PPP: Bamboo Basket

Lu., was back in town for one night and one night only! No additional shows available, cash in your tickets while you still can! Lu., always hits the town like a natural disaster, shows up out of the blue, tries to organise a get together and leaves before you realise what has happened. This time I managed to catch her! We headed out to dinner with Gill., Lu., my Boyfriend and I.

Bamboo Basket was picked seeing as it was a firm favourite of Gill and Lu.,s and I agreed since I've never been there. Something about the prices always throws me off . . .check out their menu to see what I'm talking about! What startles me the most is that they have a constant public holiday price besides their regular price, how often are these guys open?

Yeah this place!

I love a place with help yourself condiments, no matter how fancy it is. It has the usual cohort of soy sauce, chilli sauce and black vinegar. Perfect for sprucing up your meal!

Helpfully labelled

I was having a major month of inability to recognise food so when this came to the table I cheerfully dug in thinking it was what I ordered. Nope, it was what Lu., ordered pork wontons with spicy garlic vinegar sauce. These were delicious! Sweet, salty and slightly gingery, they had almost scary softness that just cooked pork has. They were slippery little suckers though and there were a few splashes where we struggled to pick them up. Although a little hard to share out with the four of us, we made it work.

Tasty!

Gill., loves their cumin lamb. I don't, mostly because I hate the taste and smell of cumin. It is the celery of the spice world, once it gets in something, you can't help but notice it. The lamb was crazy tender with none of that fattiness you normally expect of lamb. The capsicum and onion were cooked until sweet but still crunchy. It would've been a great dish except the cumin chased me off!

Bleh cumin

Gill., also ordered the steamed barbeque pork buns, super soft, white and fluffy buns with a mild sweetness to them. The barbeque pork was small pieces once you tore off the warm exterior. It was flavoursome and dyed a bright red, although a touch sweet. Very good if you're a fan of barbeque pork buns.

Fluffy little clouds

Lu., ordered their specialty of steamed pork soup dumplings! Not quite as pretty as the ones from New Shanghai with much less pleats, but still cute! I found these to be quite good, with a splash of soup on the inside. Half the fun as usual was trying to excise the dumping without losing any of the soup. Lu., was fascinated by them and thought them to be very tasty.

Mmm soup dumplings

My Boyfriend ignored all the food in favour of his roasted duck noodle soup and you can see why. Honestly, the best duck I've had in a very, very long time with perfectly deep brown crisp skin, moist flesh and deep salty, lip smacking, flavour to the bone. I kept eating his duck and passing it off to Lu., and Gill., to try whenever I could. I gave him puppy dog eyes to have the last piece when he sat back after nearly finishing his soup and duck. He reluctantly gave me the last piece after gallantly declaring it was only because he loved me.

Omg dat duck

The noodle soup was okay as well and served separately! It just makes it so much neater when the fried main is served separately, it ensures that the food doesn't get soggy! It also makes it much easier to share too. There were big halves of shimeji mushrooms, kai lan and fresh thick rice noodles like udon, the noodles had that fresh flavour were they are still amazing chewy and springy texture. The soup wasn't bad either but not great either, with a good saltiness and no oily finish.

Tasty rice noodles

I had a hankering for my own plate of noodles so I ordered these handmade cold noodles with peanut sauce, shredded chicken, onion and coriander. The noodles were absolutely delicious but I would have been happy with a lot more of that peanut sauce, I love the stuff! The shredded chicken tasted a lot like Vietnamese goi ga does, that lightly dressed with sugar and lime cabbage salad with poached/boiled chicken shreds. Its a really tasty and light tasting combination with the creaminess of the peanut sauce making it that little bit naughty so you remain happy.

I loves peanuts

This is actually the dish I ordered! How on earth did I mistake it for Lu.,'s!? Shangdong style pork dumplings, I'm not sure why they come with this super thin crust of pastry but it was pretty tasty! Crunchy easy to snap off, they hid six pork dumplings beneath it. When I googled Shangdong dumplings none of them looked anything like each other but none of them looked like this either! I didn't find anything particularly different about these pork dumplings compared to the pork wonton ones from earlier to be honest. I may have been too busy slurping up noodles and stealing duck pieces to really comment.

Why do you look like that? TSG you can't just ask why something looks like that

The last dish I ordered was salt and pepper calamari, crispy, tender tentacles with a mildly salty exterior. It was freshened up a little bit with green onion chunks.

Alright, would not reorder

Bamboo Basket
Atmosphere: 7, busy little place with a modern sort of take on Asian restaurants.
Service: 5, pretty average. We got our food but it was hard to get a waiter to notice us or remove plates.
Food: 8, really delicious. I would go back here again for a meal if I was feeling cashed up.

Chop Chop Chang's

Jubiventures! Once again we're out on the town for a quick lunch and catch up! It was her turn to pick and pay so off we go to Chop Chop Chang's!

This place!

So many signs up everywhere.

Their logo is everywhere

Here is their food and drink menu. That massive mural of an astronaut monkey is Chop Chop Chang aka Ham aka the first chimpanzee to go into space! Here is the wiki article about him :)! Our waitress told us when we kept looking at the mural wondering what it had to do with the place. I'm not sure how space monkeys have anything to do with pan-Asian hawker fare either but whatever.

Communal dining

Some little booths are available

Their bar

I ordered a Vietnamese iced coffee. It was cold and sweet, Jubi tried some and particularly liked it but I've honestly had better. The presentation of the drink weirded me out a little bit as it reminded me of how milkshakes are normally presented to you. I was expecting them to pour an inch or so of condensed milk at the bottom with a really dark coffee on top, this coffee wasn't half as strong as I thought it was. I always recall the coffee bit being almost unbearably super strong and dark in flavour until mixed with the condensed milk, it should be nearly undrinkable until the ice melts. Ah, that's just me though, I did enjoy the drink.

Not up to scratch

Nearly everything here is meant for sharing, so we picked a meal each and a starter since Jubi had already had breakfast that morning. We picked the edamame which were cooked in a master stock with furikake to dip into. The edamame were warm and wet, you can't really see it in the photo but the bowl is about half full of broth. The broth was not necessary and tasted mildly porky and didn't really add much flavour to the edamame beans themselves. If anything, the broth just made the entire dish too messy, since it dripped everywhere and you kept wiping your hands on the napkin. The furikake were a nice touch to dip the beans into, I have no idea what those nubbly yellow things were but they were tasty! Flaky sea salt and nori strips were also present.

Spare bowl just for the skins, nice.

Jubi ordered the chilled melon salad with iceburg lettuce, mint, Thai basil, coriander, cashews, chilli and lime dressing. It was a very crunchy salad textually from the combination of ingredients, I was starving so I ate a lot more of this than I intended to. The herbs were very refreshing as was the cooling water/honey dew melon balls throughout the dish. This was probably a good thing as the entire thing was declared unbearably spicy by Jubi although I barely flinched. She said several times that she couldn't feel her tongue and felt that it really detracted from the rest of the dish as she couldn't taste anything. I didn't mind the dish even though it contains elements of things I normally dislike, mint, Thai basil, honey dew and water melon, so I basically disliked everything in there, but I didn't mind it this time.

Crunchy/spicy

As I said, I was feeling super hungry so I ordered the Chiang Mai chicken curry which came with a peanut, cucumber and chilli pickle and I got a side of plain white rice with it. You could also get brown rice but I'm not a fan of its chewiness.

There were deep fried egg noodles, a massive chicken maryland piece aka thigh and drumstick together with a topping of shredded coriander. I loved the curry sauce that was in this dish, deeply aromatic, sweet, creamy and very mild in chilli compared to the last dish. Jubi and I kept spooning it over the rice to eat or slurping it up with the rapidly softening fried noodles. Jubi adds that she isn't normally interested in curry at all, but "dayummmm that's some good curry."

Crazy good

The chicken maryland pieces was moist and juicy but my biggest complaint was the size of it. Not in terms of the amount of chicken but the sheer physical size of it. How on earth were you supposed to share this with someone? Just dig in with your fingers and rip away chunks of meat? Take a bite each? There are no scissors, no spare plate or anything on which to rest this gigantic hunk of meat. Jubi and I are good friends so she sat and watched me rip apart the chicken, initially with chopsticks and a spoon but a few minutes later with my bare hands. Cubed chicken would have been easier to eat, but wouldn't have loaned that bone sweetness to the curry, catch 22 I suppose.

I enjoyed the pickle, it was very sweet and sour and cut through the richness of the curry very well. I ate all the peanuts and most of the cucumber, although I steered clear of the chilli.

Possibly the messiest meal I've had in ages

I also got some karma cookies which are basically fortune cookies that are used to donate to charity. I didn't take a photo or anything but they were lovely crunchy cookies. I can't remember my fortune either haha, I remember being unimpressed by it though!

Chop Chop Chang's
Atmosphere: 7, very bright and open space. We went during the day, but I can imagine it would get very noisy, very quickly at night.
Service: 9, wonderful service, we had a very friendly waitress who explained all aspects of the menu, recommended dishes, inquired after any little thing and wasn't fussed by the mess we left behind. She was the one who gave us the heads up about the Chop Chop Chang mural.
Food: 7, pretty tasty food, some of it is a bit hit and miss but its tasty if a bit pricy and the smaller dishes definitely rank on the smaller side.

 

Nagomi Bento

I can't even describe how annoyed I am, I had originally written the first half of this post maybe a month or two ago when I went by myself. I did the full shebang, uploaded pictures, captioned them, wrote loving descriptions of the food and the restaurants origins.

All it needed was another meal. I planned a return trip and when I went to upload the pictures, the post was mysteriously missing. I had put a lot of effort into researching its origins, and I can't remember what for the life of me, I had written here. 

I've been going to Nagomi Bento for a long time, like circa 2008 or something.

Right across from Jude/Coffe Club

The place has really changed a lot since I first started going here. They started opening up izakaya at night, small pickings to occupy drinks. As you can see on the signs below.

Just some more ideas~

When they first opened, they were one of the few places to use these buzzers. You put in your order and got handed over one of these buzzers. You could easily wander away, grab a seat or something and then when it rang, you went to the pick up zone and grabbed your meal. Its really good at decluttering the counter especially during a busy time like lunch time in the city. I can admit I've been turned off from a place because of the sheer amount of people milling around looking at menus. Speaking of which.

I always get startled by the buzzer going off

Otherwise, it's quite a plain place. Somewhere to get a fast meal, have a bit of a chat while enjoying the cool sea breeze before heading off to work again.

The counter!

As you can see, the tables are quite spartan. Despite their appearance, you can have quite a bit of comfortable elbow space with however you're sitting with. Big tables are a godsend for big appetites :)

The solid wooden tables

The chicken karaage bento box is an absolute classic. It comes with so many interesting bits to nibble on, you quickly find yourself full before you realise it! I ordered mine with an additional side of Japanese curry which was a dollar extra. The karaage here is some of the crunchiest you'll ever find, juicy thigh pieces with a great nubbly, crunchy coating. It comes with a little garnish of curly leaf parsley, a little tub of kewpie mayonnaise and a lemon slice. The potato salad on top of the balsamic vinegar dressed salad of spinach and fancy lettuce, is divine, I have no idea what they put in their potato salad but it is delicious. Its ridiculously creamy and the potato is almost a little too soft but it works very well. The pan fried pork gyoza pieces are very crunchy. The potato croquette is a lovely contrast between crunchy and super pillowy insides. I always eat my potato croquette first. The sushi rice is nothing special and I didn't end up finishing much of it. The edamame is a great snack, more on that later.

Chicken karaage bento box!

Almost all gone!

I came back a few days later and decided to have the seafood salad. I chose to have the sesame dressing with it because I've never tried it before. Sesame dressing is amazing, super creamy like mayonnaise with a mild nutty flavour and a sweet tang, I honestly debated getting another tub. The seafood salad had a strange assortment of toppings above their spinach, red onion and fancy lettuce salad. It had several prawns, shredded crab meat, seaweed salad, firm slices of fresh salmon, cooked tuna mixed with mayonnaise and corn and flying fish roe. I tried mixing them all together, but it wasn't a great idea, it's great if you pick things off one at a time and eat it that way. The prawns were good, sweet and cooked well. The fresh salmon was firm, creamy and yet melting on the tongue. The seaweed salad was crunchy, sweet and sour, I liked the bigger chunks although I prefer the brighter appearance of most seaweed salads. The cooked tuna was actually my favourite topping since it was so close to the flying fish roe, a blob of that classic combo of tuna and mayo, with sweet bursts of corn and salty pops from the roe.

Tasty mishmash of foods

Both times I ordered a container of edamame, the order in container is as big as a salad bowl! All for only $2! The takeaway container is as big as their normal sushi containers, possibly the cheapest edamame in Brisbane. I just took pictures because I remember how Gill told me she first ate them pod and all and wondered why everyone loved them. Squeeze the pod, eat the bean people and enjoy the edamame!

Hairy little buggers

2 beans in this one

Squish firmly

Eat the bean!

Nagomi Bento
Atmosphere: 6, cool and refreshing. I love just relaxing here on the pier while grabbing a bite to eat. I have no idea what the inside looks like because I always lurk outside on those wooden tables.
Service: 5, order and then grab your food. Nothing else interesting to be honest.
Food: 8, I've been going here since 2008, I still love this place.

 

PPP: Bird's Nest Restaurant

H., chose the newly opened Bird's Nest Yakitori bar in West End to celebrate Miss Chatterbox's birthday. A., the Chocolate Monster, Z., B., myself and my Boyfriend also went along.

I'm really running out of available letters to use to anonymously describe my friends aren't I? My general code was always to give my nursing workmates a single letter, or a short nickname if they shared initials with someone else. My high school friends/sister's friends had their own nicknames and that's about it. Most of my university friends, who are also nurses derp, have moved far, far away in their searches for jobs so I haven't had to code them up for that reason.

Its pretty easy to keep track of everyone though, since I tend to go out with the same people. Jubi met H., a while back and she said she was excited to meet her cause she kept seeing her name in my blog haha. 

While there are about five A.,s in total at work, I only really go out with A., and occasionally Miss Chatterbox, who also starts with an A, there's also Little A, who I frequently carpool with, and another two A.,s unaccounted for, both of whom have young babies. Those hints are more for my friends at work who try and figure out who is who haha.

Anyway, my Boyfriend and I arrived at Bird's Nest very fashionably late, like an hour late! I was absolutely mortified! I'm normally the kind of person who shows up half an hour early and waits for other people to get there! I kept texting both H., and A., telling them I was on my way but no one responded. They all seemed very surprised when we eventually showed up. They were well into their meal when we arrived.

We ended up ordering the same food as everyone else out of sheer laziness. We both ordered the seven skewer set, which nearly everyone else had ordered. Here is a link to their menu.

Placements

There are large slabs of slate to rest the skewers on. On the table are several boxes to place used skewers, a pink Himalayan rock salt and pepper pots as well as more napkins.

Big slabs of slate

Everyone ordered chicken karaage as an additional side. We were eagerly awaiting our food and all my friends noticed my envious puppy dog eyes, they kept pushing the chicken karaage onto us. Beautifully juicy, golden brown crunchy and just salty enough, the free range chicken thighs they used were amazing. The blob of wasabi mayonnaise was delicious, creamy with just a hint of wasabi spice, I kept using it to spice up other things.

H., ordered these yaki onigiri, grilled rice balls brushed with their tare sauce. H., Miss Chatterbox and B., shared these rice balls, from the looks on their faces they didn't like it. I remember hearing an audible crunch when they bit into them and I also recall that they didn't enjoy the crunchy outside and mostly discarded it. I have a sneaking suspicion this wasn't to their taste.

I ordered an additional side of Leba pate, a house made chicken liver pate with little crunchy baguette slices. The pate was so delicious, I can't even begin to describe. If you like pate, this dish will have your taste buds dancing in ecstasy. The rich, creamy unctuousness of liver, it was light and fluffy and it just spread like softened butter onto those hard crunchy toasts. The utter smoothness of that pate was amazing, especially being used to Vietnamese style pate. The pepper was a sharp and spicy contrast to the pate. I offered pate to everyone but they refused, stating either that they didn't want to try liver, had been pressured to eat it too much as children or disliked it. Oh well, more pate for me then.

H., also ordered a shiitake skewer, a locally grown shiitake mushroom grilled with ponzu vinegar. I literally took a photo and then the skewer was eaten. I have no idea what they even though of this dish.

H., got atsuage, deep fried tofu, ponzu, shallots and a generous scattering of bonito flakes. Everyone seemed a bit surprised when I mentioned that bonito was dried, finely shaved tuna. The other odd part is that this dish is covered underneath their vegetable part in the menu. It lead to an interesting discussion on vegetarianism in different cultures. When VGirl, my sister, turned vegetarian, my mum had no idea what to cook. Vietnamese cuisine has a lot of vegetarian food, but she was very skeptical when my sister refused to eat things with animal extracts, refused seafood and certain soy sauces. Over time, she just learned to cook the things my sister allowed.

Pile of fluffy stuff

The next skewer we received was a chicken thigh with little shallots grilled together with a salt base. Tasty, a touch charry and surprisingly sweet once grilled, the shallots were an interesting choice. I kept mistaking it for leeks however. In the corner is a Japanese curry set that A., and the Chocolate Monster both ordered, they had tucked into most of it by the time we arrived, so it wasn't worth taking photos of it.

Charry shallots and chicken thigh

We then received cherry tomatoes wrapped in pork belly with cracked pepper. Be extremely eating these, as they will shoot scalding lava juice at you aka hot tomato seeds. More than a few people got mouth burns when these arrived at the table. The pork is tasty and was really the only non chicken thing from the 7 skewer set.

Beware!

This was free range tenderloin chicken pieces with wasabi mayonnaise. It was good chicken if a bit plain, the chicken was juicy and well cooked.

Tasty mayo though

Chicken meatballs! These had a good flavour from their tare sauce, soft, squishy meatballs with a slightly charry outside.

Not bad

These are chicken butts aka bishop's nose aka chicken tails, don't be fooled by the cute name! They are good for people who enjoy chicken fat and skin, cooked to a melting consistency. They are quite oily as expected of an area with such a high concentration of fat.

Not a fan

Bird's Nest Restaurant
Atmosphere: 8, lovely little restaurant with lots of little pockets to sit in. We sat the main large grouping beside their door. There were intimate little booths at the back as well as a constantly full main bar, the main bar area was seated right in front of the chefs who all seemed happy to chat while cooking.
Service: 9, the floor manager was polite, friendly, super efficient and was over in a flash as soon as you raised an eyebrow. The other staff members she worked with weren't as good, but still very polite. We had our backs to the wall and found that our water wasn't topped up as frequently as some of our easier to get to friends. When we received our bill as well, there was a mix up with the drinks we ordered and they were able to fix it quite quickly.
Food: 6.5, the food is very good quality, it is very well cooked, lovingly prepared and presented. I found the flavours to be a little plain and the price to be a little steep. Each of the skewers are around 5-8 dollars each and considering how many it would take to fill me up, its just not worth the price. It seems like quite a popular place to go for a get together, but for a real meal, I'd head elsewhere.