SugarHit 2012 - Annual multiple sugar injection

My October 2012 was spectacular. KT our DDT CEO got hitched with a BANG, celebrating in style over about 10 days (!!!) - We enjoyed a happy emotional civil ceremony with General San Martin and his beloved in Buenos Aires, followed by a Gaucho party on a ranch, and continuous food and wine at Mendoza for a group honeymoon. And then coming back to Sydney for SugarHit. It just couldn't get better than that.

Reporting quickly before I get onto the Sugarhit - dessert scene in Argentina involves a few standard items - Dulce de leche, flan, ice cream. And they will put dulce de leche on everything - flan and ice cream, for example. Best entertainment was the whisky flambeed crepe filled with dulce de leche and doused in caramelised sugar - classic Argentinian indulgence, that.

OK back to the actual stuff I'm meant to report on. In fact, when planning for the SugarHit, I had trouble selecting even 4 out of the list. Previous years I had trouble culling down to 4 outings. This year, more than half of the offerings involved some sort of lacklustre chocolate cake/mousse, to start with. Don't get me wrong, a good chocolate dessert can be proposal-worthy (just ask KT to make her infamous proposal cake), and I understand it is difficult to describe chocolate cake and convince me of its worth. But seriously - have the pastry chefs of Sydney simply run out of ideas for dessert? Surely not I hope??!!

Aaanyway, we were meant to have walnut semolina tart with honey oranges and yogurt sorbet (probably the most interesting out of my SugarHit list) at Harbour Rocks Hotel, but due to various factors (including me having to juggle catching up with people and flying out in less than 48 hrs time etc) we didn't end up going there. What a shame.

Then we had a somewhat unexciting chocolate truffle bombe with mixed berry zabaglione and passionfruit coulis. It's not a bad dessert, but not divine (GOD I'm a food snob). Decadent chocolate truffle wrapped in chocolate "gift box" was, well, chocolatey. The 'zabaglione' was in fact just some bland custard mixed with berries. Technically zabaglione IS a custard. But, what zabaglione should be, is a custard made fresh (sometimes consumed still warm) from egg yolks, sugar and liquor, whipped by hand on a simmering water bath, until it is fluffy and doubled in volume, so it is silky and light in texture. The Radisson 'zabaglione' was just an ordinary custard, if you ask me.

I'm a food snob upset by this dessert, so I really looked forward to the next one - the blackforest with cherry brulee, kirsch vanilla mousse and cherry sorbet. Sounds both interesting and decadent... so I make a booking the day before, arrive at Wildfire on time, got seated and THEN told that "so sorry, we ran out of the SugarHit black forest cake, but we have replaced it with a mandarin parfait and it also comes with a glass of Cienna". What, you could not have told me when I made the booking, or could not have called me on the day to tell me that? Surely it would be clear I came here for your specific SugarHit offering and not just what's on your menu!!

We decided on trying the replacement mandarin parfait (with chocolate and almond crunch, milk chocolate ice cream, mandarin syrup), which was prettily presented but lacking somewhat in flavour. Maybe it wanted to be subtle, but when its a fruit like mandarin which was very subtle to start with, you need to add a little oomph to make it work.

Not keen on an uninteresting dessert, I opted for a Banoffe pie of banana mousse, salted caramel, dark chocolate sable. The banana mousse was very fluffy and airy, slightly nutty, but again lacking in flavour (it could be more banana'y). Mousse was encased in a sugar banana shell - kinda cute for the presentation. The ice cream on top of the chocolate sable and salted caramel was not too exciting (lacking in flavour). In fact the whole dessert was somewhat bland if it weren't for the chocolate sable and the presentation.

Now here's my rant.

Immediately after our order, the bill came. The lady explained to us that it's not to rush us, but just so when we're ready we don't have to wait further. Then we waited a good half hour for our dessert. Another waitress then appeared very keen to kick us out - came to us twice to see if we've paid (while obviously we only just got our dessert), and came a second time wanting to clear the table when I still have about half a banana on the plate and half a glass of wine in front of me.

Slow to serve, but quick to extract money and kick us out. NIIICE.

The outcome is that I will not come back to or recommend Wildfire. While Radisson offered an uninteresting dessert, their service was great. The impression from Wildfire staff was that of cold politeness. They made us feel like we were keeping them from going home.

Unfortunately I must say this months foodie highlight was in Argentina, not in Sydney. Go figure. Oh well, guess I will have to make amends at the annual end of year Homebake then?

CS

Full moon rising behind the Opera House!