Shady Palms Cafe

DJ Kez, Mr M and Big V went out with me to breakfast, a bit of an unusual mix because I've never gone out with these people before. It made this review a bit lacklustre to be honest, because I didn't feel comfortable enough to ask them for bits of their food. We all wanted to go out to breakfast and wanted something new, so I mentioned that I had heard rumours about a place called Shady Palms.

The rumours said that it was owned by the same people as Lady Marmalade just down the road, that it had great Pan-American food and nice decorations. Then I was put off because I told Liz., I was keen and she said the dinner she had there wasn't great. Then Mrs J., told me she absolutely loved going there since it was her local, but every place in that area seems to be her local. It wasn't so much a rumour because Mr M was raving about it and said he had already been there three times at the time we decided to go. So it was decided, Shady Palms it was!

Its very easy to spot

The interior is kooky cool. Think lots of mismatched furniture, stuffed animals, odd antiques and bright paintings

A very young beheaded stag, count the points

Their bar

The main eating area

Very comfy arm chairs

Their bar at the back

Larger group seatings

Another shot of their back bar

 After manically rushing around taking, hopefully, discrete photos, I ordered my meal and sat down. Here are pictures of their menu, they do have an online menu but it is hasn't been updated in a while.

Brekkie stuff

All day eating

Desserts!

 
I decided to go and get a milkshake just for a bit of a change, I originally though it was a crushed Oreo smoothie, but its actually a cherry, chocolate and crushed Oreo smoothie. I was initially hesitant but decided to go with it, that was a very good split second judgement on my behalf. This was the best milkshake I've had in a long time, smooth, creamy with a very distinctive Cherry Ripe flavour almost from the combination of cherry and chocolate, it was a little bit on the sweet side but it had a great foamy top as well as good presentation.

Absolutely delicious

We picked up some glasses and helped ourselves to some water. No idea whats going on down below in that picture, my glass was quite cloudy while DJ Kez's was crystal clear. There was no discernible change in taste but I was a little wary and stuck to my milkshake.

Add caption

I got the Full Shady, their version of a big breakfast with two poached eggs, Hollandaise sauce, cornbread, roasted field mushroom, roasted tomato, two cheese kransky sausages and maple cured bacon. The corn bread was the worst part of this entire breakfast, being immensely dry and quite floury in texture. The bacon was plentiful but could've been crunchier. The kransky were a bit fatty but still tasty. The eggs were good with a nice gooey centre, the hollandaise was creamy but a bit salty. All in all, not bad, but not great.

So shiny

Mr M ordered the sticky date, spiced pumpkin and ricotta pancakes with pecan praline ice cream. He absolutely smashed through this in seconds it felt like. He said that he had had some of his friend's serve the last time he had gone and had wanted to reorder it since then. His only complaint was that he could've eaten a lot more if there was any.

I have no idea what that fluffy stuff is

DJ Kez ordered the Veggy Shady, with poached eggs, hollandaise, corn salsa, haloumi, corn bread, mushrooms, avo smash, roasted tomato and she also ordered a side of bacon with it. She finished her off quickly as well, straight after I took the photo. She remarked that her cornbread was also quite dry and that it desperately needed the bacon to round out the flavours. The corn salsa was literally just corn kernels the day that we went, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

Bacon goes with everything

Big V actually came quite late to the party and so ate much later than the rest of us. For some reason, her food seemed to come out quite quickly compared to ours. She ordered brioche French toast with bacon, grilled banana, gingerbread ice cream and fairy floss. I had a nibble of the ice cream and I wasn't enthralled, there was a strong cinnamon flavour and that's all I noticed. The grilled banana looked floppy and didn't have a strong caramelisation, although I personally dislike bananas. Big V discarded her bacon as she doesn't like bacon.

SHE DIDN'T GIVE ME THE BACON

I attempted to go back to Shady Palms later on in the week for a dinner with my Boyfriend, I think it was about 6pm on a Friday when we went. The place was absolutely packed, we ordered our meals and spent 30 minutes walking around trying to find a seat. There were groups of people just standing around nursing drinks and we ran into a few other couples, also trying to find somewhere to sit. We had ordered about 5-6 things and the only available seat was a tiny side table at the very front of the cafe. 

We ended up asking for our money back, which wasn't a concern because the kitchen hadn't even started cooking yet. I was a bit annoyed but that was nothing compared to how irritated my Boyfriend was that they hadn't even checked if there was seating room before they had taken our order and money. In other restaurants, I would say it would be pretty important to check there was seating space before you took orders, counter service or otherwise. We ended up going back home and ordering pizza which was a massive disappointment.

Shady Palms Cafe
Atmosphere: 8, lovely, well decorated cafe with open air brightness from all the windows. The outside seating at the back is gorgeous and well suited for large rowdy groups.
Service: 8, the day we went, the waiters were lovely, friendly and super attentive. They were very knowledgeable about the food and menu as well.
Food: 7,  quite good, I would happily go back. The prices are quite cheap as well.

Piefection Gourmet Pies

Do you know why my Boyfriend agreed to go here? I gave him the online menu and when he saw butter chicken pies, he said, "yes, let's go right now." Hahaha, so much definitive choice is a bit unusual for my relaxed boyfriend.

The shop is pretty standard Aussie cheapo takeaway. Its a straight line to the front counter where there is a glass display of all the goodies, a mounted board with the menu on it and you're flanked by drinks cabinets. What sets this place apart though is the unusual combination of flavours of the pies.

Not a fan of kids eh?

Deep golden brown pies!

A very large menu

Some other interesting stuff too!

I ordered a Jack Daniels BBQ pork rib pie!

The fancyish box

This is honestly one of the best pies I've ever had. It has such a perfectly golden brown crust that was short, flakey and crunchy. The inside had large chunks of tender rib meat that melted in your mouth and a wonderfully well seasoned and flavoursome gravy that needed no extra sauce to round out the flavour. I was almost full just eating the pie by itself!

The pie!

I have no idea if there was a good flavour from the Jack Daniels used though, I don't drink at all and wouldn't be able to pick the flavour in a blind taste test haha. I love alcohol when its used in cooking but I can't stand it alone as a drink haha.

Tasty insides

My Boyfriend was unable to get the butter chicken pie, as there weren't any on that day so he ended up getting the beef Guinness and mushroom pie. It had a noticeable darker and maltier flavour to it from the addition of Guinness and also had huge chunks of beef steak in there. I really enjoyed the flavour of the pie when I tasted it, but he remarked that he did find it a little bit salty.

Ahh so tasty +_+

Once again I gave into my inner glutton and also ordered the Animal fries, a hangover cure sounding mix of ham, crispy bacon, cheese and gravy on top of your choice of potato gems or chips. It was like the biggest, baddest and heart attacking inducing poutine I've ever had. This alone would've happily qualified as an unhealthy meal on its own, let alone chasing that delicious Jack Daniels pork rib pie. I did love it, but I also ate so much I hated myself when I was eating it. If I was in a cartoon, I would be sobbing as I continued eating it.

I wonder if these Animal fries were named in honour of Animal style fries from the US chain In 'n' Out burger? Animal style fries there are part of their secret menu which would include fries, grilled onions, Thousand Island/Animal sauce and melted cheese. Read all about it at Serious Eats.

Poutine by any other name

I didn't so much so notice the ham. I did note that there were smokey and salty bacon bits throughout the chips, a thick gooey tasty cheese that was perfectly melted underneath the smouldering gravy that tasted of onions and beef. The chips were just ridiculously crunchy even under that blanket of obesity, they were seasoned with Piefection's chip salt. All in all, I failed as a food blogger and glutton and didn't eat it all. Although I had a bloody good crack at it.

I did okay.

My Boyfriend was led astray by my gluttony and ordered a small serve of potato gems. My god these were perfect little nuggets, if all potato gems tasted this good, I would be dead already. Crunchy outsides, soft fluffy insides, this why potato gems were invented. They were like tiny hash browns, you say, isn't that what potato gems are? These were like MacDonald's hash browns, but mini! My mouth is watering just thinking of eating these bad boys again.

A deceptively deep cup

I got this drink as well and didn't end up having it. My Boyfriend bought a Goulburn Valley orange and mango juice so we swapped. It tastes like a really good creaming soda, which I absolutely despise. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I picked it.

Bleh

Piefection Gourment Pies
Atmosphere: 5, typical Aussie takeaway shop.
Service: 5, stock standard, hand over money and get your food.
Food: 9, I would happily go back here for more food, their pies are utterly delicious and their sides are as well. I sort of wish I had ordered some icecream now to see what it was like, but I'd have probably thrown up if I had.

RJIE 18: FantAsia

Sometimes I just can't be arsed actually going into an actual nice restaurant or cafe and waiting for a meal. So I just be lazy and get fast food. This is the one at Garden City shopping centre, I honestly am not interested in any of the restaurants that are open there so I'm always stuck for ideas when I'm trying to kill some time. Hopefully with the new expansion there will be a plethora of nice places to go out to.

I got the spicy chicken wings and Beijing zha jiang noodles. The spicy chicken wings are deep fried and are sprinkled with a salty capsicum, chilli, purple onion and green onion topping before they are served for you. The coating is deliciously crunchy even though this chicken isn't fresh from the fryer. The topping reminds me of what my mum uses for her salt and pepper calamari. I was very happy to be eating this.

The Beijing zhajian noodles were a pork mince seasoned with chilli bean sauce with a topping of shredded cucumber and green onion on top of chewy thick, yellow wheat noodles. They were a little spicy but in the way that Shichuan peppercorns are with their mouth numbing qualities?  I didn't particularly like this and mostly left it alone.

FantAsia
Atmosphere:4, fast food convenience.
Service: 7, fast and super cheerful. If you don't recognise the FantAsia brand, these are the super cheerful Asian girls always handing out samples and menus when you walk past.
Food: 6, the chicken wings were really good but the noodles weren't great.

 

Ethiopian Lentils and flatbread

Have you ever been so enamoured of your recipe that you crow about it to everyone you meet and continue to eat it for days on end? I'm the kind of person who can't eat the same meal more than twice in a row. I ate this lentil and flatbread recipe for a record nine days before I stopped. I can't eat Mama Pham's pho for any more than three MEALS in a row

I have no idea why I wanted to cook lentils, however the first recipe from one of my friends at work, S.,. She also gave me the mustard seeds for the recipe which also included cumin seeds, tumeric, tomato paste, onions, garlic, red lentils, stock and chilli. That seemed like a pretty easy recipe as I had all of that at home barring the lentils and the mustard seeds.

Of course when I went to cook the lentils, I found that my cumin seeds had gone missing, courtesy of VGirl when she was making falafels. Then the tumeric was gone from when we last made banh xeo, Vietnamese tumeric savoury crepes. Well that was me well and truly fucked, I'd have bailed but I had already pre-soaked my lentils and had no idea what to do with it.

I decided to be courageous and wing it with a spice mix. I had to choose between a powder madras curry or my new berbere spice mix that I had picked up. I went with the berbere, the premade one I had didn't have the ingredients listed but Wikipedia helpfully tells me that it usually has at least chili, garlic, onion, ginger, dried basil, Ethiopian cardamom, rue, nigella, fenugreek as well as ajwain or radhuni. I have no idea what Ethiopian cardamom, ajwain or radhuni taste or smell like, so there was no way I was going to try and make berbere from scratch. From the smell of it, mine has paprika and nutmeg in it too. Feel free to make your own if you want.

I actually can't remember what brand of berbere I got, except that I got it from Pennisi Cuisine, a whole sale deli store in Woolloongabba and they don't even have it on their website. Its comes in a little rectangular packet though . . .

Anyway, I also decided to make some flatbread with it. I stole Julie Goodwin's recipe for it, when I made it though, I made about 20? small pieces rather than 8 large ones. Each flatbread piece only ended up being about the size of my hand, a good 20cm or so in diameter. I prefer my flatbread quite thin and crispy though, so that might why I had so many.

I was very proud of both the lentils and the flatbread and made lots of people eat it at work. H., adores it, and I kept making her a little box of lentils and lots of flatbread to scoop it up with. Di really enjoyed the flatbread too and asked for the recipe. While K., who was on a bad financial stretch also vowed to cook this, until I took pity on her and made her a batch of sausage rolls to stretch it out until pay day haha. Oh Gill and I also do a dinner swap and she owes me a bag of lentils to cook her a batch.

Julie Goodwin's Flatbread

Uses: Bribing H., to do work for you.

Ingredients:
4 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon if you're a salt fiend like me
100g of butter
375ml of milk, I used soy cause I never have normal milk handy
Cooking oil

Soy sauce is not involved

Instructions:
1. Heat the milk and butter together until the butter is just melted. I nuked mine in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Microwave strengths may change.
2. Sift the flour in a large mixing bowl with the salt and make a well in the centre. Gently mix until the dough comes together.

Like this

3. You should have a soft stretchy dough that doesn't stick to the board. If it does, continue to add flour until it stops being a pain. Knead for about 5 minutes until soft and stretchy.

Squishy

4. Cover and rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes or so.

Squish squish squish

5. Heat a large saucepan on a steady medium until hot, splash in some oil and begin step 5.
6.  Pinch off a blob and roll out as thinly as possible, lifting off the the board several times and rerolling until you are satisified. Throw in the pan, and start rolling out another piece while the flat bread cooks. It takes about a minute or so.
7. Once the surface begins to bubble and the edges curl slightly, flip over and continue playing around with your flatbread.

Rustic is a nice word for imperfect cooking

8. Continue frying flatbread until you have enough to eat for your meal.

So crunchy and buttery

Ethiopian lentils:

Uses: eating vegetarian for several days

Ingredients:
2 cups of uncooked red lentils
4 cups of water or stock
1 medium onion, finely diced
3-4 cloves of finely diced garlic
1 tablespoon of berbere spice
1 tablespoon of black mustard seeds
1/4 cup of water
400g can of diced tomatoes
1-2 tablespoons of tomato paste

Salt/pepper/sugar/chopped chilli to taste

Mmm lentils

1. Soak your lentils for about 30 minutes before cooking, also fine to cook straight from dried lentil. This recipe is very flexible. If you do decide to not soak the lentils, use an extra cup of water when cooking to compensate for water absorption. Chop up all your garlic and onion.

Lentils in stock!

2. Cook your lentils on a steady low simmer until soft and melting. While this is happening continue with the other steps.

Is it red yet? If so, done.

3. Put in a tablespoon of berbere spice and mustard seeds together in a hot saucepan. Stir until the mustard seeds begin to pop and smoke.

4. Add in the additional 1/4 cup of water and stir until the water has all evaporated again, this normally takes a minute or two. This gives the berbere and mustard paste additional time to cook. It gives it a really odd taste if you don't cook down the berbere paste so keep at it.

Lean away and turn on your exhaust fan

Pretty much done

4. Toss in the garlic and onion and cook until the onion has begun to brown and caramelise, 6-10 minutes.

Sorta hard to tell with the colour though

5. Blob in your tomato paste and cook for a few seconds to sweeten the mixture.

This is what you want

6. If you're brave, pour the lentils into the saucepan, if not, pour the spice mix into the lentils. If you go lentils into the saucepan, it will seize and spit at you for a bit, so have a lid handy.

Bubble bubble, toil and trouble!

Almost there!

7. Add the canned tomatoes and season. I normally add at least a tablespoon of sugar, salt and hot chilli powder. I prefer this curry a little sweeter to be honest and the spiciness of hot chilli cuts through nicely. Heat to simmer and allow to cook for a further 5-10 minutes, until the colour brightens and the lentils thicken slightly.

Delicious

Little Hong Kong

I'd just like to put it out there, that Pokemon X and Y came out. So my Boyfriend and I both got Nintendo 3DS and a Pokemon game each. I technically got two, Pokemon X and Super Pokemon Rumble Blast, but that's a different story. So don't expect a lot from this blog for a little while, while we play Pokemon together.

Oh and Terraria just released its 1.2 patch, but we've finished all that a few days ago. So I don't even have any back up blog posts to fall back on. 

Oh and I have an Instagram account now. Check out ThatSeriousGirl for stuff I don't always post on my blog. I'm still getting used to Instagram so bear with me :)

I have no idea why I picked Little Hong Kong as where we were going to have dinner for our first anniversary. It was a terrible idea because I was aware of its terrible service reviews on Urbanspoon, random blogs and from multiple friends. While I knew that it was from the Little Singapore/Malaysia/Nyonya brands which I never liked anyway, I still felt like I should try it. Ah well #yolo.

This place.

This place was super busy the night we went, as it is every night we go past. Upon entering the restaurant, we opted to sit outside. The waitress asked us if we wanted to be seated on the final table of a group of four tables, that were occupied by some students, even though there were other empty tables. I have no idea why she did thought we would want to sit beside strangers when there were already empty chairs. It was a good choice because they were incredibly loud as well as being messy eaters.

Their menus are all available online thankfully, complete with photos for your enjoyment. Noodles. Entrees and chef specials. Drinks.

On the inside there is a self serve sauce station. I didn't realise there were more sauces towards the cash register until we turned to leave. From memory, the only thing I really recognised was hoisin and plum sauce, it looked pretty similar to this one to be honest. I had a scoopful of the orange sauce second from the right and the red sauce, which were Hainanese chicken rice sauce and a garlic and chilli sauce. The Hainanese sauce was oddly sweet with a mild spice and a somehow tomatoey flavour? The garlic and chilli sauce was very chilli but there was not very much garlic flavour. They have little disposable dishes for you to put the sauces on.

Sauces!

We were both unexciting and got different versions of the barbeque options with rice/wet noodles or dry noodles. This is my Boyfriend's pick with rice, Teow chew chicken and roasted duck. The Teow chew chicken was nothing flash, moist with a mildly darker skin and a slightly soy sauce flavour to it. The roasted duck was alright, with a wet skin and not overly oily flesh. I found the roasted duck to not have much flavour besides the normal duck one. It also came with dishes of soy sauce as well as a minced ginger sauce. There is also a little undressed salad of cabbage, red capsicum and cucumber.

Looks good

On the other hand, I got barbeque pork, roasted pork and the soy chicken with dry noodles, which actually had a large puddle of diluted soy sauce underneath it. The roasted pork had a chewy crackling and very little seasoning, it was well cooked if nothing else. The barbeque pork was overly sweet and a little dry. The soy chicken was moist, and the flavour didn't soak through the flesh, it was mostly on the darkened skin.

Solid presentation

I left behind most of the noodles and the meat, although my Boyfriend ate my leftover meat.

Dry, my arse

We also ordered a side of steamed green veggies with oyster sauce. It was exactly as the name suggested, steamed, slightly oily vegetables with a blob of oyster sauce at the top. No golden minced garlic at all. The vegetables were the best part of both our meals to be honest.

Sad leftovers

Little Hong Kong
Atmosphere: 5, really loud, busy restaurant.
Service: 4, not sure what happened with our initial seating. Our waitress was quite surly and opted to take our order without confirming what we had gotten. Thankfully everything came out as expected.
Food: 4, pretty average. I wouldn't go here again to be honest, not even if a friend paid for a meal.