Date Walnut Tart

I was looking over the blogs I administer the other day and noticed The SDP Connoisseur. I began to feel remorse for not blogging in such a long time and a dim memory crossed my mind... I did have SDP recently... what was that?

Above is a picture of the Date Walnut Tart from Vinegar Hill House in Brooklyn. Mom came into town (town meaning New York, where we now live) a couple of weekends ago and took us out to hip Brooklyn.

Vinegar Hill House does not take reservation, but no problem, because there is a bar! Our wait for a table was 2 hours long. Our meal, as far as I can remember, was amazing.

Our dessert, I completely forgot about until browsing through my blogs.

I'm pretty sure it was incredible. I don't think I forgot about it because of it's lack of incredibility, but because of the 2 hour hungry bar wait leading up to it. It was (is) a pretty incredible, cute little restaurant. And look at that picture! Yum. I can't believe we remembered to take a picture of it! However, this black spot on my memory does make me wonder what other SDP related desserts I've forgotten about over the years...

Pav@Market

Okay, okay, another non-SDP post, but it's an Aussie dessert, so the link is there, however tenuous.




The dessert in question was from the new restaurant Market, part of the also new Shangri-La hotel in Vancouver. The occasion was a visit from Cindy, who wanted to try out the restaurant. After a delicious meal, the pavlova caught my eye on the dessert menu, a little unusually described as a white chocolate pavlova with yuzu sorbet and Thai basil syrup. After downing a pre-dinner Lemon Yuzu Drop, how could I resist?

And it was wonderful - the wafer thin meringue was crisp, the white chocolate mousse was silky smooth and the combination of the sorbet and syrup gave a pleasant tang. Five stars!

Raw Prawn SDP

This was the first SDP in a long, long time, and sadly, disappointing. Let's just say that the ice cream was the best part. Perhaps we should have taken warning from the name of the place where we got it - the Raw Prawn Bistro, part of O'Brien's Hotel in Narooma, NSW. It was listed on the menu as simply "Sticky Date".

The place was packed with people from all walks of life on a Tuesday night. The wait in the queue just to order was 45 minutes. Nicole made sure that we had a table by sitting at it (with her Jacob's Creek piccolo bottle of wine) while I waited in line. I was fortunately kept amused by the conversations around me, the pick of which was this little exchange:

Woman 1: "Yeah, ya know, I've always wanted to go to New Zealand, but haven't got around to it"
Woman 2: "You should go, it's great"
Woman 1: "Well, we have a unit in Auckland, so if we do go, it would be a tax write-off"

Anyway, back to the pudding. The texture was quite soggy. That's really all I can remember, I waited too long to write the review! It was also possibly influenced by the fact that we were quite full after our seafood platter for two which was mostly deep fried. The fresh oysters were good though. And importantly, not a raw prawn in sight.

Sticky Ice Cream

Sticky fig & Honeycomb
Originally uploaded by knicole7.

Well, well, finally a blog post after a 2009 that was free of sticky date pudding. And not only is there going to be this post, but there will soon be another post to follow - if Adam gets around to doing it.

Granted, this post isn't about sticky date pudding, but the next one will be.

Anyway, not to give away our first 2010 encounter with SDP, but it was pretty much a disappointment.

Over the christmas/new year holiday we spent almost two weeks visiting family and friends in Melbourne, and then decided to drive up the coast to Sydney to catch our flight back to Canada.

The three day drive was marvelous - crystal clear waters, white sand beaches, rolling countryside, stunning views and million dollar sunsets.

On our third day's drive from Narooma to Sydney, we decided to stop in Jervis Bay for lunch. While the view was spectacular and promises of dolphins jumping through the clear waters convinced us that it was an ideal place for lunch, those factors also drew a couple hundred other holiday makers. So parking was a bitch, but we eventually found a spot. The trick is to park on the street because Australians are scared of parallel parking so there's usually a spot.

Anyway, after wandering past crowded, unappealing cafe after crowded unappealing cafe, we happened upon Toby's Estate whose menu offered an amazing looking roasted pumpkin, Jarlsberg and pesto turkish bread sandwich. I must say, that where Australia has failed in street parking, they have definitely dominated in sandwich making.

After my near perfect sandwich, I felt a needed something a bit sweet and noticed little tubs of ice cream in the freezer behind Adam. Fooled by the colors of the tubs, I asked Adam if he wanted strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, or chocolate vanilla swirl. He told me I could decide.

When I reached the freezer, I realized how wrong my ice cream flavor stereotype had been. The 'strawberry' was actually tangerine flavor, the 'chocolate' was double chocolate fudge, and the 'vanilla' was *gasp* sticky fig & honeycomb!!!

Now I realize sticky fig isn't sticky date, but since we haven't blogged in over a year, and since our SDP experience from the previous night was so poor (see upcoming blog), I thought I needed to redeem our poor little blog.

The Sticky Fig and Honeycomb ice cream was incredible and only $3.50AUD. The figs weren't too sticky and the honeycomb wasn't too overbearing. All in all it was a very refreshing end to a lovely lunch and a perfect addition to a beautiful location.

Anyway, a quick Google of Serendipity Ice Cream provided me with this information: Serendipity is a family business which was started in 1966 by my mother, Alix Mandelson. She started making her own ice cream at home because, at the time, the most exotic ice cream available in Sydney was Neapolitan – and she is allergic to chocolate!

So there you go.

The moral of the story is, if you are in New South Wales and feeling the need for ice cream WITH traces of the excitement of sticky date pudding, Serendipity's Sticky Fig & Honeycomb could be your best bet.