Roti Chenai - Emporium

Yass was back in town so it was time to feed her up with halal meats to temporarily boost up her iron levels before she departs to the rigs again and becomes a lethargic vegetarian! Well as lethargic as someone as super charged as Yass is, can possibly be. I decided that we should go to this place in the Valley called Roti Chenai! A mix of South Indian foods with a Malaysian twist, Malaysian is near and dear to our hearts, mine because its delicious, hers because of the time she spent over there eating halal nasi lemak every day for breakfast.

Parking is ample . . . depending on what time of day you get there. It can be difficult to find a park on most days though, you should always try your luck I guess? It's right beside the Ginga restaurant.

Thar she blows!

The interior is nothing much to speak up, vinyl? table cloths and surprisingly heavy chairs. We had a bit of a chat with the owners and this is actually a franchise? Or rather an originally New Zealand restaurant that jumped across the ditch, apparently they won New Zealand's best roti chenai award, are one of the oldest Malaysian/South Indian restaurants over there and are widely featured in NZ guide books. Quite the pedigree!  

Also right beside a pharmacy?

Here is their menu! Yass and I were a bit brainless about ordering and so we ordering a lot of pancake/crepe like things. In our defense, they're often the most delicious of all foods and they all had vastly different meats and textures too!

We got the restaurant's namesake of the roti chenai with a dish of chicken curry, we both loved the roti the best out of all our pancakey/crepe like foods. The buttery, flakey layers of roti burnt our fingers and tongues, they were so hot coming fresh off the grill. Ahhh but it was such a wonderful flavour! I'm drooling just thinking about it. This was Yass's favourite!

Those char marks are beautiful!

We got the chicken murtabak, basically a roti stuffed with chicken pieces, onion and egg pieces. We also burnt our fingers eating this because why use cutlery when you can use your hands? Also why do we have just one slice of cucumber there? I mostly ignored this in favour of our roti and the last dish we opted to choose!

Still ate it all though

The mighty beef dosai! I've always been intrigued by the idea of it since its a fermented rice flour crepe basically, so like an Indian version of Vietnam's banh xeo? It gives me that same feeling with the super crunchy exterior and how it has pieces of onion and beef mince studded on the inside. I also enjoyed the slightly sour taste of the pancake. It came with two dipping sauces, the darker one I can't recall but the white one was a coconut cream based and I ate all of it. Yes, we also burnt our hands eating this one.

So many pancakes

It's kinda like looking at a meat surf wave

Roti Chenai - Emporium
Atmosphere: 5, nothing special.
Service: 7, super friendly people who rescued my fallen cutlery from the floor and replaced it more times than they had to, considering I'm a grown woman. My knife fell on the floor accidentally so many times, I might as well have been throwing it on the ground.
Food: 7, wonderful food! We left absolutely stuffed and were very happy with our choices considering we only got three types of pancakes/crepes.

Corbett and Claude

I got invited to Corbett and Claude when they opened up their first store at the Indooroopilly shopping centre. I hate that place, I rarely go because it's almost a 40 minute drive from where I live and you have to go through Coronation Drive to get there. Not to mention the shopping centre is bits tacked onto bits. I got so lost getting back to my car, I spent almost forty minutes wandering around the empty parking lots at night trying to find it. It's so eerie being somewhere you expect to be

Anyway, it's a bit of a weird place to find but if you just park on the third level of the shopping centre and walk to the food court end where the Lord of the Wings, Yum Cha Cuisine, Guzman y Gomez and other restaurants are you're there! It's on the outside opposite the Pig and Whistle. Don't think you can get there from Station Road by driving! There's nowhere to park!

We got a massive bowl of warm mixed olives to share as our first entree. Beware the pits! As much as I'm a savoury girl I never got into snacking on olives, too briney!

Everyone else loved them though

This is an amazing, amazing cheeseboard! It had so much tasty stuff on it san danielle prosciutto, salumi salami, quattro stelle smoked ham, pita bread, lavosh crackers, maffra red leichester, millawa blue cheese, whitestone double cream brie, whitestone vintage cheddar, swiss gruyere, vanella buffalo mozzarella, pesto, a fruit paste, mini figs and muscatel grapes! I was a massive fan of the blue cheese, mini fig and prosciutto all together.

Cheese please!

After the cheese platters were done we were allowed to pick whatever we wanted from the menu to try and we went a bit nuts picking food. I think everyone picked two or three dishes and we swarmed each other tables like a plague of locusts, snapping photos and sharing food. Food bloggers are great at sharing food, taking photos and waiting patiently to eat!

This was the first thing we got and it was the field mushroom, caramelised onion and goats cheese pizza, a match made in heaven! I can't emphasise enough how much I like the thinness and crispiness of this crust. The other big point I liked about these pizzas is that they had ample topping on each and every slice, at a lot of pizzerias you find there's a dud slice that is smaller than everything else and has no topping. At Corbett and Claude there is no dud slice! I quality tested all the pizzas to make sure!

I love you pizza

This was the crispy potato, rosemary and proscuitto pizza. I've never been a fan of potato on pizza, it's something about the lack of deep fried crunchiness that gets me, even with this one being cut ruffle chip style, they're still not crunchy after being in the oven. The proscuitto crisped up deliciously and of course rosemary and potato is a combination made in heaven. This one had a bit of a higher crust ratio that I'd like, but Mama Pham would love it. Mama Pham steals the crusts and leaves the filling part.

Wonderful crunch!

I didn't try any pizza but I did manage to pinch a prawn, this is grilled prawn, rocket and chili jam! The prawns didn't have any char marks that I could see but they had a great burst to them.

I didn't get to it in time ):

We got random assorted salads bought to our table all the time. This one was a quinoa based one. I didn't try any but the rest of the food bloggers seemed to enjoy it immensely.

Quinoa is weird

This was by far, my favourite pizza as it was the closest thing to a fancy meat lovers! This is the C&C special meatballs with caramelised onion, crispy proscuitto and barbeque sauce. The meatballs were soft, moist and utterly tasty! I think I ate close to half a pizza to myself, quite the feat among nearly 20 hungry foodies!

Yessssss

These all arrived at our table at the same type, nearly too far away for me to sample since I sat right smack bang in the middle. From top going clockwise, there was hand cut fries covered in parsley and grated parmesan with the best garlicky aioli I've ever had, the other food bloggers were rhapsodising ferociously about how these were the best fries they had ever had! Pan fried gnocchi coated in pesto and on a bed of spinach and tomato, I quite enjoyed these gnocchi finding them delicious with their crunchy exteriors and soft, pillowy interiors. I sadly didn't get to try the haloumi ):

CHIPS!

These are the crunchy chicken bits and I paraphrase another food blogger, "these are fancy ass KFC popcorn chicken!" That's exactly what they taste like, just jumbo sized and way crunchier. I'd have gladly eaten the entire tray by myself and I did because everyone had gotten way too full and the waiter made the mistake of putting this directly in front of me hahaha!

Bring on the chicken!

Corbett and Claude
Atmosphere: 5, solid little bar.
Service: 5, mixed at times. The service was a bit all over the place, one minute super attentive, the next forgetting orders.
Food: 8, great food! I would love the crunchy chicken bits or the fries again no problem at all. The pizzas are pretty good as well and I have to commend them on their abundance of toppings. It's just a shame they're so far away from me is all!

The Hills Pizzeria

I've been trying to eat more locally in Logan because sometimes I'm just really lazy, I want it to be a quick trip to my local for dinner before I head home and watch TV. I've been very extensively asking my Logan friends for local recommendations so you'll start to see a bunch of reviews from around the Logan area. Big A., said that there was a cluster of restaurants in Daisy Hill that I should check out and so I went there!

I went to the Hills Pizzeria and got a small meal, consisting of their small size pizza, a garlic bread and a can of soft drink for $12. I thought that was a pretty good deal! This is their Italiano pizza, pepperoni, black olives, green capsicum, onion, anchovies, garlic and a tomato base for the pizza. It was quite a salty pizza and I was puzzled at why the pepperoni pieces had been ripped in half, maybe it was to make it look like there was more of them?

Ehhh I've had better and worse

This was their garlic bread, just your typical cheap home brand style garlic bread. The bread is a soft, pudgy white bread and there's a garlic and parsley butter. I wish the bread had been crunchier, I ended up toasting it in my toaster oven when I got home.

More crispy please

This is their website, they don't have a Zomato listing. https://www.facebook.com/TheHillsPizzeria

The Hills Pizzeria
Atmosphere: 5, a tiny, local family run pizzeria!
Service: 6, solid. Nothing extraordinary.
Food: 5, ditto for the food, its nothing amazing.

T4's Gourmet Pizza House

When I think of Masterchef 2015, I think also, of T4 Gourmet Pizza House. One of my friends, Mr L., lives right near here and we both got freakishly obsessed with Masterchef this year. We would get together, buy some pizzas at T4's and then go home to yell at the TV about Masterchef. If we couldn't make it or were too lazy to leave the house, we would text each other while watching it at home.

This place!

The different sizes

The interior is nothing fancy, buy your pizza and bail kinda place.

Floor fan?

Here is the menu, they also have a lot of pastas but I'm here for the pizza! I got the Mediterranean pizza with feta, olives, pepperoni, mushrooms, semi dried tomatoes, fresh basil and a tomato sauce base. I found the combination of flavours to be perfect and exactly what I think of when I think of that area of the world. The feta was salty and creamy, I love the use of feta on pizzas since it holds its shape so well and adds so much flavour. The base on these pizzas was of a moderate thickness with a good crunch and fluffy interior, not so much the strict super thin crusts of Italian pizzas but what you think of with American style pizzas.

Classic flavours

Mr L., got the TNT pizza, fresh tomato, black olive, pepperoni and fresh basil. He took off all the fresh tomato pieces so I don't know he didn't just ask them to remove them off his pizza. I had a slice and it was delicious, the pepperoni was spicy and the olives were briney and strongly flavoured.

Sans tomato

Cheesy herb bread is pretty much always good, these were on bits of turkish bread and that's actually a half size portion! Its enough to fill you up, I'd say!

So much cheese!

T4's Gourmet Pizza House
Atmosphere: 5, your local pizza place. Grab your food and bail!
Service: 5, nothing special
Food: 7, its not flash hot but its cheap and cheerful. I'm a happy repeat offender at this place! I wish it could be my local pizza place!

Fundies Wholefood Cafe

VGirl and I went to Fundies Wholefoods on Mothers Day, before you go thinking why we didn't take Mama Pham with us, she was working that day and had already received her Mother's Day present. We had originally planned to go to Kettle and Tin but the line was out the door, so to Fundies, land of the veggo brekkies!

Fundies is half organic wholefoods cafe and half organic/wholefoods/supplements shop. We had a bit of a look around but sat down for lunch pretty quickly since we were so hungry.

Nice pictures!

This is the front counter. There is a glass drinks cabinet on the size and also a hot pie oven.

VGirl was intrigued

Here is a link to their menu! Below is a copy of the specials for the time that we went.

VGirl got this Phoenix Lemon, Lime and Bitters drink, its lightly carbonated as in tastes like slightly flat soft drink. She said she liked it like that.

Hmmm

I got a soy flat white and I thought it was pretty good! The coffee roasters here is an organic roaster from Byron Bay called Zentveld's.

F is for Fundies!

We got given our cutlery in a jar, I don't why but I was tickled pink by this at the time.

Interesting

I got the smoked salmon supreme, organic New Zealand smoked salmon with capers, lemon, spinach, organic poached eggs, purple onion, dill aioli and toasted Turkish bread soldiers. I thought it was a pretty decent breakfast, I have no complaints about any of the ingredients or the choice of them either. This was a tried and true classic combination of flavours and if you love your organic food I'd say this is the place for you!

Solid

VGirl had a really hard time picking what she wanted to eat since for once she had a billion choices. She got the vegan sausage, organic shallot and potato rosti, poached eggs, wilted spinach, lemon and salsa, capsicum jam and chipotle mayonnaise. The vegan sausage tasted like stuffing. She said that she would bring our vegetarian friend Mandy here one day since there was so much choice for the two of them.

Fundies Wholefood Cafe
Atmosphere: 7. your local cafe!
Service: 5, solid, I have no complaints.
Food: 8, good organic food. A great place to go if you want more than your standard vegetarian options.