I willeasily find a way to use it! I practically live in JB Hi-fi, given the number of DVDs I own. A friend of mine once said that my DVD collection is like a Blockbuster store. I don’t know about that but I do have a habit of picking up something if it looks interesting… 

Black forest birthday cake

And last but not least, here’s my birthday cake that my mum bought for me. It’s a black forest cake from one of the Chinese bakeries in Burwood. It wasn’t really a typical black forest cake at all, more an Asian style fluffy sponge cake with chocolate and cherries. Doesn’t bother me, still a nice cake to cap off my weekend of celebrations! 

Thanks to everyone who made my birthday so special!