Pancake Parlour

I am in love with pancakes, especially the awesomely fattening but oh so delicious buttermilk pancakes from Pancake Parlour!

It is also handy that Pancake Parlour is running a winter promotion called Winter Parlour where customers only pay what the temperature at the time is. For example, we only paid $8 each for our dishes below. This is a savings of 60%!

My dish of buttermilk pancakes with strawberries was yummy. The strawberries make me feel better about consuming all that fat and sugar but the ice cream cancelled all that out. The pancakes were just too fragrant, fluffy and good to comment. Normal price would have been $20

Gaz's dish of a medley of pancakes including hot buttered almonds, chocolate and strawberries were a delightful way to sample the many different flavours available at the Pancake Parlour.

We saw quite a number of customers enjoying their pancakes with bacon, scrambled eggs and hash browns. They look so peaceful reading the newspaper, enjoying a cup of tea and savoury pancakes on a Sunday morning. Just the stuff weekends are made of!

The Hare and the Hatter, Bayswater

There is a new cafe in Bayswater called The Hare and the Hatter. On the weekends, it is so busy that it is best to go before lunch time to beat the crowd and actually get a parking spot from the very small parking lot, and to get a decent seat in the cafe.

What I love about this place is the long glass case near the cashier counter that displays all the colourful and interesting looking individually sized cakes. I am sure the cakes would have tasted great as well. If only we had the stomach space for desserts after our brunch.

I ordered the Jabberwocky's Tale $18.50- slow poached salmon and poached egg,  seaweed crisps (seaweed coated with tapioca flour then fried), endamame, and seaweed salad on the side. The seaweed crisps try to add some texture to the dish but some of them were already soft - perhaps an airproof container for these would come in handy). Besides that, the salmon was poached and soft, the egg was poached and soft and rich and nothing really was on the plate to cut through the richness and add texture to the soft on the dish.

 

Gaz's dish Benedictine Adventure $19- poached eggs with hash brown, Korean pulled pork and pickled daikon. I believe most dishes on the menu had some kind of Asian ingredient element to them. The house made hash brown was interesting - it had shredded daikon as well as potatoes. I found the daikon shreds a bit raw for my tasted. The hash was thick and so didn't have the right crispy and soft balance that I enjoy and look forward to with hash browns. The pulled pork was stringy (that is something I find common with pulled pork. Sorry pulled pork, it's me, not you) but Gaz enjoyed the flavours.

 

 

I think the next time we visit this place it would be to try their large array of cakes and sweets. They do look very exotic and different from the other places. I'm sure these are all made on the premises rather than being carted in each morning from a wholesaler. But, we'll have to visit again to try it out.

Ikkoryu Fukuoka Ramen, Russell St CBD

Ikkoryu Fukuoka Ramen is located in the basement of 27 Russell St in the CBD. It is perhaps busier during the nights and during office lunch hours as it is one of the few ramen shops in the city that is open late until 10pm and 12am on the weekends.

So when we arrived on a cold Sunday afternoon for lunch, we found ourselves having most of the dining room to ourselves bar one other table.

The ordering system is quite interesting, in that each diner gets a big piece of the menu where they can each tick the type of soup base they would like, intensity of the soup base, texture of the noodles (normal to hard), toppings etc.

We ordered black garlic ramen, miso tonkotsu ramen and chicken karaage to share.

This was my dish - the black garlic ramen. It came with an onsen egg, black fungus, two pieces of pork slices and spring onions. The first I've heard of black garlic was through a colleague whose mother in law makes her own black garlic. Black garlic is 'caramelised' garlic, touted to have significantly higher health benefits than normal untreated garlic. Garlic is kept heated at a constant temperature for a certain time, until it becomes 'caramelised'. Although I like garlic very much, I have no intention to make this because it looks like a pain in the bottom to make!

But I thoroughly enjoyed the rich soup that is my black garlic ramen broth. It was so tasty and needed none of the condiments on the table (unlike Bankara Ramen!). I can imagine the many kilos of pork bones to brew such a delightfully rich broth. I would have like the film of oil on both bowls skimmed off though. Coupled with the rich yolks of the onsen eggs, I felt a little sick towards the end with the richness of the broth.

But that did not stop me from enjoying this dish as well. The miso tonkotsu tasted a little bland compared to the black garlic broth, but it was still very good. The toppings were standard and was the same as the ones in the black garlic ramen. I really enjoyed the texture of the ramen which is firm, springy and had a good 'mouth feel' in my opinion.

  

The chicken karaage was made of nice, big pieces of succulent chicken. There are five pieces in a standard dish (we were too fast for the camera!). Gaz thought that they should be smaller pieces so that there would be more crispy bits but I thought they were crispy enough and I quite enjoyed a juicy chicken piece than a hard crispy chicken bit.

 

I must say that $17 per ramen dish (prices start from $15) is quite expensive. We were lucky enough to enjoy a good meal deal where the two ramens and chicken karaage (total $44) cost us $35 in total. It is too bad that the offer has since expired!

Van Gogh Exhibition at NGV Melbourne

The Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria has the record of the best selling exhibition in the whole of Australia. This is not surprising seeing the lines that snake around the hall to the ticket booth and back again towards the entrance of the exhibition each day. 

Last weekend, we waited nearly two hours to get into the exhibition. It was dizzying, not to mention the crowd in the exhibition. It was an hour to queue up to the get the tickets and another to get into the exhibition. 

I was undecided whether or not the exhibition was worth the two hour queue...  As we entered the exhibition, there was a big screen of information on the artist. It was informational and provided a good feel to how the paintings in the exhibition were arranged - according to nature's seasons.

In the first section, there were quite a number of unrelated paintings, sketches and art block works that served as inspiration to the artist but not actually painted byVan Gogh. Most of us skipped past these stocking fillers and went straight to the Christmas present.. In Winter, most paintings were brown, sombre, of wheatfields and peasants. Slowly, as we progressed through the seasons, and Van Gogh accepted the idea of lightening his palate in line with the rest of the Impressionists of the time, the paintings became brighter.

I felt that many of the paintings in this exhibition were of his earlier works when he was still experimenting and finding his own style. Not many of his signature style paintings like Starry Night appeared in the exhibition. So, both Gaz and I were felt a little let down.

The exhibition has another 11 days to run to the 12 July. For those who wish to beat the queue, consider pre purchasing the tickets online ($4.50 transaction fee applies) but you would still have to queue up to enter the exhibition. NGV members get express entry so if you are one, then flaunt it! There is the opportunity to join as member on the day but you would still have to queue up to join and buy tickets plus paying some $90 extra per couple... If you were going to the exhibition with a friend, you could queue up for the tickets and join your friend in the entry queue once you've got the tickets. Could save you some time if you are really keen...

Workshop Brothers, Glen Waverley

Workshop Brothers is a new addition to the ever changing dining scenery on Kingsway, Glen Waverley. This strip has been very fluid over the last few years and the competition is fierce. It is not uncommon to visit Glen Waverley after a month to find the landscape changed (again). Most restaurants on the strip serves Asian food so Workshop Brothers is not deviating too much by offering Asian Fusion.

The restaurant has made some changes to the layout of the restaurant previously occupied by Spicy Fish and somehow made it feel tight and cramped. We were seated at a table on high bar stools which we unfortunately found to be very uncomfortable - perhaps an indication we need more padding on the bottom!

Entree was scallops on betel leaf ($6 per serve) which were delicious. The scallops were drizzled with a sweet sour tamarind sauce and finely chopped red onions. It was a good combination but all gone in two mouthfuls. This is my first time tasting betel leave and found it hard to chew and has a raw taste. I am not sure why the addiction of betel leaves and chalk!

Jungle curry beef cheeks ($30) was served next. This dish came with a caution of three 'hot's with exclamation marks on the menu. It may well have needed some skulls and crosses too because it sure was spicy!

We very nearly get to taste the true flavours of this dish because the first time it landed on the table, the meat was not heated through and was below room temperature. We could not also taste any spiciness as warned in the menu. Being a little puzzled whether or not the chef had meant to serve the dish as is, so we decided to clarify.

Luckily, the server was most polite and replaced the dish, no questions asked.  This is one of the competitive edge that this restaurant has over many of the others on the strip - great customer service. He even asked us if we would like more rice to go with the replacement dish. Talk about putting the customer first! Both the replacement dish and the extra rice was on the house.


We also ordered the sticky lamb ribs ($24) in sticky star anise and chilli infused soy sauce. This was sweet and savoury and the meat was so tender. There was not much sauce but the ribs were moist enough. Lamb ribs have got to be my favorite cut of meat at the moment!

Both dishes came with loads of fresh herbs and were comfort foods but with a new fresh clean edge to them. But what we were really impressed with was the service here!