Night Market

Yay for the Vic Night Market! Here's a tip - go straight to the stalls with the most smoke, itll be from all the meat and fat and spices. In other words, it'll be delicious.


Kransky's are a definate.

As are spanish chorizos. It's got a nice spicy kick to it.

You don't necessarily have to follow the crowd either - a small stall was selling Hungarian Blue Danube sausages - which I ordered with cabbage and onion. It was very tasty and reminded me of souvlaki. There were no crowd around the stall, which was surprising and a shame. It was nice!


Conversely, I followed a crowd to a sangria stall. They seemed very popular so I tried one. There is no doubt about it. I do not care for any alcoholic beverage. I gave it a couple of sips and left the rest behind.

I also didn't get a chance to get any Honey donuts, but there'll be a next time :)

Food Safari - Yemen

It was a miserable rainy day, but nothing stops food safari's! This time round we went to a little place called Yemeni restaurant - the only one of its kind in Victoria. We had a room to ourselves, where we sat on the floor on a colorful rug in true Yemen fashion. We ordered a few meals off the menu, and dug in! We also tried the Yemen Chai Tea - very sweet but lovely and perfect for the weather.


Yemen bread accompanied a couple of our dishes and is awesome - a cross between roti and naan.

Delicous and tasty beef

Chicken with a really soft and flavourful basmati rice

The bread was also incorporated into the dessert - mixed with cream and honey and bananas. A tasty way to end the meal.

Yumcha!

Its been far too long since I had yumcha! As seasoned pro's, we had the table filled with dishes within minutes of seating.


The highlight is always the dessert! Egg tarts were very nice and fluffy

Tofu flower was very good too

One thing was missing - almond jelly. We were eyeing the dessert cart (also known as the gelatinous trolley) before it even came out of the kitchen. We made do with normal jelly and fruit, mango pudding and a red bean squishy sweet thing (probably not its actual name).

This was at Dockland's Gold Leaf, which charged a lot more for each dish than other places. The food was good, but for the sake of our wallets, we might just stick to the cheaper gold leaf from now on.

Butcher's Grill

Working late in the city gives us a good excuse to have a decent steak dinner. This is the second time we've been to Butcher's Grill and we were not dissapointed. The steaks were cooked perfectly.

Yum.

Best Cake EVA

Caught up with friends on Sunday afternoon, and we headed off to a coffee place in flemington for some post lunch snacks. Although normally not a big cheesecake fan, the berry cheesecake was very sweet and delicious.



It was also the place where the following cake was consumed - STICKY DATE PUDDING CAKE. This is my new favourite cake (sorry cookies and cream cake, you are a distant second to this).

I must return.

Food Safari - Latin Ameria (and French)

Our latest food safari was at the Cruzao Arepa Bar, where we had a very delicious lunch. We started off with a platter of the entrees (also known as pasapalos). The small fried arepitas (small arepas with a cheese filling) were so tasty. The guacamole sauce was good, but the garlic aoili was packed with garlic so was an absolute favourite for the group.



We ordered an arepa (with a different filling) each which came with a salad. The arepas are pretty small, but the flat corn bread has a very unique texture and when dipped in the aoili, was very satisfying :)

Even better though? The venezuelan style corn flan. Corn flan didn't sound all that appetising, but it was amazing. It was like a creme caramel but denser.

Since we were in the neighboorhood, we naturally had to have some crepes (post-desert desert) from the ONLY Breizoz French Creperie in Melbourne (my regular Williamstown branch is no more, which was devasting news). The crepes were just as good in Fitzroy.

Success!

Finally cooked some portehouse steaks a perfect medium well. I used the finger test to determine when to take the steaks off the grill, and got it right, horray! It was very delicious with some onion gravy.

Korean

Went to Oriental Spoon for a work lunch. I ordered the spicy chicken which was pretty good. Big portions!

Movida

Went to Movida with friends to see what all the fuss was all about. Since there were six of us we had the banquet, where you get the 10 best dishes of the day. I'm the biggest fan of single bite size dishes so I was quite looking forward to this meal. We were concerned that we might not be full, but its not called a banquet for nothing. The restaurant is dimly lit so my photos were pretty ordinary. I've picked my favourite four dishes out of the ten.


Anchoa - Anchovy with smoked tomato sorbet on crouton. Very salty, but delicious.

Croqueta - Croquette with a creamy cheese filling. One was not enough.

Jamones - Cured ham. Thinly sliced, eaten with pan catalan (like bruschetta). Awesome.

Viera - Scallop with an amazing buttery potato foam.

We had a limited time to complete our banquet, and even on a Monday evening the place seemed to be completely booked. They were considerate enough to cater for expectant mothers with dedicated dishes while the rest of us had cold dishes (such as the Caballa Ahumado, a smoked mackerel with a pine nut gazpacho sorbet). We were quite full by the end of it. It was an expensive meal, and looking at the website now, I've noticed that the price has gone up since we visited, so it was good timing for a sampler of spanish tapas :)

We also had dessert:

You can't go to a Spanish restaurant and not have churros! I still prefer the ones at Vic market, but these were crispy and still very delicious.

This was the special for the night. I didn't have it but it looked nice :)

Now THIS is what I had. Hot chocolate ganache pudding with vanilla icecream and nougat. You had me at pudding. Deliciously decadent, and the nougat was yummy. I was so full at the end of it.