The Jam Pantry

We went here for Maz.,'s going away, we needed somewhere still close to work or centrally located enough that we could do a quick getaway if we needed to. To Jam Pantry down the road! It had just opened and I had been seeing wonderful photos all over Instagram about the place, that and I knew they were opened up by the same people that owned Comfort at My Table in Milton.

It's a bit hard to see being on the corner of Logan Road and some other small side road, its right a school of some sort, so parking can be a bit iffy. Just look out for the giant sign on the lavender building.

This place!

Z., and I both ended up getting a reservation at this place. I had a table for 11 in the back and she got a table at the front for 9. We decided to go ahead and grab the bigger table at the back and it turned out to be a great idea cause we ended up having like 10 adults and 6 children. I swear we must've grabbed every extra chair possible in that cafe.

This is where we sat!

They have a wall of preserves you can buy! Stuff like jams, chutneys and peanut butter, stuff that they had on the menu!

All the preserves!

Guess what these are? No one knew besides me, but that's what I get for being an obnoxious foodie.

Quince!

Here is their chandelier! I wasn't able to take any other photos due to how crowded the place but as you can see from these other photos, the place is extremely cute! In an old fashioned, my nan decorated it kinda way!

Pretty pretty

Here is a copy of their menu!

Z., got a fresh orange juice. I don't think this was a squeezed juice, it had that fluffy appearance that juicers get when they get put through machines. Apparently it was quite fresh but creamy in texture which reaffirms my suspicions.

Tall, orange and fluffy?

I got a large ceramic cup of brown sugar caramel milkshake, flavour wise it had more a dark richness to your usual caramel milkshake. I put some salt in my milkshake to enhance the flavour haha.

Salted caramel is my favourite flavour after all

This was the mocha. Everyone was entranced by its appearance and nearly everyone got one! Apparently the coffee was okay, it wasn't anything fantastic.

Pretty though

This is the works babycino, it was super fancy and not as pretty as the one from the Rare Pear but still pretty fancy. This one had streaks of chocolate and strawberry syrup with chocolate powder on top with marshmallows underneath.

Fancy~!

This was the very decadent hot chocolate, it looks absolutely amazing doesn't it! Apparently it tasted so as well because if they didn't get a mocha, they got a hot chocolate.

So chocolatey

This was their amazing BLT, loads of crispy bacon, baby cos, roasted roma tomatoes, bacon jam and garlic mayonnaise. S., had this and she was furiously guarding it from her two daughters and polished it off in a matter of minutes, I was very envious of her as I've always wanted to try bacon jam. I don't want to commit to buying a full jar of the stuff or making my own if I disliked it.

Looks great!

S., got a muffin to share for her kids and was surprised when it arrived. The muffin was absolutely huge about the size of a standard mug in height. While I applaud them on their muffin top skills, the flavour of the muffin wasn't great. I think it was raspberry and pear.

Huge!

This was the avocado on toast with pistachio, fresh and pickled strawberries as well as goats cheese. I had to convince Di., to get this as she had never had goat's cheese. I managed to twist her arm by saying that it was similar in saltiness and texture to feta but had a certain tang that was unique to goats cheese. She had one bite of goats cheese and she said it was absolutely disgusting. I don't know how she tries so many odd health foods with no issues but thinks goats cheese is odd? I thought the pickled strawberry was odd but she thought it was a great idea.

Hmmm~

The eggs benedict with smoked salmon was the most popular order from our group and I totally understand why! There was delicious roasted tomato, poached eggs, sourdough, silky hollandaise and the smokiest, firmest, best smoked salmon I've ever had! I had a piece of S.,'s and I was in heaven! I never get eggs benedict because its such a classic meal but if I had know how good the smoked salmon was here, I'd have gotten it!

Mmmm smoked salmon!

I got the Nims eggs, poached egg, basil pesto, banana chutney, roasted roma tomatoes crispy bacon and sourdough toast! I was a bit intrigued by the banana chutney and it turned out to be a soft, sweet and fruity preserve! It was a very unique taste and I think if you want to try something new at brekkie, give this a crack since it has all the brekkie staples with the addition of something new in the chutney.

Interesting!

H., ordered this dish called the Whole Pantry, four hours slow cooked pulled pork, two fried eggs, pork crackling, cabbage, beetroot and apple relish, cinnamon ricotta and rye bread. She was really disappointed by the flavour of this dish as is her norm and didn't manage to finish it. She found the flavours really bland despite the appetising sound of the ingredients.

Add caption

The Jam Pantry
Atmosphere: 8, a really lovely little cafe with lots of cute details that we had a lot of fun discussing with each other.
Service:  7, really good! Then again we had a MASSIVE group of people.
Food: 7. interesting food with a great combination of ingredients. 

Melbourne Trip!

I went to a conference in Melbourne with Z., L., and H.,! We stayed in the same room with an ensuite between us that we left open so we could talk all night. The first night there we stayed up until 2am chatting and had to drink a lot of coffee to make up for it. The first night that we got there, we decided to get something to eat and wandered up and down the streets of Melbourne to find somewhere to eat.

We decided to pick G2 Korean BBQ because it was one of the few places open. We got this free soju cocktail because we had to move tables to accommodate a large table. It was a peach soju drink and was quite sweet and tasty!

Free dranks

I picked the cheese ddeokbokki, as you know one of my absolute favourite Korean dishes. This was the best rendition of it I've ever had, the dish cost about $20 but was absolutely huge. There were layers and layers of stretchy mozzarella cheese that remained stretchy until the end. There were perfectly delicious rice cakes and fish cakes throughout the dish.

Bargain!

We got the soldier stew with sausage and spam! It had lots of pork belly chunks, zucchini, onion, soft togy, mushroom, enoki mushrooms, carrot, cabbage, spam, sausage pieces and bits of kimchi. It was a mildly spicy soup with lots of interesting bits to fish out and eat. All of us girls had a hearty discussion about our love for Spam, Z., is from the Phillipines, H., is from South Korea and L., is from Taiwan, all our countries had huge military presences from the US at one stage or another. Spam was a big deal and status symbol in our countries, plus tasty to boot. I don't get most peoples reluctance to eat it, its a dodgy weird comfort food for me.

Spam hotpot, got it.

We got the Korean fried chicken, it was delicious! Crunchy pieces of fried chicken with a sweet and spicy sauce, covered in green onion and toasted sesame seeds. We didn't finish this and ended up bringing home about half of it for leftovers. I ate it the next day as my breakfast.

Too much food!

On our way back to the hotel, we decided we needed tea to soothe our full bellies. We saw this Asian grocery store called Tokyo Hometown, it had pretty much EVERYTHING you could think of. It was about the size of a regular Coles/Woolworths and I've never seen so much variety in Asian food. There was an entire aisle dedicated to green tea flavoured sweets. Every day we stopped by this shop for snacks, if you're in Melbourne and are Asian, stop by this place and marvel.

Amazingggggg

H., got this buckwheat tea for us to drink and while the taste is nothing particular, the smell is amazing, kind of a toasty bread/rice grain kind of smell. It reminds me of genmaicha without the green tea aspect. It brews up a bright yellow tea, like fluorescent yellow.

Delicious!

The next night we caught up with our ex-work colleagues who moved down to Melbourne, C., and Kateo! Gill., was also with us as she had traveled down separately for the conference. We wandered around the CBD for a bit before I decided that we should head into Chinatown and into this place called Shanghai Street for dinner. It looked really packed and had a queue out the door, we got seated straight away because we had a group of seven.

I went a bit nuts ordering food but H., reined me in as usual. The first dish we got was this seafood combination fried rice full of carrots, peas, plump prawns, seafood sticks and lovely individual grains of rice. It disappeared in a few minutes once everyone had scooped up a bowl, in hindsight I should have been allowed to order a second plate H.,!

Oh fried rice <3

This was our only concession to vegetables, garlic stir fried kai lan! It got passed around a lot but everyone enjoyed its slight bitterness and crunch. 

Kai lan for fav Asian veggie

This was the pork xiao long bao, L., and I both thought this was a good rendition of the dish with a large serving size, juicy pork mince filling, ample soup inside and gorgeous pleating. It was a lot of fun teaching Kateo, C., and Gill how to eat these as they were surprised by the soup inside.

Yummy

This was the chicken dumpling with hot chili oil and peanut sauce, this was Kateo's choice from memory and it was an absolute cracker. It was scorching hot but addictive in its spiciness, we ended up scooping up all the sauce to use on our fried rice. Chili oil, peanut butter dumplings is an amazing combination and I cannot recommend it highly enough, if you ever see it on a menu, get it!

Delicious

We got fried dumplings. They were very pale but uniformly super crunchy, we had a sneaking suspicion that they were dumped in a deep fryer to get that crunch. I wish the colour was better but what can you do!

Crunchy dumplings are delicious

We got these sweet chilli prawns but we were super surprised when they came out as KING prawns in a serve of four. They were huge, about the size of your palm, there was no clear way that we could split it between the seven of us. So we split prawns into two but shared the sauce, THAT SAUCE, it was perfect on rice! We should've saved the rice for that sauce! Sweet, spicy, garlicky, thick and clinging to our spoons, we scraped the plate clean and Z., confessed that if we weren't in a restaurant she would've licked the plate clean. 

Looks like vomit though

This is the half roasted duck, we thought it would be a Peking style/roasted duck, so we were surprised when it was this brine soaked, crispy dry duck. It was intensely salty and crunchy, like eat all the bones crunchy. It wasn't a hit at our table but I did eat most of it myself, mostly because I absolutely adore duck. 

Dubious purchase

This is what the sign looks like! I find social media link ins for restaurants in Melbourne are a lot better than in Brisbane for some reason. 

Dumplingsss

We wanted to sit around and talk shit while having drinks or dessert and I had seen the perfect place on my travels! To N2 Gelato Bar! I think it was as much the flavours as the theatre of having freshly made nitrogen gelato that enticed us there. Also Terumo syringes of syrup for only $1! Hahaha, a taste of work! 

This is L.,'s apple cider gelato with strawberry syringe! We probably should have all gotten much smaller sizes because none of us finished our portions. 

Looks great!

This was the super popular Ferro Rocher sundae, hazelnut gelato, Nutella, hazelnut pieces, chocolate shot, vanilla wafers and one of those wafer sticks! I think nearly everyone got one of these.

So muchhh

I was different and got the salted caramel gelato with a shot of coffee. It was so sweet, delicious but I couldn't finish it!

Maybe to share???

The Stokehouse

Mama Pham and work friend Foodie Auntie have started going to restaurants together all the time, if they're not working together, they're constantly having each other for dinner or heading out to restaurants together. This was one of the occasions where they invited VGirl and myself along. Foodie Auntie and her daughter Foodie Cousin are more inclined to fancier food places than my family are. They said that the food here was delicious so off we went!

Its along the South Bank towards the Maritime Museum end, there is very few parking spots there but its an easy walk from nearly everywhere. Also apologies for the lighting in advance, the restaurant had soft candle light like lighting and I didn't think to change the exposure or ISO settings on my camera before this.

This place!

The restaurant was nearly empty when we arrived but we weren't allowed in until our reservation time. We were seated promptly and were given a basket of bread with a fruity olive oil for dipping.

Little sack of bread

Here is their menu! I was the only person to grab an entree and I went with the chicken liver parfait. I didn't like the aspic layer of the parfait since it had such a strongly alcoholic flavour and I don't like bitter flavours. The chicken liver itself was silky smooth however with a rich flavour. The pickles were a nice sharp contrast but I wish there had been some other kind of carb to go with the chicken liver parfait. I ended up eating a lot of the bread to have something else as a contrast.

Slate block?

I got the slow braised veal and kale cannelloni with a rich tomato sauce, rocket and parmesan topping. I found the veal to be very tender with a melting soft succulence. The tomato sauce was rich but balanced between sweetness and acidity. I found it hard to finish my dish due to the inclusion of kale in the filling. I had a bad run of dishes at this restaurant, however everyone else had much tastier foods and I know that from constantly pinching pieces off their plate.

Not my pick

This was the vegetarian pasta that VGirl picked it was a ricotta gnudi with zucchini, spinach, pinenuts and lots and lots of other cheeses I can't recall. VGirl was entranced by the texture and appearance of the gnudi and its very much a ricotta/gnocchi dumpling, the gnudi pieces were as soft and fluffy as a cloud. VGirl gave me one bite then refused to give me any more until she saw how disheartened I was with my dish, then she gave me the scrapings off her plate out of pity. Needless to say she thought this dish was amazing and scraped every bit off the plate!

Fluffy clouds!

Mama Pham decided to go with the old steady a jumbo 250g eye fillet of beef with potato fondant, roasted onion and a red wine jus. She got it medium rare because thats what you should eat it at, she personally prefers like medium well, well done kind of steaks, she gets disgusted when I cook medium rare steaks at home. Oh god, this was the best steak I've ever had, it was like eating butter if it was meat, does that even make sense? Such a wonderfully flavoursome, buttery, tender cut of meat! The potato fondant was delicious as well with its crispy, crunchy edges!

Steak!

We got the chili salt chips with a side of aioli as our shared side. The heat from the chili salt was quite subtle but the chips were without flaw, perfectly crunchy with fluffy interiors. They were fresh from the fryer burning hot and we enjoyed every last piece of them.

Oh chips <3

Foodie Auntie also got the roasted pumpkin rocket, salted onion, labnah and honey salad. I was surprised that the pieces of pumpkin weren't larger and didn't have a better caramelisation. I love the combination of sweet pumpkin, creamy cheese and sharp rocket!

This blurry thing

Stokehouse
Atmosphere: 5, fancy but makes me feel awkward setting. I can imagine this being somewhere you'd go for a special event, especially as it overlooks the Brisbane river.
Service: 8, pretty solid service, quick top ups of our water, they memorised where our orders came from and were quick to take orders.
Food: 7, I didn't like what I get but everyone else's food was pretty good. I wouldn't go back just because I disagree about the pricing of the food. Also atmosphere. 

Grill n Bao

Grill n Bao is one of the darlings of 8 Street in Garden City! It's one of the few restaurants there that isn't a smaller shop from a bigger store in Market Square in Sunnybank. Its quite similar to Bun Mobile which has steamed buns around a delicious burger option. I decided to get a quick bite to eat here one day and this is what I got! Here is a collection of all the menus for 8 Street!

I got the hot and spicy chicken steak, which was a golden brown fried chicken breast with a basic Asian coleslaw, lettuce and your choice of sauce. I got the teriyaki sauce and it was amazing, I also got cheese and bacon because that's always a good option. I loved the soft, sweet pillows of the steamed buns! They were freshly steamed and didn't stick to the roof of your mouth as badly as Bun Mobile's did.

So delicious

I came back several months later and had the wagyu beerf burger with Japanese mayo with no additional bits this time. The wagyu was tough and chewy, I would not recommend it.

Much sad

I also got their karaage chicken but forgot to take a photo. It was terrible, quite greasy, with no crunchy coating and it was very plain in flavour. I would not recommend getting it.

Grill n Bao
Atmosphere: 6, super crowded little place in 8 Street.
Service: 5, quick and efficient!
Food: 5, eh solid food court food.