Taste of Penang

I remember when Taste of Penang first opened and I wanted to go to there. We never did of course, it was one of those places that always seemed to get shoved to the back of the list. We, VGirl, Yannikins, Mandy, JGirl, Shishi and myself never made it one time because I got badly lost in Sunnybank by myself and they had to rescue me. To top things off, the restaurant was actually closed so that time we went to Little Singapore which was disastrous.

Then the second time I attempted to go there with Yass, I sent them a FB message asking whether or not they were halal and they never answered us. That time I think we ended up going to Arabellas in Upper Mount Gravatt.

Then the third time it was my birthday in 2013, and we went to Tobaki instead as it was fuller. Also not one of my best ideas.

This time it was just VGirl and myself on a cool autumn night, doing what we do and heading out to dinner in Sunnybank!

Its bright green in the centre of the complex, easy to find!

I didn't get a photograph of the menu, it's completely uploaded to Urbanspoon!  The menu has quite a few options on it and I quite like the self service aspect of the restaurant. You get a little notepad, tick and flick whatever you want and hand it back to them! No mistakes with the order here! 

We got redirected by the waitress and we pondered what we wanted outside. The owner/chef came out to see us and had a long chat with us. He asked us if we had been there before or had Malaysian food before, he recommended a few standout dishes on the menu such as the char kway teow, the chicken satay, the nasi lemak and some other bits and bobs. When I asked him what he recommended for vegetarians, he isolated about five or six dishes, the veggie spring rolls, the laska, char kway teow, deep fried tofu, fried rice, roti with dhal and added that most dishes could be made vegetarian if we wanted. When VGirl hesitated, he started adding more and more dishes haha. She was very pleased by this as she finds that a lot of places if they aren't prepared for vegetarians either make it an afterthought or do anything to make you a vegetarian dish.

As well as what is on the menu, the owner added that if you like their Facebook page, you can keep track of the weekly specials! Usually a few days where they serve a special not usually on their menu, from previous posts they have served asam laksa, lor mee, char kuey kark and nasi kandar. 

So many signs!

They also sell a variety of homemade and ever changing kuih assortment, steamed desserts with a sorta sticky/chewy texture. It's a very interesting texture, we have lots of similar desserts in Vietnamese cuisine so they all look vaguely familiar to my eye. They seem to constantly upload the day's assortment on Facebook, so like them to keep yourself posted!

I ordered a teh tarik for my drink, the cold version! It's famed as being the national drink of Malaysia, a strong black tea with sweetened condensed milk added and poured repeatedly between two cups for a frothy top. I was a little surprised when it came out in a bubble tea container, but that was the flavour I was expecting when I tried it! A very strong and slightly ginger flavoured black tea with the sweetness of condensed milk. I ended up shaking the container to get the bubble effect I wanted.

I'll take it~!

VGirl wasn't in the mood for anything in particular but she wanted a hot soy milk drink to warm up hands. When she recieved it, she said it was mildly sweet, not as much as commercial soy milks that you can find. She said it reminded her of when Mama Pham makes fresh soy milk and she can drink it straight after it's been cooked. She looked very happy as she sat there warming her hands.

In a double insulated cup!

I got the nasi lemak with beef rendang, I always love this dish. I like my food in neat sections and picking at different bits to eat! I got the beef rendang on medium heat, as I was convinced by the owner down from hot heat. He was right, the chillis were spicy but not unbearable. It's not as salty as the one I make but still very tasty, with super tender beef and an excellent gravy to splash on my rice.

Solid

VGirl got the vegetarian char kway teo, from memory it had bean sprouts, button mushrooms, baby corn, carrot, green onion, tofu and another green vegetable. She said it was delicious and polished it off super fast.

This is a really popular plate design

I got the spicy fried chicken as my starter but it arrived after everything else. I'm not sure what the spice mixture they used to marinate it was, but it smelt really familiar like five spice powder or something. I got three drums and flats in total.

Taste of Penang
Atmosphere: 5, pretty standard local takeaway to be honest, all the seating is outside!
Service: 10, really wonderful and super friendly service from the owner. He stopped to have a chat to every patron there before and after their meal.
Food: 6, definitely cheap and interesting food. I would go here again for their specials for sure.

The day I ate everything aka my birthday+iThai review

It was my birthday quite recently! We went to the Rocklea Markets on a Sunday, I always forget that the Sunday ones are a weird discovery market aka market full of secondhand, random stuff. I went with VGirl and my aunt, I was a bit worried that my aunt wouldn't enjoy it because there was no fresh produce. However she does love cheap stuff and she bought a ton of cheap $2 clothing. VGirl also got a cheap coin purse and then we had breakfast.

VGirl and my aunt went to the Fresh Omelet Company for breakfast. VGirl got the plain vegetarian omelet for breakfast in a wrap, spinach, red onion, omelet, mushrooms, capsicum and melted cheese. She said that it was quite plain in flavour as there was no detectable seasoning in the wraps. There was sauce that you could help yourself to, but even without the sauce, the wraps leaked a lot of watery veggie fluid.

Not a bad idea though

My aunt picked the mushroom version, spinach, onion, omelet and cheese. She remarked that it was also quite plain in flavour and she only ate half of it. She made me eat the other half as it was my birthday, I thought that was pretty rough.

Jelly of their wrapping prowess

The rough part was because I had just eaten this absolutely massive honeywurst sausage from Hahndorf Small Goods. It was about 20cm long and the sausage was veal and flavoured with honey which made it pleasantly sweet and much more manageable as it wasn't so overpoweringly savoury. I have made it a small goal to eat everything they offer here, at the time of writing I've had the honeywurst, weisswurst, gypsy had and German meatloaf. Slowly working on it every second week or so!

Mmm honeywurst

VGirl and I got iced tea from the Ice Tea Factory afterwards. They offer you tastes of all their iced tea which is really handy, because I can never decide as you know. I honestly tried three or four before I panicked and decided.

I really enjoy this place.

At the time that we went there was lemon+ginger, raspberry+orange, peach+mint, peach+mango, lychee+rose+white tea and apple+mint+green tea. I can't remember what a lot of the base teas were, sometimes they write it on the signs but they weren't on them this particular week. If you follow me on Instagram, you can tell I go here a lot haha.

Delicious~

Such tasty teas

I got the raspberry and orange one on the left, while VGirl got the lychee and rose on the right. Mine was very bright and refreshing, with a small segment of orange floating around in it. VGirl's was very heavily floral and honey like in flavour, she really enjoyed it though and every time I go here, she requests that I get it for her.

Delicious iced tea

After we finished breakfast, we decided to go to to the Eagle Farm Markets. My aunt had never been and was really excited when she saw how extensive and cheap the produce section was. VGirl and I went around the markets and saw these really cute little baby onesies.

Super cute

They came in a little bento boxes, the fabric was made out of bamboo cloth and they included a washer, socks and a little hat in different sizes.

Such cute packaging

We saw this little stall set up and I kept nagging VGirl to get some doughnut holes for us to share. VGirl has had a weakness to doughnuts since she was young. I remember when she about 8-10, we would get a box of doughnuts from Coles every weekend and she would eat nearly the whole thing by herself.

If you see these, definitely buy them

There were eight large, fluffy doughnut holes for $6! They were so fluffy, super light and so airy, it was hard to believe they had just come out of a deep fryer. They were rolled in cinnamon sugar and despite not liking sweets all that much, I can't remember the last time I had a better doughnut.

Yummy doughnuts

We went to DFO and bought a whole bunch of random stuff since they were still running their Mother's Day sales. We went for quite a few hours, then decided to head home and then went out for an early dinner. We wanted to go to Glamorous Wok but they told us to come back at 5.30pm when they started their dinner run, we decided to just go to iThai instead.

We picked the Pad iThai, prawns, chicken, bean sprouts, lemon and rice noodles with special iThai sauce. The noodles were served a little bit harder than we liked and the whole balance of the dish was skewed towards the sour end of the scale. My aunt and Mama Pham resolutely ate this dish as the only thing they could stand, but they were making dark remarks that my pad thai was much better, even if I cooked my noodles mushier.

Bit too sour

VGirl went for the sweet and sour vegetables, she said it was exactly what she wanted. She was craving sweet and sour pork, but the whole vegetarian thing really kills it. She really wanted a bright, fluorescent sauce over some veggies and that's exactly what she got.

VGirl loves sweet and sour 

I ordered the som tum as its one of the famous dishes of Thailand, pounded green papaya, dried shrimp, green beans, cherry tomato, peanuts, chilli and a fish sauce dressing. Oh Jesus fucking Christ, this was the most pain I've ever endured with chillis since the time VGirl dared me to eat an entire packet of wasabi when I was 12, or the time I rubbed my nose after cutting chillis and washed out my nose with milk. I was nearly crying it was so incredibly spicy. My aunt point blank refused to eat it as she has a very sensitive stomach. Mama Pham ate it but very sparingly, she remarked that it was very well made but that it was too spicy to enjoy. I ate almost all of it, CHILLI HERO. We both ultimately agreed that it would've been better a little milder.

It hurts so bad

I got the crispy deep fried pork belly with special spicy sauce which came with some veggies and steamed rice. The pork belly was mildly spicy but nothing compared to the massive heat of the som tum. My aunt and Mama Pham both praised this dish very highly, saying it was the best thing that we had ordered. The exterior of the pork belly was slightly crunchy as if pan fried and then it was cooked in the slightly spicy sauce. The crackling on some of the pieces was a bit chewy though but easily put aside. The dish was a bit overly salty but went well with the som tum.

Tasty

Also here is the birthday cake my mum made for me! She said she got the strawberries at the local market and made me a slightly tart strawberry sponge for the centre of the sponge cake. She said that her boss wrote the message on the cake which is why it looks wonky.

iThai
Atmosphere: 6, busy little restaurant, simple decor and my favourite picture menus.
Service: 6, it was solid. I have no complaints besides being worried when my waitress just took our order with reconfirming it or writing it down. Thankfully everything turned out okay.
Food: 6, large portions, not always what I was expecting but on the plus side, it was quite cheap. I would maybe go here again, if I was hard up on cash and wanted to share food with friends.

Food Phenomnomom!

Its been and gone but here are my pictures from Food Phenomnomnom held on the 1st of June at the Cooparoo Bowls Club. On arriving there, the place was absolutely packed! There wasn't parking to be found for a good ten minutes or more around the venue. We ended up going down the main road nearby and finding a side street to park on.

We did a quick run through of all the food trucks before making our plan of action. So here are the vans that showed up! First is the Neko Neko food Van, a Japanese food van selling sushi, Japanese sweet treats like fish shaped azuki bean pastries, udon dishes and bento boxes.

Closest I could get

This is the Pasta Cruiser, which sells freshly made pasta with a variety of traditional and non traditional pasta sauces.

Same for these guys

Thumbs up hotdog, had a massive line up and served five different types of hot dogs. The kicker for this food van was the huge amount of condiments they served with the hot dogs.

Ehh I'll just take photos of their sign

Juan More Taco is a Tex-Mex taco van, owned by one of my work acquaintances. They sell five different tacos, pork, chicken, beef, veggie and a special of the day.

Cute set up

Roam'in pizza is a wood fired mobile pizza oven that serve a variety of different pizzas as well as wraps.

Click on the photo to enlarge!

When I had arrived the Meatball Spot were telling everyone that they had completely run out of everything barring the wedges and were hastily restocking at the nearby Woolies/Coles. Its a pity cause I really wanted to have some. I didn't see them reselling meatballs until we left around 4pm.

Someone on IG said they were amazing ):

This is King of the Wings, they rocked up as I was getting there and I immediately hopped in line.They had five different wings for sale, the American BBQ with a hint of bourbon, bee sting with honey, sesame and chilli, the Southern Spice, a dry spice rub with a tasty herb mayo accompaniment, the Portuguese Crumb, a super crunchy coating with Portuguese flavours and the Chilliology, a mix of three of Australia's hottest chillis. You could also get steamed garlic butter chicken rice as a side or french fries. They also served potato samosas and veggie spring rolls for the vegetarians.

I saw Manda while I was in line and her let her cut in because she looked super sad when she saw how long all the other lines were.

Oooh~

While I spent an eternity in line for the King of the Wings van, I saw this van pull up from nowhere. Its the Kai Kart! New Zealand style pies, sweet baked goods, drinks and real fruit ice cream. 

Yay~

They sold out of most things really, really fast

I got super bossy and demanded everyone split up. I forgot my wallet at home which was pretty mortifying so I borrowed money off VGirl to stand in the line at King of Wings. HKBoy went to get pizza and also the tacos while VGirl and Mini VGirl derped around the trunks.

Veggie Pizza!

We got a vegetarian pizza for VGirl to mostly eat it had a very thin, slightly crisp base which probably would've been much crisper if we had eaten it as soon as we had gotten it. It had capsicum, spinach, olives, pineapple, mushrooms, onion, cheese and cherry tomatoes. There was a lovely wood smoked flavour to the pizza from the oven that they used.

Pizza~!

We grabbed one of each taco to split between us. From top left and going clockwise, there is the beef, chicken, veggie and then pulled pork tacos.

Oooh~

The sharing was made a bit more difficult by the fact that I was recovering from having a nasty upper respiratory track infection of some sort. So I was unable to share bites with everyone else, we decided to pinch off a bit of the meat off each taco and make our decisions to our sole taco each. It actually turned out quite well because we all had very different favourites.

The taco on the left is the slow braised beef in chipotle and adobo sauce with salsa verjo, pico de gallo and queso fresco. Salsa verjo being a simple red sauce made from onions, tomato, chilli and garlic. Pico de gallo is a basic fresh sauce made from tomato, garlic, coriander, onion and jalapenos. While the queso fresco is a feta like textured cheese that they get specially made from a cheese maker. I liked this one the most.

The chicken was the universal favourite on the right, I think they actually made it a differently to what they had on their website. They were chicken thighs marinated in achiote paste that were super tender and flavoursome. None of us realised that the green stuff on top was a super potent, home made jalapeno sauce that destroyed HKBoy's and Mini VGirl's taste buds. Manda had some too and she agreed it had a nasty burn. Mini VGirl had to run away to find a drink to quench the burn, she scraped off all the sauce and ate the rest of her taco quite sadly.

Not bad

HKBoy picked the pulled pork taco that got topped with some bright pink pickles. The pork was the universal second favourite. It was very tasty from memory.

The one on the right is the vegetarian taco that has spiced, crunchy pepitas, zucchini, roasted capsicum, fresh corn, tomatoes and queso fresco. VGirl wasn't particularly impressed by it and she said that the portions are quite small compared to some of the other Mexican places that she went to. She mostly ate the vegetarian pizza and ended up eating some fresh berry ice cream from the Kiwi van to fill herself up. I quite liked the pepitas that were in the taco. She also didn't at the bright green jalapeno sauce.

Hmm~

The main part of our meal were the wings from King of Wings. We got a 20 pack for $24 with a choice of four flavours. I decided that we would get every flavour but the Chilliology as VGirl said that the other people couldn't handle the spice.

Delicious wings. The smell was incredible.

So from upper left going clockwise, its Bee Sting, American BBQ, Southwest Spice Rub and then the Portuguese Crunch. The Bee Sting was sticky sweet with a mild chilli hint, which was Mini VGirl's favourite.

The American BBQ was Manda's favourite, she ordered her own box with the American BBQ and the Southwest Spice Rub. She remarked that the she was used to have a bit of a saucier wing, and the Southwest Spice Rub was quite dry compared to the American BBQ. That being said, she didn't go for the creamy herb mayonnaise that was on offer. We were both surprised they didn't do a classic buffalo wing.

The Southwest Spice Rub was my favourite, nice and crunchy and it went wonderfully with the herb mayonnaise. I really enjoyed it. I loved all of it though, I could eat any of these wings again and again. If I saw them at a market or something, I would gladly buy another box of the stuff.

The Portuguese Crunch was HK Boy's favourite one, he said he loved its super crunchy coating and the flavours in the batter they used.

Delicious wings

While we were eating, we sat at the back of the lawn bowls court. We saw a lot of little kids running around with nothing to do and completely unsupervised. When this lawn bowls game started below, a lot of kids were running around picking up the heavy balls and ruining the game, they were warned off constantly but it kept happening. As soon as one adult had turned their back, another kid passing by would see the ball and try and pick it up. One kid put himself in time out straight after an elderly man disciplined him about nearly getting knocked over by a heavy lawn bowl.

Serious lawn bowls

We had a chat to the lady organising the event while we were eating, two of the promised food trucks never showed up, a chocolate dipped strawberry van and the frozen yoghurt van. They didn't even bother to call them and inform them of it.

Toro Bravo

I went to Toro Bravo twice, once as a going away party for one of my coworkers and once again about two weeks later as part of an Instameet. Eat Brisbane has been formed by the wonderful people behind AmeriAus, they get invited to a lot of restaurants for reviews and they decided to make a Brisbane wide group for bloggers and Instagrammers where we converge on a restaurant and spam lots of photos about it. This was the first meeting and it'll come a bit after the going away party of my coworker.

This place!

The entire place is quite poor lit, it fits in with the whole bar deal but it makes it terrible for photos. Its set out quite nicely though with lovely furniture.

I quite liked that picture for some reason

Both times I went here, we sat near to the kitchen but there wasn't much light even with that being said. It was quite distressing for me. A lot of my photos turned out looking like absolute shit.

The Kitchen!

We got massive jugs of sangria to share between use, I think we had about four or five jugs by the time I left. I had a small sip of the white and red sangria as I don't drink much. The white sangria is quite sweet and quite nicely flavoured, that's coming from a non drinker like me so it must be ridiculously sweet by most people's standards. There are passion fruit pulp, strawberries and blueberries floating around, the blueberries are absolutely wonderful and I really liked scooping them out into my cup to eat them.

Quite sweet and the blueberries are amazing

The red sangria had a strong red wine flavour and I didn't enjoy as much, plus it didn't have as much fruit. It just had a few orange pieces and that was it, I was quite sad.

Glorious red

We couldn't decide what to have for dinner, so since we were a large group of fifteen people we just decided to get two of each tapas and one of each of the raciones. Here is their menu by the way. We got about four serves of these chicken and green chilli spring rolls with a sour orange dressing. They were served fresh from the fryer, super golden brown and crunchy with a lovely, mildly spicy, chicken mince filling.

These were damn good

We got two serves of these chargrilled queso lamb and haloumi skewers. These are a wonderful combination of salty haloumi and charry tender lamb, a lot of people at the table really enjoyed this dish and that's why we got some extra serves. The lemon was hard to share between people is the only thing I think.

Also well loved

We got the crusty pan bread with chives, confit garlic and roasted tomato butter dips. The bread was delicious, I do love my bread. They were grilled perfectly, crunchy exterior with soft tender insides, I also love seeing grill marks on toasted bread. The confit garlic was super garlicky and we were smashing through it in record amounts, the roasted tomato butter was lovely as well.

Tasty~

We got crispy fried calamari with aioli sauce on the side. The calamari was super crispy, lightly salted and very tender, with none of that chewiness from being overcooked.

I didn't realise this picture would turn out so blurry

The only thing we disliked was the completely ridiculous tongs that we were given to serve with. The tongs were very inflexible and difficult to bend, they were unable to pick up more than one or two pieces of calamari in one pinch. As you can see, the end of the tongs aren't designed to meet in the middle and pinch, its more of a side pinch because of how the ends flair out. I have the weirdest feeling these tongs were meant for something much bigger than calamari like ice cubes.

TERRIBLE TONGS

For some reason the charred, spiced chicken strips with lemon yoghurt and salted cucumber strips came with completely normal tongs! These were also well recieved, everyone seemed to be grabbing pieces of this chicken, it was well seasoned with the mildly spicy green sauce splattered everywhere, and the chicken itself was well cooked with a nice charry exterior.

Delicious chicken

We got these big beef short ribs with cherry tomato, green papaya, red onion and mint leaves. I didn't really like them and they were quite a large, unmanageable size so they were a bit difficult to share. They were very fatty with not much flavour, very tender though.

Not a fan

We got about five meatballs with chorizo in a romesco sauce. The meatballs were tasty but the sauce was quite odd, too super sweet and sticky. I don't remember much else about it but I remember not being a fan of it in particular.

):

Field mushrooms, rocket, roasted pumpkin, feta and a sweet sherry dressing. I wasn't interested in it but it was eaten very quickly as everyone wanted something to break up the meatiness of the other meaty dishes that we had had.

This blurry thing

The next thing that we received was the spinach and potato tortilla with sofrito sauce. Another thing we weren't 100% sure how to portion between a large amount of people. We attacked it with knives and split it like a cake, everything was well cooked but not many people ate it because we were getting very full and drunk.

It looked lovely though

We got a big serve of potato bravos, crunchy potato coated in tomato sauce and chilli. We were fishing for the smaller pieces which seemed to have a larger crunchy surface to soft fluffy potato centre.

Add caption

We also had a serve of paella which was half gone before I could photograph it. The photos of all the tapas turned out terribly so I just left them out of this. The next few photos are from my the Instameet! The rest of the photos that everyone else took can be found on Instagram under the #eatbrisbane1 tag.

These are the chicken and corn koftas, they came with a harissa and preserved lemon. They a nice golden brown exterior, super juicy and so tender inside. No one really noticed the preserved lemon or harissa flavour in the chicken.

Tasty tasty

We got some more lamb and haloumi skewers! They were highly praised at this event as well.

That lemon is the size of my phone though, seriously

They gave us streaky bacon wrapped dates smeared in honey, they were super sticky and sweet with a gorgeous saltiness and fattiness from the bacon. A lot of people remarked that even though they didn't like dates, bacon made everything better haha.

Jumbo dates

These were manchego and breadcrumb coated, deep fried zucchini batons with aioli. Do not, for the love of god, eat these when they emerge fresh from the kitchen because you will burnt your mouth off. I warned everyone else off them when they first arrived, and lo and behold, rapid AH HOT comments came from around the table as everyone else dug in. The zucchini was delicious though as most things are when deep fried.

Deep fried stuff!

The spiced chicken was declared the best thing that we ate that day.

Ooh~ chicken

Our last dish was a medium rare sirloin steak with char grilled tomato and capsicum. Also something that was difficult to share between us. 

Succulent steak

Toro Bravo:
Atmosphere: 7, its a lovely place, just a touch dark. 
Service: 8, it was wonderful both nights that we went, there were always someone around to take our requests for more water, more drinks or more food. 
Food: 8, really good food and good sized portions for the prices they were. I would come back here again with friends for sure, but never for anything that required photos cause my photos would look like absolute shit.