dining out

right so it was my birthday not so long ago and i decided to have it at rangoli at strathfield! now the location is a bit misleading, as rangoli is not located near strathfield station at all, but instead close to the border with enfield on the boulevarde. our host was charming and we were very excited to get going.

our first entree was the onion bhaji. the onion bhaji was beautifully fried and crunchy. i am a big fan of onions and this one did not let me down.

however i have to say that this second dish, the palak patta chat seemed to be the favourite amongst the group. when we ordered this there were raised eyebrows around the table but suffice to say everyone liked it. i’m not a big fan of yoghurt myself, and have to say that despite my concerns with yoghurt i do like this dish.

our third and last entree was the chicken tikka. this rates as my top entree for the night! it was nicely marinated and cooked =)

now we have 6 mains. we did want to try some seafood dishes but no seafoods were available that night, so we stuck to the traditional beef, chicken and lamb.

the bombay beef was described as “simmered in creamy sauce” but turned out to be rather spicy! i do like spicy foods and this was great for me, but people around the table found it a bit overpowering.

the butter chicken was an easy pick and it was your standard everyday butter chicken; not exciting but great tasting.

now here we went out and was a bit more adventurous, ordering the rather exotic sounding balti beef. our host explained that balti means bucket, and that’s why this dish was served in this rather interesting looking bucket. the taste was great too, and most would prefer this to the much spicier bombay beef. i disagree.

our fourth dish for the night was the chicken lazeez. no complaints here, it’s less creamy than the other dishes and was a good change.

lamb korma was another creamy sauce dish. i’m not much of a korma fan, preferring something with a bit more of a kick but judging by how quickly it went this was popular.

and i saved the best for the last. ladies and gentlemen, a must have at any indian restaurant (according to c and t) is the malai kofta. rangoli strathfield served one amazing malai kofta, but i have to say that every malai kofta i have had in every restaurant was excellent.

here’s some photos of the rice and naan. we got plenty of both to mop up the curry sauces.

this was our second time at rangoli strathfield. judging by the host’s hospitality and taste of food, we would be back.

chef’s gallery at wynyard is a newly opened restaurant with a twin at town hall. chef’s gallery is fairly well known; my friends who came from overseas insisted on having lunch here when visiting sydney!

starting with the entrees, we ordered a macanese style pork burger. it has pork fillet, pork floss and chilli mayo and it comes in a group of three. absolutely delicious! i could eat plates of these. dish of the night for me. look at how cute they are!

our second entree was the flash fried medium wagyu beef cubes in black pepper. the cubes were nicely done, tad a bit overcooked for me (i would’ve liked it a bit more raw). not much complaints here, simple good wagyu.

on to the mains, i ordered dan dan noodles in rich and spicy sauce. it has two chilli stars on the menu. the soup was mixed with dried prawns and peanuts. it was delicious! even c, who hates the taste of prawns loved the dish; that says a lot about it. the pork rib on the side was a nice touch but the soup was the best part of the dish.

c ordered the marbled beef with handmade spinach noodles. this dish is supposed to come with sichuan soup (three chilli stars) but she decided to play it safe and swap it for chicken soup. not much complaints, the beef was nice, but other than that the dan dan noodles i ordered was superior.

the meal was quite expensive but you do get good service in my opinion. we went on a busy night where they had a grand 50% off opening special and therefore was packed; however service was fast, and they remembered the change in the marbled beef dish’s soup.

silver spoon bistro is a nice pub located in the lakes hotel, rosebery. it was difficult to get to, not close to a train station and hence we took buses to get to and fro. once there, we sat down and ordered our dishes at the counter.

the meal started with delicious garlic bread for 2. the bread was tasty and fluffy and it was a delicious start to the meal.

i ordered the crispy chicken dim sim with sweet chilli sauce for entree. the chicken dim sim was yummy and great with the sweet chilli sauce. it was crispy as described, too. would definitely get this again if/when i return.

she ordered chorizo and chicken croquettes. the croquettes were nice and fluffy on the inside, with plenty of taste. i personally would rate the crispy chicken dim sims above the croquettes, but c disagreed with me here.

as for mains, i ordered pan seared atlantic salmon with creamy mash, beans, tomato basil salad and citrus butter. the highlight of this dish was the creamy mash, so good that c was eating the mash out of my plate! the salmon itself was reasonable, lightly salted and fried with delicious flakey meat. i didn’t really care for salmon skin myself but others might find it good. other sides like the tomatoes and beans were nice additions to a pleasant dish.

as for her main, c got a grilled scotch fillet with mushroom, peas, spinach, battered onion rings, chimichurri butter and red wine jus. c ordered hers medium and got just that: medium. there are not many places these days which get your order right when it comes to steaks and this is one of them. the onion rings on top were delicious too! unfortunately since it was so good she forgot to share the dish with me apart from one onion ring and the peas, however i was assured that it was a delicious main.

i would say the only downside to this restaurant is its distance to a train station; non-driving folks may find it hard to get there!

albee’s kitchen is the first malaysian themed restaurant to be featured on this blog which is not in malaysia! this restaurant is located near the train station in campsie which makes it convenient for patrons (the next blog post will feature a much harder to get to by public transport restaurant). albee’s also has a kingsford branch which must be new as i have never seen it in kingsford before.

anyhow we went there for dinner and it was packed. the four of us had to share tables with a mother and son group which made the experience not as great, but this is to be expected of a popular restaurant. where it got really interesting was our waitress walking off another not agreeing with our order (she didn’t come back!) but we gave the same order to another waitress and it all came out okay. there was no special orders or anything, everything we wanted was on the menu so that was odd.

we ordered the nasi lemak, a fragrant dish in which rice is cooked with coconut milk and accompanied by sambal, egg, anchovies and peanuts. it was delicious. i found the sambal to be not too spicy (but perhaps a little bit too spicy for the standard australian taste buds); peanuts and anchovies were crispy and rice was oh so good. a must-have if you go there!

the nasi lemak was accompanied by chicken satay which came with proper peanut gravy. it was good, but not authentic enough; we suspect that it may have been pan fried instead of grilled on charcoal. at $10 for 6 pieces, i would be thinking twice about reordering this.

our next dish is beef rendang. the beef was soft and tender and the sauce was great. i loved it. perhaps not as good as the ones you might get in malaysia, but it comes pretty close.

and finally our last dish was a nam yu pork rib, which are deep fried pork ribs coated in red fermented tofu sauce. i enjoyed this dish, but the others at the table did not; some noted that the meat was a bit fatty. i found that the fattiness combined with the crunch was delicious. my only problem was the bones in the dish, which made it much harder to eat!

we spent about $20 per person and got reasonably good food. i might be trying out mamak before going back to this local eatery.

alright here we are, gia vien at burwood, nsw. gia vien is a vietnamese food shop located on the bustling burwood road. despite having passed it like a million times we never once stepped in, but did so a month ago to try it out.

there were four of us so we ordered four dishes to try out. the first one was an obligatory beef pho. it came accompanied by bean shoots and was garnished with shallots. it was delicious! i read somewhere that authentic pho never comes with bean shoots, but imho they should…

the second dish is a salad dish. now i forget exactly the name of the dish, and there’s no menu online so bear with me while i describe this. it came with some beef, shallots, nuts, carrots, mint, salad leaves and most importantly, spring rolls. we poured the accompanying sauce over the dish before trying it. the result? it was tasty; however, eat the spring rolls as soon as possible because we ended up with soggy spring rolls.

the third dish was a seafood chow mein (once again i am not sure of the exact dish name on the menu). this dish came with crispy fried noodles topped with seafood and delicious gravy. we however found the amount of noodles lacking, and there was barely enough noodles to share amongst the four of us!

the last dish was a roast chicken dish. there wasn’t anything terribly exciting about this dish, it was great but i think the seafood fried noodles and the salad overshadowed it. that being said, i would still order this again, but if i have space after having the other two dishes.

we will be back.

hi all! today’s post is on some pretty exotic food from nepal. well honestly nepalese food is quite common here in sydney, but we hardly ever have nepalese. this place is the muglan, located in surry hills. the muglan has 3 branches, with the other 2 in granville and near hyde park. this particular one is located about 15 minutes walk from central station which is pretty convenient.

the restaurant was dimly lit, and had books about nepal that you can read while you wait for your food. we took a quick look at the books and then decided that we were too tired to read.

dinner started with complimentary papadums with yoghurt sauce. the papadum was nice and crunchy, and c ate half of mine because i was too busy fiddling with the camera.

and here the fun begins! we ordered chilli chicken momo, which according to their menu is “steam dumplings fried with chilli sauce”. the texture of the skin was delicious and the meat was tasty. i really liked the slightly spicy chilli sauce on the momo and i think that set it apart from the chinese and japanese dumplings we are so used to.

the other entree we got was the mixed vegetable platter which came with 1 samosa, 2 pakoda and 1 tiki. there’s nothing to fault on this dish; i think the highlight is the pakoda which was nice and crunchy.

now on to the mains. c loves her cheese and ordered a vegetarian paneer butter masala. what can i say about this; it was absolutely delicious, and was definitely the best dish of the night for me. the gravy was just so good that i can have it with rice without the cheese. i say this is a must have if you ever visit here.

i took the liberty to order our second main which was exoticly named adhikhola ko macchatarkari, which was essentially fish cubes in himalayan sauce and tangy herbs. after the amazing paneer butter masala above i felt like the fish was a bit of a let down. it may have been the tangy herbs; i think i preferred the butter taste in the masala. it was still delicious though, and i would still happily taken down containers of this stuff.

and here’s just a photo of basmati rice to round off the mains.

for desert we both ordered kulfis. c got herself a pistachio kulfi and i got a mango kulfi. i didn’t try the pistachio, but didn’t like the mango. i am not sure if the kulfi was just not good or i do not like kulfis in general; it has a funny taste.

would i recommend this place? hell yeah. make sure you grab the paneer butter masala and the chilli momo. i would probably pass on the kulfi, but maybe that’s just me.

a few days ago, we went to try the restaurant at the flynn, a busy pub located near wynyard, lil’ damita. according to their website, their menu is french-vietnamese inspired but i would say it’s more modern australian.

we were there on a deal which includes a drink, an entree and a main. the four of us (yes! it’s not just the two of us this time) ordered beef carpaccio, sichuan style salt and pepper squid, twice cooked polenta fries and roast baby beetroot with buffalo mozzarella. the entrees were amazing, a great start to a meal!

i don’t normally eat raw beef but the beef was really soft and had amazing creamy aioli with truffle oil. the beef carpaccio was a favourite amongst us. the sichuan style sat and pepper squid was good, according to t. i enjoyed the beetroot and mozzarella dish but thought presentation wise, it could have been better. last but not least of the entrees was my favourite, the polenta fries. i have never tried polenta before, let alone polenta fries. i have heard so much about so i was super excited to see it on the menu! the fries were huge and i really loved the crunchiness of them, with a smooth creamy mash on the inside. t, it was his first time trying polenta as well, thought the texture was too weird and felt like he was eating coconut for some reason…

having had enjoyable entrees, i was excited about the mains. we ordered three angus beef steaks and one riverina lamb rump. we all ordered them to be cooked medium. when my main arrived, i was a little suprised by the simplicity of the presentation. at first, it looked like there were only two onion rings on top of the steak. however, if you put the onion rings aside, there was more to it. i then went on to cutting my steak. to my disappointment, my steak was over-cooked. it was cooked almost to well-done… t and my other companion’s steak were cooked just right so i was a quite disappointed. i guess i should have sent it back to the kitchen but i didn’t want to make a scene since we did get the meal on a discount. t noticed i was disappointed and he took the liberty to swap our mains =) all in all, the steak were good if they hadn’t overcooked it. t said the lamb was pretty good, better than the beef and the potato dauphinoise that went with it was awesome!

to finish off the meal, we had wanted to try the affogato and sticky date pudding but their coffee machine broke. we decided to just head off to noggi for some froyo! the flynn was a nice place to have dinner, providing they don’t over cook your steak. the atmosphere was nice but quite busy and noisy on a friday night. we would consider going back to try out other stuff they offer!

a place close to home, fuhong serves cheap but yummy food. we went there fairly recently.

we ordered 3 dishes to share. i should mention that we got complimentary soup with carrot and sweet potato which was yum. not sure if there’s a minimum limit to order before getting the soup though.

the first one is a rice noodle with beef brisket. the beef was nice and tender, and they mixed it up with broccoli and carrot and buck choy. the sauce on the rice noodle (oyster?) made it very delicious. that being said, i’m a big char koay teow fan and i think it couldn’t compete with a nice plate of ckt.

another one we ordered was salted fish and chicken fried rice. this is a standard dish which i love and fuhong did it well. love it.

the last dish we got was bbq uck and bbq pork with rice. as you can see they were fairly generous with their meat. and their meat was very juicy and nice. if only i can combine their meat with the salted fish and chicken fried rice… actually why not?

the dinner was about $30, and we barely ate half of the fried rice (finished the other 2 dishes though). i think fuhong offers great value for money, and it’s great that it’s close to home; might visit again soon!

when we went to newcastle on christmas day in 2013 we wanted to try something local. so we got off the train at the station and looked around.

newcastle was a dead city on christmas day.

the first shop that we saw was open was delicious fine foods, located at hunter street mall in newcastle. interestingly quite a few people seemed to be in the same situation as us; up and about on christmas day hunting for food. it was packed.

for christmas day, delicious fine foods operated on an extremely limited menu. a few burgers, a few chickens and coffees. the wait was very long; we waited 30 minutes for 2 burgers and chips. no sauce was served, and to get it you have to ask the kitchen for some. each burger and chips combo costed us $15. Looking at their website, it seemed that the average price was about $10, so it was much more expensive on christmas day.

was it good? it was just average. i got their thai chicken burger with chips. it was just okay. wasn’t exciting. it was also quite dry.

c got a steak burger. it was better than the chicken burger, but also nothing exciting.

it was christmas day, the place was busy, and that might have caused the decrease in the quality of the food served. on the bright side, when we boarded the bus in newcastle, it was prettily decorated with christmas decorations. ymmv, especially if you go during a non-crazy period like christmas day.

here today i will be talking about the stag, mayfield. the stag is a pub located in mayfield close to newcastle cbd. the entrance to the pub is through a carpark. upon entering we were greeted with a nice clean spacious pub with pretty decorations. there were a lot of reference to bhp mining; newcastle being a mining town in the past! the interior of the pub was great:

don’t forget to check the specials board! when we went there we’ve already decided on our meals from their online menu (handy!) but i would’ve like to have tried something from their specials board.

i ordered the 400g certified angus rump medium cooked with vegetables and idaho potato. the steak was way too tough despite being ordered medium cooked; it was simply almost cooked through! the sides were really tough. tiny portions at the middle were nice and pick but that’s about it. the vegetables were ordinary, some beans and brocolli. however, the idaho potato was great. it’s cooked with its skin on and was warm and fluffy. i would order the potato by itself. the price was a too expensive for what i got: $24.50!

a friend of mine ordered the twice cooked pork belly @ $25.80. now this was superb. the pork belly was soft on the inside and  crunchy on the outside. it was very tasty! the grilled prawn was delicious as well. the chilli on top was nice and sweet. overall a winner, and represents way better value than my angus rump.

the prices for the pub are quite high; think $15 to $30 dollars. i would go if i am in the area again, but wouldn’t go out of my way to visit.