Chinatown Weston 30-1-19

Present: Jim, Karen, Ron, John, Kim

We had 5 main courses, no entrees.

The prawns and potato dish was voted as the favourite, followed closely by the special duck. The barbeque pork was another new dish. It was really tender, cut more thickly than usual, with a lovely sweet honey sauce. The fish with ginger and the shantung chicken rounded off a very enjoyable meal.

Of course we had dessert. Banana fritter and ice cream, pineapple fritters and ice cream, as well as deep fried ice cream, were shared around.

China Town Restaurant Weston 16-1-19

Present:

Megan, Karen, Jim, John, Ron.

As per usual here, we asked them to choose the dishes for us and surprise us with their specials.

For entrees we had a mixed selection of prawn toast, deep fried dim sims and spring rolls.  Pretty ordinary, not exciting.

For the mains we had salt and chilli seafood, prawns and calamari.  Very tasty, crispy light and tender, enjoyed by all. Then pork done in a batter with a sweet peking sauce with a few bits of pineapple on the side.  We were a bit dubious about this at first, a bit wary we were going to get a standard sweet and sour pork which it was not, but it was still not far off.

The vegetables in satay sauce got a mixed reaction.  Ron thought she (Linda the chef) had made the satay sauce herself, Karen thought she got it out of a tin. There you go, you never can tell.  Whatever, the peanut flavour did not predominate at all.

The special duck with bean sprouts was the winner of the evening.  Linda had slow cooked it overnight with 5-spice then wok fried with some delicate sauce, maybe soy and served up with the bean sprouts and it was one of the best duck we have ever had and that's saying something.  We liked it so much we (as in Ron) went back for another serve.

This is a great little restaurant, very unpretentious which serves authentic chinese food if you know how to order it.

PS Jim's wine was just the best..

 

Joe's Thai Wanniassa 12 December 2018

Jim, Karen and Ron attended.

The rice paper rolls were good as always.

Karen's favourite was the pork - beautifully crispy and lovely sauce. Ron's was the duck  - wonderfully tender, just fell off the bone, flavour right through the meat. The Penang curry was not a very inspiring flavour and the meat was tough. We had coconut rice, which unusually was coloured yellow. Fun for something different.

Jim and Karen shared a banana fritter. Ron had mango with sticky rice (and forgot to take a picture of it). Both desserts were a great finish to the meal.

Olive Restaurant Mawson - 28 November 2018

Jim, Karen and Ron attended.

Started with Turkish bread and dips.

The bread and dips was a very good selection.

Mains were steak, duck confit, slow cooked goat.

The steak was excellent. The duck confit and the goat were good.

Desserts were chocolate torte, almond torte, tarte tartin.

All the desserts were good.

Overall, the meal was very enjoyable, but nothing particularly special.

The noise level in the restaurant is very high, with no particularly obvious reason why.

Saigon Vietnamese Restaurant Pearce 14 November 2018

Jim, John and Ron attended. Another boys night.

Rice paper rolls, sizzling pork, caramelised lamb with black peppercorns, stir fried rice noodles with seafood, meat and vegetables. We enjoyed all the dishes. The lamb was the standout favourite. 

Desserts were caramel flan and banana cake. Also very nice.

Flavours of India at Woden - 31 October 2018

 

(Review by  Ron)

Andrew, Jim, John and I attended. An all guys evening. It took us forever to make up our minds what to order. We reckon we did a good job, in spite of having no female assistance.   We spent the entire evening talking about computers. Yes, we're a bunch of nerds.

The samosas were lovely and hot and crisp and the vegetable filling was really good. The accompanying sauce was a perfect compliment and added plenty of heat to the experience.

The goat, lamb and eggplant were all very good. Lovely flavours, quite distinct from each other. We felt it was a very carefully selected combination of dishes, that went together very well.

The dessert proved to be an interesting combination. It worked, but even I found the white chocolate mousse a bit too sweet on top of the already sweet gulab jamun.