As Sunday is wrapping up here, I thought I'd post about our Easter (as everyone back home in the U.S. is just waking up to theirs). We'd run ourselves down to emergency status on groceries again, as we ran across a Singaporean/Malaysian restaurant yesterday after going to Parramatta to order our weddings rings and decided that eating there would be more fun than grocery shopping. A quick inventory this morning yielded 1 banana, 2 chocolate mint cookies, 2 (somewhat questionable) eggs, a few pieces of stale bread and some butter. I played it safe with the banana and Pickle made himself eggs and toast for breakfast (he survived), but as we prepared to leave for a grocery run, it dawned on us that the grocery may not be open on Easter day. Sure enough, it wasn't, and as we readied ourselves for battle over the mint cookies, I decided to take a shot in the dark and check the Facebook page of a new local place that had caught my eye this past week. As it turns out, they were open AND having a fantastic little Easter Fair AND, incidentally, were busting up the largest chocolate Easter egg in all of Australia today just 15 minutes from where we live...an Easter miracle! So we made peace and headed to The Grounds of Alexandria.
The Grounds turned out to be a very cool place - it has a very industrial-meets-crunchy sort of vibe (if that's a thing). They have regular market stalls, fresh produce, a beautiful flower shop, garden, artisan bakery, a restaurant and bar called The Potting Shed, and café where they have hands-down THE most amazing coffee I have ever consumed.
They also have farm animals (including a particularly hairy pig named Kevin Bacon) and a macaw.
We put in our names for a table (the wait happened to be 1.5 hours, which was ok with us since there was so much to see) and headed over to see the largest chocolate Easter egg in Australia. At 2pm, Bugs Bunny came out and cracked it open with a sledge hammer and an axe and giant chunks of the enormous confection were distributed among the crowd. Yay Easter!
After the chocolate massacre, we wandered around the market stalls a bit and purchased some local raw brush honey with macadamia nuts in it...yummo!
When our pager finally went off, Pickle jumped and yelled at me as if we'd won the lottery and made a B-line for the hostess. We were pretty pumped to eat, and holy moly was it worth the wait! We had a deconstructed mocha that was not only novel and fun to prepare, but was definitely the most delicious coffee product I think I've ever had (admittedly, I don't think the 1/4 cup of melted chocolate hurt, but the espresso itself was really good too!). It came with a mug with melted chocolate in it, additional milk chocolate pieces, a shot of espresso, warm milk with foam, and cocoa powder. We split the fresh fig salad with gorgonzola, asparagus, crispy pancetta, frissee, honey crumble & apple balsamic vinegar, a sandwich of grass fed minute steak marinated in soft herbs and lemon, grilled & served with wild rocket, herb mascarpone cheese, marinated capsicum, onion jam in a crunchy house baked black olive ciabatta, and a mixed fruit tart and chocolate brownie for dessert. Unfortunately, the dessert was pretty sub-par, so we'll definitely just stick to the coffee-based goodies next time (we ordered affogatto, but they were out of their house made tiramisu ice cream), but the main dishes were deeeeeelish!
I'm so glad we found this great spot. We'll definitely be back for more rustic food, local products, amazing coffee and laid-back atmosphere!
Wishing everyone who celebrates a Happy Passover and Easter!