Well, I wasn't really "hungover", just super-tired. I have no idea why we got a room with a 10am checkout the day after the Mardi Gras parade, giving our whole group about 4 hours of sleep each. Sheesh.

Anyway, for our last breakfast for our Sydney '06 trip, I obviously wanted bills. The closest one, bills on Crown street, Surry Hills, had a 45 minute wait. And we were starving! Grrr..

So we walked slightly down the hill on the same street, and came across another little cafe, called Vesbar. It was nice and quiet and dark in there, with retro Italian scooter-inspired decor.


inside


inside


V

And all we wanted was variations on the "bacon and eggs plus extras" theme, with coffee/tea/hot chocolate.


drinks


breakfast


breakfast


matty


more breakfasts


more breakfasts

Yum, yum, yum. I had a little dish of ricotta with my scrambled eggs and bacon, which was divine!

The coffee was good, the vibe was relaxed, and the eggs and bacon were fantastic. It was just what we needed. Can you believe it, I didn't miss bills at all. Shh...

Josh: That was honestly the best cooked breakfast I've ever had.


money

So, you thought bills was special? You ain't seen nothing yet.

Late, late, late on Saturday night, I ate the best pie ever. It was from some dingy all-night deli, it was lukewarm, and it was the best thing I've ever eaten.

Let me explain.

On the night of the Mardi Gras parade, the city of Sydney goes nuts. Going from your hotel to the parade, to the parties, and back to your hotel again becomes a military obstacle course - you have to dodge huge crowds, drunk and disorderly party goers, rude cab drivers, and not to mention the roadblocks which make navigating Sydney's already difficult streets virtually impossible.

I finally arrived back at my hotel room at about 2:30am, starving and exhausted, with aching feet and ringing ears. I sat down, and messaged my dear friend An, who was still out.

"Hey An, I'm back at the hotel. Could you do me a huge favour and buy me some hot food on your way home? Preferably pizza/chips, but anything's ok. And no rush at all! See you soon."

When he came back, he brought a pie from the only servo that was still open.

I inhaled it in about 10 seconds flat, and it was the best thing ever.

THANK-YOU AN!


pie in packet


Pie


pie

And now we get to my favourite of all Bill’s restaurants, bills in Woolahra. This is the newest of the 3, having only been opened last year. It’s in Queen’s Court, on Queen Street, in leafy Woolahra.


queens court

Queen's Court
118 Queen Street
Woollahra NSW
2025 Australia
T +61 2 9328 7997

We (An, myself, and 2 other friends Nick and Mark) went on Saturday for lunch, straight from the Pyrmont Growers Market. Most of the tables are in a lovely outdoor courtyard, but we got a table inside. (It was already a 20-minute wait for an indoor table, and we didn’t want to wait any longer). There are some really nice shops around though, so if you have to wait for longer, it’s not a huge problem.


bills woolhara


Courtyard

As always, I started with a latté.


Coffee


Scrambled eggs with aged cheddar for Nick


Sweetcorn fritters with bacon, roast tomatoes and salsa for me


Scrambled eggs with salmon for Mark


Ricotta hotcakes with banana and honeycomb butter for An.

Sadly, An couldn’t finish his hotcakes, so I had to eat them for him. *Sigh* Life is tough.

On Saturday morning, I got up at a ridiculously early hour of the morning, and made my way down to the monthly Pyrmont Growers' Market. It's on the water, right in front of the Star City casino, and it happens on the first Saturday of every month. I've wanted to go ever since I read about it at Helen's blog a while back. Lucky it coincided with my trip!

There are lots of different stalls, selling various food products, drinks etc.

You can even get fresh snails there. I didn't buy any.

We got some breakfast food, (and coffee and juice), and went and sat in the shade, nursing our hangovers and wondering how I'd managed to convince my friends to traipse off to a market after having had only 4 hours of sleep.

It was a good market though, I enjoyed it!


you want an egg in a bap?

This stall sold fried eggs and bacon in a bread roll with delicious chilli jam.


egg in a bap in a bag

After that, my friend Mark was still hungry, so he got a roll with bacon, onion and chorizo sausage from another stall.


sausage

What can I say? He's a hungry boy.


mark and sausage

On Friday, we went to bills cafe for lunch, and had been planning on going to Kylie Kwong's restaurant for dinner. However, they don't take bookings, and when we arrived, we were informed that it would be a 1.5 hour wait for a table! We didn't want to wait, so we just went next door to bills 2.

This was the one that I visited the last time I came to Sydney, and it's been refurbished since then. Previously, it had a slightly industrial look - all polished steel benches. But now it's a lot softer and warmer, with wooden benches and softer coloured chairs. I quite like it.

To start, I had a deep-fried zucchini flower with a garlic yogurt.


Yum! This is one of my fave things to eat, but they can be hard to find. And it was only $3.50!

For main, An had delicious pork...


Maple-glazed pork loin with asparagus, peas, broadbeans and corn. There weren't any broadbeans in it though, only cherry tomatoes.

I had a baby lentil salad with beetroot, green beans, and goat's curd.

lentil salad

And for dessert, An had seasonal stone fruit roast with almonds, Ligurian honey and served with brittle ice-cream. It looked great, but was very, very sweet.



I had the cheapest dessert on the menu, a buttermilk pannacotta with a few berries. It was light and refreshing, and beautiful!

buttermilk pannacotta

Bill twice in one day? I must be dreaming.

I went to Sydney.

I went to bills.

3 times.

Do you know who Bill Granger is? He's that blonde restauranter / cookbook author / media darling / celebrity-chef / all-round nice guy who makes delicious food and is a walking advertisment for the merits of the Sydney lifestyle.

Last year, my culinary pilgrimage to Sydney (or should I say, "bill-grimage"), only involved visiting bills 2 in Surry Hills. This year, we went to all three of his restaurants, and I can safely say that I am fully converted to the Bill way.

In the blurb of his latest book, simply bill, it states, "There are many people for whom a visit to Sydney is not complete without a meal at bills". And I am one of those many people!

Here are the photos from our first visit to bills this weekend. My friend An & I had lunch on Friday at bills Darlinghurst (the original one).

bills
433 Liverpool Street
Darlinghurst
NSW 2010
Australia
T +61 2 9360 9631

bills is on a corner of a winding suburban street, and is a medium-sized space with a light, airy atmosphere.






bills interior


2 lovely lattes

Black pepper and pink Murray River salt is provided at the table.


Pepper and Murray River salt

An had a massive serving of scrambled eggs with toast and mushrooms. It was beautiful, but he couldn't finish it.



An: WOW! How many eggs are in this?
Me: Probably 2. And then lots of cream, haha.
An: What, full cream milk?
Me: No, real cream. Lots of it. I've seen him make it on tv.

I had the slightly healthier option of parmesan-crusted chicken breast served with a crunchy fennel 'slaw. I'd seen this in his recipe books, but had never been tempted to make it. However, the dude sitting at the table next to us was eating one, and it smelled fantastic. So I had to order one. And it tasted fantastic too!


parmesan-encrusted chicken with fennel 'slaw

An wasn't in the mood for dessert after his eggs, but I couldn't go past the lovely cakes that were displayed on the counter. (They look just like the pictures of the cakes and desserts in his books!) I asked the waitress to tell me what they all were, and I chose a blueberry, macadamia and white chocolate cake. Drool.


Tea


blueberry white choc macadamia

The cake was served with a jug of runny cream, which was lovely poured over the cake.


Cake

There weren't chunks of white chocolate in it, rather, the chocolate was melted and mixed through the batter. I love cakes made with melted white chocolate - it adds a rich and dense smoothness to the cake better, and infuses it with a lovely buttery-vanilla flavour. Fab! I'm a total white chocolate fiend though, and I'd have chucked white chocolate chunks in there too if I had a choice. In fact, cut the middle man, and give me a bar of white chocolate. Or just hook some white chocolate up to my veins...

Apparently Bill Granger himself was in the building at the time. I know this because a couple brought in their cookbooks and got a waitress to take them down to the bill office for him to autograph. He didn't come up though - apparently it takes a lot of work to run 3 restaurants and be a celebrity chef, and he was in meetings and filming his new series.