Red Hill Tea House Wednesday 15 January

Present:

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

Red Hill Tea House is an unpretentious little restaurant which seems to cater mainly for locals and take aways.  They have a Burmese chef, so as well as the usual Chinese dishes that you find at restaurants like this, they have added Burmese and Thai food.  We’d been there before and liked it, and decided to kick off the new year there, for no reason that anyone could think of.

We had:

Angel prawns

Duck and onion puffs.

Mains:

Stir fry duck chilli and basil

Red Hill special spicy crispy fish

Pad Siew

Burmese chicken red curry

Mapo tofu with beef

Yushian lamb

Wine: Three bottles, one sparkling, one white and Fox Creek, Mclarenvale, shiraz cabernet sauvignon cabernet franc 2011.

The prawns came in cute individual ramekins with lids on, tasted as good as they looked.  The main flavour was lime leaves, delicious

The puffs were not really a winner, too much onion, couldn’t really tell it was duck.  They all disappeared though.

Of the mains, our favourite was the duck with chilli and basil.  Cooked perfectly, nice mix of chilli and basil, brilliant.

The fish was a favourite also, really excellent with a beautiful mix of chilli and lime.

The lamb was tender, with lots of veges, and the chicken curry came in third, a lighter curry, no coconut cream, fabulous.

The disappointments were the mapo and the noodles.  The mapo was bland, the beef didn’t work and it needed more dark soy.  The noodles were too sweet, just not exciting.

We had some icecreams for dessert, yum.

The overall verdict?  Great little place to eat, not for a huge night out but for a nice relaxed meal with friends.