Dining Room at Sunnybank Hills

Dining Room Chinese Restaurant
8/223 Calam Rd, Sunnybank Hills



As unfortunate as this sounds, I don't get excited by the Chinese restaurants in Brisbane. At best, you get 'good food' but even this pales in comparison to mediocre restaurants I've been to in Shanghai. Sure it's unfair to compare like that but the fact is, there doesn't seem to be a lot on offer that fulfills all aspects of authenticity, price, service, range and consistency.

My favorite dish of the month

This is why Dining Room blew me away. My family and I have been twice now within the space of a couple of weeks. The first time, my parents' friends invited them out for dinner and as I am occasionally lacking in things to do (quite often actually), I tagged along.

Chocolate Mousse Profiteroles

Chocolate Mousse Profiteroles
Home Cooking



Sometimes, good things in life happen. I was sitting in the computer rooms one afternoon post-savory meal and thinking to myself "Gosh I really feel like something sweet". In walks a classmate with a tray of profiteroles and she offers me one.

Blessing from the sky? Yes indeed.



What really struck me about these profiteroles was that instead of the usual creme anglaise filling, she had a chocolate mousse filling. DELICIOUS. My verdict was 2 thumbs up, fueled on the fact that it was exactly what I was in the mood for.

Vagelis

Vagelis on Racecourse Rd
www.vagelis.com.au



There is something seriously frustrating about wanting to eat out on a Monday. Why is it that so many restaurants choose the start of the week to stay shut? No DON'T ANSWER. That was a rhetorical question. I'm sure there are plenty of logical/sound business-oriented justifications.



Last week (or was it the week before), I caught up with my mate Hao. It was a chance for me to take my new car out for a spin too so we decided to head up North to Hamilton. The first 2 places we wanted to eat at were shut so we finally ended up at Vagelis (I got to do a reverse park! Woot).

Slow-braised Spicy Ribs

Slow-braised Spicy Ribs
Home Cooking



Another dinner party. Another Masterchef recipe. Is anyone else spotting a trend here?

Cooking and wine-drinking with friends = my life is good

In any case, despite the repetitive nature of my home cooking posts, I make no apologies for this particular one. Everyone loves ribs (besides vegetarians I guess and even then... a taste should hook them) and ribs are one of those rare meat items I've had some degree of success with. I made slow-cooked cola ribs a long while back and dad made Korean-marinated ribs recently. He just grilled them in the oven and the difference between that and slow-cooked was quite obvious. For that reason, I went with that more time-consuming method as my contribution to the dinner party.

Jenga at Brisbane's Hazel Tea Shop

Brisbane's Hazel Tea Shop
http://www.hazel.com.au/



This will in all likelihood be a short post because I've already covered the Gold Coast branch of Hazel Tea Shop. My friend Josh and I were wandering around the city on a shopping trip (or, rather I think I was shopping and he was a poor victim of circumstance) and we decided to get some tea.



I had a very upsetting experience earlier on in the day where I poured the very last of my change (handful of pathetic shrapnel) into purchasing myself a chocolate frappe. I got a paper and sat down to enjoy and being my uncoordinated self, knocked the whole cup over before I even took one sip.

Wok-tossed Sandcrab in Sate Sauce

Wok-tossed Sandcrab in Sate Sauce
Home Cooking



Another old post. Ah... at the rate that I'm blogging I'm probably never going to produce anything fresh. Sorry guys. I can endeavor to try harder? Possibly? These days I have an odd relationship with my laptop. I seem to always be on it but never doing anything productive. It's some kind of reverse efficiency?

I'M TALKING WITH TOO MANY QUESTION MARKS.

Ok... *calm* back to my story.


Masterchef followers will recognize Luke Nguyen's crab recipe from a Masterclass way back. He made it with mud crab but well, we can't all be mud crab eaters, OK? Friday nights I tend to be at mum and dad's house so dad watched this episode and he was quite entranced by the sate sauce so proclaimed he would recreate this dish.


This dish is almost entirely about that sate sauce. The crab itself is just deep fried but the sauce is where all the flavor resides. It's compiled from a complex combination of ingredients that lends the right amount of savory, spicy, numbing and so on. The original recipe and a video can be seen here. As usual, we tinkered with the quantities.

A Salt and Battery

A Salt and Battery
www.asaltandbattery.com.au


Ahhh memories.

Sometimes, you don't realize how much time as passed until you spare a moment to reflect. I took my parents to A Salt and Battery recently because I promised them what many students view as the best fish and chips in Brisbane.



Even though I'm a UQ student, I don't have classes on St Lucia campus anymore. When I think back to 1st year, when I had science lectures there... it feels like a lifetime ago. So many things have changed.


My friends and I used to go to Hawken Drive for food because it's a reasonably close collection of food outlets. Since that period of my life, I've developed a kind of repulsion towards St Lucia because in the last couple of years, my only time spent there was for study and exams. It's enough to make anyway swap their good memories for an association of brain torture.

Having not visited A Salt and Battery in a while, my memory of the place was of crunchy chips, perfectly battered fish, large servings and lots of customers.

Masterchef Pork Schnitzels

Masterchef Pork Schnitzels
Home Cooking



Ever since the first episode aired ~ a month or so ago, I've been carrying on to friends and family about how I would be cooking Masterchef recipes at least 'n' times per week. This hasn't been the case at all and every time I'm asked, I resort to any excuse from "it was Mother's day so my parents cooked instead" to "my boyfriend hates me being in the kitchen" and finally, the more honest reason of "I'm just too lazy".

Well... FINALLY I've managed to 'plate up' (in the words of our favorite TV judges). It's not heart-on-the-plate material but hey, after last week's pressure test, I found myself with an insatiable schnitzel craving so I e-mailed mum with a list of ingredients to be procured (hence eliminating my 2nd favorite excuse of "I couldn't afford ingredients").

Tan Thanh

Tan Thanh
57 Corsair Ave, Inala



Just bought a car recently. Well, not that recently but in scale with how infrequently I've been uploading this blog, it's quite recent. It was a bit of a fiasco picking up the beast because I actually don't have my license (pause for scoffing and snide laughter) so I had to recruit two friends to act as drivers.

One of them was my uni friend Ellen who I hardly ever see now that we're all split up on placement. We planned to catch up over lunch after I got my car sorted out. As for where to eat, it was an easy decision because Ellen wanted to prove where she thought the best pho in Brisbane was.

Homemade Muesli Bars

Homemade Muesli Bars
Home Cooking



It's been a million years since I blogged (slight exaggeration of 2-3 weeks) and the reasons are as follows:

• constant sleepiness
• laziness
• unwillingness to write about muesli bars that I made over a month ago while I was in a healthy food phase (lasted all of 3 days)
• not in the mood

And the list goes on. Ah well, back in business.