Crave - October 2011

This week has been a shocker for me in terms of blogging...but I have an excuse! I was in Melbourne for the whole week for work and was unfortunately too busy to contemplate checking emails let alone blogging! Plus I was without my Macbook as well boo :(

Anyway October is already halfway through and it is so remiss of me to not have even posted about Crave Sydney Food Festival! It's the best foodie month of the year in Sydney (well, supposedly) though I've found it increasingly commercialised year after year so have found myself attending less things - it was much better when it was still called Good Food Month. Plus with October nearing Christmas and the silly season, things just get all too hectic.

Being someone with a sweet tooth though, the things I always try and do, if anything, is Sugar Hit  and High Tea. So far I've managed to do one of each - though for High Tea we ended up just doing the normal menu.

For Sugar Hit we tried out Glass at Hilton, a perennial favourite. You can't beat the convenient city location and the glass surroundings. We didn't have a booking, but by knowing a bit of a trick and getting in early we found ourselves easily being served at 9pm on the first Friday night of the festival (traditionally one of the harder days to get a table too!).

I had the Sugar Hit special, though some of my dining companions had some normal menu items which actually looked amazing too.

Sugar Hit Special - Chocolate Bavarois with a tasty caramel sorbet

Toffee souffle with pecan butter ice cream

Fruity bombe alaska

I tried a scoop of the bombe alaska and it was really quite good - the meringue layer was paper thin and besides the slightly fake tasting lychee juice that seemed to be floating around, it was a well balanced dessert.

I quite liked my bavarois but it was a bit too...rich and nutty for my liking. I'm one for rich desserts but I think it was a bit too strong for my palate that night as I was expecting a lighter bavarois (perhaps I've been too used to fruity bavarois).

And onto High Tea - we went to Sheraton on the Park for their buffet High Tea. Sheraton, though quite old,  has for some reason always been amongst my favourite hotels in Sydney. Something about the stateliness of it, I think. Anyway they have a very good deal on buffet High Tea - for $40 you can select from a just expansive enough selection of cakes, savoury items and sweet treats without the time limit that comes with a lot of the other High Tea buffets. I recall visits to Swissotel's 2 hour High Tea buffet with friends which has a bountiful selection of amazing cakes, but with the time limit in place you don't really feel very lady like scoffing your afternoon tea and waiting in line with other hungry diners to hoard your plate with goodies so that you don't 'miss out' on the best items.

Apologies for the dodgy photo!

Anyway, I digress. Sheraton's high tea is served in their front lobby tea room and it was quite fabulous being able to sit there and spend our time luxuriously going back and forth between the buffet selecting the items we liked the best. Though they may not have a wide selection, their bagels (see photo above!) were filling and good quality, so we weren't complaining.

These were some of the other sweet treats. They also had the obligatory scones, a small selection of fruit, and something a little bit different - a whole selection of lollies! Oreos, jaffas, gummy bears were placed in bowls and jars along side the hand made chocolates which I unfortunately was too full to try.

Has anyone been to any other good Crave events?