Pancakes On The Rocks

Location: 4 Hickson Rd, The Rocks, Sydney
Link: http://pancakesontherocks.com.au
Cuisine: Pancakes

After my 2 trips to Sydney, in which both involved Pancakes on the Rocks at some stage of the trip, I've decided that I should add my opinion on it here. This is not much of a food review, just a penny of my thoughts about the infamous Pancakes on the Rocks.

PROS

• cheaper then pancake parlour (melb), but PPs is over priced anyways - but it does do take away now which is always a bonus
• has an extensive menu, rangeing from pancakes, to crepes, to savoury, to desserts, to wedges etc...
• open 24 hrs (The Rocks only)
• lots of seating available at The Rocks location
• yummy food, but who can say no to pancakes??

CONS

• long queues getting in, but both times I've been havent been much of a problem
• service isnt the best, especially if you're seated downstairs in the corner
• The Rocks venue is a bit hidden, nearly got lost trying to find it the second time round
• slightly longer waiting period for the food
  

I'll visiting Syd again in late July this year, and im pretty sure we'll hit it up at Pancakes on the Rocks again.

R4 Cafe

Location: 12 Equitable Place (near corner of Collins and Elizabeth Streets)
Cuisine: Quick Meals, Modern Australian

Hidden away on the western end of the Collins and Elizabeth Street intersection is a little laneway called Equitable Place. The laneway is full of little cafes and stalls, some sporting full seating inside, others which are merely a standalone stall with perhaps a table or two and some chairs just outside. There was food of all sorts - cafe food, sushi, a baguette and hotdog place, a sandwich bar and plenty of others.

As I walked past R4 Cafe, their daily specials caught my eye - $6.90 soup and bread. Hungry and cold, I went in. Inside is like a miniature food court. A long counter runs down one side of the cafe, with soups, pastas, salads, roast, sandwiches, rolls and so forth. The place even had salt and pepper calamari! The prices were also quite cheap compared to the cafes down Causeway Lane. Pasta was $6 for a small and $9 for a large [the box is HUGE!] There is also a breakfast menu that runs until 11.45am - a good place to stop over for a nice lazy breakfast one day!

Service was fast as most food comes over the counter. Staff are friendly and polite, but know exactly what they are doing. I know I'll be back for more!

Overall Rating: 8.5/10

Hwaro BBQ

Location: 562 Little Bourke Street [near King Street]
Cuisine: Korean, BBQ

With a number of recommendations from friends, I took some work friends down to Hwaro for their first Korean BBQ experience. The food was unbelievably amazing!! Now I've had Korean BBQ before, but this time just beats the rest! The meats were well-marinated and full of flavour, and were barbecued until they were soft and tender, none of that charred burnt blocks of meat! There was a wide range of complimentary side dishes too - kimchi, beanshoots, soybeans and the like. We chose a dish each for the BBQ, and also a seafood pancake. Amusingly, we ended up selecting two of nearly everything - 2 x bul-go-gi, 2 x chicken thigh fillet, 2 x calamari and 1 x marinated rib-eye fillet.

[complimentary sides]

[seafood pancake]

[the BBQ itself]

The place was very nicely ventilated - each BBQ had its own mini air-vent that could be lowered or raised for convenience. Despite the ventilation, the smell of Korean BBQ still lingered on our clothes after we left. There is even a outdoor 'balcony-like' section with tables. Would be a nice place to sit in the summer, but for winter, we were glad to have an indoor table!

The service, on the other hand, was rather abrupt and at times bordered on rude. One waiter told one of us that we had to be out by 8pm because they had another booking for then. Now, why wasn't I informed of this when I called first to make the booking, or at either of the two times I called to confirm numbers. As we approached 8pm, they started loitering around the table collecting finished plates and bowls and brought us the bill without us having asked for it.

The next complainable thing was the way they miscommunicated information. When we made our orders, I asked the waitress whether rice would be charged per head or per bowl. She said per head, which we took to mean unlimited rice per person as is usually the case at many other Asian restaurants. The problem was when we got the bill, they had charged us for 15 bowls of rice and not for 9 people. The waiter then tried to back it up by showing us the menu - which merely stated "steamed rice $2" without any indication of whether it would be charged per head or per bowl. After stressing this, they were at least willing to rectify the bill and therefore redeemed themselves.

I think that irrespective of the billing issue, the food was so awesome that I will definitely be back for more!!

Overall Rating: 9/10

Ajisen Ramen

Location: 130 Bourke Street
Cuisine: Japanese

Reasonably priced and a reasonably extensive menu of ramen, however the menu is somewhat repetitive, with Chasyu in nearly all of them. Some of the variants were pretty much the same dish with extra corn, or extra chasyu, or something else. However, the soup base is rather tasty and the noodles are tender like the should be. Pricewise, a little more expensive than the above places, but still around $9 - $13. Worth a try!

Chasyu ramen

Overall Impression: 8/10

Hokka Hokka

Location: Australia on Collins Foodcourt
Cuisine: Chinese

Fast, cheap and as varied as you want. This little joint has a number of suggested ramen and noodle soups displayed on a large board at the counter, as well as create-your-own noodles. It's as simple as selecting:

• Either fried noodles [noodle boxes] or noodle soups
• The type of noodles: udon, egg, rice noodle, hokkien
• The soup base (for soup noodles): miso, chicken, tom yum, laksa
• The sauce (for fried noodles): chicken, beef, BBQ pork, prawns, crab meat, fish cake, fish balls
  

They add some vegies and in around five minutes time, you have your noodles!! Mmmmm... Pricewise is also quite cheap - it can cost anywhere between $8 and $10 depending on what ingredients you choose.

Miso soup

Fried hokkien noodles with seafood and oyster sauce

Another specialty of Hokka Hokka is this...

Chicken teriyaki stone bowl

There is so much food in this bowl that you could literally share it amongst two people!! Or eat some for lunch and take the rest away for dinner (or another meal another time).

The best thing about this place is that the fried noodles are perfect for a short lunch break. Let them know you're running short on time and it'll be ready for you in 5 minutes!! Comes in a cute little noodle box!

Overall Impression: 8.5/10

Noodles Noodles and More Noodles

Cuisine: Chinese, Japanese

Winter isn't even here yet and the weather is already so so cold. After a long morning of classes, what better than to fill yourself up with some nice warm noodle soups? Here are a couple of suggestions for noodle soup:

~Yamamizu~
271 Swanston Street [near corner of Swanston and Lonsdale Streets]
Awesome ramen - the bowl if usually filled to the brim and full of ramen, vegies and meat. My favourite is the BBQ pork with miso soup base, but the others are all great too. Prices range from $9 to $12. There's also a vast array of rice (don) dishes and plenty of drinks and dessert options.

~Meshiya~
200 Lonsdale St Melbourne [just outside QV next to the BHP building]
This place never fails to impress me with the generous servings and beautiful soups. The ramen definitely fills you up, and there are about 8 options to choose from. Prices around $8 - $10. Meshiya also has Japenese pancake (yet to be tried) and the usual don dishes.

~Old Town~
Next to Yamamizu
Another one of those typical Chinese restaurants you would find scattered throughout the city, Old Town managed to impress me with it's comfy booth like seating down both sides of the room and the friendly and fastservice. Foodwise, it's not the greatest. The egg noodles can be a little tougher than expected (could be cured by cooking them just a little longer) and the beef wasn't quite cooked the last time I went. The prawn dumplings are my favourite as you can actually see the prawn inside. Servings are reasonable, but it's generally a pretty large bowl with a lot of soup, a mound of noodles at the bottom and some vegies, meat or dumplings scattered across the top. Unlike Japanese ramen, presentation here is not their strong point.

~Hokka Hokka~
See individual review.

~Ajisen Ramen~
See individual review.

Ragueneau

Location: Menzies Alley, Melbourne Central
Cuisine: Crepes, Waffles


There is this amazing waffle place hidden away in Menzies Alley at Melbourne Central. Decently priced and very very addictive!

Belgian waffles with fresh fruit and ice-cream

A normal serving of this usually has more pieces of waffles - but they ran out of waffle mixture and gave us extra crepes instead (see below). The waffles are delicious! Crispy and just sweet enough. There is a slighly biscuitty crunch and soft doughy insides. The berry sauce poured over the top was sweet and light, and went well with both the waffles and the ice cream. The fruit seemed a little out of place, but was nice to balance the dish out with.

Crepes with fresh strawberries and melted Lindt dipping sauce

My favourite is usually this set but with waffles instead of crepes. The crepes just weren't quite what I had expected, although it was still done quite nicely. The strawberries were awesome, and the Lindt chocolate sauce....heaven!!


Overall Impression: 8/10 (due to lack of waffle mixture)

Gordon's (Revisited)

Location: Causeway Lane, Shop 4, 306 Little Collins Street
Cuisine: Café, Modern Australian

After such amazing food, and forgiving them for their ridiculously slow service the last time we visited, we headed back to Gordon's for some more Easter feasting.

Meat lovers pizza

Asian tasting platter

This is always a favourite. There are two dipping sauces, one is like a mango chutney salsa, the other sweet chilli and lime. The platter includes chicken skewers, grilled prawns and calamari and probably some other things I have forgotten to include.

BBQ calamari and salmon risotto

Thai beef salad

Service this time around was quite an improvement from last time, but it was still a little on the slow side. We know to only go when we have plenty of time!

Overall Impression: 7.5/10

Sushi Monger

Location: Shop 17, 309 Bourke Street [down the Causeway Arcade)
Cuisine: Japanese, Quick Meals

In short, this has got to be the cheapest sushi place in Melbourne. Two sushi rolls and a miso soup for $5. Hungry? Add another sushi roll and it's still only $6.80. Feel like the more traditional Japanese fare? All the various dishes (teriyaki chicken, gyudon, katsudon and so forth are also on offer.

The place itself is quite small and most people opt for the take-away option - cut up and places in a plastic container with your choice of soy, wasabi and ginger. Miso comes in a very handy take-away coffee cup.

One thing we've noticed about this place is that they use extremely fresh ingredient. You can even watch the background preparation if you have the time, because everything is done in the open. If you don't have the time, you can still taste the freshness of the ingredients when you bite into your food.

A word of warning, this place gets extremely busy during the lunchtime peak hour, so if you get a chance, try to get in before the rush, otherwise you won't be left with much to choose from!!

Overall rating: 10/10

Happy & Lucky Family Chinese Restaurant

Location: 23-25 Anderson Creek Road, Doncaster East
Cuisine: Chinese, Yum Cha


Originally just a restaurant specialising in Beijing cuisine, Happy & Lucky Family decided to hop onto the Doncaster yum cha bandwagon. Having tried the Beijing cuisine originally and finding the food different, but rather bland, we decided to give the place a second chance and headed there for a yum cha lunch.

I have mixed feelings about the place. The food itself was good. The chef got all the textures and flavours right, and the prawn dishes were especially well done. It was a pity there wasn't a huge range of dishes to try, and most were the just the typical yum cha dishes. I had expected there to be a few more Beijing style dishes to distinguish itself from the all the surrounding yum cha places. (If you don't already know, Doncaster is renowned for yum cha, with at least 6 places that do it off the top of my head.) The other problem with the food was that was not quite hot enough - it bordered on warm. Understandably, the trolleys had to pass through the bulk of the restaurant before getting to our table, but at the same time, one would assume that at least the inside of the food remained reasonably hot (the trolleys are supposed to be insulated), which was not the case.

The service was very gruff and not particularly pleasant. Our crockery was pretty much dropped in front of us. The tea took forever to come out, and when we asked for chilli sauce, we ended up with tomato sauce. The only exception was the guy who refilled the teapots, who would come past and apologise for us waiting for our tea to be filled despite us not having waited all that long.

The layout of the restaurant (including long rectangular tables instead of round tables) also made it quite difficult for the trolleys of food to past through the place, and particularly annoying to spread food out on the table.

All in all, I did not end up very full, but there wasn't much else I wanted to eat (it was all repeats) so we left. Prices were reasonably cheap for yum cha - $3.50 small, $4.50 medium, $5.50 large - but we suspect it is only because the place has just started providing yum cha, once it settles down a little, no doubt we will see those prices jump!!

My own recommendation for yum cha remains the same - go to Taipan.

Overall rating: 6.5 / 10

Shabu Shabu

Location: 380 Lonsdale Street
Link: www.shabushabu.com.au
Cuisine: Japanese, Hotpot

Another all-you-can-eat for $25 place! This time, it's Japanese hotpot. For those who don't know, hotpot involves starting with a pot of boiling stock with a choice of soup bases (here it is chicken or miso) and a choice of dipping sauces (soy, sesame or suki). The food comes around on a conveyor belt, you take what you want off the conveyor belt and add it to your pot.

[chicken broth soup base]

[sesame dipping sauce]

As the servings on the belt are quite small (to prevent wastage), a waiter literally stands at the end of the belt and reloads it continuously. The selection is quite extensive ranging from meats (chicken, beef, lamb and pork), through to seafood (prawns, scallops, mussels, octopus, calamari and fish), and plenty of tofu, fish balls and vegies.

[the conveyor belt of food - hint: if you see prawns or scallops, take them immediately, or you will never get any!!!]

The only negative point was that because we hadn't booked, we were told that we had a 1.5 hour time limit. That did not impress us at all, as we had wanted to make the most of our $25! However, that time limit drove us to consuming excessive amounts of mostly seafood in an attempt to break even with our expenditure! I have a feeling we succeeded!

[just a fraction of the plates we accumulated over the 1.5 hours]

But for the time limitation, the service was quite fast. Empty plates were cleared away quite often, although I would have liked a photo of all the empty plates we had!

Overall rating: 9.5/10

Cho Gao

Location: Level 3, Melbourne Central
Link: www.chogao.com.au/
Cuisine: Thai, Vietnamese, Asian, Fusion

Walk in and you are surrounded by old South East Asian furniture and decorations. A [what the website calls] 20 metre bar stretches from the doorway through to the other end of the restaurant / bar. The furniture ranges from high tables and chairs to normal tables and stools, as well as armchairs for a relaxing drink.

We were seated at one of the high, long and narrow tables, which whilst very creative, was highly impractical for eating on. A group of us decided to share a few of the tapas, and ended up ordering:

• Gado Gado;
• Eggplant box;
• Crispy pork belly;
• Flat head tempura; and
  
• Pad Thai.
  

The gado gado was simple and fresh, with a very light peanut sauce, and there was plenty of it. The eggplant box and flat head tempura were also quite nice. The crispy pork belly on the other hand, was extremely oily... Now I'm used to pork belly being somewhat fatty, but this was as though they had soaked the meat in excess fat overnight and then forgot to drain the meat after cooking it! The pad thai finished the meal off wonderfully, with fresh tamarind sauce and pieces of chicken, egg, tofu and peanuts. Mmmmm...

And the bonus of the night was that because we had spent over $50, we were shouted a free dessert platter (worth $29!) that came with chocolate mousse, creamed rice, jelly and banana fritter with coconut ice-cream.

Apparently Cho Gao regularly has specials like the dessert special on during weeknights, at the time of writing, they are offering two-for-one meals (except Thurs to Sat nights after 5pm). Check the website for updates.

Overall rating: 8/10

Portland Lane Cafe

Location: Corner of Little Collins and Russell Streets
Link: www.portlandhotel.com.au/cafe.htm
Cuisine: Modern Australian

A very classy looking restaurant with relatively cheap food, there aren't a whole lot of these around! We found Portland Lane through the Entertainment Book [$30 off the bill!] and it turned out we chose well. The menu was rather extensive, ranging from pastas, classic dishes like burgers and fish and chips to the fancier cuts of steak and lamb fillets. YMG and I shared the Fisherman's catch, a giant platter of calamari, prawns, fish, scallops and chips, served with salad and tartare sauce. It was just filling enough (enough for fried food anyway), and the salad of cucumber, tomatoes, onions and rocket was quite good (minus the rocket as I don't like it). The fish tasted a tad oily, but the rest of the seafood tasted quite fresh. The rest of the table ordered fish of the day, fish and chips, parmagiana while Jane and Anna ordered dessert only.

[The Fisherman’s catch: a selection of fresh seafood, beer battered fish goujons, crispy paprika squid and chilli mussels & prawns with garden salad, thick cut chips and tartar sauce]

[Baileys & scorched almond ice cream: served with a shot of hot chocolate fudge and crisp wafer biscuits]

I'm hoping to get the photos off Stace soon so I can put them up, but from all I know, there were no complaints about the night. The service was pretty quick, and the waitresses were friendly enough. Seating was comfortable (anywhere with couch seating always scores bonus points with me).

Pricewise, mains were anywhere between $16-$20 (salads, pastas and classic dishes), through to $32 for steak and $36 for shared platters. Given the servings were fairly large and the food tasted fresh, it was worth the price.

The other thing to note is that the Portland is not just a cafe/restaurant. There is an attached bar in the next room, and from the crowd that were there last night (a Wednesday night), it must be a pretty popular bar!

Overall rating: 9/10

Guai Wei He [怪味合]

Location: 951 Whitehorse Road, Box Hill
Cuisine: Taiwanese

Tonight we decided to try out a new restaurant in Box Hill. No English name, 怪味合 (Guai Wei He) in Chinese. Literally translated as 'strange taste box'. Why so named? Because one of their signature dishes is the famous 怪味鸡 (chicken) that you get when you're in Taiwan.

The place operated a little like hotpot and Korean BBQ places. You choose a type of base pot (beef, prawn, crab, pork, lamb, mushroom, bean curd etc) and a type of sauce (seafood, special soy, curry, sweet and sour) and the waitress cooks it in front of you. Not quite Korean BBQ (not barbecued at all) and not like hotpot either (no soup base). More like a pressure cooker - the meat and vegies soak up the sauce. You can either eat this with rice, cold noodles or on its own. We ordered a half-lamb half mushroom pot with special soy sauce and half a signature chicken. The pot came with a few small kimchi like dishes.

The chicken was amazing - full of flavour and smelt and tasted a little smokey, like it had been cooked over a coal fire. The sauce it came with was quite tasty too, fairly salty, but smokey and sweet at the same time.

[signature 'strange tasting' chicken]

The pot itself came with a mix of carrots, onions and bean sprouts at the base, which were completely soaked with the sauce by the time the pot finished cooking. The lamb was tender, and there were plenty of different types of mushroom. Exciting stuff!

[mushroom and lamb pot]

Pricewise, it was rather cheap. The pot was a 4-person pot for $27 ($26 for lamb, $28 for mushroom), the half-chicken only $10. Along with two bowls of rice, our bill came to $39.

Creative, tasty and cheap!!

Overall rating: 9/10

Saigon Noodle Bar

CHEAPEST FOOD ON CAMPUS!!!

Location: Union House, University of Melbourne
Cuisine: Vietnamese, Chinese

After a quick and cheap feed on campus? Head to the Saigon Noodle Bar at Union House. Having been a regular fan of the place back in first year uni, I was very surprised that when I went back today, almost five years later, and found that the prices had not changed at all!!

The place is just another of those 'create-your-own-noodles' joints - choose you type of noodle, type of soup, and ingredients you want - but with a slight variation. There's a board of suggested combinations, grouped by price. $4.50 will get you a simple one meat, one vegie noodle soup. The more you pay, the more variety of ingredients you get. The bowl size is the same regardless of the price you pay.

The soup base is different too. It's more similar to the traditional vietnamese rice noodle soups, and a refreshing change to the usual chicken stock or miso soup bases at Chinese and Japanese places.

The only downside is that there no eat-in option, you have to fight for seating with all the other uni students hanging around at Union House.

Rating: 9.5/10