Birthday dinner @ Aria

Last Sunday was Tao 's birthday and we decided to celebrate it at Aria Restaurant in Brisbane. It is one of the best Australian restaurant that we wanted to try for long.

We ordered the tasting menu which comes with a 7 courses.

TUNA
seared loin and tartare of tuna with pear and daikon salad and ponzu dressing
2009 Logan M Cuvee Brut Sparkling Rosé, Central Ranges, New South Wales

JAMON
with tomato, dried olives, shaved jamón ibérico and toasted brioche
2010 Albariño De Fefiñanes, Rias Baixas, Spain

SCALLOPS
seared and served with merguez sausage, mint, chilli and rice crisp
2007 Petaluma Hanlin Hill Riesling, Clare Valley, South Australia

CONSOMME
Peking duck consommé with duck dumpling and Asian mushrooms
Henriques & Henriques Verdelho Madeira 15 Y.O., Madeira Island, Portugal

PORK BELLY
twice cooked Bangalow Sweet Pork belly with Asian spiced black bean sauce
and an apple, radish and crackling salad
2008 Babo Sangiovese, Tuscany, Italy

RABBIT
assiette of rabbit, corn purée, mushrooms, baby corn and a hazelnut jus
2007 S.C. Pannell Nebbiolo, Adelaide Hills, South Australia

CAKE
pistachio cake with yoghurt panna cotta and pistachio ice cream
2003 Isole e Olena Vin Santo, Tuscany, Italy

I especially like the scallop, Jamon, pork belly and the dessert. The scallop is fresh and nicely cooked. The Jamon is very soft but not too salty. The toasted brioche is a bit sweet and it served as the great combination with the tomatoes and the Jamon.(Highly recommend). Another signature dish is the pork belly. Crunchy skin and tasty meat..nothing much you can ask for.
I do not really like the duck dumplings but it is because I dislike duck ...so I am not objective enough to judge this one.

The dessert is nicely presented. I especially like the panna cotta inside the egg shell..love the idea..love the texture ..love the taste.

Lovely weather with lovely breakfast

Another breakfast @Gun shop Cafe. I miss the corn bread so much and would like to try again. Both of us ordered the salmon with cream eggs and corn bread. The salmon is so fresh and nicely cooked with the eggs. I really enjoy the dish especially the corn bread. It is a big difference compared to the one I tried last Friday.

Tao ordered the strawberry milkshakes. The color is so nice and the strawberry is very sweet. Love it..

Tukka -second round

Sorry that because of the lighting and the quality of my iPhone, the photos are very vague.

It is not the first time we visited Tukka. It is a restaurant that serves indigenous ingredients. You can eat crocodile, emu, kangaroo and varieties of berries. It is for sure a good place if you want to experience real Australian food.

We went there last Saturday as we purchased a coupon for degustation menu on the Livingsocial website. It contained five courses. I really enjoy the smoked emu and smoked kangaroo as entree. Some of the berries on the tasting plates were quite sweet and created a good balance with the smoked salty flavor from the meats.

For the mains, we had crocodile and kangaroo. The kangaroo is one of the softest I had ever tried . Love it.

We had chocolate mouse as dessert. It was very smooth. I have not eaten any chocolate mouse for a while and it is for sure a winner for me.

the Gunshop Cafe

Gunshop cafe is the new favourite for brunch on weekends. It is a very cosy cafe that served nice breakfast and coffee in West End . The menu there change according to seasons so you can always try different stuffs there.

I ordered the salmon and egg with corn toast which Tao ordered trout and egg toast. I really love my salmon and egg as it is very fresh and well flavored. The spinach is very fresh and still crispy , neutralized the taste of the scramble egg. The corn toast is quite unique too...you can feel the texture of corn within (it is a bit loose when you try to break it into pieces)... very different to the normal bread which the ingredients and flour were blended together totally....I strongly recommend to try it....

The trout Tao ordered was very nice too...yummy....but...cannot be comparable to mine....hoho

Grill'd

I am not a burger person. Not only because it is not easy to find good quality one, most of them are greasy and made of combination of meat mixture which I felt disgusting. However, I hold a different attitude to my new found favourite-Grill'd.

It is a burger restaurant that serve fresh and good quality burger at a reasonable price. The burger is made of lean meat which is full of flavoured. Even thought it is a huge burger, it is not greasy at all.

Tao ordered the Summer sunset and I ordered the Mini Moo. I guess most girls cannot finish a regular burger and Mini Moo may be a good choice for them. We also ordered the chips with sea salt and rosemary on top. It is one of the best chips I had ...so yum.....

Scales and Ales

Garlic and Rosemary pizza bread

Scallops , pork belly, sweet chili caramel sauce

Crab spring roll

1kg mussel pots with white wine and garlic

Scales and Ales is one of the best fish and chips restaurant in Brisbane. Tao wanted to bring me there for quite a long time and we have decided to try it on Tue.

I wanna try some nice seafood for quite a long time and this restaurant did not disappoint me.

We did not wanna order chips because we want to try more varieties.

We order the pizza bread as starter, two entrees and 1 kg mussels. The pizza bread is so crispy and smelt very nice. I seldom eat more than two pieces of bread at night and I broke routine...hehe.....

I must recommend the scallop and pork belly. It is so yummy and soft. It is a nice combination for the pork belly and the caramel sauces. It is one of the best I have ever try and it is a must try dish for this restaurant. The crab spring roll is quite ordinary and I guess I will try something else.

We have mussels as main and it is cooked nicely. The mussels is well favoured ...yum...yum....and it is the special on Tue so it cost 15 instead of 25...what a good bargain. We did have a great dinner and I guess I will for sure to try again in the near future..

Dinner At Montrachet

Foie Gras Brulee

Prawn Ravioli with olive oil, tomato , garlic and herbs

Thinly sliced sugar cured salmon with warm creamed truffle potato gratin

Roasted duck served with Jerusalem artichokes , broccoli and cassia sauce

Roquefort and Delica de Formi

Grand Marnier Profiteroles

Creme Brulee

Montrachet- one of the best French restaurant in Brisbane. Tao booked the restaurant weeks ago and we were able to eat a nice dinner there yesterday. We ordered degustatioin menu. It is a nice restaurant with great food. I quite love it . Of course compare to the Quay , I still think the Quay is better , but I did have a nice dinner there..

Congratulations! You got a seat at the Quay

Yeah.. Tao made the booking at Quay months ago and we were able to got the seat for lunch on 17th Nov. We flew to Sydney in the morning and had lunch before flew back to Brisbane at night.

I did not google anything much about this restaurant as I am not the type of person who fancy about food that much. Tao wanna tried this restaurant for ages as it is voted the best in Asia Pacific.

The Quay is a modern Australian restaurant located at the Sydney harbour. You can view both the opera house and the Sydney bridge over there. It is definitely one of the scenery to enjoy.

Tao ordered the tasting menu which involved one appetiser , three entree, three mains and two dessert.

The appetiser is one of the best I have ever tried. The smell..is so nice that I can still remember now. I keep sniffing the soup.......haha..

The first entree is smoked eel and scallop pearl. The smokey flavour is just about right. I cannot imagine how much time they use to make those little pearl .....the whole dish is a delicious arts.....yum.....one of the best among all.

The second entree is salad of pink turnips, and breakfast radishes, violets, pine resin. It is a very fresh salad and many ingredients that I have not tried before. The freshness of the veggie and the goat cheese had a great combination.

The third entree gentle braise of pearl oyster, squid and lobster velvet. It is very fresh and the flavour is mild. This is not my favourite one but Tao loves it very much...it is his favourite

First main is the Butter poached cotumix quail breast with foie gras pudding. I have never tried sth that smooth...the flavour mix with the foie gras is one of the best I tried. I think it would be better if the portion can be slightly smaller. Cos I felt overpowering at the end.....

Second main is poached blackmore wagyu fillet with tasmanian wasabi......oooo....One of the best I had ever tried in my life. I do not understand how poached wagye can be that soft ....it is so yum...with the fresh wasbi sauce...best combination ever. I wanna have one more...haha....

Last main is slow braised Berkshire pig jowl , maltose crackling and cauliflower cream. It is a sweet main dish and I have never tried sth like this before. The golden layer -malt...taste like sweet chicken skin with smokey flavor.....yum..yum...

First dessert: snow egg...I like it so much ..I saw it before on master chief (which I nearly forgot) ....but Tao said he had promised to eat with me next time...haha...This dessert is a mild sweet meal and get layers of texture. Even though it does not have any chocolate or cream (typical dessert ingredient), it is sure on my top list of dessert)

Hhaha...I get my surprise on this dessert !!!sh........................!!!!!!.

The final dessert is wild cherry compote , coconut cream and and chuao chocolate crumble. It is strong chocolate creamy dessert which I like. I like the crumble ....yum yum....

This meal is amazing....including flavour, decoration, service and also the bill :<)... It tooks us more than three hours to finish and we are both very satisfy.

I did not even eat dinner and breakfast for the next day as I am too full...hoho

Gunshop cafe

After kind of struggling between two options : Yum cha or Paddington for brunch on Sunday, Tao and I came up with the idea of going to West End for a nice start on Sunday.

We went to the Gunshop cafe which is voted as the top cafe in Brisbane. I have tried that before, but I do not like it. It was lunch last time, and I would like to try their nice breakfast.

Tao had the black pudding and I have the strawberry french toast. I have no idea how the black pudding tasted as I have no interest on anything like that.(no offense). For my french toast, I really like it. The toast is soft and yum. Not so sweet and definitely suit my taste. One of the bad thing is the long waiting time. I guess it is not much kitchen hands and we ended up waiting around 40 minutes for the meal to come out. Luckily it is delicious so it is worth the wait.

yumyum breakfast @ paddington

I have not gone to Paddington for breakfast for ages. Haha ....cos I am too lazy to go such a long way to have breakfast. But I wanna to have a nice Aussie breakfast last Saturday so we decided to go ...

Tao had the salmon and I ordered the field mushroom. I love my mushroom so much ...it is well marinated with the sauce and the pesto tomato is very delicious. I usually do not like pesto sauce but this one is a bit different. ....I love it..hehe...(Also it is good that I can shop around after breakfast at Latrobe terrace)..haha..

Henry and Judy 's wedding

Last saturday was Henry and Judy's wedding. The ceremony was in New Farm Park and the dinner was set at the Moda Events Portside Hamilton.

Moda Events Portside is a great venue to have ceremony. It had the great balcony which you can drink and enjoy the view of the brisbane river at the same time.

The food there was very nice. I especially like the steak (Tao got it so I can taste a bit) and the green apple jelly and ice cream dessert. It is really delicious , however, I was too full of eating so much before, so I could not finish the whole dessert...but..it is one of the best I have ever tried.