Eight Days in Melbourne, Adelaide and the Great Ocean Road!

Greetings from the land down under! Well, not quite -- we're already unfortunately back to the daily grind back home, looking forward to our next holiday!

Ahem. Anyway we spent a (relatively) short eight days in the Australian South East, landing in Melbourne and then slowly making our way up to Adelaide via the Great Ocean Road. Without further ado, do check out our video highlights reel below!


So on to a quick breakdown of things we did, places we visited and things we ate!

Day 0: Overnight flight from Singapore to Melbourne.
- Parents: Singapore Airlines First Class (80,000 KrisFlyer miles + s$56.60/person).
- The rest: Singapore Airlines Economy Class (s$811.20/person).

Thoughts: Singapore Airlines First Class is as awesome as ever, with superb dining options and extravagant service. Economy class is, well, economy class. And the darling's recline button was broken both ways, which sucked quite a bit.


Day 1: A victorian suite, pho, and the world's best pizza.
- Car: Apex Car Rentals, s$85/day for a mid-size SUV, aud500 insurance excess.
- Hotel: The Hotel Windsor, s$554/day for the Victorian Suite
- Lunch: Pho Dzung City Noodle Shop.
- Afternoon: Ran some errands (moneychanger), did some shopping at target, and explored the city a bit before resting in the hotel.
- Dinner: Explored the Crown Entertainment complex and had the "world's best pizza" at Gradi.

Thoughts: The Windsor has a great location and the suite is huge, but the hotel is quite a bit overdue for an overhaul. Gradi was expensive and a little disappointing; but I understand from Melbourne natives that I should have visited the Brunswick branch instead.


Day 2: A market, a garden and an art gallery.
- Morning: Coffee and Bratwurst at the Queen Victoria Markets. Followed by oysters and shopping. And calamari, fish, and chips at Funk Fish.
- Afternoon: We started off touring the Royal Botanical Gardens before a bout of rain sent us scurrying to the free exhibits in the nearby National Gallery of Victoria.
- Dinner: Explored the South Bank and settled in for lamb shanks, paella and pork cheeks at The Bohemian.

Thoughts: It's awesome that the entire CBD has free-of-charge tram transport (and not only just for tourists). More cities should do this.


Day 3: Great Ocean Road, Day 1
- Morning: Checked out of the hotel, visited a long lost friend, and found out that shaved fresh black winter truffle over steak tastes awesome.
- Afternoon: Great Ocean Road Day 1, unfortunately having the time to make only one stop at Bell's Beach, home of the world's longest continually running surf competition.
- Evening: Checked into the semi-AirBnB/semi-hotel Seafarer's Getaway. s$311/night nets you a comfortable beach-view villa which comfortably sleeps 5 adults. Dinner was a forgettable fish & chips shop in the nearby Apollo Bay.

Thoughts: I didn't know until this trip that Australia (particularly the south-western corners) is a pretty solid Truffle Producer. Had always thought that truffles only come from France and other European countries.


Day 4: Great Ocean Road, Part Deux
- Morning: Bacon and eggs (self-catered) in the villa, followed by a detour to the Cape Otway Lightstation.
- Afternoon: The 12 Apostles, Loch Ard Gorge, The London Arch and The Grotto. Self-catered ham sandwiches in the car.
- Evening: Drove to our accommodation for the night: Rosa's Apartment in Mt. Gambier, which must be the best value (s$200) AirBnB that we've ever stayed in.
- Dinner: Some forgettable indian restaurant in the town.

Thoughts: It's pretty surprising that despite having an entire day on the road, we didn't really get to stop at that many places. Probably because we had to spend quite a bit of time on the road ...


Day 5: Great Ocean Road --> Adelaide
- Morning: Bacon and eggs (self-catered, again) in the apartment, followed by a visit to the Blue Lake and Umpherston Sinkhole.
- Afternoon: Finished off the additional ~5 hour drive to Adelaide, stopping halfway to have sandwiches (meh) and coffee (awesome) at the Henry and Rose in Keith.
- Evening: AirBnB/Stayz - Neo Apartment in the City, which is roomy, has a kick-ass location (right next to the Adelaide Markets) but is perhaps getting a tad bit run down. s$266/night.
- Dinner: Shopping at the Rundle Mall, followed by forgettable kebabs somewhere nearby.

Thoughts: 3d/2n to do the drive from Melbourne to Adelaide is a bit rushed. With around ~5hours of driving a day (most of it in daylight), we really didn't have the time to stop at all the places we wanted to stop at, or to really explore. If we were to do it again we'd do at least 4d/3n, and maybe even 5d/4n.


Day 6: Got on a plane, waited around a bit and jumped off at 12,000 feet
- All Day: Skydiving with SA Skydiving at Langhorne Creek.
- Dinner: Self-catered with steak, chicken wings, bread and vegetables bought from the Adelaide Market.

Thoughts: Skydiving is the bomb! Definitely should be on anyone's bucket list (unless you've got a deathly fear of heights). Not exactly a cheap hobby, though: aud409 for a 12,000ft tandem jump (including transport to-and-from Adelaide and a lunch of sausages and bread).


Day 7: Did some cosplay, went up a stage, and got a piece of paper from an old man.
- Breakfast: Group breakfast at Luigi Delicatessen, which serves up an awesome breakfast platter. And great coffee, of course.
- Morning: Graduation from the University of Adelaide.
- Lunch: Porchetta, Ribs and Pasta at Borsa Pasta Cucina.
- Evening: Adelaide Markets (again) followed by more self-catered steak and vegetables.

Thoughts: It really did feel that there were more foreign students graduating than local ones ...


Day 8: Two-dollar ketchup, a garden and a museum.
- Breakfast: Dim Sum at the Star House Chinese Restaurant. "OK" food, two dollars for ketchup.
- The rest of the day: A short detour to the Botanical gardens, followed by the Art Gallery of South Australia and the South Australian Museum. We then returned the car at the Adelaide Airport and took a s$100 Virgin Australia flight to Melbourne.
- Melbourne: Dinner at P.J.O'Brien's (awesome Irish Stew) and a short overnight at Cilom's Airport Lodge (s$159) before heading back to Singapore / KL.

Thoughts: The last day of a holiday is the crappiest one, especially once you start checking out of hotels and returning rental cars.


If you've made it this far, thanks for sticking around, and do let us know in the comments if you've got any questions!

Sydney Trip Itinerary - Hyam's Beach, Dolphin Watch Cruising from Jervis Bay and the Kiama Blowhole!

For a recap of the entire trip, table of contents and links to other posts, do click here: One Week in Sunny Sydney - Full Trip Itinerary!

We've got another road trip lined up for our third day in Sydney - Southward-bound this time, on the Grand Pacific Drive to Jervis Bay and back! It's pretty much a full day trip, with over six hours of driving in total, so got an early start and hit the road!


We took the Princess Highway southbound as we actually wanted to catch the earlier Dolphin Watching boats out of Jervis Bay. As luck (and traffic) would have it though, we arrived into the town of Huskisson just as the earlier boats were pulling away from the harbor. Sadface. So we had some brunch at the Angels Bayside Cafe on the corner of Owen and Hawke Street. It was okay.


Having some time to spare we took a short drive to the nearby Hyams Beach to dip our feet in the (cold) water and take a stroll on the sands. Apparently the Guinness Book of Records lists the beach here as having the whitest sand in the world; whether that's really true is anyone's guess. What's evident, though, is that it's crazy hot thanks to the summer sun.


There are a number of dolphin and whale-watching boat operators in Huskisson; which only go out if there are sufficient passengers. So do make sure you give them a call and ask. We ended up going with Dolphin Watch Cruises because they were the only operator sending out a boat at our time slot.


Dolphin watching is pretty fun, and within the one-and-a-half hour cruise we saw at least a few dozen of them. Getting good photographs of the dolphins is really, really frustrating, though. They appear for just a fraction of a second at a time, so unless your camera was already pointed at the right spot you'd likely be a little too late. With enough time, skill and/or luck I'm sure you'd get at least a couple of amazing shots, but apparently today we didn't have enough of any of 'em.



We take the leisurely Grand Pacific Drive northwards back to Coogee, and stop at the Kiama Blowhole. A small cave/tunnel starting at the sea wall ends here at this hole, so when the waves come in they've got nowhere to go but up and out, sometimes in spectacular 20-foot high walls of white frothy seawater. Today the seas are tame, though, and all we get are weedy 6-8 foot high sputters. Ah well.


Our final stop before heading home was the University town of Wollongong. While there are a ton of things to do here, we only take a quick pit stop for dinner and drinks before leaving to catch the Sea Cliff Bridge before sunset.


"Sea Cliff Bridge from air" by illawarrashowcase - Sea Cliff Bridge
The bridge itself is a 450m long, balanced cantilever bridge that runs parallel to the coast. We've got a video taken from the car here below, but honestly the video really doesn't do the spectacular view justice.


Once across the bridge we decided to cut through the Royal National Park, which turned out to be a huge mistake. The roads wind through the hills and would undoubtedly be an amazing drive during the day. But at night, all you see are the cats eyes on the road and it was really a waste of time and effort. Anyways, after a long, long day we stop for some pick-me-up meals from one of the nearby Woolworths before heading back to Coogee to eat, shower, and sleep.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series coming up soon!

Sydney Trip Itinerary - Fruit Picking, Terrigal, and Pelican Feeding at the Entrance!

For a recap of the entire trip, table of contents and links to other posts, do click here: One Week in Sunny Sydney - Full Trip Itinerary!

We're on a Northbound road trip today! We had initially planned to go all the way north to Newcastle, but as it turned out that was a bit too ambitious. So instead we did five hours in total of driving covering 300km to the Canoelands for fruit picking followed by a drive northwards to The Entrance, before turning back and heading over to Watson's Bay to catch the sunset before dinner.


The first checkbox on today's agenda was to find an orchard and do some fruit picking. There are dozens of farms all within an hours' drive (or two) from Sydney, many of them with different crop types. Unfortunately as we only visited one orchard we aren't really in a position to give recommendations on which ones are better - you'll have to do your own research on that. We can, however, give you a quick guide as to when each particular crop comes into picking season - so tough luck if you're here in the cold winter months of July-September when nothing is in season.


Anyway we settled for Tangerines at Canoelands Orchard, about a one-and-a-half hours' drive from Coogee. There's a $5 basket rental fee (i.e. entrance fee) and then you're set loose among the fruit trees in the Orchard, free to pluck as many Tangerines as you like. It isn't a fruit buffet, though - after you're done you still need to pay per-kilogram rates for whatever you'd like to take home with you.


While it was quite fun wandering around the orchard hunting for big and ripe fruit - sort of in a go-back-to-your-ancestors'-time-and-forage-for-your-own-food kind of way, to be absolutely honest the actual fruit wasn't that great. Most of what we picked out was either under-ripe or just "meh, okay lah" on the sweetness scale. Probably better to leave it to the experts next time, and just buy our fruit in the markets.

After that's done we head back into the car and continue our road trip North. If you're hoping for grand sweeping vistas and majestic cliffs, you won't quite get it on these roads. Yes there's lots of foliage and the roads have an occasional interesting twist and turn, but by and large the drive is rather uninspiring. Check out the fast-forwarded video below for what we mean (and do disregard the cheesy royalty-free music):


After about an hour-and-a-half we stop to stretch our legs at Terrigal, a quaint little seaside town with a nice, almost-deserted beach, and a row of shops selling food, ice cream and other curios ...


... and a further half hour after that we stop at The Entrance to check out the daily 3.30pm Pelican Feeding!


Taken from the town's Official Website:

"Just over twenty years ago, the pelican feeding started by accident when staff from a local fish and chip shop would throw out scraps. It became such a ritual that whenever the staff were late in throwing their scraps out, the pelicans would cross the road and come up to the shop to be fed.

One of the main objectives of the pelican feed is to keep an eye on the pelican's medical conditions as many have hooks and lines tangles up in their gullets, wings and other parts of their body. The feed is a chance for the co-ordinator to assess their well being. It's certainly an amusing show to come and see."


By the time we're back on the road it's already well after 4pm, so we abandon our original target of Newcastle and turn around to head back to Watson's Bay, making it in time to catch the sun setting majestically over the Sydney CBD skyline:


Sunset means dinnertime, and Watson's Bay has a well known seafood joint called Doyle's on the Beach. It's really expensive though so we settle for salt & pepper shrimp and pork belly sliders at Watson Bay Hotel's Beach Club instead. Sipping coffee and eating sweet sticky sliders while watching the sun set - an awesome end to the day.


After dinner we head back to Coogee for an early night as five hours of driving does get a bit tiring. Plus we hadn't fully recovered from the lack of sleep on the overnight flight from Singapore.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series coming up soon!

Sydney Trip Itinerary - CBD, Sea Life Aquarium and Madame Tussauds.

It's our first day in Sydney! Although the darling's been here many times in the past thanks to her time studying in Melbourne, it's my first visit and I'm excited! For a recap of the entire trip, table of contents and links to other posts, do click here: One Week in Sunny Sydney - Full Trip Itinerary!

Trying to be as efficient as possible we had chosen a red-eye, overnight flight from Singapore to Sydney (transit Kuala Lumpur) on Malaysia Airlines. The flight was really quite restful - and we had satay, which is probably the best anything we've ever eaten at 35,000 feet - thanks to a really cheap SGD150 upgrade to Business Class! Do check out our previous post on the flight if you're interested.


Upon landing we cleared immigration and customs - all the while looking around for film crews in case they happened to be filming another episode of Border Security - and boarded a shuttle van to Apex Car Rentals to pick up our Hyundai Elantra.

A note on car rentals in Australia: The major rental chains like Hertz, Budget etc have really exorbitant excess charges - anywhere from AUD2,000 to AUD4,000. This excess is the base amount that you need to pay if you get into an accident, even if it wasn't your fault! So you normally either pay an extra AUD20-40 a day to reduce this excess, or just suck it up and eat the risk.

The smaller, boutique rental shops like Apex tend to have more reasonable terms, though - we paid just AUD43/day for this Elantra with zero excess. This zero excess also applies for accidents that are your fault, so it's great having peace of mind of not ever needing to pony up extra money for any mishaps while driving in a foreign country.


The next note on driving in Australia is that parking rates in the cities are insane. And if you think I'm exaggerating, check out this AUD79 for 3 hours madness in a CBD (Central Business District) car park:


It isn't all that bad, though - there are a number of ways to reduce your parking costs - first of which is a fixed flat daily rate from AUD8 to AUD17 if you're visiting the Sea Life Aquarium or any of a number of tourist attractions within the CBD. It's still not cheap, but in our opinion a very reasonable rate to pay. As of time of writing the below six car parks qualify for the flat rate parking - just park your car, take the ticket, and have it validated by the counter staff at the Aquarium when purchasing your tickets. Do also check out the aquarium's cheap parking website as well for the latest updates, just in case they remove or add any participating car parks.


In all, there are five CBD attractions that have common ticketing:

- Sea Life Aquarium
- Manly Sea Life Sanctuary
- Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum
- Wild Life Sydney Zoo
- The Sydney Tower Eye

As you might expect, you get significant discounts when purchasing multiple attractions at once. For example, a single Sea Life Aquarium ticket costs AUD40, whereas Sea Life Aquarium + two other attractions is AUD70. You get even better prices by purchasing online. As always, make sure you take note of any T&C attached to these discounted tickets.


Anyways, if you've never been to an aquarium then the Sea Life Aquarium is similar to pretty much every other aquarium (like KL's Aquaria KLCC or Osaka's Kaiyukan): there's typically a huge central tank housing the really big fish - sharks, tuna, etc - flanked by dozens of smaller tanks with smaller fish and other marine life from around the world. Most aquariums also have a touch pool which lets you reach in and feel different rays and starfish, etc. It's a perfect visit if you've got young children - and a very good one if you don't.


Do make sure you check out the feeding times for the various tanks! Two of the more interesting-sounding feeding times (in our view) are the shark feeding at 11am and the penguin feeding at 3pm:

"11:00am - Reef Theatre: JAWsome Shark Feed
Sit back and relax while we feed the animals in our largest tank in front of the best view in the aquarium at Great Barrier Reef. If you're interested in feeding the animals yourself check out the Glass Bottom Boat for a hands on experience!

3pm - South Coast Shipwreck: Playful Little Penguin Feed
Get your happy feet down to the South Coast Shipwreck and watch our cute and cuddlycolony of gorgeous Little Penguins having lunch."


One thing the darling and I didn't count on is the fatigue from the previous night's lack of sleep. In hindsight it was perhaps rather ambitious to plan an overnight flight and immediately launch into a full day of sightseeing - after all, even though the flight itself was 7-ish hours, we only slept for perhaps two thirds of that. We were so tired we had to find a bench inside the aquarium, sit down and take a 15 minute nap!


After the aquarium and a short water break, we move on to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. Not going to go into too much detail here as you probably already know that Madame Tussaud's casts life-sized wax replicas of various historical figures, politicians and celebrities for visitors to pose and take photos with. We're not sure if we'd pay the stand-alone entry fee of AUD40; but as a reduced-cost package it was a pretty nice visit.


One thing we did notice was that Madame Tussaud's hasn't seemed to have mastered the proper skin tone for Asians yet - check out the below rendition of "Jackie Chan with Jaundice":


After filling up our camera memory cards we walk over to the Sydney Tower Eye for our third and last CBD attraction visit for the day. The Tower Eye entrance is actually inside Westfield Sydney, on the 5th floor. The observation deck sits at 250m above sea level, and although it's perhaps not quite as high as newer towers like the 450m deck on the Tokyo Skytree, you still do get pretty impressive views of the city.


If you still have time to spare, you could kill an hour or two at places like the Queen Victoria Building (shopping mall). By the time we were done with Tower eye it was quite late, though, so we walked over to Sepia for dinner. We chose Sepia because it has won Sydney's Restaurant of the Year award three times in the SMH Good Food Guide 2012, 2014 and 2015 editions, and it didn't disappoint! Food's really, really good - you can head on over to our previous blogpost for the complete dinner review.


Completely stuffed and satisfied after the dinner, we pick up our car from the parking lot and head home! By home, of course I mean our home-away-from-home temporary accommodation. For holiday accommodation it's tough to give recommendations on a blogpost because everyone has different needs (single traveller vs extended family), and different budgets (backpacker vs elite luxury traveller). Having said that, we rented a lovely two-bedroom apartment less than 200m away from Coogee Beach for around AUD200 per night (four beds, six adults) off stayz.com (airbnb clone).

Stay tuned for the next post in this series coming up shortly!

One Week in Sunny Sydney - Full Trip Itinerary!

The darling and I recently spent a week in beautiful sunny Sydney! Our overall itinerary is listed below, and we'll be progressively updating the blog with more and more details over the next few days.


Day 0: Business Class overnight flight from Singapore to Sydney
Day 1: CBD, Sea Life Aquarium, Madame Tussaud's and the Sydney Tower Eye
Day 1: Dinner at Sepia, Sydney's best Restaurant
Day 2: Daytrip North: Fruit picking, Terrigal, The Entrance and Watson's Bay
Day 3: Daytrip South: Hyam's Beach, Dolphin Watch Cruising from Jervis Bay and the Kiama Blowhole
Day 4: Sydney Opera House and The Rocks
Day 5: Bondi Beach, Sydney Fish Market, Paddy's Markets and Chinatown
Day 6: Daytrip West: The Blue Mountains and Jenolan Caves
Day 7: End of visit: Jetstar Flight to Melbourne.

OK so if I'm particularly honest it's more like just six days (ahem). Stay tuned!

Dinner Degustation at Sepia - Sydney's Best Restaurant 2014!

Best Restaurant is often quite subjective. If you were to randomly ask ten of your friends which is their best (favorite) restaurant, chances are you'd get a list of ten different ones. If you're a local you could go try each restaurant to see which is your best; but if you're a traveller/visitor that really isn't an option. Best course of action then, is to get a copy of the most prominent food review book like the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Food Guide and find out what the "experts" think.

Which is how we end up in Sepia! The SMH Good Food Guide has awarded this CBD eatery Sydney's Restaurant of the Year three times - in its' 2012, 2014 and 2015 editions. Helmed by Chef Martin Benn, Sepia's cuisine is normally classified as contemporary, but as we'll see it has really strong Japanese influences.


(In the interest of full disclosure, Quay was actually our first choice because of the gorgeous Sydney Harbour views ... but they are fully booked months in advance)

Dining area is nice and sleek (if a little dim when the sun goes down), service is good - staff know the ingredients and dishes by heart and are courteous and friendly without being overbearing. We choose the multi-course degustation and start off the gastronomical journey with the amuse-bouche - Sake-cured Marron with Sushi Rice - which serves as a declaration of Chef Martin's strong leanings towards Japanese cuisine. This is a lot like sushi, actually - warm cured Marron flesh sitting on a bed of rice-vinegar'ed short-grain rice. A tad bit too much rice vinegar, perhaps - when it comes to sushi we prefer our rice flavoured a little on the sweet side.


If you're wondering what Marron is - it's a species of crayfish that seems to really be only used extensively in Australia, and tastes somewhat like a larger, firmer langoustine.

Anyways, the first course proper is the Sashimi of Yellow Fin tuna with Jamon Iberico cream, radish, apple and wasabi, and pork crackling. It's sashimi, exquisitely presented fine-dining style. The accompanying ingredients work remarkably, particularly the crisp and flavour imparted by the crumbed pork crackling. In dishes like these the main ingredient can sometimes get lost but here it's balanced perfectly such that the yellow fin tuna sashimi remains the star of the show.


Moving on then to the House made chèvre (french for goat cheese) with rhubarb, beetroot, rye and Linaria flowers. The goat cheese forms the base of the dish followed by layers of beetroot gelee and beetroot soil. This was the weakest dish of the night for me - partially because I don't like beetroot, but mainly because the darling and I found the soil a little hard. Some of the soil crumble would get stuck on our teeth (like undercooked rice) and it just wasn't a pleasant experience. Objectively however the flavour balance between the savoury/sweet beetroot and slightly yoghurty goat cheese was excellent.


The first of the hot courses is Butter poached spanner crab on housemade silken tofu with chrysanthemum and kabu cream, fried garlic and tatsoi (a kind of spinach mustard leaf). The tofu was light and silky-smooth; the spanner crab sweet and delicate; everything flavoured wonderfully.


More Western Australian Marron - this time with kombu butter, candied lemon aspen and native sea vegetables. Dishes like these are why I like travelling and eating so much - it's like a pilgrimage to a country to partake of the ingredients that country has to offer. You can never get the same experience back home in Singapore because well ... we're a city-state with no land and have to import everything. The Marron here is cooked wonderfully as well, and the accompanying umami from the kombu-ish seaweed and other vegetables is great.


We're a little amused that the breads are served in the middle of the degustation (instead of before the meal starts like in practically every other restaurant). The milk bun here was delicious served warm - but it being a dense bread we didn't dare ask for seconds.


My favorite dish of the night by far: Charcoal grilled David Blackmore wagyu karubi (short rib) with Japanese pickles, miso mustard and ice plant. These chunks of heavenly beef are the best I've ever eaten - even better than Japan's iconic Kobe Beef (we had A5 sirloin and tenderloin a couple of years ago). Juicy, beefy, awesome. Anyone who thinks non-Japanese Wagyu can't match up to Japanese Wagyu should take a serious shot at Blackmore's beef.


Next up - Seared Mandagery Creek venison with sansho pepper, roasted Japanese pumpkin and Saikyo miso Jerusalem artichoke. The lean, gamey venison wasn't anything special to me (although it was cooked well) - but I really enjoyed the pumpkin purée and leaf-shaped pumpkin crisps. I don't recall there being any artichokes anywhere on the plate though ...


The darling doesn't eat venison so she got some Scampi with Sheep Yoghurt layered with thinly-sliced apple crisps. I've always wondered how Chefs deal with dietary / special ingredient requests, particularly with 'fixed' menus. Do they already pre-decide a list of "If a guest doesn't want X dish we will give him/her Y instead" or do they make it up on the fly?


The savoury food tour concluded, we move on to the palate-cleansing pre-dessert: Rose Flower Ice Cream with Elder flower snow and Flower Petal Granita. Despite the rather haphazard presentation we really liked the light, flowery, refreshing flavour notes from the shaved ice and ice cream.


Of course, no dinner at Sepia would be complete without trying their Spring chocolate forest - having made an appearance on this year's Masterchef. The ingredients change a little based on season - the Spring version has Soft chocolate, hazelnut and almond praline, lavender and honey cream, blackberry sorbet, caramel and shiso vinegar jellies, green tea, licorice, chocolate twigs and crystallised fennel fronds. That's one hell of an ingredient list! I like this dessert - a lot - and the darling excitedly proclaims this her favorite plate of the night.


Food of these stratospheric heights doesn't come cheap - this degustation menu was AUD 190 per person - but eaten sparingly on special occasions I think it's good value for money. Overall we thoroughly enjoyed the night - nice ambience, good service and great food. The only thing missing is a killer view - add that and this would perhaps be the perfect restaurant!

Sepia is in the heart of the Sydney CBD on Sussex Street, and is open for dinner on Tuesdays-Sundays (lunch on Friday and Saturday only). Reservations highly recommended. Non-halal.