Middle Fish, Carlton by Snooze

I can’t admit to being the driving force behind choose places to eat; so when Ruby Red and Bureaucrat were interested in Middle Fish, a Thai café on the edge of the Melbourne CBD I was in. Bureaucrat and I’d seen Middle Fish last week when we’d wandered over to Seven Seeds the week before and liked the look of it, and Ruby Red also had Middle Fish on her list of places to try.

Middle Fish falls into the modern Thai food Melbournites have adopted with relish, and goes a step further with the décor. We all gazed admiringly around during lunch at the artful (or is that artless?) blend of Thai and Melbourne café eclectic. And there was so much to take in: from metal window grills and market chairs imported specifically from Thailand to booths made from recycled Australian train sleepers and locally designed art work.


Ruby Grapefruit went for the Mussaman beef curry with roti. It was a generous service of tender beef which we coulnd't finish. Most roti I've tried in Melbourne tends to be on the greasy side whereas my "background" (through my Trinidadian partner) is for a lighter, crispier roti. This roti was exactly as I like it and I'd go back for the roti alone.


I chose the Gapi Fried Rice (caramelised pork belly, prawns, green apple, beans shoots & red onions). This came out on a dinner sized plate heaped with the rice at the centre, fragrant with fish oil and topped with a small mound of pork belly. The portion was probably large enough for two. I think Ruby Red expected the pork belly to be crispier but that didn’t mean it wasn’t well cooked and moist.


Bureaucrat chose the Ka Nhom Jeen, a southern Thai fish curry soup with crab leg meat, vermicelli, pickled vegetables, steamed vegetables and coconut cream. I'm a sucker for anything with coconut cream (despite the cholesterol and saturated fat that comes with it). I also particularly enjoyed the lightly pickled vegetables that accompanied the soup.


Another things was the drinks that came in the quirkiest containers: mine was a young coconut juice in an enamel jug. Ruby Red chose a longan juice with peeled longan that arrived in a small silver bowl. Worth it just for the containers alone.


Overall
If I didn't like Middle Fish for the huge serves, the attentive service and the moderately priced good food, I'd love it for being one of the friendliest places I've visited, with owners Siriporn Liamthon and partner David Holtum really excited about their restaurant. We spent almost 30 minutes talking to Dave after we'd finished out meal about how the decor had come together and ideas for adding a breakfast menu and I felt as fed by our lunch as I did from David's enthusiasm and I wish them all the best with their plans.

Rating
Food - 7.5
Ambience - 9
Service - 7.5
Price - 7.5

Address
122-128 Berkeley St
Carlton VIC 3053
Ph: (03) 9348 1704

MissChu, Melbourne CBD by Snooze

In Big Fil’s absence, Bureaucrat and I lunched out yet again, this time at MissChu, a Sydney Vietnamese chain now resident in the Melbourne CBD. Without Big Fil we were limited to trying a small selection of goodies, but still managed a reasonable four options from a medium sized menu.



With Vietnam one of the homes of rice paper rolls we tried two rolls selected by Bureaucrat: the free range egg omelette with avocado and balsamic caramelised onion, and the roast duck and banana flower.



Despite looking pretty in their takeaway packaging, eat in diners were offered food in takeaway packaging. Bureaucrat and I were surprised with this approach especially given the price. Getting down to the rolls, neither Bureaucrat or I thought either was a standout. For the former, Bureaucrat couldn’t taste the caramelised onions, while the latter had a slight fragrance from the banana flower.

Next up were the steamed prawn dumplings. My choice and I’m not sure why I ordered this Chinese staple at a Vietnamese restaurant but I love these particular dumplings. My thoughts: they were generous in size but the skin wasn't quite thin enough and the prawns weren’t quite juicy enough.


The final was the lemongrass beef with vermicelli and salad. Not a favourite for me I’m afraid. The meat was bland—the overwhelming flavour was the friend onion scattered over it—and had far too much chilli for my liking.


Overall
MissChu comes up trumps for quiet, efficient service as well as on the hip and cool scale (despite sitting at a sticky table that didn’t improve after a waitress wiped it down). But I was disappointed: the food felt toned down and the serves were small considering the price. And on looking around Bureaucrat and I wondered whether MissChu fell into the anglicised Asian food category—basically where white people go for Asian food in a funky café style, (and don’t have to see people eating things they find confronting like chicken feet or beef tendon). Or as Bureaucrat observes, MissChu is to Vietnamese food what Wagamama is to Japanese food. I suppose my approach to food is looking for food that’s as authentic as possible and MissChu just didn’t cut it for me.

Verdict
Food - 6
Ambience – 7.5
Service - 8
Price – 6

Address
Food - 6
Ambience - 8
Service - 7.5
Price - 6

Petaling Street, Glen Waverley by Bureaucrat

For a quick lunch one weekend, Beaker, Bubba Chuck and I went to Petaling Street in Glen Waverley. Beaker had dined there just the other night. Her view is that the Glen Waverley PS is better than the one in the city. I wasn't even aware that there was one in the city.

I had only been to the one in Glen Waverley once before. At that time, I was meeting up with Ms W for a late night-ish catch up. I got a serve of roti and Ms W got a bowl of plain congee - it wasn't enough to make a judgement of the place.

For Bubba Chuck, she got an entree of vegetable spring rolls. We forgot to take a photo of it. It was three mid-sized rolls. It was piping hot, but marred by the fact that it was fried for a bit longer than I would have preferred (the pastry was not a lovely golden colour, rather it was a darker colour).


Beaker went for the dried shrimp and minced pork stir fried mung bean noodles. It was rather a large serve, which we couldn't finish. I thought it was alright. Not great but good. It had a nice savoury taste from the dried shrimp and minced pork. Also, it got points for not being greasy.


I got the combination hor fun. As with the mung bean noodles, the hor fun was good but not great. A reasonable mix of seafood, but unfortunately it was laced with msg. It came as no surprise that Bubba Chuck declared that she wanted two of my three prawns and some of the squid, which she helped herself without asking first. My benchmark for any combination hor fun is the one they serve at Danny's Kopitiam, which I blogged about back in October 2011. Danny's hor fun is pricier but it doesn't have msg, great wok hei, good mix of seafood and the sauce is absolutely spot on.

Verdict
Food - 6.5
Ambience - 6.5
Service - 6.5
Price - 7

Overall
I know we only have tried a few dishes, but I get the feeling that the overall quality at PS is average.

I did check out some of the dishes at the other tables. I think PS has a deep fried whole fish as its speciality. A few tables had ordered it, and the fish came with what appeared to be a spicy-ish sauce - the fish looked good. If someone asked me to go there to try it, I would, but otherwise I wouldn't necessarily go back to PS.

Address
Petaling Street
111 Kingsway
Glen Waverley 3150
Telephone: 9561 1388

Quanjude Peking Duck, Melbourne CBD by Bureaucrat

For Christmas lunch, Mother Hen and Mr Strong took the Lawyer and I to Quanjude Peking Duck.


QPD is known for its peking ducks. Apparently it's a big chain of restaurants in Asia. I think this is the first restaurant in Melbourne. It's been here for about seven or so years.


Inside, it's decked out in a lot of gold and rosewood furniture - it's quite a big restaurant. When it first opened, the waitresses were dressed in cheung san (long dresses). Everything's a bit blingy in an old-school style.


Inside, it's a bit of a museum of Chinese culture. Lots of displays of vases, traditional dress and photos of famous people dining at various QPD restaurants around the world.

I've been here a few times, and each time it's kinda dead. There's not a lot of people eating there. We marvel at the fact that QPD is still open for business - how they can make a profit with so few patrons is a mystery.


Naturally, one must order the peking duck, which takes about 20 minutes for the chef to prepare. The breed of duck is different from the ones you usually get from a Chinese restaurant. Among other things, the most obvious difference is that these ducks are less fatty.

In the meantime, the waiters bring out individual serves of hoi sin (which is QPD's own recipe), spring onions and cucumbers slices. The cucumber has been salted to remove the wateriness of cucumbers.


When it's ready, the chef comes out and carves the duck at your table. Firstly, the paper-thin skin is served. So very crispy and morish!


Then comes the duck meat, which is served on a duck dish. Because the breed of the duck isn't fatty, you don't feel as bloated as you would normally would be. Also, it makes it a tiny bit healthier than the mainstream duck!


The pancakes are really good, as they're so thin you can see the plate underneath. Also, they don't stick to the other pancakes, which often happens when you go to a run-of-the-mill Chinese restaurant.


To go with the duck, we ordered fried rice. This had nice 'wok hei', and the rice was nicely al dente and separate grains. A simple dish but done very well.


We also got stir fried snow pea leaves with garlic. I love snow pea leaves. Like the fried rice, good 'wok hei' and another example where a simple dish is executed very well.

With the remainder of the duck, you can ask the chef to use up the meat and carcass in a variety of dishes, including soup, stir fried noodles, etc. However, we chose to take the carcass home (there's quite a lot meat left on it), which is another option.

Verdict
Food - 9
Ambiance - 8.5
Service - 9
Price - 8

Overall
The food, ambiance and service at QPD is above average, but it's puzzling that it has so few patrons. I guess if you wanted a special meal without the crowd, then this would be the place to go.

Some reviews that I've read of QPD say that the service was poor. Each time I've been here, I thought the service was attentive and responsive. Because there's so few occupied tables, the manager always has time to talk us through the menu choices and help us decide what we want to order.

In the past, you used to get a rather morbid certificate for the duck you had just eaten. It'd be like "Congratulations - this was the 1,452,590 duck we have served in our restaurants!". As with most omnivores, I acknowledge that an animal has been slaughtered for my consumption, but I'd rather not be reminded of that fact. However, they've stopped issuing the certificates.

Address
Quanjude Peking Duck
299 Queen St
Melbourne 3000
Telephone: 9670 0092

Chinese New Year parade and Pacific Seafood and BBQ House, South Yarra by Big Fil

Sometimes foods are associated with different times of the year. For example, Christmas to me means presents under the tree followed by turkey with gravy, roast potatoes and cherries. Easter is for Hot Cross buns on Friday and Easter Eggs on the Sunday. Chinese New Year, watching the parade down Little Bourke Street followed by lunch at an inner city restaurant.



For some of my Chinese friends it's a bit humdrum but I love watching the parade from the car park on the corner of Little Bourke and Russell. You need to get there at least 30 minutes early in order to get a good spot even on the top floor in the sun (bring a hat). It's a great spot to watch the lions dancing and the crackers being set off. Even high above the crowd though the noise level is very high and it isn't necessarily a great spot for kids.



For a closer look you can go down to street level. Watching the shops set up the long strings of crackers to be set off when the lions and drummers pay a visit is quite exiting. You know it's soon about to be loud, even louder than in the car park, smoky and hot but that's half of the fun.



In addition to the big dragon there are also a number of smaller ones. One which has been around for ages is the long skinny yellow one, chasing what to me always looks like a giant chubba chub but which I suspect is meant to represent either the sun or the moon.





By far the most impressive though is the giant Imperial Dragon (I think?). The head always seems to be level with the first floor of the shops as it passes and to require hundreds of helpers to assist on its walk around Chinatown. Kids love to run up to it and run underneath, with the adults mainly reaching out to touch it for luck (including me).





Lunch this year was at Pacific BBQ and Seafood on Toorak Road. Some of the cats have a very strong negative opinion of this restaurant, for reasons I quite understand. The major problem is when they are busy. While everyone agrees that quality wise they are one of the better Hong Kong style places around, particularly in its price range, they are very keen on turning the tables over quickly and can get very pushy the moment you've finished eating. If you plan to linger over your meal at all plan on visiting out of peak times.

Two things that I particularly like here are the deer with snow peas and the roast meats. The deer is tender and flavoursome, the meats about as good as it gets in Melbourne. Crispy skinned duck and the crispy skinned pork come with tender meat, moist but not too fatty.





Also very good were our beef brisket in claypot and stir fried vegetables. The beef brisket is wonderfully tender, the tendons lovely and gelatinous. In contrast the vegetables are still crisp, giving a nice crunch and breaking up all the other meaty dishes.





All in all one of my favourite days of the year. Just great fun with friends and something I imagine I'll be doing for years to come.

Address
210 Toorak Rd
South Yarra 3141
Telephone: 03 9826 3838

How can you not love Malaysian foods?, by Big Fil

We don’t normally publish links to other sites, but this clip always makes me laugh. That’s despite not speaking any Hokkien or even recognising the names of the half of the dishes.

Imperial Kingdom, Glen Waverley by Bureaucrat

A few weeks ago, it was Mother Hen's birthday. To celebrate, we had dinner at Imperial Kingdom.

IK has been around for at least 25 years. Growing up, we used to go there only very occassionally - back then, we tended to go to New Royal Garden, which was down the road from IK, or Dragon Boat, which was near Knox City shopping centre. For me, it's been about 4-5 years since I ate there.


In terms of looks, IK hasn't had been renovated or spruced up since it first opened for business. Inside, it's still decked out in peach coloured paint, peach chairs, and a layer of dust on the faux pot plants. From the outside, it's not much to look at - a big car park, a bit of graffiti, surrounded by crumbling brickwork, dead plants and weeds, blistered peach coloured paint, and a neon sign that has seen better days.

I'm not sure what to think of this place - IK is really a bit of puzzle to me, as I'll explain later.

On Mother Hen's birthday, the food was better than I had remembered, or expected.


For starters, we had the complimentary soup.


And we got quite a few mains. The first was stir fried prawns with silken Japanese tofu and veg. Plenty of prawns, and lovely tofu. Japanese tofu is the only tofu I eat - I love the egg casing and the creamy inside without a hint of the bland tofu that you normally get from a health food store. The veg were fresh and al dente.


Sizzling steak with capsicum and onion sauce. Although the steak was a little chewy, it was still quite nice flavours.


Salt and pepper calamari. A decent serving. Even though it doesn't look it, the batter wasn't that oily and quite light. Calamari was very tender.


Seafood combination fried noodles. Crunchy noodles and not too oily. Lots of seafood - scallops, squid, prawns, fish and fishcakes.


Mixed mushrooms stir fried with snow pea leaves. We all liked this one. Plenty of snow pea leaves, which were all tender and not at all stringy. Lots of mushrooms, including enoki, fresh shiitake and a few other mushrooms (but I don't know what they're called in English).


Whole chicken stuffed with prawn meat. Beaker had has this before and recommended us to try it. It's a de-boned chicken, that's deep fried and stuffed with prawn meat.


It's got roasted sesame on the skin and is served with a sweetish sauce (I think it was plum sauce). It's different and tasted pretty good.


Sweet and sour pork. This was better than I had expected. A thin batter, lean pork, and a well-balanced sweet/sour flavour. And it wasn't as oily as you'd expect.


Complimentary red bean sweet soup for dessert. I've never been a fan of red bean soup. But from what I could see, this was a pretty good soup - good amount of red beans (unlike some restaurants where they water down the sweet soup and has only bits of red bean floating around in it). We also got a small plate of sliced oranges.

For the dinner, all the dishes were really nice - plenty of 'wok hei' and fresh ingredients. Every dish was very tast. Nothing was too oily or salty. Foodwise, it was pretty good overall.

Service wise, it was kinda average. Our waitress was very clueless and needed a lot of prompting. For the whole night, it was like she was off with the fairies. The other staff seemed more responsive and alert.

However, I think what we experienced that night at Mother Hen's birthday was just a stroke of good luck.

Today, Mother Hen, Mr Strong and I went to IK for yum cha. Mother Hen wanted to go there as she notices that IK looks packed out everytime she drives past it. The food and service this time was below average.

The place was nearly at full capacity - with an even mix of Asians and Westerners. The yum cha food was really not great. Overly oily and, my god, completely full of MSG. After the first bite from the first dish we ordered, my tongue was tingling from the MSG.

For the three of us, we only had four dishes. There just wasn't anything that looked good to order (everything either looked oily or just plain unappetising). We left after an hour. We gave up waiting for the steamed dumplings and buns to come out. Mostly the food were deep fried stuff.

The service was poor. Although it wasn't the most cramped layout, I kept getting trolleys bumping into the back of my chair. Also, the waiters/waitresses either:

- shoved the trolley at you without bothering to tell you what was on offer (we had to keep propmting them).
- and if you did prompt them, they'd bark out the names of the dishes. And even then, they'd just tell you the name of one of the dishes, and you had to prompt them to tell you what else is on offer on their trolley.

The yum cha experience was bizarre. IK is certainly popular, but the food and service was crap!

Verdict
Food - 8 (for dinner. For yum cha it's 5)
Ambience - 6
Service - 6.5
Price - 7 (for dinner. For yum cha it's 5)

Overall
I'd say for their dinner a la carte menu, the food is quite good (no msg, or very little msg) and decent serves (even with the Lawyer and Mr P, we had left overs to take home). If asked, I'd recommend that you try IK for dinner.

However, I would recommend that you don't bother going to IK for yum cha. It's not like there's a lack of options around Glen Waverley. Save your money and calorie intake for something much better.

Address
Imperial Kingdom
546-554 Waverley Road
Glen Waverley 3150
Telephone: 9802 6787