Manakan Indonesian

I love a good cheapo Asian takeaway shop. You know the kind I'm talking about, the neighbourhood favourite everyone goes to when they want a cheap dinner. Where the walls are plastered with tacky decorations. You have to help yourself to all the cutlery. There's dodgy live bands or karaoke. There are condiments littered all over the tables surface. Its always noisy, crowded and full of university students. The menu is sticky, laminated and has pictures because you can't pronounce the words and the one person serving, barely understands English.

Its okay thought, cause the meal is always super cheap, comes out in a matter of minutes no matter what and how much you order, there are the countries natives there, its delicious even if you feeling lingering guilt over how bad it must be for you and you come back again and again. That's my kind of Asian takeaway shop.

I found it with Makanan Indonesian. Located on Hardgrave Road in West End, it must be good to stay in business for so long along that cut throat strip of super cheap Asian food. I'm always a sucker for Indonesian food so I beelined for it, too snobby in my Vietnamese tastes for anything but my mother's cooking to be tempted by the likes of Trang, Dakbla, Quan Thanh or Kim Thanh. I liked the menu and the prices so that's where we had lunch that day.

This place had a constant stream of mixed race couples and business men, although it only looks like there are a few people in there during the photo. Check out the decor, I'm not sure what they're called but I remember that the figures on the walls, are actually shadow puppets. The masks were a bit creepy though.

Nice little place haha

I did take home a copy of their menu but I don't know where it went! Watch this space for when I find it or go back for another copy of their menu. Its a huge menu too! Spanning a folded A3 double sided sheet, with dishes from lots of different regions of Indonesia.

It feels like home already!

We were given water soon after we ordered and sat down inside. I like that the cups are so childish, large, chunky plastic tumblers, ideal for kids to throw around without breaking! The bottle was cute too, I like the colour of it. Also tacky plastic flower/s? Check!

The cups are weird but cute!

We got teh tarik and a Sprite of course. One of my friends had been looking through my phone earlier and saw this photo and asked if I had taken it because the tea had a smiley face. Until then I didn't even notice it, can you see the smiley face? It was alright, the tea was a bit on the weak side for me and not overly sweet although you can taste the condensed milk being used as opposed to sugar. I wish it had a frothier head of bubbles though, what's the point of teh tarik without bubbles!

Its happy to see you!

Our plate of ayam goreng. Five pieces of golden brown, deep fried chicken, two drumsticks and three wings. They came out HOT from the deep fryer, my Boyfriend picked up the first pieces as I was busy checking my photo of it, he had taken a bite just as I put mine in my mouth and warned me that it was really hot. Luckily I had that warning, otherwise I'd have gotten burned like he did. I had just bitten in with my teeth and even through them I felt the scalding heat, I just dropped them back on the plate and tried again a few seconds later.

Golden brown much?

Oh and check out the feathers still left on! My camera refused to refocus on it, but you can still see the blurry feathers that have been deep fried along with the chicken hahaha, authentic! It reminds me of what my family buys live poultry, kill and pluck them.

Feathers!

Crazy mouth burns asides it was delicious! Simple, deep fried to the point that the skin shattered goodness, the chicken was simply brined and fried, I don't remember any other spices being involved. I nibbled the flesh right down to the bone, I don't mind being a savage when eating fried chicken, that's why it comes in perfect portions for your hands!

Western fried chicken is always so different I find, the flavour is all in the skin, thick, crunchy and heavily battered like KFC, and not in the actual flesh itself, so after the skin is gone you just have plain chicken pieces. Whilst Asian fried chicken like karaage, ayam goreng or Korean/Thai etc fried chicken, the flavour is forced right down to the bone with marinades, brining or spice pastes. Love it.

My Boyfriend's Jakarta Laksa came out next. The bowl is freaking huge, I don't think the pictures did it justice. It's diameter was about the size of a tissue box and just as deep! It looks so tasty with its diced coriander, green onion and fried onion topping, just like what my mum puts on top of our soups. It was unbelievably fragrant. There were bits of tofu, chicken, bean sprouts, slippery egg and rice noodles throughout the dish, although it did say vermicilli but I think these noodles were too thick to be considered that.

Jakarta laksa!

It was thisssssssssss big!

The coconut based broth was heavenly, with a mild back burn. I normally hate drinking soups in Asian places, I find they don't cook it for long enough so that the flavour leeches out of the bones. This soup is as good as anything my mum or I would cook at home. My Boyfriend thought it was quite spicy despite my protests and he even had the nose sweats to back up his opinion ahahaha. He refused to drink my tea when I offered it to him, stubbornly saying that the water would suffice. Silly boy! All the foodies know that water just spreads it around, while the casein in dairy destroys or removes the capsaicin from the nerve receptors in the mouth!

I picked the gado gado and chicken satay skewers. The chicken skewers were really small, they were sweet with the taste of sweet kecap manis. My Boyfriend declined to try any as he had a taste of the peanut satay sauce and didn't like it. They were tender, bouncy and well charred if a bit on the small side.

Gado gado and chicken satay

Even before I started eating, I knew this would be too much and I'd be defeated. I have no idea why I picked it, I think I was always intrigued by the idea of gado gado since I love peanut infested/infused/covered anything. I conveniently forgot I hate tofu and oddly sweet things like sweet meat and I just generally hate salad. Gado gado combines all these things in one salad. I ignored all the tofu, and ate all the cucumber, egg, most of the green beans and ate most of the sauce with the mildly coconut-y rice. It was too much and my Boyfriend was too full from his meal to be forced to eat mine.

The brain says finish it. The stomach whispers no.

All in all, I quite liked the place. My Boyfriend picked the dish of the day asides from the ayam goreng which we smashed through, I would happily go here again and try something else, maybe some mie goreng or something. The price wasn't bad either, with both of us having drinks, entree and main for less than $40 together.

Atmosphere: 8, I love cheapo Asian dives. For the reasons entailed above.
Service: 5, nothing special. I did notice the guy manning the counter being very friendly towards some business men who must've been regulars I think. We were left alone as a couple. Took a while for tables around us to be cleared.
Food: 6, solid but nothing spectacular. Since going, I haven't had wistful daydreams about how good this place is or anything.

RJIE 3: Noah's Creative Juice

I'm a super fan of drinking drinks that no one has ever heard of from weird delis, butchers, Asian groceries and little food shops. I used to do this way before I became a blogger too, I think its because drinks are easy to consume, if you don't like it, throwing away a can of something seems less wasteful than throwing away say, an entire meal.

General rule of thumb for picking weird drinks, if its peach it'll be your safe bet, anything with aloe vera will be fantastic, lychee either tastes absolutely fantastic or it'll make you gag with how bad it is, never drink an Asian drink with pulp in it, Asian iced teas are rarely sour so be prepared for immense sweetness, shake everything and check the expiry date. Don't ask how I learnt all this stuff over my years but take my advice without all the downfall of having bad drinks, or food poisoning.

Oooh so green

This is a Noah Creative Juice, we bought it from the fishmonger at West End on Boundary Street. We had actually gone in to buy some pale pink taramasalata, which in itself was decent if not great. We spotted this drink in the drinks section and decided to buy it, I think it was about $3.50? It has a very unusual combination of flavours. They actually worked really well together, I found the kiwi fruit leant the most to the drink in general though, turning it fluro green and giving it that sour taste. It was a very velvety drink too, with the addition of the mango and peach, its got that thickish consistency of pureed stuff. We were fighting to take the next sip actually, it was very good. I would definitely drink this again.

Sake

Meeting your new significant others' parents is one of the most terrifying things ever. This was the first time I had ever met his dad, and I was shit scared to say the least. Apparently his mum is a lot bubblier and friendly to meet than his dad, and his dad is apparently more like him. My boyfriend waits for almost 2-3 hours when first meeting people to hear what they have to say before he attempts a joke. He says he does this to avoid awkwardness. He told me to pick whichever place I wanted cause he had told his parents I was picky about where I ate, and that I shouldn't worry about the price because they'd pay for whatever we got. They were just up in Brisbane for a relaxing weekend and wanted to meet me while they were up here.

None of this reassured me whatsoever. What was I going to wear? Where were we going to go? What did they like to eat? What didn't they like to eat? Did they love any particular cuisine? Did they have any dietary specifications? How much was too much to spend for a meal? What if I chose somewhere that was terrible? What if I chose somewhere that was super cheap? What did they think was relaxing?

More importantly, what if they didn't like me? What if they thought I wasn't good enough for their son? Or I was boring? Or I dressed terribly? Smelt bad? Or I had bad taste in food? Or that I was some presumptuous punk mooching off their money by choosing somewhere expensive? Or that I didn't think they could pay for it by choosing somewhere cheap?

I understand rationally that it doesn't matter what they think as long as we're both happy together. A great majority of my life is spent not giving a fuck what anyone else thinks. I didn't learn how to do my own make up until I was 22. I can't be arsed following fashions, I dress comfortably like a bogan out for grocery run. I never learnt how to drive, cause I don't care for it. I went to band camps growing up. I gleefully spent the weekends playing games. I would start a verbal argument with anyone if I thought they were wrong. I read more books in a month than most avid book readers do in a year. I will honestly tell you things you don't want to hear if asked about it. I don't drink or go clubbing cause I don't see the point despite what my friends say. And yet, a part of me was desperately hoping they would like me.

Despite all my anxiety, I was warmly greeted when we eventually found them. We had a lovely time talking and walking to Eagle Street Pier where I had originally intended to take them to Jude, which has a fantastic burger menu on weekdays and an interesting weekend menu. I also chose this cause I was reassured that his mum would be tickled pink by the name of the restaurant since she shared it. She was actually, she squealed once she realised what it was called.

Unfortunately it was not to be, as she took one look at their Sunday all day breakfast menu and politely wondered if we should go elsewhere. I started to panic and named almost every other menu in the vicinity as well as every cuisine I knew under the sun. They decided they wanted something light and Asian, so Japanese was quickly chosen. Kobuki was my first choice and it was closed, I only eat cheap so I quickly threw out Siana! Jade Buddha! Sono is nearby! Sake is upstairs!

Out of nowhere my Boyfriend says that we went to Bavarian Bier Cafe for his birthday so upstairs we go. Looking at the menu, they were also not interested. They did remark that the Oktoberfest menu was good but we were one day too soon for that and that was with all the decorations up already. So we went next door to Sake and after a moment's deliberation that's where we went.

Here are links to their beverage, dining, and banquet menus. On the day we went, they were just finishing up with their Sakura Blossom menu.

I didn't actually take pictures of their interior because I knew that my Boyfriend's dad is an award winning photographer and I still take photos on my Samsung Galaxy S2. No pressure whatsoever. Its gorgeous though, quiet, serene, perfectly air conditioned, light music in the background which they turned down on request, the lighting is beautiful and there are huge sake barrels decorating the entire place.

It took me a while to bring up my courage to take some photos but I got over it as time went on and the food started coming out. Our waitress explained that Sake's food is designed for sharing and that everything came in large portions. We all decided to pick a dish and split them between us.

My Boyfriend and his father picked miso soup as starters. He remarks that its a bit bland, I'm no soup fancier so I didn't partake, although it was offered. It was a nice temperature, hot enough to steam, warm enough to sip easily. It also came in a tiny, fancy arse little cup with a lid on it.

This is the sashimi combo, 18 pieces of seafood, including salmon, king fish, tuna, octopus, , with freshly grated wasabi and daikon on a bed of crushed ice. My resounding opinion was average at best, I found their knife work wasn't crash hot, you can clearly see ragged edges on pieces of tuna in the picture, most of the pieces were uneven not that beautiful uniform loveliness you think of when you think of sashimi, most of the pieces were quite bland and I found a weird texture on my salmon like they had forgotten to scrap off skin? My favourite part on this entire dish was the fancy sakura blossom cut carrot slivers. True fact.

Orange is salmon. Red is tuna. White is kingfish. Frilly white is octopus.

This was our flower arrangement. Its a bit sad, our flowers were the only wilted ones in the entire restaurant. How do I know? I checked of course. The entire flower makes me sad, its lopsided, the flowers at the top are dead and the tiny bit near the bottom is like a tiny flag of hope that is ignored for the overwhelming

My god.

All cats look the same in the dark?

The quail as per the menu, galantine of quail stuffed with yama-gobo & shiitake
mushrooms, coated with orange-soy glaze, served with poached golden beetroot leaves & pickled golden beetroot. Incorrect there was one mushroom, look how lonely it looks. The yama-gobo is pickled burdock root, that delicious orange thing in the middle and believe me it was delicious, crunchy, sour and wrinkly. The texture was wrinkly, like when you bit down on it, it wriggled and squeaked. The stuffed quail wings still had bones but I adored them, golden, crunchy and bloody delicious. The galantine quail was super tasty as well with more mushroom bits, and that's all I remember beyond the hrngharghhhh of flavour. The roasted wings were fantastic too, but fiddly with the winglets attached.

Mmm quail

I liked this dish, I thought the combination of flavours was amazing and would cheerfully have fought everyone else for another piece, we ended up each quarter between a pair of us, my Boyfriend and I and his parents.

This was the popcorn shrimp, tempura prawn bits with a creamy and slightly salty sauce. It didn't add anything about, but why was it so fluro orange if it tasted like nothing. Nature made orange things naturally delicious and flavourful like oranges, cumquats, mandarins, carrots, pumpkins, mangos, sweet potatoes and papaya. So what the hell was in this sauce and why wasn't it spicy and  creamy like the menu said. The tempura batter was super light, crunchy and fluffy and slightly lemony, which I liked. It cut through the oil a bit, and made it seem marginally healthier. This being said, this was the dish of the day for me. I wish the shrimp weren't so tiny sized though, but I suppose they are shrimp not popcorn prawns.

Popcorn shrimp

We also ordered the assorted tempura, consisting of seasonal vegetables, prawns and tentsuyu dipping sauce. Oh god, it wasn't the best assortment, we had pumpkin, squash, asparagus, potato, sweet potato, broccolini, green onion and wait for it, avo-fucking-cado. I hate avocado, and my god when I was dared to eat the tempura'd avocado, I gave it due to peer pressure and I regretted it. You think avocado tastes like pure fat by itself? You should taste it tempura'd, I suppose it could be worse, it could have been deep fried.

Tempuraaaaaa

My such big broccolini

All in all, we left fed, not full or satisfied. I felt like I could have eaten again afterwards, somewhere cheap and cheerful and filling for a fraction of the price spent here. I don't think it was good value for money, it was lacking in a lot of places for somewhere that was supposed to be so good. Presentation on both environment and food, general taste and I don't know, I just felt ill at ease the entire time, the time we spent there was great though but good company makes anything better.

Sake
Atmosphere: 4, the flowers ruined it for me. If I hadn't noticed them, it still would've been a 5-6? It was too fancy for a bogan Southsider like myself, I just felt like I was under dressed and slovenly there in the quiet atmosphere of the restaurant even despite their warm welcome. Also all the serving staff were Aussies and the kitchen staff I saw were Japanese, maybe that's the racist in me, coming out. I missed the warm friendly atmosphere of Bavarian Bier and the beautiful river views too, Sake was just too still for my liking, way too much for a Sunday lunch.
Service: 7, well presented, friendly staff who were able to offer recommendations and keep our water topped up. Nothing out of the ordinary though.
Food: 6, everything was cooked well, nothing made me sick. The popcorn shrimp was pretty good.

I'm starting to wonder if I just outright dislike expensive restaurants but I haven't been anywhere where I thought the money was well spent either? Who knows.

The Bun Mobile+ Loading Dock Expresso

Aha! Its the Bun Mobile! The Brisbane bloggosphere's and general foodies favourite food van! And probably our only fancy one, come to think of it! Bun Mobiles speciality is an Asian sweet steamed bun with fusion Asian flavours on their burger like buns. They have their three steady buns, pork, chicken and a wagyu beef as well as a daily rotating rostet of burger, normally a savoury one that is a bit more expensive and a dessert one. A huge change from your usual Brisbane food van toting hot chips and cheap coffees haha.

Its actual work if you want Bun Mobile! You have to actually stalk them via their their website here to see where  they are for the day and then be there for the two or so hours they are there. Otherwise you have to wait another few days for them to appear again. They also have a location form or something so you can add your desired location to their list of places to appear in front of.

My Boyfriend and I missed them one evening because we had gone outside to take in his washing and the door had blown shut! This was after I had been home alone all day and had taken four loads of washing out to the line! We didn't have our phones or keys with us, our bags with our wallets were inside his room and none of his room mates were home to let us back in.

What I did. I'm Vader, my Boyfriend is Palpatine?

We tried everything to get back inside! I had locked the front door and the windows were all shut. We tried picking the lock but the wire and bobby pins I found weren't stiff enough to maintain tension on the tumblers. I managed to pry off a window shutter but it was still too far away to get to the door and there was security mesh in the way.

Yeah no levels for us that day. Hey at least the pick didn't snap off

My Boyfriend ended up approaching a stranger on the street and asking to use their mobile to call his landlord. The office for his real estate estimated it would be late afternoon by the time we'd hear from them. We settled ourselves down for a boring afternoon and ended up cuddling outside on the benches. For once, we had nothing to say and ended up nodding off. We were thankfully saved by his house mate coming back from her dental surgery. She was very surprised to see us outside hahaha.

That day we just missed out on lunch when is was at Loading Dock Expresso in West End on Boundary St, just a little way up from where Coles is. Luckily for me it was back there a few days later and I decided wed go back again. It was a scorching hot day and I felt very sorry for the couple in the van pressed right up against the grill that took up almost the entire inside of their van.

They used part of the wall as the support for their desk

As I said earlier, Bun Mobile has three steady buns with daily rotating roster. That day it was a tandoori chicken as well as a sweet Nutella and strawberry bun. My Boyfriend got the tandoori chicken and I got the wagyu beef bun.

Too bad I don't like sweets, cause that sounds fantastic

We were helpfully told that as long as we bought a drink from Loading Dock Expresso, we were free to sit there. I choose an Emma and Tom Go-Fusion juice while he chose an Emma and Tom sparkling cloudy lemon juice drink. I didn't find that flavour particularly memorable but my Boyfriend maintains that is the best lemon drink he has ever had, sweet, sour and without any bitter after taste. It just a shame nowhere really stocks that part of the Tom and Emma brand hahaha.

I found the interior of Loading Dock Expresso quite interesting. Its a very relaxed and friendly sort of place, like someone took over an empty spot and started a coffee shop out of what was nearby. Its a bit dimly lit but I imagine its a nice spot for a quick lunch at work. On the day we went, there were a lot of people there in business casual clothing. Someone was playing a guitar out front and the staff at Loading Dock took it in turns to have a go playing.

So bright and so many people!

Onto the food! It didn't take too long for our food to arrive considering how many orders there were and how there was only the one cook there. Just from a general look, I liked how perfectly the buns resembled fluffy white clouds. They were both stacked quite high and seemed neatly contained. I did find that due to the flimsiness of the bun, it did disintegrate quite quickly in your hands. As well as that, because the buns were so soft and fresh, they stuck constantly to the roof of your mouth when you were eating! You would take a bite, chew and swallow and half of the bun would be plastered to the top of your mouth.

So many ingredients!

Huh, it looks smaller with the top off

So my Boyfriend's one was the tandoori chicken special for the day, with the shaved fennel, cucumber, red onion salad, yoghurt and mint raita and butter lettuce. It was a pretty bland burger despite all those flavoursome ingredients, the chicken was cooked nicely and it looked fantastic, but it was just a plain chicken breast covered in some tandoori sauce. The raita could've been a bit better balanced with some more salt in the yoghurt. My Boyfriend didn't like it for the same reasons and he didn't like the bun at all, ah Asian flavours. He thought it was strange that it was so sweet.

Oooh wagyu beef

Attractive no?

My wagyu beef burger had slow cooked wagyu, butter lettuce, soy pickled shitake mushrooms and red dragon sauce. I liked it much more than the tandoori chicken one but that's not saying much really. My Boyfriend agreed that it was much better in taste and better balanced than his bun, but immediately after he took a bite, I ended up gnawing on a chewy bit of sinew which wasn't pleasant. The pickled shitake were super salty, and I'm not sure if I enjoyed that, I didn't find much of a sour tang at all, and I think that would've helped with balancing the flavours a bit more. Somewhere in the pickling process, the shitake mushrooms also became super chewy, like rehydrated uncooked mushrooms chewy, weird. The red dragon sauce was odd, for some reason I thought from the name that it would be super spicy, but it was more like a chutney by my tastes, just a mildly spicy tomato one. Ah well, I heard that that sauce is so popular, they've started selling it by the bottle!

I'm not sure if I would eat here again, I'm keen to find out what the chicken and pork buns taste like, although a char grilled teriyaki burger doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy. I think its because I dislike chicken breast due to its tendency to dry out and I love a soaked dark meat teriyaki piece, like thigh or drumstick pieces. The pork sounds interesting though, I suppose we'll see what happens in the future.

Loading Dock Expresso

Atmosphere: 7, its nicely designed even if it looks like it spontaneously sprung from nowhere haha. I liked its very relaxed, stop in for a coffee or whatever air. My Boyfriend comments that he likes the street lamps on the inside of the cafe.
Service: 8? Even though we only ever buy drinks here, they are super friendly, smile and wave to everyone they're serving, not just the pair of us in our lovey dovey state. The first time we went here, they offered their recommendations on the drinks and showed us where we could sit a bit away from the business crowd
Food: 0 hahaha who knows! We just buy drinks from this place = P


Bun Mobile
Atmosphere: 8, lovely little food van, very clean, bright and well decorated. Have a look at their table with what looks like ideas for new burgers scratched onto it! Their menus are clear and can be seen without squinting from far away, great for avoiding the crowds ordering already
Service: 8, verrrrry friendly, they greet you with a friendly hello and also wave goodbye and thank you for ordering, buying, eating and leaving once you're done hahaha! This is despite cooking and being super busy in intense Queensland heat! Hats off to them.
Food: 7, yeah, not bad. I should have tried their dessert bun, I bet that would've been fantastic.

RJIE 2: Maui Brownie Madness

New tag! RJIE - random junk I eat. Sometimes I eat things that I can't be bothered to make a formal blog post about, whether it be because I can't be bothered, I didn't take enough photos at the time or there's really nothing more to say about it. Its just things I've eaten and my opinion on them. Who knows, maybe I can persuade you to have something you normally wouldn't think of eating? Or dissuade you from eating something that might absolutely horrific?

You know the kind of thing I'm talking about, when you go out with a friend or grocery shopping with one and they go, "Oh xxxxxxx I love that!" And since your friend loves it, you think of trying it, even though you normally would never think of getting that stuff. I went shopping with my Boyfriend and he buys stuff I would in a million years think of getting or making, he loves AM noodles which apparently are the "most healthy" instant noodle on the market, he gets bean sprouts and alfalfa sprouts as snacks and he convinced me to try pesto and cheese toasties, fantastic by the way. I will never buy any of these items ever, but its good to know. I've done the same to him with Danish feta, Banneton garlic turkish bread, Boggo Road market fruit punch and plenty of other things I'm probably forgetting.

The opposite is also true, where a friend will go, "oh god, never try that ever, ever, ever." I'm probably among the more vocal of my friends though, in how much I dislike or like a place or food.

Today's RJIE is . . .

Maui Brownie Madness! Good god, that is a pretty picture.

After my sister and I went to the Sushi Train in Chatswood, we decided to get some dessert and I got myself a single scoop waffle cone of this concoction for about $6. It was a much smaller cone that the one I had gotten at Gelati Madness at West End only a few days ago, so I was disappointed  in that aspect.

Apparently its a chocolate yoghurt, brownie bits, macadamia nuts and chocolate fudge ribboned throughout. I couldn't notice the difference and wasn't aware that it was a yoghurt based ice cream at all! It does explain why my lactose intolerance flared up so bad afterwards though. I thought it was decent, I found the flavour to be overly rich and to get a bit annoying to eat after a while, even the nuts didn't offer enough of a contrast to me. Wouldn't eat again, but I would if someone offered it to me.

Shabuhouse

Shabuhouse was the next on the agenda! L., H., and I were reminiscing about hot pot one day at work. It evoked very fond memories for all of us of chilly winter days, seated around a bubbling pot of soup on a gas burner as we took it in turns to dump in delicious mushrooms, meats, fish balls, quail eggs and assorted veggies into a flavoursome soup. So we decided to head to a commercial hot pot place sometime in the future. H., was missing the equipment to do so, L., and D., have a tiny two bedroom house where we couldn't fit and my mother doesn't like the idea of hot pot with anyone besides family due to the chance of getting sick.

We ummed and ahhed for a bit, Sunnybank was our first go to area, since the only hotpot restaurants L., and I could think of were there. One of our friend's S., another Korean girl got invited along, she told us of a magical place in the city, a place where a person could eat a buffet for $20, of all the hot pot ingredients, four different soups, fantastic iced teas and all the sushi they could stand. It sounded amazing, and so close for the majority of us! In the end, she persuaded us to go to Shabuhouse and didn't actually turn up at all.

Aha! Shabuhouse!

So L., H., Boyfriend and I went to Shabuhouse, an unassuming little buffet place upstairs from a sports masseur, and right across from another Korean buffet. D., came along too, an hour late as usual.

Lunch special? Music to my ears

The interior was interesting! At least it was to me. There was a small entrance area, that lead to the paying area, some live seafood and then opened up to large seating arrangements. Each of the tables contained between 4-8 seats with an induction plate included for the hot pot.

The entrance! L., and H., were walking ahead

Is that one on the upper right really a baby though?

All the tables looked like this!

This was the sushi table, where chefs were quickly putting out plate after massive plate of sushi. There was also a very large well stocked bar behind them

Go chefs go!

This picture doesn't show it too well but all along the wall are identical bottles filled with different shades of a coloured liquid. If you were there, the colour of the liquid in the glasses shaded from yellow to green, and on the wall opposite us shaded from green to blue to purple! I thought it was quite cool.

Really pretty in person, the lights make this look terrible

I didn't take a photo but there were also some huge plasma screens all around us playing random songs. How random were the songs? Well it was like someone had just plugged in their iPod into the speaker system, one of the songs that came on was Skrillex's Bangarang. If this is a good or a bad thing, depends on your taste I suppose! The videos were just as good, with none of the actual music videos playing, most of the time there were random clips of sea life or animal documentary shorts.

We sat there awkwardly for a bit before flagging down a waitress to explain what we had to do. Apparently the entire restaurant is on buffet at lunch, help yourself to whatever, don't leave food or you get fined $20, order drinks with any of the staff, or flag them down if you need anything, simple! We poured over the local drink menus. I read a review somewhere that they had excellent house iced teas! I can't believe I didn't take a photo of the warning sign either!

The iced tea menu!

We ended up getting a fruit goshana for 2, a cold yuja tea and a hot gen mai cha sencha tea. L., H., and I couldn't decide at all, I wanted all the teas!

The fruit goshana was a sweet fruity tea, it had lots of floating fresh fruit but I wasn't too impressed with the strawberries they had included. It was strawberry season and we had a massive glut of really good quality strawberries, so why did theirs taste like ass? I really liked the combo of fruit, but its not like they contribute much to the flavour anyway, it does look absolutely fantastic though.

Mmm tasty fruit goshana

The Yuja tea was sweet too, and it reminded me of a slightly bitter green tea mixed with lemonade? I really liked it though, very tart and refreshing with its combination of flavours.

H.'s Yuja!

So it was now time to head to the buffet tables and see what was on offer! On the far shadowy left hand side, there was a hot food buffet, pre cooked not cooked to order. From left to right there was Korean fried chicken, deep fried sushi with a tangy dipping sauce and a vegetarian stir fry. We didn't pick up any fried chicken, the deep fried sushi was the best out of all the fried foods actually, it had a spicy beef interior and I really liked the tempura batter as well as whatever the sauce was. The vegetarian stir fry I ignored I think, there was a big batch of it left over, H., grabbed us a plate of everything. It looks interesting though, several different types of capsicum, onions, eggplant, and who knows what those chewy looking bits are.

Fried chicken, fried sushi and a fried . . .stirfry?

Vegetarian spring rolls, deep fried tofu in a sweet, sticky sauce and vegetarian noodles. I don't really remember any of these beyond basic thoughts. The spring rolls were very light on filling and they were small to start off with. I never like tofu, although these weren't too bad, crunchy outsides and soft tofu innards, obviously a hit with how many were missing. The noodles, H., grabbed were ignored by the entire group.

Spring rolls, deep fried tofu and noodles

For our actual hot pot soups, there were two large hot water dispensers and a stack of bowls containing the soups. The two water dispensers contained a clear Japanese dry fish soup and a vegetarian broth while the bowls held a hot and spicy, tom yum soup. I don't think anyone opted for the tom yum soup, H., and I went for the fish broth, my Boyfriend and L., got the vegetarian. I have the feeling that L., might have gotten D., a tom yum broth though. There were large metal bowls that fit into the induction plates built into our tables, we were really surprised that the broth from the hot water dispensers came out so hot though! The bowl heated up really quickly and I found myself quickly running back to our table to get rid of my bowl. The broths were very thin, barely any flavour to them until you boiled them down. It was a very faint, heavily diluted broth.

Japanese Dry Fish Soup it says in the background

Hot and spicy soup!

Next on the agenda was the assorted foods for the hot pot itself. There were two main spots to get things for your hot pot. Looking back at the photos I can't really see how they were arranged, besides for colour? There were tongs and large rectangular plates everywhere to help yourself to whatever you wanted.There were spring onions, pumpkin, soft tofu and seafood extenders/ fake crab on this bench.

Spring onions, onions, pumpkins, soft tofu and seafood extenders
You can see the soup dispensers in the background

This one was part of the central assortment. From left to right going clockwise, an orange and white fish ball, zucchini, baby pak choy, bean sprouts and some really bad fish tofu. The fish balls were a lot firmer than what I'm used to really, they weren't really good. I felt like this was odd, cause I've always bought/been served really good fish balls and tofu. You can get a really good kilo of it for less than 10 dollars, so I wonder how much these guys bought theirs for.

Fishball, fishball, zucchini, pak choy, bean sprouts and fish tofu

Then there were the frozen meat section, prawns, beef, pork and octopus going from upper left clockwise. I didn't pick any of this, it didn't look particularly appetising and I'm not a fan of any of those things in my hot pot. I think I left out some cabbage and napa cabbage from the photo.

Prawns, beef, pork and octopus

To the left of the sushi benches, there were raw noodles in steel containers, udon, ramen, a weird wheat flour noodle, vermicelli and egg noodles. I picked up some egg noodles and my Boyfriend picked the udon.

Udon, ramen, weird wheat noodles, vermicelli and egg noodles

Here are the neat sauce containers! Very large and light containers that had three spots for the different sauces, from left to right a sesame sauce, gochujang sauce and soy sauce. Their sesame sauce was super tasty, I can't describe it besides that distinctive sesame oil scent and a creamy texture, but its very worth trying!

Man these containers are cool.
Sesame, gochujang and soy sauce

This is the sushi I picked up! I picked up two of every available piece and its honestly been so long I can't remember what was what and what tastes good.The beef one at the top above the omelette covered sushi was very good. I remember that at least hahaha.

What are you all?

This fruit salad featured in the right of the picture was the only dessert at the restaurant I think. It had banana, apple and kiwi fruit in a yoghurt sauce. It was actually a very good mix.



This is our amazing spread! H., put the fried foods in the middle for us all to share and from upper left corner clockwise is L.'s, H.', my food and then my Boyfriend's food. We spent a lot of time talking and eating, my Boyfriend and I finished our sushi and I made the mistake of not cooking my noodles in the soup so they tasted like glue.

We finished most things but it was a struggle even with the $20 fine lurking at the back of our minds. H., tried to hide her leftover noodles in the clear broth. L., and I made our boyfriends eat our leftovers hahaha.

Atmosphere: 7, pleasant but a bit odd. I quite liked it, its not a good place for a lazy lunch when you want to pig out with friends
Service: 3, took a while for a waitress to notice us. Other than that nothing since everything is buffet style. I found it annoying there was no signs for how to operate the induction plates, its lucky we're so intuitive as a group
Food: 4, edible but not fantastic. Its a massive let down to me that the hotpot which is the main draw of the restaurant was so poor. The stock was terrible and it took a long time for it to boil down to a drinkable state.