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.

Restaurant Launch: Nest

Oh man, normally I blog about places I get invited to as soon as possible but I've been pretty slack lately because I'm on holiday! Anyway, I got invited to the opening of Nest along with heaps of other food bloggers. There was very, very little out there about the restaurant, I found an article saying that it was very expensive rebuilding, that Roma Street was destined to be a new dining precinct in the near future much like Stanley Street is and lastly that the restaurant was Asian fusion!

I had a ridiculous amount of trouble trying to find myself a +1 to this event. I had this sneaking suspicion that there would be a lot of meat at this event so I didn't want to bring along VGirl or Mandy. Then L., H., JGirl., Shishi, didn't answer their phones, Yannikins and Ness., were overseas, two of the guys I'm seeing were both unable to come along and then JGirl answered. Except that she finished work about an hour after the event started, so she volunteered Dr S., her girlfriend to come along!

Parking is relatively easy I guess. There's secure parking AT THE VERY TOP of the building that Nest is in. Like all the way at the top, if you think, oh that wasn't too bad, keep going, that isn't the right car park.

Anyway, we were greeted at the door and were offered some fortune cookies. There were 3 fortune cookies stuffed with a golden bird which meant you were entitled to a dining voucher at Nest. Sadly, despite eating nearly three fortune cookies each, we were unable to find one.

Mmm fortune cookies

The decoration is lovely! Everything fits in very nicely with the "nest" theme, lots of little cosy areas to sit in, a giant feature in the centre that resembles a birds nest and all the cocktails are named after bird themes too!

Lovely little spot

I kept forgetting the tags

My first thought was, "this would be a bitch to clean"

This was one of the cocktails we were given to drink on the night, Birds of Tokyo, Kraken, spiced rum, cinnamon syrup, cloudy apple juice, lime juice and mint. Dr S., drank it on our behalf and said it was delicious!

MASON JARSSSSS

I hustled Dr S., down to the kitchen end of the room to prowl for appetisers as they emerged from the kitchen. The first thing to appear were the tempura battered Mooloolaba prawns. These were freaking hot, had a lovely light batter and creamy prawn insides. I ate about five of these over the entire night, I can attest to their consistency and deliciousness.

Yummy prawns

I wasn't a fan of these honey glazed Asian barbeque chicken wings, the wings used were quite small and the sauce was way too sweet. For those who love sweet wings, these are for you and especially if you want to eat a small wing, but I'm all about jumbo wings and salty sauces!

They were small ):

Here is the cocktail lineup for the night!

DRINKS DRINKS DRINKS

This is the start of my weird requests to my bartender, you'll see a blurry photo of him later on. Since I don't drink and I'm a designated driver, I abstained from drinking but I really wanted something else besides the usual lemon, lime and bitters. I asked for two non alcoholic drinks and we received these mocktails! I'm not sure what was in them, orange juice, pineapple juice, cranberry cordial and some other things? It was delicious, I had two of them. Dr S., had one as well. As we walked through the room, people were very envious of our pretty drinks.

I love me some mocktails!

One of the entrees that stood on the stainless steel table for a while was the Turkish bread, olive oil, dukkah and herb butter. A lot of food bloggers were milling around, taking photos but we weren't sure if we could eat them or if they were just for display purposes. Then one of the staff members said they were up for eating so we dove right in

I love you dukkah

This is the duck salad which had green pear, cherry tomatoes, witlof, rocket and a tart dressing made from ginger, lime and coriander. Its a very crunchy, refreshing salad that I think a lot of people would enjoy as a light meal. I wasn't a massive fan because I thought the duck used could've had better flavour imparted into its flesh. All the duck used that night was stripped from their peking duck.

Duck, duck, duck, no goose?

This was the barbeque Beijing duck rolls which were served cool with vermicilli, blanched asparagus, cucumber and a few other veggies. It came with this mandarin sauce. As a Vietnamese person, I didn't enjoy it but I'm quite traditional when it comes to Vietnamese food.

Give me prawn and pork belly any day

This is the gado gado! Dr S., kept eating multiple servings of this dish, and she is quoted as saying, "that satay sauce is so good!" Satay sauce and chopped up salad, where can you go wrong really! I guess you could always get more sauce?

Gado gado is the brainchild of a parent who wanted their kids to eat veggies

Chicken satay! Tender, charry sticks of chicken and the same delectable satay sauce featured in the gado gado.

Not as blurry in real life thankfully

This was one of the few vegetarian dishes beside the gado gado, it was a vegetarian dumpling on top of onion jam. The jam was sweet, caramel and delicious, the dumpling not so much so. The dumpling had been deep fried, it had a really stodgy, doughy and dense interior which I didn't find appealing. This was a thought echoed by Dr S., and a few other food bloggers I met that night. 

Not sure what the veggies were, broccoli, carrot?

These were the peking duck pancakes with a hoisin dipping sauce. There were really good, super thin pancakes, crunchy cucumber and a big chunk of peking duck skin and flesh. I ate probably a plate of these. There was a guy making them like a machine for people sitting in front of him, those seats were hot land. 

So many!

This was the duck pizza, it was really average. For some reason, it tasted like what you could make at home with some leftover duck and pizza bases lying around.

Bleh

The nasi goreng was delicious! Fragrant, the rice grains were fluffy and separated, egg clung to the rice, chicken pieces were moist and tender and they were all around amazing. I would highly recommend the nasi goreng if you were to go to Nest.

Delicious!

The laksa was a coconut based one with prawn, chicken, egg and egg noodles. The soup was a little thin but the toppings were salad.

Laksa

Here is the menu! 

Here is the peking duck in all its glory.

Duck

These were the wagyu beef sliders! Bacon, wagyu beef patty, tomato, lettuce, cheese and barbecue sauce. Absolutely delicious.

Mmmm

This was the pad thai, I stalked it ridiculously throughout the night and finally scored a bowl. I was disappointed because the noodles were still quite chewy and the sauce was not well balanced. 

This was another one of the cocktails for the night, the tequila based one, Leaving the Nest. Dr S., didn't enjoy it but she said she also disliked tequila. 

Pretty

This was the collection of desserts! One was a delectable melting chocolate cake, a gloriously silky vanilla bean icecream and tender fried banana.

Yum

This was a virgin version of the Birds of Tokyo, absolutely delicious by the way. This was the fourth non-alcoholic drink of the night!

Nice

Here's my bartender!

Cool dude

This was the silky smooth creme brulee, the sugar topping was thin and cracked easily.

Here's the machine making peking duck pancakes!

Mien Korean Style Chinese Restaurant

VGirl is a bit obsessed with Runcorn Plaza at the moment. Every time we go out she wants to go to either here or across the road at Warrigal Square. The shops look a bit old but there have been a lot of new restaurants added recently, all of which seem to have a fair bit of people going. She's 100% sure that with enough promotion this could become the new Market Square. So for the last few weeks, we've been going here for dinner and VGirl has been encouraging her friends to do the same. I suppose this starts the first of my series on Runcorn Plaza/Warrigal Square!

This place!

VGirl and I decided to go to Mien due to her hankering for Korean food. They have a large menu but its mostly in Korean and its not very descriptive to say the least.

You can't really see it in this picture, but they have daily specials where a particular dish is discounted by a few dollars. The day we went the egg fried rice and black bean sauce was on special for $9 I think.

Oooh daily deals

Here is our cute little cutlery! I always think its interesting how long Korean spoons are.

Cute bowl though

The banchan we received were acid yellow and crisp daikon pickles. They were quite crunchy but not very sour.

So yellow

We ordered three dishes, two from what we presumed was the vegetarian section and one for myself. The first dish to arrive was the sweet chilli tofu. The tofu used was super soft and it had lots of garlic chives, garlic, onion, zucchini and carrot. VGirl was also surprised to note that there were pork mince pieces in this dish, this wasn't indicated on the menu at all so we picked through the lot and kept finding the occasional pork mince piece. The flavour was mildly spicy and not as sweet as I thought it would be considering how sweet a lot of Brisbane Korean food is, it was more along the lines of a very mild mapo tofu.

Surprise meat!

VGirl was very excited that the plain egg fried rice and black bean sauce was the special of the day. She said that she would've felt bad ordering such a plain dish but since it was the special, why not? The fried rice was excellent, each grain individually fluffy, separated and perfectly cooked, strips of egg, carrot, onion and spring onion dotted the fried rice. She also enjoyed the sweetness and saltiness of the black bean sauce that appeared on the side, while I lambasted the huge amounts of onion present, she heartily enjoyed it. That is until she found a piece of pork in her meal! We found a few more pieces after that and she lamented that she knew the sauce was too tasty to be true!

Delicious~

We received a bowl of plain broth as well, with some pieces of vegetables that I can't remember at the bottom. I remember it having a good flavour but nothing too spectacular.

Drinkable!

I ordered the spicy pork and seafood black bean spaghetti or jjangmyeon! It's a classic Korean dish that a lot of Korean people would enjoy in their younger days due to the versatility of the dish and its appealing appearance. The sauce is a dark brown/black, super thick and flavoured with lots of onion, pork pieces, tiny squid and octopus present as well. The majority of the sauce was onions though which I thought was disappointing but it was still quite delicious, it had a noticeable hot chilli flake burn that numbed the mouth. The noodle were quite thick wheat noodles that had a nice chewy texture, apparently they make all their noodles on site!

We got an entree of vegetarian spring rolls that was the last dish to appear. I had to commend the super retro garnish of iceberg lettuce and hot pink Thousand Island dressing though, its probably not intentionally hipster chic but its an interesting touch. The spring rolls themselves were quite ordinary, full mostly with cabbage and carrot, they lack seasoning and were quite heavily saturated in oil.

Meh

As you can see, we didn't finish our dishes. We got takeaway containers and gave them to Shishi, he said the sauce on the black bean noodles was delicious but agreed that it was so hot that his mouth went numb!

Leftovers

So many

Mien Korean Style Chinese Restaurant
Atmosphere: 6, busy little Asian restaurant. Lots of laminated signs up, gotta love your classic laminated menus in two languages and a list of specials that don't actually appear on the menu!
Service: 5, pretty average. The girl who spoke to us had quite poor English and wasn't able to understand a lot that VGirl was saying to her.
Food: 5, the food is okay, it's quite cheap, it has large portions and it has a fair amount of substance to it. I think it would be great student fair but its nothing special really. It's a shame that their food isn't clearly marked and that there seems to be so much onion in everything.