Canberra Weekend Getaway

We've been saying we want to get out of Sydney for a while. Never got to decide where to go, who to go with and it was such a hassle to try to organise something with more than 2 people - these 2 have to work on weekend, that 2 can't take leave on those days etc etc. So in the end we just thought forget it, we'll just make a short trip on our own and enjoy some good food. So here we were, ended up in Canberra for a weekend. Left Sydney on Saturday morning, arrived at Canberra around lunch time. Robin actually booked a table for lunch at this busy little bakery called Silo Bakery. He was actually thinking of bringing me there for the desserts which looked awesome on their website, but unfortunately by the time we got there they sold out of ALL their sweets. So we just had lunch there.

I ordered Vegetarian Pates - $12 which came with some sourdough.

The pates came in 3 different flavours: (Clockwise from top left) Pumpkin & walnut, mushroom & almond, pimento & hazelnut. My favourite was the pimento & hazelnut which was a bit like the crunchy chilli and tomato dip. Little bit spicy with the crunchy hazelnut on the freshly baked soft bread.. yummmm.. Can't have the real pate, I really wouldn't mind having these vegetarian pates instead. 2nd flavour that I liked was the mushroom & almond. The only problem with the pumpkin flavour was that it was sweet. Almost like a dessert. Still good, but just a bit weird with the sweetness in there.

Robin ordered the Oyster blade beef braised in beer & onions - $24. It was good too! I ate almost all the bread with my pate, so Robin only had a bit of the bread to go with his nice gravy. Should've ordered more bread. It was still very good though, tender beef with soft potatoes at the bottom soaking up all the yummy gravy.

So that's it for our lunch. It was a pity that we didn't get to eat any of the sweet pastries and stuff. Oh well, maybe another trip.

After lunch we went to the Questacon just to do some touristy thing when we were there :) Drove the mini blimp through a hoop, went into a pitch black dark tent to see the star lab, just basically being a kid again haha.. It was fun. I used to really like to visit all these science centres. Lots of cool things to play with.

Anyway, after that we went to our hotel and checked ourselves in. Had a bit of rest there before heading out to dinner. We were lucky that in our room there was this book. Can't remember what it's called now, but it's basically a where-to-eat-in-Canberra book. So we picked 1 of the restaurants in the book and guess what? It was at the same block as the Silo bakery that we went for lunch. The restaurant that we picked was the Kennedy Room. It's half restaurant and half pub. So the restaurant half had tables and chairs set up, the other half was the bar with some tall tables and stools and plenty of space for people to hang around and chat.

For entree to share, we ordered the Caramelised roast pork belly with chilli & coconut vinegar - $16. The meat was really tender, it was nice to go with the sweet and sour dressing. The only thing missing for me was the crunchy crackling. It would be so much nicer if it had the crackling at well.

Initially we only ordered 1 entree. Then we saw our next table ordered this and it looked really good! So we ordered 1 for ourselves as well - Fried calamari spiced with sumac & black pepper. It was really good too! Cooked just nice, very crispy outside, soft and tender inside. With a bit of lemon juice over it, it's easily 1 of the best fried calamari I've had.

We thought we should be 'healthy' and ordered some greens, but we ended up didn't finish it anyway :p I had to save some space for dessert and Robin's main came with some greens too.

I had the Almond & sesame seed crusted barramundi fillets with Ver Jus - $32. The fish was nice, it wasn't overcooked or anything, I just didn't really like the crust. It was like the dukkah that could be bought in some deli, which I thought the smell of herbs was a bit too strong for the fish. I probably would enjoy it more if it had just a layer of crispy skin. The potatoes with the creamy sauce were really nice though.

Poor Robin had to wait extra long for his Ribeye steak (400g) w beer battered chips, green peppercorn sauce & steamed vegetables - $36. The waitress took our order, even asked him how he would like the steak done, but when she got to the computer or something she just keyed in barramundi twice. So they made us 2 barramundi and didn't make the steak. So I just ate my fish first while Robin waited for his steak to be made. Apparently not worth the wait though. I didn't really try the steak but Robin said it wasnt' as good as expected. The best part of the dish was the chips. Sauce was good too. Just the meat not as tender as Robin thought it should be.

I ordered my dessert while Robin was eating his steak - Lime & coconut pannacotta with oven-dried pineapple - $13. When I took the first bite of the pineapple, it felt almost like I've discovered a new continent! I love everything pineapple - fresh pineapple, can pineapple, even (fake) pineapple flavoured gummi! So being introduced to this oven-dried pineapple was like "I've found a new way to eat pineapple!!" It was sooo good. The pannacotta on its own was very sweet, but together with the slight tartness of the pineapple they were like the perfect match. Wobbly + crispy; sweet + sour... Just made so much sense when put together. The only watchout was - the pineapple tend to stuck to the teeth hehee.. I didn't mind it at all, but I know it could be annoying at times :p

After dinner we just went up to the Mount Ainsley lookout. Wanted to take some star trails photos, but sky was too bright from the city lights and the big bright moon. Also, it was only 3 degrees at that time. So we didn't stay long there.

Next morning we woke up around 10am. As we were packing up, got a phone call from the reception to say that check out time was supposed to be 10 and it was almost 11 already haha. I thought I requested for late check out when I booked the room online, but I guess they didn't see my comment (or they ignored it). Anyway, so breakfast was skipped and we consulted our 'bible' of the trip again. Felt like having a Thai lunch, so we picked 1 of the Thai restaurants in the book. Guess what? It's located at the same block as Silo and Kennedy Room! haha.. I guess that block of shops at Kingston got plenty of good restaurants. Got there, restaurant was closed. So Robin suggested we go to the other suburb which he knew had plenty of nice restaurants too which was Manuka. So we went there and we saw another Thai restaurant which I remember was in the book too. It was the Bann Latsamy Thai Restaurant. By the way, sorry for not being able to provide prices for the dishes here. I took a copy of their menu, but couldn't find it now :p

For entree, we had the Rice paper prawn rolls. It was very similar to those that we get in Vietnamese restaurant. Refreshing sort of entree with fresh cucumber, some sprouts, cooked prawns and some rice noodle wrapped in rice paper.

There were a few options for rice on the menu and we picked the 1 that we never tried before: Saffron rice. It was bright orange in colour. Taste wise, I actually couldn't taste anything special. Robin said it taste like coconut rice, but I had a feeling the coconut taste came from the red curry, not the rice itself.

This was the Duck & lychee red curry which I thoguht contributed to the coconut taste in the rice when ate together with rice. It was very tasty, rich and full of coconut flavour. Generous servings too! Another thing that I liked was that all the duck meat was deboned :D Usually when order duck curry in Thai restaurants, I find that they give very little duck meat, just lots of vege. This was the opposite. Lots of meat, lots of big juicy lychees, very very good.

Another main that we ordered to go with our saffron rice - Stir fried tofu with cashew nuts. It wasn't too bad when eat with the rice, just a bit too sweet with the sauce. I would soak my rice with the red curry sauce but I wouldn't do the same with this. This plate of tofu + vege was really big too. We ended up asking for 2 takeaway boxes and packed ourselves 2 boxes full of lunch to bring to work the next day. Too full from these entree and mains. Didn't have any room for dessert :(  I would get the mango sticky rice if I had room in my stomach.

Overall, it was a very relaxing trip. Very happy with all the food there. Did some touristy thingy like visit the questacon & the parliament as well. Experimented with making timelapse video too which you can see here. At first we thought what are we gonna do in Canberra for 2 days, but when we got there, there were actually more things that we wanted to do than we had time for. Not a bad place for a short trip at all :)

Silo bakery
36 Giles Street
Kingston ACT 2604
(02) 6260 6060

The Kennedy Room
25 Kennedy Street
Kingston
(02) 6162 2318

Bann Latsamy Thai Restaurant
M Centre
Shop 9, Flinders Way
Manuka ACT 2603
(02) 6295 0426

Samcheonggak (三清閣)

I think it's about time I update my blog :p Haven't been eating at many new/interesting places lately. So not much of new material to write about. There are still stuff that I haven't posted though, so here's 1 of those. Just been feeling very tired lately, everyday after work, go home, have dinner, shower and sleep. Don't even have the energy to turn on my computer, let alone to sit in front of it to process photos or write. 


Anyway, let's talk food. Went to Seoul earlier this year for holiday. Most of the stuff we had were street food, little things or supermarket food court stuff. I think I'll just make 1 post later to show all those in 1 post. For this post, I'll write about our meal at Samcheonggak. It's 14 course Korean fine dining :D It's the most expensive meal the whole trip. ₩110,000 per person (which roughly converts to AUD 110). 

Started off with some fresh vege sticks with dip. Some chinese cabbage, celery, carrot and I'm not sure the other 1 was potato or pumpkin or something else. Didn't touch the celery. Not sure what dip that was too. I think it was some sort of bean paste kind of thing. Very strong flavour. Only need a little bit. 

This was the pumpkin porridge. A bit like pumpkin soup, but with some oats and grains to bite on. Served together with the pumpkin porridge was the watery kimchi. 

A better picture of the watery kimchi. It's a bit like the radish/carrot pickles that sometimes get served at the side of certain dishes in Vietnamese restaurants. 

Here's the Seasoned King Prawn with Squeezed Pine Nut. The first thing that came to our mind was 'It's a bit small for King Prawn'. It was nice, but the prawn is not as big as expected. Just a normal size adult prawn we normally get in Sydney. 

We had a bit of problem following the dishes that were served looking at the menu. It felt as though they just served whatever that got prepared quicker. Hence, this dish which was supposed to be the appetizer came after the prawn. Anyway, I quite like these tiny wraps. The wraps were really soft, with some vegetables inside. It was something light which would be good to start the meal with. Pity it didn't come out in order. 

Again, another out of order dish - Platter of Dried Five Delicacies. This was supposed to be the very first dish according to the menu. It became the 4th to our table. I have no idea what they were, I'm guessing from left to right: dried pumpkin, then some sort of dried fruit, another dried something, candied walnut and dried strawberry. Strawberry looked a bit funny though. The top looked pale pink, the bottom look greenish. Almost like a mouldy strawberry :p Not a big fan of dried fruit. I guess these were alright since I did finish them all. 

This was probably the best course of the whole meal - Stir fried abalone. The abalone was fresh and soft. Not chewy at all. Stir fried with some sesame seeds and sesame oil which gave it the great smell. As soon as Robin had a slice of it, he told me he would try making this back in Sydney (nope, never happened :p). 

Something extra for us. Couldn't find this in the menu and have absolutely no idea what it was haha.. Can't really tell much from the photo other than there's a slice of cucumber sitting on top a pile of stuff. 

Jeju Sliced Boiled Pork Belly. Not sure what those green leaves were, they were very aromatic which went very well wrapping the pork and ate together. Using the 2 different leaves even with the same meat would give 2 very different taste to the dish.

This blob of red thing was the Korean Beef Steak Tartare. A blob of raw meat like that just didn't look very nice to me :p It wasn't too bad though. Just didn't think it was too special that's all. 

This was the Grilled Duck Breast & Angelica Salad. It was nice, but again, didn't think it was impressive though. It wasn't dry or anything, but it could be nicer if the skin was crispier. 

This was the Wrapped Kimchi. It taste like the normal red kimchi, except presented slightly differnetly. All the smaller bits and pieces were wrapped in the big chinese cabbage leaves and put in a bowl like a ball of vegetable. Then it was cut open with a pair of scissors in front of us at our table to expose the filling inside. 

This is another dish that was really good. Couldn't decide which was my favourite between this and the abalone. This was the Braised Short Beef Rips with Abalone. Beef was really soft, abalone was just as nice as the previous version the gravy was sweet and fragrant. Just couldn't get enough of it. 

This was the Seafood Sinseollo i.e. royal hotpot. This was the 'special' in the menu. The whole meal would've been cheaper if we didn't have this. Just thought since I went all the way there, might as well see what's the fuss about. Nothing spectacular. Just a seafood soup. What was interesting was the pot itself :D It was a mini hot pot that was meant for 1 person only. It was soooo cute! Tiny little hotpot. We tried to find it in supermarket and department stores in Korea, couldn't find them. I should've taken another picture that show the size in perspective. It was around 15cm tall, 10cm diameter. 

Some Oyster Kimchi as a side dish. By then we were so full already that we hardly touched it. Big oysters though. 

Our last savoury dish - Seasonal Hot Pot with Rice. Basically a vegetable soup with rice. Different sorts of mushrooms, some chilli, tofu, greens, etc. 

Rice that came with the vegetable hot pot was nice. It was purple in colour with lots of grains in it. Chewy and little bit sticky. I was so full that time but I still tried to eat as much of the rice as I could. 

This was the only dessert that we had. No idea what the name was, only cinnamon dessert was mentioned. It looked like a mochi, when I saw it I was expecting something sticky and chewy, but it wasn't like that at all. It was more a soft fudge sort of texture. Can't say that I liked it, but it was o.k. 

Cinnamon Tea was served at the end of the meal. Even though I didn't like the cinnamon dessert, but I thought the tea was nice. Maybe because the cinnamon taste is not as strong as the dessert. The cinnamon was a bit more 'humble' here. Tea was little bit sweet with the smell of cinnamon and some pine nuts floating on top. Good end to the 14 course meal. 


Overall, I think for the same price I could get something better in Sydney. However, I probably shouldn't compare it this way, since it's totally different sort of experience, different sort of cuisine. The only thing I didn't like was the way they served. Dishes came out in the wrong order (they knew that too because they actually said to us "we serve this first, that will come later"). Also, it felt like we were being rushed. Usually in a degustation menu, dishes come out 1 by 1. Here, even before we finished our first dish, they would served the second dish on the table with the 3rd dish waiting at the side. Maybe the mentality is not to have us waiting, but I still don't think they should serve the next dish before we finish eating. From my experience with degustation menus, a 10 course meal would probably take 3 hours if not more. Over here, we finished our 14 courses within 1.5 hours. It wasn't 'eat slowly and enjoy', it was more like 'quick! next dish is here already!'. 



Seoul-si Seongbuk-gu 
Seongbuk2-dong 330-115 
SamcheongGak


We were there for lunch, the restaurant had lots of windows around so it was nice and bright to take photo. Very spacious seatings as well. 

Shoya

Happy New Year people!! And today being the first day of Chinese New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai!! Here's the long overdue post about a very nice meal in Melbourne. Been meaning to write about this place for ages but kept on getting distracted. Been away for 3 weeks, before that was Christmas, and before that I was too busy playing zombie vs plant :p 


Anyway, back to this meal. Had this when I went to Melbourne few months back. I knew there was this nice restaurant there but I didn't want to go alone. So I asked Vivienne who had recently moved to Melbourne to join me. We ordered quite a few dishes, chatted non-stop through dinner, totally didn't feel we've just met for the first time :) I guess that's the good thing about meeting up with food bloggers. There will never be the awkward silence because there's a topic that we can never finish talking about - FOOD! 

Started with Sashimi Moriawase - Sashimi lover's feast – carefully selected and arranged by our chef to delight your eyes and mouth $42.80. I was a bit disappointed with the presentation of this sashimi. I wanted to show Vivienne the cool ice-bowl the sashimi that I had in my previous visit. I found out after that they only put the entree size sashimi in that beautiful ice-bowl, but not the main size sashimi. Even though the presentation was not as impressive as I thought it would be, the sashimi was very fresh and each and every piece was thick and sweet. 

Salmon Toro Aburi - Rare cooked salmon belly - $7.00 As mentioned a few times in my blog, salmon aburi has to be my favourite sushi. I just really really like the smell of the lightly torched salmon. So when I saw salmon TORO aburi, I just had to order it. It was definitely as good as expected to be. The fragrant, the juice, the sweetness, it'll stay as my favourite sushi for long long time to come. 

Served together with the salmon toro aburi was the Toro aburi - Lightly broiled tuna belly - $8.50. Almost as good as the salmon, but I'm biased towards salmon anyway :p 

Crab Tempura - Whole ‘Taraba’ crab leg deep-fried in tempura style. This is not a very good photo because it doesn't show how long that crab leg was! It was probably the length of my forearm if not longer. The crab meat was so fresh, the batter was very crispy and there was just so much meat in that leg. Shell was cracked so all we needed to do was just to pick it up, dip it in the salt (green tea salt??) and bite. Even though it was deep fried, the meat was still juicy and sweet inside. 

Nama Shii Hotate - SHOYA's signature and must try fired dish. Mashed scallops softy surround the quail egg topped with a whole shiitake mushroom to make it perfect $16.50. This was definitely something I thought very creative and different. Didn't care to eat that chilli that came with the quail eggs though. If nobody told me quail eggs have much higher cholesterol than chicken eggs, I could be popping these little yummy packages 1 after another into my mouth all night long. 

Now this is the MUST ORDER dish. Beef Spinach Soufflé - Ox tongue simmered over two days with wine and sake then delicately rolled with spinach soufflé $32.00. By the way, the menu did not have photos of the dishes. So until we ordered and saw it on the table, we didn't know what to expect. At first I wasn't very sure about this. Beef Spinach Soufflé. Usually the soufflés that I know are desserts. Soft fluffy desserts that would rise very tall and then sink very fast too. Couldn't imagine a beef and spinach flavoured soufflé like that. As it turned out, it wasn't as I thought (phew!). It was actually REALLY REALLY GOOD!! The spinach around the ox tongue was so soft. I thought it would be like a lot of fibre and hard to chew, but no, it's like it was cooked till all fibre had dissolved and it would just melt in the mouth. The ox tongue was as written on menu, simmered over 2 days, it would literally just melt away together with the spinach. It was definitely 1 of those dishes that you take a bite and you would automatically close your eyes and go "MMMmmmmm............" and then you would wish that the plate would magically refill itself. 

For dessert, Vivienne picked the Chocolate cake with plum wine. I tried a piece, like commented by Viv, couldn't really taste the plum wine. It was a nice rich creamy chocolate cake nonetheless. Just that we were expecting something a bit more than just a chocolate cake when we saw the term "plum wine" on the menu. 

I ordered the Tofu Chocolate Mousse - Smooth light chocolate mousse smothered with tofu - $9.00. All I have to say is that it didn't feel like tofu :p It was a yummy creamy chocolate mousse as far as I know haha. The only thing kinda stood out was that red 'seeds' on the mousse. There were some gold flakes, a blueberry and the 2 red seeds. Not sure what they were, but they tasted like pepper seeds or something. Something herb-ish than fruity. 


It was a very enjoyable evening. The restaurant managed to maintain the quality of the food they served since 2 years ago when I last went there. Very very satisfied with the meal. It was also very nice to meet up with Viv!! I thought it would be a little awkward to meet someone the first time, but nope, it was like meeting an old friend :D 


Shoya
25 Market Lane, Melbourne, Victoria
Tel: (03) 9650 0848


Honestly, I can't remember how was the lighting condition already. So I thought if I don't remember it being particularly bad, that means it should be quite o.k :p Shouldn't be too difficult to take photos. Space wise was good. We were able to move the dish around and take photos from all sorts of different angles.