Limon Restaurant

Without a doubt, Limon is my local. More so than Seoul Bistro was due to its proximity with my home. Just a quick nip down the road for a place where we will always have a table, an excellent feed for a cheap price and where everyone we bought has had a good time. I have probably been here about six times, most of which I have stopped taking photos because I end up ordering this same thing. I've also tried nearly everything on their menu. The only thing I don't like about the place is parking is limited.

Limon has an extremely dingy sign, its not neon but watch out for fairy lights and you'll be right.

The interior is a simple little affair, lots of red patterned table tops that can be easily assembled for more seating space! Here is their menu!

With our powers combined!

This is the start of every meal I have there. Their very excellent dips platter! So from the top going clockwise its baba ganoush, a lovely smokey number, cecik, yoghurt, garlic and cucumber, hummus, the king of dips and then cemen, a spicy and salty capsicum and walnut number. My favourite is usually baba ganoush but I actually love the cacik here, its amazing with their bread. The dips platter is a meal in itself basically!

The dips!

For an extra $2 you can get it changed from regular Turkish bread to wonderful cheesy garlic Turkish bread. That's not even a choice, it's such a bargain! The Turkish bread here is baked on site and has a wonderful crust and fluffiness. I love Turkish bread so much, it's the leading reason for my fear of braces, the fear that I might not be able to eat bread afterwards with braces insitu.

The bread!

These are the sigara bogregi, little filo pastry wrapped herb, feta and ricotta cheese delights. I wish they were just bigger, but they have a lovely crunch from being deep fried and the salty creaminess of the cheeses is lightened with the taste of dill and mint. I'd just like a bigger serve please, like an entire bowl of them.

We sat outside, pardon the lighting

This was one time when we just got a vegetarian mezze platter for sharing because we weren't that hungry for some reason. It has haloumi, a fresh garden salad, mixed olives, baba ganoush, hummus, cacik, falafal, stuffed vine leaves and tiny sigara bogregi. Its basically a very good entree for a couple haha.

Noice

I really love this lamb cutlet dish, the lamb is frenched beautifully with not a skerrick of meat left behind, there's a perfectly medium rare lollipop of tender lamb meat with a gloriously puddle of creamy mustard sauce that I slather onto the mashed potato and spinach that the lamb rests upon. For a meal that's basically meat and three veg, its a cracked of a dish. I could drink that sauce down, sometimes I buy an extra serve of sauce and just drown my potatoes in it. The lamb cutlets are small, but when are they ever really tomahawk steak size?

<3

I have no idea what this is. I have a feeling the menus changed since I've last been. I can guess what it is from the photo, but you can too. So that's all I have to say on the matter.

What is this even? Lamb?

VGirl's favourite dish is this falafal plate, six blobs of falafel, Turkish bread, tabbouleh and cecik. This has since been revamped a bit but the idea is still the same. My pick for best falafel in Brisbane is still for King Ahiram in West End but these aren't bad either.

VGirl's fav

Oh man, the Limon style Istanbul kebab is not something I can take lightly, I can NEVER finish this in one sitting. Chips, Turkish bread, a fresh garden salad, haloumi, marinated lamb with capsicum and onion. You get it initially and mock the tiny serving of meat before taking it all home in a takeaway container.

#dying

We failed hard. It makes for a fine second dinner too, might I add!

Failed!

I loved this giant lamb steak with mustard sauce, rice and salad that used to be on the menu. I'm super sad that it's been removed as it was my favourite dish. It was this giant hunk of meat that they grilled to perfection, so tender! You shall be sorely missed giant lamb steak.

Miss you babe.

This is a picture of one of their specials from ages ago, a veggie stack. VGirl was very excited because she never gets the option of a vegetarian special. She hoovered it up and has pined for it ever since.

!!!

Limon Restaurant 
Atmosphere: 5, nothing fancy, brightly lit inside despite its dark interior and big enough inside for lots of people.
Service: 7, really good service actually. Even single time I'm here, the waiters are super friendly and happy to explain anything. 
Food: 10, I love this place. My family go here all the time for good reason! 

Popolo Italian Kitchen and Bar

VGirl has an Italian's love of arancini! She always orders it when we go out because it is nearly always vegetarian and its deep fried, two of her basic dietary requirements. So we have been meaning to go to Popolo Italian Kitchen and Bar in Southbank for quite the while but balked at both parking and the price. We scored one of like four parks nearby having gone straight from our respective works, car pooling at VGirl's and then legging it the rest of the way. Southbank is a menace for parking!

Here is their menu! It has a nice view of the Brisbane river, but it can make it quite chilly at times. Luckily they have giant space heaters everywhere to warm things up.

I invested all my points in food photography

This is their tre formaggi aracini, aka three cheese aracini with roasted pumpkin puree, the three cheeses were taleggio, gorgonzola and parmesan! As a result these aracini were super cheesy with a delicious long stretch that I forgot to photograph. The best part for both of us was the roasted pumpkin puree, I don't know why but when you mix cream and pumpkin it makes this intense kinda mac n cheese sauce feel. We were both fighting over the last bits of puree and I think VGirl may have licked the plate to get the last of it.

Highly recommended!

For once, I wasn't a butthole and got a vegetarian main so VGirl could try some. I got this ravioli con zucca e ricotta, basically pumpkin and ricotta filled ravioli, tossed in a brown butter and sage sauce topped with amaretti crumb and more roasted pumpkin puree. We both liked the silkiness and thinness of this fresh pasta used in their ricotta. I always love a good butter and sage sauce and this one wasn't sitting in a pool of it which is nice. I didn't like the amaretti crumb, it was really sweet and we both didn't understand its inclusion. The pumpkin puree was the same as in the arancini!

Solid!

Haha, I guess if you're vegetarian prepare for pumpkin? VGirl got the pan fried gnocchi, which came with parmesan shaved over the top and more pumpkin puree! She said she liked the lightness of this gnocchi and still was enjoying the pumpkin puree haha.

Golden crust!

Popolo
Atmosphere: 5, we got there super early around 6pm so I can't really say. Its near the river and seems like a good spot to have dinner with friends. Not sure how the noise carries though?
Service: 5, we got our food! Nothing else to say really.
Food: 7, pretty good! Everything we had was pretty tasty but I don't think I'd go here again strictly for the price. We can get cheaper Italian elsewhere!

Purple Olive

It was T.,'s birthday recently! She decided to go the Purple Olive and so there were quite a few of us girls and boys from work who attended her birthday dinner. I had to nip off pretty early on as I had night shifts to go to but it was pretty fun to have a chat with everyone outside of work.

Park on the side streets of James Street's main strip and proceed to leg it to the restaurant! Here is their menu.

I got there late like 45 minutes late because I forgot how bad traffic was coming into the city at that time. Everyone was still happily chatting away though so I managed to get my order in at the same time as everyone else. I decided to go with the special of the day, gnocchi with brown butter sauce, crispy sage, roasted pumpkin bits and shavings of parmesan. The gnocchi were soft and fluffy. I was a bit sad that the brown butter sauce was so bland, it needed a good whack of salt to make it more delicious. There were very small pieces of sweet caramelised pumpkin but I wanted a lot more! It was a delicious entree but I was starving and was definitely a very entree sized entree.

Special of the night!

I got the espresso milkshake as I knew I was going to have to leave for night shifts straight after. Considering it was supposed to be moderately fancy with icecream and cream, it just tasted like a cold milky coffee and not a particularly strong one at that.

Expresso shake!

T., got these zucchini fritters, they were coated in a very little batter. That's all I have to say, they were cooked. I don't see the point of getting this dish, it needs a sauce or something.

Tongs!

W., got this pizza, it was proscuitto and mushroom. He said it was quite salty from the ingredients used. There were only four slices so I didn't bother asking for a slice.

Uneven toppings

I got this quattro fromagi pizza, your classic four cheese pizza with a topping of rocket and it also had proscuitto added on top. I definitely agreed with what W., said, I found this pizza quite salty due to combo of the strong cheese and the proscuitto. Even with the rocket, I found it to be quite salty and I'm a girl who loves her salt. The crust on the pizza is pretty good though.

I've had better

These were the spaghetti con polette della nonna, Nonna's meatballs with spaghetti basically. I think L., ordered these and we were concerned at the giant size of the meatballs that they would be over cooked or even worse under cooked. They were okay, that's kind of all we had to say, not dry, not moist, not salty but not super bland? They were a solid average.

?_?

Purple Olive
Atmosphere: 5, intimate setting as you can see from my dull lighting. 
Service: 6, I was pretty happy that they allowed me to split the bill since I left early. 
Food: 5, I didn't enjoy anything I ate here barring the gnocchi, I felt the portions were quite small and overpriced. I was still hungry on leaving here despite having been the only person to eat an entree, an entire milkshake and a main pizza. I didn't get anything else because I knew I would eat at work later and had already paid about $40~ dollars for an unfilling dinner :(