Malacca Malay

I was initially very excited to find that there was a new restaurant opening up at the Hyperdome aka my local shopping centre. I know that I say that Garden City is my local but that is because no one would happily claim the Hyperdome as their local. When I saw that this place had opened, I knew I had to go and try their food.

Parking is easy, its at a major shopping centre. Just park down at the Coles end and leg it. It's right in front of Aldi, its hard to miss. Here is their menu, thanks Zomato!

I got the chicken satay skewers as my entree. I found the chicken to be a touch dry with a very heavy hand on the tumeric in their marinade. I was quite saddened that there was no heavy charring or smokey flavour on the chicken. Their satay sauce was quite sweet. It came chopped onion, cuucmber and sour pineapple on the side.

):

This was the curry pork rib with noodles. I could not finish this dish, both due to the generous portion sizing as well as the taste not being to my liking. The pork rib pieces that they use are the cartilage heavy, tasty pork rib tips that are loved in Asian cooking. They were smothered in a thick, grainy, spice heavy curry that reminded me of fresh curry powder? I'm not sure how to explain it because the flavour was very familiar but I was unable to really place it or describe it besides, "the equivalent of fresh curry powder."

:<

I got the teh tarik which was a gigantic delicious serve.

Another reason I didn't finish my meal was the large slick of oil present.

Pork remnants

Malacca Malay
Atmosphere: 5, nothing fancy.
Service: 5, counter service!
Food: 4, not to my liking. I didn't enjoy anything I ate.

Kitchen Inn

S* and I usually gossip like crazy during our walk to our cars. We hadn't seen each other in quite a while so we decided to go out to dinner together. S* promised me that this place had the best noodles in Brisbane and she regularly made the trip out to Calamvale from Kangaroo Point just to eat it. So with that in mind, I had to go didn't I?

Steal the menu from Zomato. The restaurant is on the corner of the Calamvale shopping centre, so there's lots of parking! Just don't do what S* did and park on the wrong road. She ended up parking on the road above the shopping centre and had to hop off the rocks to get down.

I got teh C special, I have no idea what it stands for but it tastes delicious! Some type of strong black tea with condensed milk to sweeten it. I really enjoyed this and would drop by for this to takeaway if I'm in the area! On googling, I found it its red tea, evaporated milk and brown sugar mixed in.

<3

S* told me buys the same thing each and every time she goes here. She tried it once and has never gotten anything else since then. It's the kolo mee special! Homemade wheat noodles, barbecue pork, pork mince and prawns. The noodles are the same as the one in my dish, super long, springy, with a slight chew to their texture, they were amazing! The toppings were very generous as well, to the extent that S* ended up taking half of it home, the bowl was endless!

It comes with this generic vegetable soup.

Ah yes

I got the braised pork rib and chili kolo mee, there was a ridiculous amount of dried chili in this dish! I ended up pulling out almost 20 pieces of red chili out, thankfully they just added a good smokiness to the dish and a bit of spice too! It had a thick, dark sauce that coated the noodles very well. I have no idea what you call this cut of pork, Google tells me they're called rib tips! Those knobbly, chewy, white gristly bits are well beloved of most Asians out there.

Mmm pork

I got the fried chicken, juicy, covered in a light battered and brined to perfection. They came with a solid chili sauce and I ate nearly all the plate by mself!

$8 bargain

Kitchen Inn
Atmosphere: 5, your local Asian takeway. 
Service: 5, nothing special.
Food: 8. solid food. Super cheap, huge portions and delicious. Defs go here again.

Haoke Seafood Restaurant

N., demanded that we go to yum cha one day, she was feeling a bit homesick and sick of European style breakfasts. Unfortunately Brisbane doesn't have many early morning yum cha places, we only have lunch time or late night yum cha so off we went for lunch! We had actually tried going to another location before this that I won't disclose. We arrived there at the exact time that the venue was stated to open, waited half an hour, in which time no staff or customers arrived. So we decided to high tail it to Haoke instead!

We pretty much just tried the classics that everyone orders at yum cha. So first off we have har gow! Your standard prawn dumplings, these were large plump whole prawn dumplings with a thin, finely pleated skin. A standard dumpling done well, onwards!

Ol' faithful

Siu mai dumplings with a small cube of carrot at the top to visually imitate the crab roe you can get on siu mai in fancier places. Also nothing flash, I think we ignored this dumpling after we each grabbed one.

Back up~

Chicken feet! This was much better than the one I've had at Landmark, the colour is much darker, the garlic much more potent and the flavour had soaked in a lot more into the silky chicken skin. I like that they serve it in even numbers, otherwise as Mama Pham says, how will the chicken walk?

Mama Pham always makes that joke

This is a prawn and garlic chive dumpling, its not all that different from the har gao dumpling really, there a bit of additional freshness and garlic punch from the inclusion of the chives.

The tend to be a bit bigger than har gao too

N., ordered this for us since she said it was really good. We got some deep fried tofu puffs covered in fish paste with mushrooms on top of that. The serving lady helpfully cut everything in half for us. I think due to the cooking method, the mushrooms had the least exposure to heat and were still very firm/fresh tasting. You know that uncooked flavour that you can get with mushrooms, I find it an odd taste and can't eat mushrooms that way.

I just ate the fish paste

These were a deep fried thingy with barbecue pork on the inside. I have no idea what this stuff is, its white, slightly sweet, super chewy and even after being fried its quite pale. I have this weird feeling it might be made out of rice flour? Who knows.

?_? whats the English name for it?

Lacklustre barbecue duck, shiny skin that wasn't salted enough. We packed this up for lunch with the noodles below, we barely ate any of it.

I love noodles but I did not love these soy sauce fried noodles. They were literally just soy sauce, some onion and egg noodles but they left a very greasy puddle of oil when you lifted them up.

Pass

I love salt and pepper calamari like I can't even describe. These were quite good, no chewiness, a light batter, a good saltiness and a large serving to boot.

Noice

Xiao long bao! These looked almost suspiciously perfect, all the pleats look completely the same don't they? We got a good blast of some red vinegar to go with these but I still prefer the ones you can get at New Shanghai.

Perfectly pleated

Haoke Seafood Restaurant
Atmosphere: 5, your classic Chinese restaurant done up in red and gold.
Service: 5, your standard subpar service. 
Food: 7, definitely better than Landmark and its open for late night yum cha. Unfortunately the parking situation is a lot more dismal. Pick your poison I guess?

Sunnybank Oriental

Did you think I was serious in that last post? I dunno, I'm just not feeling the blogging bug like I used to, I'm trying to push through and do a little bit per day but I've been crazy keen on weight lifting recently. At the time of writing, I can deadlift 65kg and squat the same! That's crazy considering last October I couldn't handle the weight of the bar!

That being said, I'm crazy physically dense atm. This time last year I was 71kg, now I'm 80kg and fit the exact same clothes with chunky muscular thighs. Enough about me, onto the food!

VGirl and I went out to dinner and we had no idea where to go. So we picked somewhere we hadn't been, somewhere midway between us in the CBD and Logan so we went to Sunnybank Oriental.

I got this jumbo lychee frappe with one real lychee far, far down the bottom. VGirl didn't bother to order a drink, she just powered through mine as she usually does haha.

Classic VGirl

For some reason I had a crazy hankering for sweet and sour pork, growing up Mama Pham used to make us it from a jar of Chicken Tonight. She'd dip pork pieces in a light batter to deep fry, chop up onions, capsicum and pineapple for a brief saute and then toss in that fluro orange bottled sauce. This is exactly what I was expecting sauce wise, it was missing pineapple, was sickly sweet and the pork pieces were more batter than pork so uhhh, I guess that was nothing like my childhood memory. It kinda is if you squint at it?

Ah yes, cheapo sweet and sour pork

VGirl got the vegetarian ho fun noodles, it had a slimy jumble of brown cloud ear fungus, broccoli, carrot, bean sprouts, tofu skin and mushrooms. The noodles had a sourish note to it that made VGirl ignore them to eat all of the vegetables. The flavour of it reminded us of when we didn't fully wash off the oil that comes from using wide rice noodles straight out of the bag.

Ugh

Sunnybank Oriental
Atmosphere: 5, feels like a school dining hall, it has the same vibe as Malaya Corner really. It is always packed, noisy and there are very sparse decorations if any at all.
Service: 5, quick and efficient. Expect to have your food within 20 minutes!
Food: 5, pretty average, its cheap and quite large portioned. It has quite a large variety of dishes available to try and they run from breakfast, lunch and dinner,

Landmark Restaurant

Oh man Landmark is probably the best known yum cha restaurant in all of Brisbane. I swear if you've ever been to yum cha, you've probably been here before. I don't really like it though, mostly because the food can be a bit hit and miss. If you go there during peak hour, everything is great otherwise it's really average. The fried food can be a bit oily, the calamari can be tough at best and the service is surly at best.

Anyway, it's still an easy place to go to for a quick catch up with friends. Especially since parking is so easy since its in the shopping centre at Sunny Plaza. The day we went was really a get together for all the parents and me, because I like to eat.

I was on the prowl as soon as we entered the restaurant! My friends normally leave me to order for the table because I usually know whats good, but H., has to rein me in because I usually over order! We started off with har gao, some prawn and coriander dumplings plus siu mai! The har gao and prawn and coriander dumplings had very juicy, plump and flavoursome whole prawns inside, you can pretty much guarantee for all of Landmark's failings that their prawns dishes are pretty good. The siu mai was nothing special, the won ton wrapper was a little tough for some reason but I guess that's because we went a little before lunch time.

We had doubles of this!

You can faintly see in this photo that we had deep fried prawn rolls, salt and pepper calamari, steamed pork buns and crunchy kai lan with a side of oyster sauce. The salt and pepper calamari were a hit with the kids at our table, S.,'s daughter Olivia had one tentacle in each hand and was chewing gleefully. She kept trying to share her food with the other little boy there, Oliver, he was somehow convinced that he was eating chewy chips but tried the calamari anyway. He was a very shy little boy and kept asking his dad for more "chips". That being said, they were rubbery as anything, I don't think there's been a single time that I've had tender calamari here. The steamed pork buns were too sweet for my liking and had very little char siu inside them.

The token vegetable

A slightly different angle

You can't really see through all the steam but this was an interesting dish with eggplant where the hollowed inside was filled with fish paste and prawns before being steamed! Oliver was also gamely trying this considering he hadn't had eggplant or fish paste before. I feel like I shouldn't be allowed near small children cause I'd just feed them exotic foods without telling them what it was. I guess that's no different to how I treat some of my adult friends really.

What's behind that cloud of steam????

These were more deep fried prawns and beside them is a slippery plate of steamed rice noodles with more prawns inside them covered in a sweet soy sauce.

Well at least their prawns are good

Landmark Restaurant
Atmosphere: 5, your usual bright red and gold Chinese restaurant! Complete with tanks full of live seafood for you to pick and consume at your leisure. 
Service: 3, surly and unhelpful. Skip the trolleys and bring your bill straight to where they steam the food. Your variety will be a lot better and the food a lot fresher.
Food: 4. the food is nothing special. Anything with prawns is a safe bet, otherwise gloves are off as to what you're getting.

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???