Saturday, May 23, 2009

A night out in Sydney, sleeping all day and breakfast in bed ...

Our one night out on the town while in Sydney started with dinner at fine diner, est. This is where I spent some time working before we left Sydney nearly 4 years ago. It's a 3 hat restaurant on the first floor of the Establishment hotel on George St. The dining room is something else, and stepping back into it after nearly 2 years it still almost takes your breath away. We made a late booking for this Saturday night and start with a glass of champagne at the bar whilst waiting for our table. It was a great dinner, Peter Doyle's food the epitome of Modern Australian cuisine, with beautiful, clean flavors. (Sorry no photo's, we knew we were going out afterwards and didn't want to lug around the camera). It's Jen we're meeting up with tonight, she actually finishes work before we're even onto desserts, so we invite her to join us for cheese and dessert. We chew a bit of fat, eat some tasty sweets and then off we go.

To keep in with the theme, it's another Merivale establishment, Chinese Laundry, which is the next stop. We wait in line, pass through the clipboard natzi's, pay our $ and we're in. It's pretty busy, the 2 separate rooms competing with each other as we walk in, but we're drawn to the main room. We spend the night swaying between the 2, but settle in the main room just before 2am for Mark Dynamix closing set. All is good until the dance floor breaks out into 3 simutanious fights. Egh, this I have not missed about Sydney. There was blood, broken glass and plenty of ruptured egos, but there worst thing was the music just stopped, the lights came on, and the place was cleared. Gosh! Now it's 2:30am, we're ready to party and we need to try and find a cab, and somewhere to go. Of course we end up at Kings X. After trying a few places, most of which closed at 3 anyway, we end up at Candys apartment. We then arrive back at the Hilton around 5:30am and can almost see the sun bursting out. Ouch! Thanks to the Hilton's black out screens we manage to get a great sleep. We woke up about 2pm and didn't feel like going far, definately no further than phone by the side of the bed to dial room service.

Ding* that'll be the door. And there the trolley get's wheeled in. The table is set with our antipasto and dip plates with condiments and water. Then we're shown the little hot box under the table with our hot meals. Tres cool.

Hilton, Room Service

The dip plates holds 4 little ramekins of dips, a taziki yoghurt and cucumber dip, a roasted pepper dip, hummus and guacamole. There's some marinated olives in the centre and ample toasted pita chips.

Hilton, Room Service

Assortment of antipasto items is certainly an assortment. There's everything from prosciutto to gruyere, cippolini to artichoke and some grisini and toasted Turkish bread to mop it all up.

Hilton, Room Service

Patiently waiting in the hot box this whole time Buffalo wings with potato wedges and some mini burgers. The wings were nice and juicy, but none of the Buffalo kick we were after.

Hilton, Room Service

3 mini burgers are served on a delicious, super dark, crusty roll. The bread was really nice, and the 3 meats, grilled chicken breast, lamb patty and grilled beef all tasty, just thought it was a bit boring that each one has the same lettuce, tomato slice and mayonnaise accompaniments.

Hilton, Room Service

It was so nice to have food delivered right to our bed, almost as nice as those block out blinds allowing us to sleep the whole day away ...