restaurant

Baba House (closed) : Hainanese chicken rice and more

, , , , , ,

My parents used to work a lot – they would regularly work 12+ hour days. The exception to these long days was Sunday, when the shop didn’t open until 3-4pm (depending on how my dad felt). On Sundays we usually went out as a family for lunch.

It was during these Sunday lunches that my Bro and I were introduced to Hainanese chicken rice – white chicken served with rice that has been cooked in chicken stock. We always had it from a stall at Wakefield Market foodcourt (in Wellington). The rice from this small stall was heavily impregnated with the flavour of chicken – it was very oily and fatty. Eaten with the silky cold chicken, it was a real treat, but fortunately for our arteries we only ate it occasionally!

Hainanese Chicken rice

This version from Baba House ($8.50) was not as oily or fatty as the dish I remember from Wakefield Market but still tasty. The only downside was the MSG thirst that persisted for several hours!

Baba House is our “outside kitchen” – that is, when I can’t be bothered cooking, Alastair heads there to pick up dinner.

Char Kway Teow

I’m always on the look out for a good char/fried kway teow as it’s on my (rather long) list of favourite things to eat. Baba House do an acceptable version ($9.20) with well seasoned wok fried flat rice noodles, prawns, fish cake, dried mussels, calamari, egg, crunchy bean sprouts and a hint of chilli. Personally, I like more chilli and would love that hint of chilli to be upped, but that’s a personal preference.

I should also say that the last time I had this from Baba House it gave me an MSG thirst like the chicken rice did. It seems that only recently there has been an excess MSG problem. I’ll have to remember to ask for no MSG for future visits.

(By the way: If you know of a place that does an outstanding char kway teow, please let me know!)

Nasi lemak

I have saved my favourite Baba House dish (and unfortunately, the worst photo) for last. Although it looks a bit like poop in a bowl in my photo, I can assure you that the Nasi Lemak ($9.20) is good! There’s so much to love about nasi lemak. Coconut rice. Tick. Dried anchovies. Tick. Sweet/sour crunchy pickles. Tick. Spicy, tender beef rendang (there’s also chicken or lamb if you prefer). Tick. Crunchy peanuts. Tick. Hard boiled eggs. Tick. Fortunately, there was no MSG thirst when I ate this one. :p

Alastair has the laksa 90% of the time ($9.20). The soup is fragrant, spicy and creamy and it’s chocka with noodles, chicken, fishcake, beans, eggplant and fried tofu. He loves his laksa and says that it’s better than Laksa King.

Baba House – so much food to love. What a great outside kitchen to have!

Baba House
34 Errol St, North Melbourne
Phone: 9329 1762

Soul Mama (closed)

, , , , , ,

Soul mama

Last year, Alastair got the opportunity to go to Mumbai for business. While there, he was kindly shown around by a couple of his colleagues in the Mumbai office. This weekend, he finally had a chance to return the favour, when two of those colleagues came over for a visit.

On Sunday we took them on a little tour of Melbourne, and after a lot of walking and tram riding, we decided to have a late lunch. As both his colleagues are vegetarian, we opted for Soul Mama.

I’ve heard plenty about Soul Mama but had never been there before. I suppose that’s why I was surprised by the buffet and bain marie arrangement! The way it works is that you choose your desired size bowl or plate, and that gives you a certain number of choices from the buffet.

We all choose the medium bowl, which was $15.50 for rice and 4 choices from the buffet. I’m glad we didn’t go any larger, as the medium bowl was very filling.

I choose saffron rice (you could also have jasmine or brown rice) with a tempeh and vegetable curry (front right), some kind of pasta (front left), tandoori vegetables (back left) and a vegetable and pesto gratin (back right). I was starting to get choice overload looking at all the options, so my brain was too busy to take note of the exact names of the dishes!

The pasta and the gratin were pretty good. The pasta had a lovely creamy sauce, and the gratin was delicious and also creamy. Most disappointing in my selection was the tandoori vegetables. There was no tandoori flavour AT ALL. It was basically plain vegetables, with minimal seasoning. I also wasn’t impressed with the curry. There was a strange edge to it – I didn’t like the flavour much.

All in all – the food was okay. Not bad, just okay. If you’re after a place with interesting food that might convert a meat eater to a vegetarian lifestyle (or even just convince them that vegetarian food can be really tasty) then Soul Mama isn’t up to the job. But if all you’re after is a filling vegetarian meal with average food but a gorgeous view, Soul Mama is perfect!

Soul Mama
St Kilda Sea Baths
10 Jacka Boulevard
St Kilda
Ph: 9525 3338

60 years of marriage

, , , , ,

Cake

My grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in the weekend. A banquet was held at Grand Park Chinese Seafood Restaurant in Auckland. I stole one of the menus that was displayed on each table, and if any of the dish names seem a bit weird, well, I copied them directly from the menu.

Grand Pork BBQ and Suckling Pig Mixed Platter

First dish out was Grand Pork BBQ and Suckling Pig Mixed Platter.

Jellyfish

Jellyfish was part of the platter. I love jellyfish. It doesn’t have much flavour, apart from the sauce that it is generally dressed in (normally sesame oil, soy sauce and sometimes chilli), but the texture is great. It’s crunchy but soft.

Pork

The pork crackling was very crispy. I love crunching through the skin to be met with the fat underneath. Mhmm. Next to the pork on this plate is some roast beef.

Stirred Scallop with Macadamia Nuts

Next was Stirred Scallop with Macadamia Nuts. There was no skimping on the nuts in this dish. Truthfully, I found them a bit weird. I like macadamia nuts, I just wasn’t sure about them stir fried with scallops and vegetables. The crispy noodle nests were good fun though. They tasted just like uncooked 2 minute noodles!

Deep Fried Golden Prawn Balls

These were the Deep Fried Golden Prawn Balls. It’s hard to go wrong with deep fried food, but they could’ve used a bit more oomph. More seasoning, or some spices perhaps.

Soup

Next we had a bowl of Shark Fin Soup with Shredded Chicken. The red stuff is vinegar. Shark fin itself doesn’t have much taste – like jellyfish it’s about the texture. This soup was a disappointment as there wasn’t much flavour.

Lobster

After the soup came the Lobster in Superior Sauce (I don’t know what made the sauce so superior!). This was a large lobster – and there was one for each table! My Bro ate half of it by himself as he was the only one willing to get messy and crack the legs.

White chicken

This dish was Steamed Marinated Chicken, eaten with a dipping sauce of oil, ginger and spring onion. Hoorah for the chicken head!

Steamed fish

The Steamed Live Blue Cod Fish was U-G-L-Y. Not sure what they meant by “live” but the flesh was soft and delicious. There’s a word in Cantonese that is used to describe the texture of food – the closest translation I can think of is silky. The fish was silky.

By the way, if you ever get presented with a fish like this, try eating the flesh from the cheeks. It’s very soft and delicate. Since no one else on the table looked interested, I ate one cheek and gave the other to Alastair.

Fish Maw and Chinese Mushroom

The Fish Maw and Chinese Mushrooms on seasonal vegetables was interesting. The abalone (paua!) in the middle was thinly sliced but slightly chewy. It had a stronger flavour than I normally associate with abalone. The interesting part about this dish was the fish maw (it’s the whitish stuff you can see). Fish maw is the gas bladder that helps fish control buoyancy. When eating it I was struck by the gelatinous texture and then the fattiness. It didn’t taste fishy at all – just fatty. Really fatty. Ick.

Two further dishes came out before cake and dessert. The last two dishes were fried rice and long life noodles. I didn’t bother taking photos of them because they were just fried rice and noodles. Everyone was so full at this stage that they were barely touched.

Read bean soup

Dessert was Red Bean soup. I wasn’t that enamoured. It needed more sugar and they used dried orange peel when cooking it. I find the dried peel too overpowering. My mum makes good red bean soup. She’s shown me how to make it, and the last time I tried, I mistook kidney beans for red beans (I don’t know where my head was at – they’re completely different!). I think I ended up making a big pot of chilli instead.

Long Life Buns.

And finally, we were served Long Life Buns. These steamed buns are shaped and tinted like a peach.

Long Life Buns inside

Inside the soft buns was lotus paste and salted egg yolk. Love the contrast of the salty egg yolk with the sweet lotus paste. I didn’t think I could eat any more but I managed two because they were delicious.

It was such a pleasure to be there while my grandparents celebrated their years of marriage. Maybe one day Alastair and I will celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary (if we’re long lived enough!). What a lovely thought.

Grand Park Chinese Seafood Restaurant
Cnr Manukau Road & Greenlane East, Alexandra Raceway (Gate B)
Epsom, Auckland

Phone: + 64 9 638 6998

Auckland: Sunshine Chinese Restaurant

, , , , ,

Somewhere between Auckland and Melbourne I caught a cold. Right now my head is a bit fuzzy and my memory of the dinner below isn’t great…. Even the pictures haven’t jogged my recall much so apologies for the lack of details. It didn’t help that I never looked at the menu – the ordering was done by the “adults”. No matter how old you get, when you’re with family you become a kid again.

Our first night in Auckland was my Aunt Miriam’s birthday. We loaded up the van (something that can take half an hour with my family) and headed off for an early dinner at Sunshine Chinese Restaurant. A sign on the door said that it was Auckland’s best Chinese restaurant, as decided by Cuisine magazine in 2005 and 2006.

Soup

Dinner started off with a bowl of thin Chinese soup.

Soy sauce chicken

Next out was the soy sauce chicken. The flesh was slippery and tender.

Chicken Head

The chicken head was left on for presentation. Cluck cluck!

Pork spareribs in plum sauce

Pork spareribs in plum sauce.

assorted cold meats

This was assorted cold meats – roast pork, roast beef, roast duck and, my favourite of the plate, jellyfish!

Green beans and minc

Green beans and mince – this dish was rather salty, but good eaten with rice. I would’ve preferred more spiciness.

Seafood and tofu hotpot

Seafood and tofu hotpot. The hotpot was delicious – the seafood was sizzling hot and just cooked through. I also enjoyed the tofu which had soaked up lots of sauce.

Beef strips and celery

Beef strips and celery. I think that the beef had just been dipped in flour and stir fried. It looked like the beef should be crispy, but it wasn’t.

eggplant hotpot

The eggplant hotpot was probably my favourite dish of the night. The eggplant was very, very soft. My only wish was for some chili to go with it.

Birthday cake

This was my Aunt’s birthday cake. My cousin, Anthony, blew out the candle (he’s 5).

Birthday cake

The cake was okay. I dislike fake cream, so points off for that.

Sago

And finally, a bowl of sago to finish off. I love sago. It was a good ending to the evening.

Sunshine Chinese Restaurant,
39 Market Pl, Viaduct, Auckland
Phone: +64 9 302 3322

Tiba’s Lebanese Restaurant

, , , , , , ,

Tibas Lebanese Restaurant

In celebration of my Bro’s birthday in August, we took him out to dinner. Because it was a weekday, I didn’t feel like going somewhere too fancy, so I picked Tiba’s Lebanese Restaurant.

Well, it was a good thing I wasn’t looking for fancy, because Tiba’s certainly isn’t! The atmosphere was…… what’s the best word? Functional comes to mind! It was a bit like having dinner at someone’s house – someone who hadn’t decorated for a couple of decades. Still, we weren’t there for the atmosphere or interior design – we were there for food.

After perusing the menu, we decided on the set menu and chose Tiba’s House Special. I assumed that the price was per person, but it wasn’t – it was per serve. After a bit of confusion where we got the feeling that we only had ordered one House Special (we had), Alastair went to the waiter to clarify and settled on two serves of the set house special. He was told that three would probably be a bit too much for the three of us and that was good advice.

I really needed to eat – a strong coffee in the late afternoon had been churning my stomach and I was still feeling a bit nauseous. I kept being teased by the sight of food being bought out only to disappear around the corner. So when food arrived (after a couple of quick nasty photos of course) I started stuffing myself.

Because I was so focussed on eating, I don’t really remember exactly what we had… I know there was pita bread, and dips (hummus, tzatziki, & baba ganoush), dolmades, chickpeas, parsley salad (I’m still not sure if this was supposed to be tabouleh as there was no visible signs of burghul), garden salad, pickles, Lebanese pizza and falafel. While I was eating stuff individually, Alastair had the brilliant idea of sticking stuff in pita bread and wrapping it up. Just like a bought one!

Tibas Lebanese Restaurant

Then the meat came out – lamb, chicken, beef, sausage, some random meat on a stick, sitting on a bed of rice.

Tibas Lebanese Restaurant

And that rice – OH MY GOD. All the juice from the meat had soaked into the rice and it was so tasty. It was oily and meaty and delicious – I could’ve eaten a bucket of it. My only wish is that the rice had been a bit warmer. There is nothing like steaming hot rice straight from the pot or rice cooker. Mhmmmm.

It didn’t feel like I had eaten that much, but by the end of the meal we were all completely stuffed. Not that my full stomach stopped me from taking a small pack of pastries home to savour on the couch…!

Tibas Lebanese Restaurant

Tiba’s Lebanese Restaurant.
504 Sydney Rd Brunswick 3056.
Phone: (03) 9380 8425

Tibas Lebanese Restaurant on Urbanspoon

The Brasserie by Philippe Mouchel (closed)

, , , , ,

Terrine

The other Saturday, Alastair and I went on a lunch “date” to the Brasserie by Philippe Mouchel (Riverside at Crown).
When we arrived at 12.30, there were only two other tables and we were seated between them at a table by the window. Not a bad seat, but we could easily overhear the other conversations and it felt as if the tables were quite close together.

Al was in a minimal eating mood (whereas I’m always in a big eating mood!) so only I ordered an entrée. I tossed up between the Country style corn-fed chicken liver terrine, with onion jam and toasted sourdough , versus the Snails Provençale tomato fondue, garlic and parsley butter, & puff pastry before deciding on the terrine, as Al didn’t seem keen to share the snails with me.
(more…)

«< 7 8 9 10 11