Sydney's Craze Over PokeBurgers From Down N' Out

Down N' Out: Pokeburgers Pop Up Store open until Saturday 3rd September 2016. Sir John Young Hotel, 557 George Street, Cnr Liverpool Street, Sydney NSW.
Photos by Hai taken with Canon D70 / Last Photo by Spooning Australia

Pokeman fans alert! Whether you've loved it for twenty years, two months or barely know what Pokemon comes after Pikachu - we all can appreciate the efforts Down N' Out have made to capture the magic of the popular cartoon series and games that's been around for twenty years.

Down N' Out have created THE ultimate food craze - designing three burgers inspired by Ash's Pikachu, and two starter Pokemon - the grass type Bulbasaur and the fire type, Charmander. These $15 burgers have been dubbed the "Pokeburger" and were launched 22nd August.

Each Pokeburger has it own flavour profile. Although all contain a juicy wagyu beef patty, they all have different toppings. Pikachu is stuffed with Down N' Out famous 'tiger fries' which makes sense since he is electric type. Bulbasaur contains more fresh greens - lettuce, onions and pickles with a broccoli to replicate the bulb. Charmander is slightly spicy - crispy bacon drenched in a spicy mayo and dripping with melted volcanic cheese.

With its tinted buns and cute character faces (and Pikachu's ears!) Down N' Out have been flat out with the high demand - now opening on Mondays to keep up. Most burgers are sold out within minutes of the store opening (between 12pm-3pm and 5pm-9pm) and another thing you have to factor in - customers do not get to choose their burger, everyone gets a Pokeburger flavour at random.

In our case, our group of three managed to get three Charmanders. Considering ourselves lucky to even get a Pokeburger, we were impressed with how photo-worthy and cute the burgers were.
Having abit of fun, we replicated Charmander's flame tail by sparking a lighter to create a small fire at the end of a bacon strip.

And good news. According to Food Beast, the owners of Down N' Out are creating concepts for Snorlax, Voltorb and Clefairy Pokeburgers. I personally can't wait for the Clefairy ones, I can imagine it to have puffs of pink fairyfloss everywhere or Moon stone designs.

Currently there are only a limited amount of burgers available with the pop-up store ending the Pokeburger craze 3rd September 2016. Come down and enjoy them while you can - take a Pokesick day if you have to! It is well worth it to catch them all!

A Lucky Suzie Birthday Lunch

Lucky Suzie, 70 Stanley Street, Darlinghurst 2010, NSW Australia. Photos by Me taken on a Canon 70D DSLR Camera.

Every year in July I take my best friend Betty out for her birthday. And every year I have a mini heart attack because I find it extremely important to find a decent place. I'm always on the look out for uniqueness, photo worthy lighting, variety, high quality and a delicious dessert menu.

I took notice of Lucky Suzie straight away after finding a photo of their ABC taro ice cream dessert on Instagram. I booked it straight away.
Head chef and owner Zach Tan is the inspiring man behind Lucky Suzie, as he introduces Malaysian street food into uptown Darlinghurst. After establishing his Sydney career with Devon cafe and Devon on Danks, he opened the cheeky Lucky Suzie serving classic street food mixed with hawker food and charcoal dishes.

Me and Betty sat down for a Saturday lunch, eager to pick out our dishes to have with our Smoky Lemonades. For entrees we started with the fried Lotus chips and Pie Tee Spanner Crap Pastry Cups. Reminding me of my homeland Cambodia, the lotus chips were crispy and light - such a great starter. The Pie Tees were dipped into a spicy Sriracha sauce and that enhanced the south east Asian flavors of the fresh spanner crab in a bed of yam bean and shitake mushrooms.

For mains we ordered the Salt & Pepper Tofu, Penang Char Toay Kram fried noodles and Coconut Rice. Topped with fresh coriander, the well seasoned Tofu was delicate yet crisp on the outside. It was accompanied with a chili sauce that actually reminded me of Korean Gochujang sauce. It was sweet and mild with hints of fermented soybeans and red peppers. We paired it with our fragrant coconut rice.
The Penang Wok fried noodles included seafood and Chinese sausage in the mix. This dish is true Hawker style so the secret to getting it right is high quality fresh ingredients and good seasoning. And the Lucky Suzie dish did not disappoint - it was delicious.

And of course the main reason we were there - we allowed ourselves to have dessert. We chose the Spiced Layer Cake and famous ABC dessert. Coming to our tables in bright vibrant colors, we were excited to dip our spoons in.
The warm Spiced Layer Cake came covered in green custard. Cutting to reveal the soft layers, we tasted hints of coconut, Asian spices and palm sugar. The ABC dessert - which was a bowl of shaved blue pea flower ice, bubur cha cha topped with a scoop of vibrant Taro ice cream was my personal favorite. I've never had such silky and creamy Taro Ice cream and the blue/purple tinted shaved ice accompanied it so well. The presentation was so pretty - certainly an Instagram-worthy dessert.

I intended to end the meal with the fondant birthday cake I baked for Betty, but we ended up taking it back home to eat later as we were so full from the lunch.
We were extremely satisfied to spend Betty's birthday celebration at Lucky Suzie. For fantastic Malaysian street food and Asian influenced cocktails, come down to cheeky Lucky Suzie for a bite and a sip. It helps to bring along good company and an empty stomach too.