RJIE: Bibim men

There's a giant Hanaro Mart near my butcher in Underwood so I've been having a lot of fun lately buying different Korean groceries and learning new recipes. This is one of the instant noodles that I found to be especially delicious, it's called Bibim men! I 100% picked these noodles because the name is also in Vietnamese, it translates to Korean style dry noodles.

It just consists of a noodle block and a thick red soup paste.

Cook the noodles. Drain off the cooking liquid and run cold water through the noodles until cool.

Add the sauce and mix liberally!

It's an interesting mixture of sweet/sour and spicy flavoured noodles! It's quite balanced and I like having it as a side to a steak or some stir fried veggies. I highly recommend it, the flavour reminds me a lot of a mixture between a sweet gochujang and vinegar mixture. The noodles themselves are quite pale once cooked and have the texture of a thick vermicelli. Mama Pham had a packet of these noodles and thought they were good as well.

Nonbei Sake Bar and BBQ

There's a new nurse at work who I instantly became best foodies friends with when he started working with us. His name is W., we're both Vietnamese, love food and can eat lots. It was a match made in heaven, so before I knew it, he had convinced me to go to his favourite all you can eat restaurant, Nonbei! He was very excited when I said I hadn't been as he goes here quite regularly and was waxing rhapsodical about the tender fattiness of their sashimi and the sheer quantities of wagyu beef he had consumed on previous occasions here.

We invited several other people but for the first trip, it ended up being W., L., and myself. We went a second time less than a week later due to H., getting jealous of us going, this time Ms Chatterbox also accompanied her, as well as W., L., and myself again haha.

This place!

It's a very easy spot to find as its along Ann Street, right around the corner from where China Town basically ends. Plus the faux Japanese exterior is a dead give away haha.

Very easy to spot

Here is their menu! Their menu attraction for us was their buffet, starting from $39.90, there are two higher grades which included more expensive quality ingredients for the buffet. The $49.90 buffet that we all had to decide on had a wagyu of the day, pork neck, salmon sashimi, salmon yukke, fried oyster, tempura ginger, tempura oyster, dried ray wing and takuna rice. As well as the buffets, there are ala carte items, individually priced barbeque items and hot pot assortments!

The catch with the buffet is of course that the entire table has to order from the same buffet and that any leftover food is fined. They were pretty lenient when we went, although we were sneakily destroyed food any way that we possibly could to avoid getting fined. 

Unlike other buffets I've been to, this place had a tick and flick menu that you indicated either the physical quantity or weight of the item you were ordering. So for example, for fried items you specified how many pieces you wanted, for barbeque items it was by 100g lots and random items were usually in serving size. For serving size, most of the time they keep piling up your dish until you tell them to stop. W., L., and myself are all very adventurous eaters so we tried a lot of interesting things that night!

All the sheets! They gave us spares too

Ours were clearly marked "Awesome buffet"

We ordered a lot of food

Like so much.

These are from the second time we went, Miss Chatterbox, H., and L., all ordered alcoholic cocktails, I can't remember what mixed with Calpis. W., ordered some unimpressive looking plum wine again.

Both times, without fail we recieved these dishes first. L., W., and I all decided to try this and we were really glad because they were delicious if a little daunting! It wasn't so much the fluorescent and delicious seasoned seaweed salad that was throwing us but the wasabi octopus and the chilli squid!. The wasabi octopus is on the left, it had a very nasal clearing wasabi bite in the thin fluid, the texture of the octopus itself was fantastic! It popped in your mouth like what you'd imagine popping bubble wrap with your teeth would be like, with a slightly firmer texture. The chilli squid was a slippery and mildly spicy morsel, much like the spice you would get with kimchi.

When we were here the second time, we got double serves for every and H., loved the wasabi octopus so much she had three plates by herself and said that she would love to have this with rice as a dinner. She also said she wanted to make this for herself. We had to really convince Miss Chatterbox to try any of this, she's a Filipino lady but quite Westernised in her tastes, so she refused to eat any raw foods especially fish. She also insisted that all her food had to be cooked to well done. Even the salmon sashimi, I didn't take photos.

L-R clockwise, chilli squid, seasoned seaweed and wasabi octopus

This is the salmon yukke, a jumble of chopped up fresh salmon pieces with a raw egg yolk with grated wasabi on the side. H., and W., both got this on different occasions. H., has only recently started eating seafood as she as convinced her entire life that she had a seafood allergy after eating some pickled seafood when she was younger. She ate a prawn by accident or something she told me, and since then has started cautiously eating seafood. She said that this was quite good. Apparently they have a similar dish in Korean cuisine, but usually using fresh beef like beef tartare?

Exactly the same as the picture

Both times we were here, we got big scoops of the Japanese potato salad, a soft mash of potato, mayonnaise, carrot and spring onion doused in barbeque sauce. It was a good little starter and we helped ourselves to it constantly while we waited for everything else to appear.

Japanese style potato salad is always good

L., H., and Miss Chatterbox all ordered huge amounts of agedashi tofu. This first picture was from the first visit, we didn't realise that they only came in one very, very small serve! The piece of tofu pictured is only about the size of a 50c piece floating in a 10cm dish of broth.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it

We had a real hankering for fried oysters and these were gorgeous! Super golden brown, crunchy, and they burnt your mouth with a squirt of juicy oyster! The coating was a little plain but it came with a large blob of tartare sauce that could've been a little tangier to balance things out.

So tasty

Here is all our fried food piled on one plate! We got nearly everything the first time, pan fried gyoza, spicy pan fried gyoza, fried ginger, tempura octopus, chicken karaage, teriyaki chicken karaage and sweet chilli chicken karaage. The gyoza are all delicious, a very crunchy bottom with a juicy and flavoursome ginger and pork flavour to their ample filling. The spicier ones are coloured slightly orange, Miss Chatterbox complained that they were too spicy however and ended up discarding hers.

The karaages were all quite similar, the teriyaki one is my pick as the chicken flesh has a faint soy and ginger flavour from the teriyaki used. Oh and the sweet chilli chicken karaage is just the plain karaage covered in sweet chilli sauce, I'm really not sure what I was expecting to be honest.

The tempura octopus was a touch rubbery so I didn't try a second one. I dislike pickled ginger at the best of times, so I didn't try the fried ginger.

So many, I can't be bothered naming them all

Oh myyyy, we got so much salmon sashimi both times. I normally don't like salmon sashimi, but I finally get it, that slightly firm, slightly jelly like flesh with its ribbons of translucent fat ripping through. It melted on the tongue and spread its unctuous flavours throughout my taste buds. Goddamn this sashimi was good, I had two pieces the first time and nearly six or seven the second time hahaha.

Some damn good sashimi

Our mish mash of meats from the first occasion! Chicken soft bone, chicken thighs, pork belly, wagyu of the day which was marinatd in garlic and soy and some beef fillet. Ignore everything else but the wagyu to be honest. Chicken soft bone is actually the soft cartilage part of the breastbone, grill it to a crisp and chomp away. We really didn't eat the chicken or the pork belly much because of the longer cooking time and the fact that we had gorged ourselves on wagyu long before anything else had even cooked. Such tender delicious wagyu, has anyone ever had a bad wagyu even?

The second time we were here, we received cubes of wagyu instead of these thin marinated slices. Still delicious.

So much meat

We got pickled bean sprouts! I can't remember much about them so I doubt they were memorable.

What?

Beef stew! A tiny, tiny serve but really delicious, it had such a good flavour and the beef was so meltingly tender, it just fell apart when I picked it up and the thick stew was utterly drinkable. If I didn't have to share it, I'd have hogged it all to myself. I did a lot of sniper style plucking when people were distracted.

So blurry, so delicious

I don't know why I ordered takuna rice, I remember it being a lot more delicious at other places I've been to.  For this version, I got steamed white rice with the takuna aka pickled mustard greens chopped up on top. I did not get anywhere near finishing this with how much other food I was eating.

Poor wasted food

Seaweed sheets! Perfect to improve your skin and as a munchable, flavoursome and utterly zero space taking up snack while you're waiting for heartier things! I pretty much ate an entire bowl of these to myself both times. My god, I love seaweed sheets. My sister, VGirl, has been known to eat almost an entire set of the packets in one seating, like 8-10 packets.

I love seaweed

This is the absolutely massive cabbage salad. It's the size of a dinner plate and piled to the top, I tried a little bit and I remember thinking it was creamy and salty like kewpie Japanese mayonaise. I don't recall anything else about it but W., can polish off an entire bowl by himself as H., and Miss Chatterbox highly praised its crunchiness as well.

Interesting.

We decided to get dried skate wings as well! Guessing these come from manta ray like creatures. We tried it as it came, chewy as old boot leather. Then we put it on the barbeque until it was golden brown, still a bit chewy but not unpleasant. We were intrigued by the change that came over the pieces as the heat reached them, they flipped, buckled and blistered in slow seconds which was great fun. Still nothing to write home about.

I then forgot about a piece as I was eating things and decided to eat the charry morsel as to not waste food, I was amazed. The flavour had become intensely smoky sweet like the sauce you get on eel in Japanese restaurants with a slight chewiness that reminded a lot of us of dried squid pieces. We began eating them with great speed, watch them carefully as they burn fast!

Stage 1, unchanged

Stage 2, starting to pop and flip over

Stage 3/4, make sure both sides look this golden before consuming!

Nonbei Sake Bar & BBQ
Atmosphere: 6, dimly lit barbeque joint with lots of open tables as well as hidden nooks to sit in. Hopefully you get assigned to a nook as they are much better decorated and give the semblance of privacy. 
Service: 8, very attentive and quick to clear dishes. They are very informative and are able to help explain the menu very well, as well as helping make decisions on food if they think you've gone overboard on ordering.
Food: 8, very good food. I'd gladly go here again with friends. The food is great quality with an interesting variety and $50 all you can eat sashimi and wagyu is a great deal in my eyes.



Also until Food Truck PheNomNomNom is on, I'm gonna spam this all over my posts.

What! What is Food Truck PheNomNomNom, you ask! It's a food truck gathering! It's at the Coorparoo Bowls Club from noon to 6pm and is starring Juan More Taco, the Pasta Cruiser, Sushi Neko Food Van, Roam'in Pizza, Chocolate Komberry Co, V's Vanilla Van, iFroyo, Thumbs Up Hotdogs and King of the Wings! I've been inviting people like crazy over Instagram to come here. Click on their names to links to their FB pages!

It's a few days after my birthday so expect to see myself and VGirl lurking around there for some cheap eats! See you there, and here are some more promo pics! Follow them on Instagram at @FoodTruckPhenomnomnom or #FoodTruckPhenomnomnom . They keep releasing more and more promo stuff!

RJIE: Potato Chips 1: Unagi Kabayaki flavour, Pejoy, Sakuraya tea

After we went to Lash Cafe, we went to Sunnybank and hit up the market to buy random snack foods. This is one of the many snack foods I purchased that day, I spent almost $15 on random chips, drinks and desserts. With me were VGirl and JGirl, VGirl picked us up from Lash Cafe and JGirl came along for the ride.

I allowed VGirl and JGirl to pick the snacks I was going to test. VGirl had terrible opinions, its like since she became a vegetarian she has no idea what tasty food tastes like, or what fake tasty food tends to taste like. The vague criteria for my final choice of random Asian snack were, something amusing, something that catches your eye and a vague idea of what it should taste like.

I'll write up the others as I consume them but from that day I had green tea pejoy, some herbal tea with grass jelly, the unagi kabayaki flavoured potato chips as well as my Sakuraya drink Florida Citrus from the world tea series. I won't talk about the tea cause it was terrible, however there's still like a can of peach juice drink, some random snacks and a rice seasoning mix to go.

My sister picked this snack because we had previously found Green Tea Pocky at this store and she had been searching for it ever since. We found out the green tea Pejoy had expired after we started eating. It had expired back in April 2012, despite this we soldiered on. Its from from Glico the same brand that does Pocky, despite this I haven't been able to find much on the internet about Pejoy, at least on the English side. I wonder if this is like man Pocky vs normal pocky, man Pocky being made of dark chocolate and having a slightly bitter taste.

Green Tea Pejoy

Eh it was alright, there was a weird cheesecakey flavour to the coating that I'm not sure whether its normal or from the fact that it expired almost four months ago. The biscuit was still crisp though. Not sure if I'd buy it again.

Delicious herbal tea and grass jelly

Good ol' herbal tea with grass jelly. This is just the original flavour, you can also find a honey and lychee flavoured version. I always remember having this drink when I was younger, and it was super tasty. Its a dark drink with a slightly sweet taste, sweet for Asian palates, probably a bit bland for Western. It has a distinct flavour from the addition of the grass jelly, which is quite odd because grass jelly doesn't really taste like anything. I always find the jelly settles far too easily to the bottom and the can feels super heavy. You can find them for about 70-90c a can but if you buy them from the fridge its like $1.20 a can! I would buy cans and cans of this stuff!

Looks gross

And so does this jelly

The unagi kabayaki chips were the surprise hit. We picked this based on the fact that it looked super fancy and was a rather unusual flavour compared to Western potato chips. On close inspection we found other Japanese flavours such as a takoyaki, okomiyaki and maybe a sukiyaki? I might be making the last one up. Anyway, the kicker for this dish was also the fact that the potato chips came with a flavour sachet of the unagi kabayaki chips.

Air and unagi kabayaki chips

JGirl reassured me that kabayaki is always delicious and I really have to agree with her. Kabayaki is a style of Japanese cooking where a fish, typically an eel, is split into two along the spine, deboned, gutted, threaded onto skewers and then dunked in a sweet soy sauce before being grilled over a charcoal fire. Its also the style of eel that sits on top of unagidon from memory. Oh god, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

What did they taste like? Freaking delicious. The flavour reminded me a lot of the old Lays Texas honey BBQ chips they used to have here in Australia, before Lays left the country, a very smoky, salty, slightly sweet and fishy taste though. I guess that was the eel element. However, the potato chips aren't the best I've ever had, they were crunchy but they had this weird almost slightly stale/ exposed air texture of chips you've forgotten about in your cupboard. They just didn't have that same crunch as Western chips. That being said, I would buy this again, its a pity it was almost 3.50 for 50g of the stuff ):

Poison Study, Soto and Hazel Tea's Taro Milk Tea with red beans

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder has been on my reading backlog for a while. Shortly after I finished reading Insurgent, I started reading this. As of this post, I'm onto the next of that world's series called Storm Glass. So I read all of Poison Study, Assassin Study, Magic Study and Fire Study and am halfway through Storm Glass in about five? days. That really goes to show how much I enjoyed this series.

Poison Study
Apparently this is the YA cover. Its defs not a YA book

I figured to save myself time from now on out, I would just review the first book in a series and leave it up to the reader to figure out if they wanted to continue. I mean if you liked the first book, you're sure to read the second and third and fourth, am I right? So this review is primarily about Poison Study, however I will take generally about the entire book series as a whole.

Very nice.

Poison Study is about Yelena, a girl who was convicted of murder and openly admitted to killing her victim, the only son of General Brazell of Ixia, a man known for his kindness in taking in orphans and raising them. On the day of her execution, she is visited by Valek, the magician killer, a master assassin who runs the Commander's spy networks and is offered a final chance, to become the Commander's food taster for poisons or to die.

If you google "no choice"
A lot of naked people appear in Google images = /

The story is fast paced, and always relevant, world building is thick and fast and the plot continues to actively develop with every chapter. Ixia, is a country run in an almost communistic way, years ago, the corrupt king of Ixia and his power hungry magicians were overtaken by Commander Ambrose and Valek. The Commander abides by a strict code of behaviour, that even he is subject to as is his country, still Ixia, but now know under their military district. Very Hunger Games. Every man, woman and child has their role to play in society, there is no form of currency as the governing is done by the Generals and everyone is provided for. Anyone can rise up by merit alone, but the law is strict, with uniforms for districts and permits required even to leave the military districts, get married or travel around, and the punishment even worse. The Southern nation of Sitia, is another issue though but you learn all about it as the series unfolds.

The characters are strong, vibrant and well written with everyone having a distinct flavour. Its not hard at all to keep track of who is who, what they do and how they would act, as they are all marvellously well written. Yelena is a strong female lead, with a sharp intelligence and great common sense. She is decisive and I really like her, she understands what needs to be done even at risk to herself. Valek, I'd like to hit like a bass drum if you know what I mean and I can't really say anything else cause it would ruin the story but the Power Twins are a hoot and a half.

All in all, I would strongly recommend reading this series, it can be a bit gory at times. So Yassminator, read fast through those bits :)

I went shopping today with my sister and we dropped off a massive shopping trolley worth of unwanted books. We ended up at Sunnybank Hills shopping centre. After minutes of agonising whether I should include weird Asian snacks as a yet another thing to add to my list of reviews, books, food and games, my sister, the helpful VGirl, bluntly pointed out snacks are food. So I've added them to my list of things to review. Its a fair enough call, since I frequently go shopping in Asian food stores, always have some change handy and am fairly adventurous in buying weird foods and drinks. I really wanted a weird Asian drink but instead opted to let VGirl pay for my drink at Hazel Tea, a mistake I would soon come to regret.

Words aren't even needed.

Anyway, I picked out this little delight, Soto. I picked it over the other snacks that I couldn't read purely for the cuttlefish that looks excited to be eaten. On the packet it is referred to as a "cuttlefish flavoured snack." Whilst the corner says it is oriental, the writing below is undeniably Arabic in nature, and above the words Soto, is written stuff in Malay? According to a quick google search, its a Malaysian made food with Oriental being the actual brand. The more you know.

Why so happy to be eaten little guy?

I mightily struggled to open the packet at all, and ended up shredding it down the middle. The pictures as always, look much better than the actual product. With the photo on the front, they look like pork rinds a bit, or golden brown diamond scored squid pieces. What I actually pull out resembles, for the most part, indistinct pale blobs of different shapes and sizes with maybe one or two actually resembling the picture.

Close enough

That being said, they are sort of tasty? They have that very distinctive dried cuttlefish taste, a very sorta fishy taste that is only in the pieces themselves, not in the actual powder that most Western chips would have. They have a nice little crunch and have a weird aftertaste. I'm pretty sure the aftertaste is the flavouring they used, which according to the packet is, "Cuttlefish seasoning, contains permitted flavour enhancer (monosodium glutamate)", good ol' MSG. All in all, I've had worse, I've eaten a packet of fried chicken flavoured corn snacks from an Asian supermarket and drank an expired can of orange pulp water when I was a lot younger. So for $1.10 and no eventual food poisoning, it wasn't bad.

Borat is great for expressing emotions

On the other hand, I've never been much of a fan of Hazel Tea. I never find they have anything particularly standout in their tea selection, with the usual syrups, sugar shots and toppings that all the other tea brands have. I did find a really fantastic strawberry and lychee combo at some stores, but I might be confusing that with Tea Etc or EasyWay who knows. My sister has always liked Hazel Tea, cause it panders to uni students by allowing them to linger out of the cold, and play board games as long as they buy a drink. Sorta like reverse hobos. She also says their pearls are one of the best out of the chain shops, chewy, firm and they don't tend to disintegrate while being eaten or left for too long.

She ordered her usual apple green tea and pearls with half strength sugar. She ordered on my behalf off their new winter menu, taro milk tea with red beans, also with half strength sugar. The tea was acceptable, nothing crash hot but the red beans are possibly the worst I've ever had ever. But firstly, a little history on red beans, for any Westerners reading.

Not malena. Actually tasty red beans.
Might have ruined red beans for Dr. H

Red beans, like taro, are frequently sweetened in most Asian cultures and used for a variety of sweet snacks. The beans are normally cooked in a sugary water until soft and mashed before being used. In Chinese culture, a common free dessert finisher to meals would be a sweet red bean soup and used in moon cakes as the sweet paste inside. Japanese culture would make dango, a rice flour and red bean paste dumpling on a stick or even taiyaki, a fish shaped pastry stuffed with red bean paste. Vietnamese culture shares a lot with Chinese culture, so we often use it as a topping for che ba mau, literally three coloured dessert, different sweet toppings like edible seaweed, red beans, kidney beans, sweet corn, jelly, cendol noodles, coconut milk and ice.

Che ba mao

Disgusting mooncakes.

TAIYAKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

So for Asians, sweet red beans are totally normal, I really can't think of too many Western dishes where they would utilise a bean for both a sweet and a savoury dish. To me at least, lentils, kidney beans, chickpeas and all those fun pulses are strictly savoury food, which may be why white people look at me weird when I say taro milk tea is delicious with red beans. Anyway, therein lies the problem.

These beans were terrible because they were cooked until slightly soft and were completely unsweetened. It was a shock, I'll tell you that much. I have no idea if this was an omission, or if this was normal for Hazel Tea or just a weird once off, cause VGirl bought it for me as half strength sugar. Either way I drank all the tea and discarded the beans when I got home, THE BEST PART WASTED ;w;

Lastly, after a heated conversation on FB and IRL. Vgirl told me JGirl really wanted G. as a nickname on my blog. Unfortunately single letters have thus far been used for all my work friends, which JGirl is not. Sorry JGirl ): Shishi discovered my blog and my FB food reviews. He has volunteered to be my chauffeur and fellow food adventurer, which is fantastic cause my other food adventurer friends all seem to have dietary annoyances like eating halal, being vegetarians, being on diets or being coeliacs. Shishi eats as much as I do, loves meat and understands why paying extra for good food warrants paying extra. Great success.

Also VGirl and I saw this on the way home. We loled. Its like someone with a lisp swore at me.