Raku

Raku is the newcomer on the block in West End's Boundary Street strip, and the only authentic Japanese place in all of West End. Not really counting the Sushi Station or West End Sushi Buffet found beside Nandos. I saw their cheap prices, I saw their cute decorations, I heard that it was owned by the guy who used to own Ajisen Ramen, confirmed in Taro's Ramen blog and whom I was too shy to take a photo of. I knew I had to go here.

I forgot to take a picture of the actual restaurant sign for once

We came back from a long morning of Sunday market shopping and decided to drop by here after PJ Steakhouse was closed. Raku was our first choice except we found there were some particularly enthusiastic tone deaf singers outside Char Char Yiros. They were crooning to the Sunday lunch crowd, a man in his 60s on an electric guitar who couldn't hold a note and his wife playing an acoustic guitar. She wasn't bad, but he was. Some of the songs included Brown Eyed Girl, Cotton Eye Joe and another song I heard at the markets in Park Road.

There are two different menus up, one for takeaway prices and one for dine in prices. There's also a daily special on the other side of the chalk board as well as some introductory prices. The day that we went, there was a $5 takeaway karaage chicken.

Its like a dollar difference

I really liked how the restaurant looked. There's a ledge overlooking the street, its a large open window that lets you look into the restaurant. I really wanted to sit there and people watch, but upon inspection, we saw that there weren't any seats at the ledge, there only tables below the window. The scrolls and fish were all too cute. The sign says, these fish are very sensitive so please don't provoke it! I wanted to take more photos, but kept getting scared off by other customers and the curious serving staff wondering if I wanted to order. One day, I'll gain enough confidence to ask people if its okay to include them in my photos!

Cute and well organised!

The entrance!

So many fish!

I can't even emphasise how cute I found these bells and this little banner hanging from the window. There was a little metal coin inside the bell and the little strip of fabric that danced in the breeze, and chimed merrily. I want a wind chime like that! I have no idea what the banner says, I hope Shishi or JGirl interprets for me :). Its super cute though.
Edit: JGirl helpfully adds that the banner is flapping backwards and says, thank you, come again.

So cute!

WHAT DOES IT SAY!

We sat down and were handed a menu instantly, followed by some cold water, with super light weight cups. It felt like I was holding nothing in my hand. We both chose a ramen and I challenged my Boyfriend to get pick us an entree, I was difficult by naming all the things I liked. He came back with some seaweed salad!

Delicious!

I thought this was a particularly good seaweed salad. It was a lovely vibrant green colour, had firm, crunchy texture and the dressing was well balanced. It was a touch sweet though, but I suppose that's what the lemon wedge was for. There were some suspiciously long pieces of seaweed in there of a darker brown appearance, I kept thinking they were chunks of black cloud ear fungus but they were just dark seaweed pieces.

Handmade? With love?

These spoons don't fit in your mouth btw

We got given these cute handmade? spoons to use with the ramen. It looked like a ladle handle that had been attached to a thick, chunky flat disc with a small depression for holding food.

I got the Red Raku Ramen, it came with two pieces of pork belly, a scoop of spicy meat and came with a spice rating of three chilli. It wasn't lying at all, I had a small taste of the spicy mince and it was like I had licked a chilli for the first time in my life. I began mixing the mince into the soup and it turned the fluorescent red that was in the initial display picture. It made it milder oh so lightly, but it just then spread the burn. I was sweating profusely and drinking everything in sight to try and cool down the burn. My Boyfriend saw me and asked to try some of the soup, he instantly blanched and said it tasted like being slapped in the face.

Uncertain if I liked it. Noodles were good. The pork was average and had a really strong smell to it, like a concentrated porky odour. Soup was tasty. The mince was overly spicy as you can guess. However, I really liked their soy sauce cooked egg, I found it had a much creamier, definite soy sauce flavour to their egg white and their yolk, even though part of their white was still raw and their yolk was less gooey. I found that soy cooked egg the best part of their ramen.

Three chunks of chicken not two!

My Boyfriend got their karaage ramen. I thought their kaarage, it had a very strong ginger flavour to it and was sweeter than I'd like. It was also a bit on the pink side when I took a bite, but my normally paranoid chicken eating Boyfriend disagrees. I didn't get to try the batter before it became soggy in the soup. He adds that it was super crunchy when it first came out however. He was overall disappointed with the soup, stating it could be easily better and it needed more ingredients in the soup besides the seaweed, cabbage leaf, soy sauce cooked egg and noodles.

Raku
Atmosphere: 10, this what Japanese cafes should look like! Super cute! It looks like somewhere you can just sit and chill out with a friend while people watching and having some Japanese beer. I could steal those decorations for my house if the owner wasn't sitting right in front of me
Service: 5, we had to order at the counter for some weird reason. We got water straight away and we got our bill presented straight away when we got our ramen. Although we were in the ideal dine and ditch position right beside the door
Food: 6. So close to being good, not dodgy enough to be bad. It could be so much better though, so a 6 it is.



In other news, I feel really unwell at the time of this post. I'm not really sure what from, but here is the catalogue of what I ate today. At breakfast I ate, a peach and a bottle of Marcello's Fruit punch from the Park Road market. At lunch I ate, Red Raku Ramen, Sprite, seaweed salad, some water and a piece of chicken karaage. We had some New York Cheesecake and Expresso ice cream for dessert. I drank a berry crush Boost drink when I was getting stuff for my upcoming New Years BBQ. For dinner I had a slice of BBQ Meatlovers pizza from yesterday and a Chicken and Feta pizza slice, the remaining two peaches I bought, an entire pineapple I bought from the market about 10cm in length and then immediately a vanilla malt milkshake that was about 400-500mL. I blame the pineapple and vanilla malt mix for this queasiness.

Taro's Ramen Cafe

A few months ago we were wandering through the city on the way to a picnic at the Botanic Gardens when I got us a bit lost further away then intended and we ended up outside Taro's Ramen.

My mind was instantly bought back. I knew of this place from Urbanspoon, other blogs and incredulous word of mouth from when I first started uni, years ago back in 2008. Apparently this was one of the good cheapo places in Brisbane for ramen, right up there with, at the time, Ajisen and the original Hakataya Ramen. Being a time poor, genuinely poor and lazy uni student I had neither the time nor the inclination to find the restaurant but I vowed to myself, one day if I had the money and knew where it was.

Now its 2012, and I finally found the place far, far away from where I had originally thought it to be on the corner of Adelaide and Wharf Street. Now Ajisen is closed, and reportedly the owner has opened up Raku in West End, Hakataya has opened up several new stores, at the time of report the newest being in Garden City and Taro still stands.

TAPAS? 

Oooh another special

+_+ interesting

It always appealed to me because I get the huge impression from his blog and website, that the owner of Taro's Ramen Cafe loves his job. Not in a little way, he lives and breathes his job, this is what he wanted to do as a small child in an uplifting award winning Miyazaki movie. From the descriptions of the paper menu, to the little displays on each table, to the different specifications on the ramen and massive types of toppings available, everything screams of painstaking detail and the desire of a man to tell you about a little bit about the thing he loves. Ramen.

Yep. I love easy to find places?

Taro's Ramen Cafe is a bit annoying to find though, its in the forecourt of an office building right on a corner. The front of it looks like your typical dodgy sandwich/fish and chip store with a name like, Mikes Burger Bar or something.

Hmmmm

So much booze ahaha. More out the back too!

Then you notice the proliferation of ramen menus, Japanese sakes and fancy drinks. They do however, have a weekday menu of fusion cuisine sandwiches. Also their menu is online. I advise you to look at the download section and actually have a look at the downloadable menu, since it offers a better idea of what is included. We ordered our ramens, grabbed a few drinks and headed out back.

Once you get past that part, the back really opens up into a nice little sheltered corner. The tables are all clean wooden tables with rather comfortable wicker chairs.

Such a nice breeze that day

I picked the red tonkotsu ramen, a creamy pork based soup with a nitamago - soy boiled egg, nori - seaweed, charsiu pork slices and a side of pickles that were forgotten. This soup base was interesting to me, as I'm used to most Asian soups being crystal clean with the exception of cloudy miso, so this creamy, cloudy thing sort of threw me. I remember one time, my aunt made me take care of our pork bone broth, 10L+, and when she got home, she insisted we eat it all that day because I had let the heat grow too high and it resembled this same soup, cloudy and creamy.

I really enjoyed it actually, I'm normally pretty picky with soups outside of my home. I find the cheap places I frequent use don't go to the effort of using a good stock and their soup lacks the depth of a good bone stock. This one tasted like a lot of time was put into it. I can't really describe it other than that, no oily finish, perfectly creamy with no watery, thin flavour. Only issue with it, was the gritty marrow bits at the bottom of the bowl when I was done.

The noodles were served al dente, had a fresh flavour and a firm bite form being served that way. I'm still trying to puzzle out what that bright red, thread like garnish was. The nori was absolutely delicious, I could happily sit there and eat bowl full of the stuff, dipped in a bit of that broth, it reminded me of a really, really good version of those snack seaweed you find at Asian stores. The soy boiled egg was soft poached and deliciously gooey. The pork, I wasn't a huge fan of, I normally associate charsiu with a really distinctive maltose red basted hue and the aroma of five spice powder, and I got none of it here. The red hue here was from the home made mild chilli and I couldn't taste a hint of spice at all. It was just red.

Mine was better

My Boyfriend got the shoyu ramen, vegetable, dried seafood and chicken based broth with wriggly fat noodles, charsiu, nori, egg and bamboo sprouts. I had a taste of his soup, but I immensely preferred my soup, but wanted his noodles. He had a different nori, that wasn't quite as strongly savoury as mine, but was still quite tasty.

Taro's Ramen Cafe:
Atmosphere: 3 in the serving area, looks terrible and no idea that its a Japanese place really. 7 outside, the outside was lovely and cool. Specials written everywhere on the walls and those signs on every table are a lovely touch.
Service: 7, help yourself to water, forgot my pickles which I didn't care for either. Friendly Japanese efficiency, as soon as someone was gone, zoom! Away went the plates and the table was given a quick clean.
Food: 8, quite good ramen. I would go back here and order the noodles for the shoyu ramen in the tonkotsu ramen for sure. My Boyfriend doesn't remember it at all though.

Lemon Yoghurt Syrup Cake

So I saw this recipe ages ago in a Women's Day recipe and it was George Caloumbaris, the Greek chef most commonly known by most Aussies from Masterchef. It looks light, tasty and tangy, something I love in desserts.

I MUST MAKE IT.

However, the real reason why I wanted to make this cake was because two of my friends made this cake and I thought I could do a better job. Competitive? Me? Never! Jubi had made a lime and yoghurt cake when she came over for a board games night and then Ms. D., had made a lemon syrup cake on the day she finished at work as a student. Jubi's cake was a bit flat, but the taste was lovely, with candied lime zest. Ms. D's cake was light, airy and wonderfully fluffy, but the lemon syrup was almost intensely lemony. You took a bite and your face puckered, but it was so well balanced you went back for more.

Hmmmmm . . .

My take on the cake was actually cobbled together from quite a few different recipes and I ended up making a lemon syrup yoghurt cake. I made it on the fly from what I had available, I got some yoghurt that I bought at work home, Vaalia Vanilla and googled stuff. I remembered the lovely peanut butter yoghurt cake I made and wanted that same ethereal, creamy and moist texture for my cake crumb. In hindsight, this might've been a mistake.

This cake wasn't as good as I thought it'd be, so I've been a bit reluctant to post this recipe. I think, due to the already high moisture contents from the yoghurt, the syrup can make it a bit waterlogged. The texture starts becoming almost like a steamed lemon pudding without the cloying element. Its got quite a dense crumb to it and is a very moist cake that I think would improve with age. Its ideal for non-sweet tooth people. On the other hand, H., has been hassling me for almost the last two or three months for the recipe. When we talk about food or something on my blog, she'll dreamily mention, "that steamed lemony pudding thing," and then she hits me saying I should blog about it.

On the second and third attempt of this cake. I boiled the syrup down much, much more, until it like a thick caramel. When this cooled down it made a crunchy crystallized golden brown top, so I suppose its up to you what you want.

So here it is dear, the recipe for my lemon yoghurt syrup cake. Overall I liked what I made, I was just disappointed. I might replace the yoghurt for milk in the future for more of a sponge like texture. Experiments for science! Base recipe taken from this pretty blog.

Lemon Yoghurt Syrup Cake

Uses: Bribes for H. Cake Sunday experiment. Using lemons up

Attractive much

Ingredients for cake:
2 room temperature eggs
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of self raising flour or plain+baking powder
250mL of Greek Yoghurt
Zest of the lemons used for the syrup

Ingredients for lemon syrup:
Juice of two lemons, sieve out pulp with a fine strainer
1 cup of water
3/4 cup of sugar

Instructions:
1. Preheat your oven 180C. Line a cake tin, I used my usual 23cm springform pan. A 20cm one would work fine
2. Beat your eggs, sugar and zest together until creamy

So much zest

Voile!

3. Sift the flour into a bowl on top and mix

I love this bowl

4. Add your yoghurt and stir

Gross

5. Bake for at least 30-40 minutes until golden brown and skewer comes out clean
6. During the final 5-10 minutes of baking, combine all the juice, lemon and water. Reduce until 1/3-1/4 of original volume. Skim off any white foam, not sure if this affects the taste, but do it just out of habit
7. Imagine its the face of your most despised enemy, poke the cake with a skewer until satisfied. 20+ holes is what we're looking for

I just took joy in poking a cake, I didn't imagine anyone. Or did I?

8. Pour the hot syrup over the hot cake and serve whenever

Also double post because I know H., is on nights again and would appreciate something to read in the long hours between midnight and 4am :)

Flute Fine Food

Many months ago when I first started really going out to early morning breakfasts after night shifts I found Flute Fine Food on Urbanspoon. It had an interesting menu, it was five minutes away from work, the prices were affordable, it was open before 8am, it was perfect!

Yay Flute!

We went with a small group, Z., Ms D., and myself I think. We were in rapture over it, Ms. D and I are huge eaters and we didn't finish our meals at all, we were saddened. The next week, on another unfortunate night shifts, I went with D., and L., who also loved it. Then Ms D., took a group of people. Then Z., took a group of people. Then it became the wards new hip go to place for breakfast. So this shouldn't technically be here since its somewhere I've been before, and its quite well known in Brisbane for being a great brekkie place, but its the first time I've been here since the blog.

Its basically a straight line but I went with H., A., Mrs. J., Ms L. and I went in the car with H., and as you know, my sense of direction was terrible. We were the first people to leave and the last people to get there, and I was the only person beside A., to have ever gone there. Its also a straight line from our work place. It was pretty embarrassing, H., was very patient with me. Anyway, we slunk into our table a bit red faced with how long it took us to get there.

Oddly cute everything

Cute

Ms L ordered an English Hot Breakfast tea. It came in this super cute cast iron pot, with a little pitcher of milk and this cute little green teacup. We had a lot of a fun with the pot, it was super heavy. Like ridiculously, we were handing it around and it was really surprising how MUCH it weighed for something so small. I really like that nearly all the hot drinks at Flute come with little dark chocolate squares. I always order their cold drinks even in winter so I can't comment on whether or not its good or not.

Oooh, filled right to the brim!

H., ordered the cold pressed orange juice wondering what was so special about it, the waitress laughed and said it was just a fancy way of saying freshly squeezed orange juice. It was just freshly
squeezed orange juice, she said it was very delicious and tested very fresh. She says it was probably the best orange juice she's ever had.

So good +_+

A., got the chocolate malted milkshake and I got the vanilla malted one. Oh my god, I still sit here and think about it. It was so delicious, it came in an old fashioned metal cup with loads of icy condensation dewing up the surface. One sip was like drinking a liquid Malteser made of vanilla, it was so cold, and sweet and malty. Ohhhhh, I knew I was going to feel sick within the hour from my lactose intolerance but it was so worth it.

Oh man, so good. I forgot to take a photo for a second

I really want to go back just for that milkshake. Everyone else was just happy with coffees and the cold water provided.

Tasty and it arrived on a weird, two tiered serving plate

Still pretty cool looking though

H.'s breakfast was the first to arrive. The Greek breakfast with fresh pita, grilled haloumi, a small salad of tomatoes, olives and lemon wedges as well as her choice of scrambled eggs or poached. She went with the scrambled on my recommendation that they were deliciously cheesy and almost a meal of their own. The haloumi was done the way I liked it with squeaky middles and a crunchy golden brown edge. She said that while everything was very good, that it was almost a bit too salty from the haloumi and olive combination.

I've always wanted to try this.

Ms L., got the thai style barramundi fish cakes with poached eggs rather than scrambled like everyone else. She disliked their poaching style, like I do, preferring the traditional swirled water method. They were perfectly poached though and oozed yolk all over her plate. She said she really liked her meal and was the first person finished. I think I may have tried this but I don't really recall.

Oh man so much food

A., and I got the signature Flute big breakfast consisting of avocado, maple cured bacon, tomato relish, a white wine jus, a potato hash cake, toasted buttered turkish bread and their scrambled eggs. There is so much goddamn food in this breakfast, you don't even know where to start. I love each individual component with the bacon probably doing with a bit more time to be crunchier. I absolutely adore their crunchy, buttery turkish bread. The tomato relish is the one I judge other standards by. Their white wine jus is a bit muddled I think and reminds me of a light hollandaise more than anything else. Their potato hash cake is better than even Gun Shops in my eyes. Once again, I didn't finish their Big Breakfast.

Not sure what's going on in here

Mrs. J., had the mince with pork bits, scrambled eggs and toasted turkish bread. We were a little surprised at what came out, since it looks like a hideous mash of grey gravy and some chunky bits of meat. Not quite what you're expecting when you order breakfast mince, but she said whatever it was, it was very tasty and she finished the lot.

We were so full after this we just sat and sighed before realising we should head home and sleep off our full bellies and night duty brains!

Flute Fine Food
Atmosphere: 7, bustling breakfast place filled with chatty people or people stopping by for coffee. Well lit and you can expect a line up most days, especially the weekend
Service: 10, fantastic service. The serving staff are always super attentive, offer drinks, refills, silently take away plates, offer salt and pepper, can give recommendations on food, super friendly and happy to split a bill fantastic.
Food: 8, cut corners here and there but the serving size is always very generous and nearly everything is delicious here. Just remember to pack a big appetite. I've only ever been here at breakfast so I can't comment on their lunch/dinner menu

Punjabi Palace

I'm going to start this post by saying I don't like Indian food. I love curries, Japanese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai or even British Bastardised whatever with raisins and peas in it. I don't like Indian food barring naans, roti, raita and some chutneys, but the rice, the daals, the curries, the fried starters, nope, not for me.

Maybe because I grew up in Brisbane and we don't have many good Indian places? Whenever I use this excuse, people counter with the names of franchises around Brisbane. I don't want franchises! I want some type of authentic Indian cuisine from a region that I vaguely recognise, where Indian people are in attendance and the waiters barely understand English! That's the ideal for any cuisine! A place where no one understands you, filled with their locals, where the menu doesn't come in English and its always filled and very cheap. Oh, here is their menu.

In the end, I went to Punjabi Palace. Its very accessible in West End, has a good Urbanspoon reputation, is quite cheap and I've seen Indian people in there, granted they're all business people or Aussie born students, it still counts. I've been also telling my Boyfriend that we should go there for weeks and been piking out to go elsewhere, he always wisely counters that I don't really want to go there if I don't like Indian food.

Nice

Woo cheap lunches!

Whats with the tiki like hut?

This is heavily countered by the fact that I've been wanting a naan bread for several months now. Literally every time after we eat and we'd head home, I'd tried to convince him that we should just have one little naan bread to satisfy my craving. We did get a really lacklustre garlic naan in the Indian Kitchen upstairs in Queens Street Mall that taste stodgy and like it had been in the freezer despite them having a visible tandoor oven.

I'm not sure about the interior since I've never been to any other Indian restaurant that I remember. Red and gold chairs around a double table cloth table, lots of random murals and at the back there was a shady bar area beside the kitchen. Also random scattered plasma TVs at the back with muted Bollywood videos running on them.

Hmm odd interior

A bit messy

Their tables were stained and a bit gross, so were their water glasses, crusted with maybe some old curries or something.

What is that?

Or that?

We decided to just order the lunch specials when we went in for a taste of their food. Firstly though, GARLIC AND CHEESE NAAN BREAD.

Oh my goddddddddddddd.

Oh god. It was so good. When the basket hit the table, there was this beautiful aroma of vampire killing amounts of crushed garlic, a cow worth of melted cheese and that distinctive smell of toasted carb loaded goodness. I think I nearly had a food orgasm when I bit into that first hunk of naan, it was burning hot even to my teflon baking fingers where I touched it. Oh that garlicky and salted brushed ghee hit, that crunchy blistered exterior yielding into soft flat bread and an abundance of yet more garlic and melted cheese. These were two massive halves here not two actual serves.

Stretchy. Like mozzarella with taste.

I was attempting to take a beautiful shot of how much cheese oozed out when I pulled off a bit to eat it but then I ate it and it was ruined. I would go here again and again just for that naan bread. I gave my Boyfriend half, begrudgingly.

So much, I was defeated.

I ordered a mango lassi, keen to try an authentic one. It was like a very, very thick mango yoghurt. Like unstrained Greek yoghurt level of thickness. I knew within three sips that I would be suffering from my lactose intolerance very shortly. It was nice but I wish there was like a kid's size one, I never thought I'd ever say that about a drink, ever, unless it was y'know total shit.

On the other hand, the lunch special curries we ordered weren't fantastic.

Lamb rogan josh

I got the lamb rogan josh. It consisted of a really lemony and mostly lentil dominated curry. The lentils ground and so felt a bit gritty on the tongue, I prefer my lentils whole and chewable, but personal preference. There was the occasional minced piece of lamb there but I was disappointed they weren't larger pieces like in the butter chicken. I didn't finish very much of this and proceeded to worship my naan instead.

This is where my camera started to get blurry randomly

He got the butter chicken. My boyfriend has a crazy love of butter chicken that has seen him single handedly try nearly Indian place both good and bad in West End, for butter chicken, within his $15 per meal budget that is. The sauce was quite rich with very large tender chunks of chicken in a mostly tomato dominated sauce. It was also quite salty, but dulled down a bit when added to the rice. Even to my inexperienced eyes, this curry was lacking a lot of fragrance and he agreed. He mentioned that it wasn't any better than a chain store $5 curry either.

Weird salad.

The garnish is odd. The rice was good.

The rice was solid. Rice is rice. The salad was weird, it was an odd combination of flavours with diced tomato, red onion and some lettuce leaves. No dressing and that's it.

Punjabi Palace:
Atmosphere: 5, its sorta cute. Its also a bit dark and dirty. I dunno. When I went past recently there's a shirtless fat Santa statue that is holding a surfboard.
Service: 4, we got water. We got out food. They weren't rude. Meh.
Food: That naan is a 10. The curries were a 1, my Boyfriend is telling me to write a 1.



Oh and the long ten day gap between my Peter's Fish Market and PPP: Obaltan and Chocolateria San Churro posts was due to the fact that the internet/phone lines were down in my area. I had quite a few posts written/partially written from when I had gone over to my Boyfriends/written on paper and stuff, but no internet connection to actually upload existing photos. Expect a barrage soon of new posts.

Also my most famous post is now my apple teacake/muffin recipe with 185 page views this month. Muffin is now the most searched term to get to my blog :)