Eating Out: An An Viet Noodles, Station St Box Hill

My friends and I for some reason really like viet noodles. They have got to be up in the top 3 of my favourite noodle dishes. I spent the morning rollerblading, one of my hobbies, and i've gotten worse over the last couple of months thanks to lack of practice. After blading i had to go to school to pick up my yearbook, quite disappointed as there is a lack of Interact pics. Then I took the bus with twin to Box Hill (asian land :D) for lunch. Went to this new place called An An 大头虾. Why there? Cos it said $5.90 for a bowl of viet noodles :) So we ordered a small sliced "rare" beef noodles and Bún bò Huế (beef and pork noodle soup but its not like normal viet noodles, its a tad spicy and just different) I've always wanted to try this dish since i read about it in Pauline Nguyen's cookbook/autobiography Red Lantern. I love that cookbook. 

Small Viet noodle. Normally the beef slices are wafer thin and rare right? Well for some reason they were half a cm thick and cooked...not sure whether they gave us the wrong one or not. But it was quite good. Quite a bit of beef considering the amount of noodles. Not bad for $5.90

Sorry it looks half eaten but I didn't think of taking a picture until twin added everything in and was about to eat. There were 4 or 5 slices of pork (pork belly, that pork loaf stuff in viet rolls, and some other piece of meat that neither of us knew what it was) It came with round noodles not the normal flat rice one. The soup was just a tad spicy and a little sweet. But i loved it, it was delicious. 

Would i recommend it? Sure thing, especially bun bo hue, it is soo nice. But since i've never had it before i'm not actually sure whether its a good bun bo hue or a bad one...

One last thing, who likes adding the viet basil in their noodles? Friends had a debate over it. I don't mind it but if i had a choice i'd leave it out.

Eating Out: Wealth Garden, Doncaster Rd, East Doncaster

2 nights ago we went out for dinner with some family friends to this new chinese restaurant called Wealth Garden. Most of you will probably say where?! This place used to be called Purple Sands and in my head it will always be called that. So over the span of 5ish years it changed from Purple Sands to New Panda (what?!) to New Patterns (huh?) and now its Wealth Garden. I haven't been to this restaurant in quite a while, nothing much has changed, done a bit of renovating and that's about it. So we ordered a banquet. I only took a few pics because everyone was starving and dug in before i even thought of taking a pic. The food was decent, nothing special. All the dishes you would expect to find at a chinese restaurant.

For starters we had an oyster with XO sauce. I love XO sauce, its so fragrant, a tad spicy and just full of flavour. I especially like it with noodles. The oyster was quite big, but that doesn't really mean anything. Sometimes the smaller the oyster, the richer the flavour. The amount of XO sauce was a tad overpowering and a bit too chilli to enjoy the oyster itself. But the oyster was just cooked and was nice and soft and not tough.

 

The banquet also came with Peking Duck, one of my favourite dishes. Definitely not the best peking duck around, there was limited skin but plenty of meat. The fat was delicious =P I feel that they could have put a tad more spring onion and cucumber but thats just my personal preference. The pancakes for delicious, just right.

 Would i recommend it? I guess yes but don't expect too much.

Eating Out: High Tea Inn, Tunstall Square, Donvale

Today I finished school at 1pm so I went out for lunch with my mum and my bro.

We went to this place at Tunstall Square, Donvale called High Tea Inn which is actually an Asian restaurant.
I think someone recommended it to mum saying their fish head noodles are really good. So of course mum ordered it but unfortunately mum loved it so much she didn't share any with us :( And also she devoured it before I even got a chance to take a pic. So I guess I can only describe it. Two reasonably large crunchy fried fish head pieces (which mum said was salmon) ontop of a bowl of udon style noodles in a slightly creamy broth. Mum was loving it so much she didn't even hear me talking to her =.="

Doug had a viet style Lemongrass Pork on Vermicilli noodles with spring rolls. However he also was too eager to eat and ate a springroll before I took a pic. So there is a springroll missing in this pic.

Doug said it was pretty good. The springrolls were hot and crunchy, and the pork was quite nice. I realised he savoured the pork till last.

I ordered a Hainanese Chicken Rice as nothing else on the menu really appealed to me, most of the other dishes were Vietnamese and I'm kind of over Vietnamese food after making pho a couple of days ago.

I can't say it was the best Hainanese chicken I'd ever eaten but it wasn't too bad. However I did realise it didn't come with soup like most Hainanese Chicken dishes come with. But it didn't matter because I had my awesome Honkie Milk Tea.

Awesome cup yeah? These are the types of cups they have in HK! Don't see them here very often. Love them. They make me miss HK. Milk tea was very honkie although it got a tad watered down by the ice. But all in all it was a good lunch. Service was great andthe food came quick. The place is newly renovated I think, very modern and spacious. Can't really say anything bad about it.