Birthday Feast Week

I love taking a week off for my birthday to eat. It is one of my favourite things to do, and if I could afford it, I would do it for the whole month of October.

But I can’t.

So, instead of that, I will talk at you about the wonderful food I had this week, and the people involved.

Let’s start with Saturday.

Saturday

This began at lunch, as a lot of Saturdays do for me. Due to it being closed on Mondays, I went to Detour for my birthday lunch, my first birthday lunch that is.

After being wonderfully chastised for not going that frequently, and agreeing to go monthly from now on, I perused the menu. Ok, I perused for something to have with the Emu Tartare.

I started with Cured Market Fish and Emu Tartare, and followed this with Pork Belly. All of this was finished off with my favourite dessert. Pannacotta with Granola.

Now there are two things I need to say here, the first is I have already gone through the conversation of two freeze dried bees being too many to eat when we need bees so badly at this point in time.
The second is that Saturday seemed to be the day of mostly raw. Which I am fine with.

Cured Market Fish and Emu Tartare at Detour and, later on, Steak Tartare at French Martini.

Emu Tartare and Steak Tartare are similar in theory. Emu is a little like beef, and you mix a similar sort of ensemble of flavours to highlight the natural flavour of the meat.
Cured Market Fish is a lot milder then the others. It’s kind of like cerviche, in fact I am pretty sure it is cerviche. I originally got this because I saw the words “tiger’s milk” in this.

It was not, as I first thought, milk from a tiger, but it is some sort of citrus based marinade. It was really good, and I recommend it.

Has anyone actually tried to milk a tiger?

Anyway.

Both lunch and dinner were solo affairs on Saturday. I like to eat alone sometimes, it’s meditative. Though, I never really feel like I am eating alone at Detour.

Monday

Birthday Day

There was a lot of food on Monday, and thank you to everyone who helped make it a great day.

I am only going to focus on Chew the Phat, though.

Chu the Phat is a beautiful restaurant in West End. The food is good. The downside is the price. If you can afford it, go to Chu the Phat. At least once. I went with a friend, and we got so much to eat.

It was great.

I am trying to remember all the different things that were on the table, and every time I do I can only think of the red fried pigs’ tails.

This was the greatest dish of the night. I had never had this before, I don’t think so anyway, and it was great. The right amount of crispy. Enough meat and fat to make it enjoyable. I am drooling just thinking about it.

We had a table full of dumplings, cucumber, some other things and red fried pigs’ tails. Oh, I was in heaven.

This is my favourite way of eating, one of the reasons I love yum cha. Loads of baskets of food, piled up on the table, great company. Just talking and eating and drinking green tea.

There was no green tea in this case, but there was a birthday a shot. I am not normally a drinker, and I don’t remember exactly what was in it, but it tasted like I was drinking a cupcake.

The rest of the week

I ate so much last week, I don’t think this would be a surprise to anyone. The rest of the week comprised of ribs, korean chicken, horchata, gelati, miso eggplant and a plethora of other food.

Also a lot of duck, so much duck. Duck spring rolls, duck dumplings, tea smoked duck, duck confit and crispy rice salad and duck pate.

The duck pate was really good. I liked it that much that I am pretty certain it counts as not even remotely healthy food. This is most definitely a sometimes food. The Duck confit and the duck spring rolls were also pretty good. Though the spring rolls were not as strongly duck flavoured as I like normally, they were still good. The duck dumplings and the tea smoked duck were both excellent, and the only thing that would make me say anything negative about them was the price. While good, you can get excellent food for a more affordable price in Sunnybank. If you can afford it though, definitely go to Chu the Phat.

There were loads of desserts too, but I am not going to bore you with those details.

Except for the birthday cakes my daughter made me. She made a large quantity of small cheesecakes and carrot cupcakes. The small cheesecakes were on a biscuit base and had a strawberry and some blueberries on top.  The carrot cup cakes were covered in a cream cheese icing, a walnut and salted caramel in the middle. Both types of cakes were really good, and I have nearly eaten them all.

Now, I need to eat.

More.

Snack time.