Brunch Adventures: Tom Phat

When I first came here with my mom and brother I was absolutely in love with this place! I was told that this was a "Malaysian Fusion" place, and so I expected Malaysian people running the place, and was slightly surprised when I saw Caucasian waiters! I suppose my brother was just slightly misinformed, and consequently I was misinformed too.... 

It definitely is fusion but hardly Malaysian :p More Vietnamese and Thai influences. At my first visit here I had this amazing roti + thai beef salad thing, which sounds a little weird (roti plus salad? In fact when I ordered it, it was under the heading of "Roti and Salads" but somehow I interpreted it as being "All roti dishes and salad dishes are listed here" instead of "All these salads are served with roti") but I loved it! Super tangy and the roti was soft and chewy (the way it should be! not crispy like how some people seem to like it, especially here in Melbourne. Roti tisu is crispy, yes. Roti canai crispy on the outside, yes. Roti canai crispy inside and out?? no. just, no.)

But that was almost 2 years ago...

And so much to my disappointment, by the time I came back, they've changed their menu :(

You know that reeeeally lousy feeling when you've set your taste buds on something and then you cant eat it because the restaurant is closed or its sold out or something horrible like that? Or maybe thats just me...

Roti Omelette with Tomato Salsa, Bacon, Chives.
 I wanted more meat so I had a side of grilled pork chop.

I really wanted roti. And from the list of roti+salads they used to have, the new menu only has one roti dish! (for lunch/brekkie anyway, not sure about dinner). I suppose its kind of like roti telur, but instead of the telur being in the roti, this roti is in the telur. Personally I thought it was'nt seasoned enough. But I have a feeling thats more of my own problem than theirs. Somehow to me if something isn't spicy, its borderline tasteless. Had to add salt and chilli sauce... But after I did that, cant fault the dish! Plus it satisfied my roti cravings so I'm not complaining.

Yellow curry with Hanoi Baguette

Meitze's dish. I thought those were carrots. But they're sweet potatoes! An interesting twist to the usual curry chicken and potatoes, I suppose? Super fragrant and flavoursome! Well spiced, (could this be my bias-ness to the spice? hmmm) and the bread dipped in curry sauce is just ... yum. Salivating just thinking about it.

Conclusion: Not very impressed with my roti dish, but the curry dish gives me hope. Maybe one day I'll come back to give this place another go and try other things :)

Meitzes totally sinful chocolate coated reese sandwiched in a double stuffed oreo 

Needless to say, its going to take me 500 days of exercise before I burn off all those calories... yup.

Not gonna happen.

side note: maybe I should start rating my dishes out of 10? hmm.

Tom Phat

184 Sydney Road

Brunswick VIC 3056

03-93812374

Brunch Adventures: Lot 6

I cant believe it took me 1 year of being a lost Foundation Studies student roaming around uni + 1.5 years of being a Melbourne Uni student to finally give this place a try. This entire time I've been hiding in Union House eating the same old same old (Honey chicken with rice), and missing out on life. (Okay not really).

So, Lot 6. AstroTurf and the constant crowd should've given me a hint that this place was gonna be good. 

All the nice sunlight, pretty wooden benches and steel tables, reasonable prices, good selection of yummy food and pastries, perfect location (right next to my favourite building in uni).. Lot 6 has officially become my current favourite place for catch-ups in between classes. Like seriously, how could you top that. I think for a period of time I came here almost twice a week.

Scrambled eggs with pumpkin, feta, and spinach on toast.

 Looks pretty mehhhh on the place but tastes great! Eggs were nice and fluffy, and the contrast between the saltiness of the feta and sweetness of the pumpkin was so yum. Personally I find it pretty hard to cook (and even more so, cut) pumpkin. Its so hard to get it to soften! But then again maybe thats just me. The pumpkin was creamy and smooth and the cheese was all melty and just, yum.

side note: is it just me or does this picture of the scrambled eggs look blurry? But if you enlarge it its clear. Weird. I always thought it would  be the other way round.

Spanish baked beans with chorizo, feta and a poached egg

 The beans weren't as well cooked as I had hoped, it was still a little chewy and hard. But I guess that means it didnt come from a can? Super filling dish, I had this for breakfast and I didnt eat anything else for the rest of the day until dinnertime. Which is, a rare occasion for me (who constantly and I mean CONSTANTLY snacks in between classes).

Lemongrass and ginger tea

Must try! Their Dark Hot Chocolate is my favourite beverage though.

Photo by Shini.

Sense my excitement.

Everything  looks really simply presented but for the very reasonable price I'm not going to complain about the lack of unnecessary leaves and drops of oil around my plate. They were even giving out free beverages the other day while we were there, SCORE!

Thank God for all these lovely cafe's in Melbourne. I would have no idea where to go for brunch if I was in Malaysia. Then again, in Malaysia I'd be busy stuffing my face with Char Kuey Teow and Claypot Loh See Fun with a nice cup of Teh O Ais Limau to be thinking of Ham and Cheese Croissants and fancy coffee.

Till next time! x

Lot 6 

located next to the Eastern Resource Centre (ERC)

Melbourne University

Brunch Adventures: Dead Man Espresso

"I hear the angels talking, talking talking, now I'm a dead man walking, walking, walking"

Can't help but have this song ring in my head the every time I (or anyone else) say Dead Man Walking... oops I mean espresso.

Herb and potato rosti with poached egg, avocado and smoked salmon

Potato rosti is probably one of my favourite brunch food item, right up there with perfectly poached eggs (I don't even mind if they cheat by using poaching bags I just want my eggs). One of my favourite cafe's does an AMAZING rosti, but recently they've changed it to some sort of fried mash potato patty thing and I am utterly depressed. So I was super happy with this rosti! Crispy and delicious (and possibly not very healthy, but lets not think about that). Simple but delicious! Though I probably should have ordered another poached egg because I'm not much of a fan of dry food, and in my honest opinion I could've done without the salmon.

Didn't try these next ones but here are pictures anyway.

Debs and Debs dishes (Because Jon had scrambled eggs. Boring.)

Smoky beans in tomato sugo with paprika oil and Pyegana Cheddar crumble with toast

BLT - pork belly and spinach puree on brioche with side of gazpacho

What on earth is a gazpacho. The waiter explained but I wasn't paying attention. Absent-minded as always. But from the bits and pieces of the conversation I could gather, its some sort of tomato sauce/soup thingy. Apparently its delicious!

Magic?

 Recently introduced to ... magic coffee? No, you will not get super powers or excrete golden eggs after you drink it, but it refers to the way they extract the shot/the part of the shot that they use (something like that. Debs explained this to me but once again, I cant remember details). What I can remember is, it doesn't contain the part of the coffee that would taste bitter (hoorah!).

edit:  Magic - double ristretto with milk. without the bitter end of the coffee and most of the caffiene. 
(thanks debs) So to me it tastes a little bit lighter and the taste is clearer. But then again my coffee taste buds aren't exactly very developed yet so I could be very wrong.

Side note: I just read an article about caffeine addiction. Apparently it takes 7 days to get addicted to caffeine. I have yet to find out if these effects are reversible. 

So now thanks to my new found interest in coffee, I'm ruining my teeth AND destroying my brain. Perfect.

Dead Man Espresso

35 Market Street

Melbourne

03-96862255

Brunch Adventures: 1000 £ Bend

Its pretty well hidden behind a warehouse-esque exterior along Lt Lonsdale street. I love the chill-out atmosphere and pretty hipster-ish deco of the place, but it was possibly A TAD BIT too chilled for me. Food took a pretty long time (45 mins), and didn't taste fantastic. But maybe something happened in the kitchen on that day. 

But it was pretty full, so it seems that many people do like this place. 

Grilled Saganaki Burger with Mushrooms, Rocket, Aioli, and Relish.

Too salty, and there weren't any mushrooms :( which made me very sad.

Quesadillas with pork, sour cream and guacamole.

Which tasted much better

I heard the coffee here is pretty good, though I didnt try it. Maybe it was just one of "those" days in the restaurant. Oh by the way, you have to seat yourself so don't bother standing at the door waiting for service. 

I guess this is more of a hang out place, and made to feel like your own lounge I suppose. So maybe thats where the whole "find your own seat" thing fits into the package.

On a different note, uni has officially started with full swing, and suddenly I'm swimming in work-I-need-to-do as well as sleep-I-need-to-get. Body clock is still protesting.

The first weekend of Beautiful Woman Conference 2012 is over and I cant wait for the next! Love the amount of effort the team puts into decorations and things just to make us [the girls] feel all pampered. Amazing time spent with the girls - dressing up, planning outfit themes, hanging out, sleepovers, taking tons of pictures, but most importantly, encountering God.

Shout out to the boys who surprised us with breakfast! 

Also, Ive been eyeing a few brunch/lunch places to visit... So hopefully, more yummy Brunch Adventures to come! :)

Brunch Adventures: RMB Cafe

Haven't had time to grab a proper Aussie brunch since I've been in Malaysia, so naturally I scheduled a brunch meet up at the first chance I could!

For some reason there's almost always something I am craving for at every moment - unless I just ate and am not hungry. Craving of the day - French Toast. (Bacon and maple syrup compulsory)

Brought Gwen (welcome to Melbourne, darling!) to Degraves Street for brunch, I told her to pick whichever cafe she wanted but I'm secretly happy we settled for this place (with french toast heheheh. I have no idea what I would've eaten if we ended up at some sort of sandwich/panini place)

Thick Cut French Toast with Crispy Bacon, Maple Syrup and Caramelized Banana

yum yum yum. Such a generous amount of bacon (my tastes buds are appreciative but my arteries are not) and the toast was nice and thick and soft, to soak up all that lovely maple syrup. Maple syrup + bacon may sound like an odd combination to some, but trust me, its level of compatibility is somewhere up there on the "Made for Each Other" scale alongside Apple and Cinnamon, or Carrot Cake and Cream Cheese.

Actually cream cheese goes with pretty much anything if you ask me.

And the banana's added a "healthy" touch and was a perfect "buffer" in between mouthfuls of oh-so-sinful crispy bacon. It probably would've been  much too rich and oily otherwise.

I remember the first time I came here for brunch, we were in the middle of "banana drought" because of the flood, and I ordered this simply because it had banana's in it. Those were the days where choice of fruit (or rather, whether you are eating bananas or not) were some sort of a status symbol/display of wealth.

Thank God for cheap banana's again!

Mini Passionfruit Cupcake

We went to check out the Sunday Arts and Crafts market at the Arts Centre and found this cute cupcake stall (amongst all the amazing arts and craft) ! This girl dusts ALL her cupcakes in glitter. Cupcakes on their own are already irresistible, but how can you pass up sparkly cupcakes??

I don't know when it started, but passionfruit is my current favourite flavour for everything.

Aside from looking absolutely gorgeous, her cupcakes are so fluffy and moist, these are now my second favourite cupcake place - second after Cupcake Central's Red Velvet.

In the meantime I've got to work on my own cupcake fluffifying skills.

Till next time! x

RMB Cafe

37 Degraves St

Melbourne

Brunch Adventures: Proud Mary

There seems to be many good brunch places close to church.

I say brunch but we went during lunch. Thank God for All-Day-Breakfasts. We didn't go on a Sunday, because we were all on holiday and decided to go on a weekday instead, but we were not smart enough to make a booking for 9 people (We didn't know we could! But yes, bookings can be made on weekdays. In fact, if you intend to show up with 9 people, the waitress would MUCH prefer you make a booking.) and also were not smart enough to avoid the lunch crowd.


So after waiting for about.. 20 minutes. We got a table. We volunteered to sit outside to make the waitress' life easier, but it was more so we could get a table faster because we were (read: I was) really really hungry. Nobody wanted to sit outside (we soon figured out why) so it was MUCH easier for us to get seats as opposed to have to wait for 4 tables-of-two to simultaneously leave at the same time who were coincidentally sitting next to each other.


It was a drizzly morning. Which turned into a little more than a drizzle after we sat down. And then a lot more. After a very challenging seat/umbrella-rearrangement session to avoid getting wet (during which many ideas were thrown around, some of which gave us the exact opposite of the desired result), we made it work in the end!

Lamb Sandwich with Beetroot and Herb Yoghurt

The most popular dish here seems to be the Pork Belly Sandwich (among my friends anyway. On that day itself, out of the 9 of us, we ordered 5 serves of the Pork Belly). Its nice, but since I'm not much of a pork belly fan, I much prefer the lamb sandwich. And there's beetroot in it! How can you say no to beetroot! Nutritious, delicious, and purple.

Pork Ragu with Parpadelle and Parmesan

This was a winner. Not sure if its because it really was amazingly amazing, or if my judgement was swayed due to being REALLY hungry and in desperate need of warm comfort food thanks to the rain. And comfort food, this sure is. The pork is cooked for a certain number of hours (12? 24? DETAILS DETAILS. But its a long time, basically) and so its nice and soft and juicy. This was my first time having parpadelle, and I had a little bit of trouble eating it... in a dainty way. I couldn't get the whole thing in my mouth in a neat lump initially because well, you cant scoop it up with a spoon like spirelli or twist it around a fork and shove it in your mouth like spaghetti/linguine (both of these methods were what I tried before I figured out how to do it, which is to sort of fold it and stab it with your fork before it unfolds, and then eat it. But that was after I got my face all dirty). The yellow shards on top: I think it was parmesan. It tasted like parmesan. Once again - details. But it was definitely cheese.

I did think the portion was a little tinier than what I had expected, but then again I have a pretty big appetite, and like I said I was really hungry.

Syphon - Geisha - Columbia

Proud Mary is pretty well known for their speciality coffee. Never have I faced as many options while ordering coffee ever before. To keep with the coffee tutorial theme, I went with filtered coffee. Firstly, the way the coffee is filtered/extracted : syphon, French press, V60, or Chemex. And then which type of beans you wanted. I ordered a Geisha (among many other options the waitress was reciting to me), because it was impressed on me that that was the coffee to order. And then I had to choose which country's Geisha I wanted. This was all very overwhelming without my coffee mentor beside me (he was late).

But I got my coffee in the end, it was nice, but not mind-blowingly so. It had a very clean taste (what does that even mean). I guess what I mean by "clean" is... crisp/not complex I guess. I cant help but imagine a sheet of white linen when I say "clean". But besides the "cleanliness", I still don't know how to appreciate this to the full - yet.

Paid 10 AUD for this baby. Never in my life have I paid that much for a single cup of coffee. It must've been really good. Maybe I should've saved this one for a session at the later part of my coffee-appreciation program, after I've developed the taste buds for it. What a waste :(



Speaking of coffee, my dentist has expressed deep concern about my new habits... "OMG WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR TEETH THEY USED TO BE WHITE NOW THEY'RE BROWN OMG OMG  I am not very happy."
Isn't it funny how dentists try to talk to you when they're jamming foreign metal objects into your wide open mouth?

Till next time! x

Proud Mary Coffee Roasters and Cafe

172 Oxford Street

Collingwood

03-9417 5930

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Brunch Adventures: Three Bags Full

Brunch is undeniably my favourite meal of the day. Late enough for a sleep in, early enough so you have time to do other stuff after that, and then you get hungry again just as dinner time rolls around. How awesome is that? Plus, Melbourne has so many terrific brunch/coffee places to offer.

And therefore, I have decided to start a Brunch Adventures series! Fulfilling that typical Asian stereotype: taking pictures of my food and posting it online and telling people about it (even though they possibly dont even care) but I cant help it, I love food so much I just have to share it. (the pictures I mean, not the actual food itself... although you're always welcome to share my food! At your own risk...  No I'm kidding. No not really. No really I'm kidding. :p


Three Bags Full


I didnt actually see a sign for this place, then again Im not exactly the most observant person around, so if youre not paying attention, you just might walk past and miss this place! In a brick building that looks a little boring from the outside, it sure is pretty on the inside! I mean, theyve got plants greeting you as you enter the doorway. Thats a big tick if you ask me.

The place is much bigger than I had expected, definitely bigger than most café's I've been to. But out of the two times I've came here, they were PACKED out and I had to wait 15-20 mins for a table. But that's probably because I go on Sundays after church, when lots of people from church are there too. Not helping that church ends around lunchtime (but its a Sunday! Where do all these people come from?!)

Anyway, it was surely worth the wait!

Mushroom and Lentil Ragu with Poached Eggs and Feta.

Wild mushroom soup has always been one of my favourites, and I just can't seem to find ANYONE selling them here in Melbourne. They rarely even have it in those instant soup cans/packets! (WHYYYYYYYYYYY) So the only way I can satisfy my mushroom soup craving is either making my own (which I havent exactly got around to doing) or to overdose on the Wild Mushroom Soup at Delicious when I go back to KL so I get sick of it for the next couple of months.

So yes, you can imagine my excitement when I saw this on the specials menu! I was initially worried that it was going to taste a little bit like dhall because of the lentils, but I could taste was mushroom, mushroom, and mushroom (oh yes) which was brilliant. Super chunky and full of mushroom flavour (if you haven't got that point already), and the feta made it extra creamy as well! I think they added a few drops of lemon oil or something, because occasionally I would taste something sour. Which was terrific, otherwise the whole thing would be a bit too rich so that little bit of acidity really helped lift the dish (note how I'm using MasterChef language here, evidently I watch too much of that series) 

But no really, this dish was amazing. Except maaaybe for the poached eggs? I wasn't too sure about that. I mean I love poached eggs, but poached eggs and mushroom soup seemed a little bit weird to me. Then again, in normal cases we'd have mushrooms with poached eggs on toast, so I guess its the same set of flavours, but somehow... I don't know. It did help to make the dish more filling though. It was weird for me but not like it was a total mismatch, so I'm not complaining. I'm too in love with the mushroom ragu.

Unfortunately this was on the specials menu which means they don't have it everyday! I don't even know when they'll have it again. But oh well, what can I do.

Try something else on the menu. :p

But to be honest, everything else on the menu seemed... normal. As in nothing really stood out. Then again, I don't dismiss the possibility of them making brilliant blow-me-away Eggs on Toast! I will have to test that out sometime in the future.

"Clever Coffee Press" (or something along the lines of "clever")
Filtered coffee - I cant remember which country these beans were from.
clearly I need to start paying more attention.

My awesome buddy Elton has graciously offered me "coffee appreciation tutorials" which I have gladly accepted, of course! So far we've been having filtered coffee, and I must say I really like it! But Cafe Lattes have been my only source of milk so far (I hate milk), so if I start drinking filtered coffee... I better figure out something else.

I like how you can really taste certain flavours in the coffee, instead of just full on bitterness. According to descriptions on the board, they use words like "raspberry", "butterscotch", "cherry","orange", "floral notes" etc for each type of coffee bean, which all sound really exciting because well.. it sounds like dessert. HAHA. Floral, raspberry tasting coffee? Just the concept of it excites me. Which is probably why I'm so determined to learn how to actually TASTE these notes they describe. So far all I can distinguish is acidity and maybe a little but of sweetness, and even then I cant compare them unless I have them side by side. Well, its a start! 

So lets see if my coffee appreciation skills improve with time (fingers crossed).

If you've been to Three Bags Full, let me know what you liked/didnt like about it (comment below)! or what I should order the next time I go there and they don't have the awesome Mushroom Ragu (which they probably won't).

Till next time! x

Three Bags Full

60 Nicholson St,

Abbotsford, VIC 3067

03-94212732

You can get there by taking tram 109 towards Box Hill,

 or tram 48 towards North Balwyn