Russian Club

It was a tough choice but Lynn made the call to go to the Russian "restaurant" inside the Russian Club instead of having Korean hotpot for her birthday dinner. I use the term "restaurant" very loosely as it was more like a partitioned room at the back of the club rather than a proper restaurant.

After we seated ourselves, we had to wait about 10 minutes before the waitress appeared. When we requested the menu, it turned out there was only one which another table was using.

We had limited options as only half the menu was available so to start, we shared some fried dumplings that had a springy pastry filled with a smashed potato mixture and beef mince and onion. This was followed by some hot fluffy pancakes topped with mayonnaise and smoked salmon.

Meat and potato dumplings

Pancakes with smoked salmon

We tried a variety of mains: I had the Neptunes feast consisting of a deep fried piece of fish stuffed with mushrooms; Patrick the Pelmeni Russian dumplings; Lynn with the grilled fish; and Ken with the chicken schnitzel. All the mains (except for the Pelmeni) were served with veggies sauteed in garlic/and home made fries.

Neptunes feast

Pelmeni

Grilled fish

Chicken schnitzel

While this place is definitely not gourmet, the food was good enough and not too expensive. I'm just not sure if there's enough that's worth going back for...

MilkyWay vs MilkyWay Smackdown

"MilkyWays have caramel?!?" was my initial response when a friend from the States mentioned that she loved the caramel in MilkyWays. This of course prompted us to conduct a thorough taste testing and comparison of the Australian MilkyWay vs American MilkyWay. This said friend had also conveniently just returned from the States with a bag full of confectionery goodness so this was a good excuse to carry out this "scientific investigation" :).

First we have the Aussie MilkyWay: a milk chocolate bar with a lightly whipped nougat-ey centre.


The US version comes in two varieties (at least), regular and "Midnight", both containing caramel. The US MilkyWay felt more dense than the Aussie version although that may have been due to the caramel which comprises almost half the filling. The MilkyWay Midnight was suprisingly better than the original, having a dark chocolate coating and a stark white milky centre.


Although different to the Australian MilkyWay, the US version looks awfully familiar...


And so does the 3 Musketeers bar from the States...


The verdict: Same thing different smell...it's all chocolate!

Mimiito's Photos

Stumbled upon this site http://www.flickr.com/photos/mimiito/ via an SMH article. This woman posts photos of her kid's lunch boxes - cool!

Sussex Thai

Some people consider Mother's Day to be too commercialised. Personally, I think of it as a chance to try out a new restaurant. For this Mother's Day Thai was on the menu. Sussex Thai is a relatively new restaurant that has sprouted on Sussex St and it was apparent that they were still going through some teething problems. After a few issues with reordering drinks because of things being unavailable, the waiter that brought the drinks to us was unable to tell us which drink was which and could only offer us "I don't know".

Ordering the food was a little more straight forward. We started with deep dried prawn cakes served with a sugar syrup followed by spice marinated chicken cooked in banana leaves.

Prawn cakes

Chicken wrapped in banana leaves

For mains we had the deep fried snapper with three flavours. I'm not sure if we had ordered wrong but the only flavour I could see was sweet chili sauce. This was nice nontheless but I was expecting something different...

Fried snapper with three flavours (?)

The red curry was gorgeous! Thick and creamy - just the way I like it. The grilled pork neck was smokey and served with a lime, fish sauce and chili sauce. The stir fried beef and eggplant was surpisingly spicy from the pepper but had well balanced flavours.

Red curry with pumpkin and chicken

Grilled pork neck

Stir fried beef and eggplant with garlic and pepper sauce

Overall the food was pretty good and the service was patchy - but then, who goes to an asian restaurant for the service?

Janani

Where to go for cheap and tasty Indian and Sri Lankan food? Janani of course. They claim to be open "continuously 7 days a week" and seem to be a good substitute if you can't find that kebab shop at 4 in the morning (or in Patrick's case, if you want Dosai for breakfast). The thing that sets this place apart from your run of the mill Indian restaurant is that they serve more than just curries and naan (although they have those too).

We started off this meal with guava and woodapple nectar. The guava nectar was refreshing but the woodapple nectar was a bit too sickly sweet.

Guava and Woodapple drinks

We also ordered a Marsala Dosai, a large crepe-like roll filled with curried potato and served with sambar and chutney...

Marsala Dosai

A Puri Pack, three large pieces of greasy puri bread accompanied with sambar, curried chickpeas and potatoes...

Puri Pack

Vegge String Hoppers, vermicelli-like noodles with chickpeas and veggies and lots of chili...

Vegge String Hoppers

And the Butter Chicken Package which consisted of a selection of five curries in addition to butter chicken, rasam, rice and a pappadam.

Butter Chicken Package

And dessert? They do have quite a few on offer but we were way too full... maybe next time.

Recreo

Hmm...??