Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Picking which pho restaurant to go to on Victoria Street in Richmond might be a daunting task for those who don’t frequent the street, but I am here to recommend to you Pho Dzung as a great starting point Victoria St. has to offer.

Pho Dzung, like any good pho joint, concentrates on their two dishes of beef pho and chicken pho. Unlike its CBD sister, it only offers very few rice dishes and no vermicelli salads. The simple, rich goodness of the pho makes up for the lack of choices.

The decor is rather like any other pho restaurants on the strips, rows of minimal laminex tables with just the bare essentials. But let’s face it, you don’t hit a pho joint for a date or a hip-and-happening ambience, you’re there for the soup.

That particular afternoon, Josh and I took our friends from London, Doug and Diane, to experience the Victoria St. Vietnamese eating culture.

(Vietnamese spring rolls – $9)

We started off with prawn spring rolls. The crunchy rolls were well balanced between the skin and filling. The sides of various mints and lettuce were fresh and generous. Not all pho joints do this and it is very disappointing when the quality, and quantity of side vegetables are left to be desired. Read the rest of this entry »

(Thanh‘s sweet pork)

We food bloggers like to eat. As if you didn’t know that. So when a chance presents itself to be eating and cooking and baby not getting in the way? I’m there.

(Kat‘s pad Thai)

This is my very first Cooking the Book event I attended. Basically, we just pick a cookbook and all of us pick a dish or two to make and bring it together at a potluck-style lunch. This time we have decided on David Thompson’s Thai Street Food.

(Kat‘s green papaya salad)

It was such a fantastic effort everyone had pulled together for an awesome lunch. Even the Mini Katspat felt how awesome the occasion was that she thoroughly behaved and smiled (or slept) through most of the afternoon. Read the rest of this entry »

I bring awesome news. I have been neglecting this blog for a very tiring but joyous reason. I would like to announce a successful personal go-live (so to speak), the birth of our little daughter who has her very own hash tag #minikatspat on Twitter. She was born on 8 December 2010 at 5.55pm and my life has been turned upside down since.

The second piece of good news is that now that she is 2 months old, she finally lets me on the computer so hopefully this blog (and its sister blog) will be back to its active status once more.

Anyway, back to Izakaya Chuji, which is one of my favourite Japanese haunts and I have previously reviewed it. So I might just jump in and go through what Josh and I had on one of our Friday night date nights BB (before baby).

We managed to score the best seats in the house, in my opinion, at the sushi/sashimi counter. Arrays of tempting raw seafood and listening to the kitchen buzzing and staff shouting orders in Japanese just made the food taste that much more authentic.

We decided on ordering a few smaller, shared dishes that night. Our koroke (Japenese-style croquette) was a perfect blend of crunchy coating and creamy potato filling. Accompanied by crunchy cabbage slices and tonkatsu sauce, it passed with flying colours. Read the rest of this entry »

It was our 2nd wedding anniversary and since I was off work, I was tasked with choosing a place to dine to celebrate such momentous occasion (I mean, deary me, we must celebrate! It’s not like we have an anniversary every year!)

(menu)

Being heavily pregnant, I was too tired to basically bother to stick with my original intention of putting together a really lovely meal. And I didn’t really want to book somewhere really expensive and really special because a) I couldn’t eat much and b) I didn’t want to go into labour half way through a, say, Jacques Reymond dinner.

(steamed pancakes for Peking duck)

So Simon’s Peiking Duck Chinese Restaurant it was. It wasn’t far from home and it was more interesting than dumplings. The restaurant was supposed to be newly opened but I made a booking anyway just in case as the Age recently had a write up on them. Simon is, of course, the famous duck nazi (err… not sure why he’s called that, he’s not exactly one but someone has to sell the story) from Old Kingdom in Fitzroy who came out of retirement to open his own restaurant in good old Box Hill.

The place was already almost packed by the time we rocked up at 7pm and as they only took cash, we had to go back out to hunt around the neighbourhood for an ATM. There wasn’t one. But there was an Australia Post outlet at the bottle shop nearby who gave us a withdrawal from our NAB account. Phew!

The menu consisted of your typical suburban Chinese restaurant populars with a slight Malaysian slant but we weren’t there for lemon chicken or hor fun, oh no, we were there for the duck! We ordered the duck course (option 1 – $55) which is exactly what is served at Old Kingdom. Option 2 consisted of additional noodle course (or in place of beansprouts, I’m not too sure) and was slightly more expensive. Read the rest of this entry »