Finding our wedding favours. Sydney macarons!

When I visit Darling harbour in Sydney and feel like having sweet things I go to Lindt chocolate cafe and buy those little macarons. They are one of the nicest macarons you can find in Sydney! I tried few famous places like Adriano Zumbo, Baroque Bistro, Blackstar pastry and others, but Lindt chocolate cafe is easy to find and taste great as other famous shop's macarons. :)

 

2 champagne 1 strawberry 1 salted caramel from Lindt chocolate cafe

their cute box

I got to taste macarons from different places because we were planning to use macaron for our wedding favours. It was lot of fun to go those pastry shops and restaurants in the name of wedding preparations.

Adriana Zumbo had lots of varieties, their salted caramel was my favorite salted caramel among others. It had very nice texture, the size was small to medium and the price was actually slightly lower than other shops.

Adriano Zumbo's salted caramel

Baroque bistro's macaron looked very fancy with the pearly color decorations, and the taste was nice and very sweet. size was small to medium and the price was average.

Baroque Bistro's macarons

And blackstar pastry's macaron was unique, for example like chai tea tasted macaron, but unfortunately I forgot to take photos of them. they were very big and more crispy than others.

Lindt chocolate cafe's macaron was my favorite macarons so I almost decided to go with them. There champagne macaron has very delicate sweet flavour and the color is just perfect with wedding!! their macarons are bigger than others but slightly more expensive. I personally loved their packaging with ribbon on it.

 

Lindt's macaron packaging. Right side is for more than 5

Me and my husband really enjoyed the process of searching our favorite macarons and all the macarons we tasted were nice. But we decided to go with Adriano Zumbo because we just liked the taste and the pricing was better for the large orders. And we liked their wrapping of the macarons as well.

 

 

Our weddding favour box

 

We got the following tastes randomly mixed so that each guest would have 2 macarons. Hope that if anybody's preparing wedding and considering macaron as their flavour this would help!

·         Coffee Crème Brulee

·         Fig and Burnt Honey

·         Salted Butter Popcorn

·         Chocolate Pop

·         Liqourice

·         Lemon and Olive Oil

·         Rice Pudding

·         Butterscotch Caramel

·         Raspberry Shortbread

·         Mandarin

·         Pear and Vanilla

·         Passionfruit

·         Blackcurrant

 

Public Dining Room- Balmoral

Few weeks ago, I went to this restaurant in Balmoral with my friends. I really liked the foods there and we used our entertainment book voucher so it wasn't too bad priced as well.

It seems like they hold weddings and functions as well so if you are looking for nice beach side function, they could be considered as one option. (although I don't know the function pricings though...)

Anyway this was my dish

' Strozzapreti, king prawns, NZ clams, chilli, zucchini flowers, sardinian bottarga'

(Thanks for the photo from my friend S!!)

Bottarga tasted really nice and gave some saltiness to fresh pasta, and I loved the delicate zucchini flowers. Also prawn and clam was cooked to perfection, very soft. yum.

My friend orderd

'Thirlmere confit duck leg, smoked duck breast, lentils dupuy, young garlic, red wine & eschallot vinaigrette'

It was nice, crispy outside and soft inside. The presentation was lovely.

One of my other friend ordered '‘Melting’ Huon valley tasmanian salmon (sous vide), rockefeller sauce, pomme allumette', which was very very soft because of sous vide technic. But not everyone liked that soft texture of salmon. I personally liked it.

Other than foods, big advatage of this restaurant is of courst great view of the beach and spacious interior.

I really liked the restaurant overall, and planning to visit with my husband on some special day.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

(This posting contains the rough story of the movie, so if you didn't watch the movie and planning to watch it later, maybe you would want to read this later!)

 Today I was just watching TV with my husband and found out that A.I. the movie was the next program. It is one of my favorite movie, so my husband decided to watch it for the first time and I got to watch it again.
 Since I was a very little kid, I loved every single Steven Spielberg's animations like ' The land before time' or movies like ' E.T.'. It's just there's something about his movies makes you dream and sigh and cry. ( I am not that emotional when I watch other movies though.) And I just love the fantasy world he creates.

<The official poster of the movie A.I.>

Anyway, like the name of this movie it's about a child robot named "David" designed to love the owner(in this movie, a mother who lost her real child). Story evolves as David is thrown away from it's human mother who he loves so much. After being alone, he meets another robot "Gigolo Joe". Joe help David to find a Blue fairy who David believes will make him a real boy so that he can get his mother's love back.

 

<The robot boy 'Dave' with male-prostitue "Gigolo Joe">

The robot boy couldn't be a real boy in the end but the director gives him a warm present for this poor little boy.
I was reading some critic's review and some people thought that the ending of this movie was excessive and unnecessary, but I believe that it's actually the ending of the movie which made the movie trully moving and therapeutic. And that's I think who Steven Spielberg is.

I also loved the kid, Haley Joel Osment's brilliant acting also Jude Law's comical but moving acting. Oh and the little teddy bear as well. (Looks similar to my 25 years old brown teddy bear. :)

My husband loved the movie, and even if it was the third time I was watching it I never got bored and gave me different inspirations every single time.