Chin Chin, CBD

It was a hot day when we had lunch at Chin Chin last weekend. This restaurant was made famous by some good reviews and so it was quite difficult to get a seat in the restaurant without waiting for some time.

We passed the restaurant at around 11am on our way to the Moomba fest and I asked Gaz if we could get a bite then because I didn't want to wait. Of course it was way too early for lunch so we went back at around 1:30pm.

We were told that there will be a half hour wait for a table and that they will sms us when a table comes up. There were a couple of empty tables with the owners still roaming the streets waiting for the fateful sms, no doubt.

We walked round and round the block for half an hour until my legs could not take it any more so Gaz went back to the restaurant and asked if there was a table available yet. Thankfully the maitre'd immediately showed us to a table.

Seeing it was a hot day, the waiter recommended a watermelon, mint and coconut ice drink. I felt a little pressured into ordering the drink even though I do not like coconut.

The drink came with too little watermelon and too much mint. The young coconut flesh turned out quite OK though. But I was not impressed with the drink.

As a starter we ordered the kingfish sashimi. It was slices of fish with lime juice, kaffir lime leaf, thai basil, blitzed green chilli and coconut cream. Gaz joked it should have been called kingfish ceviche instead seeing the fish was almost cooked in the lime juice.

I really liked the dish. The combination of flavours - sweet, sour, spicy was just right. I thought it made for a very appetizing starter and after tackling the dish I was more than ready to devour our mains.


We had to wait about 15 mins for our main during which time we looked hungrily on at the diners to our left and right. The impulse of reaching out to the next table with my chopsticks for their food was very strong. After all, the next table is just half an arm's length away!

So when the first main arrived, we wasted no time in digging in. We had ordered the crispy skin duck with pickled cucumber and ginger salad. There was a sprinkle of crushed peanut salt on top of the duck.

The duck was very good. I really do love duck, especially when they're moist and full of flavour like this one. The skin was crispy, the meat was tender and moist, and the peanut salt on top of the duck added flavour to the dish.

The pickled cucumber salad had the right tang of sourness which prompted a renewed appetite. The quality of the produce was superb, the duck was not too fatty at all. I just could not stop eating this dish with the bowl of rice we'd ordered.

The next main we ordered was the barbecued goat with riata. It was spicy! But I just could not resist ordering goat everytime I see it on menus because it is such a rare dish to come across. The strands of goat meat was tender and nicely done. I could not see how it could have been barbecued though.


Taking my first spoonful, I initially thought it was too sweet, but then it blends in with the spiciness. And when the spiciness becomes too much I take a spoonful of raita and it immediately quells the spiciness. It's all very well balanced indeed.

I really enjoyed our lunch at Chin Chin (with exception of the drink - they need to rethink the ratio of ingredients in that drink, seriously). I went into the restaurant thinking, 'What's the big deal, it's just Thai food.' I walked out converted. I felt I could taste a real difference in the dishes - they were fresh and clear flavours and quite different from 'just Thai food'.

Moomba 2012

It was Moomba Fest last weekend, during the long Labour Day weekend. It was a gloriously sunny and warm day. It was so good to have a day off to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air.

This year's Moomba Parade has had a change of venue. Instead of parading down Swanston St, it will be held on St Kilda Rd where the crowd can watch from the grassy slopes of the Botanical Garden and the Shrine of Remembrance. Unfortunately we arrived just as the parade was starting and did not get a good spot. We were at the end of the parade and watched through a fence! Not a good view at all.

The theme for this year's parade is food, food and food!! Everyone in Melbourne is food obsessed. In the GFC, retail spending has dropped and shops are noticeably quieter despite big SALE signs but spending on dining out and food products have increased.

These are a couple decent shots of the parade for memento:


Guy Grossi, chef of Grossi Florentino

Luckily the day was saved by other events such as this water skiing event on the Yarra. When we got there the Women's Slalom was on. We stood by the banks and watched in the shade of a tree.

I was glad that there was a commentator for the event because I got some interesting information. He explains that the boat travels at 40 kmph - quite slow, no? But the skiier will travel up to 100 kmph because by criss crossing the marker he's got a longer distance to travel and also because of the water current.

Later in the evening, I learnt that this year's Moomba parade had the biggest turnout for years. Some 120,000 people attended the parade, perhaps because of the change in venue but I really did not think it was that great at all.

Taiwan Food

Now how can I have written a series of posts on our trip to Taiwan with the scantiest mention about the food we ate there? Because they will all be compressed into this one post.

The first dishes we ate in Taiwan were wonton noodles for me and beef noodles for Gaz. Later, Gaz said that these were the best noodles he'd in Taiwan. The broth was excellent and my wontons were quite interesting. The wrappers seemed to have spinach mixed into it, which is something I haven't seen in Aust.



We had these 3 dishes at the Chinese restaurant in the hotel we were staying in, Fleur de Chine at Sun Moon Lake. We were a bit nervous about dining at a 5 star hotel's restaurant because of the steep prices, but we had limited choice because the isolated location of the hotel meant we could not simply walk out the door and find a hawker stall. I am very glad we dined in the r'ant though because these were the best dishes of our trip.

The captain recommended stir fried local vege - she said this is grown in the lake and is local to the area. I do not know what this vege is, but it is crunchy and has a clear taste. It was stir fried with some mushrooms. The captain also most kindly told us she'll order half portions for us so that we can have a greater variety but not overwhelmed by the portion size.

Full portion of fish stir fried with ginger. The fish's texture is slightly rough but the taste is delicious.

And my favourite dish of the night and the trip - braised Japanese beancurd with crab roe sauce. It was absolutely delicious!!! We both loved it so much we scraped the pot clean and nearly licked it too. The total bill came to around AUD 30, relatively high compared to normal restaurant food but a steal for us. This meal would have cost $50 in Aust.

We had this in Tainan. It was something like yee mee with Japanese influenced tempura prawns and fish cakes. Gaz ordered the one with finer fried noodles which was more delicious than my thicker ones :(

We had these two dishes in another hotel restaurant. We'd ordered eggplant and minced pork in hot sauce (below) and chicken with spring onions and did not realise that both came in hot pots. The eggplant was delicious and I was lucky to have been reminded by the waitress to make it less spicy because it was spicy!

This is the chicken with spring onions. The chicken was starchy and it was a little salty but went well with rice.


We had these two dinner sets at Hualien. The restaurant was recommended by our guide and was about 15m walk away from our hotel. On our way there, we met with a hawker who was selling paintings by the roadside. Toys, food, clothing yes, but paintings?

The restaurant specialises in health food and is a strong advocate of the usage of Chinese herbs to promote holistic health. My set consists of chicken herbal soup, mee sua and an assortment of side dishes which include purple sweet potato, pickled melon strips, stir fried ferns, a whole green chilli (which was only slightly spicy), boiled taro and braised melon.

The herbal soup was a little bland and the chicken was tough, but the mee sua boiled and mixed with a little sesame oil was delicious! This was the only mee sua dish I had in Taiwan. I was told that Taiwan serves good mee sua so I was on the look out wherever we went. When we went to one of the night markets, I spotted some people eating a bowl of what looked like mee sua. Remember both of us cannot read Chinese so I can only rely on pictures to point out what we want. I asked the vendor to give us a bowl of mee sua upon she looked at me like I was stupid and said in Chinese, 'I am not selling mee sua, I'm selling pork rib noodles!!'. So malu...

Gaz's set of steamed cod, black rice (steamed wrapped in bamboo leaves), and a soup of tear drop egg and a type of vege my mom's always said is good for the eyes (I eat this in M'sia but I can't find it in Aust), with the same side dishes.

The cod was silky smooth, and the soup tasted better than the herbal soup for sure. The black rice has a slightly chewy texture, because it is unpolished and therefore healthier.

We also got a cup of herbal tea and pineapple jelly. I was initially very sceptical of the serving sizes because the dishes looked small in the menu but after we've downed everything in the set, we were so full. I felt quite good after the meal, knowing we've eaten healthily and two days' serving of veges!

These are what we ate on our last day in Taiwan, and they were... BAD. I told my brother about this and he said he had some Japanese food in Taiwan and it was bad too.

Gaz's unagi bento came with pickled ginger, some soy product which was slightly spicy Taiwanese style and cabbage. The unagi must have came from a pack, so it was alright tasting.

I ordered a pork katsu don. It came with the same cabbage and soy product. The pork was pink in some places and really tough in others. It was also crying out for some seasoning. It was not a perfect ending to our trip.


Many people told us that the street food in Taiwan is delicious but I am afraid I'm not a big fan of them. They're very creative and novel food, that's for sure but I'm not sure I appreciate the flavours (except for tea eggs and Taiwanese grilled sausages). I much rather prefer traditional sit down food like the ones we had above.

Movida Next Door, CBD

So, what do you do after you've just a full day of eating? You eat some more! After tasting plates and meals throughout the day during our outing at the Food and Wine Festival, Gaz decided he needed something more. Like a sit down meal, out of the cold and rain. We had wanted to get some snacks from the Food Trucks Unite before we headed home but the thought of spending another second out in the cold and rain deterred us.

Instead, we headed to Movida Next Door and decided to try our luck at finding a table in the tapas popular restaurant. The rain worked in our advantage and we were instantly shown to our seats at the bar.

Artichoke, salt cod topped with caviar. Salty and nice.

Eggplant chips with dip. Didn't care much for the dip but the eggplant was light and melts in the mouth. Loved, loved it except for the skin, makes it difficult to eat and very unsightly with a strip of eggplant strip trailing out from the mouth between bites!

Chorizo and peppers sandwich. Wow. Chorizo is so wonderfully moist and spicy and sweet. The peppers luckily were not spicy. They were plump and melts in the mouth.

The bomba, which appeared on MasterChef. Potato croquette stuffed with chorizo topped with capsicum and mustard sauce. What can I say, it's deep fried and it's delicious!


Our bill came to $30. We saw the person next to us pay something like $60 for his food and I reckon that will be how much we will need to spend for a satisfying dinner and not have to stop by at McDonalds on the way home.

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 2012

Gaz and I went to the second day of Melbourne Food and Wine Festival last week. Gaz had carefully planned our day around the free events that took place during the Festival. The Food and Wine Festival is held across Victoria where participating restaurants can offer from sample plates to full courses matched with wine and stalls are set up to introduce new products. During the month, it felt like every foodie is out around town tasting their way across Victoria.

We started our day with a free sample of Peking Duck Pancake in the middle of Fed Square. The event was limited to only 30 people per session, 1 session per person. There were other dishes offered in other sessions such as Tacos, Fish and Chips and Pavlova. The first session, the pancake started at 10am. We ended up at Fed Square early by one whole hour on a chilly, drizzling morning. The city was deserted save for some trucks sweeping the streets. We passed our time browsing through the BMW Edge watching people setting up their stalls for the Saturday Book Market.

Soon it was... 9:30am and we sat close to the big screen tv in the square watching the news about floods in regional Victoria. It has been raining everyday everywhere in Victoria since our return from holidays. A lot of good it did, seeing the rains hadn't spread itself out during our absence. All our plants dried up while we were away on holidays. The strawberries were reduced to a mass of brown leaves, the tomatoes which showed so much promise with at least 10 fruits hanging off the vine dried off without the fruits managing to mature into juicy toms and my new roses, planted because it was a particular species I had been looking for (the smell is incredible!), died. It was very upsetting. The only plant that did well was the ginger, since ginger loves the heat and can get by with limited water.

10am came and went, still there was no one at the 'restaurant' which was a few poles that drew together upwards decorated with hanging pots of bougainvillea and strawberry plants. Little garden tables and chairs sat underneath the structure. We finally took a seat when trays of duck pancakes were sent out from a nearby restaurant.

There were generous slices of duck in each of the two pancakes but the skin was not crispy. In the pancakes were spring onion and cucumber slices. We ate the pancakes with hoisin sauce. It was a morning tea!

We then walked off the snack by browsing through the National Gallery of Victoria in Fed Square. There were some interesting exhibitions going on, including a big model of the Fuel and Gas building which used to be on site before it was Fed Square. The building comprises of two big brown blocks, quite similar to the Menzies Building in Monash Uni. I was quite glad Fed Square replaced the outdated blocks although a NGV guide we spoke to preferred the old building better.

Soon it was lunch time, so we took a water taxi (free for the weekend, specially for the Festival) to Southgate where the tasting plates are. The first dish we bought was a little Piggy $8 - tender pieces of roasted pork wrapped in flat bread and topped with chutney from Ludlows Butchers Grill. It was awesome as the pork was tender and plentiful and the chutney was not too sour or sweet.

We passed by Joost - a much talked about pop up restaurant whose claim to fame is serving sustainable food. There is a toilet underneath the restaurant (r'ant on second and top level accessible by staircase), some noisy generators and big barrels of herbs such as basil etc nearby. The link of processed human manure - fertilizer - herbs - my plate in the restaurant - mouth and that put me off immediately.

We next went to Tutto Bene and ordered one each of their tasting plate for $8 and $10. I cannot remember the exact description of this dish but it has tuna, ham, oyster infused cream sauce which was absolutely heavenly. We enjoyed the sauce a lot.

This one is salmon and there is some sweet caramel to contrast. It was a surprise to taste the crackly caramel but I enjoyed the salmon more.

We also went to Salsa's and ordered tacos for $2 each. Initially we wanted 2 each, but accidentally ordered 5 in total instead so we brought the extra one home.

We passed by a row of stalls selling sweets but did not browse further because the rain was starting to get heavy. We hopped on to the water taxi to Harbour Town, Docklands instead. The whole journey took us about 20 minutes and during that time the rain eased a little. Harbourtown was empty, I suppose the rain did not help because the shops are not enclosed in a mall, they only have a little awning and not much protection from the rain and cold wind that blows through from the harbour during the winter months. I think it is my least favourite shopping place solely because of how unprotected it is from the cold, and I dislike the cold very much!

I had wanted to purchase a pair of runners but by the time we found Rebel Sports, we had ran out of time. We caught the water taxi back to Fed Square just in time! We really enjoyed the Food and Wine Festival this year. Although some of the events can be a little pricey, such as full courses over $150, but there is a good mix of free and reasonable priced activities too.

Taipei - Final Day

The next day, we went to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. It was the only place we had the time to visit in our limited time on the last day in Taiwan. On our way there, we passed by the National Theatre (below) where we saw many youth waiting outside the theatre while unabashedly practicing dancing. Looking at them made me miss my dancing days and the cockiness of youth!

Chiang Kai Shek Memorial - where there is a statue of him in the building, guarded by two guards.


A wax model of Chiang Kai Shek in his office.
Then it was time to take the bus to the airport. Good bye Taiwan!

Taroko Gorge

I think I most enjoyed this part of the trip, even though it was a little shorter than I'd like. I remember the first time I went to Taiwan with my parents we seemed to have spent a longer time seeing more awesome scenery in the Taroko Gorge.

We were made to wear hard hats, so that we looked like construction workers when we got off the bus to walk the Swallow Grotto trail. Our guide told us that 2 years ago some small rocks fell from the top onto some Chinese tourists and one of them passed away as a result.

The huge rocks where the river is are marble, but of course they don't look anything like the marble you and I know because they're unpolished.


The road in Taroko Gorge was built in 1956 by the soldiers who came with Chiang Kai Shek to Taiwan, and was completed in 1960 at the cost of 300 lives. Below is the temple that was built to honour the people who died building the road. The temple is built atop a gushing waterfall because it is believed that running water can soothe spirits.



The highway was built after the original trail forged by the Japanese during their occupation of Taiwan for the purpose of finding gold. While gold was found in the Gorge, the amount is not significant enough for economically efficient mining. These days, parts of the mountain are mined for marble.

Overall the tour showed us the highlights of the beautiful scenery of Taiwan, and the next day we headed back to Taipei to finish off the sights of Taiwan's man made structures.

East Coast National Scenic Area and Hualien

Today's weather is an opposite of the sunny warm weather we experienced yesterday. If yesterday we were sunburnt, today we could not see the sunny face of the sun.

First stop is at Little Yeh Liu, a rehash of Yeh Liu we visited on the second day in Taipei. This time we got to see the Tofu Rocks, after we ran out of time in Yeh Liu.

We saw a brightly coloured crab resting on a rock while there. It looked so real, but actually it is just a dead shell of a crab thrown onto the rock by the tide.
From there we went to the 3 Immortals' Platform. It was so windy we almost fell off the bridge onto the pebble beach. There were pebbles everywhere... all rounded and smooth.


We also went to the monument marking the Tropic of Cancer. One side of the monument is where it is more warm, the other a little colder.


Our guide thought it would be fun to mix it up a little so we went to an Aboriginal village to watch a musical performan presented by the Amis people's Kakeng (musical group). They usually travel overseas to perform but we watched the performance for free (tips welcome).

Kenting and Taitung

Early next morning, we left for Kenting National Park. This is located at Taiwan's southern tip and where we had the opportunity to see the Pacific Ocean. We travelled along the coast line and our guide pointed to a 'Cat Rock' Maopitou. Till today I cannot see how it looks like a cat!

We stopped at Oluanpi Light House - is the world's only armed lighthouse. There is a moat around the lighthouse and there are holes every 3.5m in the wall for rifles. Apparently in the old days it was used to shoot down Taiwanese Aborigines. We were not allowed to go up to the lighthouse because it is still in operation. When in operation, it is the brightest in South Asia, its light can reach 27 nautical miles out.

Next, we went to the Recreation Area in Kenting where we had a little exercise by walking along a jungle track. It was a very sunny day and we were glad for the shade provided by the trees. We saw an unattended glasshouse filled with all kinds of orchids. I cannot say that orchids are my favourite flowers but I was surprised at how big and pretty the orchids are. The one below is first grown in Taiwan.

After a sweaty slog up to the observation tower, we were awarded this lovely view:


After the trek, we were brought to the town in search of lunch. We had a good lunch of steamed fish, salt and pepper whitebait, fresh bamboo shoots and local veges.