Ladurée (again)

I've blogged about Ladurée before. This visit was JUST AS GOOD. 

They make their own champagne: who knew. 

I blogged about having a rustic kouign amman in St Malo a few years ago.

My favourite every pastry: the palmier (front left). The thing in the middle is a Paris Brest. 

Le Bistrot du Peintre, Paris

 Le Bistrot du Peintre ("The Painter's Bistro") is in Paris's 11th arrondissement: in a slightly grubby, gritty, non-touristy part of town. The bistro itself is beautiful and full of gorgeous art-deco furnishings and finishes. We had a fantastic lunch here. The menu is full of Paris bistro and brasserie classics, like steak frites, composed salads, lovely cuts of meat and simple desserts.

Chewy sourdough baguette pieces with saucisson sec (dried sausage)

Beef tartare with pommes frites and salad

Crispy canard confit (duck leg) with pommes frites and salad 

Creme caramel

Kugelhopf

This is Dorie Greenspan's recipe for kugelhopf: I made the recipe as written here.

It's technically a kugelhopf made in the wrong pan. This is a rose-shaped bundt pan. A kugelhopf is traditionally supposed to be in a tall swirly turban-like shaped pan.

I found out a few things while planning this cake:

1. A bundt cake in modern parlance is an American term for anything baked in a bundt tin of whatever shape, typically some sort of pound cake or heavy cake in any flavour. You can get bizarro bastardised versions in sour cream and carrot, black forest, pecan caramel, etc.

2. A bundt cake in the traditional sense is a German chocolate-laden thing, still in the fancy shape but with cinnamon-coffee-mocha-type flavouring.

3. A kugelhopf is not a bundt cake. It is like a brioche, but not. It has raisins in it and runs on yeast, not self-raising flour. So it is like a half-bread, half-cake bakery mutant.

I also learned that flour can Do Things I Did Not Know It Could Do. When the dough was first mixed, it was super-sloppy, almost like pancake batter. I was all like "whatever, it's screwed, I put too much milk in it". Then Dorie was all like "beat it in the mixer until the end of time." I was like "whatever Dorie, that's never going to become a cake, or even remotely dough-like. Good luck, lady." But anyway, I did the eternal mixing, and slowly it came together and all the gluten strands stretched and stretched and eventually it was like smooth stretchy chewing gum. No joke. I was amazed. Then it had to rise and be knocked back about six times, then sit overnight, then rise again for hours. By the end of all that I was like "THIS BETTER BE WORTH IT". Anyway, it totally was.

This thing came out of the oven and it was light, richly flavoured (no doubt from maturing and rising and yeasting for so long) and the raisins were soft and juicy, and it was awesome. I also dusted it with cinnamon along with the sugar. It was delicious with coffee.  Perfect for afternoon tea. Or breakfast. Or dessert. Incredible.

My tip: if you use a bundt pan or a rose pan or anything with tons of ridges or moulded detail, butter it real good, butter it again and then lightly flour the tin as well. I hate it when things stick to pans.

Egg Bistro

At Stanley St, Woolloongabba.

Verdict: very good. Nice Euro-esque interior decor, the dark wood, the bentwood chairs. The tall tables and stools along the walls are a nice touch but not always easy for shortarses like me to climb up on. Strong and hot leaf tea, not teabag (tick), fresh muffin-like creatures on the countertop (tick), hash brown made from actual real potato that grew in the ground, grated, seasoned and freshly fried (double tick). Tables not always wide enough to fully open newspaper and not knock over coffee, though.
We ate scrambled eggs with bacon on sourdough with a hash brown, plus the special: veal and pork meatloaf with a poached egg, tomato relish and sourdough toast. The meatloaf was too much like meatloaf for my liking: however for a meatloaf it was very good and not too strongly seasoned (tick). Poached egg EXCELLENT. Toast legitimate. All things very delicious. Service prompt and calm. Plus the waiter was super cute (insert inappropriate meatloaf joke). Most other patrons were sophisticated and genteel. Concerns: noisy chidren, business-shirt bogans, yapping women. Also how they don't take bookings for less than four people, despite the weekend breakfasts creating queues round the block. Location: I guess they can't help being next to a servo. Parking is OK on the side streets. Lucky the old antiques building is so lovely. YES TO EGG.

Cup Specialty Coffee

Cup Coffee, Russell St at West End: I will gladly marry every single one of your baristas and have all their babies, if you promise never to close down and never to change. No altering with the years, no upgrades, no tweaking. Just stay frozen in time, just as you are, right now, today.

Today you made me a long black. It changed my life.

This coffee you made me contained not a single tiny trace of bitterness or acidity. I didn't know that was even possible, especially with black coffee. The flavour was not just full: it was rich. It was nuanced. It was full of earth and wind and terroir. It was juicy. It was fat and rippling with life.

I would gladly choose your coffee as my last meal. This is the best coffee in the universe. 10 out of 10.

Plus there is a funky robot on the wall and he is also on the cup itself. That increases the awesomeness to 11.

Max Brenner + River Cafe

Seems like every time I pass the Max Brenner store at Southbank, there is a queue out the door. I have had intentions of trying it out in the past, but the everlasting lines of fussing women, tourists and clumps of teenage girls all vying to buy a coffee or dessert and sit in a noisy choco-den really put me off. Plus, people said that the produce was comparable to others (eg: get a good coffee at Chocolate Soldier instead and avoid the crowds.)

Anyway, I was enjoying a Lovely Outing with a friend, and after we had lunch at Piaf, we wandered over to check out ye olde Max Brenner. Bypassed the ubiquitous queue and went straight over to the retail counter where you buy gifts and prepackaged chocolate. Picked up a few little things as presents for various people. Expensive. Packaging a bit over the top. No need for everything to be quite so branded: the packets and tins were like a steer's arse with the MB logo seared onto every surface.

Continued on down to the River Cafe at GOMA (such a beautiful location but WHY ARE THE BAIN-MARIES FULL OF ROCKS?) for a coffee, which, thoughtfully, we were allowed to sprinkle with mini-marshmallows ourselves. Quite good, for you know, a standard coffee served in a takeaway cardboard cup. This is also where we opened the Max Brenner showbags and had a taste. My verdict: MB chocolate is smooth and good, but too sweet for me and probably overpriced. The caramelised pecans with praline and cocoa powder were lovely. Unfortunately I also enjoy chocolate that costs less than $15 for 80 grams, so not sure if I'll be bothering with Max again. Thanks for trying though Max, and it's nice to see businesses like this appearing in our fair city to begin with.

Cupstart: online coffee ordering

Pre-ordering your coffee and collecting it on the run from your local cafe. What a good idea. Obviously there will be more locations available soon, but in the meantime I hope they get enough business to keep it rolling.

Lady date

French Twist at the Barracks: coffee, tea and a beautifully mini apple crumble to share. Lovely chinaware, lovely company, lovely position.

Our Haus Cafe

Popped down to Our Haus, Riding Road, Hawthorne, for a spot of lunch. Overwhelmingly good feedback from the interuniverse, so I was looking forward to something interesting and tasty. Pictured here is the cheese and tomato toasted sandwich with salad, the Caesar salad and some fries to share. Toastie was well recieved and the chips were a winner (note to cafe: serve aioli with them next time please), but my salad did not please me so much. Sure, all the elements were there, so A for effort but execution gets a C- at best. Poached egg on Caesars are great, but this one was a fridge-cold poachy and so did not ooze satisfactorily. Salad leaves were only one layer thick, and croutons, while made from your excellent house sourdough, were over-baked and really hard on the teefs. Anchovy good. Dressing good. Feel free to toss the dressing through a little more and even add some water to thin it slightly, get that coaty, crispy, juicy effect on your salad leaves. Just a suggestion. Coffee was lovely. Interior decor was also lovely- I was a big fan of your bright fuschia banquette seating and your quaintly decorated inside room, even if there were too many people jammed in there for a simple weekday lunch and even if half of them were annoying wannabe yuppie women who shop at Marg Kaye. Bit squishy at times to get through to a seat. Also think about getting rid of that INCREDIBLY LOUD AND ATMOSPHERE-DESTROYING JUICER or blender or whatever it is. Surely someone must make a quiet one these days. Or just shove that one out the back, and send the work experience kid or the most hated member of staff out there to be on Juice Patrol. Speaking of staff, our waitperson was very friendly and very lovely and very sweet, even if he did seem to be a bit Special Ed at first, when he brought us two forks, then took them away, then came back with one fork, then a second fork, then went away, then returned and took the second fork away again and replaced it with a butter knife. One butter knife. Lucky it was only for a toasted sandwich; or maybe that was the point. Anyway he was very nice and it seemed like all your staff are like little shining Happiness Fairies. Good on them. Unfortunately though, if I return, I won't be having a salad. Maybe work on those- in the meantime I'll order a sandwich or something.

Grub St Cafe

Had heard really good things about Grub St. The interwebs were all a-flutter and people were saying it was totally worth the trip to Gaythorne, which isnt really even that far out of the way for anyone, unless you live at Mt Cotton, in which case you've got more problems than needing some good coffee anyway, so we decided to go check it out.

Cons: A bit hard to see / find as you're driving past, but once you know where it is, you're set. The outdoor seating is basically in a driveway, but that's OK cos the inside is fairly cute. When we went in, the waitperson was a bit surly and a few of the tables needed to be wiped down, so options of where to sit were limited. Screaming local children and some fairly insane other customers, but that's not their fault. Pros: Good coffee. Food was delicious, nice and hot, except my plate had a few grimy specks on the edge. It was fine though. We had the bacon and egg burger, and the corn cakes with chorizo and poached egg. Very tasty, not over-salted. Everything got completely polished off and the plate juice was mopped up with bread scraps. And good prices- $30ish for two people with coffee. Very good. Well done Grub St: I wish you all the best and my only advice is to friendly up your wait staff and create a soundproof fenced and electrocuted area in which to corrall the local offspring.

La Cantina, Surfers Paradise

Had a lovely quiet late breakfast at La Cantina. Hard to find a breakfast as good as this on the Gold Coast. Poachies on wholemeal, with crispy bacon, avocado, tomato, spinach and mushrooms, and scrambled eggs on Turkish toast with crispy bacon and tomato. Yum. I'll be back.

Rosie Cheeks at Chouquette

Gorgeous. I didn't taste this, but it was like a sugared doughnut filled with berry jam and custard. I love its sensuous and cheeky cleavage, and its perky little marzipan leaf.

Breakfast at the Continental Cafe

The Continental is behind Chouquette at New Farm. There's a little airconditioned room out the back that is filled with trompe l'oeil brickwork, moulding and faux-Euro mantels and shelving. It has a lovely big tapestry on the back wall and it's a bit like being in a slightly naff Swiss boarding house in the 80s. It's great. The breakfast menu is also great: names like The Belgian, The Norwegian, The Swiss, etc. Good prices, too. Pictured is The Italian with the field mushrooms, and The Euro, with the poachies. Lord, how I love poachies. It's a deep character flaw.

We all agreed that the roasted tomatoes were fantastic- probably up there with the best tomato of my life. Bread was a strong chewy sourdough and very fresh. I fantasised that it was from next door at Chouquette. A really good and high-quality breakfast, and what's even better, the tea was strong, leaf, Earl Grey, delicious and got three cups to a pot.

Parisian breakfast

Croissants are not good walking food. They leave you feeling hungry again in an hour. I stopped at Clichy's Tavern, boulevard de Clichy, for breakfast of a Pampyrl orange juice, the beautiful French short black coffee, a tartine of strawberry confiture and unsalted butter. Heaven.

Deli lunch for two

Two fillets of smoked trout, sprinkled with grated lemon rind, butter, Dijon mustard, sun-dried tomatoes, chewy Italian bread, Sicilian green olives, fresh rolled proscuitto and basil leaves. A gorgeous build-your-own lunch on a rainy day.

Locantro Fine Foods

On a rainy, cold and windy Saturday morning in Sydney (you know the kind that turns your umbrella inside out and you end up like a wet rat), we visited this gorgeous little deli in Leichardt. At 7am, it was like a golden warm oasis of light in a sea of grey concrete. Beautiful, Italian-owned patisserie and delicatessen, wide range of smallgoods, pastries, drygoods and cheeses. They also make a great, strong, and tooth-biting coffee.

It was deserted. For breakfast, Mum and I ordered two coffees, a blueberry danish and a palmier. I love palmiers: ever since France I've been obsessed with their symmetrical loopy shape and sugary simplicity- perfect for coffee-dunking and a bit of a nibble. I also had a bit of a stickybeak round the shop, looking for anyting in particular that I'd be unlikely to find back in Brisbane. Happily, I didn't find anything. Queensland is no longer a cultural shopping backwater: everything you'd get in a third-generation Italian community deli you can get at Black Pearl, James St or Balaclava St. They had some great-looking risotto rice.

Behold the chocolate croissants, tiny blood orange tarts, eclairs, almond-filled galettes, raisin-studded pastry wheels, glazed to within an inch of their lives, lime cakes, chocolate ganache-coated puddings and fruit-filled doughnuts (or beignets as the French call them.) I'm so jealous that Mum lives just around the corner from these guys. If I lived close by, I would practically move in. Unfortunate but true. There's no point in denying it.