Cumulus Inc

There was a cause for celebration, and my boy really wanted to go back and check out Cumulus Inc for dinner, so off we went on a rainy Saturday and waited 45 minutes for a table. This is not my first visit to Cumulus as back in the days when my BF was trying to impress me during the 'chasing stage' of our relationship we came here for brunch. Anyway enough of my life story and onto the food.

From all the waiting, I was starving by the time we sat down so I just had to get olives or anything just to settle my stomach. The olive for $7 were a nice selection and a nice treat to start off the meal with the house sour dough.

First up was the Tuna tartare with pea salad. This was a favorite from our previous visit and still lived up to our expectation this time. Fresh chunks of Tuna with a wonderfully tossed mash pea salad.

As a side we ordered the potatoes with red wine vinegar and mustard. This was a tasty treat on the side, went great with the O'Connor steak. The steak was full of organic flavor and texture, the way it was cooked highlighted the grade of the beef and really allow the juices to come through.

There was also the zucchini special of the night, which was done with cream fresh..... it was char grilled and served with asparagus. It sadly did not please me one bit. I regret ordering this as all I could taste was burnt zucchini. I just wished I stuck with my original decision on the cauliflower.

To finish off the night, we got the strawberry jelly with coconut sorbet and granita. This was just YUM. If I had room in my stomach I would've ordered a second one. ;)

Overall 17/20. It really does live up to it's expectation and image. The food is a modern and fully respects the produce.  

 

N2 Extreme Gelato

I accidently came across this on a blog and was very keen to try it. Just so happened, I was sent to Sydney for work last week.

For those of you who haven't heard of it before, the concept of N2 is that they make the ice cream on the spot for you.... only catch is........ they add liquid nitrogen into the mixture so it turns into an ice cream consistancy straight away.

This place is tucked into Dixon's place near Chinatown. Once you get there, you are greeted with the sight of people wearing lab coats behind the counter in front of a number of KitchenAid mixers.

The flavours you get here, aren't exactly your usual vanilla, chocolate, strawberries and cream etc. Like the way they make their ice cream, the flavours are also a bit experimental. During my visit the flavours they had were butter popcorn; banana, peanut crumble; earl grey, caramel; coconut and pomegranate tea; mango sorbet; pineapple milk; sandy beach and; sour cream, chocolate. 

Unfortunately, I was able to try all the flavours. I ordered the butter popcorn, earl grey caramel and banana peanut crunch. Surprisingly I liked the butter popcorn the best. This tasted like butter popcorn laced into a vanilla like gelato with small popcorn bits. It may sound strange but the flavours actually work very well together.

The earl grey caramel was also very pleasant with the hint of tea infused into the mainly caramel gelato. Banana peanut crumble was...... very strongly banana scented. To me it tasted like a strong combination of both artificial banana flavouring and fresh banana. Personally I found this a bit overpowering but my partner loved it.

I also managed to get a sample of the coconut, pomegrante tea gelato. My guess is they used coconut water to get the final flavour. It was very sweet smelling and also taste very much like coconut without the heavy milky flavour. Not a bad choice for summer.

If you are in the area, you should really give it a go. At $6 a serving it is quite a generous size and for that price you also partly get the show. It might be a bit of a gimmick but I am a sucker for these type of things. 

Stokehouse

I am positive I found my restaurant of the year. For my recent birthday my boyfriend finally took me to Stokehouse. I have been dying to try this place out since the Taste of Melbourne festival a few years ago, and it not disappoint me.

Situated right by the water edge on St Kilda beach it has a lovely relaxing atmosphere, even at night. Stokehouse works on 2 levels, lower floor is casual dining and upstairs in fine dining. Since it was a special event, we dined upstairs.

Onto the food! For entree we had the Spaghetti alla chitarra, which is basically clam and cuttlefish with saffron. It was divine, the pasta was perfectly al dente and the chili and saffron just gave it that nice kick.

Mains we had the duck and steak. The steak was exactly medium rare as we wanted with a nice crust of flavour on top. The duck was laced with rasberries and truffle honey sauce. Duck is one of those things where you get it right or you get it awfully wrong. In this case it was done so so so right. The meat was just tender and the sauce was just rich enough, but then there was the raspberries to balance it out with the hint of sourness. The duck skin was so done to a point that it almost had me fooled as pork crackling. LOVED IT

Desserts, we ordered the special of the night which was an apricot pistachio nougat with berry sorbet. Overall it was a great dessert, only 1 small hiccup. There was a pistachio shell inside my nougat that almost chipped my tooth. Besides that part, it was a delightful dessert.

I think the wine selection is worth a mention too, the wine list is a good selection that really caters for all tastebuds.


Overall I would rate this a 18.5/20. It would have scored 19 if not for the nut shell.