Cookies & Q

We went to a wedding in Matarangi in the weekend. It is the most beautiful place – white, white sand and beautiful clear blue water. We had a fabulous time and the weather was stunning. I made the cookies above for the bride and groom. I thought they were quite cute.

Last night I had to take a client to dinner and I chose Q Restaurant at the Westin hotel in the viaduct. It was wonderful! The meal was very delicious – lots of wonderful flavours. The service was a little bit average, but not too bad. We went the whole hog, having an entrée, main and dessert.

My entrée was pumpkin ravioli with sage butter. It was delicious. Lots of parmesan cheese and delicately flavoured pumpkin filling. Perhaps a little more butter than I would have liked, and I didn’t think it was “burnt” enough – you know when you cook butter to a nut brown colour to give it more flavour, I don’t think it was left to brown enough.

My main was divine. I had seared tuna which was served on a small pasta bed, flavoured with olives and pesto. The flavours were delicious and each mouthful was truly a taste sensation. The tuna was seared to perfection – still very rare but not so it was raw in the middle. This was my favourite course. Apart from the ice cream…

Two scoops of the creamiest gelato chocka full of macadamia nuts and white chocolate. It came with a delicate tuile biscuit.

Not quite as good as the French Café, but I would certainly rate Q Restaurant as one of the best I have been to.

The Engine Room cont..

Last week I posted about the Engine Room -just to give an up-date, yesterday we received a lovely note in the mail apologising if the clams had caused my husband's food poisoning and a voucher for the restaurant. As i mentioned earlier we did not expect anything other than understanding, so we were pleased to get this. I will be deleting my comments from the earlier post re: the food poisoning as a mark of thanks to the Engine Room.

The Engine Room - Northcote Point

Last Friday night we went to the Engine Room in Northcote Point for dinner. The Engine Room is probably the best restaurant on the north shore. We had only been there once before not long after it opened. It was a real treat to go back. There was a group of six of us and we all thoroughly enjoyed our meals.

I didn’t have an entrée, but there was lovely sour dough (perhaps a tad on the dry side) and olive oil to begin with. We were also treated with a gift from the kitchen of arrancini – little deep fried risotto balls, which were incredibly tasty. From the main menu, the salmon was the meal that caught my eye, salmon being my favourite protein! However, it came with champ and mashed potato is my least favourite carbohydrate. I asked the waitress if I could have the salmon with the chicken’s accompaniment of lentil tabbouleh, roast pumpkin and labneh. She happily said yes and the meal was delicious – the salmon was perfect, not over cooked, but not too rare either.

I was looking forward to dessert as the previous time I had been to the Engine Room I had shared churros with chocolate and it is still on the menu. Churros are little Spanish doughnuts served with a chocolate sauce to dip them in. The chocolate sauce is pretty much warm chocolate ganache. The churros did not disappoint. My husband chose the pear crumble with vanilla bean ice cream as his dessert and it was also delicious.


Also, please check out my latest feature on Foodlovers on Unbaked Slices.

Dining at the French Cafe

Last night we went to The French Café for my birthday dinner. The French Café is consistently voted the best restaurant in NZ and I can see why!! My husband and I both agreed it was the best dining experience we have ever had! The service was impeccable and the food was almost indescribable!!!! But I will do my best!

Instead of the degustation menu we decided to eat a la carte. For my entrée I chose the caramelised shallot, beetroot and fig tart with goats cheese which is one of their signature dishes. It was divine and just as I had hoped – the pastry was incredibly crisp and the goats cheese was so creamy and mellow, the perfect contrast to the sharpness of the balsamic in the vegetables. My husband had roast pork belly with scallops, cauliflower puree and apple salad. Pork and scallops are two of his favourite things and he said it was just perfect.

Before our main we were given a small palate cleanser of tomato and watermelon gazpacho with a goats cheese foam. Beautiful! My main was courgette flowers stuffed with beautiful creamy ricotta, and served with mushrooms and buffalo mozzarella with pesto. It was so yummy, my mouth is watering just thinking about it!!!!! It was quite rich, but I ate every mouthful!!!! My husband had blue nose and I cant even tell you what it was served with as I was so busy concentrating on my own!

We shared a beautifully ripened piece of French brie next. It was served with crispy lavosh and quince paste. Then for dessert we shared a tasting platter which had small tastes of 5 of the desserts from the menu. They were all beautiful and included Rhubarb and vanilla crème brulee, a pistachio meringue (just how I like meringues – very chewy in the middle) with summer berries, praline ice-cream, chocolate parfait with a sliver of brownie (the flavour of this was so intense – you could tell the quality of the chocolate was just superb) and then the piece de resistance!, a chocolate sable tart which was warm, so when you cut into it, the filling oozed out. It was soooooooo good!!!!!

We shared a bottle of beautiful Highfield chardonnay – one of my favourite wines!

I am definitely looking forward to the next special occasion when we can return to The French Café!!

Tapas at La Zeppa

A couple of nights ago I met up with some girlfriends at a Tapas Bar behind Victoria Park market called La Zeppa. It was a really fun night – lots of talking and catching up, but also some wonderful food! Tapas is a great way of being able to try lots of delicious morsels without having to eat off other people’s plates and without getting diner envy (ie when you go to a restaurant and the dinner of the person beside you looks far more appealing than your own!!). La Zeppa had a great selection of tapas – a good mix of cold and hot and also sweet. Also, as there were four of us dining, it was perfect, as each dish had four items on it.

We chose a selection of 8 different tapas, mixing things up between hot and cold, vegetarian, venison, duck, and chicken and then finished off with two selections of sweet tapas. The service was excellent and I was also impressed that all wines were available by the glass which is great when you are dining after work and a glass or maybe two is all you want (well, all you should have!!!).

All of the tapas were delicious, but the stand outs for me were the salted olives (these had the texture of roast olives), the smoked snapper & pernod dip served with grilled flatbread (the snapper gave the dip a very delicate flavour), the chorizo, caramelised onion and sage risotto balls (some of the best I have tasted – beautifully seasoned, with a crisp exterior and creamy interior), tomato & basil polenta chips with aioli (once again I think it is the texture thing – crisp polenta chips and creamy aioli!) and last but not least the peking duck pancakes with hoisin sauce. Actually, that is almost everything! The food was great!

Even though we were quite full by then, we ordered two dessert tapas to share – one was tiaramisu wontons with mocha anglaise (I wasn’t such a fan of these) and the other was filo cigars filled with dates and dark chocolate with a side of mascarpone – delicious!

La Zeppa is definitely a great place to got to try some really yummy food and have a good catch up with friends after work!!