Recently in Restaurants Category

So last Sunday night, we had dinner at China Red, because my parents wanted to try a new place and catch up with us.  It's got tables on the entrance level, and then some more tables down some stairs to the basement.  The way the ordering works is that you can use the touch screen menu at every table to order and bring forth the onslaught of food, drinks, and many mango-based desserts.  But because of how you order, you need to be the one to stagger your courses so you don't end up getting your dessert amongst your mains and end up with absolutely no room on the table!  Anyways, pics after the jump!

We've been popping along to the regular Thursday night table with some of Decay's current/former workmates at Tandoori Times, for the last year or so - it seems that at least once a month, we get to a Thursday in the week and neither of us are particularly enthused about figuring out what's for dinner, so we all hop into the car, and drive to St Kilda, and sit down for some tasty Indian food while being looked after by Akash (:    

I feel like I'm about 10 entries behind at the moment - there has been far less time sitting at the lappy the last few weeks, and more time away from the computer playing with X, or cooking, or sleeping, or going out for a meal.  This dinner was way back at the start of April, just before Easter.  We had dinner @ Hu Tong with Po-Po and Goong-Goong and Stirfry Ninja, before Po-Po and Goong-Goong's whirlwind trip to Hong Kong.  We've only been to Hu Tong twice, and specifically the Prahran location.  What we've worked out so far is that their dumplings and starter dishes are absolutely amazing, and we'd make an entire dinner out of the starters if it were up to us.  The mains that we've had so far, have been OK in that there's been nothing wrong with them, but sitting next to the starters, they didn't deliver the knockout punch they could have.  At any other place, these mains would've been fine, even really good, but they're left for dead by the house specialty dumplings.  It may have been because my parents were trying to build a standard Cantonese-style restaurant dinner out of the menu though, but if we were to get a chance to pop by here ourselves, we'd go all dumplings for the whole dinner.  Anyways, after the jump is a bunch of pics from this second (non-CNY-themed) dinner we had at Hu Tong, what feels like 5 million years ago now!

We don't really need much excuse to go out to have dinner with my parents - they pick out some interesting places for Chinese food, and we're generally up for trying something new (:

Kam Fook has a few locations - a couple in Sydney, and this one in a new part of Westfield Doncaster Shoppingtown.  I hadn't been to this shopping centre in at least ... 10 years.  That kind of makes me feel a bit old!  There's a whole new section that has opened up here, full of restaurants and cafes, all near the entrance to a rooftop carpark.  It kind of makes it feel like a very covered restaurant street crossed with an airport.  Which probably doesn't make sense to anyone.

One of the different things about Kam Fook is that they offer different set menus for each night of the week.  Mum and Dad were keen to try the set menus, but hadn't had much opportunity because they have a minimum 4 person table requirement.  

Anyways, pics of food after the jump (:

We had a kind of last-minute (visiting relos of relos) CNY dinner at Golden Dragon Palace on the first Monday during the Chinese New Year festivities, and we were there again on the middle Sunday, with a mostly different group of people.  Mum and Dad decided not to go for the CNY-themed dinner again for the Sunday, because they'd had quite a few of these themed dinners in the last week (seeing as they were definitely in CNY dinner mode!), so the pics for this dinner were more from the standard menu at Golden Dragon Palace.  Anyways, bunches of pics, after the jump (:

We went out to Yum Cha lunch on Australia Day, with Po-Po, and Goong-Goong, and Stirfry Ninja.  This came about because the previous week, Decay sent me a link to a review of a bunch of yum cha places, and when I sent that over to Stirfry while wondering out loud in gchat whether they were up for some yum cha on the public holiday, Mum rang back, Decay answered the phone, and was met with a question - whether we had any specific places in mind for this yum cha.  We generally trust Mum and Dad's judgement - they seem to have their ears to the ground on all things related to delicious Chinese food, but after a bit of ringing around of places Mum wanted to try, they either didn't offer yum cha, or weren't open on the Tuesday.  Which is a roundabout way of explaining how we ended up at Superstars again.  I think X's first experience of yum cha was at Superstars, and he would've been maybe 6 weeks old?

Anyways, pics after the jump - it's only taken me about 4 days since I started typing this, to actually finish it!

A couple of weekends ago, we went to dinner with my parents (Po-Po and Goong-Goong to X) and brother (Uncle Stirfry to X), at Jimmy Leung's Kitchen in Doncaster East.  I think the reason for going out to dinner was that my parents hadn't worked out what they were going to do for dinner, and they'd rung us anyways to ask about something completely unrelated to dinner.  We're generally up for some dinnery action together! 

It happened to be my birthday yesterday, and it also happened to be one that was specifically a multiple of 10, so Decay asked me to not make any plans for the day, and to choose a place for dinner with friends.  Given that we were going to have a fairly large group of people (20, including a couple of toddlery rapscallions and a not-quite-2-week-old), I figured something Chinese-ish would probably work.  So ... a booking was made for the lot of us at David's Restaurant, and after a morning at a day spa, lunch at a Japanese restaurant (although our sentimental first choice was closed), an afternoon nap (!), made our way to the restaurant (passing a cop car that got itself smashed through the window of Rebel...!), and got some food infront of us!

Pics of food (a bit blurry - proofing on a point-and-shoot in dim lighting when I insist on turning off the flash and using the macro mode, is kind of ... difficult), and possibly some commentary, after the cut: