Ginseng, Hellenic Club Woden 10th April

I wasn't really looking forward to this, because the last time I went to Ginseng at the Hellenic Club, shortly after it opened, I wasn't really impressed.  But, majority rules, so I went with an open mind.  And, was pleasantly surprised, the food was excellent, well presented, tasty, genuine (Kim said Cantonese).

Present: Jim, Karen, John, Ron, Kim and myself.  Andrew was enjoying himself in some fancy resort in the Philippines as per usual.

Ginseng is not BYO, so we had to buy wine off the wine list.  Stonefish 2011 Chardonnay and Stonefish 2010 Shiraz, both well chosen by Jim of course.

The entrees were duck pancakes (as per usual, are we getting too predictable) and Peking beef pancakes. The duck came as big chunks of duck, with spring onion and hoisin.  The whole dish worked, the duck was lovely and tender.  The beef pancakes were beautiful, quite sweet, maybe too sweet with the shredded honey beef?

Honey pepper beef, tender with a nice hint of pepper

Char kwey tau: voted by Karen to be the best in Canberra

Prawn and scallop lemongrass: intense ginger flavour with lots of snow peas

Chinese broccoli with shitake mushrooms, lots of lovely sauce.

Seafood stuffed eggplant, just divine, voted the best dish of the night.

We also had dessert (well some of us did anyway): lemongrass and coconut pannacotta with a really delicious lemongrass flavour.  And chocolate mousse with blue berries, jaffas and chillis, which Jim claimed was Yummy.

John and Ron texting

Jim and Ron who is still texting (oh well, Jim is texting too.)

A good night.  One downside was that we had to be signed in to the club, a very complex process with a machine.  The restaurant was not crowded or noisy, a real plus.  The menu was the same as it was 5 years ago, which is not a bad thing.  One other slight downside was that they were a bit tardy in taking away our main course dishes.  Not a big deal. 

Well worth a repeat visit

Mings, Phillip 27 March 2013

Only photos, sorry.  I was at Beechworth and no-one took any notes.  Ron did take photos though and I believe they enjoyed it.

Kusina Coolamon Court March 13th 2013

Present: Kim, Jim, Andrew, Karen, John, Megan, Ron

Andrew, back from his latest Phililpine adventure, recommended that we try this restaurant, and since we are always keen to try something new, we all readily agreed.

We had three entrees, Alimasag (soft shell crab), Pritong Manok (crispy chicken wings), Priton talong (fried eggplant, tomato, salted duck egg) and the mains were Pinkabet, adobong Manok, Inihau na liemp, sizzling sisig (sorry I forgot to note what was what).

Wines: Willson Family SB 2011 Langhorn Creek
Sonoma County Old Vin Zinfandel 2010 Kirkland.

For most of us (not Andrew) the menu was entirely new, we had no idea what to order, what was good, what flavours were what, so this was a bit of an adventure into the unknown.  But what an adventure, we were pleasantly surprised, delighted by all the new flavours, tastes, spices and different ways of presenting the dishes.

The chicken wings were oily, but tasty, the eggplant deep fried with salad and salted duck egg was a real surprise, the duck egg had a real tang.  The pork was fabulous with a striking lemon flavour, the vegetables we guessed were done with shrimp paste.  The special was a diced pork which some of us thought was similar to Asian hawker food, with chilli, lime, mayonaise (?) and egg.  The deep fried fish we thought was reminiscent of Catonese food.

The comments were: Really nice: pleasantly surprising, a good variety, but very rich: never seen mayonaise used in Filipino food (Andrew): very filling; fabulous; service really quick: really tasty:

We all came away feeling that we had eaten a style of food that was a bit different, a bit new and exciting.  We couldn't determine the exact style of the food, the closest we came to was Malay Nonya or Spanish adobo.  But maybe it was just its own distinctive style, Filipino.

The only downsides were that maybe the service was a little too quick, did they want us out early?  And maybe we had ordered too many deep fried dishes, but this probably comes from not being all that familiar with the style of food.

It was definitely put in the "to return to" category.

What did we discuss?  The usual work, politics (Rudd v Gillard), travel.