RJIE: Banhi mi dac biet at Scotts Road Takeaway

On the same day that we went to 2B Thai, VGirl and I went shopping for groceries in Inala and ended up going to Scotts Road for some banh mi for breakfast! The shop is right across from the train station so it's pretty easy to find.

This place!

It's a pretty small little takeaway shop with your standard goodies and their specialty banh mi! Its got a serious reputation as one of the most authentic banh mi places in Brisbane. I know VGirl and JGirl both make the trip down here at least once a week!

Shop set up

So many drinks

I got the banh mi dac biet, the special pork roll basically which consists of coriander, pickled carrot, cucumber, slices of cha lua, char siu and pork meatballs, a smear of chicken pate and homemade mayonnaise! Everything was fresh and delicious with the bread being light, crunchy and fluffy.

VGirl gets the same thing minus the meat and normally asks for double the mayo. Its addictive stuff!

RJIE Upstairs in Little Taipei: the One Taiwanese cuisine and Yahoo Sunnybank again!

I went on a date with someone and we decided to have a quick lunch in Sunnybank before he went to work one day! We had a bit of ponder and couldn't decide where we wanted to go for sure, so we wandered upstairs to Little Taipei and plonked ourselves down in the aircon to avoid the summer heat.

He picked this spicy pork cutlet bento box from The One Taiwanese Cuisine. I don't think he realised it was a bento box set because he was very surprised when it came out. There was a bowl of plain vegetable broth, a big bowl of rice, a tiny cabbage and carrot spring roll covered in tomato sauce, some candied sweet potato, steamed cabbage and carrot, a side salad of shredded cabbage covered in mayonnaise and then the pork cutlets! They were battered and super crunchy, the meat was still very juicy though. The sauce was odd, we were both expecting a super hot sambal kinda sauce but this was a mild chili and black bean kinda deal.

Aw yiss

Meanwhile I went to Yahoo Sunnybank and chose to get their Mie Goreng, it had pieces of tomato in it which I wasn't happy about not to mention the shredded lettuce component. The noodles had a good charry wok hei flavour to them and there were lots of fish balls and tofu in the noodles so I was happy in that regard.

Hmmm~

I also got us curry puffs to share. He said he liked them, so I got them for us, cause I'm cute like that. I made him eat all but one of them, as you can see they had a wonderful bubbly crust with a sweet filling that I can't recall. I remember thinking that I've had better in Mons Ban Sabai Thai though.

Joe's BBQ

I was meeting up with a friend to steal her parking pass for work in Sunnybank so I decided to go out for a meal. I picked Joe because it was somewhere I hadn't been before and I couldn't get a park in Market Square.

Weakest excuse ever

Its a very simple little shop as most BBQ places seem to be for whatever reason. Black tables and chairs, pictures of the food everywhere, a hand written chalk specials board in Mandarin and a counter with a glass display case where a man quickly chops up barbequed meats.

Every BBQ shop ever

What makes this place interesting are all the random signs from someone with an Internet based sense of humour. I forgot to take a photo but there are lots of "KEEP CALM AND EAT BBQ" type meme pictures floating around as well.

Also lots of pictures of Brisbane

Here is their menu!

I ordered pan fried dumplings as my entree. They came out super sizzling hot with an impressively crunchy bottom despite their pale appearance. They were also a touch on the small size, the same size as that dish of sweet chilli sauce pictured, let's guess about 5-6cm in length. I was very surprised and scalded when I bit into one, they were actually Shanghai style soup dumplings so I had a steaming hot mouthful of soup.They had a very good porky and green onion flavour. While they were small, I'd gladly order them again.

Teeny weeny handmade dumplings

I ordered the roasted duck and dry noodle and received this thing below. I'm sure that's what we all confirmed it as. Both myself and the waiter knew I was getting this roasted duck and dry noodle dish, then this odd concoction appears. I was expected stir fried noodles with chopped up roast duck plonked on top.

It was duck, it just seemed to be twice cooked roasted then braised duck, or at least that's what the flavour of it was. The duck was meltingly tender and fatty with a thick, savoury, dark brown gravy that soaked through my noodles. It also had a side of steamed cabbage which went well with it. It was an absolutely massive serving and I struggled to finish it after my noodles. It was tasty if somewhat odd.

What

Joe's BBQ

Atmosphere: 6, slightly different than your usual Chinese BBQ restaurant

Service: 6, friendly waiters and waitresses even if their English isn't crash hot.

Food: 6.5, the food is all stuff I wasn't expecting but was still tasty. Not to mention it was all quite cheap and with large portions. I would probably go here again just out of curiosity to see what else they can serve up.

Little Hong Kong

I'd just like to put it out there, that Pokemon X and Y came out. So my Boyfriend and I both got Nintendo 3DS and a Pokemon game each. I technically got two, Pokemon X and Super Pokemon Rumble Blast, but that's a different story. So don't expect a lot from this blog for a little while, while we play Pokemon together.

Oh and Terraria just released its 1.2 patch, but we've finished all that a few days ago. So I don't even have any back up blog posts to fall back on. 

Oh and I have an Instagram account now. Check out ThatSeriousGirl for stuff I don't always post on my blog. I'm still getting used to Instagram so bear with me :)

I have no idea why I picked Little Hong Kong as where we were going to have dinner for our first anniversary. It was a terrible idea because I was aware of its terrible service reviews on Urbanspoon, random blogs and from multiple friends. While I knew that it was from the Little Singapore/Malaysia/Nyonya brands which I never liked anyway, I still felt like I should try it. Ah well #yolo.

This place.

This place was super busy the night we went, as it is every night we go past. Upon entering the restaurant, we opted to sit outside. The waitress asked us if we wanted to be seated on the final table of a group of four tables, that were occupied by some students, even though there were other empty tables. I have no idea why she did thought we would want to sit beside strangers when there were already empty chairs. It was a good choice because they were incredibly loud as well as being messy eaters.

Their menus are all available online thankfully, complete with photos for your enjoyment. Noodles. Entrees and chef specials. Drinks.

On the inside there is a self serve sauce station. I didn't realise there were more sauces towards the cash register until we turned to leave. From memory, the only thing I really recognised was hoisin and plum sauce, it looked pretty similar to this one to be honest. I had a scoopful of the orange sauce second from the right and the red sauce, which were Hainanese chicken rice sauce and a garlic and chilli sauce. The Hainanese sauce was oddly sweet with a mild spice and a somehow tomatoey flavour? The garlic and chilli sauce was very chilli but there was not very much garlic flavour. They have little disposable dishes for you to put the sauces on.

Sauces!

We were both unexciting and got different versions of the barbeque options with rice/wet noodles or dry noodles. This is my Boyfriend's pick with rice, Teow chew chicken and roasted duck. The Teow chew chicken was nothing flash, moist with a mildly darker skin and a slightly soy sauce flavour to it. The roasted duck was alright, with a wet skin and not overly oily flesh. I found the roasted duck to not have much flavour besides the normal duck one. It also came with dishes of soy sauce as well as a minced ginger sauce. There is also a little undressed salad of cabbage, red capsicum and cucumber.

Looks good

On the other hand, I got barbeque pork, roasted pork and the soy chicken with dry noodles, which actually had a large puddle of diluted soy sauce underneath it. The roasted pork had a chewy crackling and very little seasoning, it was well cooked if nothing else. The barbeque pork was overly sweet and a little dry. The soy chicken was moist, and the flavour didn't soak through the flesh, it was mostly on the darkened skin.

Solid presentation

I left behind most of the noodles and the meat, although my Boyfriend ate my leftover meat.

Dry, my arse

We also ordered a side of steamed green veggies with oyster sauce. It was exactly as the name suggested, steamed, slightly oily vegetables with a blob of oyster sauce at the top. No golden minced garlic at all. The vegetables were the best part of both our meals to be honest.

Sad leftovers

Little Hong Kong
Atmosphere: 5, really loud, busy restaurant.
Service: 4, not sure what happened with our initial seating. Our waitress was quite surly and opted to take our order without confirming what we had gotten. Thankfully everything came out as expected.
Food: 4, pretty average. I wouldn't go here again to be honest, not even if a friend paid for a meal.