Author: Ardi

Maranellos

Rating:

6.5 / 10

Taste: 6.5 / 10

Price: $12 – $16 lunch

Place: 7 / 10

Review for lunch menu:

There are a few Italian restaurants, pizzeria to be exact, in Maroubra Junction. Maranellos was the clear winner from the restaurant location’s perspective since this pizza restaurant is located right at the piazza of Pacific Square shopping centre.

On this occasion, we went to Maranellos for a quick lunch. The lunch menu is divided into three categories, easily named Menu A, B, and C (each with around six dishes to choose form), that has a flat value of $12, $14, and $16 respectively.

It is only obvious that we have to try the pizza on a pizzeria. Our choice fell to Pescatore pizza ($14) with toppings of mixed seafood, fresh garlic and parsley. The pizza was quite good and had the right crunch to it.

We were quite intrigue with the name and description of the next dish, Vitello Funghi ($14) – pan seared veal with button mushrooms and parsley in a white wine sauce. I felt that the dish was pretty sour with quite a strong lemon taste and the potatoes were super hot. I actually liked how the veal was cooked as it still has that tender and juicy taste to it.

Lastly, we also ordered Spaghetti Bolognese from the kid’s menu ($10). Personally, I am not a big fan of Spaghetti bolognese, especially the classic tomato and minced beef one. However, I think that the bolognese sauce tasted just like a regular bolognese sauce.

The final verdict for Maranellos

Maranellos offered a great value for a lunch menu. However, there is really nothing sparkly about the dishes.

Did you know?

We have also tried eating in Maranellos for dinner. However, you pretty much get the same thing for around twice the price.

Details:

51/737 Anzac Parade Maroubra

02 8347 0733

http://maranellos.com.au/

Apr 1, 2014
Chilis American Grill Bar – Singapore

Rating:

6.5 / 10

Taste: 6.5 / 10

Price: S$23 – S$35 main course

Place: 7 / 10

Review:

Chilis American Grill Bar is located strategically right at the heart of Resorts World Sentosa. We went there just after a visit to Universal Studio Singapore because it was just around the corner!

I recommend you to try their Triple Dipper (S$24) as a starter. You could choose three dishes between their starter choices. It would then be placed on a share plate with three sauces of your choice. On this occasion, we chose Texas cheese poppers, Wings over Buffalo, and Southwestern eggrolls. The cheese poppers were pretty exciting with the additional pop from the jalapenos every now and then. The other two were okay.

Chili Shrimp Quesadillas (S$23) was our second dish of the day. Since it is American, they tend to use the word shrimp instead of prawn. Served with house-made pico de gallo and a side of sour cream, the quesadillas could have a little bit more time on the pan. However, the dish was presented pretty nicely.

There is a whole lot of Cs in our next dish: Crispy Honey-Chipotle Chicken Crispers (S$25). It was a spiced up version (with the addition of smoky honey-chipotle sauce) of the regular chicken crispers that came with sweet corn on the cob and homestyle fries. This dish was my personal favourite in the restaurant.

For the last dish, the name escapes me, it could have been Fajita trio (apologies for that). However, I can tell you that it is sort of a hybrid between quesadillas and fajitas with rice. They also have ribs and burgers which we didn’t try this time.

The final verdict for Chili’s American Grill Bar

Being at the heart of Resorts World Sentosa certainly enticed us to visit Chilis American Grill Bar, especially after a full day of fun at the Universal Studio Singapore. The Triple Dipper would certainly get things a bit more exciting to start with.

Details:

Resorts World Sentosa

26 Sentosa Gateway, #01 – 072-074 Singapore 098138

+65 6835-9077

http://www.chilis.sg/index.php

Mar 28, 2014
Petaling Street | Malaysian Hawker Food

Rating:

7 / 10 Taste: 7 / 10

Price: $11 – $18 main course

Place: 7 / 10

Review:

When I heard that Petaling Street opened in Kingsford, I was so happy. The first time I went to Petaling Street, I tried its Steamed Fish with Radish ($15.80). A whole fish for $15.80 (rice included) was actually quite rare in Sydney! You can actually stop reading here and just order that fish when you go there next time.

They have quite a few options to choose from and luckily I went with quite a big group once. This way, I can showcase what they have. For the entrée, we ordered Vegetarian Spring Rolls ($5.8), Roti Kosong ($6.5) – Malaysian roti with curry dipping sauce, and Chee Cheong Fun ($7.80) – a popular breakfast food that has a combination of rice noodles, fish balls with chilli and special sweet sauce. This is the essence of Malaysian Hawker Food.

If you would like a traditional Singaporean/Malaysian dish, you could always go for Hainanese Boneless Chicken Rice ($11.50) – Traditional hawker steamed chicken with chicken flavoured rice and soup. The Hainanese chicken was as expected. We also ordered another traditional Malaysian dish in Petaling Street, the Penang Fried Koay Teow ($11.50).

My favourite dish in Petaling Street (after the fish) is the Mar Mite Chicken Ribs with Rice ($11.80) – Steamed rice served with Chicken ribs in Mar Mite sauce. I tried this dish out of curiosity and it turned out to be pretty good. I love how the marmite actually gave a unique sweet dimension to the ribs. They also gave you the main dish option for $ 16.8.

You could also order Laksa or Mee Goreng ($10.80) but on this occasion, I did not really try them. Unfortunately, just like many other Asian restaurants, service was its weakest element.

The final verdict for Petaling Street: Malaysian Hawker Food

Petaling Street offers plenty of Malaysian food choices. If you can overlook the service, the food they served was actually pretty good and affordable. I love their Mar Mite Chicken Ribs, but I think most would appreciate the $15.80 whole fish more.

Details:

Shop 4, 438-448 Anzac Parade, Kingsford NSW 2032

02 9662 8880

http://www.petalingst.com.au/

Mar 18, 2014
Belly Busters

Rating:

6.5 / 10

Taste: 6.5 / 10

Price: $115 for 3.5 people

Place: 7 / 10

Review:

As someone who enjoyed food so much, just hearing this restaurant’s name is music to my ears. Belly Busters is strategically located at the heart of Surfers Paradise and you would expect with big name like this, people would be enticed to at least try it out. That was exactly what we did…

On this occasion, two of our entrée used the same ingredients, wings. They were Buffalo Wings – Chicken Wings with a spicy tomato sauce – and BBQ Wings – Chicken wings with BBQ sauce. It was quite strange to receive two deep-fried wings dishes, one with tomato and the other BBQ sauce. If they said on the description that it would be deep-fried, I wouldn’t be as disappointed because they actually tasted okay for a deep-fried chicken. However, they definitely weren’t Buffalo or BBQ Wings as advertised.

For the main, I chose Rump n’ Bug – 350 gr rump steak topped with a bug covered in creamy garlic sauce. From the presentation standpoint, it was pretty good as they actually put an effort to decorate the plate. The steak was juicy but was cooked a bit towards the medium side, instead of medium rare. In addition to that, the bug was quite a letdown as it was not as fresh as I would like it to be.

For the next main course, we ordered T Bone n’ Garlic Prawns – 400gr T-bone steak topped with garlic tiger prawns in a creamy garlic sauce. Just by looking at the pictures below, you can see that the prawns were quite insignificant. The T-bone was also quite well done (instead of medium).

I guess when you ordered steak you might want to choose one below your expected level on how they cook the steak.

The final verdict for Belly Busters

Being at the heart of Surfers Paradise, Belly Busters will not need to do anything to advertise the restaurant. However, despite its big name, the restaurant under delivered on the taste department.

Details:

Centro Surfers Paradise, Cavill Mall, Surfers Paradise, QLD

07 5538 2355

Mar 3, 2014
Three Blue Ducks

Rating:

8.5 / 10

Taste: 8.5 / 10

Price: $150 for 2.5 people

Place: 8.5 / 10

Review:

A little prelude before my review of Three Blue Ducks restaurant: My wife had wanted to go to this restaurant before we eventually had the occasion to do so. I would probably describe the restaurant as French-style modern Australian with Asian influence. The only downside here was that I did not bring my big camera with me and had to rely on my iPhone! Three blue ducks menu is a very simple piece of paper on a clip board. I think it is quite beneficial as they change dishes seasonally. The dish was divided into four categories: smalls, bigs, sides and sweets (I think you can figure out what they mean).

It is obvious that we have to select seafood as our ‘smalls’ dish as five out of seven selections were seafood dishes in three blue ducks. Our first option went to snapper ceviche ($14). It was a beautifully presented dish that gave us a fresh start to our dinner. The next one was an unconventional corn, chawanmushi and crab ($17). It came as the ‘swipe’ presentation on one end of the plate.

We also took out their special of the night, beef brisket with chimichurri. When the wait person explained the special for us, all I could hear was ‘Beef brisket… slow cooked for x amount of hours… then cooked with chimichurri’. However, since I am a big fan of chimichurri, I took this option. I know my picture really didn’t do justice here, but the beef was great. It was very soft and you didn’t even need a knife to cut it up!

Now, we move on to the ‘bigs’ dishes. It would be a sin if you go to three blue ducks without actually trying their duck menu. On this occasion, it was duck, chilli jam, mushrooms and greens ($32). I was actually quite reluctant to try because of the word ‘chilli’. However, when a one hat restaurant in Australia specified chilli on the menu, you wouldn’t be expecting a blistering hot one! I had to share the duck with my son, because he chose this more than the beef brisket or chawanmushi we prepared for him. I guess he wasn’t wrong because it was clearly the best dish of the day. We didn’t even leave a single drop of the sauce!

Our other ‘bigs’ dish was wallaby, broccolini, pickled grapes ($30). We tried this out of pure curiosity. How many restaurants listed wallaby as an item on their menu? Possibly not many! The interesting part of this perfectly cooked wallaby was a hint of wasabi on its sauce. To be honest, we had difficulties in actually recognising that it was really a wallaby meat.

They have some unusual items for side dishes, the ‘sides’. However, we found that they were the best value for money and tasted pretty great! For the first dish, it was a rich and flavoursome mushroom and grains dish ($8), they used different types of mushrooms and grains that were most likely consisted of barley and quinoa. We also loved the roast carrots, honey and almonds ($8). Not only they provided a sweet dimension to our dinner, it was also presented in quite a decent size.

I must say the ‘sweets’ section had a list of dishes with quite unusual ingredients. We decided to pick apple & pears, ginger & mint custard ($14). It was quite an interesting mixture of sour apple sorbet, diced pears, and strong flavour of ginger and mint sauce. They also used savoiardi (or ladyfinger biscuit) that soaked up most of the strong-tasting custard.

The final verdict for Three Blue Ducks

It is quite rare that we went to a restaurant with high hopes and met with equal or better presentations. Three blue ducks restaurant actually exceeded my expectations as a one hat restaurant!

Details:

141-143 Macpherson St, Bronte

02 9389 0010

http://www.threeblueducks.com/

Feb 24, 2014
House of Crabs

Rating:

7.5 / 10 Taste: 7.5 / 10

Price: $340 for six people

Place: 7.5 / 10

Review:

Opened at the beginning of November last year, House of Crabs (written as House of .C.R.A.B.S. in their website) has become the ‘Talk of the Town’ in Urbanspoon. The restaurant’s specialty (can’t really call it ‘signature dish’ as there might be different combinations) was ‘The Boil’.

Before we talk about ‘The Boil’, let’s have a look at what they have to offer. The first one to arrive on our table was from ‘The Greens’ section Kale, bean, & broccoli salad w/ spiced sunflower seeds ($16). Kale is the keyword to healthy food these days, but sounded a lot like hype for me. We also had a plate of fried chicken ($18). I must admit that I wanted to order this dish because of the picture I saw in Urbanspoon.

Personally, I think the best dish of the night was the lobster fries w/ lobster gravy, bacon & corn ($12). It was listed under ‘The Snacks’, but in reality it was quite big. I am pretty sure that there was no lobster in the fries, but the lobster gravy that generously covered the lobster fries was heavenly. You must not skip this one! We also ordered deep fried soft-shell crab ($15) from their Special Menu board. I love how the crab gave the complemented crunchy taste to our dinner.

Now, onto the main course, that was called ‘The Boil’. The price that you see on the menu is based on 500 grams of the seafood of your choice. They have six different seafood dishes that can be combined with four different sauces. We had all the sauces, but only three different kinds of seafood. I didn’t try the QLD prawns ($27) with Oriental sauce, but the prawns looked pretty big!

My first taste of the boil was the Alaskan king crab ($45) with Mexican sauce… and boy it was hot! We ordered two portions of Alaskan snow crab ($36) with Cajun and Lemon Pepper sauce respectively. It was quite hard to differentiate the king and snow crab because they were in a bag and the snow crab was actually quite big. From the four sauces, I quite like the non-spicy lemon pepper and the Cajun ones.

There was also a special edition of ’The Boil’ that featured QLD yabbies ($34) with special creole butter sauce. Some of us didn’t quite like the appearance of the peeled yabbies as they were quite dark and looked ‘un-fresh’. After browsing Google for how peeled boiled yabbies might look, it was certainly a lot darker than that!

Lastly, the waitress explained earlier that they pride themselves of an ugly aftermath that showed that you really enjoyed the dish. I won’t post the aftermath because it was quite gruesome, but if you want to see, you can view the aftermath here.

The final verdict for House of Crabs

At House of Crabs, in addition to its specialty, the boil, you must also order its lobster fries.

Details:

Level 1, 305 Cleveland Street, Redfern

[email protected]

http://houseofcrabs.com.au/

Feb 17, 2014