Author: Ardi

Gukbab Korean Restaurant

Gukbab Korean Restaurant Review:

We came across Gukbab Korean Restaurant when we were walking down Melbourne CBD looking for a nice cup of coffee. Later that night, we decided to dine there because it was close to where we stayed. As with any other Korean restaurant, we receive free side dishes. They were just a simple kimchi and marinated onion in Gukbab. They also gave us a plate of salad with sesame sauce. However, I’m not sure whether that’s part of the side dishes or the main dish that we ordered.

There are the usual Korean dishes in the menu. Judging from the number of dishes displayed, the Korean Fried Chicken and soup were the main dishes in the restaurant. However, we did not get to try the soup this time around.

Sweet Chilli Chicken – $18

Korean Fried Chicken is usually our unanimous choice when dining in a Korean Restaurant. That’s exactly what we ordered at Gukbab. We ordered the sweet chili chicken on this occasion. They only gave pieces of chicken wings with quite a generous serving of sweet chili sauce. In addition to the chicken, we also asked for extra cheese with the chicken (for a small amount of money – I could not remember).

Their fried chickens were really nice. However, it’s unfortunate that they chose to serve only wings.

Beef Bulgogi – $16 – stir fried marinated beef and vegetables

Another classic Korean dish is our choice for the other dish on that night. Bulgogi is the name people usually mention when talking about Korean food. They gave quite a sizable portion for the bulgogi.

The final verdict for Gukbab Korean Restaurant

Gukbab is quite a nice Korean restaurant in Melbourne CBD. .

Did you know?

There are quite a lot of Korean restaurants in Little Lonsdale. Some of them are Korean BBQ restaurants.

Rating for Gukbab Korean Restaurant:

7.0 / 10

Taste: 7.0 / 10

Price: $15 – $19 main dish

Place: 7.0 / 10

Details:

Shop 1, 535 Little Lonsdale Street, CBD, Melbourne 3000

+61 3 9939 0380

Jun 28, 2017
Eat Fuh

Eat Fuh Review:

“That’s not how you spell ‘Eat Fuh‘”. That’s what my little one said the first time we visited this restaurant… Everyone burst into laughter!

We were interested in dining at Eat Fuh in Marrickville because of the gigantic stockpot that can be seen from the outside.

Their menu is quite simple with a few different noodle soups, salad noodles, and rice dishes.

Fuh Noodle Soup – $16 – bone broth cooked with star anise, cardamom, cloves cinnamon, ginger, onions, served with thick rice noodles and garnished with coriander, basil, shallot and sprouts

Obviously, when you are at Eat Fuh, you must order Pho (that’s how most Australians write it ^_^). We ordered the large one with rare beef and flank. The regular version is $2 less and you can also have the chicken option.

If you want to add more types of meat like tendons and/or tripe and/or meat balls, you will need to add an extra $1

Beef stew noodle soup – $17 – lean beef and beef shin stewed with seasonal vegetables, ginger, lemongrass, star anise, cinnamon and served with chewy rice noodles, garnished with coriander, basil, shallot and sprouts

Beef stew is the one that piqued my interest. The taste was pretty strong. However, in this cold weather, the soup really warmed me up!

Vanilla creme brulee with vanilla ice cream and strawberry – $10

They had quite a nice little theatrics when serving the creme brulee. They actually charred the brulee with blow torch in front of you!

You can have an option of Caramel or coconut pandan for brulee or sticky date pudding.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVGnqPmjcMj/?taken-by=aaf_blog

The final verdict for Eat Fuh

Big portion and hot soup are the perfect combination for this cold winter days. Eat Fuh delivered a nice dining experience.

Did you know?

I’m not sure whether it’s substantiated or not, but one comment on Zomato mentioned about the use of MSG in their soup at Eat Fuh. MSG has no adverse impacts on me, but if you do have the allergies, I guess you need to stay away from it (or ask not to have msg, if possible?)

Rating for Eat Fuh:

7.0 / 10

Taste: 7.0 / 10

Price: $14 – $17 per portion

Place: 8.5 / 10

Details:

274 Illawarra Road, Marrickville 2204, Sydney

+61 2 8385 3459

Eat Fuh on Facebook

Jun 23, 2017
Remboelan

Remboelan Review:

This week’s post is from our trip to Indonesia earlier this year. It is an Indonesian restaurant in Jakarta called Remboelan. We went to the one in Plaza Senayan. The venue is a bit tricky to reach and there are no elevators going up to its level. So, it is quite a battle if you have your grandparents or disabled person dining with you. Also, given that it is located in one of the best malls in Jakarta, you could expect hefty price tags (by Indonesian standards).

The menu is like the who’s who list of famous food around the country. They have a lot of different kinds of food. You might want to take your time browsing through them. On this occasion, we went with a gazillion of people ordering gazillion of food. So, I might not be talking about each of them individually as this post would look more like an essay.

Hors d’oeuvre
In Indonesia, the appetizers look more like desserts than savoury dishes. Remboelan can do this assortment of snacks, or locally known as ‘jajan pasar‘, served before all guests arrive.

Soup

We ordered two soups from Central Java: asem-asem iga and tongseng sapi. They were both beef soup. I wasn’t really paying attention to them.

Asem-asem iga Putri Solo – 79k – Sour Beef Ribs Soup

Tongseng Sapi Telaga Sarangan – 60k – Curry-like beef soup

Meat

The strength of Indonesian food is in the meat and fish departments. Beef Balado from Padang and Javanese Beef Steak (known as Selat) from Solo are probably two of the most prominent dishes in Indonesia.

Balado is pretty spicy, so please make sure you are well equipped to eat it!

Balado Dendeng Hijau Padang Panjang – 65k – Dried beef with spicy balado sauce

Bistik sapi Jawa (Selat Solo) – 68k – Javanese beef steak

Ayam Krispi Saus Mangga Muda Midodari – 58k – Crispy Chicken with young mango sauce

Fish

Indonesians (read: my family) love grilled fish. We are blessed with overabundance of fish in the region. On this occasion, we chose gourami and snapper. The snapper had a spicy flavour native to the Eastern part of Indonesia, Manado.

Ikan Gurami bumbu kemiri – 95k – Grilled Gourami

Kakap utuh Woku Belanga Bunaken – 225k – Spicy Snapper

Kakap utuh Woku Belanga Bunaken – 225k

Vegetables and Noodles

These two vegetables, along with eggplant, are probably three of the most ordered by us. In addition to that, we love our noodles too!

Kangkung Bumbu Terasi – 42k – Water spinach with shrimp paste

Cah Taoge Jambal – 42k – stir-fried bean sprouts

Mie Goreng Remboelan – 43k – Remboelan Noodles

Drinks

Indonesians usually drink black coffee. Drinking with condensed milk, a la Vietnamese coffee, is probably the only other way.

Kopi Tubruk – Black coffee

Es Delima Larasati – 33k

The final verdict for Remboelan

I know the price seems to be quite excessive by Indonesian standards. However, Remboelan presented a collection of wonderful dishes that you would otherwise need to travel 1,000 kms for them.

Did you know?

Similar to other well-known restaurants, Remboelan has plenty branches all over Jakarta. They are mostly located in high-end malls.

Rating for Remboelan:

8.0 / 10

Taste: 7.5 / 10

Price: Rp 40k – Rp 225k ~ $4 – $20

Place: 8.5 / 10

Details:

Plaza Senayan, Lantai 4, Jl. Asia Afrika No 8, Jakarta

+62 21 5725088

www.remboelan.com

Jun 20, 2017
Good Feeling Thai

Good Feeling Thai Restaurant Review:

Good Feeling Thai restaurant is one of the newest restaurants in the Inner West, Sydney. It is located in the Dulwich Hill shopping area. They have a few of the usual dishes you see in a typical Thai restaurant. They also have a few interesting ones. We did not get to try many dishes on this occasion.

Gang Phed Pad Yang – $18.90 – Grilled roasted duck in curry and vegetables

I love eating duck. When visiting a new restaurant, duck is the ingredient that I would try to find first. I’m not quite sure about grilled roast duck as the menu stated. To me, it looks just like a roast duck. It was quite a sweet and savoury curry.

Pad Thai Pu Nim – $18.90 – Special pad thai with egg net and soft shell crab

Pad Thai is probably the most well-known Thai dish in Sydney. It is so famous that you could even find pad thai in a non-Thai restaurant!

Good Feeling Thai tweaked the recipe a bit. Instead of serving the usual rice noodles with something, they put this elaborate display. They introduced soft shell crab to complement the dish with its crunch and savoury flavour. They also blanketed the pad thai with egg net. The Good Feeling’s Pad Thai was very nice.

Fresh Coconut Juice – $6.00

I guess they could say it is just a fresh coconut. I love coconut when you can still scrape its inner wall and enjoy the fruit!

The final verdict for Good Feeling Thai Restaurant

Good Feeling Thai Restaurant is a restaurant worth coming back to. Their price was quite decent for the area and they have nice duck and pad thai dishes.

Did you know?
Good Feeling Thai restaurant serves halal food. There are not too many halal options in Inner West. This part of Inner West is actually more known for the Vietnamese restaurants.

Rating for Good Feeling Thai Restaurant:

7.5 / 10

Taste: 7.5 / 10

Price: $14.50 – $19 per main dish

Place: 7.5 / 10

Details:

Shop 1 / 362 – 372 New Canterbury Road, Dulwich Hill

+61 2 9518 3185

Jun 15, 2017
Kreta Ayer – Ashfield

Kreta Ayer – Ashfield Review:

I have to warn you in advance that the restaurant that we review this week, Kreta Ayer, only accepts cash. It is quite troublesome especially when most of their dishes are in excess of $15. Some of the prices are even marked as “market price”, like those mud crabs. The closest ATM is the Ashfield shopping centre.

Their menu is quite similar to high end Chinese restaurants in CBD with the likes of Moreton Bay bug and coral trout on offer. Being a Singaporean/Malaysian restaurant, they have a different way to cook the dishes. If you are looking for the authentic Singaporean dish, you need to choose their Singapore Chilli, Black Pepper or Salted Egg.

Boneless Hainanese Chicken – $15.8

Hainanese chicken is one of the parameters of a good Singaporean restaurant for me. It goes without saying that when ordering this you really need to order chicken rice as well.

Crispy Noodles with seafood – $13.8

Our family loves eating crispy noodles. Kreta Ayer’s crispy noodles has quite a lot of seafood in the dish. I guess you can see it yourself below.

Being warm and soupy, this dish is a nice dish to have in winter.

Cereal Prawn – $24.8 – Deep fried prawn with sweet cereal

I call this double crunchy prawn. When you coat deep fried prawn with fried cereal, you get this super crunchy prawn. It is so crunchy that you can eat pretty much everything.

The final verdict for Kreta Ayer – Ashfield

Kreta Ayer in Ashfield is a decent Singaporean/Malaysian with premium price. The cash payment method is also a pain to deal with. If they can accept other payment methods, I might be inclined to try their Singapore Chilli Mud Crab.

Did you know?

They have quite a decent package for lunch on weekdays. For the same price, you get a selection of dishes, but you also receive complimentary selection of iced teas.

As you can see from the picture below the lunch special crispy noodles with seafood is actually the same size as its dinner counterpart.

Rating for Kreta Ayer – Ashfield:

6.5 / 10

Taste: 7.0 / 10

Price: $20 per person

Place: 7.0 / 10

Details:

339 Liverpool Road, Ashfield 2131

+61 2 9797 8688

http://www.kretaayer.com.au/

Jun 7, 2017
The Palace Tea Room

The Palace Tea Room Review:

We went to The Palace Tea Room for the Mother’s Day brunch. Given that we could get in without even booking the place was a plus in my book. Unfortunately, there was a little ‘drama’ where our food was delivered extremely late due to clerical errors. However, they were quite apologetic about it and removed the drink bill off our total amount. Not bad!

Let’s talk about the food itself. Being in the historical Queen Victoria Building at the heart of Sydney, you would expect a sizable price point for the restaurant. Browsing through the menu, the price was actually quite acceptable.

Salmon & grilled vegetable salad with avocado, beetroot & feta, horseradish cream – $26

I ordered this for my main dish. However it ended up being taken over by my wife because her dish was unavailable (I think they ran out of pappardelle). She enjoyed everything about the dish.

Wagyu Beef Burger (tomato, lettuce, pickles, gruyere, bacon, onion, fried egg) with fries – $25.5

We had wagyu beef burger as a replacement. While I was still having the burger, the little one actually wanted to eat the fries. To his defence, the fries were pretty good. There was nothing special about the burger.

Buttermilk and blueberry pancakes, caramelised banana, honey butter and maple syrup – $17

The pancakes were very fluffy. It was probably a tad too big for a six-year-old kid.

Devonshire Tea – two scones, tea or coffee – $18

The devonshire tea is why we are eating here in the first place. We ordered two types of tea: Rose Floral and Cherry Blossom Tea. They were very nice. I didn’t eat too much of the scones (because I had to finish the pancakes).

The final verdict for The Palace Tea Room

A big plus for the palace tea room was availability during Mother’s Day and also how they handled crisis.

Did you know?
There are quite a lot of tea on offer at the Palace Tea Room. You could also purchase them to enjoy at home.

Rating for The Palace Tea Room:

7.0 / 10

Taste: 7.0 / 10

Price: $25 – $35 per person

Place: 7.0 / 10

Details:

Shop L1 20 – 22, Queen Victoria Building, Sydney

+61 2 9283 2222

http://www.thepalacetearoom.com.au/

May 31, 2017