Han Guk Guan

Craving for Korean food? HGG is the place to go in Melbourne. For me, HGG will always be the number 1 – undisputed – Korean-Chinese restaurant in Melbourne!! For one thing, they have THE BEST gan jjajang (jjajang myun) EVER. Just thinking about it makes me hungry. Also I like the banchan they serve there. My other favourites deep fried Korean dumplings, ddukbukgi, kimchi chige, sweet & sour pork, sweet & spicy chicken, spicy octopus rice, and grilled pork belly. If you ask any Koreans where is the best place to go for Korean in Melbourne, most of them will say HGG. For what you pay, you will receive a generous portion of a delicious dish (unlike some other restaurants…). The staff may not be the best English speakers but they are very competent.

Han Guk Guan

13A, Victoria Street

Near the corner of Exhibition Street. The restaurant is quite hidden so you may have to keep a look out for it.

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I also recently had dinner in Hwaro Korean BBQ. This restaurant is in a sense quite the opposite of HGG. It’s modern, chic, and fashionable. The food is pretty good but the portion is really small for the price they charge. Although the lemon shouju is really nice. The staff is friendly and food came pretty quickly so I can’t really complain.

Hwaro Korean BBQ

562 Little Bourke Street

Near King Street.

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There are also a few good ones on Victoria Street near Victoria Market. Hallah, a modern Korean cuisine restaurant, has a really nice soy chicken but the food there is pretty pricy (well actually Korean food is pretty expensive).

Brunch-ing In Melbourne

One of my all time favourite things — “rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens” — is going for brunch. It might sound a little luxurious but believe me it’s not. I’m not talking about doing it every day or week, but now and then – it’s really fun AND SATISFYING (when it’s good of course). I wished I had started this brunching thing earlier but Fi and I only started last year and then we started dragging Annie along, and sometimes Grace as well. There are so many to visit and so little time. But anyway, so far I’ve only got 3 that’s worth talking about.

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Number 1. The Quarter, Degraves Street (off Flinders Lane), Melbourne CBD.

This is the usual favourite place. It’s simple. It’s convenient. It tastes good. The Quarter is your good ol’ fashion cafe that serves breakfast and lunch. Their breakfast menu has all the basic breakfast favourites like bacon and eggs, eggs benedict, omelet, buttermilk pancakes etc., and also some less conventional ones but I don’t really look at those. My usual choice at The Quarter is eggs benedict with (extra hash brown) which uses a toasted turkish bread base instead of the traditional english muffin base but the turkish bread is exactly why I have these eggs benedict, nice an crispy!  I’ve also tried their big breakfast which was ok but nothing special, and buttermilk pancake which Fi loves but I think they weren’t actually all that great – it was a little heavy to me, I prefer my pancakes light and fluffy. I’ve also had lunch at The Quarter before and it’s pretty decent. Overall the food is acceptable, the service is decent, the coffee is not bad – an overall dependable place to have brunch.

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Number 2. Auctions Rooms, 103-107 Errol Street, North Melbourne.

I’ve only been to this place once and I have mixed opinions about this place. Food was pretty good. First thing you should know is that their menu consist of original recipe type dishes, but you can still pull together an order of bacon, eggs and toast. I can’t remember the name of the dish I has as it’s name after auction terms but it’s basically baked eggs with chorizo, and potato and carrot hash – it was pretty good. But there is one thing you should really try from Auctions Rooms, their pancake! Trust me, this is no ordinary pancake. Despite it’s size, it’s light on the inside and crispy on the outside, REALLY GOOD. Service was ok but it was really hectic. Let me put it this way, a place can be busy but still offer smooth service, but here the service was really hectic. Although the staff was really nice, so I guess I can let that slide. The down side was the coffee. Very, very disappointing. The coffee wasn’t hot?!? According to Annie, she revisited the place and asked for very very hot coffee and it can as just (maybe) hot enough. So I guess they need a new barista. But honestly, if you don’t order coffee, the food is pretty good. Plus I kinda like the layout of the cafe itself – it has an open kitchen, a back patio, and even though the place is quite cramped it feels open.

*To get to Action Rooms, catch the 57 tram from Elizabeth Street towards West Maribyrnong. Get off at stop 12 (just before the tram turns off Errol Street). Keep walking up Errol Street past Queensberry Street, it’s not far from the stop.

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Number 3. Gattica, 223 Carlisle Street, Balaclava.

Amongst the 3, I would give this one the highest rating even though I’ve only been there once. The food is good and comes in a generous portion and apparently the coffee is just fine (I didn’t have coffee). The thing which deserves the most mention is their homemade hash browns. I had the hash stack with chorizo, homemade baked beans, crumbled feta, and fried free range egg. The other thing is that the 3 cafes essentially have the same price range but the portion in Gattica is the most generous. They also serve really nice homemade jam with their toast, you just have to ask for it. The food is indeed very good. Even though it’s a little out of the city, it’s really close to the train stop so no worries.

*To get to Gattica, take any train that stops at Balaclava Station. Get off there and turn right coming out of the station. It’s right next to ANZ.

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I have to mention this when mentioning The Quarter. If you walk along Degraves Street towards Flinders Street, there is a little shop that makes and sells THE BEST cupcakes in Melbourne. It’s called Little Cupcakes. If you like cupcakes or anything along those lines, TRUST ME, you will want to stop by this place.

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Another place worth mentioning, as it turns out not a lot of people seem to know about it, is Laurent, a French patisserie located at 306 Little Collins Street (between Swanston and Elizabeth). Forget Brunetti (mediocre and overrated) or Greco (average and terrible customer service). Here the pastries are actually good and none of the staff think they are better than you. However, be warned that the pastries are a tad bit pricy.

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These are the few things that I can remember that I wanted to blog about. Until next time, itadakimasu.

The Return

Ok, so I know I haven’t updated my blog in a long long looooooong time and I’m pretty sure that no one even bothers with my blog anyway. However this has been mentioned a few times by my good friends Shal and Ash, so I’ve decided I will make a come back. At the moment I am preparing for my exams, most probably the most important exams so far, so technically this is just a pre-return post. But I am determined to bring my blog back to life! Stay tuned everyone… I’ll be back!!

Discrimination At Supper Inn

This is actually a long overdue entry. My housemates and I had decided to try out Supper Inn after hearing good comments from others about the place as well as from the internet. However our experience there was not as pleasant as hoped and has left a rather bad impression on us. Firstly it was rather surprising that there was a minimum charge to book a table so we decided to not do that. However there was still a minimum charge even without the booking but I guess they are not the only restaurants that do that. The food itself was actually pretty good, I was pleased with the quality of the food. However the service was something left to be desired. The waiter/waitress that had served us was not very responsive nor showed much empathy. There were 6 of us there that night and 1 had decided that she wanted to have congee instead of sharing a meal with the rest of us, so rice (which is ordered seperately) was ordered for 5. It came in a little bucket so we had assume that the bucket was for our table to consume as we liked. So when we had quite a lot of leftovers, we asked the girl who had chose to eat congee to try the dishes and have some rice. When the waitress saw us doing so, she came over and told us that that was not allowed as we had ordered rice for 5 people even though the bucket was more than half full, and that if she wanted to have some she had to pay extra. Not only that but she immediately snatched the bucket of rice away without even asking if we were done. I thought that that was extremely rude and we were all outraged. What made it worst was that it was obvious that they did not behaved the same way with the other customers, namely the Chinese speaking Chinese and the Caucasions. It was obviously discrimination! And by people of my own race. Even though the food was good, I have to say that I will never spend another cent in that restaurant ever again.

Back To School

Well it’s now coming to the end of week 2 of semester 1 of uni… This semester is definitely going really quickly… especially with my service audit project!! Anyway so since being back, I have furnished my bedroom and unpacked, and those were not easy things to do since I have loads of accumulated crap… We’ve also had a house warming bbq… went to the Melbourne Motor Show… and the Moomba Water Festival… Every year I go to the Moomba Festival and see everyone holding a toy they’ve won and I’ve always wanted one and this year, I finally got something… yay!! It’s been a crazy few weeks… so much to get done!!

Sweet, sweet Melbourne…

So I’ve been back in Melbourne for a few days now and it’s good to be back… I’m still settling into my new place and updates on that later… It’s actually been quite hectic and I’ve had very little sleep… Yesterday… Tjia Wen came into the city to have dinner with Ash, Siew Peng and myself in conjuction with her birthday which was actually awhile ago but she was nice enough to wait for me to get back… hence Ash and I made a cake for her… the cake tasted good but there were some unfortunate circumstances, although Tjia Wen said she liked it so I’m glad. There’s still loads to get done before I can get fully settled in like buying some furniture and cleaning the place up. Fortunately, I have time this semester… or do I?!

Past, Present, Future…

In less than a week, I will be flying back to Melbourne for what I desperately hope is my last year in Melbourne. At the moment, I am trying to get done everything I need to including my application to Kendall College. Yes, I have finally decided on my future culinary institute! Kendall College is located in Chicago, IL a.k.a the windy city… I’m not exactly sure how it’ll turn out but the college sounds pretty good, it has been acknowledged as one of the top 10 culinary institutes in America, and the admissions staff are nice. If I get in, and I think I will as I was told that I was reserved a placement, it’ll another 4 years of study, but I am very excited. At the moment however, I will need to work hard to get through my final year, and I am actually feeling really good about it. I have my own personal goals for this year which I hope I can maintain.

One of the requirements for the application to Kendall is to write a short essay, of which I chose to write about my experience in Melbourne. Initially I didn’t really know what to write at all but as I looked back on the past 3 years, I really have learnt a lot and have enjoyed myself so much, despite complaining about Melbourne being boring all the time. I am definitely glad that I ended up in Melbourne, and I definitely won’t change it for anything.

As for my future plans, I don’t know if culinary school will work out for me, although I am determined to make it work. I don’t know how good I will be at it but I am definitely always interest and curious to learn more. But it’s going to be awhile before that happens.

Family Dinner… FUN!

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a big family dinner with my maternal side of the family and it was loads of fun… I’ve forgotten how fun it was really. We’ve always had this dinner ever since I can remember, every Chinese New Year… my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins from my mother’s side of the family would have a dinner together. Of course now, not everyone can make it, but there are also new faces… Nevertheless, it’s amazing how everyone has changed yet they are still the same… It was even more interesting when we started recalling old times, all the fun things we did together, all the tricks we played on each other, and all the embarrassing stories of each other we revealed.

We had the dinner at Golden Dragon City in Sea Park, which we haven’t been to in quite awhile… the food still tastes the same… I’m not sure how much th food costs there, but apparently it’s quite affordable and the food is excellent for the price you pay. All I can say is that it tastes pretty much the same as I remember it and it’s pretty decent. The dishes were, Yu Sang (a dish of Singaporean creation to celebrate Chinese New Year), shark’s fin soup, roast suckling pig, steamed fish with stewed pork, fragrant prawns, glutinous rice with preserved duck and Chinese sausages, and dessert.

Just to include into the entry, I had dinner with some friends yesterday night… and it was fun too. It was good to see Vin Li whom I haven’t seen in awhile now and since she’s working in Singapore now, it’s gonna be awhile until I see her again as well… that is unless she comes back to Melbourne. I loved that we ended the night playing Mahjong, no not the computer game where you pick a pair of mahjong tiles to eliminate them, the actual Chinese game which I consider is the equivalent to Poker just in terms of popularity. It was really fun, and it’s been awhile since I’ve played it so I was a little rusty.

Anyway now that the 3rd day is over, celebrations pretty much dies down from here on. It’s been an interesting 2-3 days, probably the most fun since I got back from the US.