Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Noir & Real Macarons.


Oh Hi! I'm just writing a blog whilst my hair is bleaching....Goodbye Regrowth!

Also I'm very glad to say that today's blog is a positive blog about my dining experiences, it literally makes up for the crappy experiences I wrote about in my previous blog. 

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So on friday night, I took my boyfriend to a lovely restaurant called 'Noir' in Richmond. It's a great place that does French, Mediterranean and modern Australian cuisine. It's very melbourne-esque, has value for money and great service. 


It's quite a simplistic but stylish restaurant, perfect mood lighting for a date. My only complaint is that the walls of the restaurant don't absorb sound very well and the sound just bounces right off, so it's a bit noisy when the place is full. We unfortunately had a group of people in the restaurant with a woman who liked to scream (probably had a bit too much to drink)

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Now on to the food! Sadly, it was so dark in the restaurant I couldn't take my own photos but I grabbed some off their website. We decided to have their Surprise Tasting Menu, it's 8 courses and is $70 per person. I LOVED it, and it's quite a reasonable price considering the quality and quantity of food we had.



Of course we started of the meal with some bread.....

Our entree was premium pacific oysters with a champagne granita and a spicy crab croquette. The oysters were refreshing! The granita was very sweet but complimented the oysters nicely. We also had this salmon dish...From memory it had a dill sauce and some caviar on it too.....


Another entree was Crisp Bread, Waldorf Salad and Eye Fillet of Beef. Delicious! the way they did the Waldorf salad is so interesting!


We also had a crisp pork belly dish with peas.

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Sadly there are no pictures of the main we had which was a White Rabbit Pie with winter vegetables, thyme and a black peppercorn sauce. I loved it, the little rabbit ribs were so cute and tasty and I loved winter vegetables, especially the parsnip.

Desserrtt just BLLEWWW my mind. It was EXACTLY what I wanted in a dessert, It was a Chocolate Fondant with a serve of ice cream and some cherries. The cherries had a LOT of liqueur  in them so I only ate one but everything else was divine, I would've licked the plate clean.

I strongly recommend this place! Do try if you're a real foodie, it's quite an older crowd there (we were the youngest ones in the restaurant by a huge margin) but if you love food, it won't even matter.


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Remember my crappy macaron experience? Well this made up for it!
According to the maker of the best macarons in melbourne, A little place which is kind of close to my workplace makes the closest thing to perfect macarons in Melbourne. It's called La Tropezienne.



This tube of 6 cost me $12 which when you think about it is quite good value! The macarons at the previous place was almost $3 for just one and they were CRAP.

These however were delightful! Perfect biscuit to filling ratio and not even in the slightest bit chewy. They were delicate and light just like a real macaron should be. The flavours were nice and sweet, maybe a bit TOO sweet for me....but I'm a dark chocolate kind of girl but if you have a sweet tooth, these macarons are for you! 


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Anyway I'm off to bed!


I have a girl date with my friend Karen tomorrow! I'm so excited!

Friday, September 23, 2011

Vialetto? Via-Let Down! - Carrie the food critic?

HEYO~

I know what you're thinking....2 blogs in a day? Fuck off already!
But I just had to.....I'm here to talk about some disappointing experiences with food I had in the past days because you all simply deserve to know.



On Saturday night, the boyfriend and I went to Hardware lane for dinner. Normally from a place such as Hardware lane, I'd expect to have a very lovely dining experience but sadly I didn't. There were so many disappointments that night....I'll never go back to this restaurant again.

We were approached by someone from the restaurant and they told us they had a good deal going on for two courses, so I decided to eat there. Sadly as soon as we ordered the entree, It went all downhill from there. Here's why:

- The wait was MUCH too long for our entree and main
- Although my main was fine, the so-called "roasted" vegetables stated in the menu meant RAW vegetables in my boyfriend's main.
- Didn't even bring us water
- Gave us the bill twice
- The deal they mentioned to us, ended up not existing so paid a lot more than expected.
- Bill was like $80, paid $90 and we did NOT get our change.

It was TERRIBLE. I don't even understand....They just ignored us and packed up the place whilst we sat at our table waiting for our change, so we just left.

NEVER go to Vialetto on Harware Lane, I soon after discovered that the restaurant has HEAPS of bad reviews. I wish I had read them before we sat down. D:

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The next thing on my list are these macarons, I bought. Now i'm not really an expert on them but the truth is I just wanted to write this little review because something exciting happened to me because of these macarons.


So I bought some sweets from the Dining Hall in Melbourne Central....and well although I didn't have HIGH expectations from the place, I was still disappointed. D:
The toblerone cheesecake tasted pretty much like nothing.....except from the actual piece of toblerone on top. lol

The hugest let down were the macarons. Seriously guys, don't be like me and buy food 'cos it looks pretty from the window. After I received them I had a good look and they were pretty shitty macarons. They were bumpy, chewy, messy to eat, and OVERLY sweet. In fact it was just so bad, I stopped eating the Pistachio one after two bites. 

Now here's the exciting part, I was just so disappointed that I tweeted the maker of the best Macarons in Melbourne about my experience.....and HE TWEETED ME BACK! :OOOO


So because of him, I wrote this blog. I was so excited, no one important has ever tweeted me back before! >w<

So yer, that's all. As he told me to do, I told you about the crappy macarons and now you all know!

G'night!

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Been a while again.....Shout out to Brenda!

LONG TIME NO BLOG,


It's been a very long time since I last blogged (3 weeks, i think)...I apologise for my lazniess. But hey! Shout out to Brenda, a girl I randomly met who reads my blog! Thanks for motivating me to write another one. You're a lovely girl.

So here are the highlights of my week! 

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Last night, I took some visiting Japanese students to a bar in the CBD called Miss Libertines, it was fun, we got to talk about a lot of stuff and take a few photos as well. My japanese is terrible, so I was very shy until I had some more beer. Also maybe some photos of them in my next blog.

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Father's day also happened. Sadly this year my family didn't end up doing anything special because of certain clashes with dates and stuff, we normally have a massive family dinner with all the relatives though.
Instead I drew my dad a little card, just like I used to when I was little.


He likes golf. haha

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My boyfriend's birthday was not that long ago as well. I finally finished the 1000 cranes for him just in time! It took me a long time, I folded them on and off for two years! That just shows how long we've been friends. :)


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Other than that I recently started my new job at a Market Research place, it was tough in the beginning but I'm getting used to it. I also sympathise completely with people who do my job now. From now on, I'm never gonna be rude to a telephone surveyor, If i'm not interested I will say so kindly.
EVERYONE should do so as well, not abuse the poor person. :(

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Anyway now for the unexpectedly customary food porn segment of my blog!


These are dishes from a restaurant in Box Hill that does Wuhan style food, which is where my boyfriend is from! The noodles I had are apparently what EVERYONE there eats and they were YUM! They make the noodles themselves from scratch too! I love how it's a family business, all the food is like mama's cooking and very delicious.

Also they had a little daughter there and she was SO cute, she liked my blonde hair and make up 'cos it looked very girly. haha


This is a watermelon sorbet my boyfriend made with his friend. It was VERY refreshing and sweet.


My mum decided to do hotpot/steamboat one night for dinner, there was so much food we had to have hot pot again the next night. xD


This is DELICIOUS beer batter fish and chips that my boyfriend made. He even made the chips! The fish was delicious and the beer batter made it even better.

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Since my boyfriend cooks so well and so often, we one day decided it was my turn to try. (Which was a potentially dangerous situation, I can NOT cook) I made Bi Bim Bap, which is a korean mixed rice thing.


It was okay, I much prefer it in a restaurant and in a stone bowl though.


This was the pasta and crumbed veal, we had on my boyfriend's birthday.


and FINALLY this was the tonkatsu ramen we made together. The crumbed pork or Tonkatsu we made ourselves and it was really good and crispy, the Chinese tea eggs were made by my boyfriend. (He's a good cook, if you haven't figured it out by now lol)

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ANYWAY that's enough of that. I'm gonna write another blog after this one because I've got more to say...But i don't want this going on for too long so i'll stop here.

Thanks for reading. :)

Thursday, September 1, 2011

A new chapter and HEAPS more food & drink.


Good evening~ 
just enjoying some cider in the boyfriend's bed.

I've been drinking a lot since my last blog, even with my mum. haha

Anyway as usual here is what I've been up to this past week and a half.

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I went to check out a friend of mine's new apartment, it's got quite a nice view of the city from the balcony.


School has been going okay, I particularly enjoyed playing this japanese poetry game called 'Hyakunin Isshu' at the end of my seminar. I only got one card but I'm proud of that one card!



After a big lonely parma for lunch at work this weekend... I......


Finally quit my job! After almost 4 years of working at AMF Bowling, I quit. I'm kind of sad but it feels great to finally start a new chapter of my life.

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The night I quit my job was also the night of my uncle's 50th birthday....So there was a lot of booze. There was no one really my age there except my 2nd cousin and after a nice chat with her, I got swept up chatting with my mum's cousins who are around 30 and ended drinking a lot with them.

My mum got crunnnkkk, it was quite hilarious. I wish she was drunk all the time.

 Isn't the cake adorable? One of our uncles made all of it! SO amazing.


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Anyway....it's sort of turning into a tradition on my blog but here is the food porn.



A brilliant idea suggested by a friend of putting chocolate custard on top of a chocolate choc-chip muffin. Was so yummy, so much chocolate!


A delicious breakfast made by my lovely boyfriend. Eggs, hash browns and sausages.


Not really food porn but I had a cute face in my cappuccino so I thought i'd share. lol


Some early morning east-side Pho with my boyfriend before uni. I don't know....but west-side Pho is always better. Right??


My first ever pie from Pie Face, I got a cheese injected steak pie with the stuff on top. It was nice, nothing special but nice. The face on it looked like this :S


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Now tonight my uni friends and I went to a place we've been meaning to check out. It's a korean place on little lonsdale street called Gami, and they are famous for their fried chicken and beer!


And chicken and beer, we had!




It's a nice place, The best flavours were garlic soy and sweet chilli. The original was too plain for me. I'll definitely be going back soon.


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That's all for now. I'm dead tired so Goodnight!