The Apollo, Potts Point

Living in Elizabeth Bay, The Apollo is one of the closest restaurants to my house, and it's a bloody good one. It's contemporary Greek and it's the best Greek restaurant I've ever been to in my life. The dishes are great for sharing - like Greek tapas.

This was my third visit to The Apollo, we went on a Saturday night and were lucky to get a table in the busy-every-time-I-walk-past restaurant. I went with Sarah and Mo, it was Mo's last night in Sydney before going travelling around SE Asia. 

As soon as we were seated a selection of olives along with a mini pizza box of warm pitta bread and a little glass pot of taramasalata appeared at our table. It was the best taramasalata I've ever had in my life. So smooth and creamy and lemony. The olives were big and juicy too. 

We started off the drinks with some cocktails. Mo and I went for the Pearsephone - a refreshing blend of Ketel One vodka, St Germain, elderflower, pear and coriander. I'm a big fan of herbs in cocktails and this one was no exception, the coriander made it delicious. Sarah had the Tears of Chios - Tanqueray gin, mastic, cucumber and lemon. Cheers!

I have 3 favourite dishes at The Apollo. The first is the fried king prawns. They're enormous. They're crispy. I once ate everything except the eyes, it was that good. 

The second is the saganaki cheese with honey and oregano. I tell everyone about it. Saganaki means the dish is prepared in a small frying pan, and that's how it arrived at the table, bubbling away in a bath of honey. 

My mouth is watering just looking at it. It's very hot so you have to wait for it to cool down. This is my least favourite part and I always burn my mouth on it because I'm impatient. After you've eaten the gooey, melty, honeyed cheesy deliciousness, you can mop up the honey sauce with some leftover pitta. This is probably the best cheese I've ever had in my life. 

I'll get onto my third favourite dish in a bit. *Spoiler alert* it's a dessert.

Next we tried some new dishes - grilled calamari with eggplant, olives, tomato and capers. The tomato sauce was rich and full of flavour. The calamari was perfectly cooked. I really enjoyed this one. 

We also tried the Apollo's homemade pork sausage with tomato relish. I liked this but didn't enjoy it as much as the other dishes. The relish was possibly a bit sharp.

We had a village salad with cucumber tomato, feta and olives to up the health factor. The tomatoes were the best part - beautiful, bright red with heaps of flavour. 

And finally on to my third favourite dish at The Apollo: Avgolemono pie. It's a deconstructed lemon meringue pie - a layer of beautifully smooth and tangy lemon custard, covered with crushed biscuit crumbs and finally topped with warm, fluffy, bite-sized, gooey meringues...

 One of the best thing's I've ever tasted. I say that a lot, but this really is (until the next thing).

The Apollo is one of my favourite restaurants in Sydney - one I return to again and again. Fantastic quality food, fair prices and a fun and friendly atmosphere. You should definitely try it. 

The Pie Tin

Australians have a bit of a thing for pie, and after today, I can see why. I went to The Pie Tin in Newtown with Abbey and Rob.

I've never been before but they go quite often and are always talking about how good it is. They weren't wrong. The second I walked in I was oohing and aaahing over the sweet pies - malteaser pie, marsbar pie, oreo pie, triple chocolate pie, the famous 'Pie that ate Newtown' apple pie... you get the picture.

Then I saw the savoury pie counter: beef and peppercorn, sausage and mash, chicken carbonara, slow roasted shredded pork with apple & bbq sauce... I chose the sweet roasted duck with maple syrup and seasonal vegetables. I sat down to eat it at the big communal table and it. was. delicious. Probably the best pie I've ever had.

All the pies are hand-made on site with fresh ingredients, which really improves the quality of the pie. The duck was sweet and succulent, and there was a good meat to sauce ratio. The pastry was perfect, crisp and golden. You can also order hot and cold sides, as well as some yummy-looking kumera (sweet potato) hot chips which I will definitely be trying next time.

Then it was time for dessert. We went for the Caramel and White Chocolate pie. A layer of caramel and a layer of white chocolate ganache on a biscuit base, drizzled with caramel sauce. I'm glad we shared it because it was delicious but very rich. We couldn't quite manage the last bite, we saved it for you, enjoy!

I loved The Pie Tin, great food and good value for money - I will definitely be going back next time I'm in Newtown.

Life without iPhone

My phone was stolen this evening at a bar in Darling Harbour. We went on a mad chase through Sydney CBD and into Chinatown to get it back but had no luck. I don't know why Apple hasn't added a feature where the cameras automatically turn on when you open Find My iPhone. Then you would know who had your phone and where they were. There's an app which does a similar thing but of course I hadn't got around to installing it yet. Just like I hadn't got around to getting my phone insured (Yes Dad, you told me so).

 I really hadn't realised how much I rely on it. The thing I'm most worried about is how I'm going to wake up in the morning. That was my alarm clock. I don't have another one. I'm considering building an elaborate Rube Goldberg style machine to wake me up in 8 hours.

I was in the middle of reading the third book of Game of Thrones on my Kindle app. I have no idea which page I was on. Is that info stored in the cloud? How many pictures did I take today? were they any good? When did I last back up my phone? How will I see anyone's Snapchats/instagrams/vines? You mean I actually have to log into a computer to go on Facebook and Twitter and every other social media? I have no idea what time the bus is coming. I'm going to be forever lost. I will never know the exact time. I'm going to have to always be on time, never late. No change of plans and no spontaneity. What's the weather doing tomorrow? What song is this? How did people live like this? How did I live like this?

Suddenly I'm on the other side of the world and can't contact my family in a millisecond. That makes me feel a lot further away. Tomorrow's going to be a #digitaldetox. I'll let you know how it goes. If I manage to wake up in time.

I was supposed to start this 6 months ago...

But it didn't happen. It's happening now. New year, new blog and all that.

I want to write about everything I've done in the last 6 months. It's going to take a while so I might save that for a rainy day, except there aren't many of those in Sydney. Today was a scorcher, so I hit the beach, obviously.

Hot-dogs or legs?

I went to Redleaf which has a tiny beach and the Murray Rose Pool (shark net). It's the closest beach to my apartment that you can swim at, and is only a short walk away. I went with my housemates, Mickey and Jed. We went swimming outside the shark net and didn't get eaten by any sharks, luckily. Jed did step on a sting-ray though. We didn't put our feet down after that.

Had a lovely evening to myself which I really felt I needed after the non-stop Christmas routine of beaching and drinking everyday. I cooked butternut squash risotto from my Honestly Healthy cookbook for dinner. It was delicious. For dessert I made chocolate peanut butter gelato, and treated myself to a refreshing glass of Lambloch Estate Flipside Semillon which I bought when I was in the Hunter Valley. Then Jed and I watched The Imposter - it was very weird.