Wine Library – borrower’s paradise

                              This place hits the bullseye in Woollahra. Only a place of this quality can make it in an otherwise desolate Oxford St. Great food (better than it’s parent “buzo” around the corner) and excellent wines, in an atmosphere pioneered in Oz at Zigolini’s in the 80’s….http://www.eatability.com.au/au/sydney/wine-library/

O Organic – “would you like love with that?”

          I know what you’re thinking…an egg and bacon burger at an organic cafe? This place is a real find. Yes, they have the gluten-free tofutti mung-bean pastie, but they have a huge range of real food breakfast and full lunch dishes, all day…plenty for carnivores and those other people too..and spectacularly friendly service http://www.organicproduce.com.au/cafe.html

Gnome cafe, Surry Hills – counter-intuitively happy

 Camel’s love gnomes…we barely know they’re there. This place is similarly low-key. But the coffee and right-on-the-money meals bely its size. Probably the best of its type in Surry Hills, which has more opportunities than 12yo Rhodes Scholar. http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/70/1559146/restaurant/New-South-Wales/Gnome-Cafe-Surry-Hills

Satellite, of love – Newtown.

 From the outside…hell, from the inside too, you’d think you’re in just another “we knit our own creme fraiche” cafe.

But satellite is much more than this. Creative, professionally sourced interpretations and ingredients, very well put together.

Sure, the coffee’s great, and desserts are right on the not-very-much money.

And yes, the place has been put together like a good piece of modern art…it looks like you could do it yourself, but if you tried, you’d just get brown disaster.

But the meals are what you’re here for, and the crew care til it hurts.

No web site http://yourrestaurants.com.au/guide/satellite/

Infinity sourdough – a genuine unpassable original

 Phillip Searle had a restaurant, Oasis Seros. In kids speak, he CBF’d it, and opened this bakery about 15 years ago, when sourdough was as popular as Tony Abbott at a climate change conference.

http://www.infinitysourdough.com.au/ 

Flat White…flat out!

Your Camel doesn’t identify with the “lizard drinking” metaphor, preferring to be “flat out like a Dromadarie not really needing to drink, because we are superior beings that don’t succum to human fralities”…can’t imagine why it never caught on…

Falconer – time travelling perfection

Your Camel’s in love……breakfast, lunch and dinner…

http://www.thefalconer.com.au/

Pendolino – the original hidden treasure

Melbourne has a perfectly good reason for the hidden bar scene…there’s nowhere else to put a bar!

I mean what are you going to do? Have a bar with a view of….of…I dunno, yet another melbourne park?

How many dirty old men do they have down there, that they have to have all those parks?

So I’m guessing with nothing else to look at, Melbourne became the home of bars with million dollar fit outs that look like $2 shop fit outs, and people staring at the food, or each other…tres European, don’t you know?!

Long before the bar scene in Melbourne became the bar scene in Sydney, there was Pendolino.