Phở in Flemington October 1, 2008
Posted by sabandaw in Eating Out.Tags: Flemington, Phở
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This post has actually been delayed for approximately 2 weeks. To be honest, I was reluctant to write it because the sight of those pictures makes me hungryyyyyyy!
It was a bad day to began with, when we drove along Paramatta Rd it was initially sunny but it started raining cats and dogs (kangaroos and koalas) as we got closer to Flemington. Thankfully we secure a park and headed straight to Ta Fong Noodle House.
I was actually brought here long ago by my ex. However, we didn’t have a car back then so it was always a hike to get to Flemington from where we lived.
Their Special Beef Noodle Soup is to die for! Unfortunately I don’t eat beef so I always end up ordering just plain Special Noodle Soup, BUT, there’s one thing that I absolutely love about here – homemade chilli oil.
The friendly owner came over and talked to us for a little while, and that’s when we found out that the chilli oil i always soak my noodles with are home made! (As you know i’m a BIG FAN of spicy food) For drinks, they have a wide choice to choose from, I ordered home made soy milk and Shaun decided to go with the tea instead.
Special Beef Noodle Soup
The Special Beef Noodle consist of beef tendons, beef tripe, partly raw beef, etc. The soup, according to Shaun, it’s so sweet with the taste of beef which he loves! (I’ve trained this white man to eat the unusual food that does not appear in his diet regularly)
Special Noodle Soup
Frankly, I do not think this Noodle Soup is very “Special” at all. I certainly know how to make it awesome though – check out the progress of turning my noodles into CHILLI NOODLE SOUP
Step 1
Step 2
Notice the transformation of my plain Pho into chilli Pho? hehehe =P I went psycho with the chilli oil and even the owner noticed the colour of my Pho when he walked past our table!
Shaun, on the other hand refused to let his soup covered with chilli taste, so he decided to drink some of mine instead! I won’t blame him, it’s too delicious to be missing out!
Ta Fong Noodle House
That’s how it looks like from the outside, not very grand or appealing, but they serve good food.
Flemington isn’t a big suburb, when you’re there, just walk up to the end of the block of shops and turn left, walk for about 2-3 mins you should be able to find this restaurant.
Also, consider having freshly squeezed sugar cane juice down the road while you’re there! It’s refreshing and sweet 🙂
P/s: There are NO banks or ATM machines in Flemington. The only place you can do a cash out is the liquor store at the corner but with a purchase of minimum $10 . Remember to have some cash with you, as most stores such as Ta Fong Noodle House only take cash payments.
Aivy & Shaun
Hawker’s Cafe – Melbourne September 28, 2008
Posted by sabandaw in Eating Out.Tags: Bak Kuh Teh, Malaysian, Melbourne
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Hawkers Cafe
While I was down in Melbourne recently I had the opportunity to visit one of my favourite Malaysian places in Australia. Hawker’s Cafe has two locations in Melbourne, one in Hawthorn and one in the CBD. Aivy and I have been to the CBD one a couple of times.
One of my favourite Malaysian (Chinese) dishes is Bak Kut Teh (肉骨茶) which is very difficult to find in Australia. On a previous trip to Melbourne this year I happened to be strolling around the CBD when I came across their store, and wouldn’t you know, they have Bak Kut Teh!
So my meal here, which I ordered without looking at the menu, was Teh Ice, which is Malaysian ice tea served with condensed milk, and Bak Kut Teh.
Bak Kut Teh itself consists of a few components. The main part is a rich herbal broth that also contains mushrooms, tofu and chunks of pork. Served along side it are deep fried bread sticks (油炸鬼) and a bowl of rice.
That is a tasty (non-alcoholic) beverage!
The Teh Tarik came out almost instantly and had a strong, not too sweet, flavour which reminded me of the places Aivy and I ate at when we were in Malaysia earlier this year. It wasn’t long after this that the Bak Kut Teh came out, piping hot and wonderfully aromatic.
Mmmm tasty soup
While you can get this dish in other places around Australia the thing that makes the version at Hawker’s Cafe so special is the strength of the flavour of the broth. One of the people we’ve talked to who own a restaurant and make this dish have told us the reason it’s not usually too strong is that a lot of caucasians don’t like the herbal flavour, some even get stomach aches from it. I took some people I was working with here though and they all had and liked it, so it varies from person to person.
The acommpanying items
Maybe due to the fact that there is a larger Malaysian population in Melbourne Hawker’s Cafe don’t have to wory about this quite so much. Whatever the reason it makes eating the dish here, to me, almost as good as the first time I tried it in Klang, the birthplace of Bak Kut Teh.
You eat the rice with the broth
All up dinner cost me less than $15 and I walked away fully satisfied. If you’re just eating the dish yourself don’t get the large size, you won’t be able to finish it.
All done!
Sorry for the delays on the review. My review was actually written the night I went there but somehow it manage to f@$%ing disappear from my laptop…
Oh yeah, and if you appreciate top quality Jewellery, Melbourne is the place to shop and I suggest you swing by MDT Design and check out some of their amazing work.
Hairy Incident September 23, 2008
Posted by sabandaw in Eating Out.Tags: Asakaze, Easyway, Hair, Japanese Fusion, Sydney CBD, Wynyard
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No, it wasn’t Shaun’s fault.
2 weeks ago on a Tuesday, I met up with Shaun for lunch in the city near his work place. As Wynyard is usually overcrowded with starving working people, good food and bad food seem to blend together.. which is quite bad for us (or everyone else that appreciates decent/good meal).
After a 5 minutes stroll around Suncorp building, we decided to have our lunch in Asakaze. I craved for bento that particular day, and was hoping that this place could calm my cravings for a little while.
I’ve actually heard some negative things about this particular chain Japanese fusion restaurant. I’ve tried searching for their official website but they don’t seem to have one, hence i just included a link of their logo for the ease of recognition. Despite all the rumours i heard, we decided to give it a try.
Here are what we ordered
Katsu Don
Yaki Soba
I ordered Katsu Don, which we previously mentioned in our Miso post, it’s fried pork cutlets with rice and top with egg. Shaun had Yaki Soba, which is stir-fry Soba noodles with meat and vegetables. Our meal came with Miso Soup as a side dish.
As i took the first bite of my pork cutlet, i realised that the meat was quite stale and overcooked. Also, there weren’t enough sauce in the rice, which made the whole thing really dry and hard to chew. Miso soup was terrible, it was extremely diluted (even the prepacked ones in asian supermarket taste better than it). At that point i was somewhat annoyed.
Shaun’s Yaki Soba was quite sweet, which i did not mind but he certainly didn’t enjoy it much. We were both quite grumpy while eating our lunch. As we thought that it couldn’t be worse, he found a strand of hair in his noodle! ewwww! And it wasn’t his! (hahahaha, i tease him so much about being hairy :P)
Awhile later, I pulled out a LONG strand of hair that was stuck in between the flour coating and the meat. Neither of our meal was half gone, so we confronted the employees and demanded refund for our meals instead of replacement (come on, who wants to eat another meal with hair inside!!!!!!) They return it to us without much hesitation given the fact that it was peak lunch hour, any complaints about their food would not put them in a good position!
Sorry to disgust you guys but this is to prove that above claims were all true!
The longer strand on the left was from my Katsu Don and the shorter one was from Shaun’s noodle…
That was a particularly bad lunch for both of us, we compensated ourselves with Easyway (our fav drink!).
All in all, if you’re interested to have some additional ‘spices’ added in your meal, you’re most welcome to try it in Asakaze (Wynyard).
p/s: I do not know much about the other branches of Asakaze, so please don’t assume that they all have hair in their food!
Aivy & Shaun
Thai La-Ong September 15, 2008
Posted by sabandaw in Eating Out.Tags: Newtown, Thai
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A different kitchen setup to usual
While we’re desperately trying to catch up on the places we’ve been to over the past couple of weeks we’ve been “calling” the places we’re going to review. Aivy got Mamak since we both decided she was better placed to comment on the authenticity, I called this particular place because of my personal views on the quality of Thai restaurants in Newtown.
For those of you who don’t know Newtown is a suburb just slightly south and slightly west of Sydney CBD. It’s right next to the University of Sydney (where my lovely sister-in-law works, hello Maggie!) and is about a 20 minute walk, or a short train ride, away from Central Station. It’s well known for it’s vast array of trendy little stores and complete absence of shopping centres.
Along the main traffic arteries of King Street and Enmore Road you’ll find stores for clothes, footware, books, pets and other miscellany. You’ll also find a bevy of places to indulge your stomach or whet your whistle. It is well known amongst Sydney locals that Newtown has the highest concentration of Thai restaurants anywhere in Sydney, there’ll be a future blog post about exactly how many we can find 🙂
With that little bit of background let us now move on to the night itself. Aivy, our friends Adeline (above pictured right), Belinda (next to Adeline) and Lisa (the hand on the left) and myself had been to Kuleto’s for some cocktails. We were in need of some sustenance so Lisa suggested a Thai place that she really likes, Thai La-Ong.
Thai La-Ong is located at 89 King St, Newtwon, just a short walk up the road from Kuleto’s. It was pretty busy by the time we got there at 8.00 and we were fairly lucky to get a table for six people straight away.
One of the first things that I noticed when I sat down was the layout of the restaurant is a bit different to a lot of places. There’s a big eating area out the front which is right next to a very open cooking area, it adds quite a bit to the noise level and means you’ll be speaking up a bit and can make discussions in a group a bit tricky.
Dishes
We had a look around the menu and decided on four dishes and some rice:
First up Pad Khee Mao:
Stir fried thick rice noodle with chicken and vegetables in a spicy, thick sauce. I could have sworn I tasted peanuts but Aivy disagreed. It had enough chilli in it that we could taste it, but it was quite mild by our standards. Not bad.
Next Red Duck Curry:
And this is where it starts to go all wrong…
Aplogoies for the bluriness of the photo but believe me you’re not missing anything. Red Duck Curry is a dish that both Aivy and I enjoy immensely, however this just failed to even get going. The sauce was thin and quite bland, the vegetable choice was a bizzare pick’n’ mix selection and the duck itself was pretty “meh”.
The arrival of the dish led us to pondering exactly what it was we had ordered…Guys, please, when you order red duck curry you expect it to be red. Not yellow, not beige-ish brown, red.
Is this what we ordered?
Can it get worse? Sadly yes…Dish number three, Prawn Green Curry:
Um…Well…I think it was supposed to be green. The sauce was bland, the papya was bland and the prawns were bland as well as being poorly cooked. The prawns were much too firm for prawns that are supposed to be cooked for a curry.
And now, for the finale….oh dear…
We’re not sure…We can’t remember exactly what the dish was called so we’ll dub it Tofu-Vegetable Satay thingy:
To be fair it didn’t look this unappealing at the restaurant, but looking at it now I feel the photo makes it look like a baby has vomited over a vegetarian stir-fry. The sauce tasted so-so but I’ve had much richer tasting satay sauces before, there was just not enough of a peanut taste.
The thing that was the big problem with this dish was the tofu, the skin was rubbery and the insides only slightly better. At one point I watched Lisa repeatedly jabbing the same but of Tofu trying to get it on to her fork only for the tines not to penetrate the outer skin. I know tofu comes in a number of different types and there are innumerable different ways of cooking it (mmmm, Mapo Doufu / 麻婆豆腐), but this isn’t one of them.
Price
The one mitigating factor in all this is that Thai La-Ong is cheap. For the four dishes and two servings of rice it cost about $50. Mains are between about $8 and $12, Entrées are around $6.
Conclusion
Other than what I’ve detailed above there was one other main problem with the meals, that being the presentation. The food is chucked on the plate without care or deliberation, the Tofu dish being the primary example but a look at the curries shows the same thing.
A good indicator of how much we’re enjoying the food at a Thai restaurant is by how much sauce is left in the dishes that we’re eating. If the food is really good we’ll use rice to soak up all the sauce and chow down on that. When we all stopped eating the Pad Khee Mao was the only dish that was completely finished, with both curries and the tofu dish only being half eaten.
Maybe I’m being a bit harsh on the place but with the range of good eating options available in Newtown there is something for every budget, and something for every taste, that is good. When I’m in Newtown I expect good, tasty, food, which something that Thai La-Ong fails to deliver.
(Please note: in all fairness Lisa still likes the place)
Malaysian Food – Mamak September 14, 2008
Posted by sabandaw in Eating Out.Tags: Curry, Ice Kacang, Kangkung, Malaysian, Roti canai, Sydney CBD
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Here comes a review (okay, i think i might hv promised 3… but things got caught up~!!)
Today, I’m going to review about a Malaysian restaurant in Goulburn St, Chinatown that commenced their business late last year that I’ve actually visited several times.
As some of you may know, before i came to Sydney, I’ve lived in Malaysia all my life. Shaun thought that it might be better for me to do a review about Mamak‘s food. (click link for smh’s review about their food) Mamak is usually referred as hawker stalls own by either Malays or Indians that close late at night, or not at all. Best for people who gets hungry in the middle of the night, or just wants to have a cheap bite with friends. However, this restaurant, has average pricing, and does not stay oepn 24/7. Wellllll… it’s not Malaysia afterall!
We’ve actually tried some of the other Malaysian places in Sydney, but I particularly like this place although the queue to get a seat is usually quite long, especially during weekends! We were there on a Saturday afternoon, accompanied by a friend, Adeline, who is also from Malaysia.
The interior of the restaurant is fairly small, but it should be able to fit in about 40-50 people. They also set up a Roti Canai table at the front of the restaurant so that passerbys and customers could have a clear view of them making it. Unfortunately, they ran out of roti canai dough when we wanted to order.. maybe another time!
Here are some of the food that we ordered :
Adeline and I indulging ourselves in those extra spicy food!! (if you’re into chillies, kindly ask them to make it to suit your tastebuds)
There were nasi lemak with sambal prawns, curry chicken, kangkung belacan, mee goreng. (clockwise starting from bottom left)
Curry Chicken, which i didn’t particularly enjoyed because it was too diluted 😛
However Shaun and Adeline seemed to find it alrightttt….. hmm..
MEE GORENG! we requested for it to be extra spicy, and it tasted so authentic i almost thought i was back in KL! **HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!* It might be too spicy for certain people but it definitely tasted awesome to us! (yes, Shaun ate it too… He’s been turn trained to eat spicy food since we started going out. Bwahah)
Kangkung Belacan, also highly recommended! Best we had so far compared to many places (which we WILL review in the future). The vegetable was fresh and the sauce was excellent! (looking at the photo makes me drool!)
Ice Kacang =D (Shaved Ice top with sugar and condensed milk with some fruits and jellies)
This is Shaun’s favourite dessert. We had it every single day when he visited me in KL last year.
He certainly got addicted to it after his wonderful food trip in Malaysia. (and he’s going back for more)
Shaun was sulking because we insisted to take a photo of the food but he was so eager to eat it already.
Adeline and her almost gone ice kacang.
We were so full =) but happy!
All in all, it was a great afternoon, good food and good companion
If you’re near Chinatown the next time, why not try some Malaysian cuisine?
P/s: A friend of Shaun and I are starting a new business to run a Malaysian restaurant near Railway Sq by the end of this month.. so stay tune for that!
To end this post, i present you Adeline and I camwhoring in the car while Shaun’s driving!
Love,
Aiwei and Shaun
Phở Saigon Yummi September 6, 2008
Posted by sabandaw in Eating Out.Tags: Burwood, Phở, Vietnamese
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The sign is fairly distinctive
Aivy and I are big fans of Vietnamese food, in all its various incarnations. Phở is a particular favourite especially, like today in Sydney, when the weather is cold and wet.
Phở Saigon Yummi is one of our regular eats in Burwood which I didn’t know existed until Aivy’s mum told me about it. It’s located at 93 Burwood Road, Burwood, just a block down from the station towards Burwood Westfield.
While they do make more traditional Vietnamese food, including a stack of Phở dishes, they also do a lot of Chinese dishes too. We headed there last Saturday for some dinner.
One of our favourites dishes is hot and sour soup. For those of you who haven’t had it before hot and sour soup is a Chinese dish that has a soy / vinegar / cornstarch / water / chicken stock base. Take that and add a whole bunch of other miscellaneous stuff like tofu, shrimp and bamboo shoots and you get yourself one tasty dish!
Saigon Yummi does a good hot and sour soup, nice and spicy with quality ingredients. While it’s nice it’s not quite enough to fill you up, so to handle that we also picked up braised duck noodle soup. The broth had a strong herbal taste and the duck was smooth and soft.
Hoeing into the noodles
They also have quite a nice selection of drinks. The Ice Logan drink and the Ice Coffee are both refreshing.
The interior of Saigon Yummi is nice and bright, well lit and clean. Service is friendly and the food comes out pretty quickly.
It's nice and bright inside
All in all it’s a good place for a reliable feed. It’s not somewhere I’d tell you to go a long distance out of your way for, but if you’re a local it’s a great place for lunch or dinner.
Chinese Dumpling and Noodle House August 27, 2008
Posted by sabandaw in Eating Out.Tags: Chinese, Dumplings, Kingsford, Noodles
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While the name is rather…generic the Chinese Dumpling and Noodle House at Kingsford is good, solid, tasty and inexpensive food.
The restaurant is located at 396 Anzac Parade, Kingsford, just past the University of New South Wales heading southbound on Anzac Parade. If you’re lucky you may be able to get a park on Anzac Parade, otherwise take a right at the lights at intersection before and look around the back streets.
The food can be broken up into four main types: hand-made Dumplings, hand-made noodles, fried rice and meat / veggie dishes. When we went the other night we had Chicken and Salty Fish Fried Rice (咸鱼鸡粒炒饭) and Hand-Made Noodles with Pork Mince (炸酱面):
I’ve never had a dish with salty fish in it before so I was unsure what to expect but according to Ai Wei the stuff they put in the fried rice was pretty weak so I couldn’t really taste it. The fried rice was good, solid food, and helped fill us up.
The noodles here are excellent, firm, tasty and they go well with the pork mince. A simple dish but very tasty, also goes well with some vinegar if you’re that way inclined.
Ai Wei and I have had the dumplings here previously and they’re really good. Freshly steamed, freshly made piles of dumplings. The menu will indicate how many come on a plate but some basic dumplings come about 10+ per plate and cost about $8. Just be really careful when you’re eating them to pop open the skin before you eat them or you’ll get a mouthful of scalding hot pain (yes, I sepak from experience).
The decor inside is pretty bland but the staff are nice (and speak Mandarin) and the food comes out very quickly.
Dinner for the two of us, with a glass of soy milk each, cost $17.70. That’s right, tasty dinner for two, freshly made, is cheaper than McDonalds, Oporto’s etc. Dishes Range from about $6-$18 with most dishes sitting in the $8-$12 range.
So if you’re a fan of noodles, or just like Chinese food in general, give it a go!
Miso August 22, 2008
Posted by sabandaw in Eating Out.Tags: Japanese, Miso, Sydney CBD
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Another entry about Japanese Cuisine ^^
Please bear with me as my (Aivy) entry will not be as professional as Shaun’s.
So i was waiting in front of Makoto half an hour before business commenced, and wandered around World Square like a hungry mad woman! I walked past a clean, plain looking restaurant with a bunch of employees having a “serious” meeting before opening for dinner – Miso. This place is name after a traditional japanese food produced by various ingredients, often soy.
I picked up the interesting looking takeaway menu and instantly decided that I should give this place a go!
Shaun and I were quickly served after getting our seats. Browsing through the variaties of Bento (lunch boxes) definitely made our stomach growl.
We arrived at 5.30pm, the restaurant quickly filled up when it approaches 6.00pm. Staffs were efficient and friendly too =). As for our order, Shaun had a bad experience with Katsu Don (fried chicken with eggs and rice) but after my persuasion he decided to give it another chance. It turned out awesome!! I ordered Ikura Bento, which was exceptionally huge given that it was only $17.50. Some photos below to explain more about the food we had
Photos are clickable! Click to view larger image.
As you seen the interior is pretty simple, not much decoration but comfortable to dine in. (Photo 1)
Photo 2 on the top right is Shaun’s Katsu Don, which I stole some before taking the photo.. *hehe*
The chicken was served hot along with raw egg that was beaten on top it. They mixed perfectly well with the sauce and rice. ( I took more of his food after taking the picture of it…)
Ikura Don, well worth the money! Rice was served with fish roe and side dishes were amazing! There were fried tofu, grilled salmon, grilled eggplant, sweet egg roll, fish cake, grilled diced pork, miso soup, and some vegetables soaked in raw egg white (i think…). The vegetables are not as disgusting as it sounds, really. I particularly liked the grilled diced pork.
We were both stuffed after 2/3 of our delicious meal. I managed to clean up my Bento (bwahaha) but Shaun, as usual, old and lousy, could not finish his food! (I hope he doesnt read this!)
We would definitely return to Miso to try out their meals!
p/s: They do takeaway, unfortunately my scanner doesn’t work, otherwise i would upload their takeaway menu that i took earlier.
Details are as following:
Shop 20, World Sq
Ph: 9283 9686
Fax: 9283 9687
Lunch Mon to Fri 11:30am to 2.30pm
Dinner Mon to Sat 5.30pm to 9.30pm
*let me know if you find my post is harder to read than Shaun’s. I’ll try to do something about it.*
Till then!
Shaun and Aiwei
Toko – Surry Hills August 18, 2008
Posted by sabandaw in Eating Out.Tags: Cocktails, Japanese, Surry Hills, Sushi
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Our first write-up is of Toko, specifically their Surry Hills branch. Toko is Japanese restaurant and a self described “izakaya”, which we can tell you straight up is rather misleading. The key thing about izakayas is that they are about drinking first eating second, it’s not to say that the food is bad, it’s just that it isn’t the most important thing about eating there.
So without further ado here’s our take on it:
The Experience
It wasn’t immediately obvious where the place was as we were going along Crown Street. Signage is pretty minimal and the interior is fairly dark. We got in without a hassle as there were only two of us…
and we were fairly early…
and it was Monday.
We were seated at the sushi bar and started poring over the menus (wine and food). Unfortunately they’d neglected to provide us with a cocktail menu which is what we were really looking to drink.
A waiter did come and ask us if we were ready to order after a couple of minutes but we were still trying to work out what to drink. It was then a bit of a struggle to get any waiter’s attention again, a trend which continued for the rest of our visit.
The cocktails arrived pretty snappily and were quite good, main lot of food we ordered came out in a consistent flow so we weren’t out of anything to eat until we finished the last of the three dishes we ordered.
We decided to stay for another dish and round of cocktails, this time the dish took a bit longer to come out so we sat and sipped on our cocktails. Funny thing was that as we were watching the chef preparing our dish we were talking about how good the food was at other places we’d been to.
Restaurant owners take note, if your customers are talking and thinking about how good the food is at other places more than the food where they’re eating now, you’re not doing a good job.
So I finished the night there full but a bit disappointed and longing for a bit more than what we actually got.
General Observations
There were a few big problems that we noticed with Toko:
- The place is too big for the number of wait-staff they had on
- There were only two sushi chefs for the whole restaurant (there were 40-50 people in)
- Following from (2) when there is high demand the sushi chefs have to rush which has an impact on the quality of the sushi and has a big impact on presentation. When you’re eating higher end sushi presentation is an essential part of it
- Very poor signage, we found the place by the actual number of the address rather than the name
Final Assessment
Service: Poor, difficult to attract the attention of wait staff and the delay in our later dish was a bit long for a single sushi roll
Food:
- BBQ Quail: Cooked just right and most of the bones, bar the wings and legs, had been removed making for easy eating
- Soft Shell Crab: The crab itself was fairly bland but the Wasabi Mayonaise was interesting.
- Inside Out Eel Roll: Average, nothing more to say.
- Salmon Skin Roll: Bland and the presentation was choppy because the sushi chef was rushed
Cocktails:
Each of the cocktails we had were fresh and full of flavour. Good quality and probably the best thing about the place
Price:
Dishes range from $8-$28, most stuff is around the $12-$18. Cocktails were $15-$20.
Over all:
Toko has some great cocktails but it can’t build on this. The service was poor and its dishes uninspiring for a restaurant in its price range. For top quality sushi and cocktails go to Sushi E or for cheaper, reliable Sushi head up to Cleveland Street to Emon. We’ll have reviews for both of these up in the near future.
Till next time.
– Shaun and Ai Wei
So it begins…. August 18, 2008
Posted by sabandaw in Eating Out.add a comment
So, Ai Wei and myself have been thinking for some time about the places we eat. Some of them are good, some of them are great, and some of them are really, really bad.
We thought it’d be cool to document some of the places we visit and let people know whether they’re good bad or indifferent. Some of the places we’ll have just been to recently, others it may have been a little while since our visit but the end goal is to let people know the places to go for good grub and the places to avoid.
So, check back often, you’ll never know the next place that’ll be a must visit…
– Shaun
Food of All Nations 
