melbourning

Last weekend was our melbourne trip. The boy and I had a great time exploring the city. I'd never been before, and he had but hadn't stayed in the city so it was an adventure for both of us. I love the weather down there, cool breezes and no blinding hot sun. The city itself is gorgeous, much like brisbane but bigger and with an old world sort of charm that brisbane just doesn't have.

We did all sorts of stuff whilst down there. The first thing we did was head straight to the shops so I could buy a couple of extra jackets, lol. Alas, one of the jackets I bought ended up with a rip in it (not sure how that happened!) and some of the gorgeous stockings I got from myer also have two holes in them already, haha. I was terrified of looking at my bank account balances after all the money I spent. Never mind, but must save for our europe trip!

Ankonick took me out to dinner on the Saturday to the most gorgeous, largest meal I've ever had in my life. We went to Ezard and had the 8-course meal with matching wines for each course... oh my god, so much food and each dish was absolutely divine. We had breads and herb/spice mixes with balsamic vinegar infused with parmesan when we first arrived, and then had our starter of oyster shots with sake and wasabi, and a sweet corn asian soup shot with a glass of champagne. With each course the waiters would explain the origin of the wine and the ingredients of the dish. The waiters were very professional but not pretentious, which was good as I managed to spill sake all down my dress whilst trying to eat the oyster shot, haha. Our second dish was kingfish sashimi with sesame custard, lime caramel and pear salad (ok, i'm just going to copy the description from the menu, lol. We had the degustation menu on the website however ours was slightly different). That was awesome, very good indeed. They served that with a nice white wine. Next was steamed prawn dumpling with cauliflower cream, curry oil, celery cress with yarra valley salmon roe... this was also awesome, and the cauliflower soup around the dumpling was very good. I can't for the life of me remember which drinks came in which order after this dish, haha. Next we had salmon with asian gazpacho, tempura avocado, fennel salad and creme fraiche- this was one of Nick's favourites. Each of these dishes were amazing. By this stage I was starting to get full (between the wine and the dishes) and we weren't even half way there, lol. We moved on to one of my favourites, rice crusted kurobuta pork cheek with spiced apples, yellow bean soy, tamarind and peanuts... this dish was absolutely amazing. I think they might have served us a glass of red with this, or possibly an italian dessert white as the dish was a little spicy. We then were served a wagyu dish, but neither nick nor I can remember what sort of a dish this was, haha. Our main (not that we could fit it!) was then brought out, which was a gorgeous sichuan peppered duck with coconut rice, stir fried witlof, blood plum and ginger dressing. This dish was absolutely goddamn amazing- the best duck dish I've ever tasted (/perhaps the best dish I've ever tasted full stop). Just fabulous. After this we had dessert, not that we could really eat it, which was bitter sweet dark chocolate torte with mandarin sorbet. This was served with an '97 vintage red dessert wine which was absolutely amazing. I won't tell you how much this cost, but let's just say that the boy had to pay $100 just to secure our table with food on top of that. Seems rather wasteful but the food was absolutely devine. I don't think I'll ever eat so well again, lol.

So anyway, we were absolutely ridiculously full and nothing will ever taste as amazing as those dishes did!

On the sunday we headed to the Melbourne aquarium. Such a kid thing to do but oh so much fun- we even went in the dodgy little glass bottom boat around the shark tank, though I must say this was somewhat scary given that the boat was just a tin thing and the sharks are rather big and very close, lol.

Alas we had to leave on the sunday night. We survived our tiger flights, btw, despite the fact that their arrival area in melbourne very closely resembles (/is exactly the same as) a cage at the zoo, except minus some walls and add some extra wire and a conveyor belt. Suffice to say, Qantas flights booked for Melbourne in July, haha.