257 Home Kitchen

I actually hardly come to Eastwood, so didn't know this restaurant existed. Came here with relatives for some Shanghainese food. This place is well lit, clean with modern decor, and staff were quite attentive. Not gonna lie, I don't really eat Chinese food out since I feel like places aren't really clean, in terms of food/table stuff.

food spread

names of stuff we ordered

didn't have heaps of soup, but decent bit of meat inside and skin was quite thin

love a pan fried bun with a crunchy base

I found it was really cool how they just get a live fish then add some batter and deep fry it, so that the skin ends up 'popping out' and can pull a part out and have deep fried fish. The sweet and sour sauce went really well with it. Would recommend, even though it's turning something healthy into not healthy at all...

Dishes in general were quite nice, well portioned, not overly salty and decently priced.

Ms G's

This place has been on my places to visit or a while, so finally decided to make the trek to this side of the city. There’s a lot of fusion dishes here, where they take the ‘basics’ of cuisines such as Viet, Thai, Korean, Chinese and Western food and literally mix them up. Being on this side of Sydney, dishes are more pricier than your average dinner.

Tables are small and it’s quite crowded inside with dim lighting, so if you’re after a quiet dinner to chat, this isn’t the place for you. Ended up using iPhone torch light to take photos, and other people around turning heads #noshame

food spread

Cheeseburger spring roll-$6

inside

This sounded pretty interesting on paper, and it was really good. Tasted exactly like a cheeseburger with the beef mince, melty American cheese, and pickles wrapped in a spring roll. It was deep fried well with a good crisp and not too oil.

Squash, peas, butterbeans with pickled radicchio, mint, yuzu and white miso ranch-$18

The salad sounded interesting with a yuzu sauce, but I wouldn’t order it again since I don’t think it’s worth the money. The yuzu was quite subtle, and the actual salad was average.

Vietnamese pork and prawn pancake 'Korean style'-$24

The pancake had more toppings than actual batter and was quite oily. There was a nice crunch from the shrimp heads without being too salty, and still interesting to try. It’s just nothing like your Korean pancake as there was a lot of air in between this pancake, and only bits of batter sticking the toppings together.

Tom yum fried rice with snow crab, kaffir lime & crispy wonton skin-$29

Our favourite dish was the fried rice. I didn’t realise you could buy those Thai Tom Yum paste in grocery stores. I still remember when I went to Thailand around 9 years ago that the Tom Yum soup was way too spicy to drink. The fried rice was cooked well with that dry sort of rice texture without being dry, and there was just the right amount of spice for me to enjoy. Would recommend this dish as well.

red lighting=not ideal for food photos

Luyu & YumYum

Came here during their 50% off Dimmi offers since I was craving dim sum (or dumplings, but these technically aren't dumpling as some Chinese people like me will tell you). Got there at 6:07pm, for a reservation at 6pm, and they had already cancelled my reservation already, and I received a 'cancelled booking' email from Dimmi at 6:08pm. Dimmi booking terms allows you to be 15min late, and I'm pretty sure they wanted to take more walk ins than bookings. They still let us be seated, and reminded to give the table back in 1.5hrs, which was already a part of the booking on Dimmi. In hindsight, they did some very sneaky moves to the menu, which I'll explain later. This post is from April but just publishing it late because of a back log of food posts on my blog...

food spread

menu from the night

example of menu when it's not on special

(note price discrepancies)

Snow white dumpling: Prawn, Asparagus, Bamboo shoot & Luyu Home-made Creamy Soup in Chrysanthemum infused Potato Starch Dough-$20 for 4, paid $10 ($13.80 for 3 on website)

inside

These were really cute, but there wasn't much filling inside. It did have a bit of prawn, but not one whole prawn like in other yum cha places. The  dough could have been thinner as well, but I guess they made it thicker cause they needed to do the ears.

Green Lantern dumplings: zucchini, asparagus, celery, shiitake & king oyster mushroom, steamed in rice flour dough-$20, paid $10

This wasn't on the website menu. I like how the dough is green. Didn't eat the chilli, but a nice combo of veggies for the filling without being too salty. 

Manga dumpling hedgehog: King Oyster Mushroom, Chinese Mushroom, Fungi, Carrot, Coriander in Flour Dough Baked-$20 for 4, paid $10 ($12.80 for 3 on website)

inside

Another super cute dish. I did find the dough a bit too dry and thick, and could've had more sauce in the filling. I like how they had bits of pastry to make the spikes.

'Kiss Me' Dumpling': Chicken, Ginger, Shallot & Luyu Homemade Soup in Flour Dough-$20 for 4, paid $10 ($10.80 on website)

inside

Nice thin dough with flavour soup inside. The meat is a bit smaller, and again wished there was more soup. It was average but not amazing.

Mr Luyu fried rice: Duck, Egg, Asparagus, Shallot, Coriander, Baby Corn & Mustard Seeds Stir Fried-$17.80

I love how the fried rice is more 'fried' and has a drier texture in these 'modern Aus' restaurants as not many places can do a good fried rice. There were tiny bits of duck in it, and I think would've been better to have slightly larger pieces for some texture and more flavour.

You can see the price discrepancies, even though they served 4 instead of 3, there is a major price mark up, and even half price, it turns out to be similar price to the website price/previous menu before they had the Dimmi deal. I wonder if they revert back to their old menu/prices after this promotion. Like for some dishes, only saved 80c in total. So half price seems like I'm saving a lot, but just compared to the original price, yeah, it's not really.

The waiters were friendly, and inside sat at a good table with decent lighting, since they use spot lights, and some parts can be dim. Probably will just stick with the asian yum cha places next time.

Dainty Sichuan

I actually cannot eat spicy at all (well my limit is Kettle Chilli chips), but I still love trying new places to eat. Came here with BW since I know he can eat spicy. Me being yolo and always wanting to try ‘recommended’ stuff on the menu decided to get the three spice Beef noodles.

 

Spicy stewed beef noodles-$15.80

noodle lift

First bite in and it was tolerable. After the third bite I was dying (not as much as the time I accidentally ate the world’s chilliest chilli in the form of beef jerky where there was stomach and throat pain for at least 3 days). The chilli in the soup was the chilli which hits your mouth and tongue. Apparently the oil in it is supposed to numb the chilliness, but I am no chilli expert. The noodles weren’t too dense, and there were also decent chunks of beef. Maybe if I come here again, I’ll try a 1 chilli spice level, but then none of it was recommended on the menu so I probs won’t come here again since it’s just too chilli (unless I order non chilli stuff).

can see them making noodles

Easter 2018

Normally I sleep in so can't attend morning services, but first time attending a Good Friday service in a long time. Nice to spend part of the weekend reflecting on the meaning of Easter with BW. It's sort of funny how my 'normal' time to get home nowadays is like 12-2am, well, at least for the past few days. The long weekend was half work and half catch ups. I think my throat hurts from talking to people too much. If I wasn't so lazy, I would've liked to go on a mini road trip somewhere, and take nice sunset photos, but I contradict myself because I ceebs going, and also no time, and not feeling the best.

I don't like how Easter is so commercialised, but a colleague gave me some Ferrero Rocher dark chocolate in easter egg form, and it's quite nice. It's not as big, and you don't have to chew through the nut in the middle compared to the normal chocolate.

mini Easter feast ft BW's paella bottom left

Feeling so spoilt when he cooks. To those who read this, you know I love food, and I love watching all those cooking tv shows and know the theory of cooking, I just can't actually cook. Unless you count boiled veggies, or chucking together a raw salad or sandwich count.

When you fb call a friend to join the dinner table

This is the 2nd time having Uber Eats, and I get fascinated when you can track the car coming to the house. I don't order delivery/pizza/ubers, so I don't normally see the whole tracking thing. Nice catchup with half the G8s, but so sad missed out seeing Happy Apple. It was nice hearing people's testimonies on the Easter Sunday baptisms. I may have 'missed' the chance with my one and only Sunday off in the year, but part of me just doesn't feel ready to get baptised because of 'logistics.'

Late night 1am Catan

Easter Monday was work, then catching up with some other church peeps. I haven't played this for a while, and this game took about 1.5hrs, much longer than your usual game. I was blue there, and people kept blocking off my rock supply, but at one point if someone rolled an 8, I had enough to get a settlement. I feel like Catan has become one of the 'classic' boardgames, goodbye my old school boardgames like Monopoly, Scrabble and Cluedo. I still love playing boardgames regardless. Played Avalon as well, and I am so bad at being on the 'evil' side.

Beef noodles-$9.20

First time actually going to the HK Cafe since they closed down at Carlo Village and moved to Eastwood. It was public holiday so 10% surcharge, so most people wanted cheap eats, and tbh, me too. I was disappointed when they gave the thin noodles instead of the normal flat noodles when you order this dish. It's so oily and greasy, and so different to home food. It's not as good as I remembered it to be. 

I sort of have 3 weeks off, but half of them are filled with events, and should finish off some reports as much as I can, and hopefully do some end of year planning. This week has almost half gone, so it is going pretty quick already. I must force myself to study, even though I've said that the past 6 weeks/beginning of the year.

Rotation 1, Week 1

The first week has felt quite long for some reason. On Wednesday it already felt like a Friday, but I guess it feels long since I feel like I haven't done much or learnt as much as I wanted to this week. How to improve on doing everything within the time limit? That will forever remain the question. So much stuff to continue revising.

I am going to miss the smooth-ish traffic once more people start going back to work, then school kids, then uni kids. Catching the 7:20 bus can get me to uni at 8:45, normally it would be 9:30. If I wanted to get to uni before 9, then normal days I must catch the bus before 7am. The bus just after 7am gets me to uni just before 9 which is cutting it close. Apart from waiting for buses between city and uni, the m2 between home and city didn't have traffic during peak hour. First time catching a bus in Friday arvo with no traffic, normally it builds from 3pm and lasts until 6pm. 

I can't believe I survived a week of summer wearing long pants without dying from heat. Luckily it did cool down a tiny bit this week and spending your day in air con does help. Pants and fully enclosed shoes are just so much easier to run for the bus...Maybe I should just learn to miss the bus more so then I don't have to make a mad dash...Even though I run, it's still normal for me to see the bus drive off...

No one at work went to our regions Xmas party, but they allowed our store to have some 'credit' and use it for a belated Xmas dinner, and we also had some leftover money from a voucher we won over a year ago. Long gone are free work dinner tbh. With so many CEO changes, and so many pay cuts and different way everything is run, free food is pretty much not on the agenda. Went to a place opposite my church which we used to go often as kids before the afternoon service ever existed. Haven't been here for so long though.

lobster

chinese stuff: chicken, fish, pork, tofu

This isn't a proper food review so I'll keep it brief. It's actually not that cheap for around $50pp, like if I get some discount for 'modern Australian' food, I'll prefer spending $50 on that rather than this. Dishes are quite small, and lobster didn't have that sweet/fresh lobster taste, rather the lobster here just tasted like the sauce. It had ok chunks of meat, but so ceebs opening the claws (because normally dad does that for me and he's not supposed to eat that). Had some prawn crackers tonight though, it's been so long since I last had them. I'm not a big fan of eating Chinese stuff outside of home, unless it's fancy/modern Chinese style stuff.

Lotus

For a girls night out pre-theatre dinner, I decided on something a bit more fancy (Aladdin was an amazing musical!) I often walk past this place in The Galeries, and wanted to see if it was worth the hype. (Yes, Aladdin was my fourth out of six musicals I've seen, so you can probably tell this is quite out back dated post, from last spring menu).

Service was generally pleasant and friendly. I liked how our table had a few spotlights on it, although my seat had a lot of shadows. Generally the lights were useful.

The Galeries


nice cutlery for modern Chinese food


cute


inside is quite big




Steamed mud crab and pork xiao long bao-$21


inside

I was quite excited to try these despite the price. The dumpling skin is thin and you can taste the crab in it but a bit on the subtle side and not worth $5.25 a bite. I guess I have had better in Asia (as expected).

Fried rice with duck, asparagus and mustard seeds (large)-$25

Love this fried rice, not too oily with fresh flavour. Wish there was more duck though...I like this sort of fried rice as the texture of the rice is more dried/fried.

Wok fried tea tree, wood-ear, and mixed mushrooms with garlic-$24

This dish was pretty average as I normally have this sort of thing at home. It didn't taste like anything special, so wouldn't order it again. Sometimes the English names of Asian things sound cooler on paper, only to realise that you normally have this at home...

Pork belly with some sweet and stick soy based sauce (not on the menu anymore...)-$32

We all loved the pork belly, and that nice stick sauce. Some bits did have way too much fat to swallow, but decent chunks of pork which wasn't dry throughout.

Slow cooked beef short ribs with ponzu and soy-$39

Another favourite, the beef was really tender and fell off the bone. It had a good balance of citrusy and salty flavours, quite light yet flavourful. 

food spread


dessert!

 
Lotus garden: jasmine tea bavarois, apple, matcha sponge, apple cider jelly, burnt vanilla crisp-$16

It's so pretty! They are vary in shape. This crisp didn't have a hole in it where the 'pea tendrils' were supposed to go through. This was my favourite of the two. Subtle tea flavour mixed with apple. Didn't get much matcha sponge thought. Really loved the flavour in the jelly.

Mandarin picked from the tree: valrhona chocolate mousse, mandarin, dark crisp pearl, chocolate soil, caramel sauce-$17


inside

It is so cute and looks like it's name. I'm just not a big fan of orangey flavours with chocolate as it reminds me of those Jaffa chocolates which I hate. The soil wasn't too buttery or dry, and the caramel inside wasn't too sweet either since it balanced with the bitter choc mouse and slightly sour mandarin flavour.

Dinner was more than the average price (for a typical uni student), but a splurge and catching up with friends is always a good idea (: