Brunch at Toast.

We went to this lovely little place for brunch on the weekend. It focusses a lot on different kinds of bread and lets you pick what bread you have with what dish, very tasty, and dynamic!

I had grilled tomatoes, feta and fresh basil on plain-ish toast.

Hubby had a fresh muffin made with maple, blueberries and cream cheese.

The colour of the egg yolks is worth a photo alone! Orange almost, and that is because they are free range eggs. What a difference.

Kate had the chocolate crepes with toasted hazelnuts, and a side of ice cream. The chocolate was intense, in a very good way and the ice cream was out of this world good.

This place is well worth a try, even if it just for a slice of amazing toast, like the name suggests. There is a huge array of spreads and apparently if you like crispy bread the Turkish is the one to get! I hope we revisit this place soon.

Seafood at Sandrino's in Freo.

When the birthday girl has a hankering for seafood, the troop finds seafood. Yay me! I was not disappointed, especially when I found a dish called Barbequed Seafood that came with prawns (yes they call them that here, not 'shrimp'! Another reason to love Oz!), calamari, mussels and barramundi which I was really keen to try.

This is my idea of seafood heaven, I only wish I could have shared it with my Dad who shares a birthday with me and is also a seafood lover. I learnt later on via skype that he was having home made fish and chips made from nkupi fish that he had caught at a fishing competition and not only that but they had placed 2nd in one of the categories so they were really happy campers too! 

The barramundi was really good. Not like a white flakey fish at all, very much more dense with almost a grey/white flesh that really holds together nicely. It almost tastes earthy if that makes sense, like river. I would compare it to a Bream fish from Zambia at a push. We were dining with our friend's friend's too and he was a chef too and told us that the barramundi flavour can really vary depending on the season, from tasting muddy when it is in the rivers to really 'oceany' when it moves out to the estuary or ocean. Am loving the local knowledge!

Our friends ordered a pizza with roasted pumpkin, goat cheese, pesto and rocket on which looked divine!

Hubby's meat lover's pizza also looked divine, actually, it tasted divine, maybe a touch salty with the proscuitto but divine none the less.

All in all a very nice day! Loving Oz!

Birthday drinks in Freo.

Woohoo we are in Australia! And fingers crossed, jet lag free. The 12hr time change seems to have been dealt with by the insanely long journey. First couple days have been amazing here in Perth. My friend's husband is a chef, I cannot tell you how delighted I am to be living with them and discussing food and watching him work in the kitchen. He made red thai curry our first full day here and it was so good and I was so relaxed that I forgot to take pictures and document, boo! Am now on the ball again.

Yesterday we went to Fremantle for the day and mooched around, had drinks, moved on, had drinks, found food etc etc. The first place was a kind of warehouse on the harbour called Little Creatures, very interesting place. We sat outside on the deck for drinks and I discovered Pipsqueak cider.

This is definitely not a North American version of cider, nor really a hugely English one, the closest I could compare it to is Savannah dry which comes from South Africa. So light and crisp and fresh. And so welcomed on a roasting, sunny, blue skies afternoon with the sea breeze washing over you. Not being a huge alcohol drinker, I loved my cider and then moved on to my new favourite drink, Lemon, Lime and Bitters.

Another amazingly fresh, tart and crisp drink, I was in heaven. And not that it matters hugely, but what a beautiful colour no!? Here comes the warning - drinking this bottle version is amazing, however, if you order one in a restuarant where they will make it from scratch it will not be anywhere near the same as this! It was very sweet from the lemonade and almost orange from the Angustura bitters. I learnt rapidly that you need to order it SODA, lime and bitters if it is being made and you will have more luck with a tart, crisp drink. On the drink side, I was one happy birthday camper! With a hankering for seafood. Enter new post.