Just Soy Cafe

Just Soy Cafe in Sunnybank Hills is our go to meeting spot. Its relatively close by to all our houses, its cheap, its quick and we can stuff around in the cafe for ages. Its pretty popular with Asian students. since it does a lot of Asian style desserts, soy custards, bubble teas and a really solid traditional frappe. Think Meet Fresh with a third of the queue.

Just Soy Cafe

Its located in a weird little spot but its also quite near to everything? Its close to Calamvale Centre Shopping Centre, Pick n Pay Hypermarket, about 10 minutes away from Sunnybank's Market Square. I think its weird anyway, the parking is all out the back of the store, and its heading towards suburban local traffic.

I have very fond memories of this place. I'm not sure when we discovered it last year, maybe VGirl found it. Almost every second or third day of winter, we went to this shop and bought a traditional or Japanese matcha green tea frappe. In winter. Heading out food shopping, Just Soy Cafe, going to work, Just Soy Cafe, heading home from work, Just Soy Cafe, bored at home, Just Soy Cafe.

It got to the stage where the shop assistants recognised us by sight and could predict our three frappes, mine was always red kidney beans, rainbow jelly and then some type of giant flavoured pearl, whilst VGirl's was always fresh fruit, pearls and then rainbow jelly. My mother's was always something different. The creme caramels here are absolutely delicious, and I'm not even a fan, smooth, slightly sweet, with a sultry wobble and oozy caramel sauce. The Asian flavoured ice creams here are fantastic too, their green tea and black sesame ice cream are just sweet enough, lovely, creamy and incredibly dense.

Oddly, we never go here once the weather warms up? After we went to Little Singapore, we went to Just Soy Cafe, us being VGirl, JGirl and I, Yannikins and Shishi had to leave us. VGirl and JGirl shared a dish whilst I went solo, and I immensely regret this decision.

Japanese Green Tea Matcha Frappe

VGirl tried to get a few of her options changed in her Japanese Matcha Green Tea frappe but they said they weren't able to do any substitutions, however when she asked if they could add fresh fruit to her dessert, they also said no? She then ordered my one which had the additional of sweet potato  balls, a mix of a traditional pearl with bits of sweet potato, and that was fine. Weird, I know, maybe it was a language barrier? The traditional green tea matcha frappe contains adzuki beans, green matcha pearls, regular pearls, a scoop of green tea ice cream all on top of a massive bed of shaved ice, condensed milk and matcha tea syrup.

My regrets.

All my regrets for not having shared this dessert. I didn't even finish half of it ):

Bare bones but it does good stuff!

VGirl always unintentionally photobombs my pan shots

Sweet Treat

L., LGS and I wandered past Sweet Treat when we were at Westfield Carindale Shopping centre after we had yum cha and went shopping. We were wandering at the bottom level when we went into the old food court and spotted the shop.

L., was pretty excited, she said that this was a US based brand that had briefly been in Taiwan and Brisbane. There had been a shop of it previously but it had closed down before she got to try it. So we all hopped in line to get some. I was initially umming and ahhing but I gave in, I'm lactose intolerant and just ignore my hurt bodies remorse.

Pretty simple really, pick up a cup, choose your yoghurt, pick some toppings, weight it and pay $2.80 per 100g. There are too many choices however!

I actually took this leaning over the counter.

The yoghurts change seasonally apparently, the day that we went there were from left to right, coconut, blueberry, chocolate, original, mango and wild berry. According to the menu, there's also a strawberry, passion fruit, pomegranate and coffee flavoured yoghurt too!

So many choices!

From top left going clockwise, the fruit available were, morello cherries, peaches, pineapple, orange segments, strawberries and kiwi fruit!

Fruit!

While in the non fruit section from top left going clockwise were, chocolate squares, chocolate freckles, bircher muesli, M&Ms, gummi bears, marshmallows, smashed peanuts and toasted coconut.

Not fruit?

At the counter there was also squeezable bottles of chocolate, strawberry and caramel topping.

Here's mine! On the left was the wild berries yoghurt, slices of peach, bircher muesli and under the museli was the blueberry yoghurt! The wild berry yoghurt was super sweet! Tooth achingly sweet, I guess the US likes their yoghurt like that. The blueberry was intense, much milder but still quite sweet, L., and LGS both enjoyed it when I offered them. The peaches were your stock standard canned peaches, but they were sweet and not overly mushy so they weren't bad. Lastly the muesli, oh that muesli, so toasty! So crunchy! What textures! I would pour myself a shopping bag full of that muesli and buy it outright.

Really appetising to look at I know.

Guess how much I paid? Almost $7! I don't wanna know how much LGS and L., paid for theirs considering theirs was a lot fuller than mine.

This is LGS's, she got the plain yoghurt, wild berries yoghurt, orange segments, pineapple bits, strawberries, bircher muesli, peanuts and toasted coconut. L., and I tasted her plain yoghurt and it was lovely! Creamy, very thick, it reminded me of a tangy Greek yoghurt, it was fantastic. She also loved the muesli and said that the coconut was super toasted, even though the colour was a bit pale. She said the orange and pineapple were way too sour though.

LGS's looks much better

Hahaha, L., got almost the same thing we did, wild berry yoghurt, plain yoghurt, strawberries, chocolate bits, gummi bears, marshmallows and some peanuts! We split up after buying our yoghurt so I didn't get to hear what L had to say. I would definitely go here again! Maybe next time I'll get a smoothie, they must be fantastic!

L's!

There was only one person there that day, and I think she got a bit slammed cause there were heaps of women lining up for yoghurt and since she was the only one manning the entire store front, she couldn't really restock. Hopefully they continue to do well, cause I wanna come back here some time for some more yoghurt!

Little Singapore

So originally Shishi and I had planned to go to restaurants together, many posts ago. Shishi is always busy though, so that makes it difficult. This weekend was no different. Shishi had a friend over from another state, and so we only had a small window of opportunity to seize. He had stuff to do at 3pm so we had to be done by then. We invited my sister, VGirl, JGirl and Yannikins along. As a result, we had to start from 1pm as that was when VGirl finished work.

That doesn't actually leave much time to do anything. Since we all live so far away from each other, we were restricted in our choice of suburbs. We had to stick to the southside of Brisbane as the aggregate, roughly triangulated meeting spot of all our locations. Frankly, the southside is terrible for food, Sunnybank/Hills area is the mecca of food, if you like Asian cuisine, and the only other spot of note, is not even jokingly Ikea.

I had originally picked out Taste of Penang in Sunnybank Hills to try out, however it was closed on Sundays so we had to pack it up and head to Oishii sushi bar. Also closed. Frustrated, we went to Market Square and since everyone had spent so long trying to find me (long story, trust me), we wanted somewhere quick, fast and cheap. LITTLE SINGAPORE IT IS.

Everyone was sitting outside.

We were mildly surprised to see it so busy during a Sunday afternoon. We managed to get a small booth though and were given two drink and food menus to sort out between us. I think that is the fastest we've ever ordered anything. JGirl and Yannikins sat next to each other, whilst Shishi sat pimp like between myself and VGirl.

JGirl and Yannikins.

They said I should take pictures of them from the chest down, to show who was there and as a means of censorship. Frankly, I think JGirl just wanted a legitimate excuse to photograph my chest. All the description below happened out of order, but I had no idea how to organise it like what happened. The drinks arrived all at the same time barring the grass jelly, my food arrived first, than VGirl's than JGirl's and Yannikins and lastly Shishi. It'll be reviewed according to person though.

VGirl, Shishi and myself.

JGirl got the satay beef with rice. She also got the weekend special as did everyone else of the home made lemonade for $2. I stole a bit of her food without asking and found the satay to be very sweet. I think probably from the liberal use of pineapple, red capsicum and I guess sugar? The meat was very soft and tender but that was easy to see why!

Beef satay with rice

Check out that beef! It was pretty much rare/raw! I'm surprised she even saw it under the thick layer of satay sauce it was coated in. She was initially worried that she would get sick, but we reassured her that was pretty much only for long dead seafood, poultry, game and pork. JGirl found only a few pieces to be like this and towards the bottom of the serving oddly, but she ended up sending the plate back and getting another serving.

Just a bit gross.

Yannikins may have gotten the Hainanese style dry noodles and lemonade. Why did I say, he may have gotten it? Our waitress took all our orders without pen and paper, and recited them back to us. At the time, I think she had gotten the order down as Hainanese chicken rice before Yannikins clarified the order. With that being said, his Hainanese style dry noodles came in a puddle of some broth/sauce I didn't taste. It didn't look anything like the picture on the menu either! He stuck with it though and polished off the entire plate. I also stole stuff off his plate and the noodles were nice and chewy :>.

If they're dry why do they have broth?

VGirl ordered the vegetarian Singaporean laksa and wanted it mild, also lemonade. I can't stress to you how huge this bowl was, it was a trough of laksa soup! I didn't try it until the very end, and that was just a sip of her broth. It was a nice mild bite, nothing too special. She kept finding weird unidentifiable vegetables in her laksa, for a vegetarian she isn't very good is she? She couldn't identify the eggplant they had slipped in despite it having small stripes of the purple skin.

Shishi helpfully rearranged the garnish for me

I even took a picture against the lemonade to show you how huge it was.

She actually finished everything but the soup

Shishi wanted the Singapore Chilli Prawns and rice mild too, yeah he got lemonade too. His meal definitely wasn't mild, Yannikins and I agreed. It had a slow back burner effect as well as heavy kick in the face of chilli. Shishi religiously counted the prawns and came up with eight, so it wasn't too bad and a decent size too. The prawns were fantastic, tails left on, plump and juicy and coated in that odd sauce.

The sauce was weird. I can't really put my finger on it, it was really thick and sludgy like a raw egg that had been mixed up. If you lifted up the spoon, it poured down in a ready line. It was very thick, but it didn't have that same consistency that cornflour has when used as a thickener. The eggy bits were just set and very silky thin, the same texture you get when your pour an egg into a hot broth and stir it to cook it. Similar to the eggy threads in corn and chicken soup!

I ended up ordering the most as usual, with a plate of chicken satay skewers, Malaysian char kway teow, a grass jelly drink and a lychee frappe. I was super thirsty okay! Next time my eyes are firmly on the mango or fresh coconut frappes. I was pondering ordering ice cendol, but Yannikins said it was alright but nothing crash hot. I briefly considered the roti canai or maybe murtabak but wanted the gorgeous char kway teow that I'd seen others eating in passing.

The chicken satay arrived first and I handed out a strip to each of the other meat eaters. It was average, the chicken was tender but not particularly addictive like really good chicken satay is. The sauce was very sweet, bleh. 

Eh average.

My lychee frappe was delicious. I'd have happily had another of these immediately after. I kept getting brain freeze from drinking so much of it in one sip. Everyone at the table had a drink and we all agreed it tasted exactly like a bunch of real lychees had just been blitzed up in a blender with some ice. It was missing that weird fake sugar taste that lychee syrup has and there were real lychees at the bottom! I doubt they use anything other than canned lychees considering the season, but boy that drink was good. 

So goddamn delicious lychee frappe

OH REAL LYCHEES OMG.

My grass jelly drink was missed until almost the end of the meal! It was so delicious. Words cannot even express. I wonder how they got their grass jelly to float so well?

Mmm grass jelly

I'm not sure whose lemonade this was. I drank it though, it was slightly on the sweet side and everyone agreed it wasn't bad for $2. I would've preferred it just a bit stronger, with more sugar and lemon juice, but it was perfect for a hot day like it was that day.

Possibly Yannikins or JGirl's?

This is my Malaysian char kway teo! Its a really tasty dish, that is quite controversial like pad thai. Everyone has their own variations on the dish but the only real thing people agree on is that it needs a dark/light soy sauce combo and it has flat rice noodles. The rest of the ingredients, the inclusion of pork fat, eggs, lap cheong, prawns, cockles, bean sprouts, chilli, belacan, garlic chives, chicken, seafood mixes, fish balls and many more things I'm probably forgetting, are entirely up to the person cooking and the personal preferences of the person eating.

Looks good! Malay char kway teow

In mine there was eggs, pork fat cubes, squid pieces, prawns, bean sprouts, garlic chives, lap cheong, strips of fish cake and bits of onion. It looked really good! There was a mild smokiness to the dish, the strands of noodles were all nicely separated and there was a good assortment of ingredients. However is was resoundingly bland. The colour was spectacular, but it didn't really taste of anything, I think they could have done with more of the sauce. I ended up eating maybe half of it, and palming the rest off to Shishi.

Pork lard bits!

The damage!

We were in that little hollow behind the blurry waitress

All in all, the food was really cheap, fast and filling but not particularly tasty. We were averaging $12-14 per meal, with my exception of about $30? The drinks were amazing though. I would definitely return for the drinks.

PPP: Yum Cha Cuisine

Woah! Two PPP in one pay week? Cashed up aren't we! This weekend I was prompted to go to yum cha for lots of reasons, most of them being my foodie/dog park friend LGS discretely telling me,

"I've never been to yum cha."
"Well let's go then. Are you free next week?"
"Yes! I was hoping you'd say that. You're my foodie friend."

She wasn't even coy about it, she just had to mention it and I was keen. I just jump at any chance to go out and eat anyway. So after some mumblings I decided to invite some people from work too. Yum cha is better with people, its always cheap anyway and PPP is all about the spirit of generosity and being flush with cash like we're secretly rich. I wrote it up on the message board and asked a whole bunch of people. Drum roll please . . .

Six people turned up! WOAH THERE, DON'T GET A FAT HEAD NOW. Turn out was NZ-A and her family, LGS, L., and myself, so seven in total. So really, four people turned up cause if you get your family or partner to go, that doesn't count.

Anyway, the big deal I had this time was I hate yum cha. I hate it. Its the whole good food vs good service thing. I hate yum cha cause no speaks English, no one pays any attention to you when you're trying to order something, you have to pay for every small thing like tea, sauces, containers, your order always gets misplaced, you can't get drinks, its noisy, the food is average to good and the service staff are rude. The real kicker is that you aren't even full after, you can walk it off in an hour and then get a real lunch elsewhere.

Many yum cha enthusiasts would reply that we would go to yum cha for the food and not for the service. You go to a hospital not to eat delicious food but to get healthy is a similar thing. Why can't the two principles be mutually exclusive? Can't I get good food AND good service? Fair enough, if its one and not the other, but I'd rather good food and terrible service any day of the week. Yum cha for me is bad food, bad service and leaving irritated.

That being said, I go with my friends cause they enjoy it and I'm a bossy cow who likes to tell people what to do. Years of yum cha with my family and friends mean that I've been to most of the major big name yum cha places in Brisbane, Landmark, Big Gun, King of Kings, Kingsfood, Haoke and countless others I probably can't even remember. I can honestly think of a negative experience for each and every one of those, so I was sort of stuck for a new place to go to as per food blogging rules.

I was thinking Landmark was the stock standard. It was central in Sunnybank, its well known, its Asian impressive, the food is good by non-Asian standards. I hate Landmark so much though, re read my complaints from earlier and multiply it by ten. Then I heard that Westfield Carindale had opened up a Yum Cha place so off to that we went. I did hear from H., and Z., at work that it was nice, but a bit pricey and geared towards white people.

Empty as hell

LGS and I arrived there at 10am, opening time exactly. We had booked a table and were awaiting other people. We spent some time talking. Here are some snaps I took whilst we were waiting for NZ-A and L., to arrive.

They had to hastily vacuum the floor, what on earth is that white stuff anyway?

What is that paper?

LGS and I had been waiting for about an hour and a half and things were just starting to gear up in the restaurant. We were offered some soy beans and snapped them up. They were icy cold but we inhaled them like no ones business. They were nicely salted, but lacked that soy sauce hit that edamame have.

Tasty.

We noticed other people far far away from us in the restaurant. We were situated near the back and we joked around that all we need was a bathroom behind us to be fully ostracised from the majority of dinners. By 11am, they had just started seriously rolling around the trolleys. I started ordering with two har gao, two siu mai and a plate of BBQ pork buns. As well as a round of soy sauce and chilli sauce.

The BBQ pork buns were solid. They were full of that dark sweet char siu meat and it was nicely salty, they were a touch sweet for my liking, but I never like the combination of sweet and meat in any case. LGS told me that the first and last time she had ever had a BBQ pork bun was when she was drunk and had one from 7-11 in some foreign country that she doesn't remember. She said this was much better.

BBQ Pork Buns

The siu mai, or prawn and beef mince dumplings as they were called here were great as well. They were a good solid height, filled right to the top with filling, held their own shape, had a good mix between the veggies and meat and were perfectly seasoned. They didn't have the little fish roe that the picture did though!

Siu mai

You can always tell the quality of a good yum cha place by its stock standard dishes; the har gao and siu mai as well as its desserts. The har gao here were fantastic, full of whole and minced prawns, with a delicately thin skin and gorgeously pleated folds on its surface. The look on LGS's face when she ate them was priceless, I think her words were, "woah these are seriously prawny!"

Har gao

By the time, LGS and I had smashed through the first two layers of dumplings and a bun each, NZ-A and her family had arrived. After getting their drinks, they ate the rest of our dumplings and the ordering began in earnest.

We got two rounds of salt and pepper king prawns. Oh man, these were fantastic. They came six to a plate and they were so delicious, hot and moreish. They had a beautifully seasoned salt and pepper nuggety coating that clung to every inch of that crunchy shell, I even found myself nibbling the tail for more of it! The prawns were beautifully cooked, and properly deveined as they should be! They were juicy, bouncy and large, not quite king prawn size but not bad either! Probably one of the unexpected hits of the day.

Salt and Pepper King Prawns!

Special fried rice. That plate is actually missing about half of the rice on it, NZ-A's hubby got through the plate first as he served the kids and his wife. You can imagine how much there was to begin with! Seven people shared the entire plate and managed to get a bowl each. Its a really good fried rice! Its not stingy, there's huge chunks of ham, little bursty prawns, little slivers of char siu, bits of egg and shallots! The rice was nicely separated, it wasn't overly oily and remained light and fluffy.

Fried Rice and steamed BBQ pork buns

We ate this with a serving of pork ribs in black bean sauce. I didn't take a picture cause they looked terrible, grey, oily and unappetising but boy was I wrong! They were lip smackingly good, they had the deep, soaked in saltiness that long braising imparts even though the colour was terrible, the meat was meltingly tender and I found myself trying to scoop the sauce left behind to garnish my rice. There were a lot of gristly bits in there, but that is how I like my pork ribs. I can't imagine how much better this would be if they had used a real cut of meat that wasn't 70% cartilage.

L., had arrived by now and she wasted no time in ordering a homemade lemon tea. She later whispered to me that it had no sugar in it at all, but that was how she liked it hahaha.

Iced lemon tea!

Deep fried bean curd and prawns! For some reason I ordered this thinking it was steamed rice noodle rolls with prawns. Man I wanted some of those bad boys, with their slippery, gooey, unctuous layers and slightly sweet soy sauce. Screw the prawns, I could eat plates of that rice noodle~ Instead I got deep fried bean curd skins and prawns. They were okay, we scored some free vinegar as a result. There's three to a serve, NZ-A's son got to them first is all.

Deep fried bean curd and prawns!

Two rounds of pan fried prawn dumplings. Geez they look good with their burnt butts, and they tasted good too! I love the contrast of smoky, chewy charring and the still soft dumpling skins, the filling was perfect! Nicely salty and very meaty. Harajuku Gyoza, eat your heart out.

Delicious!

Two rounds of Shanghai soup dumplings! L., and I were very excited to see this on the menu. They attraction of Shanghai soup dumplings is that they are thin, thin dumpling skins filled with soup and a ball of tasty pork mince. The reward/risk is somehow lifting one of these things off the steamer sheet without popping it and losing all the precious soup. You have to do this while its still hot! Otherwise waiting for it to cool is just a waste! I did the best I think, LGS did the worst and left half her dumpling behind, the other ones were just eaten. LGS remarked that she didn't particularly like them cause of their strong coriander taste. Also she got a bit of reflux from them later.

Shanghai soup dumplings!

Fried white bait! Oh man, I am such a sucker for white bait. Delicious assorted baby fish who will never turn into real fish cause they're in my belly! By the time we got these, they were a bit cool, so the fried coating was a bit softer than usual. I didn't mind though, they had the same salty golden coating as the salt and pepper king prawns. Unlike the usual practice, these white bait were so delicately fried, they were still moist in the centres. I inhaled the plate, practically solo. God, I would go back here again just for the white bait.

Fried whitebait

A round of roast duck. It was terrible. Skin was crispy but. Under seasoned, the meat didn't taste like anything, just very lean not very fatty, no other flavour and look at this bit! Look at all the feathers still left on! Gross!

Roasted duck!

Super gross!

For dessert, we got two of the custard tarts, some baked custard buns and coconut jelly. Oh and some sesame and red bean balls! The custard tarts were tiny, L., and I were very displeased, the casing was wafer thin and flaked apart when I picked it up. The custard was super eggy and very plain, not sweet at all.

From the very top! Coconut jelly, custard tarts, custard steamed buns

The baked custard buns were fantastic though, the top was covered in caramelised, chewy sugar top and the inside had a much better custard! Much sweeter and with a much better consistency, more like the custard you get in apple tea cakes.

Sesame and red bean balls.

The sesame and red bean balls were tasty, they apparently only appear on the weekends. They were golden brown, crispy, chewy and the red beans were a smooth, sweet paste. Red bean makes everything fantastic.

The service was fantastic for yum cha. There was actually a waitress for our quarter of the room whose sole job was to do whatever we wanted, clear plates, get extra chairs, get sauces, order food. It was magical. Service actually picked up once the busy rush started, wait more dishes started to come out and we got offered lots of stuff by the waiters and waitresses rushing around. I'd definitely come here again, but I'd time it for closer to noon perhaps.

Much better :)