Date night was cancelled lastn Friday night courtesy of a mix up with babysitter.
Devo'ed we were.
Absolutely devo'ed.
Like most couples who have kids, we cling desperately to that time out alone. Time to just be... you know grown ups and do grown up stuff without having to do multiple toilet runs, referee arguments or fork out a month in mortgage repayments at Yogoland.
And when that precious time slips through your fingers like sands through the hour glass (yes I am being very melodramatic) well... you just wanna cry.
CRY I tell you.
Lucky for us no tears were required because by a rare fluke of the heavens we also happened to have another day planned on our own the very next day. A lovely friend; Terase from BYOChair.com, had kindly invited us along to her Manly Walking Food Tour.
Terase was asked by the gang at Fairfax to organise this tour as part of the NSW Food & Wine Festival.
The tour (as the name suggests) is all on foot, and it takes you behind the scenes at some of Manly's local secrets. Here you get to chat to the owners about the hows and whys of their business and gain some backstage insight into what makes their businesses so popular with not just the tourist trade, but with the locals who return regularly.
There was seven of us on the tour this particular day and our first stop was Showbox coffee brewers where Bo the owner ran us through the finer points of coffee brewing.
It's a real art that coffee thing.
I seriously had no idea how much effort goes into that cup of coffee I grab when I am out and about and in actual fact there is a real science behind the blends of natural and washed beans, the filtering process and the coffee making itself.
I even tried a little cold brew coffee. Yep, a coffee that you drink cold on purpose and not just because you made it an hour ago and forgot about it.
It's actually really nice and far more refreshing than I expected. I'm thinking it would go perfectly in an expresso martini.
If you would like to try a cold brew have a good coffee, and I mean a really good coffee, then Showbox on Whistler Street (a mere 2 minutes walk from Manly Wharf) needs to be on your list of must go places.
To call him an eager beaver would not even do it justice.
4 Pines is all about the brewing of handcrafted beer designed to get true beer lovers salivating whilst converting the rest of us novices who have been left uninspired by beer thanks to the mass produced beers we have all been exposed too.
I will be honest with you - beer kind of goes over my head.
What I heard was 'Pure handcrafted beer with all natural ingredients and infused with various herbs or fruits. Coffee and chocolate inspired stouts and florally aromatic an fruity pale ales. Yada Yada Yada.
What I wanted was to taste the beer and taste it we did.
We were each given a wooden tray thingy full of their different crafted beers on offer and whilst not all of them were totally tickled my taste buds.. I kind of had remorse about offering to be the designated driver.
My husband was in beer heaven.
It is much easier to understand beer when you are actually drinking it and I could have happily sat there and listened to Andrew (the Head brewer) rattle on passionately about his beer... but we couldn't, because we still had one more place to visit.
Our final destination was The Pantry down on Manly Beach and with arguably one of the best views of any restaurant in Sydney, here was where I had to undo the button on the pants after gorging myself on the best tapas style lunch I have eaten in a loooong long time.
Amongst a HUGE feast we ate was spatchcock and whiting fillets and prawns and gnocchi along with about five different types of bread and olives. It was all washed down with a crisp semillon whilst we rested our weary feet and took in the spectacular view of the ocean.
Can you see now why my pants were undone?
I'm not even kidding.
Terase has a passion for cooking and people so it is any wonder she is making a living out of connecting the two.
The sad news is however, Terase is no longer going to be running these tours at Manly.
Awwww.
But the good news is she will be running them in Byron Bay.
Yayyyy.
Yep the lovely woman behind these successful food tours is packing up and heading up North and taking BYOChair.com with her.
From April on, you will be able to book a food tour with Terase and sample some of the best Byron has to offer.
If you are a small group of six then you can even be picked up and driven around in a restored Kombi...
Oh shut up!!! She is gonna be living my dream that girl.
It wont just stop at tours though. Nope. Terase plans on running cooking classes that showcase the local produce and you can book them to be held at your holiday accommodation in Byron or at one of the local venues like the Fig Tree or others.
For more info on BYOChair.com visit Terase's website here or her Facebook page here. I'm thinking it would be the perfect thing for a weekend retreat or perhaps a girl's getaway in Byron.
Hmmmm now that is something worth planning.
Have you ever been a food tour?
Are you a fan of beer or is coffee, wine or food more your thing?
*This was not a sponsored post. Terase is a friend & invited us to be guests on her final Manly tour.