Soju Girl Wednesday 6th June 2012

Smoked Trout betel leaf

Kingfish

Stuffed eggplant

Soft shell crab

Prawns

pork

Fish

Duck curry

peanut butter icecream caramel sauce

sticky black rice

WINE

La Zona, Chrismont of King Valley Pino Grigio 2012
Wynn's Coonawarra Estate Connawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 1992 (surely Jim must have exhausted his cellar by now!)

FOOD

We were trying to figure out why we had not been to Soju Girl before and couldn't quite remember why, and this has been our loss because Soju Girl serves just the kind of Asian food we like.

The place is very trendy, very hip, very dark, lots of young people, lots of noise, loud music.  Parking in Civic was hellishly difficult, but are we just spoilt in Canberra?

There was a long long wait in between entree and main courses, but to make up for that the food was just divine.

We decided that the entrees/small plates looked interesting, so ordered 5 of those between the five of us (Andrew had something else interesting to do that night which had something to do with the Transit of Venus which had happened that morning) and only 2 mains.

The smoked trout, betel leaf, coconut and chilli relish set the tone for the evening, very different, fresh, crunchy refreshing, with a lovely lime flavour coming through and we even ate the betel leaf  (was that supposed to do something for us, I'm not sure?)
 =
The king fish, which was described as "tiradib of kingfish, yuzu, white soy and ginger lime radish" was voted the winner for the night, extra ordinary lime flavour, very delicate with the marinate going right through it.  Ron rated it "wow" 11 out of 10.

The soft shell crab with shredded green paw paw and basil was another winner (3 in a row!), deep fried to perfection, magnificent.

The prawns were a bit fiddly, a bit of a disappointment compared to the other dishes, but the pork stuffed eggplant with candied seeds and spicy miso made up for it.  It was basically boats of eggplant with filling and fried basil on top, in a rich sauce, beautiful flavour.

But the pork was a bit boring, fried pieces of pork, nicely done, but that was about it.

The main dishes, the fish and the duck both had spectacular presentation.  The fish was standing on it's side (very cool way of presenting it) had a fabulous coriander flavour, delicate chilli jam and coconut flavour which complimented the delicate flavour of the fish

The duck when we went to eat it, was nice but not exceptional, not much different from any duck curry in any Thai restaurant.
 Now the desserts, yum, I"m still dreaming about the peanut butter icecream, chocolate fondant and salted caramel sauce.  Peanut butter icecream must be this month's flavour because I had just that dessert at the Ginger Room.  I"m not sure which one was better, this was an absolute treat.

Ron had the Black sticky rice, banana jam and roast banana foam which he promptly photographed and put on his facebook so that all his friends could make comments, but we think that secretly he wished he had ordered the peanut butter icecream.  What's to bet that he will go back there and order it some time in the next week.

 What fabulous food, this will definitely be on our list of repeats