Bill's Restaurant (Sydney, Australia)

433 Liverpool St
(Darlinghurst)
This cafe is popular for ricotta hotcakes with fresh bananas and honeycomb butter...The hotcakes were very light and fluffy.. Just melted in my mouth!
We also had the scrambled organic eggs with organic sourdough toast.

Aziza (San Francisco)

5800 geary blvd @ 22nd ave
san francisco, ca 94121
phone: 415 752 2222
http://www.aziza-sf.com/
Chef Mourad Lahlou

We heard that Aziza is the best Moroccan food that San Francisco has to offer. Walking into this restaurant, I immediately felt the North African ambience with its candlelit rooms and alcoves, colored in midnight blue and earthly warm tones. The walls were lined with plush couches and pillows. The chef here uses organic and locally produced ingredients to create unique Moroccan cuisine. But before wetting our palates with Moroccan flavors, our server first brought out a pitcher of rose water for us to rinse our hands.

Lamb shank with barley and spiced prunes - Aziza's trademark dish. The tender meat was falling off the bone, accompanied by a sweet and vinegary sauce, soaked up by a side of barley.
Rabbit with paprika, carrots, parsnip, and dried cherries -I was a bit hesitant in ordering rabbit for the first time but I thought, "when will be the next time I will really try rabbit..." The meat was pretty tender and the taste and texture resembled chicken.
Goat cheese with tomato jam, pistachio and argan oil

We will probably visit Aziza again just to try the other interesting items on the menu. The restaurant is hip and inviting, but not at all pretentious. I hear the cocktails are delicious too! We met a local later on that day and casually asked him what restaurants he recommends. His first rec was....Aziza!

Opus Restaurant (Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles)

opusrestaurant.net
3760 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90010
213-738-1600

For our 8th year anniversary, we went to Opus in Mid-Wilshire area in LA, right next to the Wiltern Theatre. We had their 3-course tasting menus with some surprises in between.

For the amuse bouche, we had fennel seed "pudding" with some sort of sweet potato panna cotta and topped with green poppy-like seeds.For our first course, I had the hamachi and fried fish fritter on a stick w/ tomato caraway sauce. Tony had the golden beets salad.
In between the courses, the waitress brought a nice poached egg, with creme fraiche, chives, and bacon. This was wonderful! It was like a breakfast meal in an egg.

For our second course, I had the garlic cream and hazelnut broth w/ scallop and foie gras (seared scallop) and grapes. (The soup was so good that I ate it all before taking a picture!)

Our main course was the milk-fed roasted chicken atop butternut squash, shitake mushrooms, and green beans.

For dessert, we had peanut butter chocolate brownie with watermelon sorbet. Yum!