Late dinner @ Taiwan Cafe

Taiwan Cafe

273 Swanston Street 

Melbourne VIC 

Taiwan Cafe - the bright red restaurant situated at the corner of Swanston Street and Lonsdale Street in the middle of Melbourne city with people queuing outside managed to lure Teddy and I to set foot in.  

It was Teddy's idea that we should try this newly opened cafe.  Plus, we were looking for something quick to eat without the need to join any crazy queue up.  Lucky for us that it passed the peak dinner service time, so we managed to get a table at the ground floor quite promptly.  

I would say that this cafe is more or less like a fast food restaurant.  It was very casual and the service was quite average - it actually matched my expectation of what this cafe would set out to be (well, i had this expectation in mind before I stepped in).   Inside the cafe, the tables were placed closely and there weren't much room to move around.  It was also quite loud and we needed to speak up when we were talking - just so that we could hear each other, rather than hearing other people conversations. 

We ordered the dishes that more or less match to the usual Taiwanese meal (Teddy's friend has told us about the Taiwanese food).  The food was quite alright, not such outstanding that I would want to come back and have it on the very next day.  I think people are queuing up at this restaurant because it is still new and there aren't many Taiwanese cuisine in the city.  

The Taiwanese Fragrant Sausage ($3.90) was probably the best dish that we had that night.  It was yummy and very aromatic and the best thing was that it didn't have the usual pork smell!  I would say that the aroma was a bit like Chinese sausage.  

 

Ramen hunt @ Ajisen Ramen

Ajisen Ramen

130 Bourke Street
Melbourne VIC

It has been a while since Miss P and I had Ramen.  When I thought about it, the last time that we ate ramen was couple of months back when we went to Sydney.  No wonder why our craving for ramen started to act up a bit, especially on me, whom has a love for noodles.  I know by heart that I wouldn't be able to find any ramen like the ones at Ryo's at Crows Nest or Menya noodle bar on Market Street  in Sydney, but I still do have hope that at least, there will be a good ramen in Melbourne.

After passing by Ajisen Ramen for numerous time, I decided that I should at least put my chopsticks into the ramen to see whether Ajisen is worth to be on my ramen list or not. 

Ajisen Ramen looks like a fast food restaurant that offered Japanese style food, where there are plenty of choices to choose from (Ramen and rice).  The service is OK, not that exceptionally outstanding since I still need to grap the attention of the staff every time I needed something.

The choices that we picked for the day was Ramen set A + extra ($17.5) and B + extra ($16.5).  Under set A menu, Miss P picked Tonkatsu Ramen with extra volcano sauce on the side and a small Chahan.  For me, I went with Volcano Ramen with corn on the side and Tori Karaage.  For drinks, we went with Hot Green Tea ($1.6)

Quick Bite @ Nhu Lan

Nhu Lan

152 Victoria Street

Richmond, VIC  

Seeing the Vietnamese bread rolls made me think of the old times at Uni.  I was introduced to the Vietnamese bread roll during my first year at UNSW by one of my friends.  Since then, it became the favourite grab and go food for me.  The size and portion were just right, easy to carry when I needed to run around the campus for the next calls.  Also, it didn't create a much of a mess while eating them since everything was stuffed into the bread roll and put in a small paper bag. 

Since my uni days were over, I barely get a chance to eat the Vietnamese roll.  Until I moved to Melbourne, I got my hands on the Vietnamese roll once again.  Trial and tested the rolls from many shops on Victoria Street in Richmond, I found my favourite shop that do the yummiest rolls to my taste.

Nhu Lan is a bakery shop that also sell Vietnamese rolls.  The shop is situated in the heart of the Vietnamese strip in the middle of Victoria Street.  The shop is clean and has good lighting, the staff were friendly and never rush the customers.  They offered around nine different type of rolls, including vegetarian roll (tofu) and each roll cost around $3.80.

The moment I walked in, the smell of freshly baked bread streaming out along with the BBQ meat that they had for the fillings. It got me hungry even more than a minute ago!  I ended up ordering three rolls to share with Miss P..I know, three rolls for two people, we were ones of those nutcases who love food.

The rolls that I ordered were BBQ pork roll ($3.80), BBQ chicken roll ($3.80) and Ham roll ($3.80).  Each rolls were filled with hot chilli...like a mine trap, you wouldn't know where the chillies were until you bit into it.  The rolls were soft and freshly made, unique in taste and the fillings.  The vegetables here were marinated in vinegar, gave out different but yummy taste.  Both BBQ rolls were dressed with Hoisin sauce, but the BBQ chicken roll had extra fried shallots, which gave more aroma to the roll compared to the BBQ pork roll.  The ham roll was delicious as well, there were many type of hams and the roll went well with the paste they put inside.

Budget Samurai

Samurai

804 Glenferrie Road

Hawthorn, VIC

Recently Little M and I were introduced to Samurai - a Japanese restaurant in Hawthorn.  Our friend suggested that we should give it a try since we both enjoy Japanese food and we may like it there.  So we went!

Since we both were tired from work and too lazy to cook, we decided to put Samurai to the test.  Since it was early Tuesday evening, we decided to push our luck and just turned up to the restaurant without any booking. 

I would say Samurai is a small local Japanese take away/ restaurant in the middle of Glenferrie Road.  The restaurant is quite small as well as their tables.  I didn't manage to take any photos since it was getting crowded and all I saw through the lens were the restaurant-goers. 

Little M and I decided to go with two dinner boxes ($15.00 each) - Soup of your choice, Entree of your choice, Main of your choice and Drink or Dessert. 

The soups came right after our waiter took the order.  We order Miso and Osuimono soup.  Osuimono was more like a clear mushroom soup compared to Miso.  Both soup were good, leaning slightly towards the salty side.

Marinated fried chicken and Croquette were served not long after.  The chicken was more like a grilled than fried.  Croquette was yummy, I prefer to have it by itself but my fellow diner prefer to have it with the accompanied tomato sauce.

The main dish of the night slowly came out one at a time, first it was the Samurai Sushi set.  It was a combination of nigiri and California roll.  The tuna and salmon slices on the nigiri were quite thin...but, for the price we paid, it was kinda acceptable. 

It settled with cheap Asian lunch after all @ Petaling Street

Petaling Street

704 Glenferrie Road

Hawthorn VIC

My friend once said "Once you had a bad start, it will affect the rest of your day".  Initially I didn't agree with this statement but now I think it is quite correct!

My food plan for today was to go for Yum-Cha at Golden Dragon Palace at Lower Templestowe, but the plan turned sour as I did not realise that I need to make a booking for Yum-Cha! It was a bit of culture chock for me since in Sydney, you can just walk in and queue up for Yum-Cha.  I also carved for fish and chips, so my friend and I decided that we could try out Belvga (Beluga) Fish and Chippery at South Yarra.  Again, we got turned down, not because it was full but because it wasn't open yet (though it was lunch time). Our journey for fish and chips continued to Hunky Dory at South Yarra, but we could not find a single parking spot, so we gave up on the fish and chips.  Quite a series of unfortunate event on my food journey today.

Since our tummies did not have a single bit of proper food to satisfy since morning, apart from small cups of vaalia yoghurt, we decided that we can just go to Glenferrie road and push our luck.  Since my craving for fish still lingered, my friend suggested that we could try the fried fish at Petaling Street.  One of our friends mentioned that they do the whole fish dish at Glen Waverly and CBD, and we assumed that at Glenferrie the menu should be quite similar so we decided to give it a try.

The waitress was nice and attentive, she advised us that they had a new menu and we could give them a try.  After reading through what tempt us most, we came to know that they did not have a whole fish dish.  Lucky us that they have the fish dish on their new menu.  So we ended up ordering two of the fish dish for our lunch.  We ordered Lobak ($6) for entree, Sambal Fish Fillet as a main ($15.80), Nyonya Fish Fillet with rice ($10.90) and Chicken Nasi Lemak ($9.90). 

Inside the restaurant

We didn't wait that long for the food to arrive.  Three parcels of Lobak came first accompanied with sweet chilli sauce.  They were quite tasty and taste better than the one we had at The Grand Tofu.

Lobak

Another shot of Lobak

Not long after the entree, the main arrived.  First came the Sambal Fish Fillet.  The aroma of the dish was great and seem like they used shrimp paste as one of the ingredient.  The dish wasn't that spicy as we expected but had great flavour to it.  One thing to note, there were plenty of garlic in the sauce, but it wasn't an issue.  The dish also had small pieces of green capsicum and small pieces of chilli and the fish was served on the bed of lettuce.  The coating of the fish fillet was quite right, not too highly coated with flour that would turn soggy after being expose to the sauce.  It was cooked perfectly but we found if there was more sauce it would be even better.

Sambal Fish Fillet