Sichuan Chinese Restaurant – Belconnen -Canberra – Australian Capital Territory – Australia -November 2019

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Australia, Australian Capital Territory, Belconnen, Chinese food, dinner with friends, Sichuan restaurant

Chinese food that tastes like Chinese food

I absolutely love Chinese food!  My two gorgeous Chinese friends took me and my friend Jon to a Chinese restaurant here in Canberra.  It’s a Sichuan restaurant actually called Sichuan Chinese Restaurant which means that the dishes are all pretty spicy and clearly no great thought put into the name; guess you know what you are getting!The restaurant is located in a suburb about a fifteen minute drive from my home and on Lake Gininderra which is lovely to walk around during the day.My friend Peter selected this restaurant as it serves genuine Chinese food.  No crazy Aussie versions of Chinese food to be found here and thank goodness.  Peter always orders for us as he knows what dishes both Jon and I like.  I love the beans which are usually dry fried with garlic and chilli – yum!I also loved the chilli dry fried cauliflower and as you can see it certainly did have a lot of chilli.  Peter also ordered a plate of  white and brown buns (Mantou 馒头) which are steamed and soft; popular in northern China.  They came with some sort of creamy sauce but I didn’t have any of it.  A beef and chicken dish was ordered; the beef made with an enormous amount of chilli  (loved by Jon).The fried potato dish was so good; a bit too spicy for me as it made my lips numb but I couldn’t stop eating it.And something I absolutely love is the black sesame glutinous rice balls (tangyuan 汤圆) and glutinous rice sticks in soy…again delicious. What a great meal.  I really love the food at this restaurant.  So much that I have been back about five times since my first visit.

 

 

Chongqing Street Noodles restaurant – Dickson – Australian Capital Territory – Australia – February & March 2019

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Australia, Australian Capital Territory, Chinese cuisine, Chongqing Street Noodles restaurant, Dickson, street noodles

Food in Canberra that brings back wonderful memories of China

Last month my lovely Chinese friend Peter and his girlfriend Katie took my other friend Jon and I to a relatively new noodle restaurant just near my home in Canberra.  It has a very small frontage on the main street in Canberra’s Chinatown.  I am not sure if I should call it Chinatown as it is only one street but it has many Chinese restaurants and Chinese food stores and is frequented by many Chinese Australians so perhaps Chinatown it is. When you enter Chongqing Street Noodles restaurant you are greeted by a rather large statue of Chinese nana with cat like whiskers.   I have no idea who this is but maybe my blogging friends (Marta/Sophie/Edwin) might be able to help.  She is also painted on the wall and depicted on plates and bowls and printed on the paper napkins.  The obligatory waving cat also welcomes you.

Since going to this restaurant with my Chinese friends I have been another six times both for lunch and dinner and have booked for a group of us to go tomorrow night.  Yes it’s definitely my new favourite place to eat.I absolutely love the noodles.  They are authentic Chongqing street noodles so are very spicy.  There are options to have your dish mild (one chilli pictured on the menu) or incredibly spicy (five chillis pictured on the menu).  I choose mild but still find the sauce a little bit lip numbing.  I think you can see how bright the sauce is from my photo.  But oh my goodness it is so worth that lip tingling!On our inaugural visit, my Chinese friends ordered a cold chicken dish [again with spice] and a couple of tea boiled eggs [for those of you who do no know what these are – they are hard boiled eggs which once cooked and cooled have their shells cracked and then are placed into a mixture of water, tea leaves, soy sauce, salt and other spices like cinnamon stick and star anise].  Peter told Jon to put the egg into the noodle dish which he did so the spicy broth seeps into the egg.Peter and Katie also ordered dishes of cold cucumber in a spicy Chinese vinegar, shredded potato in chilli oil and Chongqing street noodles with beef. The chilli theme comes out in nearly every dish on the menu.Jon said his Chongqing beef noodles were on par with those he had when we travelled to Sichuan Province last year which means they were mouth numbingly hot!

There were two additional dishes our Chinese friends ordered which were wolf teeth chips [crinkle cut chips with yep you guessed it – spicy chilli) and brown sugar rich curd (made with black sticky rice, black sugar sauce and yellow bean powder).  I do know both of these dishes are not healthy but they are so delicious so I continue to order them.  I think the sticky rice is a dessert but I put them into my chilli noodle sauce – fabulous!The beverage situation is a bit limited.  Cans of coke, sprite and fanta are sold.  There are also bottles of herbal tea, a prune drink, soy milk and a grass jelly drink [no idea what this is and too scared to try].  I always buy a bottle of cold soy milk – it’s quite sweet but lovely with the spicy noodles.

(source: courtesy of internet)

There is also a huge tea pot containing Chinese tea which is complimentary; great for lunch time meals.  We brought our own wine on the first visit but they don’t have any wine glasses so we used plastic cups.  Next time we were smarter and brought our own wine glasses and left them there.  The owner and staff know me quite well now and I chat to them in Chinese so they enjoy that and guess it’s good for me to practice.  It’s still funny seeing Chinese patrons staring whilst I am speaking Chinese – they seem to be very interested in hearing how well [or not] I speak.

I went to this restaurant last night with my friend Ray and the owner came straight out with my wine glasses (very kind that they wash them and keep them there for us).

The menu is four pages with only about two vegetarian/vegan dishes but that is ok as every time I visit I order the same noodle dish and now I don’t have to tell the staff; they tell me!

There are also pork and prawn wontons which my friends Jane and Natalie enjoyed one evening along with a small plate of combination vegetables.  And with any Aussie Chinese restaurant there is a deep fried ice-cream ball – Chinese of course have never heard of this but I remember it fondly from thirty years ago living with my parents and visiting the local Chinese restaurant.

(source: courtesy of internet)

Looking forward to tomorrow night!  Hopefully not last people to leave like on a previous occasion…but it was only 9.30pm.

 

 

 

XO Restaurant – Narrabundah – Canberra – Australian Capital Territory – Australia – January 2018

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ACT, Australia, Australian Capital Territory, Chinese fusion cuisine, dinner with friends, Narrabundah, Tofu, XO Restaurant

Dinner with friends

There is a small group of friends from my previous employment that I like to catch up with…we started off going out to dinner at a local restaurant but now have decided to catch up at each other’s homes as it’s a little more relaxed.

But our first catch up was at a local restaurant serving South East Asian cuisine.  Unfortunately one of my friends could not attend so it turned out to be just four of us.  What a great night it was…lots of food and wine and so much to catch up on.I chose this restaurant as I had been here before and enjoyed the food.  XO Restaurant is located in a small neighbourhood shopping street and is known for its communal share plates.  There is a range of vegetarian and vegan dishes and lots of other dishes for my meat and seafood loving friends.

We started off with steamed dumplings…yum…these were Chinese style dumplings but a little like Italian ravioli containing minced vegetables and wood ear mushrooms sitting in a spicy soy vinaigrette and also a dish of special XO fried chicken wings which were marinated in butter milk and came served with a large dollop of kewpie mayonnaise.

We also ordered two plates of Banh Mi; one a vegetarian lentil burger with carrots and cucumber and a mushroom pate which was accompanied by a chilli kewpie mayonnaise.  The other plate pretty much the same but with a pork burger and toppings of carrot and cucumber.  A little more than bite size and so tasty.

Next dish I chose was the shallow friend tofu with soy and candied ginger.  I do love tofu especially now I am vegan [which wasn’t at the time of going to this restaurant] and this didn’t fail to impress…the tofu was so fresh and the sauce delicious.

I must say looking back on the evening we really ordered so much food but unsurprisingly managed to eat it all.  I have decided just to list all the dishes as there really were so many…and every one was delicious.

Two dishes of fried Udon noodles; one vegetarian in a Swiss brown mushroom ragout and the other with chicken.

Sugar snaps tossed in a garlic confit.

Fried baby squid with a sweet chilli salt.

Grilled chicken thigh fillet with a pickled vegetable and peanut sauce.

Nasi goring with squid ink fried rice, spanner crab and fluffy eggs – well that is what the eggs are called, I just think they are a little scrambled; suppose they could be fluffy!

Slow cooked black Angus chuck steak reduced in coconut milk and spices.

Steamed fish cooked with ginger, shallots and shoaling wine.

Yes… and still more to come.  Only one more dish though…a salmon ceviche with lime caviar, red curry cream and a crispy salmon skin.

All throughout the evening, wine certainly flowed and our laugher grew louder. Funnily enough we didn’t have any room for dessert.  I really do love catching up with my friends and look forward to the next catch up with this particular group of girls but now know all three that came on this occasion cannot work out a bill even though it pretty much was just divided by four!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nara Peace Park – Lake Burley Griffin – Lennox Gardens – Yarralumla – Canberra – Australian Capital Territory – Australia – February 2018

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ACT, Australia, Australian Capital Territory, canberra, Japanese blossoms, Japanese Gardens, Lennox Gardens, Nara Peace Park, Yarralumla

A lovely Japanese themed garden in Canberra

I came across this park whilst visiting the Chinese Gardens here in Canberra.  All you have to do is continue walking from the Chinese Gardens and you in the gardens.  You can’t really miss them and whilst they are very small they are lovely to walk through especially on a sunny day with views across Lake Burley Griffin.

The gardens were a gift from the people of the ancient city of Nara in Japan to the people of Canberra and celebrate the sister city link between Canberra and Nara.  Design and construction was carried out by local designers and contractors who consulted closely with the city of Nara and the Embassy of Japan.

You can enter through a large traditional wooden gate…
And walk along beautiful paved pathways…
Whilst enjoying a number of iconic cherry blossom trees.  The planting scheme is mostly trees, groundcover plantings and specimen shrubs. The trees include twenty-four cherr­­y blossoms, four Crepe Myrtles, ten Japanese Maples, and one Japanese Red Pine. Shrubs include Japanese Lily of the Valley, one of Japan’s earliest spring bloomers which is still the most common shrub grown in the city of Nara’s parks because the deer will not eat it.
Central to the park is the eight-metre tall pagoda, crafted by a Japanese sculptor. It stands as a miniature replica of Empress Komyoh’s towering pagoda, which was erected in Nara in 725AD. Other structures within the park are two large tōrōs, or Japanese lanterns, which weigh five and three tonnes respectively. And the World Peace Bell…  The 350-kilo brass bell came from Japan and is a replica of the peace bell at the United Nations headquarters in New York.  Its design includes 103 coins from nations of the UN.

The bell will usually be rung annually on World Peace Day in September.  That date also coincides with the opening day of the United Nations General Assembly, and national and international days of remembrance and celebration.And the final structure is a ‘Toku‘ which was commissioned to celebrate the 1300th anniversary of Nara. The sculpture has three main elements: A five-storied pagoda form which represents Canberra; a floating stone representing Nara; and the form of a small bird symbolising peace. The bird resembles a Latham’s Snipe, a species which migrates annually between Japan and Canberra (long way to go!!). A really lovely place to visit and enjoy the peacefulness and beauty.

 

 

 

Zaab [Streetfood] Restaurant – Braddon – Canberra – Australian Capital Territory – Australia – March 2018

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ACT, Australia, Australian Capital Territory, Braddon, dinner with friends, Eggplant, Lao-Thai street food, nam jin sauce, seafood platter, Tofu, Zaab Streetfood Restaurant

Dinner with friends

Zaab (pronounced sahp) Street Food is a local Lao-Thai restaurant in a suburb I regularly visit to meet friends for dinner.  I had been to this restaurant once before and ordered the Pad Thai noodles and didn’t really love my meal, but my friend Jane really loves the food so I said I would give it another try…and can say I am very happy I did.

Inside is a spin on a classic southeast Asian street food restauarant – beer ads hanging out the front, corrugated iron panels and graffiti on the walls, and low tables and stools to enjoy a casual evening meal. The menu is small and includes nice range of vegetarian options and lots of other dishes to share.Since retiring last November, I make an effort to catch up with the good friends I used to work with and as I hadn’t seen Kylie or Xenia since I retired I felt it was time for a catchup.  Jane booked and we met up for a pre-dinner drink and chat and together walked to the restaurant.  There is an extensive beer menu but none of us ordered beers; Xenia started off with a cocktail which arrived in a funky plastic bag with straw, Kylie’s came in a normal cocktail glass and Jane and I ordered wine.Most of the smaller dishes are for sharing so we ordered a few including the chicken satay sticks and crispy tofu with fried noodles.  The tofu was so (so) good.Jane ordered two serves of the betal leaf which contained a spicy pork filling [she has had this several times before and loved it] – you roll them up and eat in one bite…loved by the girls.Also ordered was the Crying Tiger dish which is a Thai dish comprising strips of beef and a hot sauce.  A lot of my friends enjoy this dish and whilst the girls said it was spicy, they did say it was very tasty.We also ordered two serves of the corn fritters and I ordered a roasted eggplant dish (no surprises here) to share with the other girls.  Wow… this was very good as it was cooked to perfection with a particularly spicy tomato sauce…the girls loved this dish too.  The final dish ordered by the girls was a grilled seafood platter to share.  It came with king prawns, barramundi fillet, mussels and calamari and a nam jin sauce which I now know is a hot, sour and tangy Thai dressing.  Looked pretty good I must say!As we were leaving I saw a noodle cart with fairy lights that serves meals during the day. And on a Friday/Saturday night it transforms into a DJ station – probably too late in the evening for me but guess it would be great for the younger crowd!!Always great to catch up with friends; we have decided to make this a regular event and will try out other restaurants in Canberra.

Natural Nine Restaurant – Casino – Canberra – Australian Capital Territory – Australia – February 2018

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ACT, Australian Capital Territory, canberra, Chinese cuisine, Lunch with friends, Natural Nine restaurant

First visit to Canberra’s refurbished casino

I had read about the Chinese restaurant at the Canberra Casino which had very good reviews but had not particulary wanted to go there as it was located inside the casino and guess I didn’t think it would have great ambience being next to gambling tables.  But… recently I read another review at the beginning of Chinese New Year (gong xi fa cai to my Chinese friends) which again mentioned how good the food is…so knew I had to go especially over CNY.

And as it was CNY, my friend Jon and I first visited the Chinese Gardens in Canberra [pot to follow] and then drove to the Casino.  You have to first walk through the Casino floor, which is pretty small compared to those in Sydney (where I have been for work) and Las Vegas (also for work) with a bar next to the entrance to the restaurant.We were the only people in the restaurant which had lovely Chinese lanterns all throughout and was served by a beautiful girl who was born in Japan and moved to Australia to be with her partner; an Aussie boy – lovely chatting to her I must say.

There was a lunch special on during the week; being the choice of pork, chicken, egg or tofu wheat noodles for $10.  These were inexpensive so we decided to try them along with other dishes.  The bowl came out filled to the rim firstly with the noodles then topped with all vegetables, tofu and ginger – such a filling dish.I am not sure where the name Natural Nine comes from but all the colourful paper place mats have the Chinese character for the numeral nine on them and also the same character is on the walls.  They all look fabulous.The menu is extensive and great for vegetarians and I think that is why we ordered so much food.  First up we ordered the steamed mushroom and water chestnut dumplings with black garlic dressing and as Jon loves spicy food and chicken wings he ordered the Sichuan pepper and lime chicken wings.  Both dishes arrived pretty quickly which made me think they are part made and heated up when ordered but my dumplings were still very good and Jon said the wings were extremely tasty.Our next dishes were the sweet and sour plum eggplant with handmade egg tofu – best dish ever!!!  I loved it.  This came served with a bowl of steamed rice but as we had ordered another rice dish we did not touch it.We also shared a bowl of exotic mushroom and burnt onion wild fried rice; so delicious and such a big bowl, so we only were able to eat about half.  Shame we were so full as it really was very good.This restaurant is well worth visiting; such good food.  After lunch we head to the Casino and watched a few people start with a huge pile of chips and end up with none!!  I guess that is why I never gamble!!

They also serve a Chinese High Tea on a Friday and Saturday afternoon with both savoury Chinese treats and sweets – so must return!When I spoke to the waitress, I had mentioned that the paper place mats were fabulous, so when we went to pay she gave me two to take home…very kind!!

 

 

 

 

Rasa Sayang Restaurant – Dickson – Canberra – Australian Capital Territory – Australia – August 2017

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ACT, Australia, Australian Capital Territory, canberra, Chinese cuisine, Dickson, Dickson Dumpling House, dinner with friends, Friends, Malaysian cuisine, Rasa Sayang Restaurant

A quick dinner with a friend 

A thirty minute walk from my home is a suburb with many Chinese/Thai/Indian and Vegan restaurants.  I usually eat at the Dickson Dumpling House which is definitely my favourite but I wanted to try something different, so with a good friend who I used to go to school with [all those years ago], we visited a Malaysian/Chinese restaurant called Rasa Sayang.  This particular restaurant has been in this suburb for over thirty-five years so it must be doing something well.

We had made a reservation but as we were there early, we were initially the only people in the restaurant.The menu is extensive with over 100 dishes to choose from and has lots of options for us vegetarians.  I ordered the tofu with peanut sauce and Anne ordered the deep fried spring rolls with a plum sauce.  Pretty good but am glad the tofu comes with a sauce otherwise in the main I do find it rather bland.  But this particular tofu was lovely and fresh so it was enjoyable.I ordered some Malaysian bread [roti chanai] to share which was absolutely delicious. My friend had not tried this type of bread before and loved it so guess next visit she will order it along with her omelette.The owner is very personable and enjoys a joke whilst taking your order and as soon as he saw us laughing at his jokes, he returned to tell us more…more laughter and now ready to order our main courses.  Anne ordered the crab omelette with beansprouts, shredded onions and topped with oyster sauce…she said it was absolutely delicious.  So delicious that since that visit she drives over from her home [about half hour] to pick up this omelette regularly.  [no photo as forgot to take one].

I ordered the Eggplant Sambal, which was sliced eggplant cooked in a spicy sambal sauce..not bad but my preference is up the road at the Dumpling House.  I don’t think this dish was as spicy as my preferred dish.  Still good though!I enjoyed the evening very much and loved chatting to my friend but as it was a week night [I was working back then], we just ate our meals and left rather than what I usually like to do which is relax, chat and enjoy a glass of wine.  Next time!!