dinner

Dinner at Phong Vinh – Northbridge Vietnamese

by Sab on March 28, 2012

As most of my friends know, I’m currently obsessed with Vietnamese food. On recommendation from a Vietnamese person, I visited Phong Vinh on William St, Northbridge. My friend was running late, so I sat in the restaurant for 20 minutes waiting which the staff did not seem to mind. The service was friendly and when we finally got to order, the food and drinks came very quickly.

We started with the stuffed chicken wings (one each) which were nice and crispy on the outside. They were $8, which seemed pricey but there was a decent amount of meat and other things in there so I didn’t mind the cost once I had consumed them, they were surprisingly filling. I’m getting hungry thinking about them now.

Stuffed chicken wings from Phong Vinh

As a main, I ordered the Raw Beef Hofan soup, which I had no complaints with flavour-wise. The only thing that bothered me was the beef in the soup which was full of tough sinewy bits, which made it very difficult to eat :( I liked the soup otherwise, there was lots of bean sprouts, mint etc so if I ate there again, I would try a different dish.

Raw Beef Hofan Soup from Phong Vinh

My friend ordered the dry egg noodle with crispy chicken, which she ate most of and she took the rest away to eat for lunch the next day.

Egg noodle with crispy chicken from Phong Vinh

We both ordered drinks that I didn’t take photos of because they arrived last and I was too hungry. I ordered the young coconut juice, which always tastes the same wherever I go – it tastes like the canned stuff you can buy from chinese supermarkets ;) My friend had a jackfruit shake and she seemed to enjoy that!

What is your favourite place for Vietnamese food and what’s your favourite dish there? :)

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Playing with my food… angles

by Sab on December 7, 2011

I’m liking this top-down angle of food lately. Often with food photos, there’s no context required, I just want to capture the food itself. In this case, katsu chicken from Yuki Japanese Restaurant in Willeton.

Here’s the only other photo I took that evening that I like:

Prefer the top-down angle as it captures more detail in the delicious fried coating. It’s rather awkward to take top-down photographs in restaurants though, because you need to be vertically over the food…

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Dinner at ToTo Vietnamese – Victoria Park

by Sab on November 29, 2011

The restaurant was pleasantly quiet around 6:30pm on a Saturday evening. After we placed our order, the food came astonishingly fast. We ordered sizzling beef and lemon chicken with steamed rice to share between two people. I usually order Pho and/or rice paper rolls at a Vietnamese restaurant, but unfortunately I had already had a brothy soup for lunch that day and couldn’t bear the thought of more soup.

The sizzling beef was tender and served on a hot plate, slathered in tasty sauce and came with water chestnuts, baby corn, onion and celery (forming the vegetable component of the meal). The lemon chicken had a crispy coating with a thin-consistency sweet sauce that was not too overpowering.

I ordered the lychee drink with crushed ice but was not as impressed with it as the syrup was not easy to drink and was likely diluted canned lychee syrup. However, there was a whole host of colourful drinks to choose from on the menu, I would be keen to try something else next time.

Just a short post today, busy with other things unfortunately. I keep finding great resources online but I do not have time to try them :( There’s a cosplay photoshoot in the works…

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The day of the ball

by Sab on October 3, 2011

Starting with the afternoon’s preparatory activities, I got out my makeup box. This is a clear stationery box from Officeworks. This is a great way to store makeup – everything is easily accessible, and makeup can be sorted into different drawers.

No more digging through a makeup bag to find what you need! Please note: I have accumulated these products over recent years, not all at once.

Here is a cheap brush set I am using, I found it on Cents of Style.

When I placed an order for these brushes, I don’t think they’d ever shipped to Australia before so it took a bit of negotiation to get it here. I don’t know if this set is comparable with brand name brushes but I love having a range of brush ends to choose from for placing colour / blending, etc! Back to the actual ball…

The ball was held at Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, which is an impressively large venue for an impressively large number of people. Here is what the line looked like by the time I got in – it was at least two or three times this long to start with.

Shot of the table setting.

I seemed to be the only person who had brought a touchup mirror in my handbag, it’s really handy to carry one around with you, four other girls at my table used it to reapply their lipstick!

Overall, I was pretty happy with the food. The mains were excellent and well portioned. I don’t remember the exact menu but there was a choice between lamb and chicken, and those little square blocks of cream were potato. Tasty, tasty potato.

Dessert was chocolate fondant, which was amazing – warm, soft and gooey on the inside and went well with the vanilla bean icecream and pastelle-looking thing in the middle.

My gluten-intolerant friends to either side of me were served this dessert dish, which was neatly arranged fruit.

At the end of the night before bed, I got a quick snap of my jewellery. Flower hairclip and earrings from Forever New. I love the floral, lace, flowy girliness that oozes from every corner of that store.

In some ways, the part I enjoy most about a formal event is the planning that goes into it, creating a look with makeup, hair and accessories. When I get to the event, I really like to look around at what other people have done with their outfits, how they’ve put it all together.

Having makeup and hair done professionally will obviously look great, but there is something really satisfying and fun about planning, researching and doing it yourself. What do you enjoy most about dressy events?

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Lakeside Restaurant – Karri Valley Resort

by Sab on June 16, 2011

After a long drive down from Perth to Pemberton, we didn’t feel like cooking our own dinner. We were staying at the Karri Valley Chalets so we wandered next door to the resort next door for dinner at Lakeside Restaurant.

To start, we ordered the warm house loaf which was a dukkah encrusted loaf, served with balsamic essence and sea salt butter.

The bread was perfect – warm throughout, soft on the inside, crunchy and flaky on the outside.

Tom ordered the fish of the day, which was an oven baked snapper with parsnip mash and a spinach, beetroot and fetta salad. I was told that the mash was delicious and tasted like potato :)

I ordered the moroccan style calamari, which came with wild spinach and a chilli plum glaze. I also ordered a side of roasted pumpkin, sweet potato and beetroot with shaved pecorino. I couldn’t finish it all, but my favourite part of my order was the squid. I wasn’t too sure about the batter, but it was light and flaked off easily.

Not a bad way to start our holiday!

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Viet Nosh – Nedlands

by Sab on April 22, 2011

Suz and I felt like some Asian food for dinner, so I chose Viet Nosh on Hampden Road in Nedlands. I had eaten here a small handful of times for lunch and enjoyed the beef pho and vietnamese spring rolls, so I was eager to go back and try something else on the menu. I also knew that Suz preferred chicken that didn’t have bones in it and had previously noticed several non-bone options on the menu.

I read somewhere that it was important to make a booking for this place and I would agree. When we walked in, the great majority of tables had “reserved” plastic signs on them, even though it was a Wednesday night. Whilst Suz and I sipped our lychee drinks (pictured below) and chatted, the restaurant filled up completely and ontop of that, there was a fairly constant stream of people coming in to pick up takeaway orders.

Lychee Drink - Closer

The lychee drinks were alright, mine contained four canned lychees, the largest of which was perched atop the drink at the rim of the glass. The other three were trapped underneath an avalanche of ice. I had to use my spoon to manoeuvre around the ice and get at these lychees because there was so much ice that did not melt.

By the time we received our mains, I was so hungry that I completely forgot about photographing my meal (not because service was slow, I was hungry due to having exercised earlier in the day). I ordered the stir-fry beef noodles, which were delicious. I enjoyed the salty and fresh Vietnamese flavours, as well as the texture of soft rice noodles against crunchy bean sprouts. There was a generous amount of thinly sliced beef, much to my delight – both as a meat lover and a female with a history of iron deficiency. I was almost finished when I remembered about the plan to take some pictures for my blog, so I just took a picture of what remained.

As you can see, Suz’s meal in the blurred background (prawn curry) is considerably less demolished than mine. This is due to the fact that I was multitasking by munching and listening whilst she recounted stories about things like Dragon Age 2.

As an aside, we noticed that the words “Chicken Maryland” appeared several times on the menu. Neither of us were sure what that meant, however the helpful and accurate pictures that were next to each menu item hinted at the idea that Chicken Maryland was chicken on the bone. Some further investigative work on the internet has confirmed that in Australia, Chicken Maryland refers to the quarter chicken cut that includes the thigh and leg.

Anyway, I really enjoyed my reasonably priced and tasty meal (I think Suz did also?). I was amazed that we sat there for two hours without being rushed out of the restaurant or hinted to leave (y’know, the “do you want any desserts / tea / coffee / your bill?”), which was a pleasant surprise. I would recommend this place for the reasonable price, tasty food, range of options on the menu and non-intrusive service.

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The Alice May – Franz Josef

by Sab on December 21, 2010

We were staying at the Bella Vista in Franz Josef (which is a great motel) and decided to wander down the road for dinner at The Alice May. I had found some positive reviews of the place and it did not disappoint. The decor gave the place character, with wooden beams, floors and furniture and interesting ornate decorations such as an old cash register, a bunch of mounted things we could not identify and a prominent deer head.

Cash register

Window table

Deer head

This may have made Tom hungry as he ordered the venison stew, which he said was delicious.

Venison Stew

I ordered the salmon, which was arranged very thoughtfully and artistically on a rectangular plate. It was slightly salty but other than that was great. It tasted really healthy and let the food speak for itself. The vegetables in both our meals were a welcome addition to our holiday food diet.

Salmon

If we returned to Franz Josef, we would definitely revisit this place and I highly recommend it.

Streetscape

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Dinner at Arigataya Ramen – Northbridge

by Sab on December 21, 2010

Last night, I went to Arigataya Ramen on Roe St in Northbridge. I walked in the door and was motioned to a table where I awaited the arrival of my dinner partner for the evening, Lee.

While I was waiting, one of the Japanese female staff working there started speaking to me in Japanese. I’m not sure if it was the way I looked or my shy and nervous manner which contributed to the mistaken assumption about my nationality, but I took it as a compliment.

When Lee arrived, we shared the Gyoza as a starter, it was quite nice. It came with a bunch of small bottles we could use to flavour our food.

Special ramen

Lee had the “Special Ramen”, it looked really tasty.

Chicken teriyaki dipping sauce

I ordered the “Chicken Teriyaki Dipping Sauce”, which is a noddle dish that comes with separate sauce bowl in which to dip the noodles. It clearly states on the menu, with the help of additional demonstrative images, not to pour the dipping sauce into the noodle bowl, as the soup will get cold. I mostly ordered this dish for the novelty of having a noddle dipping sauce. Unfortunately, my chopstick skills are extremely ungainly and I found the taste of the dipping sauce strange. These two factors destroyed somewhat the novelty of having to dip noodles before ingesting them.

Chicken Teriyaki

The noodle part of my dish was great though; the egg was slightly soft in the middle, noodles were good and the chicken teriyaki was fantastic: it had been fried so it was slightly crunchy and had a strong sweet and salty teriyaki flavour to it. I’d be keen to go back another time and try something else from the menu!

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The Beaufort Street Merchant – Mt Lawley

by Sab on September 29, 2010

Tonight I had dinner with Lee at The Beaufort Street Merchant in Mt Lawley. It was fun and delicious.

One of the male staff working at The Beaufort Street Merchant came up to me and loudly proclaimed “No photography!” as I was concentrating on squinting through my SLR’s viewfinder. I visibly jumped and looked up, guilty and about to apologise… then I saw that he was laughing at me! Hehe

I ordered the Coq Au Vin Pie which is described as “hearty peasant pie, filled with provincial slow cooked chicken coq au vin, on mash”. It was so good! The pastry around the soft chicken drumstick was light and crunchy. The sauce was really rich and gave a lovely flavour to the dish. I also ordered “petit greens, vinaigrette” to share which was a bowl of dressed leaves with crunchy bread croutons (in the bowl to the right of the picture below).

Lee ordered the Steak Fries Au Poivre which is “rib eye steak (400g) rubbed in herbs and garlic with our house chips and deluxe pepper sauce”. The chips were divine, I ate some and they tasted exactly like Original Kettle chips. The dish was sooo big, I was super impressed that Lee managed to finish it.

For dessert, we managed to squeeze in the chocolate tart. This was topped with crunchy honeycomb and came with a small saucer of cream.

After we packed in our dessert, we were definitely done for the night. I was so absorbed talking to Lee the whole night I didn’t realise there was a whole store area at the back with racks and racks of wine and a cheese fridge, amongst other things.