My lovely lemon tree!

Last year my lemon plant gave me a single delicious lemon, so I was super excited and tentative when it made five lemons all in one go! I wasn't even sure that a plant in a pot could sustain so much fruit, but luckily I have both supermarket fertiliser and my special supply of pigeon-poop-water, lovingly provided by my pigeons, which I'm sure is the secret ingredient!

I've had to fight mealybugs the whole time, I think they've taken hold even though I don't see them very often - but when I do, they go squish! One of the lemons developed a defect in the super early stages of growth, so I knew to expect at least one imperfect lemon, but to be honest, it wasn't as bad as I thought! I only picked two for now, since they can stay on the tree for a bit.

I think this time they were more sour than last time? But still delicious! I love that I've gotten 6 lemons from my tree so far, I'm hoping this will be an annual thing, but I'm not the best with plants so we'll see!

Firepop

Firepop is very new; my friend mentioned it to me amongst other hip and cool restaurants in the Newtown/Enmore area, and this one appealed to me quite a bit - I love places that cook with fire, and the description of the place sounded right up my alley - chicken hearts! Chicken tails! Padron peppers!

Look at the fish bones drying for stock!

My friend and I went for the a la carte menu since I wanted the chicken bits that weren't included in the set menu, and it turns out that it's possible to try all the things on the menu (not the mains or salads unless you have a super big appetite). We went through the priority items first and then later went back to get the things we missed!

This was the lamb marrow and it was my first time eating lamb marrow, it was good!

They didn't have oysters that day, but instead had some really nice hapuka with really tasty watermelon radish!

This is a terrible picture of a really nice wagyu cube. It's not as dark as it looks, and the flavour was good and it was nice and tender! I actually think this would go really nicely with some wasabi rather than the garlic chips, but I'm not complaining!

Wagyu slices, which did come with wasabi! It was also soy marinated so it had a great flavour.

And here are the chicken tails! I love that fatty goodness, it's so bad but so good!

The chicken hearts were really delicious too, maybe one day I should think about possibly cooking with chicken hearts?

They actually had a grilled tofu option which was really interesting, had a slightly spicy sauce if I remember and was quite enjoyable. I had been complaining lately how a lot of cheaper, almost fast food places (and even not cheap fast food places!) often don't do tofu well - I have no idea how. It's so simple to make it tasty, and Firepop demonstrates this well!

Ahahaha the padron peppers, with a side of shishito peppers. I love chilli roulette, and there was a frozen long grape on the side if we got the spicy one. Because I have no spice tolerance though, it's hard to tell if I actually got a super spicy one. I think I can gauge whether or not something is spicier than normal for me; the final padron pepper was noticeably hotter than the previous one I ate, and the heat continued to build up well after I stopped eating more, so I imagine I might have hit the jackpot, and so I asked for an extra frozen grape. I should really freeze some grapes as edible sweet ice!

And here's where we went back to the top of the menu and ordered the things we skipped. Corn ribs with a mountain of cheese, one of their popular dishes, and with good reason! Very tasty corn!

The lamb was also very impressive, I actually don't eat enough lamb but whenever I order it, it's so good. I really think I should look into learning to cook more cuts of lamb too; I didn't cook lamb forequarter chops very well once (I had no idea how long to cook them for) and usually end up specialising in backstrap and cutlets, both of which are some of the most expensive cuts ever. Lamb ribs and lamb leg seem to be grisly? I have no idea why it'd be grisly? So shoulder is the only cut that I really enjoy slow cooking - it's so good! Maybe one day I need to find a cut that I can short cook well.

And the pork belly, a classic, tasty stick!

Okay, this panna cotta was actually amazing. The chef mentioned that they make everything from scratch, even the buttermilk, which is really cool! There was rhubarb and strawberry that cut through the panna cotta nicely, and also the drops of olive oil in there were really nice too! The panna cotta had a texture similar to the type of custard that Teeter Bakery in Perth makes, it's smooth, rich, very, very nice!

What a cute little restaurant that makes tasty food! It's so simple and we could try everything without feeling overly full (I managed to save enough stomach space to go a few doors down and try out some vegan salmon sushi lol - which was fun to eat!). Hopefully they'll do well!

Sydney 2024

Just a photo spam! Seagulls are forever bullies, and the new parts of Central Station are so pretty!

MONA - the proper visit!

Finally, a chance to redeem myself! When I realised I had the chance to come back to Hobart and revisit MONA, I was determined to do this properly this time! Look at mustardy MR-II, though I ended up going on the grey MR-I, just like last trip. I've tried not to double up too much on my previous content, and I had a lot of fun properly exploring the outside too!

I didn't manage to get the shot exactly in the middle lol.

I love the trip up the river, the factories are fascinating!

This is the first winery I've noticed that doesn't allow people in it - the humanoid exclusion zone signs are hilarious!

Oh wow, this is new. This is an exhibit that wasn't there last time - it's a person who starts composing at the beginning of the day and then at the end of the day, a string quartet comes in and sight reads it. I think that's a really great way of showing an aspect of how music is created, as well as the artistic process!

This is the exhibit that leads to Faro restaurant, one of the fancy restaurants within MONA. It's a bit of a trek to get to from inside the museum and you can't use your phone or camera once you're on the pathway - for the reason that you have to watch your step; if you veer off the path there's a little drop!

Ok Faro restaurant is not only artsy, it actually makes great food! This beetroot mocktail was great!

Oyster salad, which had chopped oysters instead of whole oysters. And look at those succulents! I'd forgotten just how long it's been since I had really tasty ice plant and sea blight!

More eating the problem, this venison was soo good that I didn't actually need the cafe de Mona butter or any other condiments, but I ate it all anyway because it was all delicious!

This lemon parfait was cute, have you ever seen a cube ice cream before? Haha. All the food was so good, I should have spent more time and tried one more item on the menu too!

I think White Library was actually here last time too, but somehow I'd missed it. I'm not entirely sure how considering it's opposite Kryptos, but maybe that's exactly why I missed it haha. I love the concept of so many white pages, that's both inspiring and daunting!

And of course my favourite Kryptos. This time the exhibit had more traffic than last time, so it was fun listening to others get jumpscared by the final chamber haha. I still love the mood of this one!

And no more ladies lounge :( I missed out by a week or two, I'm so sad!

I stayed around till 4PM since I sensibly booked the last boat of the day, and was rewarded by a lovely session of string quartet performance! It was like a free concert built into my ticket, so awesome!

There was also a fun exhibit called Confession, where there's a soundproof chamber in the shape of the inner ear, and it's also super dark. At the end you get to speak out loud and the sound goes to the outside of the museum where passers by can have a dialogue! Of course anyone who is above ground and doesn't know about the exhibit would be so confused! I think that's so cool!

Whoops I forgot to post a picture (though I did take many) of a really random exhibit where two goldfish are in a shallow bowl with a knife in it. It's super fascinating to think about because from a human perspective, we freak out that it's so dangerous for the fish to be in the bowl, that being next to a knife is such a scary experience. But the fish don't know what a knife is, and it probably can't cut them, so they live on blissfully. Isn't that so interesting?

I was much happier with this visit and installed the O App as well, so I did it right and enjoyed it so much more! Hooray for art!

Fico

I visited a bunch of restaurants and wine bars during my hobart visit, including a fantastic dinner at Sonny where I had a lovely conversation with two other solo diners, but Fico was the only one I had booked in advance since it seemed interesting. It was fantastic!

The best thing about going to a restaurant and seeing an oyster fork, but no oysters on the menu? It means oysters are on the menu! Most of the oysters in restaurants these days are from Boomer Bay, whereas last time it was all from Flirty Bay, how interesting! Tassie oysters are so delicious!

Carrot gazpacho - it was so creamy but apparently doesn't have any cream in it! Was it really all made from carrots? Because that's incredible!

This funny looking plate was a super tasty fig leaf oil, balsamic vinegar and sea salt dip for some tasty bread! How is it that this tasted so good? That balsamic vinegar was fantastic!

My favourite dish of the night flavour and texture wise, tuna and heirloom tomatoes with horseradish cream and dashi. That tuna was amazing, and apparently there was a tomatillo in the tomato mix too! The horseradish cream was quite potent, not too bad though! Some nose fuzziness but not enough to disrupt my enjoyment of the dish.

Fico has European influences and a baby sister pasta bar, so it's no surprise there's pasta on the menu - tagliolini with calamari. I think my opinion that Lulu La Delizia makes the best pasta hasn't changed, but this was quite nice!

Haha ok this dish was awesome. It's listed as flathead royale, but they've made it so it looks like a creme caramel! The texture and flavour were so good, this was my other favourite dish! The texture of the flathead mousse was like that of a steamed egg tart or silken tofu - nice, soft and creamy, and the soy based sauce went so well with it!

Of course I said yes to adding 5g of truffle for $20 onto the duck agnolotti! I am so illiterate when it comes to Italian food that I was expecting duck on the outside rather than duck on the inside of a pasta!

Yes, venison time! Venison backstrap, venison mince en croute, and some beetroot and olive garnishes. Venison is a pest here so it's always great to see it on the menu. That pastry was done really well!

This funky looking dessert was mandarin sorbet, milk gelato, and sabayon. They even poured the sabayon tableside so it slowly blobbed downwards. When I tasted it, all elements together tasted better than each individual part, and it looks like I'm on the same page as the staff, because that's what the waiter said too! I love food that tastes different as a whole compared to the individual parts!

Lastly, a cute little choux! Filled with praline and grand marnier, what a great way to finish dinner!

Overall this was a very nice place, I'm so glad I booked it! The service was so professional, I hadn't fine dined in so long that it was super refreshing! Oh yeah, the drinks - I had two drinks, a cold pressed sour cherry juice which was lovely and tart, and then also a very fragrant raspberry kombucha. Oh, the decor is excellent too, including a hacksaw on one of the walls haha!

Since I probably won't be making posts about the other places I ate at, I wanted to mention here that Hobart has some great non alcoholic options, even at the wine bars! It's so great to see, it means I don't feel out of place regardless of what kind of eatery I'm at!