Balinese Sunday Brunch with ze Bunch

It was a lazy sunday for us, we just wanna enjoy our day without any plans. Since ze bunch were gonna have their brunch in a balinese restaurant just 5 mins away from our place so we thought we could join them together. 

A quick escapee to "Wantilan Bali"~

Nasi Goreng (mild) - Fried rice with chicken, egg, chicken satay top with cracker

Betutu Siap - Chicken braised in kafir lime and lemongrass paste

Wantilan Bebek Goreng - Duck braised and fried with snake bean urap and sambal on the side

Tahu Tempe Megoreng - Fried tofu and tempe in condiment with thick soy sauce and chili

Jukut Gado Gado - Blanch fresh veggies with boiled egg, fried bean curd and tempe, mixed in peanut sauce

Plecing Kangkung - Blanch water spinach with mild tomato and lime sambal

Be Celeng Guling - Suckling pig slowly cooked in lemon grass paste, top with crispy pork crackling

The Betutu Siap is slightly disappointing, it has a strong flavour of herb but the meat is flavourless. Our Indon friend told us that the purpose of eating betutu is to cry because it is suppose to be so spicy that if you are not tearing means that the betutu is not up to standard. However, the Wantilan Bebek Goreng and Tahu Tempe Megoreng was quite good. Mr commented that his Nasi Goreng was too oily for his liking. As for Ms's Jukut Gado Gado, how can peanut sauce taste bad rite? It was okay but there's definitely other much better ones out there. Ohh ya and the Be Celeng Guling, the crispy pork topping was indeed very crackling as we can hear the crackling sound loud and clear when our friend was eating that. Luckily he didn't chew his tooth out!

*Lunch is only available on weekend*

Happy Sunday =)

How's everybody's Sunday? Hope you all had a good weekend =) We wanna eat out for brunch today so we went to city for The Grain Store at Flinders Lane. They are currently at the no.1 place in Urbanspoon's talk-of-the-town list so we were tempted to check it out.

'Enjoy our table of inspiration'

Clean and simple decorated interior

Waiting for our foooooood~!

*special menu* French Toast - Buttermilk french toast with cold spiced nashi pear and candied pecan

Bacon Steak & Smoky New Season Borlotti Beans with eggs sunny sided up, whipped goat's feta, vincotto

Its quite sad to say that we were a little disappointed especially when we were heading to the place with the high 'talk-of-the-town' expectation. And when we say its disappointing, its not because the food is terrible or something. To be fair to The Grain Store, the quality of the food we ordered was good but their menu/cooking style/cooking culture somehow just doesn't suit both our taste and likings. 

After brunch, we had to stay in the city to pass some things to Mr's cousin. Both of us were craving for an after-meal dessert so Mr suggested La Petite Gateau but unfortunately it was closed on a Sunday so we changed our plan and head towards Melbourne Central. We walked passed La Belle Miette and nothing can stop Ms from going into the shop to get the best macaroons in town!

Happy Ms with salted caramel, mango & coconut and hazelnut la belle macaroons

It was very windy on the outside so we stayed in Melbourne Central to kill time, we scout around the building for some sweet tooth to fix our cravings but nothing seems to be satisfying as our thoughts was all about Brownie and Passionfruit Chocolate Gateau from La Petite Gateau. End up we sat down in Theobroma Chocolate Lounge for some chocolates.

Waffles drizzled with thick melted chocolate and a scoop of ice cream

Hot belgian dark chocolate drink

As for dinner, we came home and boiled corn soup with pork bones and carrots add some red dates, scallops and wolf berries. As weekends are the days where we are allowed to indulge in everything sweet and fattening, we ended our night with Magnum's honeycomb ice cream accompanied by running man(the funniest tv show on earth)! A sunday well spent =) Goodnight people and have a nice week ahead~!

What about Replete Providore?

Having brunch in Replete was an impromptu decision, we were supposed to be eating dim sums that morning afternoon in Tao Tao House but it's a full house. 8 hungry ghost wandering on the side street trying to think of a place for nice brunch and Mr thought of Replete cause it's just few blocks away. Mr had been there for their big breakfast before, he said that it's good and they serve real big portion.

As usual~ A cuppa hot chocolate to start off with

Peppermint Tea Infused Hot Chocolate - This might not be in the menu as it is recommended by le waiter

Spotted a beautiful rose design light on the ceiling

Eggs Benedict - grilled ham hock, mustard, poached eggs, english muffin, hollandaise with extra hash brown

Replete Breakfast - poached eggs, roast tomato, mushrooms, hash brown, bacon, chorizo

grill chicken with lotsa peas? can't find this dish on it's website menu, might be on the special menu board

Replete Omelette with chilli, ham hock and other ingredients

Corn Fritters - istra bacon, sour cream, avocado salso, sweet chilli

Ricotta and Orange Hotcakes - lemoncurd, strawberries

Those that had Replete Breakfast was very satisfied, just that some might find the bacon a bit too salty to their liking. However, the Eggs Benedict was disappointing as the poached eggs were over cooked. The Ricotta and Orange Hotcakes was good, le friend initially wanted to have the other hotcakes from the special menu board but some of the ingredients were not available so he'll just have to settle with this. Overall food was good, if we want to have big breakfast we'll go back to Replete.

Tao Tao House 陶陶居

Yuuhooo~~ It's saturday!! What else to start off a good weekend with a good brunch! We had Dim Sum this morning afternoon in Tao Tao House located at Glenferrie, it's one train stop away from our place so we took a 20 mins morning afternoon walk to there instead. Actually we had been craving for Dim Sum since last week but when we were there on a Sunday around 12.30pm, it was full house and we weren't able to get a table, we were told to go back at 2.30pm ==" What are we gonna do for 2 hours with a hungry stomach so we end up having english breakfast at a nearby place which was quite good. Will be blogging about that soon but today let us share with you our happy and satisfied Dim Sum brunch experience in Tao Tao House =D

Chili Chicken Dumpling

Pork and Prawn Siu Mai

Vegetarian Spring Rolls

Spare Ribs in Black Bean Sauce

Stuffed Bean Curd

Char Siu Pastry

Mini Custard Egg Tarts

The Mini Custard Egg Tarts were AWESOME!!! The best egg tarts that we've had in Melbourne so far! It was sooooo goooood that we ordered two plate and left us still wanting for more after consuming three each. It was fresh and HOT out of the oven, we both burnt our tongue just because it was too tempting and we cannot wait any longer to get a taste of it xD

Shanghai Pork Dumpling (soup filled dumplings)

All the dim sums were very good except for this Shanghai Pork Dumpling aka Xiao Long Bao, sad to say that it's the worst that i've(Ms) had. To make a good Xiao Long Bao, the skin, it's meat filling and soup filling are all equally important, i've heard that even the fold count at the top is also a part of what makes a very good Xiao Long Bao. Back to this particular Xiao Long Bao, no comment on it's meat and soup fillings BUT, the skin is...yucks. It should be tender, smoother and somewhat translucent but it is not, it felt like wet-supposingly-fluffy-white-buns which is thick and mushy. Also, from the picture you can see, one of the dumpling's skin has split so where's the soup filling? Gone =(

Nicely decorated interior

Pu Er Tea lovers

The place is not as spacious as you see from the pictures above, it's actually small and cramp. There are only two carts circling around the restaurant and the time frame that they serve out dim sums from the kitchen takes quite a long time so base on our experience in Gold Leaf, don't expect dim sum carts to keep coming to your table every few minute. This is slightly hard to accept at first cause we were used to getting whatever we want the moment we sat down in a dim sum restaurant and next minute our table will be full of dim sums so we can dig in to fill our tummy. So, we had to keep waiting for new dim sums to come out and that is a bit frustrating as we were both very hungry.

The bill came at the price of a total of $62+ for nine dishes (average of $6~6.50 for one dish) and a pot of tea. Honestly we weren't expecting this much as the average price for a dish in Gold Leaf was about $4, oh wells.. what you paid is what you get. At least eight out of nine dishes we had was pretty good so we don't mind paying more for better qualities dim sums (sigh..imagine how many dishes of dim sums we can have back in Malaysia with the amount that we're paying now, ($6 x 3) / 3 x 9 =54 dishes!) 

Oh! Do make reservations in advance. We can't even get a table for Sunday 1pm when we called to make reservation yesterday so remember to call and book before going to Tao Tao House! We learnt our lesson by getting turned out at the door with empty stomach and that does not feel good at all. 

Dimm summm!

The long wait has finally come to an end for you readers and followers (if there is even one...hahaa!). Sorry for taking so long to post something up. We've been busy lately which we cant think exactly why are we busy but anywaysss, Ms has started class already and for Mr is still having his holidays. Life is still the same for us, peaceful and all.

Remember our usual movie date? Well, we had our usual movie date again this week and we decide to go for Wolverine. It was GOOD! The show provides adequate action scenes, not too bad story line and love the robot-samurai idea. Hopefully they'll come out more x-men movies in the future! =D

So, one of the typical thing about us chinese-malaysians is that we love having dim sum. Whether its on a Sunday with the family or Saturday super early morning after a long party on friday night. Sadly for us malaysians in Melbourne, the dim sum stores here doesn't provide the same standards in KL in terms of the pricing and quality PLUS, it doesn't open at 6am in the morning....hahaha!

However, we still manage to find a good dim sum called Gold Leaf. And apparently, Gold Leaf serves one of the good dim sums in Melbourne. And that was the reason why we had to go and have a try...

Ms with her egg tart~ *happykid*

Mr with the dim sum kakis AKA 'the bunch'

The final verdict for this so called 'good' dim sum restaurant for us is....its GOOD! Hahahaaa! It was a Sunday that we went if we're not mistaken, the resturant was so busy but the quality of the food they serve was still fresh and nice. We really enjoyed our dim sum experience there that day. Love the ambience, the interior, the food and mostly, the company. If we or even you, have any craving for dim sum and you're in Melbourne, this is a good place for you, good quality and its not pricey. 

Having said that, we just found another dim sum place called Tao Tao house and based on the reviews we found online, apparently it is even better than Gold Leaf. So, we are gonna try that place soon to verify that comment so....stay tuneeee!