Cowch Dessert and Cocktail Bar

I went to Cowch a long, long, long time ago, A*., and I went here straight after we went to Zeus Greek Food. If you can recall, we were still fairly peckish after our feed at Zeus so we were super keen to have something else to fill up on.

Cowch is in the Southbank strip right next Guzman y Gomez,  that means parking is terrible. Good luck finding a parking place.

The interior is a bit odd in Cowch? See below.

I hate sitting at tables that are knee height

Udder lamps

Slightly dark everywhere else

You can get their menu here!

A*., got the chocolate fondant cake with vanilla ice cream. Their ice cream is supplied by Lick! Aka the same guys who supply the Ekka strawberry sundaes! It was perfectly executed, the vanilla ice cream was dense, creamy and flecked with vanilla bean seeds and then the molten hot fondant cake. We smashed it open and watched the warm chocolate spill onto the plate. The cake was quite light and fluffy with a good chocolately flavour.

+_+

Action shot!

Perfectly gooey

Meanwhile I got a belgian waffle with strawberries, banana, salted caramel and vanilla ice cream. All the components were tasty and went well together. The freshly cooked waffle melted the cold ice cream and I was able to interspace the bites with pieces of fresh fruit.

All standard ingredients!

A* also got the hot chocolate milk, rich and creamy, she struggled to finish this with her dessert as well haha.

Cowch Dessert and Cocktail Bar
Atmosphere: 5, ahh I don't really the place.
Service: 5, we got served by a trainee waiter. He got my order of icecream completely wrong and gave me salted caramel by accident.
Food: 5, nothing special with their desserts, they do classic stuff well. Its located in Southbank and its pretty cheap by Southbank standards. 

RJIE: Re Del Gelato

VGirl and I went here after we had dinner at Jakarta, we just wanted a quick snack before we went home so gelato it was!

This place!

There was a huge variety of different flavours but we were pretty boring and got our stock standard favourites. There's also quite a fair few seats inside where you can sit and chat with friends.

Hazelnut gelato for VGirl!

She gets cups not cones

Salted caramel for me! I found mine to be way too sickly sweet so I don't think I would go back here again.

Salted caramel!

Donut Boyz

Stop the presses, Donut Boyz is my pick for best doughnut purveyor! Cheap at only $3.50 for a glazed doughnut, $4 for a filled doughnut,  pack of six sets you back $20 from memory and the cronut of the day is about $5! So much more affordable than the other two doughnut places in Brisbane! The flavours change from day to day as well.

The first time I went here I got the salted pecan caramel glazed doughnut, it was absolutely amazing. I loved the sweetness of salted caramel glaze and the crunchy glazed pecan pieces. I saw Manda soon after I bought it, I seduced her with a bite and her eyes went huge as soon as she tasted it. We went back for some more doughnuts after that haha!

The second doughnut I picked was a chocolate glazed doughnut with a coffee custard and shot of espresso to inject into the custard. I saved this for later and shared it with Sir A., after I finished worked. We watched Netflix and ate our doughnut together. I really enjoyed the sweet creaminess of the coffee custard, it wasn't overpoweringly sweet and went well with the doughnut. The coffee shot was too sweet but it was a great theatrical piece!

This is actually just a picture from T.,'s six pack. We finished our night shifts and waited two hours for the place to open! We finish work around 7 and they open at 9am on a week end. It was a very, very long day for us but well worth it! That shiny one in the upper left hand corner was the one I picked! Salted caramel with caramel popcorn, the caramel was a much darker one that I'd like but it was a nice bitter contrast to the sweetness of the glaze.

Donut Boyz:
Atmosphere: 4, its a shipping container. It looks like sweatshop conditions to work in to be honest.
Service: 4, average as all hell, at least its better than the one person they have at Doughnut Bar. Would it kill them to have a picture menu set up somewhere so you don't have to get up to the front of the line to make your decision?
Food: 8, the best doughnuts. I go to the "Shailer Park" aka Hyperdome one all the time when I do my grocery shopping. It sucks up all my loose change!

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???

The Jetty South Bank

We went to the Jetty after we had dinner at Stokehouse, VGirl and I were wandering up and down South Bank for a while trying to find the perfect place between Acquitaine, Popolo, Cove Bar and Dining and a few other places. We ended up choosing the Jetty because of its wonderful no frills dessert items, they sounded absolutely delicious!

It's a super easy restaurant to find, its in the same strip as all those other restaurants I mentioned, parking is a little bit more difficult though since its in South Bank. Here is their menu! Its changed since I've gone, at the time of writing it was only like a month since I've gone.

I got the dark chocolate lava cake with peanut butter ice cream and biscuit crumbs! I forget to get a photo at the time because I was so excited but it had a perfectly liquid centre! I love that contrast between hot cake and cold ice cream! That peanut butter ice cream was one of the best I've ever had! It tasted like pure, densely packed peanut chunks in perfect peanut butter flavoured ice cream, it was so damn good!

This is the most delicious dessert I've ever had

This is the dessert that VGirl picked up, this was a deconstructed cheesecake it had slices of grape, mango and green apple as well as shattered biscuit crumb. The ball in the centre was a big blob of cheesecake. VGirl ate all the fruit almost immediately and then found that the cheesecake was too thick and rich for her. So she ate my dessert.

More fruit!

This was a pannacotta with freeze dried raspberries and orange. Y., finished this in seconds. I looked up and she had finished it. She said it was absolutely delicious!

Gorgeous!

The Jetty South Bank
Atmosphere: 7, freezing river side views of South Bank. Find yourself a heater to cuddle under!
Service: 8, great service! They cleared out dishes quickly and kept our waters topped up too.
Food: 8, wonderful, wonderful desserts.

Sweet Treats Dessert Cafe

This is my absolute favourite dessert place. It's super cheap, located on the Southside, the music is great and the drinks are pretty good. I always find myself dropping by when I'm in the area. The only issue is that its become pretty popular since I started going here so sometimes they are all sold out of the good desserts ):!

It's relatively easy to find being on the very corner of the Runcorn Plaza shopping centre! If you can see Little Lamb, head in the opposite direction.

Watch out for this sign!

The restaurant is super cute. It has lots of cute details to catch your eye like the bicycle they have mounted on the wall below!

Cute

Happy hour is always a bonus!

Music to my ears

There isn't much of a view but the lighting inside always makes the outside very blue. Whenever I sit here, I always feel very warm and cosy, like I'm sheltered from the rain outside even if its sunny due to the lighting haha!

Hiding from the world!

Here is the front counter! The ordering area is actually on the far left, I always end up queuing in the middle next to the menu for desserts.

Cute!

This is their big chalkboard feature! It's very cute and has a lot of puns that VGirl and I appreciate. They also very handily have their instagram tag on the wall in case you want to post pictures!

I wish I could draw :/

Their glass display cabinet!

Individually wrapped cakes

Their drinks cabinet always seems to be pretty empty, they always sell out of Blackstar cold pressed coffee really quickly. This was the only day that I saw it there out of the five or so visits I had here, at the time of writing.

How did I get such a wonky photo?

Here are their menus! They sell an interesting assortment of hot and cold drinks as well as Western and Eastern style desserts.

They always have a changing cake and hot drink deal every day. This was the only day I bothered photographing it though.

Bargain!

The first time VGirl and I went there, she got the green tea creme brulee! It had a wonderful crack across the burnt sugar topping and a creamy green tea flavoured custard underneath. The green tea icecream was super creamy, dense, sweet with a strong green flavour.

Yum!

The waffles were amazing! I got them with plain vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of salted caramel sauce. The waffles were so damn good with a buttery, crunchy and sugary crust contrasting wonderfully with the soft, hot, fluffy, sweet insides. The salted caramel sauce could have been a touch thicker and saltier but it was still pretty good.

They always run outta waffles early on

I went again later in the week with Mr D., and A*., after we went to Bungle Bungle. I got the Horlicks drink which is a vanilla malt flavoured concoction of milk, blended ice and lots and lots of Horlicks powder. It was a touchy on the watery side, I love an absolute ton of Horlicks powder in it.

Had better

Mr D., and A*., got coffees and I can't remember what they were for the life of me, the picture looks nice.

Failure of a blogger

This is the berry pannacotta! Vanilla bean speckled deliciousness with berry coulis, strawberry pieces and an absolutely luscious forest berry sorbet. A*., had a lot of fun grabbing the plate and wobbling pannacotta. I enjoyed the lightness of this dessert especially contrasting with the tartness of the fruit provided.

Berry and pannacotta ftw

The regular creme brulee was good but Mr D., said that he had better. He also got the Tia Maria ice cream which he said had a really good coffee flavour.

Crack!

A*., got the tiramisu, they said it was okay but I can't comment because I never tried it and I don't particularly like the flavours of coffee or alcohol. It looks wonderful but apparently was lacking in flavour.

Lovely

You can get these cheap little signature toasts in different flavours. I got mine in green tea matcha butter! Its a square of thick white toast coated in a blended matcha and butter paste and coated in condensed milk. I found it delicious because I love the flavour of buttery toast and matcha too.

Mmmm matcha

Sweet Treats Dessert Cafe
Atmosphere: 10, warm, cosy cafe with wonderful indie music. I really enjoy coming here after a meal and talking to my friends.
Service: 6, pretty good.
Food: 7, pretty good desserts and drinks. The menu is a bit limited but its a nice place to have a chat with friends.