Saeng Thian Thai

My friend John and I went to Saeng Thian Thai for dinner before our Lord of The Rings movies fest at the projector accesorised house he was house sitting. Saeng Thian Thai is located on Centre Road in Bentleigh East, just a short trip from our work place. Yourrestaurants.com describes it as a cheap-and-cheerful local Thai. I'm not sure if I totally agree with that.

We left work and arrived right on the opening time of 6pm. We entered to find a fairly dark restaurant, with the tired looking decor of your usual small suburban restaurant. We rung the door chimes a few times, but still no one came out to greet us. So I walked into the kitchen where I could hear voices and said hello.

A waitress came out and apologised that she didn't hear us come in. We were seated and offered menus. We got some beers and the waitress also poured us some iced water without us having to ask. Throughout the night, only one other table was occupied, so it's hard to judge the ambience. We didn't really mind and were talking the whole time.

I ordered the Fish Cakes for entrees while John got the Fried Chicken Ribs. Both entrees were good, with the fish cakes full of flavour and the ribs being crunchy. For mains, we then both chose curries. I chose a Red Beef Curry while John chose a Yellow Chicken Curry. We chose mild curries and hence they were fairly tame for my liking. The red curry flavour was quite good, but the beef wasn't. The meat was extremely tough. The chicken curry had much softer pieces of chicken, but the curry flavour wasn't the best I've had.

The service was good, considering we were the only table for a while and then one of two tables a bit later. They topped up our iced water and cleared the table efficiently. Now back to the cheap and cheerful part at the start. It might have been cheerful enough, but it definitely wasn't cheap. The prices were quite high, with our meals costing $34 with one beer each. This is similar to many other local Thai's, but with food that is much worse. I consider a cheap and cheerful Thai place to be something like Ying Thai, which serves fantastic food for extremely cheap prices.

Overall Rating: 10/20, Food wasn't very good and way too expensive.

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.

Fedele's

Fedele's must be one of the strangely located restaurants. It just sits off the main Springvale Road by itself, nestled amongst residential houses. I'm always amazed that they have customers. I must have driven past the restaurant a few hundred times, but have never even thought about eating there.

Hence, when my friend suggested we go eat there for a catch up, I thought it would be great to finally see how this place is. I met up with a couple of high school friends who I hadn't seen for a while for dinner.

I arrived a little early so went inside to sit down first. The interior was an old style looking restaurant. There were wine bottles displayed all over the place. I was greeted at the front bar by a very casual waiter, who then yelled to another waiter to seat me. The second waiter then asked the first waiter if I had a booking, which I had. I was seated and asked if I wanted a drink. I ordered a glass of wine for myself as I wasn't sure if everyone else wanted wine.

I looked around to find that although it was 7pm, it wasn't very full yet. Later on through the night, the place would be mostly filled. I watched food being served to other tables and the dishes looked quite large and full. According to their website, Fedele's describe themselves as "a perfect blend of 'old style' service and authentic Italian cuisine with a contemporary twist".

When everyone else arrived, we ordered our meals while chatting away. Much had changed in regards to people's lives, but yet things still remained the same in terms of how people behaved. We caught up on gossip regarding class mates and the "where are they now" discussions. We were asked if we wanted bread, which we did. I'm guessing bread isn't free if you have to order it. The bread turned out to be very ordinary and a bit stale.

I passed on entrees and ordered a mains of a Trio of Dishes. The trio of dishes included a Duck Pie, which sat on a salad of apples and cucumber, Roast lamb on a beetroot salad and Crispy Quail on with some salad. I found the duck pie to be very dry, and the flavours didn't work well with the sweet apple and cucumber salad. The roast lamb was cooked to perfection, but lacked any flavour. Finally, the quail was my favourite of the three. It was cooked very nicely and had a nice spicy salt and chilli skin.

For desserts, I got the Trio of Chocolates. This included a chocolate pudding, chocolate tart and chocolate parfait. The pudding was deliciously decandent, with warm chocolat oozing out as I broke it. The tart was ok, but nothing too special. The parfait was good, with a light texture.

The ambience was ok. It felt a bit muted and down for my liking. For some reason, I just didn't feel the vibe of the place. That sounds a bit zen, but I wasn't completely sold on the ambience. The service was good enough. It was fairly informal, with the older staff making a few jokes but not really engaging with us much.

Overall, I think the prices they charged are too high. I didn't really like my mains much, but dessert was better. Just reading the menu, no dishes really captured me and I don't think I will come back. My mains wasn't very good but the desserts were better.

Overall Rating: 11/20, Food is ok and ambience a bit lacking.

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.

Hot Pot House

I really like hot pot, especially on cold nights. With my friend Aleen vising Australia again, we all organised to have hot pot. It's become almost a tradition now, that we have to eat hot pot when Aleen visits.

We booked at the newly opened Hot Pot House near Glen Waverley station. We noticed that the lady owner was the same lady who owns Hot Pot King in Box Hill. Hot Pot King used to be our regular hot pot restaurant for quite some time until other hot pot restaurants started popping up all over the place. These new places offered buffets, which was much more value for money than Hot Pot King so we stopped going there.

Hot Pot House is no different to any other hot pot restaurant. It's new so is very clean. Hopefully it stays that way. The tables are much larger so there's room to put the plates of food. Also, they use an induction stove, like Little Lamb in Box Hill. This means the food cooks a lot faster.

We stuffed ourselve silly as usual. I always like the beef the most. They also had all the usual "balls", which aren't too bad. The fish balls were good, and actually tasted more like fish rather than flour.


Ambience is not bad. The crwoded restaurant didn't have overly high noise levels such that you can't hear your friends. I thought the service was fairly good, as far as these hot pot places go. Kevin may disagree but I think we were able to grab the waitresses whenever we needed anything. The waitresses also spoke English, which was useful. Usually we try to use our broken mandarin to tell them what we want.

Here we are freezing outside the restaurant for a group photo.


As an aside, we went to Pancake Parlour in the Glen for desserts. As usual, service was absolutely shocking. This time it takes the cake. Although all tables were free, they wouldn't let us sit where we wanted. Then, we were told that since we were a large group, we all had to order something. What the? When did this become a rule. Finally, we were told that if we wanted to split the bill, we had to do it before we ordered and not after. So strange, all these new "rules". If only their service adhered to normal restaurant rules of serving customers. Water had to be repeatedly asked for, drinks and food took forever and even trying to catch a wait staff for extra cutlery was a real task.

Overall Rating: 13/20, Food is ok and service is acceptable.

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.

White and Dark Chocolate Jaffa Swirl Cake

This cake looks and taste spectacular. From the exterior, it already looks great. But when you cut into it and see the white and dark chocolate swirls, it looks even better. As I made this cake for a child’s birthday, I was hoping it would not be too overpowering with chocolate as children tend to have more subtle palettes. I didn’t need to worry. The chocolate cake part was also very light in chocolate flavour. The cake had it’s main chocolate flavour from the ganache, but was balanced very well from the orange and white chocolate flavours.

It’s a bit of work to separate the cake batch into two and add the different chocolates, but it really works both visually and flavour wise. Sometimes you will bite into one part of the cake that only contains one flavour, while other times you will get both flavours combined together. It’s definitely worth the extra effort to produce an even better cake.

The recipe says to use a food processor to make this cake, but I don’t have a powerful food processor, so did everything with an electric hand whisk and it worked just fine.



White and Dark Chocolate Jaffa Swirl Cake
From Belinda Jeffery’s Mix and Bake

Ingredients
55g good white chocolate, finely chopped
55g good dark chocolate, finely chopped
290g unsalted butter, chopped, at room temperature
2 ½ cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 ½ cups castor sugar
1 cup buttermilk
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
3 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
chocolate ganache

Method
1) Preheat oven to 180C. Butter and flour a bundt tin (approximately 26cm).
2) Melt white and dark chocolate with 20g of butter each in separate bowls, either in a microwave or over a pot of simmering water. Leave chocolates to cool while making the rest of the cake.
3) Put the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a food processor. Whiz together until mixed and tip into a bowl. Put eggs and sugar into the processor and whiz for 1 minute. Add remaining 250g of butter chunks and whiz until light and creamy. Pour in buttermilk and vanilla extract and whiz for 10 seconds. Add flour to wet mixture and whiz until all combined.
4) Transfer the batter into two equal lots. Add the dark chocolate to one batch and the white chocolate and orange zest to the second batch. Mix each batch until chocolate is evenly spread throughout the mixture.
5) Spread half the white chocolate mixture into the bundt tin and even it out with a spatula. Add half the dark chocolate mixture into the tin and spread evenely. Finish off with another layer of white and then dark cake mixture. Using a narrow knife blade, cut through the cake mixture and make petal or figure of eight patterns around the central hollow tube.
6) Bake for 55 minutes or until an inserted wooden skewer comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out the cake. Leave it to cool completely.
7) Make chocolate ganache.
8) Pour the barely warm ganache evenly over the cake so that it trickles down the side and ridges.

Chocolate Ganache
Belinda’s ganache is made from butter, water and chocolate, but I find that it’s not as good as the usual ganache I use made from cream and chocolate. So I will provide the recipe for the cream ganache.

Ingredients
100g good quality dark cooking chocolate, roughly chopped
120ml thick cream

Method
1) To make ganache, combine chocolate and cream in heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (water should not touch bottom of bowl). Stir occasionally, till mixture is melted and smooth. Remove from heat and set aside for around an hour, stirring occasionally till it has cooled and thickened to a spreadable consistency.

Tropical Pineapple Crush Cake

I chose to make this cake for mum’s birthday as she likes fruity type cakes that aren’t too sweet. I dropped the sugar amount a little bit to ensure that the cake wouldn’t be too sweet for her liking. I still decided to make the frosting as I thought it would really add to the cake and this turned out to be true. Mum gave her thumbs up to this cake, even with the frosting.

The cake is very moist with all the banana in it and has this lovely fragrance to it due to the mixture of pineapple, banana, cinnamon and nutmeg. I didn’t add the optional macadamias this time but will add them next time as I think it will make the cake even nicer.



Tropical Pineapple Crush Cake
From Belinda Jeffery’s Mix and Bake

Ingredients
3 cups plain flour
1 ½ cup castor sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ cup roasted macadamias (optional)
3 eggs
1 ½ cups light olive oil
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup canned crushed pineapple in natural juice undrained
5-6 medium sized bananas to give 2 cups mashed

Icing
125g softened unsalted butter, cut into chunks
250g softened cream cheese, cut into chunks
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
500g icing sugar mixture, sifted

Method
1) Preheat oven to 160C. Butter two 25cm round cake tins. Line the base with baking paper and dust the tings lightly with flour.
2) Put the flour, sugar, salt, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and nutmeg into a large bowl. Whisk together quickly. Add macadamias now if using them.
3) In another bowl, beat eggs lightly so well mixed but not frothed up. Whisk in the oil and vanilla extract until well combined. Add pineapple and mashed bananas and mix thoroughly.
4) Scrape banana mixture into the flour mixture and stir them together to form a thick batter. Divide batter between the two tins and smooth tops.
5) Bake for 45-50 minutes or until an inserted wooden skewer comes out clean. Cool cakes before turning them out of tin.
6) For icing, put all ingredients into a food processor and whiz until smooth and creamy.
7) Assemble cake by sandwiching the two cakes with icing in the centre. Spread remaining icing on top of the cake. I also decorated the cake with some left over crushed pineapple.

A Really Beautiful Orange Cake - Belinda Jeffery Recipe

This cake is again from Belinda Jeffery’s Mix and Bake book. I think I’m going to try nearly all the recipes in this book. So far, this book hasn’t disappointed. All the cakes and muffins are so easy to make. Most of them really are just mix and bake recipes, taking 30 minutes to prepare. But the vital part is that all the cakes taste so good. The flavours are beautiful, without being insanely sweet or rich if you don’t want it to be.

This orange cake epitomizes the philosophy of the book. I have already made this cake four times, such is the speed that it disappears from the fridge. It is extremely easy to make, but produces the most wonderful orange cake. It’s the best orange cake I’ve ever tasted. It can work simply by itself, or you can dress it up with a frosting and/or candied zest. The only change I’ve made to the recipe is to drop the sugar from 2 cups to 1.5 cups and to half the glaze. I found this produced an even better cake as the flavours of the orange shone through even more unmasked by the extra sweetness.

Belinda uses a food processor to make this cake, but I've also done it by using a hand mixer and that works great too. If using a hand mixer, you cream the butter and sugar and then add the eggs, following with the other wet ingredients and finishing with the dry ingredients.

Some tips to help you make a successful cake.
* Don't over process the mixture once the flour is added or it can cause the cake to toughen.

* Use the concentrated orange juice drink rather than orange juice. The added intensity of the concentrate really does work well in this cake.

* Use an oven thermometer to ensure the temperature is correct as this cake will burn quite easily. It's also a very delicate cake so let it cool before glazing it.

* I find it unnecessary to add another icing as the glaze is quite sweet already.

* Butter and flour the tin really well as the cake is delicate and if it sticks, it will break apart when you try to take it out.

A Really Beautiful Orange Cake
Adapted from Belinda Jeffery's recipe
Makes a large 26cm round tin or a bundt tin

Ingredients
3 cups plain flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
3 eggs
1 ½ cups castor sugar
250g unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into chunks
1 cup buttermilk
finely grated zest of 3 oranges
2 ½ tablespoons of concentrated orange juice drink
80g dried cranberries (optional)

Orange Glaze
½ cup icing sugar mixture, sifted
30 ml concentrated orange juice drink
15g unsalted butter, melted

Method

1) Preheat oven to 150C. Butter and flour a large bundt tin (approximately 26cm).
2) Put flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into food processor and whiz until they’re well mix. Pour into bowl and set aside. Put eggs and sugar into food processor and whiz for 1 minute. Add the chunks of butter and process for another minute until thick and creamy. Add the buttermilk, orange zest and concentrated orange juice and whiz for 10 seconds. Add flour mixture and blend it all until just combined.
3) Add cranberries into batter if using them. I omitted these as I wanted just the orange flavours of the cake. Spoon mixture into bundt tin and smooth surface.
4) Bake for 70 minutes until an inserted wooden skewer comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 10 minutes.
5) For the glaze, put all ingredients into a bowl and whisk them together until smooth. Turn out cooled cake and brush glaze all over cake, remembering to brush the central hollow.
6) Serve with a dusting of icing sugar when cooled, or orange icing with candied zest. To make orange icing, mix until smooth 1 cup of icing sugar mixture with 2-3 tablespoons of concentrated orange juice drink and grated zest of 1 orange.

Fig, Orange and Banana Muffin

This recipe is from Belinda Jeffery’s Mix and Bake, yes, again. I only own two cookbooks so far, and this one is proving so great, so why not try every recipe from it. This recipe is actually suppose to be date, orange and banana muffin. Upon spying some dates left in the pantry the previous day, I decided to make these. Only when I started to make them did I find that all the dates were eaten in the space of a day, despite being in the pantry for a good 3 months untouched. Necessity being the mother of invention, I decided to use the dried figs in the pantry instead.

The figs worked ok in the recipe but not fantastic. The flavours of the fig was too subtle and the nutmeg really dominated in this muffin. The dates would have been much stronger in flavour and also provided more sweetness to the muffin. I also found the texture of this muffin a little dry. Again, I think the dates would have made it more gooey and better.

Belinda uses a food processor to make this cake, but I don’t have a powerful food processor, so did everything with an electric hand whisk and it worked just fine. I did whiz the orange in my small blender.



Fig, Orange and Banana Muffin

Ingredients
1 cup plain flour
½ cup stone-ground wholemeal plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup figs, chopped
1 medium sized navel orange
2 eggs
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup light olive oil
2 medium sized bananas, giving ½ cup mashed
½ cup fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method
1) Preheat oven to 200C. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper muffin cups.
2) Put both the flours, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and nutmeg into a food processor and whiz them together for 15 seconds. Tip the mixture into a bowl.
3) Wash and dry the orange and chop into small chunks. Put chunks into food processor and whiz for 1 minute until a rough puree is formed.
4) Add eggs, brown sugar, oil, mashed bananas, orange juice and vanilla extract to the orange puree and whiz until mixture is fairly smooth.
5) Put the orange mixture into the dry ingredients and quickly stir them together until just combined. The batter will be quite sloppy so leave for 1 minute to thicken before spooning into muffin cups.
6) Bake for 20 minutes or until an inserted wooden skewer comes out clean.

Green Tea Biscuits

I saw these green tea biscuits from Ellie at Kitchen Wench. I had been looking for something to make with my matcha powder that I bought. These biscuits look so great and easy so I thought I would give it a try.

The biscuits were really easy to make. I really like the flavour, a butter cookie with a hint of green tea. A tip is to really watch these biscuits when they are baking. You want to make sure they don't brown too much. I found that the biscuits that were too brown had a really strong burnt taste, which is still good, but it hides the green tea flavour. The biscuits that were not burnt at all had a beautiful green tea flavour.



Green Tea Biscuits

Ingredients

3/4 cup icing sugar mixture
145g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1 3/4 cup plain flour
3 large egg yolks
1.5 tbsp matcha (powdered green tea)
1 cup castor sugar (for coating)

1) Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
2) Whisk the icing sugar and green tea together in a bowl.
3) Add the butter and green tea/sugar mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix until smooth and light in color.
4) Add the flour and mix until well combined.
5) Add the egg yolks and mix just until the eggs are fully incorporated and a mass forms.
6) Form the dough into a disk and chill in the refrigerator until firm (about 30 minutes).
7) Roll the dough out to ½” thickness.
8) Cut the dough with a cookie cutter.
9) Toss each cut cookie in a bowl of castor sugar to coat.
10) Place the sugar-coated cookie on a parchment lined pan. Bake at 180C for 12-15 minutes, or until slightly golden around the edges.

Frenchy's Bistro - Birthday Dinner 3

I had already celebrated more than enough at dinner 1 and dinner 2, but it's an excuse to try a fancy restaurant. Due to a logistical mix up, birthday dinner 3 was 10 days after my actual birthday. We decided to try Frenchy's Bistro in Glen Waverley.

When you enter Frenchy's, there's sort of a front desk with lots of bottles of wines on it. The restaurant is decorated in either an old fashioned French restaurant or is a parody of a French restaurant. They had all the fun paintings or French chefs, those funny wine bottle holders, old style lights and other 80s things. I liked it, it was all a bit of fun I thought.

We were seated at a table against the wall looking out through the other patrons to the glass restaurant window. The chairs, as mentioned on numerous restaurant review websites, are wooden ones and not the most comfortable. They had butcher's paper over the tables. That's a bit tacky I thought. I thought only Chinese restaurants did that, especially at yum cha.

After ordering wine, the waiter brought iced water as well, without us having to ask. The waiters, as I noticed, were mature gents. You don't usually see older wait staff, generally at family run businesses only. I don't think they were all related. As long as they can do the job, I don't see why wait staff has to be young people. There is a discussion over at Tomato about what good service is and whether older people have a role. One interesting thing about the younger waiter is that he really looks like Justin Timberlake, a young Justin Timberlake in his Nsync days. Kin asked me who the waiter looked like and I got it immediately. I definitely thought there was a resemblance but Paul and Jo didn't think so.

For entrees, we ordered the Snails with bread and the Pork Belly with Scallops to share. The Snails was my favourite dish of the night. In fact, it was the only dish that was really good. The snails were done in a traditional butter and garlic sauce, with a pickled salad and bread to accompany it. The scallops were big and juicy. However, the pork belly wasn't so good. The skin wasn't crispy and it lacked flavour. It was all drowning in a lot of pea soup.



For mains, Jo and Kin both got the Roast Lamb. The lamb was cooked to perfection and was tender, but was devoid of any flavour, even the taste of lamb wasn't very strong. The beans were soft and nice, but then were immersed in this strange chilli type sauce that again didn't have much flavour.


Paul's Pepper Steak was good but not fantastic. The meat part was very good, cooked with a good charring on the outside and still pink and moist on the inside. The pepper sauce was very strong, a bit too strong I thought.


My Moreton Bay Bug special sounded fantastic on paper, but was a mess. I couldn't even taste the Moreton Bay bugs and they were completely masked by this very very salty ham. The risotto was cooked well texture wise, but the flavour was bad. It had vanilla or some other sweet flavour through it and I didn't like it at all.


Jo got the Quince Crumble for dessert. The quince was wonderfully fragrant and totally delicous. It was however, very sweet. I don't know if that is natural sweetness from the quince or a lot of sugar was added in the crumble.


Kin's Death By Ice Cream sure sounded and looked good, but was more style than substance. There was mango, hazelnut, vanilla, chocolate ice cream and a lemon sorbet. I don't know if these ice creams were hand made or just store bought. The hazelnut ice cream was the highlight.


Paul's Belgian Chocolate looked better than it tasted. The chocolate part itself was surprisingly disappointing. It was very sweet and didn't taste good. The gold foil looked very sparkly, but that was the only sparkling thing about the dish.


Finally, I was eagerly awaiting my chocolate souffle. After watching a lot of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, I know pay a lot of attention to desserts on menus and think about whether they are mostly pre-prepared and then just finished during serving. This chocolate souffle cannot be pre-prepared in any way. Hence, the menu showed that it would take 20 minutes. It was done perfectly in terms of texture, so wonderfully light and fluffy. The chocolate flavour wasn't as strong as I thought, but was again extremely sweet like the other desserts. The sickly sweetness of all the desserts killed them all.


The one present I had to share with all you readers is my wonderful stash of Patchi chocolates. They're my favourite chocolates of all and last year I got a tree of them for my birthday. I think there is a pattern emerging here about my love for chocolates. My work mates got me Lindt chocolates that I finished. This was immediately followed by my sister getting me a big box of Koko Black chocolates, which I have finished already. And now I get a big box of Patchi chocolates to follow on with, perfect.


The food at Frenchy's was surprsingly disappointing. The dishes sounded traditional enough, but nothing was really good. Compared to other French restaurants that I have been to such as The Brasserie and Madame SouSou who also do classical French cooking, this place falls far far short. I don't think I will return here when there are similarly priced options that provide far superior food.

Service was good and personable. I liked the older wait staff who are extremely relaxed and can catch with you with ease. The atmosphere was quite good. The noise levels got really loud at one stage when the whole restaurant just seemed to be talking at the same time.

Overall Rating: 12/20, Food is ok but nothing tasted really 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.

Goshen Korean BBQ - Birthday Dinner 2

After already having a birthday dinner with my work mates at Shira Nui, I was expecting to have another one this weekend. But then my friend Kevin rang me and to say Happy Birthday. Then he also said that we should get together to dinner. Never one to refuse dinner, espeically when its to celebrate my birthday, I said ok and left it to him to organise.

Before meeting up at Glen Waverley, Dennis rang and said to meet him a bit earlier to go and get some wines from his wine storage. I had romantic visions of an underground masonary cellar with racks and racks of wine bottles. Instead, it was a locker style cupboard as Kennards Storage. He showed me a lot of the wines he had, many of them extremely expensive. We picked a couple of bottle and went off to meet the others.


A very old looking bottle of Penfolds Grange Hermitage 1963.


We met up with Kevin and Patrick and were initially going to try out the new hot pot place in Glen Waverley since it was so cold and a perfect time for hot pot. However, that place was packed and so we went to Goshen Korean BBQ instead. This restaurant is on the main Kingsway stretch near the Village cinema. It used to be this Shanghai restaurant where I once had the most awful hot and sour soup I've ever tasted.

There was a couple of table free at Goshen and we chose to sit at the BBQ table, telling the waiter that we wanted BBQ. After sitting at the table for ages and asking for the menu once, we finally got up and got our own menus. We also waited for them to clear and clean the table. We had already told the first waitress that we wanted to drink our wines. Eventually, after asking again, we got some glasses. The waitress then proceed to block up the BBQ, which we all smiled at.


We finally ordered two Set B BBQ meals. This included two meats and one seafood variety to BBQ at the table. We got a dish of everything, chicken ribs, pork, beef ribs, beef, octopus and mixed seafood.

The entrees of fried dumplings and tofu salad arrived. However, we didn't have any bowls or chopsticks to eat them with. Again, we had to ask for them. The dumplings were actually quite good. They had a crispy skin and sat in a shallow puddle of soy. The fried tofu salad was very refreshing. The tofu was soft inside and crispy outside, and the mixed greens had a sharp soy dressing.

The vegetables arrived first and the waitress dumped them all onto the grill. The meats then arrived and she proceeded to dump all that onto the grill too. That meant that it took really long for things to cook as the grill wasn't very hot anymore. We were starving so kept tucking into the refillable salad and kimchi. Upon request, we finally got more refills.

Finally, the meat cooked and we started to eat it, but there was no rice. We asked for rice, to which a tiny shallow bowl of rice came. The waitress said that we could ask for more rice when we needed it. We joked to each other how there was a massive shortage in rice recently. We gulped down the two teaspoon of rice each very quickly. Again, we asked for more rice and again the same small bowl arrived. We asked for rice about 5 times that night, the same as kimchi. Finally, I just asked for a big bowl of kimchi.

The meat itself was quite good, though Patrick and Kevin wanted some BBQ type sauces to go with it. A sauce would have been good, but the marinated meat had good flavours by itself too. The ribs were soft, the beef had a good bulgogi marinate, the chicken ribs were my favourite and the prok wasn't bad too.

When we had started to finish the meats and were going to slowly place the seafood onto the plate, the waitress came by and just dumped all the seafood onto the grill. She then joked that none of us must cook at home. Hmmmmmm. I think it is she that doesn't cook. Again, dumping all the cold seafood onto the grill just meant the whole grill virtually stopped and the food took forever to cook. We were going to place small bits on at a time so they would cook as we ate. By the end, we were really full from the food and it was all good too.

I saw the massive dessert sets being taken to other tables so really had to try some. The dessert plate consisted of sesame ice cream, green tea ice cream, red bean ice cream, chocolate dumplings and a fried banana with honey. I really liked the red bean ice cream. There was a hint of red bean with a honey flavour mixed with it. The chocolate dumplings were really good too.


The atmosphere is quite good. The noise levels aren't too bad. I like the comfortable seats and the room looks quite pleasing with the motifs around the walls. The service wasn't quite as good. Maybe it's a case of being open only recently, but the service was shocking. We had to ask so many times for things as they kept forgetting. They also didn't have to initiative to do things that clearly needed to be done. Of course we need chopsticks to eat, what are we going to do, use our hands. Of course we want the rice now, not when we finish eating. Of course we want more rice as we had indicated right from when you brought the first small bowl.

I'll go back again as the food is good and not overly expensive. I'll see if service improves or it's just another one of those Asian restaurants where service is utterly terrible.

Overall Rating: 12/20, Food is good but service needs a lot of work.

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.