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Food Adventures in Chatswood

If you live anywhere near Chatswood in the lower north shore of Sydney, you may have seen or heard about the recent surge of renowned retail and food outlets popping up in the increasingly busy neighbourhood. From the oh so kawaii Hello Kitty Diner to the Michelin star restaurant Tim Ho Wan, and from novelty ramen burgers to delightfully spicy Sichuan noodles, there is no shortage of delicious cuisine from around the world to awaken all your senses. With lots of new food to try and time to kill, my friend and I (sorry Annette! Next time.) decided to go cafe hopping to try some of the somewhat less promoted (but still very popular) places. Withour further ado, here is how the day went down.



Our day begun in a dainty little cafe called Burnt Orange situated in the middle of Chatswood Chase. Although it's right in the middle of the shopping centre, the ambiance is nice and relaxing. The tables are covered by a green canopy which gives the cafe a nice, peaceful touch to it. The menu looked absolutely amazing and every dish stood out to us, but ultimately we decided on the Alaskan Crab Benedict on brioche, pictured above. It tasted every bit as amazing as it looks. The brioche was super soft and toasted perfectly to give a nice crunch and the Alaskan crab tasted fresh and real but the real winner was the hollandaise sauce which matched the crab and brioche to a tee and was bursting with flavour. I also ordered a summer goddess smoothie (containing banana, passionfruit, orange, yogurt and honey) whilst my friend ordered an Elderflower presse juice. Both were refreshing and suitable for summer but nothing too special. Overall, we both thoroughly enjoyed the food at Burnt Orange even though it was slightly pricy. Tip: don't go on Sunday like us as there's a 10% surcharge.



After that "entree," we moved onto The Elbow Room Espresso, located right outside the Westfield exit on Spring St. It had a nice, almost rustic feel to it but boy were we dying in the non-air conditioned 35 degree weather. We came in here with only one goal in mind, to try the Green Tea French Toast. But we also ended up getting the Grilled Octopus Salad as well.



First up, the Green Tea French Toast. We loved it. I mean what is there not to love? There's green tea, ice cream, mochi, pistachios, pear, banana and French Toast! Only the best combination of ingredients since French fries and soft serve! I'm joking but in all honesty, the flavours all balanced well together, it wasn't overly sweet and the cold ice cream balanced out the warm French Toast. Not to mention the green tea mochi was the softest mochi I've ever eaten! Would definitely recommend. The Grilled Octopus Salad was also decent. I didn't enjoy it as much as the French Toast but can we even compare sweet with savoury dishes anyway? The Octopus was my favourite part, salty and satisfyingly chewy, but the rest of the salad, consisting of couscous, rocket, mint, almonds and sundried tomatoes wasn't too bad either.



By this point, my friend and I were already stuffed and we seriously considered giving up for the day but alas we dived deep and found it in ourselves to shove one more dessert in. So that is how we rounded out our day at Passion Tree Cafe at the District food court above Chatswood Interchange. This cafe specialises in exotic sounding, Asian inspired desserts, one of which is the Red Bean Bingsoo that we tried. Bingsoo is a popular Korean dessert that we've been dying to try for the longest time so we were super excited for this. I'm happy to say that it didn't disappoint! It wasn't too sweet (although it did get sweeter towards the end when all the ice was gone) and there was such a variety of textures from the crunchy cornflakes to the soft, chewy mochi. Perfect dessert to end the hot summer's day.

And that is the end of our food adventure folks! There's SO much more food In Chatswood that we've yet to try - and would've loved to - had we not been struggling with the limitations of our stomachs. Here's to hoping there's a sequel in the future :3

The Red Centre, Australia

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Sunset