Yamato 2

Name: Yamato
Location: 223 Exhibition St, tucked into the laneway near corner Lonsdale/Exhibition Sts
Price: Mains $10-20, Dessert $4-7
Price score: 4/5
Overall score: 8.5/10
I really enjoyed Yamato’s ambiance the first time, so I came back a second time with more people. I also wanted to show you better pictures of Yamato’s interior, and here they are.

Noren cloth curtains/ A wall scroll with 'Yamato'/ We're in the right place

Does this room seat four?/ No, it actually seats six./Suspicion confirmed.

TOFU STEAK
Cost: $14?
Taste: 9.5/10
Would I order this? Yes.

Witches of Macbeth/ Double toil and trouble/ Hot tofu bubbles

It’s a vegetarian dish comprising of deep fried tofu, mushrooms and a deeply flavoured sauce. It’s a great umami hit. The tofu is sizzling in the sauce when it is plated for you. You allow it to cool just enough so you don’t burn your mouth, and the tofu absorbs the sauce to become sponges for delicious sauce. I heart sauce. One of the things that disappoint me whenever I order deep-fried tofu is how dry it can be. It really needs to be reconsituted in advance, and then drenched in sauce. But I wasn’t disappointed here, because there is sauce. The serving is quite sizeable too.

KATSUDON
Cost: $11
Taste: 9/10
Would I order this? Yes, I would order it again, but only if I had to. Not because it’s bad, but because I need to exhaust the entire menu before going back to it. There are other foods to be explored here.

Generous topping size/ But rice serving is quite small/ Up to perspective

The portions for their dons (rice with toppings) are fairly small, so beware. I wouldn’t say I have a large appetite, but this serving size leaves me -just- satisfied. But I could go a sushi roll afterwards, maybe two. But occassionally, one should only eat til satisfied. Think of it as the samurai experience.
Apart from my problem with serving sizes, their katsudon is good! The chicken is crispy, and there is egg to bind the chicken together. It’s a lot of chicken for the amount of rice given to you. But you don’t hear me complaining about that.

TENDOJI DON
Cost: $13?
Taste: 7/10
Would I order this again? No.

Hello portmanteau/ One of my favourite word kinds/ Many words in one

Tendoji don is a portmanteau of tenpura, tonjiru and donburi. Tempura are deep-fried small pieces of vegetables or seafood in a light batter. Tonjiru, also known as butajiru, a pork-based soup. It’s thicker than miso soup, and commonly has deep-fried tofu, tubers or a seaweed in it to make it an even heartier soup. Donburi is a rice bowl with toppings. Combine all three words together, and you get ‘tendo-ji-don’.
The fried seafood and vegetables are crisp, but I think the batter was a bit heavy-handed. To me, tenpura should only have a very thin, very crisp layer of batter. But in the Melbourne scene, tenpura seems to always be heavy-handed. This would be in the medium-thickness category of things. The thickest tenpura I have been and eaten was a tempura prawn. It had a diameter of a 20c coin, and the prawn in the middle wasn’t even 5c-coin-sized in diameter. Refer to the picture and judge for yourselves for batter thickness. It includes tempura prawn, white fish, sweet potato and green capsicum.
In the other vessel, there is a very salty pork soup with egg stirred through it. It’s so-so. The saltiness blankets over any other flavours, which is disappointing. I like eggs, but I would also like something else in the pork broth, such as sweet potato, or seaweed, or even just chopped spring onions.

DAIFUKU
Cost: $3.80
Taste: 10/10
Would I get it again? Yes.

Cut into three bits/ I can cut eleven bits/ By force of habit

I’ve already reviewed this, but here’s a better picture.

Kenzan

Name: Kenzan
Location: 350 Bourke St, Melbourne CBD, GPO eating strip
Price range: Mains $10-15
Price score: 4/5
Taste: 9/10
Would I go there again? Yes.

If you’re into california rolls in Melbourne, then you’ve most likely heard about Kenzan. If not, go to Kenzan and order a sushi roll. The rice and seaweed are separated with a thin sheet of plastic, and when you pull the tabs, by some form of engineering ingenuity, the seaweed wraps around the rice and you are left with a sushi roll with crisp seaweed. Magic.

But we’re not here today for their sushi rolls or rice balls, we’re here for a more substantial hot meal.

*TERIYAKI CHICKEN WITH VEGETABLES (with rice)
The icecream scoop of mashed potato is a nice touch. Very cute. The vegetables are blanched. The teriyaki chicken portion is generous, and has a tasty sweet teriyaki sauce. You can’t go wrong. (Unless you were severely allergic to sesame seeds. That would be terrible.)

Teriyaki sauce/ Wherein does the appeal lie?/ It is delicious

*TENZOBA

Tenzoba is soba (buckwheat noodles) with tenpura. The broth is clear, but can be overly salty. The soba has been thoroughly washed beforehand so it isn’t starchy. It is so good. The tenpura was crispy, up until they placed it into your bowl of noodles.

I was so impressed by their soba, that I had food envy. Despite being a fan of udon.

Hot buckwheat noodles/ Simplicity aesthetic/ Just eat it with tea

VEGETABLE FRITTER UDON
Cost: $10
Taste: 7/10
Word of advice, eat your fritters as soon as you can. They will soak up broth and become soggy and fall apart. Udon is great. Broth can be very salty. Seaweed is a welcome addition.

Udon noodle soup/ What can make it heartier?/ Vegetables fritters

Gotta come back and have their soba, and their sushi and riceballs.  Might as well try everything else too.

Ikea Foodcourt

Name: Ikea food court, the food court of Ikea
Location: 630 Victoria St, Richmond 3121, Inside IKEA
Price: Mains $4-13, drinks $2.25-3.5, desserts $3

SOFT SERVE
Cost: 5/5 (50 cents!)
Taste: For a 50c soft serve cone, 8/10. I had expected it to be very similar to MacDonald’s cones. But I am pleasantly surprised. It has a vanilla-like flavour to it, rather than just sugar.
Much better than the softserve at McDonalds’. You trade in 50 cents for a metal button, which can be slotted into the soft serve machine, and a wafer cone. Place the cone in the place alloted for the cone….

Place cone in machine/ It says 'Press once' so press once/ Swivelling soft-serve

Voila! Creamy vanilla-flavoured soft serve in a cone-shaped wafer cone.

Soft serve like a cloud/ Analogy to nowhere/ Just accept it's good

CHICKEN AND PASTA
Cost: $7
Taste: 6/10
Would I order it again? No.
I don’t understand the facination with the Ikea food court. It’s not cheap for the type of food you’re receiving, nor is it tasty in comparison to other food courts. It baffles me.
The pasta is overdone, and on the soft side. The vegetables are swimming in pasta starch. It’s your standard school cafeteria lunch fare, if you went to a boarding school or had school lunches in your programme. (Coincidentally, I didn’t, but this is what I imagine it’d be like.) The chicken isn’t dry, but it isn’t juicy either. It’s not bland, or tasting of anything in particular. It’s all average.

TV dinner-esque/ Instant food has its own charm/ See instant noodles

ORANGE SODA

Carbonated drink/ What flavour are you, I ask/ It must be orange

COFFEE
Cost: $2.25, for a cup, and as much refills as you want.
Taste: 4/10
Would I order it again? No.
$2.25 to use a mug. That’s smart. But the drinks are so awful. Maybe it’s just part of the plan.

Ikea coffee/ I'd take Nescafe Instant/ but they taste the same

FERMENTED APPLE DRINK
Cost: $3
Taste: 5/10
Would I buy it again? No.
Fermented apple drink would sounds like very sweet cider, but it isn’t. It’s more like watered down carbonated apple juice.

MEATBALLS AND CHIPS/MASH
Cost: $8?
Taste: 5/10
Would I order it? No.

Apparently the star of the Ikea foodcourt are the meatballs. I see the appeal, but it doesn’t live up to expectations. The meatballs are very heavily breadcrumbed and don’t have the texture of meat. More like a meaty paste with some grisly textural bits. The mayonnaise and lingonberry jam complete the experience, but neither of these sauces have any zing to them. I could have enjoyed these as a child, when I used to enjoy Chicken MacNuggets. Unfortunately, the appeal is lost on me now.
Mash: instant-mash.
Chips: Average chips, but I like chips. Needs a second fry.

Little Sweden flag/ On a Swedish meatball mound/ Kids' meal nostalgia

Chips make things better/ Meatballs are no exception/ Fry those potatoes

APPLE TART

Apparently it’s dry and overly sweet. (I like my apple tarts with more apple than pastry, especially the dry biscuity kind.)

Apple tart or cake?/ Either way, needs more apple/ Too full to sample

Yukimi Daifuku

Yukimi daifuku is a famous brand of mochi icecreams. Icecream mochi has a different sort of mochi, it’s more a wrapper for the icecream rather than a chewy glutinous delight on its own. Not that icecream mochi isn’t enjoyable, but the texture is different.

Cost: $11.90

Contents: 21 individually wrapped yukimi daifukus.

Would I buy it again? Yes.

Moon-viewing mochi/ Moon rabbits pounding mochi/ And churning ice cream?

There are three flavours. Vanilla, strawberry and chocolate. Vanilla is good. Strawberry is the artifcial strawberry taste, much like Strawberry Big-M. Chocolate was disappointing, with a Chocolate Nesquik taste.

Taste: 3/5 inidividually, but mochi icecream is generally is 4/5.

The chewy mochi skin is good with the yielding icecream inside. But they are still delicious, and there is only one substitute; that is the larger yukimi daifuku in the two-pack.

Happy Kappa

Name: Happy Kappa
Location: 85 Swan St, Richmond
Price range: Mains $10-15
Overall rating: 8.5/10

There is a picture menu! The menu is limited, but it has enough range for the hungry travelling band.

Love picture menus/ If in doubt, point to picture/ It has served me well

The deco is neat too. The walls are lined with Japanese cultural artifacts, and the place feels cosy without being too shabby.

Islands of tables/ Walls covered in bric-a-brac/ Communal feeling

*TORIAGE UDON

Huzzah! Fried chicken/ Delicious in all its forms/ A bowl of udon

*TORIAGE DON

Fried chicken again/ Also good on hot white rice/ Or even brown rice

*TORIAGE RAMEN

Yet more fried chicken/ Maybe chicken noodle soup/ Fried chicken in soup?

*TOFU CURRY

Some tofu this time/ A Japanese curry rice/ Strange, but still tasty

*KATSU CURRY

Fried chicken cutlet/ In Japanese curry roux/ Noticing a theme?

*: These were ordered by other people who kindly let me hover about and take photos of their food. According to photos and response of the crowd, I’d say they were a success.  A word of advice, toriage is fried chicken pieces and is less lean than the chicken used in chicken katsu. Of course, with the addition of a bit of fat and dark meat, toriage is more flavoursome than chicken katsu. Katsu will be crispier though, through the crumbing process.

KATSU BENTO BOX
Price: 4/5
Taste: 9/10
Would I get it again? Yes

Fried chicken cutlet/ Rice, pickles, slaw and shumai/ Everything I want

On the right, white rice with red pickles, with some black sesame too. On the left, in the small compartment, soy sauce (which I didn’t feel the need to use) and 2 homemade dimsum. The dimsum have pork, onion and cabbage inside. (There was also a vegetable croquette in the small compartment, but that was eaten before I took the picture. It was crispy on the outside, and so soft on the inside. Delicious fluffy potato-ey goodness.) In the larger compartment, there is a cutlet of fried chicken with demi glace sauce, on a bed of shredded cucumber/lettuce/cabbage/carrot and a slice of tomato.

Normally, I avoid coleslaw because it’s usually been sitting around in a dressing for a while, and I am objected to salads sitting in dressing. But this bed of shredded vegetables doesn’t have any dressing, and it’s still fresh-looking despite being very finely sliced. It is a welcome addition to the meal. The katsu (cutlet of fried chicken) is crunchy and hot. A win in my books.

If you ever walk down Swan St to the football, give Happy Kappa a go.

Pho Dzung (Chicken and the Cow)

Name: Something in vietnamese. It has a picture of a chicken and a cow.
Address: 234 Russell St, Melbourne CBD (Cnr Russell, Lonsdale)
Price range: Small pho $8.50, medium $9.50, large $10.50, other things $8-15
Price rating: 5/5, 4/5 for other things on the menu which makes sense since they specialise in pho. But the spring rolls are pretty tasty.

Taste: 4/5 Best pho place in the city. For the 5/5, go to Victoria St.

Overall rating: 8.5/10. It’s my favourite pho place in the city.

Pho is a vietnamese rice noodle with a beef broth, and beef toppings. There are variations that use chicken, but beef is most common. The broth is prepared a day in advance with beef bones and spices, then gently simmered away, and impurites are scooped away, leaving a very clear flavoursome broth behind. Put some rice noodles into a bowl, add whatever toppings you like. Pick from cooked beef, thinly sliced raw beef that’ll cook when boiling broth is ladled in, beef sausage, beef balls, tendom, tripe, chicken and pork sausage slices.
Serve it up with a dish of fresh bean sprouts and Vietnamese basil, lemon and chilli. Add it all together and use the heat of the broth to cook these things. It’s fresh, fragrant but still mealy from the sheer quantity of stuff you get.

*VIETNAMESE COFFEE ($3)
Vietnamese coffee is condensed milk, with strong black coffee that’s been slow-dripped from a percolator. It’s good hot, but the real magic lies in it being ice cold. Add some ice, and suck it down on a hot day. Refreshing, with a buzz.

Drip percolator/ Minutes pass drip drip drip/ Finally, coffee!

CONDIMENTS PLATE (comes with each bowl of pho. Or shared between two people. Whichever saves the most room. This place has a quick turnover, and the tables are small.)
Bean sprouts, vietnamese basil (add as much or as little as you like), and a small bowl of lemon wedges and sliced chili.)

Boo, lemon in eye/ Add condiments at the start/ Flavour infusion

PHO

You can order any toppings you like, by listing them when you order. Or you can point to set combinations of toppings. I like to order the Beef Combination without tendon when ordering a small bowl, and with tendon for medium bowl. I haven’t ever ordered a large bowl because it’s roughly the size of a wash basin, too big for me to finish. Small bowl is enough for me most of the time. I order a Medium bowl when ravenous. (It doesn’t look as grey as it does in the picture, that’s from the fluorescent lighting.)

Beef Co-co-combo!/ Good for the indecisive/ You get everything

Would I order this again? Yes, and have multiple times.

Seven Seeds

Name: Seven Seeds
Location: 114 Berkeley St, Carlton 3053
Price range: Breakfast $4.50-$9.50, Lunch $10.50-$13.50, Drinks $4-7
Cost rating: 3/5
Taste rating: 5/5 (“It’s all good.”)

Filled baguette with chorizo, sauteed onion, pecorino, sherry aioli and cos lettuce/strong> Cost: $10.50

Overall rating: 9/10

I docked a point from the baguette because it wasn’t a baguette on the day, but a sandwich with turkish bread. That is not a problem most of the time, because I like turkish bread. The problem is the how messy it was to eat the sandwich. I could always opt to use a knife and fork, but to me that seems wrong for a sandwich. If you’re an experienced sandwich-eater and have overcome the problem of tacking stacked sandwiches being messy to eat, then this will be a 10/10. Of course, there wouldn’t be this issue if it was a baguette. Aside from the mess issue, this is a delicious sammich. Especially if you like chorizo. The fried chorizo is crispy, and the sauteed onion and pecorino cheese isn’t too salty combined with the aioli and cos lettuce. The lettuce and onions are very important for texture. (This place seems to love sherry-based sauces. The last time I came here, there was another sherry sauce with caramelised onions.)

Look at the pickle/ Chomp it down after sandwich/ Order another

Crushed pea, mint and spring onion FR (Free Range) egg omelette, whipped feta, beetroot jam, hot pressed sourdough sandwich

Cost: $11.50

Overall rating: ? (It looked very very good. I had food envy. Everything here gives me food-envy.)

Peas: Where is the love?/Omelette in my sammich/Colourful relish

Chorizo and adzuki bean soup, served with toasted sourdough
Cost: $10.50
Overall rating: ? (Good enough for a “I need to make this.”)

Adzuki bean soup/ As a savoury main meal/ Mental dissonance

(To me adzuki beans have one purpose, and that is make red bean paste in all its delicious sweet variations. This soup blows my mind.)

Roasted mixed mushrooms, basil pesto, poached FR egg and turkish bread Cost: $13.50

Overall rating: ? (But damn, it looks good. Smells good too. Damn that pesto.)

Vegetarian/ Mushrooms for B vitamins/ Eggs are all protein

 

Your Thai

Name: Your Thai
Location: 255 Swanston Street, CBD
Price range: Entrees $3-5, Mains $9-13, drinks $2-4
Overall rating: 6/10, made up by the variety and price. It can be bland at times, but the servings are generous. It’s a motley of asian flavours, so don’t expect too much in the way of Thai food.

I have heard mixed reviews about this place. So I have eaten there three times to get a general overview.
Pros: Cheap, lots to choose from, picture menu, quick service, high turnover of customers
Cons: You get what you paid for, the food is average but still done well enough for people to come back, not a loitering place

*SPICY PRAWN with rice
Despite what ‘spicy’ may mean to most of us, Spicy Prawn isn’t spicy. It’s spicy in the way sweet chilli sauce is spicy, and that is ‘I wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t informed me’.

Medium size prawns/ Sweet, sour, hot and crunchy/ Textural dinner

*MANGO SMOOTHIE
Can’t go wrong with a fruit smoothie.

Mangoes and ice cubes/ A memory of Summer/ Sigh, four months to go

*COCONUT MILK with GREEN JELLY
Apparently, it is filling, because it is made of coconut milk.

There is green jelly/ It's bright green like Kryptonite/ Phew, I'm no Clark Kent

*GRILLED CHICKEN
There is also a vinegar-chili-sugar dressing on the side, not shown in the picture. The grilled chicken is delicious. The chicken is glazed with a sweet marinade, and tastes like it’s been grilled. Scoring 8/10.

Barbequed chicken/ Versatile protein stuff/ And so tasty too

The milk tea and red curry come in a set combo, which also includes 2 spring rolls. Combos are $12.80 and there are a variety of dishes, drinks and sides to choose from. Unfortunately, it’s not a mix n’ match thing. If they did, I would increase the overall restaurant rating.

YOURTHAI MILK TEA
Everybody knows phone cameras aren’t the best cameras to take photos with. But the colour of the Milk Tea isn’t a problem with my camera phone, the milk tea is actually the same colour as the table it stands on. Orange. It tastes vaguely caramel-y for a milk tea.
Price: Since it was in a combo, price rating goes up. 4/5
Taste: 7/10. It’s different from many milk teas. For a start it has a caramel taste and a smooth texture. Give it a try.
Would I order it again? Yes.

Is it an orange?/ Is it an Oompa Loompa?/ No, it's Thai Milk Tea

THAI RED CURRY
It’s a mild red curry with chicken and vegetables. It tastes a lot like ginger, so that adds some kick to an otherwise unoffensive dish. But having said that, it is still very mild.
Price: Part of a combo, so price rating goes up as price goes down. 4/5
Taste: 7/10. I like how many vegetables it has, as well as the variety. It seems they try to give you an equal amount of everything. From memory there is chicken, eggplant, baby corn, carrots, broccoli and bamboo shoots.
Would I order it again? Yes.

All I want is here/ Meat, vege and sauce to soak rice/ Could do with more zing

SPRING ROLLS
Not shown in the picture. (Repeat after me, take photos BEFORE eating.) They are vegetable spring rolls, with a soft potatoey centre with shredded vegetables.
Price: Part of the combo, 4/5
Taste: 5/10. Not bad, not great. I like crunchy fried food, and spring rolls work for me.
Would I order this combo again? Yes.

*: I did not eat these, so everything said above is relayed from comments said at the time.

 

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Red Spice Road

Name: Red Spice Road
Location: 27 McKillop St, Melbourne CBD.
Price: Early banquet is $30 per person, includes 1 appetiser dish and 5 main dishes to share
Cost: 3/5
Taste: 10/10
Would I come here again? Yes, for special occasions.

Red Spice Road (RSR) offers banquets for a set price. Here is the $30 menu, as of 17 August 2011: (the menu changes over time)

Banquet Menu

• Appetiser: Betel leaf topped with Chicken, Chilli, Kaffir Lime and Lemongrass

Shared Mains

• Lamb Rendang- Malay style lamb, potato and coconut curry
• Chicken with Kailan, Snake bean, chilli and basil
• Tomato, Cucumber, Fresh Herb, Green chilli and Asian celery salad
• Snapper, watermelon, coriander, mint and lemongrass salad
• Pork belly with apple slaw, chili caramel and black vinegar

But I found there was more dishes than on the written menu, but that might be my imagination. Or that dishes were split into different plates for ease of sharing. I do not think I have a snapshot of the Chicken-Kailan-Snake bean dish. But onwards!

Before I get to the food photos, I wanted to show you the interior of RSR. Once your eyes adjust to the dim lighting, it’s really quite pretty. (Unfortunately, my camera doesn’t do a good job of adjusting to light levels. I have trouble taking photos in dim lighting because it becomes very blurry. Photos have been quickly retouched by adjusting light and contrast.)

A floating lantern/ Claim to fame: Largest in the /Southern hemisphere

Curved tables look good/ But bares an intrinsic flaw/ Chairs don't fit neatly

Paper lantern lights/ An attempt at poetry/ It looks like the Moon

Red: A colour theme/ Even the pitchers are red/ Colour matching win

Light bamboo screen doors/ A case of room-jealousy/ An unused bright room

Now for food.

Appetiser: Betel leaf topped with Chicken, Chilli, Kaffir Lime and Lemongrass
Taste: 10/10, no complaints here

Dig in, use your hands/ Chicken-betel leaf for all/ Sharp and peppery

The chicken mix sits on top of a betel leaf. Betel leaf has a crunchy texture like crisp nori, and a sharp peppery taste. A win as an appetiser in my books.

To clear up any confusion, culinary betel is different from the betel nuts and betel quid, which are associated with oral cancers. From now on, when I mention ‘betel leaf’, I am refering to ‘Piper sarmentosum‘, and not ‘Piper betel‘. They are related plants, but culinary betel does not contain the carcinogenic compounds in chewing betel. Nor does it have that strong taste that can only be acquired through sheer will to impress your locals, or the ability to dye your teeth yellow and your spit red, or the numbing sensation, or you know, gives you cancer. No, culinary betel leaf is safe to eat, delicious, and has positive health effects.

Betel leaves are most commonly found in tropical areas of South-East Asia (SEA), north-east india and south China. But it is more commonly used as a foodstuff in Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and Vietnam. In Thailand, betel leaves are a snack food commonly found at festivals. You get the leaf, put stuff on top and use the leaf as a vehicle for toppings. Thai miang kham (betel leaves with topping) is very similar to the betel leaf appetiser at RSR, which isn’t unexpected as RSR does draw a lot from Thai cuisine. I doubt that the Thai version would use chicken, but it’s a good addition here. Food is continually changing and adapting to fit the tastes of the people. If people are more comfortable eating a shiny green leaf that looks like it was plucked from an ornamental plant with something familiar, such as lemongrass chilli chicken, then let it be so.

Betel leaves have medicinal effects. In SEA medicinal philosophy of ‘heating’ and ‘cooling’ effects of food on the human body, betel leaves are seen to have a ‘cooling’ effect. It’s believed that it replenishes energy and helps recovery from lethargy associated with humid hot summers. It’s also delicious. But now western medicine has something to say about betel leaves.

“Aqueous extract of piper sarmentosum decreases atheroschlerotic lesions in high cholesterolemic experimental rabbits.” It’s a mouthful, and the words are too long. Culinary betel is good for you. It decreased the chance of the poor fatty rabbits from having a heart attack. While there hasn’t been any studies on humans, I think it’s a safe bet to say that culinary betel won’t hurt you. It might help clear up atherosclerotic plaques in humans. But that goes without saying that eating more green leaves is good for you. (Betel leaves are also good in a lean beef stir-fry.)

If that wasn’t enough, here’s another long line of text. “Intrinsic anticarcinogenic effects of Piper sarmentosum (our culinary betel leaf) ethanolic extract on a human hepatoma cell line.” Say what now? Some people infused some ethanol with betel leaves to extract a bunch of chemicals, and dropped it onto a liver cancer population. Cancer-in-a-bottle shrivels up and dies. (Well, not exactly, it’s not the Witch of the West. It’s not Oz either.)

The point is, betel leaves are an interesting ingredient and they could be the next broccoli. Having said that, betel leaves should not replace a healthy diet and an active lifestyle. It doesn’t hurt to eat betel leaves every now and then though. They are quite tasty. Go forth and eat leaves.

Lamb Rendang- Malay style lamb, potato and coconut curry
Taste: 10/10, love that galangal kick

The word galangal/ Is a lot of fun to say/ Galan-galan-gal

Rendang is a curry-like dish originating from the Minangkabau ethnic group of Indonesia, but is nor served all across Indonesia. According to wikipedia (my favourite go-to site for entertaining light reading. Also, not the most reputable of articles, so you have been warned.), rendang is made from beef and is ‘slowly cooked in coconut milk, spices and sometimes toasted coconut paste’.
Rendang is a coconut-based wet curry. Unlike like many curries which are coconut milk-based, rendang is based on ground-up toasted dessicated coconut. I am going to go by my favourite rendang (home made by a not-Indonesian friend) because I enjoy culinary bastardisation. (I don’t even have a cuisine to call my own, so I’m going to claim as many as I can. All in one.) Her rendang consists of toasting dessicated coconut, and grinding it in a mortar and pestle until it resembles tahini or natural peanut butter. It takes a while. Then grinding galangal, ginger, garlic, chili, tamarind, kaffir lime leaves, curry leaves and soemthing else into a paste. Slowly fry up the coconut paste until it drives your neighbours mad with the toasty coconut-ty goodness, then add the spices to release aromatics. Throw in your lamb (we like using lamb instead of beef. I prefer the texture and taste of lamb fat to beef fat.) Add in some crushed lemongrass. Then slowly simmer for at least 3 hours.
In the mean time, you’re rolling around feeling hungry, and sewing your arms back on from having them drop off after grinding coconut flakes. Rendang is a and time and effort-heavy curry to make from scratch. The point is, if you want an authentic rendang curry and don’t have the time to make it yourself, go to RSR.

It’s full of toasty coconutty goodness, with a kick from the ginger and galangal. A strong kick. No skimping on the galangal here. No shortage of sauce here either. None of that super-lean lamb either. It has some collagen and fat on it for that gelatinous texture that comes with slow cooking. There’s also a giant bowl of rice to soak up that sauce with.

Rice, delicious rice/ the staple food of Asia/ Good for soaking sauce

Gotta love sauce. Sauce and rice.

Chicken with Kailan, Snake bean, chilli and basil
Taste: 9/10, shaved off a point because it could do with a crunchy component. My standards are high here.

Hello gluttony/ Singularity to eat/ Basil fried chicken

I’m sure there is chicken (fried), with basil and chilli. Where I  start to become confused is where the kailan (chinese broccoli) and snake beans are. Maybe I just missed them, it is a long table afterall.
Either way, good fried chicken. It has tangy components in the salad too, to cut through the fried batter. The batter isn’t heavy, or greasy, but there’s another fried item on the shared menu and I think it is considerate of RSR to add something refreshing and zingy with this salad.

(Snake beans, also known as yard-long beans. Also known as Vigna unguiculata subspecies sesquipedalis. Despite its name ‘yardlong bean’, it is only about half a yard long. Which is still very long. They also grow incredibly quickly. I find that they are softer and more tender than green beans. Green beans are crispier. Both have their place. I wish I found the snake beans at the table so I knew more about them at RSR. But I didn’t, so I don’t know.)

(Chinese broccoli. It’s that vegetable you get at Yumcha. You’ll see ladies with carts laden with a wall of trimmed kailan. You order a plate, and she’ll toss a pile of kailan into a vat of boiling water, boil them for 90 seconds, put it on a plate, drain the water and then drizzle it generously  with oyster sauce. Ridiculously easy, but so good and crunchy. Chinese restaurants go through a lot of kai-lan. I have spent hours of my life trimming and portioning kai-lan. ‘Nough said.)

Edit: The snake beans and kai-lan were separate from the chicken. Apparently, they were just average. Unfortunate.

Tomato, Cucumber, Fresh Herb, Green chilli and Asian celery salad
Taste: 10/10, no complaints. How can it go wrong?

Crunchy and zingy/ The way I like my salads/ No need for dressing

Refreshing too! Good after the curries.

Snapper, watermelon, coriander, mint and lemongrass salad
Taste: 10/10

A phrase comes to mind/ Thai food, italian phrase?/ Chi mangia solo... (crepa solo)

Oh my goodness. This! I apologise for the lack of photos of this dish. It had chunks of lightly battered and fried snapper (honest battered fish. None of that mucking around with my fish thank-you!), generous sized chunks where you can bite into it and see the fish flake into layers. Chunks of watermelon, which may seem a little odd considering this is a savoury dish, but the watermelon adds that summery flavour and adds to the juiciness of the salad. There’s also coriander, mint, lemongrass in the dressing and beanshoots for crunch. We have a winner. (I wish I ate more of this instead of being preoccupied with photos. Then perhaps I would have remembered to take a photo of it.)

Edit: Found a photo! The snapper salad on the left end on the edge.

Chi mangia solo crepa solo translates to ‘those who dine alone, die alone’. Eat with friends whenever you can.

Pork belly with apple slaw, chili caramel and black vinegar
Taste: 9/10. Good, but it can be over-fried for some pieces. I had one of those pieces.

Tender pork belly/ Reminder that fat is good/ In sparing amounts

Here’s the one that everybody’s been waiting for. Pork belly.
It wasn’t quite what I expected, actually. I had expected a mass of soft gelatinous chunks of pork marbled with fat and collagen, yielding to the bite yet not greasy when it goes down, just the sweetness of pork and its subtle broth bursting from within. I did get that, but what I didn’t expect was the extra frying for the crispy exterior.
You need to eat this pork belly with the apple slaw, and the black vinegar. The vinegar is the hard part. I settled for biting into the pork belly chunk and dipping it into a spoonful of vinegar in my bowl to mop up the tartness. The pork belly is good on its own, but the vinegar adds another level. The slaw adds texture and sweetness.

There were more things that weren’t on the menu. Perplexing, but welcome.

FRIED FISHCAKE/FOOTBALL
Taste: 10/10

I have no idea/ Good things come in small package/ and vinegar slaw

I have no idea what this is. It seems to be minced fish, possibly mixed in with prawns for texture and flavour. The overall flavour is mild and sweet. (Not in sugar-sweet kind of way, either. It’s great.) There are also spring onions and possibly bamboo shoots too. The slaw on top is coriander and cabbage with a bit of vinegar. Whatever it is, it was very tasty.

POTATO, EGGPLANT, BABY CORN CURRY
Taste: 10/10. I could dock off a point because I don’t like baby corn, but that would be petty.

Potato eggplant/ Two of my childhood favs/ One yummy curry

A curry based on coconut milk. I am not familiar with spices to name the spices in it, but it’s a mild curry without any strong flavours that might upset people. The potato texture is just about perfect.

That’s all for today. Long post. Have one more picture, just in case.

Stare at the platter/ Visual feast for all viewers/ Emtpy stomach growls

Cacao Green VS Tutti Frutti

Name: Cacao  Green
Location: Swanston St/Lonsdale St (285 Swanston St
Melbourne, 3000)
Price range: $6.5-12 frozen yoghurt (Junior sized tub with three toppings is $7.50. )
Overall score: 9/10 for frozen yoghurt, though it is a bit dear

Name: Tutti frutti
Location: QV Urban Market
Price range: $1.50/50g, by weight only
Overall score: 6/10 for frozen yoghurt, but luckily for Tutti Frutti its charm point doesn’t lie in its frozen yoghurt

Cacao green and Tutti Frutti are both frozen yoghurt places, both claiming health benefits from their products. The aim of this review is to compare and contrast Cacao Green and Tutti Frutti.

Nutritional Value:

Tutti Frutti has 16-20g sugar per serve  (depending on flavour), is fat-free for almost all of their flavours, and contains an average of 420kJ. The catch is, the serving sizes listed on TF’s website is a 89g serve. Let’s make all of this mathematical garble speak the same language. In 100g of Tutti Frutti frozen yoghurt, there is 18-23g sugar, fat-free (or negligible), and contains 470kJ.
Comparing this with Cacao Green, which do specify a serving size in their nutrition tables (100g), Cacao Green is low-fat, has 22g sugar on average, and contains 470kJ per serve.

So for the same serving size, they are pretty much the same in terms of fat, sugar and energy content. They both claim their probiotic yoghurts have health benefits. Cacao green has the additional point for being organic yoghurt. Tutti Frutti takes a different approach and offers more flavours.

Service, Flavours and Toppings:

Let’s start with the simpler review: Cacao Green. Cacao Green is straightforward. You go in, look at the price board overhead, make an order, maybe add some toppings if you feel like it, pay at the counter, wait along the streetway to decrease traffic inside, and recieve your mountain of frozen yoghurt.

The fro-yo machine/ Slick and sophisticated/ Sounds like a car ad

Cacao Green has 4 flavours: Original, Matcha (Japanese green tea), French strawberry and chocolate.
Original is tangy, and yoghurt-y. I’m not even sure whether it has an additional flavour to it. It’s tastes zingy and fresh.
French strawberry is a gentle strawberry flavour, it’s not artificial-tasting as I had expected it to be, or tasting of ‘french strawberry yoplait’ flavour. Strawberry is pleasant, but not the greatest strawberry flavour I have ever encountered.

Left: Original/ Blueberry compote, cheesecake/Right: Plain strawberry

Matcha is a fragrant delicate flavour that seems to be popular with the asian youth. Sometimes matcha-flavoured things are overly sweet or are poor imitations of green tea flavour. But at Cacao Green, matcha-flavoured froyo still retains its delicate notes. Some may find it too delicate, especially as the fro-yo is cold and numbs your sense of taste, but it does offer an unobtrusive background note.

Japanese matcha/ The haiku is Japanese/ A recurrent theme

I have not yet tried chocolate fro-yo.
Toppings include: chopped fruit, mochi, chocolate, cheesecake chunks, nuts and berry compotes

Chocolate or diced nuts?/ Diced fruits for your fruity fix./How about mochi?

CG Flavours: 9/10. I would love the strawberry flavour to be reformulated to be a sharper tangier flavour, but that is my preference for strawberry-things. It’s still tasty!
CG Toppings: 9/10. The cheesecake is disappointing. Just pop down to the supermarket and purchase a cheesecake there.  But there is always the added bonus of convenience.

Now to Tutti Frutti. The reason why I deem Tutti Frutti (now refered to as ‘TF’) to be more complex is because there is a lot to be reviewed here.
TF is a self-service franchise. You pick a paper tub to collect your fro-yo, have a field day on the 6 flavours available to you, go wild on all the toppings, weigh and pay. The best thing about TF, apart from the self-serve and freedom to have whatever you want in whatever quantity, is the way it appeals to consumerist psychology. It suggests you should have a certain sized portion, and subtly hints that you should have more of everything. So really, it’s the worst thing about TF if you’re bean-counting. The way it does this is a marvel and a half. Allow me to expand on this observation:
1. Larger tubs are at eye-level, hence more likely to be taken. Larger Tubs leads to Larger Serves.
There are two sizes of tubs at TF: Large and small. Large is green, and small is orange. The green tubs are placed on the top dispensing rack, as well as the middle one. These two racks are at eye-level, and are more likely to be taken than the smaller tub, orange, which is waaay down at the bottom. Also, everybody else has fallen for this and has  green tub, so you too feel compelled to take a green tub.
So what if I take a larger tub? I can control my portions. I don’t doubt your sensibilities in portion size, my friend, but portion size is a large factor in determining how much you eat. The same idea transfers over to Bigger Trolley: Buy More Things, or in this case, Bigger Tub: Dispense more Froyo.

(In effect, portions are relative. We have no natural grasp on absolute numbers, or absolute portion size. But we are very good at determining relative numbers. (This explains why we find it much easier to decide which suitcase out of a 30kg and 35kg suitcase is heavier, but still haven’t a clue whether the suitcase will pass weight limitations at the airport.) There is also a famous psychology experiment conducted with popcorn to illustrate the point that Larger Portions=Larger amount consumed. Four groups of people were invited to a movie. One group was given a small bag of fresh popcorn, one a large bag of fresh popcorn, one a small bag of stale popcorn, and the last group, a large bag of stale popcorn. In short, when you’re given a huge portion of something, be it a bag of fresh popcorn, or a bag of stale popcorn, or a giant trolley, or paper tub, you will feel compelled to consume more of it. Regardless of whether it tastes good or not.
If you made it here, thanks for reading my rant about experiments. Another experiment which involved popcorn is the ‘Bad Popcorn in Big Buckets: Portion size can influence intake as much as taste” article.  (I used my university’s subscription to access full-text. I realise that I now read journal articles for work and leisure. Neeeerd.) Actually, that might be the article I spoke of before. The additional point I wanted to make was that people who habitually eat at movie theatres, will eat more popcorn when they are given popcorn. It’s a habit, it’s hard to kick, even when the popcorn has been stale for a week. The real kicker is, the habit kicks in only when they are watching movies in a dark room, similar to the environment in movie theatres. It doesn’t kick in when the room is brightly lit. I hope you found this as interesting as I did.)

2. There are 6 flavours to choose from, instead of 1.
Given more choice, it is much easier to deliver a larger serve to yourself. In another study, 2 groups of people were told to eat as many M&Ms (except they weren’t told they were M&Ms otherwise it would seem to be a product placement) as they felt would satiate them for the time being. The group with the bowl of M&Ms in one colour ate fewer candies than the group whose bowl contained different coloured M&Ms. Colours produce the illusion of choice, even though they all taste the same.
Also, the handles for the machine are not made for precision. I tried to dispense a small smount of each, but the machine handles are heavy and insensitive, so I did end up with 230g. (Which is small compared to everybody else’s self-administered serve)

So many colours/ So, can you taste the rainbow?/They are not Skittles.

3. Freedom to pick any/all toppings
Some toppings don’t weigh very much, such as almond flakes, but some can weigh a lot, such as chocolate-and-chocolate-biscuit sticks. But most of them don’t weigh much. I enjoy the freedom to mix everything together for the ultimate knobbly fro-yo concoction.

Go on, I dare you/ Curiousity calls you/ Take all the toppings!

The flavours which I’ve tried are
Vanilla: Tastes like vanilla shots you get when you order syrup with coffee drinks. Or cheap vanilla essence.
Chocolate:Tastes like concentrated ovaltine without the malt, or like nesquik. It’s a dark brown, which is a colour I associate with dark chocolatey flavours, but alas it’s just a concentrated shot of nesquik.
Green tea: A stronger green tea flavour than most. More like the hard candy green tea flavouring than the delicate green tea in biscuits and milk candy. If you like that concentrated matcha flavour, you might like this one.
Taro: I haven’t ever liked taro-flavoured anything, and I won’t be making an exception here. It tastes like the burnt bits scrapped off toast.
Blueberry: This was my favourite out of the 5. Tastes like blueberry yoghurt flavouring.
Original was out of service, and needed to be topped up.

Fro-yo melts quickly/ Watery puddle of yog/ Looked better frozen

As an overview, I prefer the flavours at Cacao Green to TF. I also prefer the frozen yoghurt consistancy of Cacao Green to TF, it doesn’t become watery. I like both places’ toppings. I would go to CG for their frozen yoghurt and the entire experience, but to TF for the novelty and for the multitude of toppings. Eat TF for the toppings. You have my permission to forgo most of the fro-yo at TF and have a (dis)proportionate amount of topping with it.