Eating Out: Harajuku Crepes (Knox Pl Melbourne VIC 3000)-Melbourne Central

After being kinda ushered out of Pancake Dessert House for dinner, we decided to get some dessert. And where else to go but Harajuku Crepes even though Pancake Dessert House is supposed to be known for their crepes.

Mango Ice Cream Crepe 

Don't remember the exact price but it was around $6. Which is quite a bit considering it's cost price isn't actually that much. The crepe was really thin and crisp on the edges. The inside was filled with mango pieces, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. Really yummy. Not too sweet. And you can eat it on the go.

Eating Out: Korean :) at White Tomato (City) and Ice Cream Mochi

Met up with Nals for lunch today. I owed her a korean meal from november last year. Tiff tagged along since she didn't have anything to do after the neap bio lecture in the morning.
We walked through Chinatown and only saw one korean restaurant with 2 waitresses outside holding the menu convincing you to eat there. However that place looked expensive so we walked around for a bit more to find another place. Found one on burke st called White Tomato.
The environment was very nice, spacious but most importantly, it wasn't noisy like some restaurants in the city. Maybe it was because we went at 2:30, past lunch hour. The waitress spoke limited english, wrote in korean and was very pretty. I ordered a beef bibimbab, Nals ordered a chicken bibimbab and Tiff ordered a tofu seafood hotpot with rice which looked insanely chilli.
We managed to watch the chef cook and it looked very cool. Watching him move the wok, throwing it up and catching it again, the flame was fierce.

My meal. There was a tiny bit of beef compared to Nals' massive heap of chicken. I was disappointed at how unfair the different servings of meat was. I feel that a tiny bit more of each ingredient would have been better as after I mixed my rice up there seemed to be very little ingredients mixed in. Taste? Quite nice. A bit like fried rice but better. All the flavours went well together, I particularly liked the egg and mushroom. The beef was a bit on the bland side. Nals complained that it was too oily unlike the one she ate in Korea. But I guess the oil makes everything taste that little bit better.

I would definitely come back but to try a different dish, they had soooo many choices.

After lunch we went to the asian grocery store where they had 90c pocky which Nals got. We bought the mochi ice cream thingos for dessert just like the ones I had in HK.

From left to right.

• The packaging of my chocolate ice cream mochi. $1.60. In HK you get doublt the mochi for that price.
• My icy mochi ball. Tasted NO WHERE near as good as what you get in HK. The ice cream was ROCK HARD and there was ice all over my mochi.
• Nals green one mochi ball. It looked nothing like the picture on the front. Supposedly ice cream with big pieces of walnuts in it, in reality tiny bits of walnut. The skin of the mochi ball did not stick to the ice cream. The ice cream fell apart. It was a fail mochi ball.
  

Last Day

Went to China on the 3rd and 4th of Jan. Another food trip but I'm not going to blog about it. The food wasn't too great, different but not outstanding...to tell you the truth I didn't take any pics XD And about the first China food trip, that blog post is still coming along due to Microsoft Word issues. I promise I'll finish it by the end of the week.

So back to my last day in HK. The day was mainly spent packing our endless luggage.
My aunty ate lunch with us, our last lunch in HK was of course CONGEE :) which was also our first lunch in HK. I ate a congee with fish slices, beef, corn and choy sum. Yes that is all in the congee not separate. No pic sorry but it was really different having corn and choy sum in congee but at the same time very nice and sweet. I might actually add corn to my congee in the future.
We then WALKED to Sha Tin Plaza and had to look for a laptop for my cousin but unfortunately they were sold out throughout all the big reliable retailers in HK. Since congee doesn't keep you full for long we had afternoon tea at Pokka Cafe.

Mum's Hokkaido Coffee (cold). Came with Hokkaido milk which is supposed to be really nice. But what I found interesting was they even have coffee ice cubes so your coffee doesn't get watered down.




"Romantic Dessert" obviously we didn't choose this for its name but for the amount of variety. We managed to share this between 5 people. Favourite was the chocolate mouse cake and the green tea ice cream, but really they were all divine.





My lychee drink with sorbet. The bottom was sweet lychee syrup followed by lemonade and a ball of rock hard sorbet floating around. INCREDIBLY expensive at $6 AUSSIE but it was relaxing to have afternoon tea with family.

 

Dad's fresh fruit sundae. Looked amazing, dad ate it without saying a word so I take it was nice.

Doug's ice cream thingo with coffee liqueur. Doug found this really weird as he ate it by layer, not mixing the layers together. Overwhelming his taste buds. Looked awesome though.

Dinner at Cafe De Coral for the last time. Great place to spend my last dinner in HK, at the HK trademark Cafe De Coral. I chose the HOT POT for like $6 aussie :)

The top tray is sliced pork and beef, the tray under is all the vegies, and noodles. I felt like such a pig since I ate it all but it was soooo fuunn. You're own little pot of boiling soup base (pork bone) and just cook away. Soooo yum and fun.

If you have never had Hot Pot before you have to try it at least once and with a massive group of friends or family. Good times :)

So that rounds off the HK trip unfortunately. I hope you enjoyed reading about HK food. But don't worry, I'll still be blogging about my cooking and eating. Stay tuned :)

New Years Day-Snake Soup,Sham Shui Po

Ticked off another few things off the list yesterday.
First of all SNAKE SOUP. Sounds pretty crazy right? Tastes pretty good.

I got the snake soup and sticky rice set $45. Sounds pretty expensive but it really does fill you up and it's snake....pretty expensive stuff. The sticky rice wasn't particularly excellent, tasted like how sticky rice is supposed to. The snake soup was a little thin to my liking but contained tonnes of snake meat. Snake meat is like tougher chicken meat crossed with pork. You add crunchy fried pieces of wonton wrapper and shredded lime leaves to the soup, which gives the soup more textures and flavours.

After a bit of walking I started to get thirsty and saw trusty Maccas. Tried this new drink, no idea what it is in english. It was frozen fanta with ice cream on the top but the ice cream was special, it had an outline of flavouring.

Tasted sweet and cold...I don't think many people buy these in winter... And it's at about the price of a small-medium coke at Melb maccas.

A day in Mongkok :)

 Finally kinda have the time to post bout 2 days ago. Went to Mongkok with Wezblob, Wezblob's bro and my bro. Only for a couple of hours but we managed to eat quite a few things on the things to eat list and shop around the touristy places in Mongkok.
Day started at noon, unfortunately in Mongkok barely any shops are open at noon which we found out. Our first planned destination was Japan Boat for takoyaki but they were only starting to open and not making takoyaki yet so we detoured and went shoe shopping on Fa Yuen St (otherwise known as sneaker street). Couldn't find the shoe I wanted in my size. Managed to find a badminton shop to look at some prices for things before accidentally walking into Gindaco (another takoyaki store) and it was fully open.
Bought 10 pieces/balls? of takoyaki (5 were octopus, 5 were prawn). $38 (AUD$5.50) cheaper than Melb.

Taste? Crunchy on the outside, soft but a little too hollow on the inside. Nice big pieces of octopus/whole prawn. Good mayo and takoyaki sauce. 7.5/10

After Gindaco we went to Rose Sporting Goods or something like that. Specialised badminton shop, really wanted a little keyring but way too expensive. After looking at more shoes we ended back at Japan Boat for a second round of takoyaki. This time at $15 for 6....way cheaper than Gindaco but you get what you pay for.

The guy at Japan Boat looked no where near as pro as the guy at Gindaco. Japan Boat takoyaki wasn't as crunchy but it was BURNING HOT, and the piece of octopus wasn't as big. The mayo looked like plastic and the takoyaki sauce was unusually sweet.

Then we went to ParknShop (supermarket) to buy "ice cream wrapped in glutinous rice wrapper" and decided to look for Hot and Spicy Pringles, failed to find them but found these instead :)

Tasted like wasabi flavoured chips...nothing special except for the price...$9.00....burning a hole in my pocket. Back to the ice cream thingos

PURE HEAVEN. The pastry is 2mm or so thick, just like tang yuan if you know what that is, its chewy and tasteless. Then there's a massive ball of ice cream inside, I chose vanilla. At $9.50 a two packs (one pack contains 2) it's pretty good value. One the pack it says Mochi Ice so maybe that's what they're called.



After walking to Langham Place we bumped into a place that sold the all mighty Egg Shaped Waffle thing 鸡蛋仔. No  idea what it is called in English. Been craving it for ages, but honestly I actually ate this last week.

Freshly made :) on nom nom
It's crunchy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside. Tastes like a waffle just airier. You rip off the little balls and EAT IT.
ANOTHER MUST EAT!!




The afternoon soon ended with a McFlurry which was half melted for some reason and a trip to Muji where I got told off for eating in the store though I could NOT find a no eating sign anywhere.

One last thing. ANOTHER MUST EAT!! Had dinner with family and ate SUCKLING PIG *drools* This stuff is amazing, 10 times better than Chinese Roast Pork.

Yes that is a roasted pigs head on the dish, with cherries as eyes. You bite into a wafer thin skin that is crispier than ever, and then into a layer of fat which just melts and possibly into a tiny bit of meat. TO DIE FOR!!!....I think if you ate this pretty often you would die....so much fat

All in all, a day of must eats.