Wheelers Hill Pub

Wheelers Hill Pub is not your traditional type pub. It's one of the modern type pubs. Why do I say that, well the pub is smoke free inside, it doesn't stink of vomit, the carpets are not sticky, the pool table is missing and the food is expensive. Wheelers Hill pub is where you come of have a comfortable meal with a beautiful view. The glass walls overlook most of outer Melbourne and is definitely a great sight.



However, the food here is ok but way overpriced in my opinion. For such high prices, you would think that a waiter would come and take your order, but no, you still go up to the counter, line up, pay and then take a ticket back to your table.

We always come here when someone from work is leaving since it is a huge venue and can fit lots of people easily. This week, our work mate and friend Mariusz was leaving for greener pastures.

Tin ordered the Beer Battered Fish and Chips (its so inhuman to hit the fish over the head with a bottle of beer, get it, beer battered fish, ok so I'm no comedian) while I had the Chicken Swirl. The fish and chips were nice, but for $20, I think is a bit overpriced. The batter was light and crispy and not too oily. The chips tasted good too, albeit from a packet type chips. My Chicken Swirl consisted of avocado, brie and chicken all mixed together and wrapped in pastry. It sat on a bed of cous cous with vegetables thrown through it. The swirl had a nice smooth creamy texture to it, but it got a bit overpowering towards the end. I'm not that fond of cous cous and found it a bit dry actually.



John had the Ravioli, and with its creamy sauce was nice he said. The serving was extremely small though for $20+. The beautiful hand model that you can see in the photos are those of John. Esther decided she was on a diet so just had butter hahaha. Only kidding, she also had the Chicken Swirl and liked it too.



Overall Rating: 11/20, The food is ok but too expensive. The ambience there is good, and the view is fantastic. There is no service as such since you need to go and get things yourself, which is a let down considering the prices you are paying. Good place for large gatherings.

Scores: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK,some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.

Rock Kung

Firstly, Rock Kung must be one of the worse names ever for a restaurant. It is located in Kingsway in Glen Waverley. Rock Kung is your typical Chinese restaurant and it opens till very late, 2-3am. As Jo noted, the crowd at Rock Kung changes from old people during the daytime, to young people at night. We went there at about 10pm and it was still packed with people who were just starting to order their meails. Usually at late night, Asian people go there for supper in the form of congee. This is what half of the group ordered.

I ordered the beef black bean since I hadn't eaten dinner yet and was extremely hungry. Despite my hunger, the beef black bean was not good. The beef was chewy and the sauce wasn't that great. I should have ordered the roast duck rice as Rock Kung are famous for their roast duck and there is a queue on Saturdays for their freshly roasted duck.

Here's Son and Rowena doing their funniest camera poses. Son had the congee, which was good apparently and Rowena had the seafood fried noodle.

Phuong and Jo also had the congee while Kin had his roast duck rice.

Overall Rating: 10/20, I would only come to Rock Kung late at night for congee or roasat duck. Otherwise the food is not that good.

Scores: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK,some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.

Sydney Road Festival

So today I had planned to go to Sydney Road to try out the famous Roti Omelete at Tom Phat's. I then planned to go to Brunettis and buy a cake to take home. When I got to Sydney Road however, they had blocked off the main street and I saw a sign saying "Sydney Road Festival". This looked promising, so I parked my car in the side streets and proceeded to walk down Sydney Road.

The road was very packed as it was a great sunny day and people came out to enjoy it. Sydney Road in the Brunswick area is what you would call an area for more alternative people, and the crowd reflected that. There were people in all sorts of clothing and hairstyles, and most of the stalls sold funky clothes that you don't find at Myer.

There were magician acts with a guy getting out of the chains in under 3 minutes. Some girls doing some sort of juggling thing with these glass balls.



There was also lots of great live music blaring out from all over the place. Today I saw a jazz band doing their scats, an African band with their cool beats, quite a few rock bands and some heavy metal bands. Live music is definitely very enjoyable and provides a great atmosphere.

So after walking for a while, I was getting hungry, so I went and bought a Morrocan Beef Burger for $5. It was good, with Morrocan spices in the mince and the burger served with onions and tomato sauce. So I was walking along eating my burger when some guy from the other side of the main road shouts out "I like your t-shirt". He shouted it twice. So I looked down to see what I was wearing. I was wearing my personally hand painted Yoda Says "Blogging This I Am" t-shirt. I was quite happy that someone liked my hand designed t-shirt, so I raised my hands to acknowledge him and yelled back "Thanks". In the mean time, the burger I was holding in my raised handed proceeded to shift slightly and some onion fell out and dropped on my t-shirt, leaving a nice tomato sauce stain on it. Totally hilarious.



Anyway, I continued walking and spotted some Turkish desserts. There was some pastry type things and Turkish delight. I got a box of each. I started with the pastries, which were just filo pastry dipped in sugar water and topped with various toppings. The round one on the left was the best, with the pistachios giving a nice crunch. After that first one, they all started to taste the same and I was struggling to finish it all. The Turkish delights were good too, but after two, again I had had enough.



So after eating my dessert, I had been at the festival for about an hour and a half. I was walking back towards my car when someone grabbed me on the arm. I was looking across at something else so was a bit shocked. I then looked up to see my friend John. He was also at the festival with his family, and asked me to join them. So I walked some more with John and chatted away. Since he also lives in Brunswick, I dropped by his place for a coffee and more discussions on his balcony. Balconies are very cool, I must get one one day. Anyway, I also helped him wire up his new TV/VCR/Foxtel box properly so that his VCR also got an antennae signal. I then set up the VCR channels, fixed a few of the settings on the TV, and my handy work was done. He could now record TV shows on his VCR.

We headed back out to Sydney Road for a beer and a last walk down the street in the falling sunlight. The cool breeze and setting sun provided for a very nice relax walk and end of a fun day. Along the street, I saw many signs for the Brunswick Music Festival, which runs from March 14 to April 1. I might check out what that's about and attend some of the events they have.

Horoki

After reading the review in the The Age newspaper about Horoki being named Cheap Eats Guide restaurant of the year, I had to go and see what it was about. The review said that the food was a very interesting fusion of Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Italian influences all rolled into one. I wanted to compare this place to Koko where I had eaten a couple of weeks ago. That Japanese restaurant was great, with very traditional Japanese dishes, at very expensive prices.

Firstly when we got there, since it was such a tiny restaurant (seating 27), we couldn't get a booking, so ended up having to wait about 20 minutes. When seated, we got a drinks list where Kin and I drank Sake, Jo chose a Sangria and Phuong chose a Raspberry Tea. However, my request for a glass of iced water didn't eventuate. Upon a second request for hot green tea and a glass of iced water, the green tea arrived but the water didn't. I tried a third and final time with a different waitress and got the iced water immediately, so I put it down to the waitress rather than restaurant policy to try and not give iced water.

We ordered a variety of dishes and shared them all. Apologies for the quality of the photos as I didn't have my camera with me and had to settle for photos from my phone.

We started with entrees of Bread with Sun Dried Tomato and Pesto. It was beautifully done, with the bread just crisp enough without being all crumbly.


Left: Horoki restaurant front. Right: Bread with Sun Dried Tomato and Pesto.

The next dish was the Daikon Salad with Sashimi. This dish was absolutely divine. The daikon was perfectly infused with this delicious soy sauce and there were these crunchy fried things which I don't know what they were. The fish roe and sashimi help to add even more flavour to the dish. This dish was one of my favourites for the night.

The Roast Octopus with Garlic Butter was good too, with the garlic having a nice sweet flavour to it.


Left: Daikon Salad with Sashimi. Right: Roast Octopus with Garlic Butter.

My other favourite dish of the night was the Beef Tartar. I always try the beef at Japanese restaurants if they have it. I thought the Beef Yukke at Izakaya Chuji was good, but this one was fantastic. The beef itself had a great flavour which I couldn't really pick. They served it with a quail egg rather than a standard egg, which made for great presentation but also a different flavour.

The soft shell crab was another dish I was looking forward to. It didn't disappoint, being crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside and crab flavours coming through clearly.


Left: Beef Tartar. Right: Soft Shell Crab with Sour Cream Mayo.

The Diced Scotch Fillet Steak with Potato looked like your regular Steak and Potato dish, but the flavours were anything but. The steak had this great garlic and mushroom type sauce that I really liked.

The Roast Duck with Eggplant was probably the only dish that didn't "wow" me. The duck texture was good, but the BBQ spare ribs type sauce didn't do it for me.


Left: Diced Scotch Fillet with Potato. Right: Roast Duck with Eggplant.

Finally to finish up, we first had some Horoki Special Fried Rice. The rice had that nice "wok" flavour that I always love. It was also slightly spicy and contained chicken and Chinese sausage type meats. A simple fried rice dish done to perfection.

The Rice Noodle with Cod Roe Butter was one that slowly got to you. When you first eat it, it doesn't taste that different, but then the cod roe burst in your mouth providing flavour, and the butter flavour leaves a nice flavour just as you finish swallowing the noodles.


Left: Horoki Special Fried Rice. Right: Rice Noodle with Cod Roe Butter.

After the meal, you get a complimentary Almond Pannacotta type dessert. The perfect way to end the meal, on a high from the sweet dessert and knowing that it was free.

I can now see why there was a queue to get into the restaurant and it was voted Best Cheap Eats Restaurant. Horoki is definitely a great place to eat, with it unique menu with influence from many cuisine. It all sounds weird but works a treat. I thought the food here was even better than at Koko. Even though Koko was a different dining experience, with high class surroundings and service, the food at Horoki had so many "wow" dishes whereas Koko had dishes that were done well but nothing that surprised me. I would put Horoki in the same category as Movida in that they are both tiny restaurants where the quality of the food can be strictly controlled and the dishes are so innovative.

Apart from the iced water incident, the service on the whole was very good. The atmosphere is good inside, with the small number of seats giving a cosy feeling. The open bar gave a good view of the chef cooking up a storm in the kitchen. There were occasional moments where the flame from the kitchen would fire up and give you some entertainment even. I will definitely be going back to Horoki and trying all the other dishes on the menu that I didn't get to try this time.

Overall Rating: 16/20, Loved nearly all the dishes, with quite a few giving me a "wow" moment. The prices were also excellent, with the meal costing about $30 including drinks.

Scores: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK,some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.

Waltzing Matilda

Waltzing Matilda pub is located on the corner of Heatherton Rd and Springvale Rd in Springvale. Its your typical TAB type pub. I head there on Friday with my friend Tin and a couple of his friends.

For dinner, Tin and I both had the pub Steak with chips and salad. The steak was extremely cheap at $12.95 for 250 grams of Porterhouse. The quality of the steak also turned out to be quite good. The flavour of the steak itself was good. The mushroom sauce had a bit too much cream. The chips were actually nicely fried, being crispy outside while still soft inside. I also licked the side salad that came with it. The mayo type sauce had a bit of a tang to it. Overall, the meal was one of the better pub meals and very cheap.



The pub also had pool tables for $2 a game. Above is Tin about to take a shot. As with most pubs nowadays, they also had karaoke. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a)lots of people were singing, from young men and women to old grandmas, and b)most of them were very good and it was very enjoyable. Everyone in the pub sang along to classic songs. Even the younger guys were singing and dancing like idiots. It's not a good look for white males who are drunk to dance around and try to act like black gangsters. One guy was hilarious with his air guitar, hand pumping and dance moves. I had to hold my laugh in for fear of getting decked if he saw me laughing at him. The tough looking blue collar workers at the other pool table were also singing along and dancing. This big guy was also doing this Irish/Country Line dancing thing all night. I guess so alcohol and the fact that everyone else was looking like an idiot makes people less inhibited and join along to the singing and dancing. Tin and I were also singing along to many of the songs. Next time I go back, I will definitely get up there with the mic and sing a song. I just need to practise a bit first so I don't sound totally aweful.

The Waltzing Matilda is a nice play to hang out for a quick dinner and on Fridays, some entertainment with karaoke. The beer keeps flowing and there are pool tables to play on as well. I suggest that you don't get too drunk though. There was one small fight that broke out on the next pool table. A guy, who was definitely extremely drunk, did or said something that the Irish/Line dancing guy didn't like, and the dancing guy pushed the other guy to the floor. Security came and quickly broke up the fight, and everything was fine again.

Readership Survey

Inspired by The Amateur Gourmet's post on his readers, I'm also interested to know who reads this blog.

This humble blog is by no means as popular as The Amateur Gourmet, but we do try our best. I say WE because this is a collaborative blog, although I, Thanh, do put up the most post. It was Alan from Photo Finish who initially suggested to me that we do a group blog. I then thought of a food blog, since the bloggers who I had met (through their blogs but not in real life yet) all seemed to be interested in food. Hence this blog was formed. You can read about the contributors here. We are a very diverse bunch in terms of age, interests, location and food experience.

The most involved with food is Choo. Choo actually owned a restaurant and ran one at one time in Singapore. The rest of us just enjoy eating. I personally am a terrible cook but love to eat. My ultimate job would one day to be a food critic or food writer. This is very different from my current job as an engineer. But who knows, life is unpredictable, it could happen. If not, I will just keep enjoying food and reading about it on other blogs and writing about it on this blog.

Now that you know some more about me, tell me something about yourself. It can be whatever you like that is related to food I guess but a few of the details below would also help me understand what type of people read this blog and why.

Please let me know
Name:
Location:
Age:
Sex:
How are you involved with food:
What types of food you like and why:
Any good food blogs you recommend:
Anything else you would like to comment about:

Hopefully there will be a few responses. Don't be shy, no one will eat you, unless you're made of chocolate. :-)

Let me be the first to do the survey.
Name: Thanh
Location: Melbourne
Age: 26
Sex: Male

How are you involved with food: I just like eating a lot and try to eat as many different types of food as possible. I write a food blog and that's is as far as my professional involvement with food is.

What types of food do you like and why: Being a Chinese growing up in Australia, I enjoy a variety of food. It needn't be expensive food, but it has to be good food. I am not afraid to eat anything and will give anything a try. I do enjoy Chinese food the most I guess since I did grow up eating that. I love eating desserts the most and can't resist them.

Any good food blogs you recommend: The blogs that I personally read every couple of days are on the links section on the side of this blog. I'm constantly looking for more food blogs to read. The blogs that I enjoy most are those that show people's personality. They will talk about their own lives and how food is involved rather than just doing professional posts about the technical aspects of food.

Anything else you would like to comment about: I would love to meet some other food bloggers in Melbourne and go out for meals, gatherings and events.

Red Hill Vineyards

On Sunday, I went to visit some vineyards with my friends Justin and Adrian. We choose the closest ones to our place, which turned out to be Red Hill. There was also quite a few clustered together in close proximity, which meant we got to visit a few all in the one day. We also visited the Ashcombe maze, which you can read about here and learn about the scientific way to get out of a maze.

The first vineyard we visited was Red Hill Estate. It was a simple fairly small vineyard but looked wonderful bathed in the morning sunshine. From the manicured car park, we walked into a fairly dark tasting area. This vineyard had the largest selection of wines to try of the four we went to. The assistant offered 17 wines for us to try, but we didn't want to try that many and opted for a few of them. I really like the chardonnay so bought a bottle of that.



The next vineyard was Tuck's Ridge. It had a huge vineyard that spread out far into the distance. The tasting area was a small bar where the assistant was very nice and explained things to us. She also recommended certain wines that were what they were good at. I liked the Pinot Noir 04, but not enough to part with $35 for a bottle. Hence it was on to the next winery.



The next winery happened to be just a walk next door from Tuck's Ridge and into Montalto. Montalto was the most interesting winery in that you could actually walk amongst the grape vines. It also had all these rather strange sculptures scattered all over the winery and wetlands.



Here I am standing under one of the sculptures. I'm looking sad because since I was the driver, I had to taste and spit most of the wine, rather than getting to swallow them. There were many many more sculptures and I took photos of some of them which you can see at my Flickr account.



The last vineyard was Paringa Estate. It was supposedly the must see place since they had some gold award wine. Paringa had a great view from the restaurant but was probably the worse in terms of enjoyability. Firstly, whereas you could as least walk around the vineyards at the other places, this was not possible at Paringa. Secondly, the tasting area was this tiny bar inside the restaurant. There was quite a lot of people that it took a while to get a glass poured. There was also a very very discreet little sign saying $2 for wine tasting. If we had seen it beforehand, we probably would have left, gold award wine or not. In the end, they didn't charge us but we felt kind of funny walking out not sure whether we should hand over 2 bucks. It just felt like it was too posh and rather than getting genuine warm service, we were being looked down at and expected to buy.



Of all four vineyards, I liked Red Hill Estate the best. The service was warm and friendly. They had a huge range to try and the place just felt comfortable. Montalto was also good for a walk around the wetlands and looking at the strange sculptures. In terms of actual wines, well, there were quite a few that were good but after a while, I forgot which was which and they all started to taste the same after the 15th glass. I'm not a very good wine taster I guess. To be more subjective next time, I guess I should take notes. But oh well, being my first wine tasting trip, I think I can be forgiven. I think wine from any of these places are a very high quality already and you can pick up quite a few good varities of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. The gold medal Pinot Noir from Paringa was probably the stand out, but at $90 a bottle, have you credit card ready.

For lunch, we tried to get tables at each of the vineyards, and despite all restaurants looking totally empty, we were told that they were all booked out for lunch. I guess people all turn up at the same time. So instead, we went to the Pig and Whistle pub.

The prices were quite high at this pub and the food portions turned out to be quite small. It also took an unbelievably long time for the food to be prepared. Luckily it was a beautiful day outside and we sat around talking. If this were any other place in the city, this level of service would be quite bad.



I ordered the Beef Peppered Pie. The pie itself was good, with actual pieces of beef. However, it was tiny for $14.50 and even with the chips, my starving stomach was not fully satisfied with the meal.



Adrian ordered the Salmon Salad, which took an eternity to arrive. You would think it was quite simple to cut up the salmon and toss the salad together. He said it was good though.



Justin got the Chicken Parmigiana and this one was good. It contained real chicken rather than processed chicken and the ham was of a decent type.



Word of caution, the pub ale was totally awful. This could be due to us drinking wine beforehand. Is it true that you should never drink beer after wine? Did this ruin the taste of the beer? Or was the pub ale actually terrible.

Beside the beer being hard to swallow, it was a great day trip and I recommend it to everyone. It's very close to the city, the scenery is fantastic, and you get to try lots of free wine without pressure to buy any from most places. Should you try a few wines you lick and pick up a few bottles, thats a bonus. Till the next wine tasting tour, bottoms up.

Koko

Koko is a fairly high class Japanese restaurant located on level 3 in the Crown Casino Complex. On Saturday, Kin, Jo, Paul and I decided to treat ourselves to a special meal there since it was Chinese New Year.

We got there at exactly 6pm since initially we were told the booking was for an hour and a half. I felt this was a little disappointing, but it turned out they did not try to push us out the door.

As an aside, here is Kin, myself and Jo sitting outside waiting to go into the restaurant. It looks like we purposefully posed for this photo like a fashion ad, but we were really just sitting there talking. It just shows you that the natural photos are the best. I really like this photo.

We were seated in a table that was a bit far from the stunning water feature pond in the centre of the room and the window views. However, it was still comfortable, with the lighting just right, not too dark but still with some ambience. The plates and cultery were quite nice, with only the embossed paper place mats a bit out of tune with everything else.

Upon being seated, we were offered a drinks menu. We decided on the Umeshu, which at $43 for a bottle was on the low scale compared to all the other wines. It was a plum type wine, which was delicously sweet at the start, but got a bit too much at the end of the meal.

For entrees, we ordered the Chinese New Year special of Oyster Miso Yaki, which was a beautifully presented set of oysters on a bed of rock salt. The oysters were covered in a mustard miso sauce with "Fat Choi" black moss mixed in. The flavours were rich and very interesting. I quite liked it.

The Wagyu Sashimi was thinly sliced wagyu beef seared on the outside. The sauce was a sharp soy type sauce. The beef layed on a bed of thinly sliced onion. Eaten all in a mouthful, the textures and flavours were perfect. I always love the yukke at most Japanese restaurants, but this beef was even nicer.

The tuna tataki was also a special for Chinese New Year. It was similar to the Waygu Sashimi in that the sauce was also a tangy sauce, but slightly different. The tuna was quite firm and seared as well. It too tasted good, but I liked the texture and flavours of the beef more.

For our sushi and sashimi order, we firstly got the Chef's Special Sashimi Platter. My favourite sashimi was the squid and this white fish, which had a very firm texture and strong flavours. The seafood was extremely fresh and flavoursome. I forgot to ask what types of fish they were though, must do that next time.

For the sushi, we got the Koko Special. The colours were stunning, and so was the flavours. The rice had just enough vinegar in it, and had a fairly firm texture without being dry and clumpy. My favourite sushi from this platter were the fish roe roll. The little red roes just burst in my mouth and filled it with flavour.

The final sushi dish we got was the Spider Roll, which was filled with crispy soft shell crab. This was the best dish of the night in my opinion, just edging out the Waygu Sashimi. The flavours in this roll worked so well together, with each bite producing so many sensations in the mouth, the crispyness of the skin and crab, the softness of the avocado, the slightly chewiness of the nori and rice.

For mains, we got the Gyuniku Sanshoku, which is beef cooked three ways. The pan fried beef with a similar miso mustard sauce to the oysters was good. The teriyaki beef rolls with aspargus had its own nice flavour. The braised beef belly was a bit plain and was probably the only disappointment of the whole night.

The Kaisen Yaki Udon was stir fried udon with seafood and vegetables. It was better than other seafood udon I've had, but still not something I would order for myself normally.

The last savoury dish of the night was the Ten Zaru Sumi Udon, cold charcaol noodle served with tempura sweet potato. This dish was again magnificently presented, but again its not something I would order. The noodles are nice enough with the sauce, but not something you would eat for a mains by itself. It worked well at the very end of the meal to help clear the palette a bit.

With just enough space to share a couple of desserts, we got the Triple Chocolate Box. The chocolate ice cream wasn't good. The chocolate pudding with white chocolate sauce was rich and quite good. My favourite though was the panacotta with chocolate crisps inside. Very interesting mix of texture and flavours. The berry sauce just made it all the more interesting.

The last dessert was the Mach Crepes, green tea crepes. The crepes were not made of green tea but instead had a hot green tea filling. That part was ok but the highlight was the ice cream accompanying it. The ice cream tasted like it was Rafaello chocolate balls crushed up and mixed with vanilla ice cream. It was totally addictive as I love Rafaello's normally but they tasted even better in this ice cream.

The service throughout the night was top class. Our plates were changed regularly, especially when going from entrees to eating sashimi where you want a clean plate so other flavours don't contaminate the sashimi. Our waitress was very attentive, regularly filling up our tea pot and wine glasses. She also made sure we knew what the progress of the dishes were and remembered every request we made. I guess when you want quality service, you have to pay for it.

Overall, it was a fantastic meal. The atmosphere was great, the conversations were interesting, and the food was very good. There weren't a whole lot of WOW dishes in terms of original mixtures of food, but everything was done to a very high standard, both in presentation and flavours. I loved the spider roll and the waygu sashimi the best and recommend you try them. I would definitely go back to Koko for another meal, but due to its fairly high price, about $100 each including wine, I don't think I will have to opportunity to go back too regularly. However, it is great for special occasions or just when you want to indulge yourself in some fine dining.

Overall Rating: 17/20, Everything was great.


Scores: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK,some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.