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.

Dapur Dahlia

I love Malaysian food so its a wonder that I hadn't already been to Dapur Dahlia in my travels! I decided that VGirl and her boyfriend, Zbag, JGirl, Dr S., and myself, should all head here for dinner one day.

Dapur Dahlia is a bit hard to spot, its pretty near to the Pizza Hut/Night Owl store in Upper Mount Gravatt so keep an eye out for that. Parking is a bit limited since its not particularly a big shopping lot. This restaurant is super popular, while the Indian restaurant beside it had barely any customers the entire time we were there. Perhaps they should expand that way?

This place!

The restaurant is extremely small by the way, not to mention the furniture is pretty small and uncomfortable to sit on. We had to wait about 20 minutes to get a table simply for the fact that there are only about . . . 8 tables in the entire place, the majority of which end up being put together due to limited tabletop space. In short, I hate this tiny restaurant's atmosphere!

Here is their collection of menus.

We all got random drinks. VGirl got this Soda Bandung, aka iced rose water soda. It's bright pink and icy cold, it also tastes exactly like creaming soda, surprise!

Fave for VGirl

I got the traditional teh ais, thick black tea and condensed milk thats been stretched. Zero stretching here, there is no foamy top at all! That being said its delicious, but what more do you expect from condensed milk drinks?

Love condensed milk

Zbag picked ais limau, a black tea with lime juice added. It was a very refreshing and sweet iced tea flavour.

Yummy

I made VGirl get the Maggi migoreng as opposed to the regular migoreng, this is because I wanted to eat Maggi noodles over hokkien noodles. Also it was the chef's special! This is even though VGirl would only allow me a small mouthful of the noodles. She said it was delicious and finished it before the rest of the dishes were even put down. When I asked her if she wanted another serve, she declined but spent a lot of time inquiring after other peoples meals, so maybe I should have gotten one . . . oh the vegetables in this dish were bean sprouts, carrot, cabbage and gai lan!

Yassss

I got the ayam goreng and beef rendang nasi lemak! I love nasi lemak because it allows me to pick and choose bits off the menu that I want to try without having to actually order that dish as a main! So yeah I picked fried chicken of course and beef rendang! To be truthful, since I started making beef rendang, I've never found one as good as my own. I love the sauce super dense, full of spices and coconut and the beef to fall apart. This was okay. The fried chicken reminds me of home with the way the winglet is still kept on it! That's the good bit, there's so much skin on there to eat! I enjoyed the sambal that they had here as well as the fact that the egg was a medium boil, no dodgy iron grey ring for me thanks!

<3 nasi lemak

Chicken satay, the way it should be! Charred, fat skewers of chicken absolutely doused in finger licking satay sauce accompanied with cucumber and red onion! They come four to a serve, so there was enough for everyone to eat one and get

Ideal number, so easily divisible!

This is their roti telur bawang aka egg and onion flatbread that comes with dahl, lentil curry, and a curry gravy, chicken! I feel like that sentence has a lot of commas in there but I'm too lazy to fix it, so please endure! Dr S., and JGirl both enjoyed this!

!

However, they also ordered roti jala aka net bread, which also came with a curry gravy and chicken curry. I have no idea why they basically ordered the same dish twice to share. I don't understand the appeal of roti jala because its meant to go with curry dishes as a means of sopping or picking up curry. So why would you use a bread that has so many holes in it to do that? Doesn't that seem fundamentally arduous somehow? Like eating soup with a spoon?

?_?

CBoy got the seafood laksa. It is a massive, massive bowl! It comes with lots of prawns, calamari, fish cakes, three types of noodle, flat rice, egg and a homemade rice starch noodle as well as a very rich and flavourful coconut broth! He did not finish this bowl by the way, it defeated him!

Truck size bowl

We got the cendol as our shareable dessert, bright green pandan noodles, shaved ice and palm sugar syrup! I like that they actually used real palm sugar, you can taste the caramel sweetness of it. I had to scoff this down as everyone else was too full and wanted to go home and sleep.

Refreshing!

Dapur Dahlia 
Atmosphere: 3, I hate this tiny restaurant. Please expand more!
Service: 5, nothing special.
Food: 7, average! The drinks are pretty good as are the dishes barring the roti. The serving size is solid and the pricing is pretty cheap. Give this place a shot, I'd say! 

The Establishment

Imma start off by saying this is my favourite Italian place in Brisbane because its pretty cheap, has huge portions and I like people watching in West End. I definitely prefer this place for dinners but their breakfast dishes are pretty huge too. It's easy to get to being on the Boundary St intersection opposite the Commonwealth Bank. Park at the Coles and run!

This place!

They have a massive wall of coffee!

Ah!

Here is some of their menu. I honestly forgot to take photos, thinking I had already had them. My bad. Anyway I got a really strong mocha with an extra shot to survive the the drive home.

<3

I got a serve of chorizo scrambled eggs with spinach, mushrooms and a massive slab of sourdough under there. The chorizo was a super fine dice which I wasn't happy about but there was a lot of it so I guess that kind of balanced it out. The eggs were really creamy with a soft curd. I have nothing else to say about this dish because it's something you can easily make at home but it also pretty tasty.

Spot the bread

There was a ridiculous amount of food and I failed to finish my food.

Woah

Dr. S., VGirl, JGirl, and myself went again after we went to the Lifeline Bookfest earlier this year. We wanted something in the area that was also a prime spot to watch the dodgy set of lights where there were numerous close calls with car crashes. Its a traffic light intersection where you CANNOT do a U-turn to get into Coles however, people attempt it anyway with near disastrous effects.

Here is their menu!

We got this freaking huge bowl of chips to start with as per VGirl's requests. Crispy hand cut chips! What more could you want!

Plus aioli and tomato sauce

We got these potato croquettes as well to share between us, I don't think they're on the menu any longer but they were pretty good as well.

Crunchy crunchy!

Next up were the arancini balls filled with mushrooms, pine nuts, parmiggano cheese and truffle oil. These came in a group of three that we split between the four of us. They were super hot and burnt our tongues in our haste to polish them off haha.

<3!

I can't remember who got this seafood fettucine, it came full of scallops, prawns and a super garlicky and bright tomato sauce. Like a ridiculous amount of seafood, we were feeding each other prawns and scallops for the length of the meal. There wasn't just the jumble on the top but also a whole heap inside the pasta nest as well. This giant portion wasn't finished, it was taken home for lunch the next day!

So much

This is VGirl's spinach and ricotta canneloni with a giant serve of balsamic vinegar drizzled garden salad, lots of rocket, tomato, purple onion, pine nuts and capsicum. As usual, VGirl didn't comment very much on her dish, her comment in it's entirety was, "its spinach and ricotta." She's not wrong I suppose, I don't have high expectations of spinach and ricotta dishes, I find it a bit of a bland combination. Too creamy and mild for my tastes, spinach and feta all the way. She liked the huge side salad though.

This blurry blob

JGirl ordered the chorizo and pesto gnocchi with sweet potato crisp, thats the crunchy pile on top! She adored this dish so much that she bought it again the next time we came here. We all had a lot of fun eating the super crunchy, deep fried sweet potato bits but I still miss the fluffiness of sweet potato. The sauce is very rich and creamy while the gnocchi is obviously homemade, so light and fluffy.

<3

Dr S., got gnocchi as well, the zucca! Roasted pumpkin, goats cheese, spinach, pine nuts and sun dried tomatoes, a perfect vegetarian assortment. Dr S., said that she never understood the appeal of gnocchi until she had this dish saying that the ones she had eaten in the past were rubbery and dense. Not like these fluffy square pillows, haha, not a pretty appearance but a great taste, right up my alley!

Shiny

I went again with just Dr S., and JGirl about a week later. We got this garlic bread as our entree. It needed more garlic, you should be able to see it! Not a fan of how they cut the bread as well, it makes it hard to share if you have two noticeably smaller pieces and a jumbo middle one.

Uneven cuts too

I got the jumbo lasagna and side salad, its not called jumbo lasagna, that's just obviously the freaking size of that slab. That's like, what your nonna feeds you when you come over for dinner and she thinks you look too thin. It was delicious, probably one of the best lasagnas I've had ever! Easily detected layers of beef and pork ragu, bechamel sauce, Napoli sauce and parmeggiano regiano sprinkled on top. I did not finish this and so I took the rest of it into work!

Yessss

Dr S., got the sand crab ravioli, a classic Brissie dish I feel! The sand crab ravioli were densely packed with sweet crab meat and covered in a gorgeous buttery sauce of burnt butter and sage. Honestly one of my favourite classic sauce flavours, I loved the piece that I got but compared to my dish, the serving size was underwhelming.

Haha food envy!

The Establishment
Atmosphere: 5, the corner of a busy intersection!
Service: 7, solid, they always check if we're enjoying our meal and top up the water quickly.
Food: 9, really delicious Italian food, cheap, plentiful and with a few more options than your traditional Italian restaurant! Put this one down as my fav Italian place in Brisbane!

Nene Chicken

I was very excitedly stalking Nene Chicken's opening in Queens St Mall for many months. All my friends know I love fried chicken especially Korean Fried chicken and I was especially excited as Nene Chicken is South Korea's version of our KFC! I didn't manage to go on their opening day because the rain was so bad but I managed to go later in the week with VGirl, her boyfriend, JGirl, Dr S., and myself.

Parking is terrible, it's the CBD! Hope for weekend parking at the Myer Centre, park further afield and leg it in or catch public transport! It's located near the Starbucks/MacDonald's end of Queens St Mall.

Here is their menu! Don't bother with their website as it has no prices and doesn't actually have the same range of products as their Zomato menu.

We got the bulchi chips to share! It's a mix of deep fried potato chips covered in bulgogi mince, kimchi, then topped with sour cream, tomato and finely shredded green onion. It's pretty messy but also delicious to eat, think of it as a Korean take on chilli fries!

We got the largest box of chicken! Jumbo 16 pieces which allows you to get two types of sauces for an extra $2. We ended up getting the bulgogi and swicy flavours. The bulgogi flavour tastes just like straight up honey and garlic soy, which is essentially what bulgogi is, I like the flavours here and I will always continue to pick honey and garlic soy if asked .

The swicy flavour is their sweet/spicy flavour, tasting a lot like a sweet tomato and honey number, its very sticky and continued to thicken up as we ate it. I think we were pretty evenly divided on which flavour we preferred. I still prefer Momo's chicken though, its just as crispy but has isn't as drenched in sauce. There was a massive pool of sauce at the bottom which I though was a bit much and made eating quite messy.

All their fried chicken comes with a tiny serve of pickled radish and coleslaw, the radish too finely diced to be easy to pick up or share. Ditto the coleslaw, its very finely shredded and was very soggy by the time we got it. That being said, I do appreciate any form of vegetation when I'm eating Korean fried chicken, it alleviates the oiliness! Especially the crunchy pickles.

Actually a huge box

Nene Chicken:
Atmosphere: 5, its a takeaway shop.
Service: 5, brisk and efficient. They package everything neatly for you and also give you plastic gloves to stop your fingers getting dirty!
Food: 8, a good introduction to Korean Fried Chicken but I still love Momo's more!

88 Topokki

Toppokki, toppoki, tteokbokki, ddeokbokki, and however else you decide to spell it, is utterly delicious. Little strips of rice cakes that have a very satisfying chew, you can have them in their signature gochujang spicy sauce with fish balls and other goodies or as an accompaniment to your favourite hotpot! H., tells me its an iconic part of your childhood growing up in South Korea, the perfect quick meal or after school snack alongside Korean fried chicken of course! I will use the word tteokbokki for the rest of this page as it is my preferred spelling and what Wikipedia uses, if its good enough for wiki, its good enough for me.

So when we found out there was a shop called 88 Toppokki, we were extremely excited and had to go. Except we kept forgetting it was closed on Tuesdays. Oops. Its located in the Pinelands Shopping centre so its easy to get parking. Its located in the centre of the shop near the fruit shop.

Thats us!

Random 88 photos

Here are some terrible photos of the menu, otherwise check out Zomato for clearer ones.

The first time I went here was when I was looking for some fried chicken after work. I bought myself half a honey soy chicken for takeaway and chose the tteokbokki as my side. I like that you can choose between several different sides such as the grilled tteokbokki on a stick, rice, chips, regular stir fried tteokbokki or prawn and veggies. I love variety!

This fried chicken was very crispy and moist but I found the sauce a touch sweet so it's not my absolute favourite fried chicken to have. That being said, its definitely not bad though, and lots of people agree with me! They do a deal of 10 drumsticks for $10 and its always sold out when I try and get it.

Yassss

The stir fried tteokbokki is the regular tteokbokki you would order at any Korean restaurant, barring the fact that this is much more obviously a home style slash side dish version. How can you tell? The sheer number of bulk veggies present! Carrot, cabbage, green onion and zucchini a plenty, the fish cakes aren't as prominent but this is still an enjoyable dish. Just think of this as balancing out that chicken you just got! The sauce is a wonderful fluorescent orange from the spicy gochujang paste but despite that its not unbearably spicy like Madtongsan's tteokbokki, you can happily still eat this without stopping.

Yassss

I went back here a second time with H., and A*! H., and I had the same days off and were tossing up between here and Rogue Spice Canteen. H., insisted that we should eat the special hotpot while I was arguing that we couldn't possibly finish a hotpot off between us. Then I saw A* was online on Facebook and I knew she would come with us because she freaking loves tteokbokki. She loves it so much that once when we went to a Korean restaurant, she made us leave because it didn't sell tteokbokki, that was the time we went to FunnyFunny for dinner.

Anyway, we got the triple fried chicken plate, it came with honey soy chicken, plain fried chicken and a sweet and spicy sauce fried chicken. there was also a lightly dressed garden salad that we mostly ignored. A* loves plain fried chicken. I have a deep love of honey soy fried chicken and guess what H., loves? That's right, spicy fried chicken. We were the perfect team hahaha!

<333

We also got these banchan to go with our fried chicken from left to right its caramelised sweet potato, kimchi and soy marinated fish cakes! I love the sweet potato and the fish cakes the most, I could eat an entire bowl of these without getting sick. I often find myself having to move them away from me so I can't actually get to them before my main meal arrives.

Yesssss

H., was prodding us towards getting the special hotpot and I was being annoying by saying there was no guarantee that A* would agree to getting it. A* is an easy going girl though and she did agree. We got this in the regular size with three additional toppings which cost an extra $8-10 from memory. The ones we picked were an extra serve of deep fried seaweed rolls, quail eggs and tteokbokki since it didn't automatically come with them in there. There are a lot of other ingredients included in the hotpot such as spam, bulgogi beef, pork belly, enoki mushrooms, sweet potato noodles, calamari, deep fried gyoza, whole eggs, cabbage, mussels, prawns, onions, garlic, deep fried seaweed rolls and ramen noodles. We were told by our waitress to eat the deep fried gyoza and seaweed rolls first otherwise they would get too soggy. The soup had a wonderful savoury flavour that wasn't too spicy the best part was fishing out all the different ingredients to eat, you never knew what you were going to get!

H., loves deep fried seaweed rolls and she said this was the first place in Brisbane that she found made them. They're a battered roll of sushi seaweed that is wrapped around a bundle of soft vermicelli noodles, sounds kind of bland but the batter is really tasty! It tastes exactly like the batter on the plain fried chicken.

I really enjoy eating Korean hotpot much more than our Vietnamese version, lau, or Chinese style hotpot just due to the sheer number of ingredients present. Also for the fact that its already layered in for me, where as I would have to grab everything I want and dunk it in. Korean hotpot is already perfectly portioned to boil down to thick saucy goodness! It goes without saying that this place does the best hotpot I've found in Brisbane so far!

So so good!

88 Topokki
Atmosphere: 7, a cosy little place to hide from the world, as we did when it was absolutely bucketing down the day we went. 
Service: 7, pretty good actually. The shop is quite small so the waitresses are always lurking nearby, ready to help or top up your banchan dishes!
Food: 9, I love their hotpots and their fried chicken isn't bad either! I love that you can add whatever you want to the hotpot as well <3

House of Hygge

Camdog is a devout Danish person. She is obnoxiously patriotic, she's the kind of person to proudly declare her Danish heritage at any possible moment. We received a container of those Danish butter cookies at work, she tells us they are made in Copenhagen from DANISH BUTTER.

DANISH

Number one restaurant in the world is Noma and its head chef!? Rene Redzepi FROM DENMARK.

Stolen from wiki

What does she also bring to work parties? My spinach dip you say? No, its RISALAMANDE, Danish rice pudding.

Stolen from Nordic Living

The Sydney Opera House? Designed by a DANISH PERSON.

Stolen from the Sydney Herald

So when I said there was a new Danish restaurant in town, she said she would go with me before she even knew what was on the menu or where it was. When I said it was near the West End vet, it was easy for us to get to. The other funny thing is that her parents and brother had all separately come to this cafe before she had even told them about it. Also there is a ton of street parking nearby, mostly up the hill.

*To be honest, Camdog only said the first bit about the butter cookies and some rando actor. She also told me some other facts but they turned out to be all incorrect when I was finding the photos.

Their coffee!

They are dog friendly!

Yay

Camdog was tickled pink when she heard of their name. She tried to explain what "hygge" meant, its kinda like a cosy feeling/relaxed vibe, like when you spend a rainy day indoors reading a book, or when you just relax with friends with a few brewskis late at night. According to her, its synonymous in Denmark for that feeling, you describe the situation as "hygge". Google says it means enjoying the good things in life and warm atmosphere so her descriptions were pretty spot on eh?

A description

Yay!

Here is their menu! Here is a legible version of the menu.

Camdog went absolutely nuts when she saw this chocolate. Its apparently a super thin chocolate spread that you can eat with bread. She bought home a box for her dad to eat.

?_?

Flowers at every table

We got there a bit early to have their lunch which is what really wanted to eat since we wanted to have their smorrebrod and risalamonde combo, they had like four different toppings on their risalamande besides the traditional sour cherry and almond combo! Camdog is a fiend for remoulade to the extent that her family have been fined by Australian customs for attempting to sneak it back into the country.

Anyway, she got the smashed avocado, mushrooms and balsamic vinegar onto of a dense rye bread. She said the taste took her back to Denmark and her best friend Lara's mum's rye bread, the perfect start to the day. We both agreed that the best way to have avo on toast is if people presmash it for you, none of this fanned bullshit.

!!!

I wanted something a bit more substantial so I got the Monte Cristo toastie, shaved leg ham, seeded mustard, swiss and havarti cheese, sharp dill pickles on top of toasted Turkish bread. They apparently coated it in egg wash before frying it but I didn't realise notice any difference. I had in mine like a savoury French toast style toastie, which really sounds amazing doesn't it? Those crispy, frilly edges would have been amazing. The flavour combination reminds me exactly of what I do at home when I have toasties so I was very happy.

Mmm bread

House of Hygge
Atmosphere: 7, brightly light, small cafe. Probably higher if you're Danish, cause Camdog was estatic.
Service: 5, friendly but unwilling to part with their remoulade even when Camdog wanted to buy it.
Food: 8, portions are a touch on the small side but delicious anyway. Defs would go back to try some more of their food or to see what a snapshot of Denmark is like!