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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I wasn’t quite ready to post this, but then around midnight last night I was in a tired state and accidentally published my draft version that only had brief notes in it with the photos, so if you see a weird description on the urbanspoon page, that’s why!
I’d been curious about Cantina 663 for ages and finally got to visit on Monday at lunchtime this week. I loved the interiors at Cantina, it felt familiar and comfortable with lots of brown tones and wooden surfaces. I arrived there just after opening at 12pm to find the place slowly filling but still fairly spacious and chose a seat near the window.
To start off with, we both ordered the apple juice which was amazing. It was freshly made, had an interesting cloudiness to it at the bottom and the addition of a crisp piece of apple was fantastic, which I ate at the end of my meal – as dessert.
For lunch, I ordered salad, grilled skirt steak, date, avocado, crispy fried onion and yoghurt which was very generously portioned. The combination of ingredients seemed a little odd to me but I thought I’d give it a chance. The steak was my favourite part of the meal, the texture was deliciously tender.
The fried onion was great at first, very crunchy, however there was a lot of it and it was very strong in comparison with some of the other flavours in the dish. I wasn’t too sure about the dates into the dish, but these comments are just my personal preference, the guy waiting on our table mentioned whilst I was ordering that the grilled skirt steak had been a very popular dish lately.
Aimee ordered the bruschetta, roast cauliflower, almonds and buffalo mozzarella. She said she enjoyed it but had some trouble finishing the cauliflower.
The best thing about my lunch experience was the service; it was unexpectedly fantastic, I don’t think I’ve had service like this at a restaurant ever before. We had a bright, cheerful guy named Danny waiting on our table (I hope I remembered that right). He came by very frequently to check we had enough water, refill our glasses and provide a little friendly chit chat.
After lunch, I was faced with a decision to order dessert. I was sorely tempted to order the “vanilla olive oil parfait; strawberry, pistachio” but unfortunately was too full. I would probably go back and try other things on the menu, the offerings are very unique and I like that they try to use local and organic produce as much as possible. Looking at the breakfast menu, I would be curious to try this place out for breakfast sometime.
Check it out: http://www.cantina663.com/
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Tom and I decided to go somewhere fancy for lunch on our last day in Pemberton (back in June, this post is well overdue). The Wine and Truffle Co in Manjimup seemed suitable as I have never had truffle and was extremely curious to go to this place.
For our meal, we started out with the Toasted hazelnut sourdough with truffle butter. I really enjoyed this, I love the flavour of hazlenuts and sourdough so those two things together were wonderful. I think the truffle butter added a kind of inexplicable complexity in flavour that couldn’t really be explained by the other ingredients.
Tom ordered the Beef and Shiraz Pie, described on the menu as “slow cooked beef in a rich Shiraz sauce, baked in crisp pastry served with homemade tomato & apple chutney, seasonal vegetables and truffle mash”. Tom said that it was delicious.
I ordered the handmade truffle pasta which was described on the menu better than I could put it: “handmade truffle pasta with sauteed mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and spinach drizzled with truffle infused oil & parmigiano reggiano”. I had ordered this dish because I was keen to leave the restaurant knowing what truffle tasted like and compared to everything else on the menu, it had truffle written more times in the description than any other dish.
The pasta came with flakes of black truffle ontop that looked delightfully like cross-sections of tiny black brains. The taste was earthy and salty, as expected with mushroom, parmigiano reggiano and truffle. The cherry tomatoes were my favourite part of the dish, providing sweet freshness relief to the oily dish. I was not partial to the pasta – it was thick and gluggy.
I’m experimenting with taking pictures while food is being eaten – this way the person I am dining with doesn’t slowly become hungrier while I figure out which angles work best with their meal and their food gets slowly colder ;)
Some meals don’t photograph well once they’ve been partially eaten!
Do you think this half-eaten piece of pie looks tasty or off-putting? I’m on the fence…
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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.
This may have made Tom hungry as he ordered the venison stew, which he said was delicious.
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.
If we returned to Franz Josef, we would definitely revisit this place and I highly recommend it.
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Road tripping from Christchurch to Franz Josef, we stopped in Arthur’s Pass for lunch at the Wobbly Kea Cafe. This place had a comfortable kind of homey feel to it with the wooden floors & ceiling and warm colours. The lady who greeted us at the door was really friendly and advised us to sit wherever we wanted, and order at the counter when we were ready.
I ordered the pasta fettucine which was nice, but looking back at the menu, I suspect the steak ribeye or lamb salad may have been a better choice. Tom said that the fish and chips were very tasty, pictured in the background.
I love the look of mounted heads. I believe this is a Himalayan Tahr – we learned whilst in New Zealand that this animal (related to the goat) is an introduced species to New Zealand. It was introduced in small numbers for hunting and has flourished in the alpine parts of the South Island. It’s presence in New Zealand is controversial as it is endangered in some parts of the world, however in New Zealand it’s grazing activity is having a negative impact on native alpine vegetation.
As another aside, I started to notice that a lot of restaurants / cafes in New Zealand offer this strange thing called “Lolly cake” which was a caramel colour embedded with lollies, usually a combination of licorice allsorts and some other brightly coloured pastel lollies (apparently “Eskimos”).
Tom was curious to try some but did not end up buying any lolly cake while we were in New Zealand. The lady working at the Wobbly Kea told us that she hadn’t even tried it and added that it didn’t seem appealing to her as it was a sickly sweet combination of condensed milk, butter, lollies and crushed biscuits. I don’t think we missed out on much…
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Tom and I landed in Christchurch with a hankering for steak. After settling our luggage in at the motel, we scoped out a couple of options for steak on the internet in Christchurch and Mu Premium Steakhouse looked like our best bet. Unfortunately, we arrived at the restaurant at around 4:30pm – a little early for dinner. The staff appeared to be having some sort of meeting out the back, however, the front doors were open so we tentatively edged inside.
A man came to greet us and told us the kitchen would open at 5pm. He asked us if we would like to sit at the bar with some drinks while we waited and we agreed. Our lemon, lime & bitters were served in tall glasses and, as you can see, had both lemon and lime slices in them.
Eventually when the kitchen opened, we were directed to our table and given menus. The placemats (pictured underneath the menu here) had a really interesting cutout shape.
One thing that really impressed me with the menu was that they actually listed when specific cuts of beef had gristle and/or fat in it and how much of it there was in each particular cut of beef. I really hate wrangling with gristle in beef and was very pleased that it was all laid out on the menu.
It was hard to decide what to eat as everything looked good.
I was very sleepy due to the red eye flight and was also extremely hungry as I do not enjoy plane food. These two factors meant that I somehow forgot to take photos of the actual steaks that we had. However, we are both lovers of steak and were impressed with the flavour of the sauces and quality of the steak, and would go back again if given the opportunity!
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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.
Lee had the “Special Ramen”, it looked really tasty.
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.
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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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.
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