This week the Sunday lunch project has extended to breakfast.
Doc had his foot operation during the week so is not very mobile. Of course, I did the good partner thing and left him home on his own while I went to the football on Saturday night. Well, you have to get your priorities right and in my defense I bought the tickets at the beginning of the season. I couldn’t waste them!
So, I was in Sydney while Doc rested up at home in Wollongong.
Taking advantage of the situation I thought it would be a good idea to catch up with my kids for Sunday lunch. Unfortunately both of the girls had their boyfriends in tow. Not that I don’t like their boyfriends – they’re both nice enough and I get along with both of them – but they don’t like each other. So lunch with the kids turned into breakfast with one lot and lunch with the other. No wonder I’m putting on weight!
Families!
Breakfast was at the Lite Hearted Café at Malabar. I’ve lived near Malabar for over 20 years, and visited nearby a lot longer – all my life in fact. Yet I’ve never considered it a place to go out. Malabar had a sewage works, rifle range and a beach with water you couldn’t swim in. It’s also right next door to Long Bay jail. It still has a sewage works but the smell no longer hangs over the area and the deep ocean outfalls means the beach has cleaned up considerably. And the grassy area and children’s playground attract families to visit, picnic and swim. The rifle range has recently closed down, but having it there for so long has saved the Malabar Headland as open space – now public open space.
So Malabar has changed. The strip of shops just up from the beach is now home to a few very nice cafes, with good food, great coffee and tables outside. And a sense of community. In the time we were sitting having our breakfast two separate groups stopped to say hello, and a couple of cars driving past also contained friends who stopped to chat or just waved.
And the food was good, and plentiful. The vegetarian breakfast came with eggs, mushrooms, tomato, baked beans, haloumi avocado and sourdough toast. Even after giving the eggs away I couldn’t get through it. Which made eating lunch quite difficult. Or so I thought …
Lunch was at Bodhi’s. A vegetarian yum cha restaurant at Cook & Philip Park by St Mary’s cathedral in the city. Bodhi’s has long been a favourite lunch spot of mine, but one I haven’t been to much lately, so even though I’d just had a big breakfast I found space for lunch. Which is just as well because the food keeps coming. And I love it all – well, except the buns, but the rest is superb. Spring rolls, rice paper rolls, spicy noodles, satay baskets, shitake mushrooms, dumplings with a variety of fillings, sticky rice, tofu, bok choy, and the list goes on. Then there’s dessert!
So we spent a very nice couple of hours sitting under the trees, with St Mary’s façade one way and the green park below Cook & Phillip pool the other way, with celebratory champagne (the Tahs won the night before), taking our time selecting dishes as they came past – nibbling, resting, nibbling, resting.
Until I remembered Doc was home on his own, laid up with stitches in his heavily bandaged foot.
But it was great to catch up with my kids and have a family Sunday lunch – and breakfast!
