For Part 2 of my birthday celebrations (following on from Part 1 at the Breakfast Buffet at The Glass Brasserie) I went to Orto Trading Co. ("Orto") in Surry Hills with my friends!
The reason I chose Orto was because one day, me, my sister and a couple of our friends ate at Al Aseel in Surry Hills (yum!) and were walking back to our friend's car which was parked somewhere in Surry Hills and we happened to walk past this random strip of 3 small restaurants in one of the little side streets in Surry! They were PACKED and looked super cool so I made a mental note to try these restaurants out.
But alas.....I had forgotten the names of the restaurants....
So I literally went on Google Maps and tried to figure out what street it was and then used Google like crazy to find out the names of the restaurants :) And I found them! They were on Waterloo St, Surry Hills.
And one of the happened to be Orto :)
The entrance to Orto is wonderfully decorated with plants and candles. Apparently "Orto" means "vegetable garden" in Italian - I have to say it was very aptly decorated to suit its name!
You can see that the inside dining area is quite small...it looked like it would seat about 30 people inside. They also had an external courtyard / marquee area with heaters which looked like it would seat about 30-40 people!
They also had a really cute bar area with hanging bottles with flowers in them :D So cosy!!
Even the table setting was simple, yet super cute with candles and a jar of dandelions!
So we (by we I mean 5 people) decided to order a number of dishes to share. First up was the Broccoli & Cashew soup ($4).
We ordered two of these to share and boy, were they cute!!! They came in the cutest little cups and were super delicious, especially because it was quite cold that night!
We also ordered some Sourdough bread rolls ($3 for one roll) to go with the soup. They were freshly baked and went really well with the soup. One of my friends thought it "would have been nicer if they gave us some balsamic vinegar as well" :)
Then our main dishes arrived. It might have been because we were really hungry but it felt like a lifetime between the entrees and the mains...but I guess to get everything cooked to perfection (esp big pieces of meat) it would take some time..
Here are the mains that were shared:
Crispy pork hock with poached pear, carrot puree & glazed brussel sprouts ($55 for two people)
I really liked this dish - it was very crispy and the meat went so well with the pear and carrot purée! But the highlight had to be the glazed brussel sprouts. I was never a big fan of brussel sprouts until I tasted these! They were just little balls of yummy goodness - my friend was even like "I could eat these all day" :)
Braised Cape Grim beef short rib with Yorkshire pudding, colcannon mash and cider jus ($38)
Ooh the meat just fell off the bone so easily and was so tender! And the mash was super yummy as well.
Duck two ways - roulade and confit glazed in quince syrup with fig, walnut and raddiccio salad ($38)
I have to say this looks and sounds better than it tasted :( it was quite nice, but just the taste didn't live up to how delicious it looked... And I'm not really into figs, walnuts and raddiccio :P but definitely a tasty dish nonetheless. Check out the rest of the menus at www.ortotradingco.com.au!
We ended up paying around $30 per person (we didn't have any drinks) and overall it was a very lovely dinner. They had a nice drinks and dessert menu as well but we decided to head to Gelato Messina in Darlinghurst for our sugar fix because I just love the salted caramel & white chocolate gelato there!!
Will I come back to Orto? Definitely. I heard the brunch here was even more amazing :)
D xx
No comments:
Post a Comment