Ze Pickle

I went out with JGirl to Ze Pickle cause we love dirty burgers, it had also been having great photos all over Instagram. Also I was still salty about it being closed when I tried to go with Dr H. This time we parked on the outside of the Emporium and we legged it across the four lanes of road to get to Ze Pickle.

Here is their website! We went on a Friday night and I had to go to work straight afterwards. We waited for almost 45-50 minutes for a table, it was freaking crazy. I was getting twitchy paranoid that I would show up late or I wouldn't eat. We ended up sitting at the bar and it was great, TABLES ARE OVER RATED. I just want a spot to eat food at!

We got the Ze Chips! Jesus H., Christ, this is the standard by which I measure loaded fries now. The excellent Ipa beer cheese sauce, the hand chopped maple bacon bits, the fresh green onions to cut through all that richness and those crispy, crunchy chips! Ahh this was so good, I was scraping the sauce off the plate with chips, then my fingers, then licking my fingers and rubbing them on the plate when I thought JGirl wasn't looking. 10/10 would eat again.

Omg so so good!

I got the Double Double, two hand pressed wagyu beef patties, double cheese, double maple smoked bacon and ZP sauce. For a place that touts itself on the awesomeness of its real wagyu beef burgers, I think they should've bothered seasoning the stuff, it was blandly medium rare beef. Even the cheese and bacon didn't help that much with how freaking thick the pattie was. Kudos on generosity, boo to the lack of seasoning.

>:

JGirl got the 3pm burger, wagyu beef patty, maple smoked bacon, guacamole, mozzarella sticks and more ZP sauce. She struggled to finish this burger due to the immense greasiness of the burger, she was trying to down it heroically but to no avail. She ate the patty and continued to breath heavily for a while before admitting defeat.

:(

Ze Pickle
Atmosphere: 5, dark and dingy pub hole!
Service: 8, excellent! They were very polite despite the hum of activity in the place, quick to take drink orders and clear tables. I always find that bar staff are always the best at service no matter where you go.
Food: 5, pretty average burgers. I was really disappointed by their burgers and the lack of seasoning too. If giant, greasy, over indulgent burgers are your thing, have at it!

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.

Jackpot Dining - West End

When I was finalising this post, I realised that this place has never been blogged about ever. Seriously guys, it's been open for at least four years and no one has ever blogged about it, and its in the direct centre of West End practically. It has like four sister stores. Well, I took advantage and your chance to take the first post is long gone, like your ex girlfriend who will never return!

There seem to be lots of little Jackpot Dining places sprouting all over the city and with that in mind VGirl and I decided to go here. No, I'm lying, we totally went to go out to this Mexican place in West End that was closed for the New Year. Then we weren't able to go to Lock and Load Bistro cause we didn't have a reservation and so we ended up here.

It was absolutely bucketing rain during this time and I had gotten a lot of water into my flats when protecting VGirl and Dr H., from the rain. Dr H., went to dinner at Little Greek Taverna which VGirl and I didn't want to go to.

SAFE HAVEN FROM THE RAIN

Look out for this flag!

The interior is nothing exciting, it reminds me of a slightly upmarket cafeteria hall. At the front is a counter where you pay, order and get your drinks. The majority of the restaurant is taken up with plain white booths and tables. At the back is a counter that contains help yourself sauces and the entrance to the kitchen where you can watch chefs chopping up barbequed meat.

Their drinks range!

More drinks!

Even more drinks

The sauces, soy, chilli, chilli garlic oil, plum and black vinegar

I picked up this can of lychees juice. It's one of those deceptively heavy Asian cans, that are super thick and have a deceptively small amount of juice in them. This juice was very syrupy, sweet and had a strong taste of lychees, think the texture of mango nectar and the like. I'm unsure if I would buy it again, but it was an interesting taste.

I felt like eating roasted duck but also wanted noodles, so I ended up getting shredded duck with vegetable noodles! It was initially quite disappointed with the appearance of this dish since the garnish of white and purple cabbage, whilst striking was very haphazard. There didn't seem to be enough duck, as I was expecting the usual deceptive pile at the top and nothing beneath. With every mouthful, there was a chunk of duck and I found I had quite a lot of duck in my noodles. As well as a LOT of vegetables, cabbage, bok choy, garlic, onion and small slivers of carrot. It was a very healthy dish I think and I really enjoyed it in the end.

These spring rolls were vegetarian so VGirl snagged a few as well. I honestly can't remember what was in it besides carrot, peas, corn and cabbage. They were freshly fried and super, super hot when they arrived at the table. I'm pretty sure VGirl burned her mouth when she ate them. They came with a little side dish of sweet chilli sauce.

When I was writing this I had no idea what this was. I looked at the photo and said to myself, that is unmistakably barbeque pork buns. I had no idea why I would order this as I don't usually like it. Its in my Facebook pictures as well so I must've gotten it but I wrote no notes on the dish which is strange. I honestly have no recollection of eating this.

Then I remember that these were VGirl's fresh green vegetable buns! She said they weren't that great. That's all she said.

Memory loss barbeque pork buns

HAR GAO! Delicious, thin skinned, multi pleated, prawn filled morsels of deliciousness. For their price, at the time of writing 3 for $4.80, its a little pricey but still a delicious and consistent alternative to the usual yum cha hotspots. I would happily drop by for these har gao if I had a hankering for yum cha in West End.

Delicious!

These are steamed vegetable dumplings, these were expensive considering its two largish dumplings for $4.50. VGirl said they were really delicious but she did baulk a bit at the price, odd considering I had to pay for our dinner. She said she would go here again, solely for these dumplings but only for a special occasion.

Tell me your secrets dumplings.

We ordered the steamed Chinese vegetables with oyster sauce. One of those places that literally gives you oyster sauce sadly. The vegetables were fresh, springy and still a bit crunchy.

Boo plain oyster sauce

This place was so good, I went back here again with my Boyfriend! I had to talk him out of ordering the steamed vegetables as I knew how completely average they were. We also got a serve of the har gao dumplings when we went here. Below is a picture of Bubble Black tea, it doesn't have any pearls or anything, I'm unsure of why the name is Bubble Black tea. Its a very, very sweet earthy black tea, there isn't any bitterness due to how much sugar is present but it has a very distinctive tannic flavour from how long the tea has been brewed. I had to dilute mine with water as it was so intensely sweet.

So, so sweet.

I panicked while ordering and got barbequed pork and roasted duck with veggies. My Boyfriend was not happy as he expressly wanted ONLY roasted duck, but it was too late to take back the order. We all regretted the barbequed pork, it was meltingly tender, so soft you could pull it apart with two forks. With zero flavour. It looked like char siu and tasted like the faintest hint of it. The roasted duck was really good though, tender, fatty, juicy with a great crispy skin. He kept muttering under his breath that he could've had a whole plate of duck. He made me eat the barbequed pork.

BBQ pork and roast duck!

I got the butter garlic chicken with a side of fried rice for an extra $2. The rice was well cooked, a touch plain, but the grains were fluffy and well defined, carrot, peas and egg were present in the fried rice.

I don't know what I expected with the butter garlic chicken. One of my friends heavily recommended this when I said I went here the first time, so I decided to pick it. They were crispy fried chicken bits in literally a butter and garlic sauce. When you bite into the chicken, you got this overwhelmingly strong taste of butter and garlic. It wasn't unpleasant but it was a rich and surprisingly filling taste. I was glad I picked the fried rice as a side as there was little else to this dish besides the chicken.

Oddly tasty

Jackpot Dining West End
Atmosphere: 6, fancy arse cafeteria room. I wouldn't bring a hot date here that's for sure.
Service: 8, wonderful friendly, polite and super efficient staff members. They would helpfully point out each dish and are very patient with people umming and ahhing at the door without being obtrusive.
Food: 8.5, would gladly go back here again. For how much you're paying for food here, the huge portions and very solid cooking? This place is a winner, winner, chicken dinner for me.

Grill'd Wintergarden

So I got an interesting message over Urbanspoon one day:

Oh em gee

Lots of this message got censored because I got overly excited and had to post it on Facebook. Then I paranoid about leaking details of the launch because I was unsure if this was open to the public at all. So I kept deleting parts of the message out. This is what it eventually ended up looking like, I'm surprised its still so coherent out of context.

This is the first food event I've gone to as a food blogger and guest. So this was a little bit exciting, way more exciting than the first time I got highlighted on Urbanspoon's front page. Is it too early to dream that I'll one day retire from nursing and blog full time? Yeah maybe, calm your tits ThatSeriousGirl.

I was very torn about attending this at all because I had night shifts straight afterwards. If you've ever worked a night shift, anything short of sleeping, before your shift, is not advised. Even for people like me who actually sleep during the day. My friends, work colleagues and patients were all very supportive of me and actively encouraged me to go or call in sick and go. In the end, I went to the event AND went to my night shift.

PUBLIC DISCLOSURE TIME. I WAS INVITED AS A GUEST. THE FOLLOWING OPINION IS PURELY MY OWN. EVEN IF I WAS A GUEST AND THEY PAID FOR MY DINNER. I'M CALLING IT LIKE IT IS.

These guys

What was the event you ask? Grill'd at Wintergarden is having Ping Pong After Hours! Apparently its pretty cool to have ping pong at casual dining places overseas, so we're bringing it to Australia. At the moment, its only available on Thursday nights after 5pm, just rock up and see what its like!

Ooooh~

The Grill'd at Wintergarden is a little bit hard to find, but just look for their giant logo and follow it.

Oh yeah

Up here and to the left

They have an interesting chandelier of spatulas. This was difficult to photograph with my new camera because it has a tendency to overexposure when there are bright reflections. I found that swapping between my camera phone and my camera covered any issues like that. I use my camera for food photos and my camera phone for shiny things like menus.

Just in front of the bar, behind that bookshelf are little booths

They had a lot of random stuff for decoration. I liked all the pictures promoting Melbourne Cup drinks, although its a little late at this stage to be promoting Melbourne Cup events haha, maybe next year?

Too late now

All the wallpaper looks like graffiti and a bit scratchy in some places. It has that look of posters that have been placed on top of one another for band gigs? Or a very active street pole.

You the feel right?

Their bar is very plain. I have nothing to say about it.

Bar

Here is their Queensland menu. I ordered the Hot Mama, grilled grass fed lean beef, tzatziki, roasted capsicums, dill pickles, tasty cheese, lettuce, tomato and harissa paste on a traditional panini bread. The beef pattie was roughly ground and chunky but held its shape well. The tzatziki was not noticeable, when I was eating this, I was firmly convinced it was just sour cream and was eating my Lacteeze by the handful to counteract its effects. Tzatziki should be a much thicker yoghurt, cucumber and herby thing rather than the thin sauce I had. The grilled peppers weren't bad, they did end up sliding out of my burger though. Their dill pickles are good, sharp and crunchy. The harissa paste is super spicy, I liked it but maybe a shade less.

My burger!

I only ate half before I asked for a box to take my burger in.  The many reasons being that I ate more than my fair share of chips, the burger was too hot from the harissa paste, harissa being a very spicy, super red hot chilli paste, I was a little nauseated/anxious from being on nights as my lactose intolerance kicking in and wondering what time I'd leave. I had the rest of it, a little after midnight for my lunch and it was really tasty then, although still a bit hot.

The two sauces at the end were the sweet chilli mayonnaise and the herbed mayonnaise. I had actually only asked for the herbed mayonnaised but hey, free is free. Although technically, all my meal was free, sooooo yeah. The sweet chilli mayonnaise is wonderful, VGirl and I often go to Grill'd and get their chips with this sauce, its sweet, tangy with a milder honeyed sweet chilli sauce with the creaminess of mayonnaise. You could totally get the same flavour by mixing the two sauces at home yourself though. The herbed mayonnaise is also quite good, it gives it a Dutch feel since you're putting mayonnaise on your chips. The sauce is quite green but the flavour is not so strong that you can tell what herbs are in it, probs rosemary and oregano to my taste.

Here is a close up of my burger.

Nice blurry shot there

Here is what it looks like straight down the middle.  I like its mostly even distribution, so you get a fair bit of everything when you bite into it.

Little bit squished too

My Boyfriend got the Big Queenslander as well as the chips put on his side. His burger was the better burger, it had chunky lean beef pattie, fried egg, purple onion, beetroot, tomato, lettuce, crispy bacon, relish and herbed mayo all on a traditional panini roll. It was a much more balanced burger, flavour wise than mine was. The fried egg was cooked all the way through, which I'm not a fan of but he enjoyed it. The beetroot was good and very classic Aussie flavour, egg and beetroot on something is instant Aussie after all.

He also got our bucket of regular rosemary and salt seasoned chips. They were, as always, really crunchy on the outside and fluffy in the centre.

+_+ jealous

Here is a close up of his burger.

Add caption

As well as an interior shot.

He didn't want my knife to cut the burger

We then went to play ping pong, once the slightly tipsy group beside us had finished. They had cleared out a large space to put two tables in as well as their DJ. I completely forgot to take photos of this bit because I was so busy playing ping pong. I went back a few days later during the day to take photos.

Pretend this is a DJ

I'm not great at ping pong because I've played a lot of badminton and my first reaction is always to hit the paddle downwards rather than upwards, so I do a lot of down smashing into the floor. It was pretty even though just because it had been a while since either of us had played. The DJ had fun between songs by throwing additional ping pong balls onto our table from the massive plastic bags they had everywhere.

This is the space that the tables were set up

We had a handful of ping pong balls with us at all times and kept having to hunt around for more, despite the massive bags. I ended up trying to stack them on the bench beside the window. I didn't realise there was a gap between the wall and the window, so a few of the balls escaped and landed a bit too close to some people passing below. The DJ and I were in hysterics and we hid underneath the Grill'd sign, while we giggled over the confused faces of the business people below.

Big gap between the wall and the glass

I think we played about an hour before we decided to head home. It was fun but one of my criticisims of the location is that due to our terrible playing, there were a lot of loose shots ending up in the restaurant area. On more than one occasion, I hit someone with a stray shot and I almost knocked out the son of the waiter looking after us that night. His toddler came up to the table as my Boyfriend hit the ball towards me, and he started trying to pick up the ball, AS I WAS SWINGING MY PADDLE. Remember how I use massive downstrikes? Yeah, that could've been bad. Luckily, I stopped and his mum hurriedly pulled him away.

It does look like you can pull those glass doors together?

I can imagine it would get really annoying to have random ping pong balls hitting you. I wonder if they could install a partition to stop random ping pong balls from hitting other patrons?

Oh and on the second time I went here, I got myself the strawberry and lime Rekorderlig slushie. It was very sweet and tasty, the alcoholic tang was barely noticeable and was very refreshing on the hot day I went!

Yay alcoholic slushies!

Grill'd Wintergarden

Atmosphere: 7, bright and cheerful, a good place for a quick catch up for a friend.
Service: 8, super friendly and very quick to help. All the staff members had a smile on their face and if I asked something, they knew the answer and ran to find out. Even the DJ helped, although I guess throwing ping pong balls is pretty fun without having to be part of your job.
Food: 7, I've been to Grill'd many times before, and I don't doubt I'll go again.

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.