Sydney Food Diary

Eat to the beat

And now a quick musical interlude, 500 Songs About Food

Blue Eye Dragon

From the same people who keep the unbelievably good value Taiwanese kitchen at Grain Tea Rice and Noodles (one of our regular favs), comes this charming little stunner on the other side of Harris St.

Blue Eye Dragon is a slightly dressier and grown up restaurant than it's sibling and lit perfectly for an intimate dinner (it's also big enough to accommodate a good sized group).

The dishes are made for sharing and include delicious fried crisp chicken with basil, five spice and a salt and pepper dipping blend on the side, tender stewed beef shin served cold but melting with sweet rice wine and soy flavour, succulent pork belly in star anise and soy sauce, tofu stuffed with pork and prawn, and truly elegant prawn and pork dumplings (that nearly disappeared before I could even snap a photo).

With BYO also on the cards, Blue Eye Dragon makes for a really great and affordably elegant night out. You're worth it.

Blue Eye Dragon is at Shop 2, 42 Harris Street, Pyrmont T: 02-9518 9955 and is only open for dinner Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday

The World's Most Luxurious Ice Cream

Ice cream has had some unexpected, fascinating and occasionally surprising incarnations on the menus of our top restaurants in the last few years, from Heston Blumenthal's (now well on it's way to legendary) smoked bacon and egg ice cream to some great Sam Mason inventions at WD50 to well, seemingly everywhere you look these days.

Heck, we've even given experimental ice cream our own go, whirling together five spice and date, white peach and butter fried rosemary and other, less successful combinations which we'll spare ourselves the indignity of sharing.

Our favorite of this ilk, however has always been Tetsuya's surprisingly wonderfully blue cheese ice cream with pear and Sauternes jelly. So when we were asked to create an award for the Independent Food Festival Awards our minds did a natural little wander towards this wonderful creation (though we weren't sure what we would call it).

Ramping up for our award and upon revisiting Tetsuya's though, we were at least slightly deflated to find that the it had gone from the menu (at least for the moment, we did manage to wiggle our way into a new panacotta version of the aforementioned dish, as consolation, but that is another story).

In it's place on Tet's always entertaining tastebud-rollercoaster was something very special, something so deliciously, perfectly, cleverly, and gently balanced and at the same time very luxurious.... And it is to this dish that we humbly bestow the award of the World's Most Luxurious Ice Cream.

White truffle ice cream with white bean and fig sets a new benchmark for soul-filling umami but also comes off the palette surprisingly light and refreshing. Naturally it's also luxurious (which in this sense is a nice word for decadent) in ingredient, fusing white truffle with thick cream and egg.

Sign us up for at least a tub.

Our thanks to Hillel from Taste Everything for the opportunity to present this award and for organizing the Annual Independent Food Festival Awards