For starters, I had the Meat Anitpasti Plank; beef ‘bresaola’, tuscan fennel salami, pistachio mortadella and san daniele prosciutto served on a giant plank of wood.  All very delicious!

Meat Antipasti Plank

So far so good, next up the mains!  I chose to have the Good Old Grilled Steak which was an 8oz Sirloin that I chose to have medium rare, with mushroom sauce and dressed watercress.  The steak was nice, a little more chewy than I expected (with a few bits of tendon - not so much that I had to spit some out though which is always good).  As the name seemed to suggested, it was a good piece of steak - cooked simply - which is how I’ve always liked my steaks.

Good Old Grilled Steak

Finally, onto dessert… for this I had the Chocolate Brownie.  This brownie included some banana too which served to counter the richness of the brownie.  Very nice.

Chocolate Brownie

Overall, for first “celebrity chef” experience in the UK (even though the celebrity chef in question doesn’t cook there, as per usual) has been very positive.  The produce tasted fresh and was not over-prepared.  Dessert was probably the highlight for me.  They also gave away free Christmas pudding to every guest - a great gesture.  Jamie’s Italian defintely gets the thumbs up from me!

I was very happy to be able to satisfy my cravings for these snacks I can’t find in Australia (or you can find them but they just don’t compare). Martabak is one of them. We have sweet and savoury martabaks. Malaysians have them too. They call them murtabak. The sweet varieties are basically round pancakes with thin crispy outer edges folded in half filled with toppings of your choice. Popular filings are chocolate, chocolate peanuts, chocolate cheese and cheese with sweetened condensed milk. They come in original and thin crispy variety. They’re so deliciously sinful =)

Half-half martabak (sweet cheese and choc nuts)

Original Choc nuts martabak

Thin crispy martabak

Savoury martabaks are made with eggs and minced meat and eaten with sweet and sour sauce with pickled cucumbers and carrots. They’re called martabak telur.

Martabak telur

Gorengan is also one of my favourites. Translated it means “fried stuff”. Street food. The usuals are banana fritters, fried tofu, fried tofu with vege and noodles fillings, fried tempe, fried cassava and fried sweet potatoes. They are everywhere. Mostly found outside schools or they do rounds around the residential areas.

Abang gorengan = gorengan man

Banana fritters and sweet red bean sesame balls

We call our “cakes” kue (similar to Malaysian’s kuih). The one on the left is kue pukis and the one on the right is kue lapis (layered cake). If you’ve tried malaysian cakes kue lapis taste similar to them - with the mung bean flour consistency with coconut milk and pandan flavours. Bought these in the markets. They’re so good - much better than the ones you get in Sydney.

The last few I will show you are typical snacks you find at night at street hawker tents/stalls. Usually each stall specialises in something. One with all the ice desserts - es teler (avocado, jackfruit, coconut), es alpukat (avocado juice with sweetened condensed milk and moccha syrup), es kelapa (young coconut), es kelapa puan (a different type of coconut, it’s soft with flaky and creamy texture), etc. All served with shaved ice and sweetened condensed milk.

Es teler

Another would have all the grilled snacks such as roti bakar (toast with chocolate flakes and sweetened condensed milk - maybe cheese), pisang bakar (grilled bananas with same toppings).

Grilled bananas

This one is also a favourite of mine - fried tofu with sweet sour syrup (spicy!) and acar (pickles).

Abang gorengan = gorengan man

Those were some of the many many wonderful yummy snacks you can find in Indo. As you can see, we have some combos people might find weird - cheese and chocolate, sweet avocado, cheese and condensed milk. But you should give them a go first before making any judgements!

One look at the place and I realised I was silly for thinking I’ll just have some congee. This place was no foodstar. It was, quite literally, the largest buffet I’ve ever seen in my life. There were 700 different food selections, the restaurant seats up to 1000 people, and it took me 10 minutes of walking around each time I went up to get some food. The selection was so huge the place was laid out like a street of food stalls of different cuisines around the world. The cuisines included: French, Thai, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Mexican, and Chinese. You could even order the delicacies from each cuisine, such as escargot for the French, the hot pot beef ramen from the Taiwanese, grilled eel from the Japanese and even steamed fish, abalone and shark fin soup from the Chinese stall, all included in the buffet. For the drinks, beer was included as well as 8 different types of freshly squeezed juices and about 16 different types of tea – and they are actual tea leaves, including western herbal teas like lavender and rose tea, not the lipton teabags.

Now for the food quality – after getting over the initial amazement of the huge selection, I was somewhat let down by the mediocre quality of the actual food. It would appear that Golden Jaguar has fallen into a common trap for buffets – focusing all on quantity, and not as much on quality. The escargot and French onion soup were not bad and the Japanese tempuras were crispy with fresh prawns, and the Taiwanese hot pot ramen was tasty and quite authentic. However, the grilled fishes were dry, the Cantonese dishes were all of food court quality, and I prefer not to think about the huge amount of MSG and corn flour poured into the Shark Fin soup. The freshly squeeze juices were great (you can’t really ruin fruit juice) and just what the doc ordered for my sore throat, but desserts – both Asian and Western styled – looked better than they tasted. I suppose I can’t possibly expect authentic crème brulee from a buffet place in China but I thought the chinese sweet dumplings (lor mai chee) and egg custards could’ve been better. The only decent desserts I had amongst the ones I tried (admittedly I couldn’t try them all, just like the mains) were the coconut jelly and mango pudding — the type of food you can’t really stuff up.

But all in all, for a buffet meal in a decent restaurant that costed only about $35 AUD, I was probably being too demanding. They even had a band with a cute chick singing. Definitely worth visiting at least once, if only for the experience.

inside the store

Gourmet cupcakes! Soft, fluffy, light-as-air sponge with creamy icings. But what I like most about them is they’re not too sweet. I love staring at the window display cos they’re so pretty! They have about 10 different types of cupcakes with various sponges and icing selections for $3.50 each.

From top left (clockwise) …

• Chocolate cupcakes with caramel icing
• Vanilla cupcakes
• Chocolate oreo cupcakes
• Lemon meringue cupcakes (my fave)

I think the vanilla ones are better They have strawberry ones as well.

Jimbaran is one of the “nicer” Indonesian restaurants in Sydney, apart from Ubud and Ratu Sari. All the other Indonesian restaurants around Kingsford, Randwick, Maroubra have very authentic good food, but no ambience as they’re targeted for students, not a place to have a date or dinner where you can have a nice long talk. Ever since it received good reviews from SMH, I found it very difficult to make a booking at this place. So I was surprised to find that it wasn’t packed with customer when we came. Perhaps because it was a lunchtime.

Jimbaran has a nice courtyard, but we sat inside. Ordered only two dishes because we were very full from breakfast. Bandeng duri lunak (bandeng is a type of fish, cooked for a long time so that the bones are soft and edible) was fried and served with chilli sweet soy sauce. I loved this because you can’t find this dish easily in other restaurants. Fish was tender, flavoursome and fried to perfection. You gotta eat the fish with the sauce.

Ayam kalasan was sweet deboned chicken, cooked in a pressure cooker so the flesh was very tender. Very tasty.

And of course we made room for dessert! They were so cheap, $3.90 each. We had cendol and bubur ketan hitam. Cendol is the little droplets of green “jellies” made from pandan, served cold with palm sugar syrup and coconut milk. Bubur Ketan Hitam (black sticky rice) was served warm with coconut milk. Cendol was very yummy, very well done. Bubur ketan hitam was a bit too sweet.

Overall… I was very happy with this restaurant. Haven’t been since a few years back before they became popular. Food was still very good and didn’t disappoint. Quite affordable too, our dishes were around $14-15 each (maybe a little bit expensive compared to the other cheaper Indonesian restaurants, but still good value for what you get).

Just came back from lunch here. Completely stuffed for $15 pp. A bit of history about this place - SinMa is short for “Singapore Malaysia”, so this is a good place to try Singaporean/Malaysian dishes, the “Mamak” dishes (Malaysian-Muslim) and Nyonya dishes (Chinese-Malaysian). SinMa has been around Kingsford for a few years, which is a good sign considering the high turnover of restaurants in this area. You have to be very good and competitive to survive here.

Decor is not great - very basic with tables covered in plastic. Menu is long and extensive, providing a good variety of hawker-style dishes as well as other dishes like Singaporean Chilli Crab. Service could be a lot friendlier, but what they lack in service and ambience was made up by the food. You order and pay at the counter and sit down to wait for your food. They also have a glass counter where you can order 3 dishes+rice for $8.20. We ordered …

• Curry puffs ($1.50 each) which were very good - fresh, crisp, very yummy spicy curry fillings.
• Rice with 3 choices of dish (pork stew in sweet soy sauce and star anise, curry and sambal chicken) - recommend the pork stew
• Mamak nasi goreng (approx $9) - very tasty, not too oily and the best dish out of all
• Singaporean fried bee hoon (approx $9) - fried rice noodle, not as good as the nasi goreng but quite good
• Ikan bakar - grilled stingray with sambal, a bit too salty and fish was a bit tough
• Sambal baby octopus ($15) - on the specials board. This dish is different to the other sambal dishes I’ve tried. I was expecting sweet sambal sauce, but this was very salty and oily. Octopus was chewy, disappointing.
• Fried turnip cake - Turnip cake with beansprouts, egg and prawns. Very tasty.
• Ice kacang ($4.80) - My friend said it was a tad too sweet. Otherwise pretty good, better than the one at QVB she said.

The point is .. go for the single dishes like nasi goreng, mee goreng, char kway tiao etc. Overall all the dishes were nice except for the sambal baby octopus. A Malaysian friend of mine frequents this place every time she comes to Sydney. She recommends the nasi lemak, curry laksa, Loh Mee, prawn mee, hokkien mee, fried turnip cake and chilli crab. Definitely worth trying

I was sooo excited when I found this cafe in Bangkok. I first heard about Lenotre from one of the food blogs about high tea. Lenotre is a famous French culinary school whose certification is highly regarded in pastries/desserts. Read more about it here.

This cafe is one of the many shops in the gourmet hall on Siam Paragon, a very posh mall in Bangkok. Everything looked soo delicious.

Brulees, pannacottas, eclairs, tiramisus, tarts…

And look a mountain of macaroons!!

I was contemplating between macaroon pannacota or Emeralda, but chose the latter, a fruity sponge cake with mousse, jelly, strawberries and lots of cream. I didn’t take pictures but it was quite good! Prices were a little expensive for Bangkok but still around AUD5 per dessert. Wish they have this in Sydney

We found Thanh Binh from one of the recommendations on www.virtualtourist.com. A cheap, good, no-frills restaurant frequented by lots of locals. This place was tucked in behind Ben Thanh Market in District 1, HCMC. Lots and lots of items on the menu. Lucky they had a picture menu seeing that we are not Vietnamese.

I had a hard time deciding what to order but I settled with a rice cake dish I saw someone ordered.

The rice cakes were made from different flours I think. Different textures with different fillings. Pork, shrimps, sprinkled with fried pork fat and soaked in sweet chilli/fish sauce mixture that comes with most Vietnamese dishes. It was very different but very good.

Mel had crab spring rolls with vermicelli. Yum!! She loved it. Let the picture does the talking.

We were so happy with the dishes we went there again the next day for lunch. I ordered tamarind prawns. It came out within minutes (all the dishes came out really quickly!) and was very fresh. The prawns were succulent and sweet. Sauce was sweet and a little spicy and went very well with the coriander and shrimps. By the way prawns are always called shrimps in Vietnam.

We were curious with the desserts they put on our table, so we decided to try one. We chose the little green cake and it turned out to be very good! It had consistency like mochi with sweet shredded coconut fillings. Hmmm

Service was quick, food was excellent and very cheap (the prawns cost around AUD5, most other dishes cost around AUD2).

Address: Le Thanh Tonh 136/25, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

First dish I tried was the Peking Duck - I’ve grown up with Peking Duck, and it’s one of those dishes that I use as a benchmark when comparing chinese restaurants. The duck itself was quite good - if a little tough (probably a little too “meaty” for my taste), the sauce and pancakes were done well, with the pancakes having a good texture.

The Staff served the Peking duck - you get 6 pancakes/serving

Closer look at the Peking Duck

After the duck it was on to the main dishes. We tried several dishes, scallops in XO sauce was done well, though they could have been a little more generous with the number of scallops (it’s chinese restaurant with no tablecloth, not Flower Drum).

Scallops in XO Sauce

The battered king prawns with five spices was nice. The prawns were fresh (very important) and the batter was not too oily. For a non-spicy eater like myself, the amount of flavour was just right - though the spciy food fans I was eating with found it a little bland.

King Prawns in Spicy Salt

There were other dishes on the night, all solid but forgetable (nothing to blog about). Dessert was interesting, I had “tong yuen” with sweet pear soup. It’s always rare to find “tong yuen” served anywhere in Australia, and they did a decent job of it.

Tong Yuen with Sweet Pear Soup

Overall, I Ginseng is definitely one of the better chinese restaurants in Canberra, but is it the best? I’ll have to defer my judgement for now until I get the chance to try more places but it’s definitely up there.

Location:

Ginseng Restaurant, Manuka

The Food:

A group of 8, we ordered the shoya degustation which included 8 courses of modern japanese food. Highlights included sea-urchin and egg topped with salmon roe, sashimi served in a bowl of ice, wagyu beef tataki cones and scallops wrapped in salmon topped with salmon roe.

Not only was the food delicious, but well presented as well. A great example of this was the fresh sashimi served in a bowl made out of ice. See pictures below:

Sea Urchin & Egg topped with Salmon Roe

Fresh Sashimi served in a bowl made of ice! (looks like a goldfish in a bowl from a distance)

Scallop wrapped in Salmon topped with Salmon Roe

The Drinks:

Along with the food, Shoya has an extensive Sake list, with dozens to choose from. Being relatively new to the whole Sake, scene we asked the staff to recommend a few bottles which we had warmed. The recommened sake was good and complemented the food well.

Summary:

Overall, dinner @ Shoya was an enjoyable experience, the food was delicious and the service was professional and friendly. At $130/person (including drinks) it’s definitely a place for special occasions and best experienced with a group.

Thanks to melicious for the photos.

Shoya Japanese Restaurant - 25 Market Lane, Melbourne VIC