Happy half a century Mum

That was quite a pleasant evening. We randomly selected Figos Grill at Parramatta (76 Philip St) to celebrate mum's birthday tonight, and I think we did ok. I liked what I saw as we entered the contempory looking restaurant, immediately spotting the cosy cushions on the couchy seats. And sure we were early (6pm) but it was still a little unusual being the only diners till about 730ish. This also meant that we had pleeeenty of time to decide what to order and that service was great, and exceptionally friendly too.

For starters we got a pizza crust.

Looks like more than a crust to me. Lovely light base, very tomato-y.

Mains, I opted for the linguini with prawns, asparagus and sundried tomato in a creamy sauce

What they failed to mention was that it had chili in it, trust me to get the chili dish again. And so I picked out what I thought was deseeded chili chunks in disgust, thinking "how could they have not included this in the description?" I counted 6 strips. I had a bit of dig for the prawns and asparagus, camouflaging themselves in the sauce but the sundried tomatoes were missing-in-action. The heat was very manageable actually, especially as I balanced it out with mum's BBQ seafood plate.

This was my favourite and I couldnt resist from stealing bits and pieces.

My sister's chargrilled chicken breast skewers had a flavoursome honey and mustard seed sauce to it. And there was the usual salmon with a sparse sprinkling of cous cous.

After reading about suze's chocolate pizza, when I saw that they offered chocolate hazelnut pizza with strawberries I knew that it was a definate go-er.

Oh oh oh so good. We were the envy of the other diners as they watched me plate up the pieces. There's no doubt they ordered some afterwards. The ice cream was an unexpected bonus and worked so well for presentation and eating purposes. It adequately moistened the finely powdered hazelnut topping sitting on the (suspected Nutella) chocolate spread.

Another unexpected bonus that just topped off the evening was this:

Birthday cake! Complete with sparklers! That was super of them, I was impressed. Even the strawberry made me go Wow. It was all so well done. And the cake, ooooh. If my cakes turned out this good I'd be over the moon. Moist and not too heavy and the perfect amount of chocolate, it also helped that it was warmed.

A great night, mum seemed to enjoy it so I'm glad.

It was later as I sat in my now-uncomfortably tight fitting jeans that I realised that they had not left out the sundried tomatoes like I had initially thought. And that what I had picked out thinking to be chili chunks was in fact the lost tomatoes. Even when my brother ate a piece he didnt notice what it was. I feel so wasteful, the tomatoes had been a component of the dish that had appealled. What a fool.

Waah. And there was something wrong with my memory card. Luckily I was able to have play-time with my brother's shiny new camera. *phew*