City Pocha
71-73 Goulburn St
Sydney, NSW 2000
$$$$-

About 14 of us got together for dinner at City Pocha, a Korean BBQ joint in Chinatown. It has a fun, lively, cosy atmosphere and half the restaurant is on the balcony since you stick to high-heavens after all that smokey BBQ-ing. The waiters are all Korean, so much so that they didn’t speak much English and it was pretty tough whenever we wanted to communicate with them! The service was prompt and polite though, and they were quick to oblige. One suggestion would be for the waiters to be a bit savvier so they can recommend dishes and alert if we’ve ordered too much/little. The reason I say this is because we OVER-ORDERED LIKE CRAAAAAZY! We had a moment of insanity and ordered up a storm, so much so that they couldn’t fit all the food on the table *lol*

The whole point of the place is to BBQ your food.. and it’s actually quite easy to, you can’t really cook it wrongly/badly. The cuts of meat are terrific so everything was tasty and tender so we didn’t need any dipping sauce. Plus it was lots of fun to BBQ the food. Only thing I would change is that next time, I’d order HALF what we did, and we’d still have been well-fed. Got a little woozy and headache-y from all that food, in particular, the sheer amount of meat. Meat, meat, meat everywhere!! Madness 😛

City Pocha Korean BBQ

The entrance

Menu

Peeps

Whacha lookin’ at

Appetizers. The one on the left was deadly spicy!

Random salad

Cheese omelette. OMG… so good…

Popping the burners in for our BBQ

Bulgogi stew

Bulgogi stew after it’s cooked for 10mins – this was the best dish IMHO!

Platter of beef spare ribs, marinated ribeye, scotch fillet, tenderloin and marinated spare ribs (AU$90)

Pork platter (AU$35)

*sizzle*

Oops! We caught fire!

Spicy chicken wings (AU$30) – so spicy we had to return it to the kitchen to “wash the spice off”

Table sagging with food

Greedy people 😀

So typically Asian!

Passion Flower Cafe
Level 1, Darling Walk
Sydney, NSW 2000

Located in Capitol Square, Passion Flower was just down the road from dinner.. so I had the bright idea to swing by afterwards for dessert. Passion Flower boasts ‘unusual’ ice cream flavours like Sticky Rice, Taro, Black Sesame, Lychee & Rosepetal, etc.. similar to those ice cream joints in Singapore. I have to say though, Passion Flower falls WAY WAY short of those other places. The ice cream flavours were interesting but unfortunately did not pack a punch – they did not taste very strong and weren’t very creamy/luscious. Just standard, nice ice cream, really.

Service was also poor. Whilst civil enough, many at the table complained because we “weren’t allowed” to add an extra table (since we had so many people).. then some were told they couldn’t place their bags on an empty chair, etc, etc. And when I asked for some taste-samples at the counter, I was given a miniscule amount such that I couldn’t even taste the damn thing 😉

Also, very very pricey. I had the Waffle with Maple & Walnut ice cream and it was $9.80! The waffle didn’t taste that great either.. Each scoop individually costs about $4 I believe, quite a rip-off as the ice cream is not very good. It was fun to go with everyone so we could sit and have a chat, but I doubt I would ever go back if they don’t change..

Passion Flower Cafe

Menu

Mmm.. decisions, decisions

Sticky Rice, Taro, Green tea ice cream

Lychee & Rosepetal, Maple & walnut, Sticky Rice ice cream

Waffle with Maple & Walnut ice cream