Meet Fresh @ Chinatown

Ok... finally caught up, this is probably the last post in the pipeline so far!!!!

The other day as I was driving along Goldburn St in Chinatown, I saw what used to be a dumpling place at the corner of Goldburn St and Dixon St has closed down, a new Taiwanese restaurant has popped up. Since I was driving, that was all I could see! I said to myself - this needs further investigation!

A few days later, I had to get something done in Chinatown, so I decided to walk from work in Pyrmont at lunch time!!! It was actually quite a good walk, and not as far as I thought, probably just under 20 minute!!! On my way there, I thought I'd go and have a peep at this Taiwanese place. Wow.... queues!!!!!! A long queue outside this Taiwanese eatery which is a dessert house (originally I thought it was a proper restaurant)!!! Although I really wanted to queue up, but it looked like it's a good 30 min wait, so I gave up!

the queue outside - it actually bent around the corner!

Last sunday, hubby and I decided to go for another visit, hoping that the queue would have died down after a week of grand opening. No no no.... the queue was still there, but since we parked our car at a FREE parking spot, so we thought we could afford to queue up for a little while! 30 minutes later we were finally at the door step! The menu from this dessert house basically divided into 3 categories - taro ball, tofu pudding (tofu fa) and drinks.... I have never been a big fan of tofu pudding, so I went straight into the taro ball menu!

The menu is actually quite simple, you have the base ingredients - either taro ball or tofu pudding. Then you have your toppings - red bean, honey bean, pearls, barley, sweet potato etc etc....

Taro ball with peanuts, red beans and pearls $5.50

Taro ball with barley, sweet potato and pearls $5.50

I ordered the taro ball with pearl, barley and sweet potato, and hubby had his with red bean, pearl and peanuts.

The service was quick because all ingredients were ready in their containers, the staff only had to scoop scoop scoop, and done! It has an upstairs seating which you can just relax and rest for a while, but because of the queue, alot of people actually chose to get takeaway!

The dessert is actually quite refreshing, the taro balls were apparently handmade on the premises! It consist of a bowl of shaved ice, topped with chewy taro balls, and the different toppings, and drizzled with brown sugar syrup!!! Not too sweet, just right! Perfect dessert for the upcoming summer time!!!!

Later I found out from a friend that this shop is actually quite a famous chainstore in Taiwan!!!! But can someone tell me how did this English name come about?!?!?! I reckon this store worths a try - maybe after the queue dies down a bit! =P I think I'll come back!!!!

Meet Fresh

Cnr Goldburn St and Dixon St

Chinatown

Tran's @ Mosman

There is one friday in each month that we have neither prayer meeting or home fellowship. For this month of September, Hubby and I decided to go out for dinner for a little celebration, cos he just got a bonus from work. Nowadays getting a bonus is really rare, a lot of companies would rather keep their excessive profit to themselves rather than sharing with their fellow staff members! However, this year all the bonus went into our air-con system which we just recently installed, but I reckon we should still have a celebration for my hubby being so hard working in the past year!!! =)

I asked my hubby to pick a restaurant that he wants to go to... and I'm not surprise that he picked a restaurant that we've previously been to before. Yes.. he's not very adventurous or creative in terms of finding places to eat! I guess I should be proud of him already because he didn't suggest KFC to me!

Anyway, Hubby picked Tran's - a modern vietnamese cuisine on Military Rd in Mosman. The first time we went to this restaurant was probably still in the early days that we started going out! Oh yes... that's yonks ago! I still remember that we had a competition over who can scoop out the longest coconut flesh out of a young coconut without breaking! hahaha... I remember that we did have a good time there, and the food were delicious!

Young fresh coconut

To refresh our good old memories, the first thing we ordered the night was - two fresh young coconut please!

The interior decor in the restaurant hasn't changed - plain yellow wall with photos of vietnam. Staffs dressed in the traditional vietnam costume were friendly and quick to service. They are real professional waitress who didn't need pen and paper to take down our orders, everything is just in the mind!

Ok... we ordered spring roll for entree - yeah... not very adventurous at all, but somehow I felt like spring rolls... =P then we ordered Lemongrass Pork Belly, and Prawn Curry in Young Coconut as main.

As we were sitting there, we could see the owner went around to a few different tables and chatted away, you can just tell that alot of customers are long term faithful customers there! And they didn't even need a menu to order their food from, because they've already got their favourites in mind!

Crispy spring rolls

Here comes the entree... 2 spring rolls! It looked pretty average, and after the first bite, it was actually quite disappointing. It didn't have the crispiness that it should have, and there was a lack of flavour in the filling. The dipping sauce was actually quite mild which didn't help in adding more flavour in. =(

Lemongrass pork belly with fresh rice noodles and mint

Now we have all our hopes in the mains. First arrived on the table was the Pork Belly - the size was quite generous, and it served with fresh rice noodles, peanuts and mint. The pork belly was nice and crispy yet still juicy, it's not oily like some, and important of all you cannot taste the fatty meat of the belly!! The lime and fish sauce dressing I reckon can have a little bit more flavour to it. The rice noodles and mint helped to neutralise the meaty taste of the pork belly, making it a bit more refreshing!

Prawn curry in young coconut

The Prawn Curry was the winner of the night! Not only because it was full of meaty prawns, but the curry sauce was awesome. It was quite mild, but the texture was nice and thick - just the way I like my curry sauce! We scooped the last drop of the curry out of the coconut shell, and of course how could we let go of the coconut flesh that was covered with the delicious curry sauce!!!! Hahah...

Young coconut drink dismantled!!!

We didn't end up ordering any dessert, simply because the dessert menu didn't look very attractive, plus we were full to the brim, and we still have the coconut flesh from our fresh young coconut drink to finish off! However this time we couldn't have a competition, because the opening was too small for the spoon to dig in! We had to ask the waitress to open up the coconuts for us, so we can polish off the flesh! hahaha.. we don't let anything go to waste! I wonder whether Westerners actually do what we do - eat the coconut flesh as well, cos we didn't see any people in the restaurant as crazy as us! Anyway, I gave up half way through, because I was just way too full!!!!!

Sorry guys... the photos were not great, because I didn't have very good lighting inside the restaurant!! =(

Tran's

523 Military Road,

Spit Junction, Mosman

Meidi House @ Parramatta

This post should have been up 3 weeks ago... hehehe... sorry... a bit late! This time our mission given by our dearest Camay is to find a restaurant for Carol's birthday. Usually Camay is the one who has lots of idea as to where to go for dinner, but this time she has given the task to us... umm... maybe she got drained out by the ER department lately!

There were 3 suggestions in total with our combined effort of 10 people... =.=" not a very good effort I know...

1) Chophouse in the city

2) El bulli in Surry Hills (I wish that we're going to the one in Spain!!!)

3) Meidi House in Parramatta

All 3 seems to be very different, I guess it comes down to a matter of who wins the vote! At the end Chophouse got the highest number of votes, but unfortunately it got booked out. And Irene didn't want to have Spanish food because there are too much spices in the cuisine. So we left with Meidi House.

Meidi house is actually a Korean BBQ buffet restaurant. What makes it different to others is that all the food are on skewers and you place them on a special BBQ device which rotates the skewers for you continuously, so you can get an even temperature on all sides on your food! Great invention!!! Every time we go for the HK style BBQ, either the tip of our sausages got burnt, or one side of the chicken wing gone black, or even worst, half of the sausages got dipped into the coal because we tried to get closer to the fire, so the food would cook quicker! >.<

Our skewers of food on the self-rotating bbq device over a bed of coal

Meidi house is a all you can eat restaurant for the price of $30, which I reckon is pretty good value. It has quite a large range of food ranging from beef, chicken, lamb to mushrooms, livers, hearts, cold dishes and ice-cream. In terms of the meat, I found that after a few skewers, all the marinates tasted the same because the spices are actually quite strong! Poor Irene, initially she was trying to avoid the spicy food, but at the end she had to submit into it. =(

I reckon this restaurant is worth trying for the sake of fun, probably not for the taste. They could have probably done better with the marinates!

Angel Cake with Toffee Brittles

Our butcher knife for our cake cutting!!! =.="

As I mentioned before this gathering was for Carol's birthday... but while we were organising it, we've found that in the month of September, it was also Mel's, Freddy's and Jacky's birthday!!!! So we ended up having a 4-in-1 birthday celebration. Thanks to Phil who made this gorgeous cake - Angel cake with toffee brittles!!!! Yummmm... but the weird thing is, when the waiter brought out the cake, we were also given a knife to cut the cake.... not a normal knife... but a butcher knife!!! So guys... if you want to have your cake cut at this restaurant... probably not a good idea unless you want a butcher knife!!!!

Meidi House

Shop 4, 100 Church St,

Parramatta

Eveleigh Market @ Redfern + Cafe C @ Newtown

One saturday in September with the fantastic looking weather, we've decided to take Mochi out for the day!!! The rundown is...

Eveleigh Market in the morning

Lunch @ Newtown

Sydney Park in the arvo

Chill out at my sister's place in Edgecliff

Eveleigh Market is one of those markets that I've never been and really want to visit! I got there at around 11am and it was full of people already. Although there were heaps of people, but because the way it was set up, there is only 1 aisle, and stores were on either side of the huge aisle, which leaves plenty of space for people (and dogs!!! there were ALOT of dogs!!!!) to move in between. Eveleigh market is an organic growers market which has more than 70% of the stores selling fresh farm produce such as vege, lamb, beef, cheese, bread etc. The first stall that caught my eyes was Pat and Sticks!!!!! I quickly looked at my watch... ummm... 11am... doesn't sound like a very good time to have ice-cream at this time of the day.... I might have a good walk around first, and hopefully a later time would make me feel not as guilty of eating ice-cream! =P

The next store that caught me was Billy Kwong! I actually saw Kylie Kwong at the store doing some cooking. As usual, having a celebrity chef at a store attracts crowd, and the store was surrounded by so many people that hubby and I decided not to squeeze in now, we'd do a visit at the end of our round trip. But an hour later, we found that it was a wrong decision, because at the end of our tour around the market. A sign saying 'sold out' was sitting at the Kylie Kwong store, and it was empty with no one there! >.<>

The Eveleigh market is actually full of organic vege bargain, but unfortunately because we won't be at home cooking most nights the following week, so we didn't get any food there! =( But Mochi got something! There was a store there that sells natural dog treats called Jollie Its selling point is all treats were made from human grade ingredients with no mystery meat, no chemicals, and no preservatives. Just like all other stalls, it has taste tests! I had a quick sniff at them, they all smelt fantastic! I could actually smell the ingredients that are stated on the packaging! And the stall owner actually popped one cookie into her own mouth, to show me that they are even tasty for human! OKOK.... a box for Mochi... I got him a box of chicken, mushroom and thyme morsels which has a very strong aroma of thyme!!! And the packaging was quite attractive as well, I could easily mistaken that as human food! Unfortunately by the time I got home the box got squashed in my bag, and it wasn't in a very good state for me to take a photo of! Oopppsss.... i reckon this biscuit must be very tasty for the dogs, cos as usual I put a piece of the treat in front of Mochi, and he has to wait till I say 'OK' before he can eat it. This time after 10 sec of waiting, I could see Mochi started drooling!!!! Hahahhaa... haven't seen that before!!!!

OK... after a round trip, back to the beginning... ie. back to the Pat and Sticks store... had another look at the watch... 12pm striked! OK... seemed like a better time to treat myself with an ice-cream... my hubby murmured into my ear... 'well... to you, there's no time in the 24hrs that isn't an ice-cream time for you anyway!!!' =P which is true... but I still wanted to make myself feel healthier... hehehe... I had a quick glance at the menu... then I found my pick - chocolate lace! Rich chocolate ice-cream sandwiches by 2 crunchy laces of caramel.... yummmm... can someone tell me how can you keep something crunchy even after being frozen and slightly defrosted? Usually it will go a little soggy right?!?! AMAZING!!!

Second stop... Newtown for lunch... Where shall we go?!?!? Newtown actually doesn't have alot of eateries that has outdoor seating that caters for dogs! At the end we just walked into a random cafe called Cafe C - had a quick glance at the menu, and my hubby settled with a Grilled Chicken Burger, and I ordered a Blueberry Bagel with sausage on the side.... haha.. yes, recently I have this habit of ordering sausage on the side of something that is totally irrelevant! The food came relatively quickly, the grilled chicken fillet was very tender and juicy, the sauce was just the right amount. It was sandwiched between a damper roll with chips on the side! I love damper! I reckon this burger is pretty good for value and standard is slightly above average... can't complain! There is nothing special about the bagel, but for the sausage... ummm.... not meeting the standard! It didn't taste like a gourmet sausage that you would expect to get in a cafe, and I could taste the fatty meat instead of a lean juicy one. Also it wasn't cooked fully, probably 80% cooked... which didn't quite help. =(

After lunch... we drove to the nearby Sydney Park for our King Mochi, so he could have a run! Sydney park is great for having a picnic and fantastic for dogs. It's an off leash park and it's huuggggeeee!!!!! With the beautiful sunshine, hubby and I just decided to lay on the grass and enjoyed the sun and absorbing some Vitamin D while Mochi runs wild in the park. It was such beautiful day with a light breeze, both of us just quickly fell asleep!!! hahaha... an afternoon nap... but unfortunately, this random little dog just decided to trot on us every 20 min as if he didn't want us to sleep! But anyway, I still enjoyed the 20 min power nap!

If you guys have a dog... feel free to explore this route... Eveleigh Market > Newtown > Sydney park... I reckon this will be a relaxing day for you to enjoy with your beloved 4 legged animal!

=)

Almond Cookies

Last week was the Chinese Mid Autumn Festival, the story/myth behind it, I can't really remember, but it's definitely a time to celebrate with the whole family. That usually means big feast and mooncake. Personally I'm not a big fan of mooncake, because I don't quite like the lotus paste, neither do I like egg yolk, and that's basically the entire ingredients in the mooncake! And the more modern style iced-skin mooncake is not my cup of tea either, I don't mind it - at least it doesn't have the two ingredients that I don't like in it!! But I reckon the outer skin has a funny texture, if the skin was a bit more chewier then it would be better.... hahaha... yes.. I'm fussy with my food! Overall... my conclusion is I prefer the Japanese mochi with ice-cream filling! =P

I remember when I was little, my grandma used to use the pomelo skin and turn it into a lantern for me! Very creative hey! She would lightly score the skin into 4 sections, and take the flesh out carefully without breaking the skin into pieces, and replace it with a candle inside. Then use some string and tie the top back together, and use a wooden chopstick to hang it up! The light of the candle would seep through the gaps in between the 4 pedals of skin. It was kind of like Kinder Surprise, 3 wishes in one - something to eat, something to play with and something to surprise me with. Pomelo is probably my favourite food in the Mid Autumn Festival menu!!!! Ashamed that you don't get it that often here in Syd, and it's quite expensive compared to Hong Kong!!!

Back to the almond cookies topic! For the last 3 years, my church has turned Mid-Autumn Festival into a evangelistic event. And we have been organising a celebration night with dinner/talk/games/hymn praising at our church worship center which holds approx. 140 people for a sit down dinner. Believe it or not, every year the tickets get sold out within 2 weeks! And all the food on the night were made by our fellow brother and sister with chicken, fish, prawns, veges, beef, pork and rice on the menu this year, plus dessert and fruit, all made by our masterchefs at church! On the night in the church kitchen, we had 3 masterchefs, 6 kitchen hands, and 6 waiters/waitress ready to serve!

On the night I was one of the kitchen hands, and I was also responsible to prepare one variety of the dessertssss for the night. Thanks to Christy who helped out with the other desserts!!! =)

I had to think of something that I can make in large quantity without too much fuss and can be made beforehand without going stale. I know that Christy was gonna make the Chinese red bean pudding, and chrysanthemum jelly, so I've decided to bake some Chinese Almond Cookies.

Makes 30

Ingredients:

250g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

150g butter

100g caster sugar

1 egg

1 tsp almond essence

20g almond flakes

30 whole natural almonds

1. Cream the butter together with sugar. Add in egg and almond essence and beat continuously.

2. Sift together flour, baking powder and baking soda into a bowl. Add in almond flakes. Combine the mixture into the creamed butter using a spatula.

3. The mixture should turn into a dough, then wrap it up with glad wrap and refrigerate for 30min - 1hr.

4. Divide the dough into 30 portions, and roll into a round ball. Push a almond into the top of each ball of mixture to flatten it slightly.

5. Arrange the dough on a lined baking tray (remember to leave room in between each dough to allow it to spread), and bake for 15 min in a pre-heated oven at 170C.

6. Let the cookies to cool on tray for about 10 min before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

I actually omitted the almond essence in my batches because I don't really like the fake almond taste. So feel free to omit it if you are like me, and add in more almond flakes if you wish!

These cookies have a real crunch to it with a buttery taste. But be careful while eating it because it crumbs as soon as you bite into it! If your mouth is large enough, I suggest that you eat it all in one go! hahaha...

The Mid-Autumn Evangelistic Night was a big success! We had 50+ new comers on the night, and everyone, including the 20+ helpers who worked endlessly with sweat throughout the night seemed to enjoy every bits of the night. Thank you God for everything! =)

Toasted Homemade Muesli with a Hint of Sweetness

All of a sudden I felt like some homemade muesli, the last batch I made was probably a long time ago...

This time I want my muesli to have a hint of sweetness to it, although I know it means a few more calories!!! =P Usually i would only use apple juice to mix up with the oats, nuts and seeds (see Toasted Homemade Muesli) but this time I tried to add some maple syrup into it to give it more crunch and sweetness!

Ingredients:

2 cup rolled oats

dried fruit, diced (a mix of whatever you like, I used dates, apricot and cranberries)

half pack mixed seeds (approx. 70g)

handful of almonds

1/4 cup of canola oil

1/8 cup of maple syrup

1. Heat the oil and maple syrup together in a small pot over medium heat until they are combined thoroughly.

2. Mix together the oats, seeds and almonds in a bowl, then pour the heated oil mixture into the oats mixture, and stir to combine.

3. Spread the mixture evenly on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

4. Toast it in a pre-heated oven for 20 min at 200C or until golden brown.

5. Cool on tray, and the mixture will become crunchy!

6. Mix in dried fruit.

If you want, you can actually toast the dried fruit together with the oats, but I like it a bit more juicy, so I tend to mix it in after the oats is toasted. And if you don't have the maple syrup handy at home, just substitute it with honey, although you'll get a slightly different flavour, but still good I reckon!

After the tray of toasted muesli rested, hubby and I just dug in straight away!!! ummm... and it was about mid-night... not really healthy to eat at this time of the night when we were just about to go to bed! But we just couldn't resist the golden colour of the muesli, and the beautiful smell from the maple syrup, also the crunchiness was awesome! You would just want to reach out your hand and grab another handful while you're crunching away the muesli in your mouth!

This is just a healthy snack that you can just eat straight or with a dollop of yoghurt and some sliced banana and strawberries! Strawberries are in season at the moment, and I've seen them going for $1.50 per punnet at Coles and Woolies or $1 if you're willing to go to flemington market for a field trip!

Chocolate Self Saucing Pudding

Catching up... catching up...

One night... hubby came home and told me a news.... ummm... some good news obviously... but... it was too long ago, that I can't really remember now!!! Oppsss.. that's the problem with me not catching up with my posts, and I tend to be very forgetful! >.<

But whatever the good news was, he deserved a yummy dessert! A chocolate self saucing pudding!!!

I first tasted this recipe was at a friend's place and we all had to bring in a dish! Kitty - our high school masterchef who used to bring in all sorts of food for us - the famous rice pudding was my favourite, this time she brought in some chocolate pudding with cream fraiche! yummmmmm....

Serves 4

Ingredients:

125g plain flour

a pinch of salt

120g caster sugar

3 tsp baking powder

4 tbsp cocoa powder

250ml milk

85g unsalted butter, melted

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

topping:

185g soft brown sugar

2 tbsp cocoas

250ml boiling water

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Sift the flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, and cocoa powder into a bowl. Add the milk, butter, egg and vanilla extract and mix with beaters until combined. Pour into 4 250ml greased pudding moulds.

2. To make the topping, stir the brown sugar with cocoa powder in a bowl to combine. Then sprinkle it over the pudding batter.

3. Sit the pudding moulds in a baking tray filled with boiling water up to half way of the moulds. Bake for 20-25min. Serve with cream fraiche or ice-cream.

A very easy but awesome recipe. Better still, you can pre-make the batter beforehand, and refrigerate it until you need it. Then you just pour it into the moulds, sprinkle with topping and into the oven! Great for dinner parties!!!

Also, looking at the ingredients, it actually not that bad for you!!! hahaha... yeah... we need to comfort ourselves every now and then! There's no actual chocolate pieces in there, only cocoa powder, and there's only 85g of butter to share between 4! Not that bad!!!! And as for the topping - I didn't really follow the 185g soft brown sugar, I probably only used 3-4tbsp. But that's up to you, whether you want it real sweet or not!

Cream fraiche or ice-cream to serve is ESSENTIAL!!!! It helps to lighten the the texture, makes it not as heavy! Although this will put a few more calories on the radar, but it's absolute crucial!!!! Makes it taste better too, and the magical feeling of having spoonful of hot and cold dessert together in the mouth... AMAZING! =)

Be mindful that you don't over-cook the pudding as well, otherwise it won't have the self-saucing effect, which happened to me a couple of times. I guess it depends on the strength of your oven too! So it's more like a trial and error process.

Enjoy!!!

Apple & Pear Crumble

OK.... time to catch up with my posts. I probably have more than 10 posts waiting for me to upload!!!! Hopefully I can catch up in a week!

In one of the home fellowship night, I made a large apple and and pear crumble (but forgot to take photos of that!!!) but since I over-bought the apple and pear so I can do a small version of it! This is such quick and easy to make, so I don't really have a REAL recipe for it! But roughly...

Ingredients:

Serves 2

1 medium size apple (peeled, corded and diced)

1 medium size pear (peeled, corded and diced)

handful of oats

handful of sultanas

1 tsp cinnamon

20g butter (roughly)

1 tbsp brown sugar

2 tbsp plain flour

1. Mix the apple, pear and sultanas together and divide them into 2 souffle ramekins. Add a couple of teaspoon of water in each.

2. Rub the cold butter with the oats, flour, brown sugar and cinnamon together, so it's crumbly. Press lightly on top of the apple mixture.

3. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200C for about 20min or golden brown. Serve with ice-cream.

Just a little note to be careful of is not to put too much water in the apple mixture, otherwise you will end up with a pool of water at the bottom of the ramekins! And after 10 min of baking, I've realised that the top is not browning at all, so I've switched only the top heat element on for the next 10 min for it to go brown. But I guess if you have a bit more patience than me, the top will go brown eventually anyway! =P

Ribs & Rumps @ North Ryde

One friday night after work, we’ve decided... ‘lets go out for dinner!!’ This random decision popped up probably because both hubby and I have been so tired and busy at work, and we just want to relax and go out for a night!

Since it was such a last minute decision, finding a place to eat on a friday night is not such an easy thing. Especially we couldn’t go too far out, because our dearest Mochi was at home alone waiting patiently for us. Normally if we knew that we were gonna go out for dinner, I’d get my parents to look after him for the night. Yes... Mochi is fussy.. we always say that he’s the king in the household!

Anyway... back to the food... we had a few options, we could go to Gladesville to have Thai, or North Ryde to have steak. Hubby’s reaction was ‘STEAK’.... not surprised!!! So we tried our luck and called up Ribs & Rumps to see whether they have a table.

Seriously I haven’t been to Ribs and Rumps for agggesssss... And we used to go to the one in Manly, but now they’ve got an outlet in North Ryde. Perfect. Nice and close!

It must be our lucky night, Ribs and Rumps could offer us a table at 7pm, but have to finish by 8:30, which was fine with us, since our king was waiting for us at home anyway! As long as they serve the food quick enough, we could give them back the table on time.

We have never been to this North Ryde shop before, and it was actually quite hard to fine, because it’s tucked away behind the trees, away from the street front! Parking was hard as well, there were only a few spots available in front of the shop, and all other parking spots around the building are dedicated to the companies around that area with the sign ‘tow away zone’... ummm.... should we risk it!??!?! At the end we did! It was night time, and we were hoping that no one in the companies will come out and call the tow truck!

This restaurant was packed... well.. it’s friday night, plus I guess their steaks are pretty reasonable as well. We quickly glanced at the menu and knew what we wanted straight away.... Whole rack of beef ribs with chips and giant mushrooms to share....

Sizzling Black Mushrooms $12.95

The giant mushrooms are pretty big!!!! They were very tasty and full of flavour, they were tender, not soggy like some with beautiful but not too over powering garlic flavour... yummm.... I recommend it!

Beef Rib Full Rack $36.95

The beef ribs came soon after! The waitress offered us the bibs to wear in case the juice/sauce splashes over you... however both hubby and I just kindly declined the offer... hahah.. why?!?! because we just don’t like our look with the bib on!!! =P The first thing I dug in wasn’t the rib... it was the chips! They were the fat chips, usually I prefer the skinny McDonald chips over the fat KFC chips. But these ones were fantastic! They were crispy on the outside and not too oily!!

Next.... the ribs... the ribs were meaty and juicy, covered with smoky BBQ sauce, not not dripping! For the price we paid, I reckon its pretty good! Next time we might try the pork ribs and see what they’re like.

Service here is not superb.... pretty slow actually, we tried to wave a waiter to give us the bill, but it took them ages to notice us, and then another 5 minute to give us the bill, and then another 5 minutes for the credit card to return to us.... well... at the end we didn’t give them the table back on time.... but I reckon it’s not our fault... they’re just under-staffed!

Ribs & Rumps

11 Talavera Road
North Ryde

Garfish @ Crows Nest

Because I've been pretty lazy with my blog lately, I suppose to have this post blogged a few weeks ago! Oppsss...

On a sunny saturday morning, we went out with a group of friends to Garfish for breakfast/brunch. It's such a beautiful day that we just couldn't just leave Mochi at home! (for those who don't know... Mochi is my white fluffy dog!)

We arrived at Garfish at 10am, and it is already filled with people. Lucky that we booked a table! As soon as we sat down at the table, the friendly staff quickly brought us the menu and water while we waited for our other friends to arrive. In no time, a bowl of water was delivered to Mochi as well! This cafe restaurant is definitely pet friendly!

Although the weather was so good, but somehow my stomach told me that I didn't really want a proper big breakfast, so I glanced through the menu and quickly found what I wanted! Raspberry and pear bread! When I looked further, I saw the category 'side'... ummm.... I think I should order the chorizo on the side! hahaha... a bit of a weird combination, but it worked for me!

Some people on the table ordered the egg benedict with smoked salmon, and they looked really good!!!! The creamy holladaise sauce sitting on top of the two poached egg with smoked salmon just looked perfect! Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it. =P Although my raspberry and pear bread sounded a bit plain in comparison, but the praline butter that came with it helped to bring it alive! The crunchy praline was swirled through the butter, by spreading this on top of the lightly toasted raspberry and pear bread gave it an extra crunch when biting into it. Yummmm.... I'm glad that I ordered the chorizo on the side which helped to balance out the sweetness of the bread in my stomach! hahaha...

toasted raspberry & pear bread with praline butter $6.50

the garfish breakfast $18

The big breakfast I found was a bit disappointing, not only it lacked presentation, the eggs also lacked the flavour. Perhaps adding some salt would make it better, or even truffle salt which will definitely make it taste perfect! Lucky the sauteed mushroom helped it to gain a few brownie points. The mushroom was sweet and garlicky, definitely the best bit on the plate!

hot chocolate $3.80

One thing that I've got to mention is their hot chocolate! Wow.... I didn't expect the hot chocolate to come with a whole stick of chocolate! It slowly melted into the milk, and it was smooth and silky, surprisingly not too sweet! Beautiful!

The staffs here are friendly and efficient. In terms of food, they've got their good dishes and bad dishes, I guess it's just a try and error! I think I'll come back and try their lunch or dinner menu one day. =)

Garfish

6/20 Holtermann Street,

Crows Nest