An Afternoon in Waterloo

Locations: Northside Produce Markets, Fratelli Fresh, Danks Street Depot

After sleeping in late & still feeling 'gah', went to the northside produce markets. "Lucky these end at noon", I say as we pull into North Sydney at 11am. Despite my blithe words, a lot of store holders were packing up. I visited the usual favourites: Pastabilities, Willowbrae chevre, Redgate Farm for cheese. The Redgate man said that the easter saturday trading was very quiet, a lot quieter than normal.

I tried a new lamb supplier that I hadn't seen there before - Ladysmith Lamb. We bought lamb sausages and a roast, then true to form tried the products fresh from the bbq, and they were tasty! Other products that we got were some fresh quail (had a craving), english stilton (love a cheese that can clear the sinuses), a grapevine ashed goats milk brie (indulgent!), and some grana padano to replace "my old faithful unspecified hard cheese which has been living in my fridge for the past three years but was really tasty grated over pasta". Somehow managed to burn through $75 in less than an hour.

I got a coffee from Toby's, despite my misgivings about getting t/a coffee, esp toby's which I never saw the point of the fuss, because "the man himself, was making it". It was okay, but I wouldn't do it again. Considering we were off to Danks Street Depot!

After looking at the map, I couldn't believe that I hadn't visited the place before. For some reason I keep getting Woolloomooloo and Waterloo mixed up, and this place is literally just across the road (& the park) from where I live.

First up was Fratelli Fresh, apparently *the* suppliers to the stars, and open to the public only on Saturdays. Or maybe Fridays too. There was quite a nice range here of fresh produce, with kiwi berries and feijoias standing out. Surprisingly I didn't see any figs, although I'm sure they're in season at the moment. There's a good selection of Italian packaged goods upstairs in the grocery section, and all sorts of 'inspirational' Italian, um, writings.

The cafe at Fratelli Fresh (Sopra) was packed, and there was a decent sized queue awaiting a feed and refreshment, so I wandered down the road and into Danks St Depot, a place I have wanted to try for ages.

Blogspot went & lost my post TWICE, so I can't quite remember what I got what was it I liked; but I do remember that they had a reuben sandwich. Apparently big New York thing, it had sourdough, and seeded mustard, saurkraut and roast beef. We were lucky enough to be seated near the kitchen, so I could see the chef in charge of making it. In fact all he seemed to make was this reuben, again and again. I like seeded mustard. I like it so much that when I go to the pub, I bring along my own tub of seeded mustard 'just in case they've run out', and also so I can dip my chips in it. But this was tooo much mustard!

Ah yes! The other the we got was a celeriac panfried sandwich thing, with an Italian chesse, all melted and gooey. One of the reasons I wanted to try it was because it used celeriac, and it wasn't remoulade! It was funny. The reuben was so strong, so overpowering in taste, that I didn't like it - and I ended up stealing mustard off it to make the celeriac sandwich taste less bland!