Apples on Ainsworth

I've been getting tons of scam emails recently. Lots of seedy, "I want to donate money to you, contact my lawyer@hotmail.com." Its really annoying and its super obvious that its some sort of scam. What kind of self respecting lawyer operates out of hotmail rather than their law firm email? Plus the grammar is always terrible and the name never matches the email. I wonder if they ever manage to snag people with that kind of thing?

Anyway, I just was wondering if any other food bloggers had experienced this before? If this is legit, I want the money in cash sent to my PO box. Thankssssssssss.

Jubi and I went out to breakfast on the morning after my third night shift. We usually carpool but my phone's GPS has been stuffing up recently, I didn't trust myself to be awake enough to drop her back to hers and then get myself home. So we met up at my workplace and then drove to Apples on Ainsworth. 

Along the way, she made a really bad U-turn across a shallow side street, because we didn't see the sign for this place. She has been apologising to me profusely for doing it and kept bringing it up, I didn't care as no one got hurt. Just rubbing it in because by the time she sees this, it would have been long enough for her to forget hahha.

This shop is a little hard to notice because the sign is quite faded/dirty, so keep an eye out! Its got lots of parking in front of these little shops and its directly across from a bowls club.

Memorise this sign

The interior of the shop gave me the impression that its quite cute and cluttered, very retro in appearance was the vibe I got from it. I wasn't able to get a lot of photos because we got there so early, all the staff were expectantly watching us and the other side of the restaurant had a large group of people eating there. There's only 2-3 tables inside and the rest of the tables are all outside.

Oooh EVOO

Lots of mismatched furniture and stuff for kids

Here are the menus! Jubi and I have been wanting to go here for months now and nowhere seems to have a menu for this place. Found one!

There is a hamper of different sauces for you to liberally add on as you will, balsamic vinegar, sweet chilli, tomato, barbeque, worchershire, mint, soy and tabasco sauce!

Ooh~

We got this cute little seven of spades and seven of diamonds place holder cards. I like unusual place holders like this, it really adds to the character and can be a nice little conversation started.

Cute

Jubi ordered a long black with a shot of maleny full cream milk on the side. The coffee is by Byron Bay Roasters and she said it was an average coffee. I liked the cute cup and saucer design.

Nice

I ordered a kids size orange, pineapple and mint juice. It tasted strongly of orange juice with a hint of pineapple and no mint which I was thankful for. I don't often enjoy the taste of mint and it can be overpowering in juices.It was a seriously cute small drink! The price was only about $4 from memory as well.

Little bit smaller than my camera

I picked the spanish style baked eggs with a salsa, organic mince and house bean mix sauce, parmesan sourdough toasted soldiers and a side of bacon. The flavours were all there but I had some annoying points to make, my baked eggs were a bit overcooked with the majority of the yolk being quite firm although there was a little burst of yolk with them. Parts of the egg white were still undercooked with this being said, I found bits of uncooked egg white strands when I was dipping my soldiers into the eggs. The sauce was on the watery side too. The first few mouthfuls were very well seasoned, thick and unctuous, after that the sauce was thin and watery. I would've preferred the sauce to be a little bit thicker. The bacon was a touch pale but I didn't specify how crunchy I wanted the bacon to be so I suppose that was my fault. I liked the parmesan soldiers, they sandwiched cheese inbetween two slices of sourdough and then cut them up. It was lovely dipping my soldiers into the baked eggs and sauce to mop up my food.

Eggs!

Jubi got the avocado and labneh on toast with a side of greens to make things even more green! Jubi loved how many bright green and blemish free avocado slices she had, she said they were beautifully creamy and that they were also perfectly ripe. She said the long sprouts were a pain to pick and eat however but finished them all haha. Also that she would have like a little bit more labneh.

Best picture of the lot!

Apples on Ainsworth:
Atmosphere: 8, very cute, retro outfitted cafe in the burbs. I love the immense care they've taken in all their details from plates, to spoons to the thoughtful presentation. A great place to be your local.
Service: 8, super friendly staff who were able to help me decide in my post night haze what I wanted to eat.
Food: 6.5, both our dishes were definitely cheap and tasty, well presented but there were minor issues with each dish. I wasn't happy with how my eggs were and Jubi's were missing her lemon but they were both delicious and may I emphasise, super cheap again. 

Kai Gai Thai Restaurant

This was VGirl's 22nd birthday dinner with myself, our Mama Pham and our aunt. VGirl picked this place that she had gone to the previous night for her birthday dinner with her friends.

This place!

We decided to just grab some water and green tea. My teapot was quite cute as was our little rooster cups, however the inside of my cup was disgustingly grimy. I was very reluctant to drink out of it. I forgot to take a photo though.

Green tea!

Its cute at least?

We decided to get some entrees to start things off, vegetarian curry puffs and vegetarian spring rolls. I was dreaming of Mons Ban Sabai Thai's perfect golden brown curry puffs from the 10th anniversary dinner that I was invited to a few weeks before my sister's birthday. Those ones were super crisp, golden brown shells around meltingly soft, potato, chicken and onion curry. These ones had a quite potato, pea and corn mix. The spring rolls have a mix of cabbage, onion and carrot mixture. There was a serve of six spring rolls but they were very measly in filling, very thin and not very appealing.

Sad ):

This was a vegetarian oyster sauce stir fry, it contained beans, zucchini, carrot, onion, red and green capsicum as well as mushrooms. The oyster sauce was quite salty and wasn't well liked by anyone.

Oyster sauce!

I decided to get rice to share. It was a very large portion of fluffy, fragrant, long grain jasmine rice.

Rice~

The bowl was very pretty and I remember Mama Pham laughing at me for taking photos of everything.

Silver inlay

I got the beef massaman curry for us to share, it came with large chunks of potato, sliced pieces of tough beef and a thick, coconut flavoured curry sauce. The flavour of the sauce was lovely, with a rich, thick, coconut that coated the rice grains lovingly. The potato was soft but the beef hadn't been cooked long enough to be meltingly tender, soft and falling apart. I found the beef was an obvious let down, but we all agreed that the sauce was tasty over the steamed rice and that it was a shame that the beef wasn't cooked as well as it should have been.

Sad beef  ):

VGirl got the satay sauce stirfry, apparently she wanted to order this on the previous night and had gotten something else instead. She said that she really enjoyed the satay sauce and she scraped it off the top and ate it all by herself. When the satay sauce had been removed, the rest of the sauce at the bottom of the stirfry tasted surprisingly a lot like the oyster sauce stirfry.

Satay sauce is good?

We got some filleted barramundi fillets, it was one of the chef specials and it was served on a bed of the same vegetables as used in the stir fry meals. I wasn't sure why I was under the impression that it was served on the bone. We were a bit disappointed when it arrived to be honest, the fish was a bit dry and not very flavoursome.

Blergh

We got chicken pad thai to compare against others we've had in the past. It had bean sprouts, tofu, prawns, garlic, onions and some garlic chives. We found the balance of flavours to be very good, a nice mix between sour, salty and sweet. The most unfortunate thing about this dish was the very, very firm noodles, they were under cooked and very chewy. We found this to be a deal breaker as the noodles are one of the best parts of the whole thing.

So close, yet so far

My aunt decided to get the salt and pepper soft shell crab with me, it was slightly greasy mouth feel and every bite was greasy. I don't know if its because we were full but for once I didn't like this soft shell crab, and I seriously love it.

Kai Gai Thai Restaurant
Atmosphere: 3, dead quiet. We were the only people dining that night, there were like 4 other people that visited while we were here and they were just collecting take away.
Service: 5, the chef forgot our soft shell crab order until the last possible minute. We were the only people there so its sorta hard to gauge.
Food: 3, I would never go here again even under extreme duress. 

 

Inferno Challenge by Pizza Capers

So long story short, I got asked by Pizza Capers to try their Inferno Challenge range. I got them mailed to H.,'s house cause I'm weird like that. She thought her fiancee and brother had used them. So I emailed the marketing lady from Pizza Capers about it. Then H., found the voucher in her bag, still unused. We decided to get Pizza Capers on the weekend, but they didn't honour my voucher as they had given me a drink and garlic bread, thinking I wanted some other promotion. So I had to pay for it all, but the people at work don't know that yet, cause I got them to share the pizza with me. So the original voucher is still in my living room and I doubt I will use it, as explained in the following post.

Here is the chimichanga chorizo and prawn pizza, It has a hot salsa sauce, black bean chipotle, Spanish onion, roasted capsicum, corn, mozzarella, chipotle mayo and Tabasco spices on top. We all agreed that the prawns were super juicy and well cooked, and that there was a huge amount of prawns on there which we loved. The chorizo was from a fresh sausage as it was deliciously soft and not as intensely flavoured as the semi/dried ones. It wasn't as spicy as the other pizza and ate nearly all of this pizza in the first try.

Lots of prawns and chorizo

No one liked this pizza, it was too intensely spicy by nearly everyone's reckoning. The pulled pork was unevenly portioned in huge chunks so you didn't always get a bite of pulled pork in each bite. The sour cream on top didn't help with the heat at all and just made my lactose intolerance flair up afterwards.

These slightly burnt looking wings are the Inferno Wings! For whatever reason, Pizza Capers have always done bloody fantastic wings, smoky, super tender, moist and flavoursome wings with a great sauce. Their Jack Daniels BBQ wings are bloody fantastic. These wings were exactly the same, after I had one I grabbed myself a second one straight away, before anyone realised what I had done.

The other side we received were these little corn and salsa empanadas. They were in a sort of biscuit exterior, rather than the short, flaky layers you associate with fried empanadas. They had a slightly dry corn and salsa filling, that everyone agreed wasn't unpleasant, but wasn't the same as a normal empanada filling.

These little fellas.

The mini tabasco sauces were super cute. They gave us about two or three for each box. We had about 10 when we finished the meal.

So cute~!

I would be reluctant to eat this again barring the chicken wings, neither myself or the other four girls I shared the pizzas with enjoyed it. This was even with us having a "discount", none of the other girls knew I paid for it almost entirely out of my pocket, so I wonder what the general consensus would have been if they had to pay more for it.

Shucked

I got invited by the general manager/owner of Shucked Naomi Mawson! They had a new chef join up from London called Colin. As a result, they had a new menu launched and they wanted people to try it. We had a rapid exchange of emails and I managed to snag VGirl along for the ride.

I've only really started exploring Newstead recently and I'm really liking the neighbourhood. We took separate cars since I had work afterwards so VGirl was doing all the navigation. Shucked is in a weird little business/industrial area and so it's a little out of the way and hard to notice. With that being said, there is good signage so its not too bad.

Gotcha!

Gotcha!

There was a bit of an awkward bit initially when I said I had been invited there and no one knew what was going on. A phone call cleared things up and we continued on as usual. I always panic when I get invited to places as I don't publicise my personal details and no one really knows what I look like. I always wonder how I prove myself and sometimes I accidentally delete the email getting me the invite in the first part. That being said though, how ballsy would you would have to be to fake invite yourself to a restaurant and grab a free meal.

With that tangent over and done with, I like the hipster cafe look. There is like a random chair on top of the air conditioner unit which was a bit kooky. We sat in the main part of the cafe as we figured it would be a bit warmer.

So much wooden furniture

That's the other area!

I like places that have fun names for their dishes, I love a good sense of humour. I had a good chuckle over the names of their cold brew coffee range.

Cute names

This is the second section that has more interesting seating arrangements and pretty murals. It is also way more exposed to the elements and was freezing when we walked past.

Pretty~

I liked the murals, they are very bright and attractive to my eyes. I especially liked the couch and the balloons attached.

Cute~

Super cute~

The second area in its entirety

There is an online menu but there are quite a few options that solely appear on the walls only. It is well worth checking out both before you make your decision. Here is their winter menu for 2014!

Breakfast alcohol?

ICED TEA

VGirl and I aren't super coffee drinkers as you know, we're more flavoured coffee, sugar syrup or mocha kinda girls. So I think it was hardly surprising that we went for the more exotic flavoured options. VGirl picked a nutella latte, she reasoned that it would taste like a fancy mocha with a hint of hazelnut and she was right! The milk was beautifully textured, silky and creamy and the nutella smeared over the sides of the glass, added an extra richness to the drink. That being said, she added that she didn't quite like the coffee that they used, although I thought it was a pleasant contrast.

So creamy

I ordered the peanut butter hot chocolate. There was a distinctive creamy, slightly salty peanut butter flavour to the faintly chocolaty drink. There was a gigantic smear of peanut butter down the side of the glass that I kept eating. I found the drink not as sweet as I liked, so I did have to add extra sugar to it.

Wasn't what I expecting I think?

VGirl picked the Fun Guy! Roasted field mushrooms, poached eggs, basil goats cheese curd on top of a piece of toasted turkish bread. She wanted to have haloumi but they were already all out by the time we went there which was unfortunate.

Mmm mushrooms

Lots of mushrooms spilling out everywhere which was a lovely touch. The mushrooms were very meaty and juicy, I loved the flavour of them. The poached eggs popped beautifully as you can see below and the yolks were so bright and rich. The basil goats cheese curd was so creamy, VGirl dislikes the strong flavour of goats cheese but she quite liked this due to the mildness of the cheese used or whatever they did to make the curd.

Oooh~

I picked Compliments to the Chook! Sweet spiced roasted chicken, fried egg and coleslaw burger! It also came with a side of lightly salted potato chips, I was surprised but that sorta of American touch to the dish. I liked the spice coating on the chicken and I have no idea what it was to be honest. The chicken was so succulent, juicy and tender. I was a little surprised that the chicken came out in chunks thought as I had pieces of chicken falling out of my burger, left, right and centre. The coleslaw had a lot of celery in it, so I wasn't a huge fan since I feel celery overpowers everything, it does add a nice crunch to everything though. The fried egg popped inside my burger and made a gooey sauce for everything.

Aw yiss

I liked my little skewer which was in the shape of a heart.

Nice touch!

Both VGirl and myself decided to get a glass of iced tea at the end to finish the meal off. We couldn't decide on who got what iced tea, so we decided to order both and share the drinks. There was a lychee and lime iced tea and a strawberry and lemon iced tea. VGirl shotgunned the lychee and I should have fought for it because she was my +1 but I let her! I LET HER HAVE THE SUPER DELICIOUS ONE.

It tastes like pure fruit. No watered down crap. Pure lychee, sweet, slightly sour and the tang and freshness of a muddled lime cheek added into it. There were two giant lychees in the bottom of the glass which VGirl let me eat. It was a really tall glass and we swapped drinks halfway through. We were absolutely freezing and our hands were so cold from the condensation but we shivered and sighed through the drink. We both agreed that it tasted like summer days, in the darkness of winter. Especially with the cute little palm tree stirrer.

Lychee and lime!

The strawberry and lemon drink was just as good, it had a strong strawberry flavour but with a bit of sourness from the lemon juice. Tasty but still no lychee and lime. I would still buy this drink again, but probably not over lychee because that is probably my favourite fruit.

Strawberry and lemon!

Shucked Coffee House
Atmosphere: 7, cold but a bright and well decorated space. I like the different seating arrangements. I also love me some hand written chalk menus.
Service: 6, pretty solid. I can't think of anything special.
Food: 7.5, I thought the food was pretty good, definitely worth a visit. The iced tea were the real highlight for VGirl and I, and she's adding that she would definitely go back for the iced tea if we were in the area, but not for a meal since its a bit out of the way for us.