Supernormal スーパー・ノーマル

Supernormal Kitchen's has relocated to its new and beautiful location on Flinders Lane. Adding another restaurant to Andrew McConnell's vast repertoire, Super Normal is his interpretation of Asian flavours inspired by his time spent abroad.

 

The space is modern and clean but with subtle traditional Japanese touches; especially because of the cloths hanging above the kitchen. McConnell has successfully encapsulated the unique Japanese style of blending traditional and modern aesthetics

Supernormal's menu is meant for sharing with a selection of raw dishes, dumplings or bao, veggies and larger meat dishes.

I thought the Pig head bao in particular was really good. He used an unconventional part of the pig but deep frying and packaging it in a Taiwanese bao was a great way of presenting it to a Western palate. The saltiness and spice of the sauce and the acidity from the pickles balanced out the flavours as well. We ordered a second helping before I even finished my first.

With McConnell in the kitchen, everything came out swiftly and beautifully. He did very well to capture typical Asian flavours, whilst eating I was reminded of my own travels through China and Japan.

Rue & Co - Kong BBQ

Rue & Co have brought to our CBD 3 pop up restaurants to add to Melbourne's growing street food culture.

Today I tried Kong BBQ, an Asian bbq pop up located on Collins Street. Although bbq is written in Japanese on their sign, the place focuses on Korean inspired flavours. Their menu includes fried chicken, bo ssam (lettuce wraps), steamed buns, soups, salads and sandwiches.

All the meat is cooked very well. My wings were moist and covered in a rich Gochujang glaze and our pork belly had a crispy crackling. I found their kimchi was saltier than most though. 

If you're not feeling Asian food, next door to Kong BBQ is Jimmy Grants (George Columbaris' souvlaki joint) and St Ali's church of secular coffee (they play some pretty awesome music too). 

They'll only be around for 6 months but I really love that Melbourne is trying to build a street food scene. It's definitely one of the things that our city is lacking. I think everyone should experience the joy of snacking on freshly grilled meats whilst sitting outdoors on a cold winter's day. 

Northern Light

Northern light is a recently opened bar and eatery that is quickly becoming a new favourite on Smith street.

Adam Liston, co-owner and head chef was influenced by his time in Shanghai and has created a constantly evolving menu with Japanese, Korean and Chinese influences. 

Having fresh sashimi, succulent wagyu and grilled scampi being a few of its many offerings, I found myself ordering practically everything on the menu. Every dish is an ingenious embodiment of Asian street food flavours with just the right amount of finesse, but any chef that shares my love for Asian food and mayonnaise has already stolen my heart.

All the food is designed to be shared in the laid back atmosphere with exposed brick and mahogany surroundings, where one can knock back a few Sapporos whilst snacking on some bincho tan grilled skewers.

Make sure there's room for dessert though. Northern light's notorious ice cream sandwich was without a doubt amazing. A revelation that apparently took the chef several years to perfect. The bitterness of the dark chocolate biscuit with gooey caramel and green tea ice cream was a well balanced and heavenly combination of flavours, simply a must try

Sushi Adventures. - The Unkown Fire in the Red Lantern.

Hello again,

Today's blog will be about one of the greatest things in the world......Sushi! 

I've recently been to Shira Nui (which I've been to before) and a new place in South Yarra called Akachochin. Shira Nui means unknown fire and Akachochin means red lantern, so I got a bit creative with this post's title. haha

This time at Shira Nui they let us sit on the side so we could see all the chefs at work. I didn't take pictures of everything because the set menu hasn't changed TOO much but here were some of the favourites.

Kingfish, as usual a delicious whitefish..

The most incredibly tender beef.

Tuna steak, you can't go wrong with Tuna. We ordered seconds of this!

This is swordfish. It was my first time eating it and it DEFINITELY won't be my last. It was amazing, it melted in my mouth like butter.

Some lovely Ocean trout belly, I loved the look of this sushi. It reminds me of a beautiful mermaid's tail.

We were also given a little surprise treat from the chef, it was some fried and seasoned fish skin. It was really tasty and crispy.

As usual we ended our meal with dessert, a green tea creme brulee with a little complimentary sorbet served in a shot glass. So cute.

I really love this place. The chef is so ridiculously friendly! He's always so nice to chat with. I learnt more about him this time around.....He's been learning about sushi WAY before I was even born, about 40 years and deep down he's a country boy who likes open spaces over the city. 

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The second restaurant came highly recommended from the Age for the best sushi. It's a new place in the South Wharf called Akachochin. It's a lot more modern and stylish and some of the food is pretty amazing. We sat at the bar and I had a cute mini bottle of Choya Umeshu.

I was most impressed by their sushi. Just by looking at the photos, you can see how fresh and high quality the sushi is. I didn't even know salmon could be that amazing and fresh. We also had kingfish, tuna and ocean trout. Yum yum!

We also ordered some Pork Belly.

Wagyu Tataki, which was tender and delicious especially with that sauce.

Some grilled Chicken.

And a Black Sesame Panacotta with Green tea Ice cream. The consistency of the Panacotta was perfect, I ended up eating most of it even though I was supposed to share. 

As usual, I have a habit of  making friends with the Sushi chef, it's really good practice for my Japanese. They always turn out to be SO friendly though, despite their appearance. I think he was from Kanagawa and has been in Melbourne for a couple of years. He was really animated and had a great sense of humour. He gave us a few tips for our Japan trip later this year and said with my level of Japanese we would be okay.

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I definitely plan on returning once the weather warms up even more, it'll be really good to go there on a hot day to relax with some fresh sushi and umeshu by the river. 

When I think about it though, I much prefer Shira Nui.... the variety of sushi just trumps any place and I like that it's not all cold. A lot of people are under the impression sushi is ALWAYS cold but at Shira Nui a lot of them are served warm. Shira Nui will destroy any Sushi Sushi roll anyday. haha

Izakaya Den

How's everyone been?

I've just realised it's been a month since I last blogged so HERE YOU GO GUYS!

A little while ago my boyfriend and I decided to try out a highly recommended "modern"  Japanese bar/restaurant called Izakaya Den. Hidden away obscurely on Russel St, Izakaya den is an incredibly stylish and modern looking venue with a lengthy bar that appears to go on forever.

The decor is minimalist and the menus projected on the wall add to its Japanese flair, which just emphasizes style and function. Not to mention it's small but well organised open kitchen where the many chefs prepare your meals right before your eyes. Nothing is more reassuring than knowing the kitchen has nothing to hide.

Moving onto the food!

These are scallops with garlic butter and soy 

Gotzinger Pork sausages

Wagyu beef with a side of pickled cauliflower 

Spicy Tuna Tataki (I LOVE TUNA)

Duck Liver Parfait with Crispy Wonton skin

Sweet Japanese Pumpkin Creme Brulee

Everything was delicious and cooked to perfection. The scallops were succulent, the meat well cooked and properly rested, everything just bursting with flavour. My only fault would be that there wasn't enough wonton skin for the duck liver! haha

I washed our meal down with a lovely glass of Umeshu and Matcha tea, one of the few selections on their extensive drinks list. I highly recommend this place but try to go on a quiet night as they don't take bookings and the place can get CROWDED.

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As an apology for not writing a blog in so long, here is some more food porn.

Brie-gazm pizza from the Lucky Coq

Chocolate fondue for two

Burger and chilli fries from Soda Rock

Lamb rack, sweet potato puree, fondant potatoes and chorizo

Green tea Swiss roll

A spit roast at my friend's birthday party!

The cake above is the one I bought my dad for his birthday, it was raspberry and chocolate.

The first time I came to this sweets/cake store, I was met with a huge surprise....Julia from this year's masterchef was doing work experience there!

She was so friendly and TALL in real life (she's bending down for the photo) and her skin is lovely as well. I can't wait to go back, it's quite close to my work so i'll be making lots of visits.

Thanks for reading! Until the next blog~ (hopefully soon)

KoKo Teppanyaki

Hi Everyone!

Hope your exams went well, my last one is tomorrow!

I've just finished studying and decided to take a break by writing another food blog.

As a last minute decision we tried to get a booking at KoKo a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant located at Crown Casino. Unfortunately we were told they were fully booked until 9:45pm...but 20 minutes later they called us back saying they had a table at 7:45! What luck! 

Such a terrible photo but the restaurant is gorgeous. It has a very traditional Japanese theme with a large pond right in the center of the restaurant! Very cool.

If you don't know what Teppanyaki is, it's a really exciting dining experience where a chef cooks and serves the food right in front of you on a large grill. 

The way KoKo works is they have a variety of set menus to choose from we chose the one called Kaze ($129pp), which means Wind in japanese. 

Dinner started out with some lovely sashimi. As usual the tuna is delicious, but I also found their salmon was particularly tasty as well!

It was then followed by Lobster Tempura with wasabi mayo. I absolutely loved this dish, there's nothing quite like biting into a big succulent piece of lobster that's been fried in a delightfully light tempura batter. I should also mention again that Wasabi mayo is and forever will be "the bomb"

This adorable little tea pot had a really flavorsome soup in it, the waitress said it was made from seafood. It was called Dobinmushi.

Finally we got on to the real Teppanyaki, which started off with seafood! Prawns and Scallops!

All of the seafood was excellent quality and I was really happy with the way they were cooked.

Scallops were great! So plump on the inside, exactly how they should be.

I'm really glad that the Prawns were good as well, the chef even cooks the head for you.

Next was a bit of salmon, as you can see it was cooked perfectly and the sauce you dip it in made it even better! I also adore the tableware at Koko too, the plate in the photo is absolutely gorgeous!

The chef then proceeded to make us our wagyu fried rice! It's just so fun to watch him make it right before your eyes, it's literally dinner and a show!

We then moved onto the Wagyu sirloin, the chef was very nice and asked us how we liked our steak cooked.

Finally we reached dessert, which was the most amazing vanilla ice cream I've ever had! It was smooth and creamy. You can even see the little bits of vanilla in the ice cream.

As usual we ended our meal with some tea, accompanied by some very interesting conversation with some Scottish gentlemen sitting next to us. 

So in conclusion, I recommend you try this place out one day. It's lots of fun, if you're a bit tired of KBBQ like I am at the moment, Teppanyaki is a really fun easy going experience where you can just sit back and relax whilst the chef does all the work for you!

The service at KoKo is superb as well! Our waitress, Kaori was so nice and very courteous. Despite being RIDICULOUSLY busy she tried to have a conversation with me for as long as she could. 

So that's all! This was my first ever Teppanyaki experience and I loved every minute of it!

See you next blog, it will be a dessert lover's dream!