1 February 2014

January 2014 food reviews

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2014 is off to a good start – here are some of my January foodie adventures.

Brunch
I headed to the recently opened Mrs Sackville at the Kingston Foreshore. It’s not along the lakefront, but faces the Bus Depot markets. The small café offers homey and simple food in a quiet spot on the Foreshore. Prices range from $9 for house-made toasted muesli to $25 for a Sunday Big Breakfast.

Penny University in Kingston recently introduced CRONUTS to their weekend menu. I tried their maple and thyme glazed cronut for $6. Deliciously sinful. I tried to be healthy and had their Low GI Breakfast Pudding before indulging in the cronut. Consisting of black sticky rice, coconut, grilled mango and nut brittle, this was an awesome dish and very filling. Best of all, it suits most dietary requirements as it’s gluten-free, vegetarian and dairy-free.

I had the white beans, tomato chorizo with baked egg at Autolyse on Lonsdale Street. The fresh bread tasted amazing, especially after dipping into the yummy tomato sauce.

Coffee at Lonsdale Street Roaster’s latest project, Remedy, on the Kingston Foreshore is reasonably priced and tastes great! I think it will do very well there.

Lunch
Dolce and Salato in Civic not only offers sweets and gelatos, but they have a huge wood-fired oven and have a selection of wood-fired pizzas on the menu at around $19 each. I really liked the ‘Verdi’ pizza consisting of caramelised pear, prosciutto, brie, rocket and bocconcini cheese. Yum!

I was informed of an awesome coffee and lunch spot in Woden – Urban Bean Espresso Bar. Using Ona coffee, they really do make a great coffee. I headed in for lunch and have been raving to everyone about the delicious chips covered in 20 different seasonings. Better than Kingsleys!

After all the hype, I thought I’d check out Vietnamese street food at Roll’d in the Canberra Centre food court. Disappointed with both the banh mi and rice paper rolls.

Dinner
I dined for the first time at Aubergine, recently rated Canberra’s number 1 restaurant by the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide. It was an enjoyable experience and is a great place to go to for special occasions or foodie fine-dining get togethers.

I headed to Torrens to finally try out Pistachio Dining, which has been on my list of restaurants to visit for the last 5 years. I thought dinner was lovely and like that they have tasting plates for both entrees and desserts.

I was eager to try out The Rum Bar at the Kingston Foreshore – a 5 star rum/cocktail/pintxos bar. I was suitably impressed with the selection of pintxos chosen – the charcuterie board, coconut shrimp (feature photo above) and arancini balls in particular. There is a bit of a wait for cocktails, especially on a Friday night, but the staff reassured us that they would be bringing in more bar staff.

I tried out Peking Duck at Mr Wei’s, located near the Canberra Theatre on London Circuit. A whole duck is $89.90 (shared between 4), and a half duck is $48.90 (shared between 2). Not the best I’ve had.

You can’t beat nice cheap food so I went back to PappaRich a couple more times for dinner.

I tasted Peruvian food for the first time at Cholo’s Peruvian Restaurant in Dickson. The saffron ice cream was feminine, light and sweet. I also tried doogh – a yogurt drink with cucumber and salt in it. Definitely the most odd drink I’ve ever tasted and not one I’d likely order again.

Until next time, stay cool.

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I enjoy FPJ. Their reviews are short and to the point, include lots of photos and prices, and often little tidbits that other blogs forget like accepted methods of payment, ability to book online, suitability for large groups, what alterations are possible, and so on. The writing isn’t anything spectactular but I’m more interested in the breadth and volume of posts anyway.

Codders111 said :

I really like the reviews. If you click on the links to the actual articles (rather than just reading these one sentence summaries) they’re quite entertaining. Even if you don’t like the reviews, it’s useful to have somewhere look at pictures of food and scope places out.

I understand if you’re frustrated with Johnboy/Barcham’s demise and the lack of new content, but there’s no need to rail against innocent bloggers.

Agree – the photos on this blog are pretty good and she seems to get on top of new places pretty quickly.

As for madam cholet’s comment, sheesh woman. Life-envy anyone? Would be interesting to see how she does work off all these 4-5 meals she consumes though 🙂 High-earning public servant and gym fanatic possibly.

I really like the reviews. If you click on the links to the actual articles (rather than just reading these one sentence summaries) they’re quite entertaining. Even if you don’t like the reviews, it’s useful to have somewhere look at pictures of food and scope places out.

I understand if you’re frustrated with Johnboy/Barcham’s demise and the lack of new content, but there’s no need to rail against innocent bloggers.

Masquara said :

Riotact – please lift your game. These “reviews” are crude, bad, and completely and utterly useless.

I would disagree. The writing isn’t the best, but there’s value (for me) in hearing about places around town that I might like to try.

MrBigEars said :

Masquara said :

Riotact – please lift your game. These “reviews” are crude, bad, and completely and utterly useless.

Do people not have eyes? This isn’t RiotAct, this is FoodPornJournal. You can no more blame RiotAct for this than you can blame RiotAct for my inane drivel.

dear riot act, please stop mr big ears’ inane drivel. yours, astrojax x

Masquara said :

Riotact – please lift your game. These “reviews” are crude, bad, and completely and utterly useless.

Do people not have eyes? This isn’t RiotAct, this is FoodPornJournal. You can no more blame RiotAct for this than you can blame RiotAct for my inane drivel.

Masquara said :

Riotact – please lift your game. These “reviews” are crude, bad, and completely and utterly useless.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks you would know that RA is currently running on autopilot and its future is uncertain. Therefore you should be thankful that new posts are appearing at all. I realise you might be upset at the lack of quality posts and links like mine a few weeks back where I put the Mt Taylor trig thru its paces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQlzTPbzynE
but that is the new paradigm at the moment and many of us are hoping that normal service will soon be restored and RA will once again be firing on all cylinders.

Masquara said :

Riotact – please lift your game. These “reviews” are crude, bad, and completely and utterly useless.

Strange, I found this quite good at highlighting a few places to check out.
Though, I suppose I could just post a whinge instead…? Hahaha!

Madam Cholet8:35 am 02 Feb 14

Lazy I said :

I went to Woolies and bought some Kanga Bangas on special because they were reaching use-by.

Woolies was rated one of the two largest grocery stores in Australia by the Financial Review.

I cooked the Kanga Bangas on my George Foreman grill and found they were both cooked and edible after roughly 15 minutes on the highest setting. I was eager to try them with sauce, so I tasted them with both tomato and barbecue sauce. The taste was good but not great.

I then settled down on the couch and watched Two And A Half Men re-runs with two scoops of home brand cosmopolitan. I had the strawberry but after starting thought I should have chosen chocolate.

Until next time,

Lazy I food journo – signing off!

Good one!

I love food as much as the next person, but if I ate that number of very decent meals at the least out of home every month a) we would be broke and b) I’d be shockingly huge. It comes across as quite vacuous, although I readily admit that my life is not exciting at all – it being based around children, work work and eating to stay alive.

Masquara said :

Riotact – please lift your game. These “reviews” are crude, bad, and completely and utterly useless.

Clue: click on the hyperlinks.

Urban Bean’s owner is opening the Espresso Room stores around town, currently at the Hyperdome and Woden Plaza. Coffee and training by Ona, and finally Tuggers has great coffee. Highly recommended.

I went to Woolies and bought some Kanga Bangas on special because they were reaching use-by.

Woolies was rated one of the two largest grocery stores in Australia by the Financial Review.

I cooked the Kanga Bangas on my George Foreman grill and found they were both cooked and edible after roughly 15 minutes on the highest setting. I was eager to try them with sauce, so I tasted them with both tomato and barbecue sauce. The taste was good but not great.

I then settled down on the couch and watched Two And A Half Men re-runs with two scoops of home brand cosmopolitan. I had the strawberry but after starting thought I should have chosen chocolate.

Until next time,

Lazy I food journo – signing off!

Riotact – please lift your game. These “reviews” are crude, bad, and completely and utterly useless.

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