The Red Hill Tea House is my local Asian (doesn't every suburb have one?) and I"ve been there several times for a quick after work/end of week meal and liked it. They've had Burmese food available for a while now, as well as Thai and Chinese and I usually like to try something from that menu. It's always been tasty, a bit different, so suggested it to the group. It is a bit out of the ordinary for us, because while we only go to the top end restaurants every now and then, we usually like something a bit more fancy than the "local".
Anyway, they agreed to come along. We were all there except Kim who was still in the US, but we were plus Lara.
Jim, as per usual came out tops with the wine:
He brought Westend 3 Bridges 1998 Shiraz
and the other one was Seven Marlborough Sparkling Sauvignon Blanc
And the boys ducked out and bought a Wynn's Coonawarra Cab Shiraz Merlot 2010 from the local IGA because we had almost gone through the above two bottles (there was 6 of us drinking after all)
The entrees were Burmese beef dumplings; Burmese prawn spring rolls; deep fried scallops.
We really loved the dumplings, nice and light, delicate. The scallops were nice, though not that exciting and a bit like just fried fish. The prawn spring rolls came out as a prawn wrapped in spring roll paper and fried. There was a lovely coconut flavour to it.
The Angel Prawns came out in their individual serves, with a little cover over each of them. They looked very appealing and tasty equally, very aromatic, flavours of lemon grass and lime leaves.
The red curry fish was very different from the prawns (well, to be expected really because the prawns were from their Thai menu). The red curry sauce was very onion based, very different from the traditional Thai red curry, quite rich, and earthy. Andrew told us that the Burmese curry powder is closer to the Indian curry powder, than to Thai. It was presented with a mixture of fish and potatoes which appeared to have been fried beforehand, quite delicious.
The chicken curry with pancakes was a bit of a disappointment. The pancakes were okay, well nice really because they were fried, but the chicken curry was basically like a soup, very liquid. Maybe that's the way it was meant to be.
The mixed vegetables and tofu, from the Chinese menu, were well, forgettable. Nice, full of vegetables but not new or exciting, it was your standard Chinese stir fry veges. Oh well, we got what we had asked for.
Chicken Curry coconut rice was delicious. Ron in particular wanted to try the coconut rice, I don't think he was disappointed. It wasn't quite as exciting as some of the other dishes though.
SUCH AS , the Tea Leaf Rice which I forgot to take a photo of. This came out as a serving of rice cooked with tea leaves and smoked nuts of some kind, it had a wonderful depth with a nutty flavour. It came with a crispy skin chicken drumstick, but difficult to share but we managed.
Some of had dessert, which didn't go much beyond deep fried ice cream, but who's complaining.
Overall, the group thought that it was well worth coming to, something nice, wonderful. Nice as a local restaurant with interesting food, a "hidden gem". The restaurant wasn't full by any means, but there were people popping in and out for a quick bite to eat or takeaway. The staff were very friendly, happy to help out and move tables around, although one end of the table was being blown by the air conditioner. By choice though.
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