What could be better than spending a beautiful weekend at The Rocks enjoying a delicious high tea with friends and family?

One of my favourite high tea places of all time is situated right in the heart of The Rocks just next to The Rocks Weekend Market which is pleasantly enjoyable to walk through and immerse yourself in all the wonderful exotic stores.

When walking past the row of shops parallel to the weekend markets, you will see an inconspicuous shop house The Irish Design Shop with a sign saying "Freshly Baked Scones", if you love scones, this is the perfect place for you to go to and have a delectable afternoon tea.

When you walk into the shophouse, you would immediately feel like you're walking into a homely and warm little cafe with little teapots lined up by the sides of the staircase. The front of the shophouse is a small Irish store that sells traditional Irish gifts, tea sets and celtic jewellery.

The Tea Cosy is all the way at the back of the shophouse where it is beautifully decorated with a very traditional Irish feel and lovely little accessories.


I absolutely love their decor! It makes me feel like I'm in a totally different place altogether! Don't you think?



The thing about The Tea Cosy is that it only sells scones and that's that! So it makes it so much easier to decide what to eat! They have a fairly wide choice of tea to choose from to pair it with the scones.

The great thing about The Tea Cosy is that they change the scones selection every month so you will never get bored with the selection! The last time I visited The Tea Cosy, the scones were Apple Strudel, Plain, Cheese and Onion, Date and Apricot.

The scones for the month of October are plain, spinach and feta, currants and white chocolate berry!

This is the tasting basket for 2, it has 4 scones, 2 jam selections. The tea comes seperately

I absolutely adore their scones! Their scones are piping hot and huge, it is very moist on the inside while slightly crumbly on the outside. The best thing about their scones is that it is baked fresh in the morning and afternoon so you won't have to worry about eating old and overnight scones! I love their teapots too! All of the teapots come with their own little tea cosy and every one is hand knitted and all different and its so cute!

The tasting basket for 2 which we ordered comes with 2 selections of jam, if I remembered it correctly, we ordered raspberry jam and triple berry jam which is my favourite jam from the teahouse! The clotted cream is really smooth, light and fluffy and we could not stop spreading generous portions of cream on our scones! I heard from the waitress there that they make their own jam and cream which makes the scones even more delectable.

You could also order a scone set instead of a tasting basket! The scones set comes with 2 scones, a jam and a clotted cream along with tea of your choice for only $9.50!

The outdoor area is really small but really pretty and simple, looking out of the window from the cafe makes my mood perk up immediately. It is really different from all the other cafes I have been to and I feel that you should defintely visit this place at least once!

My family absolutely loves their scones and on one occassion I wanted to take their scones away and the scones were priced at $1.50 per scone which is really much more affordable than I expected!

Delicious and fresh scones at such affordable prices and with such a homely and comfortable ambience, what more can you ask for?

FYI: The Tea Cosy is only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays while The Irish Design Shop is open on all days.

The shop has vibrant posters all around, they are absolutely gorgeous!

The Tea Cosy

Address:
33 George Street,
The Rocks, Sydney,
Australia 2000

Opening Hours:

Fri:	10:00 am	-	4:00 pm
Sat - Sun:	10:00 am	-	5:00 pm

Telephone: 02 92473233

Website: http://www.irishdesign.com.au/g/4145/the-tea-cosy---tea-room.html

Or you could visit their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Tea-Cosy/178079518915595


Hope you guys have a great weekend!

Bain taitneamh as do bhéil!

Foodling 3

Hello everyone!

The fourlittlefoodlings are back with another restaurant review! Today's review is about one of my favourite japanese restaurants in Sydney, Busshari Authentic Japanese Restaurant. Located along the main roads of Potts Point and about 5-10 minutes walk from Kings Cross train staion, it is not exceptionally hard to find.

When you enter the dimly lit restaurant, you are greeted warmly by the hospitable staff who are ever so nice and friendly. The restaurant is fairly small and the chef quitely slicing the sashimi and preparing sushi at the sushi bar.

The staff there were very helpful and the waiter still remembered us from 2 weeks ago which was rather impressive. Having been here before, we sort of knew what we wanted and wanted to try new items. Busshari has a daily special menu which was rather interesting and excellent if you are a frequent customer and want to try new and seasonal dishes.

The first item we ordered is a definte must try, the Seafood Sashimi and Seasonal Vegetable Salad. It has to be one of the best salads I've ever had and I'm not kidding! The vegetables in the salad are fresh and crisp and the sashimi slices in the salad are thick, succulent and fresh and with over 4 kinds of seafood in the salad. The salad dressing is the main lead in the salad which ties everything together, its refreshing, tangy and nutty, an excellent and mouth-watering dish to start the meal with!

Next up is the Chef's Sashimi Selection Plate which is highly recommended as well! The sashimi is so wonderfully fresh and thick and has to be one of the best and freshest sashimi selection I've had in a while. My friend commented that the chef's slicing skills is really good and clean too.

Spider Sushi Roll, was a wonderful dish. The soft shell crab was crispy and tasty, wrapped with avocado and cucumber and red tobiko on the outside. The combination made this dish suprisingly appetising and craving for more. The only down side of this dish was the rice which was overly sticky and soft and it fell apart as soon as you bite into the sushi.

Next is the Grilled Eggplant topped with Miso Paste. This dish has a very interesting concept, with one side of the eggplant topped with black miso paste and the other side with another type of miso paste, the "black and white" concept was appealing and appetising and was suprisingly delicious and the eggplant was juicy and the combination with the miso paste tied in really well. Both of the miso paste were different in taste and texture, thinking about it now makes me crave for more.

We also ordered Beef Tataki Salad, which is thinly sliced beef topped with grated daikon and spring onions. The beef was wonderfully made and it was made just nice. It was very light and refreshing and it went pleasantly well with the soy based dipping sauce that came with the dish.

This next dish was a daily special that day and because I loved scampi, it was something I just had to try! This is the Pan-fried Scampi topped with special mayonnaise made by the kitchen, the outer bowl which contained the scampi was like a cracker, very crunchy and tasty just that it was too oily for my liking, the scampi was pan-fried nicely however it lost the special texture and sweetness you get when eating raw scampi and so this dish was a miss for me.

After going through all those dishes above, my friends and I were still itching for some food so we decided to give the Rainbow Sushi Roll a shot, in the menu description, it was tuna, king fish, ocean trout, king prawn, cucumber and avocado so my friends and I were expecting a beautiful sushi roll and all kinds of different fish wrapped in rice so we were rather disappointed when this dish arrived. The taste was rather expected and it was nothing special, so this would be a miss for me as well.

And lastly to end our wonderful meal at Busshari, we had desserts!

We ordered a Dessert Platter where we got to pick any 3 desserts in the dessert menu and were in smaller proportions, something like a sample platter which for us we got the black sesame ice cream, roasted green tea ice cream and sesame tart. I have to say that I really enjoyed their dessert! Everything in the dessert platter was suprisingly lovely and was not overly sweet nor bland. Both the ice creams managed to retain their original flavour without it being too sweet and the sesame tart has to be my favourite in this platter, it was not too sweet and had a strong sesame taste to it which was something of my taste.

The three dishes above were full size desserts, the Roasted Green Tea Ice Cream and my favourite dessert of the night Mont Blanc aux Marrons which were all served with Warabi Mochi.
The Mont Blanc aux Marrons is chestnut puree with vanilla mousse where the outer layer of the tart is chestnut puree which was pleasantly sweet and a nice creamy texture with vanilla mousse in the middle of the tart which was light, airy and slightly bland just right to even out the sweetness from the chestnut puree with a crunchy tart at the bottom when put together makes a wonderful combination and just the thing to end the night beautifully.

Overall I really enjoyed my meal at Busshari, the winners for the night defintely had to be the Seafood Sashimi and Seasonal Vegetable Salad and the Chef''s Selection Sashimi Plate. I absolutely adored these two dishes and wished I could bring home these two dishes to savour at home. I wished I stayed near Busshari so I could have these two dishes everyday! It has to be one of the best japanese restaurants I've been to in a long time.
Price: $50-$70 per person

Busshari Authentic Japanese Restaurant
119 Macleay St Potts Point 2011 
Opening Hours: Mon-Sat 6pm-11pm

Tel: +61 02 9357 4555
Website: www.busshari.com.au
Reservations: reservations@busshari.com.au

Hope you guys like this restaurant review!
Have a great week ahead!

Foodling 3