Tags
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.
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!
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)
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.
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!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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!!
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.
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 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!!
