El Loco, Surry Hills

Viva Los Tacos!

You can't really go wrong with a freshly made taco from El Loco, the newest member of the Merivale family serving up Mexican food on a street corner in Surry Hills. While it's attached to the Excelsior Hotel on Foveaux St, it's a stand-alone place in its own right, with tacos, sandwiches and plenty of tequila to go around.

Interior

The inside of the Mexican cantina is decked out in bright colours, pictures of cacti and sombreros as well as used jalapeno cans as pot plants. It's all things Mexican here, and while I can't vouch for the authenticity of the food having never been to Mexico myself, it's a far cry from the food-court nachos with fresh, crisp flavours and quite possibly the most delicious guacamole I've ever had.

El Loco Cocktails: Classic Margarita, Jalapeno Margarita and Pink Cuco - $13.50 each

We grab some drinks and snack on some corn chips with guacamole and salsa ($5 - which I conveniently forgot to take a photo of). You can't go wrong with a Classic Margarita, but if that's not your thing you can always go for the more adventurous Jalapeno Margarita (which wasn't actually that spicy) or the sweet Pink Cuco which comes in the form of a slushie. There is also an extensive selection of tequilas on offer with varying prices depending on the quality of the tequila.

Tacos: Al Pastor (Pork), Carne Asada (Lemongrass beef), Camaron (Prawn) and Pollo (Chicken) - $5 each

All you can eat @ Sushi Choo, Sydney

Inside Sushi Choo

Even though I've been to the Ivy a few times before, I've never noticed the brightly decorated Sushi Choo nestled behind the stairs with its red lanterns, Astroboy figurines and bonsai trees on the counter. Tonight we're indulging in the early bird $20 all you can eat offer and we arrive bright and early at 5.30pm when the restaurant opens to maximise our eating time.

Oh hai mr piggeh!

5.30pm is very early for me to be having dinner but I can't resist when we're seated and the sushi starts rolling out in front of us on the train. There's a fat green piggy sitting between the sushi train rails and it's as if he is giving us license to pig out on the all the sushi. Ok, we will!

Edamame (left) and Creamy pasta salad (right)

Being only $20, the variety is limited as expected but the sushi is fresh and tasty and you can see the sushi chefs working away behind the counter to keep the rails fully stocked. Aside from sushi there are also other foods circulating on the train, including edamame and a creamy pasta dish with vegetables and wholegrain mustard.

Salmon nigiri (left) and Tuna nigiri (right)

Omakase Dinner, March into Merivale 2011

A birthday celebration isn't complete without a drink - Chandon NV (complimentary drink on arrival)

It was Sir D's birthday 2 weeks ago, and to celebrate I decided to take him to one of the special dinners hosted by Merivale as part of the annual March into Merivale event. It was hard to decide which event to go to since so many of them sounded good but in the end I decided on the Omakase Dinner coordinated by the three Japanese chefs at Merivale - Nobuyuki Ura (sushi e), Akira Urata (Uccello) and Atsushi Saito (Sushi Choo).

Sakizuke - Tuna ravioli with nori seaweed sauce

The concept of omakase comes from Japan and leaves the chef to decide and select the dishes for your consumption rather than ordering from the a la carte menu. For someone who likes to check out the menu before visiting a restaurant, it involves a certain level of trust on the diner's part that the chef will be able to surprise and excite your palate. Tuna ravioli didn't sound particularly exciting but when it arrived on the table I was impressed by the use of thin slices of tuna sashimi as the casing for the ravioli and all the individual components of the dish which married well with each other. A creative and interesting start to the meal.

Zensai - Traditional tasting plate with grilled pacific oyster with cream miso sauce, persimmon and konnyaku with tofu paste and salmon roe, red miso lamb cutlets, ebi isoge age with green tea salt, miso cod

Food Bloggers' Dinner at Bistro CBD

What happens when you chuck four food bloggers into the kitchen of Bistro CBD to cook one course each for 70 guests? It turns out that you get a phenomenal success, as we all found out last night at the Food Bloggers' Dinner as part of Merivale's Feast for the Senses promotion.

We were served up five delicious courses, one from each of the bloggers and one from Bistro CBD's head chef Simun Dragicevich. When we arrived, Fouad, Billy, Karen and Linda were hard at work preparing their dishes in the kitchen, as they had been doing all day and the night before.

To start, we had some sparkling wine which was included in the $60pp price for the dinner, as well as some sourdough to munch on while we waited for dinner to be served. There was an awesome vibe on our table of bloggers since we were all here to support the guys in the kitchen, cheering them on when they came out after their dish was served.

Sashimi of kingfish, avocado, wasabi, lime and soft herbs by Simun Dragicevich, Bistro CBD

sushi e, Sydney (March Into Merivale)

There really is such thing as a free meal! Thanks to the Tweet to Eat competition as part of March Into Merivale, I was lucky enough to score a free voucher to eat at one of nine Merivale restaurants offering $33 lunches and dinners, which include a main meal and a glass of wine or beer.

Deciding which restaurant to go was probably the hardest part, even with the help of the $33 menus available for viewing on the website. We ended up at sushi e, located in the Establishment building of the Merivale empire, and were seated on stools at a marble bar surrounding the sushi chefs, which allowed us to watch head chef Nobuyuki Ura in action.

We started off with a steaming bowl of miso soup (included in the $33 menu), which was very welcome on this dreary, rainy evening. The broth was more bland than I'm used to, and in the soup was deep fried tofu, spring onions and mitsuba leaf.

March Into Merivale 2010 Launch Party

Yes, March Into Merivale is back! And it kicked off with a bang last week with the inaugural launch party held at The Ivy. I was lucky enough to be invited to a preview of the event before the doors opened to the public.

The Pool Club

We went up to the Pool Club for some drinks and were very well looked after by Renee and Debbie from Merivale, before we went downstairs to the Ivy Room to check out the chefs in action!

Nobuyuki Ura, head chef of sushi e, preparing sushi for the launch party

It was great to watch the Merivale chefs prepping their canapés and plating them up right in front of our eyes. Lucky for us we got to sample some of the canapés before the masses were let in.