GPO GETS MY STAMP OF APPROVAL

If there is anyone in Sydney who knows more about cheese than Sonia Cousins, please raise your hand. Not that Sonia would say that. She’s too modest. But after dining at the newly reopened GPO Cheese & Wine Room the other night I am awed by this fromager’s knowledge and understanding of cheeses. Not just Australian ones either, although all my favourites – many of them recently awarded medals at the Sydney Fine Food Dairy Awards – appear on the menu, or I can see them for sale in the eye-level display, the cabinet-style ‘cheese-room’. Stretching the width of the provedore area, it is packed with over 100 seasonal cheeses from here and all over the world, each of them carefully selected by Sonia. 

As for the rest of this subterranean space deep below Sydney’s original General Post Office – which, if you haven’t been paying attention, was completely remodelled to include a Westin Hotel, several restaurants, food outlets, bars and boutiques some years ago? One end is packed with all the goodies that go with those cheeses (and that of course includes racks of over 250 different wines) while the other has been transformed into a moody bistro-style space, complete with pictures, mirrors and avant-garde light fittings.

But the part that took my eye, and where we opted to sit, was the one-table-wide tunnel, along one side, newly discovered during the most recent renovations, although dug over a century ago. Once the connecting passage to the Tank Stream, it now has just seven tables for two and the best ambience ever in which to sample the tapas–style dishes, cheeses and matching wines. That European-cellar feel immensely enhanced the experience for me.

The Cheese & Wine Room is an intimate part of the food and wine-focussed downstairs of the GPO building, and the portion sizes on this menu are designed for sharing, with prices to match.

With 16 wines by the glass on the amazing wine list, we passed up on a Cheese & Wine Flight this time. There’s time for that, we’ll be back to try the promise of ‘three seasonal cheeses expertly matched with three sensational wines’ – well, who wouldn’t?

GPO Cheese & Wine Room is open for dining from 12 noon to 10pm, Monday to Friday. To make a reservation, or for further enquiries, phone 02 9229 7701 or email GPO

GPO CHEESE & WINE ROOM
at No. 1 Martin Place
www.gposydney.com/index.asp

THE PERFECT FINNISH

Sydney’s weather has been chilly and wet forever, it seems. I’ve never seen such a cool summer. In fact I think it lasted two, possibly three days!

So, feeling thoroughly summer-deprived now that it is mid-autumn and even wetter and chillier, when someone sent me a press release the other day about Finland in summer, it brought back a flood of yearning memories.

Several years ago we were lucky enough to visit Scandinavia in mid-summer. It’s a festival time with all sorts of old rituals – burning effigies of witches on bonfires, that sort of thing and a great sense of celebration. 

And before you groan ‘oh, no, these travel writers, they get everything on a plate’ you must know that this trip came from something else on a plate. I’d cut out and sent the barcodes from some imported cheese I was about to serve at Christmas lunch and WON a trip for two in a competition!

But getting back to my nostalgic little trip…..mid-summer in this part of the world is also the time of late, late evenings when, depending on how far north you are, the sun almost never sets. The locals seem to be enlivened by all that daylight, and they hardly sleep either. I remember waking up at 2am one night and seeing the streets busy with people walking around in the twilight which was really also the pearly pre-dawn.

It’s a time of fields blazing with red poppies too, and Finland with its 188,000 lakes, 647 rivers, and a greater number forests than any other country in Europe is especially blessed, with almost more beauty than it’s possible to handle. Try taking a photographer to a place like this if you want to see what I mean!

As part of our itinerary we travelled north to Rovaniemi and met an out-of-season Santa, still gamely nursing children for photographs, before we straddled the Arctic Circle line of latitude, and took our own pics, as you have to if you get that far. It was there too that we met some real Laplanders and traveled by canoe to their beautifully decorated tepee-like hut and met their herd of huge shaggy reindeer.

Yes, we also swatted those king-sized mosquitoes which come out in hordes in summer, but that was outweighed by so much else. Savonlinna,  for instance, much further south where we sat in on an opera rehearsal at the ancient lakeside castle which hosts an annual opera festival each summer.

I realized a childhood dream too and made it to the west coast to Naantali near Turku (Finland’s ancient capital) to finally meet the Moomin family, characters from a favourite childhood storybook. I found Moomin World sweet and delightful and not at all ‘Disneyed’ so that my much-loved childhood friends seemed just as I would have expected.

In Helsinki I remember most the waterside markets filled with fruit and vegetables, and breads I had never seen before or since, such as loaves baked with handfuls of whole tiny fishes inside. When cut, the cross-sections of their little bodies made a mosaic in each slice. It tasted good too, but I never did find out what it was called.

And the strawberries. In summer in Helsinki, fruit stalls pop up all along the city streets. Pedestrians pause to purchase punnets of these crimson fruit – perhaps better here than anywhere else in the world (sorry, Australia!)  – and snack on them as they walk along. The footpaths become littered with thousands of green hulls which are flicked away as they go.

Those multitudes of  lakes are lined with brightly painted summer houses, a Scandinavian indulgence. This is the place where families go to relax in what has to be the best season, maybe anywhere. Many of the islands seem only reachable by boat, and each home, its green lawns melting into the reed-fringed waters has a red or blue or white boat pulled up on the bank.

Whoops! This reminiscing is not good for my concentration, and it’s all thanks to that press release. So, in case you’re interested in going and snacking on strawberries and wandering the streets all night, I am told that you should visit www.visitfinland.com/au for a full list of summer tours from Australia.

I shouldn’t forget to mention all the other things I didn’t have time for such as hiking, fishing, canoeing or sailing, cycling or simply soaking up the long sunny days from the veranda of one of those waterfront summer cottages.

I’d also come back for more Finnish food which differs delightfully from other countries: heaps of berries, the best cold-ocean seafood, mushrooms, breads and Finnish caviar. And there is a vibrant cafe-bar scene in Helsinki too, I’m told.

Finland’s biggest summer festival is the city-wide Helsinki Festival starting in mid-August.  I missed that too. So there are reasons for me to return I reckon. 

Maybe I need to buy some cheese and start cutting out some more bar-codes!

TEA FOR TWO

Darling Harbour has morphed so much since we arrived in Sydney over 25 years ago. Then the area was gloomy with what appeared to be derelict warehouses and a web of railway tracks. It was shudder-and-look-away territory as you drove on the overbridge heading for more attractive parts of Sydney.

Now, of course, it is everyone’s playground, thronged with tourists and locals at most times of the year, but never more so than on a sunny summer day. It was like this last week when I took up an offer to have high tea with a friend at Bayside Lounge underneath the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The lounge’s curving wall of windows gave us a ringside seat view of the sparkling Sydney skyline as well as all the goings on outside – buskers juggling balls, boats on the bay and the masses of people. After all it was just past Christmas and so far Sydney’s summer has been balmy, and it seemed everybody was out enjoying it all.

Despite this our attention was on the tiered stand holding a range of afternoon tea treats. In addition to a glass of Australian sparkling wine and quality leaf tea, and espresso coffee (Zentvelds from the NSW north coast, I was pleased to see) there were open prawn sandwiches, veal and mushroom vol au vents, crab and celery finger sandwiches and smoked salmon rillettes on cucumber. That was just the savouries (and vegetarian alternatives are available too).

Sweet tastes (here I was pleased to see there was a good balance – so many ‘high teas’ are sugar overloads) included a fresh berry macchiato with crème fraîche in a shot glass, brandy snap vanilla mascarpone and, the piéce de resistance, gold leafed Lenôtre Opéra slice, as served by the Lenôtre culinary school in Paris.

Tea for Two has been created by Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre’s Executive Chef Detlef Haupt, who has drawn on fresh local produce to create a contemporary high tea menu in keeping with the lounge’s relaxed style and spectacular setting. I was most impressed too with the price: $22 per person. When you consider the location, this would have to be one of the best treat-yourself bargains in town.

Tea for Two at the Bayside Lounge, Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Darling Drive, Darling Harbour, 02 9282 5916, is available from 2pm-5pm Wednesday to Sunday.  Bayside Lounge is open for coffees, snack and meals from 8am daily.

Contributor to:

Travel and Living

Sally is a contributor to Global Travel Writers

View a sample of Gordon Hammond's photography at www.gordonhammond.com.au