Meshiya restaurant review

Meshiya is a Japanese restaurant in QV. It's a small restaurant located at the corner of the lane way next to Queen Victoria Women's Centre on Lonsdale Street. There aren't many tables in this restaurant but there is a huge stone table where customers can be seated around it. 

For some reason, I haven't been visiting this restaurant since 1-2 years ago until recently when one of my colleagues suggested having lunch at Meshiya as they offer special lunch menu for only $10. 

The $10 lunch menu is indeed a good deal. Basically, there's a list of don (dishes on rice) to choose from for only $10. And it comes with miso soup, salad and pickles. Besides that, there is another deal where you could get a plate of fried rice and gyoza for $10 too. It's worth mentioning that the $10 don offer is only available from 12pm-1pm while the $10 fried rice and gyoza offer is available from 12pm-3pm. 

Well, I ordered a teriyaki salmon don. My expectation was a tiny slice of salmon being served for $10. To my surprise, there were actually 5 decent pieces of salmon in the salmon don. The salmon was cooked to perfection where it was lightly seared. Hence, it's tender and juicy. However, it's interesting to find some stir-fried bean sprouts with vege on top of the rice which was quite unusual for a Japanese don. Anyway, it was still tasty. 

My colleague ordered a prawn tempura don and it came with 5 prawns too. The prawns were coated with crispy tempura batter and were adequately cooked. 

The lunch offer is really a good value for money. I'll certainly visit Meshiya more often now.

Asian Gourmet Hut restaurant review

Pan mee or mee hoon kueh is my favourite Malaysian food as mentioned in my very first post. So far, the only good pan mee I can find in Melbourne is at Asian Gourmet Hut. I actually discovered this restaurant a few years back when I read the JOM magazine that featured a list of Malaysian restaurants that offered pan mee. After trying each of them, I concluded that Asian Gourmet Hut has the best pan mee of all.

Asian Gourmet Hut is located in Doncaster East which is quite a drive for me from the city. Well, the distance is a small huddle when one is hunting for good food! Since then, we have been visiting this restaurant whenever we feel like having a bowl of pan mee but were lazy to make it at home. If I'm not mistaken, the restaurant only serves pan mee for lunch. The dinner menu consists of the usual chinese dishes. So it's best to call the restaurant to confirm if pan mee is available to avoid disappointment.

How did Asian Gourmet Hut's pan mee top the list? Well, it boils down to 2 simple things - the thin pan mee noodles and the soup. Their pan mee noodles are manually torn into thin pieces. Besides that, the pan mee soup has a good balance of flavour. Having said that, I reckon their pan mee is lacking ingredients and I personally prefer more ikan bilis flavour in the soup. 

Other than pan mee, they also serve various double boiled soup and steamed dishes on rice in addition to the usual Malaysian noodles and rice dishes. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the double boiled soup and the steamed dishes on rice but I reckon they are quite good and it's something you don't usually get from other Malaysian restaurants in Melbourne. 

I've tried their wat tan hor too given that I'm a wat tan hor fan. However, I think their wat tan hor is just average and not as good as Laksa King's.

If you're longing for a bowl of pan mee in Melbourne, you must give Asian Gourmet Hut a try! Otherwise, you could always make your own at home by following the pan mee recipe. It's quite easy! :)

Laksa King restaurant review

There are a number of restaurants that I often visit but I have never blogged about them. For example, Laksa King. So I thought I should give it some attention although I reckon they are already quite popular as there's always a queue on weekends!

Laksa King is a Malaysian restaurant located at Flemington. Although it's quite a big restaurant, it's always packed. Luckily, they are kind enough to set up a proper waiting area with seats for the hungry people. There is a wide selection of food ranging from individual meals such as rice dishes, stir fried noodles, noodles soup, roti and its famous curry laksa to a variety of main dishes. 

Fish fillet noodles and Ipoh fried noodles (aka wat tan hor) are my favourites from Laksa King. Although I'm not so much of a laksa person, I must say that their laksa is pretty good too. 

The fish fillet noodles at Laksa King is one of the best I've found in Melbourne. The soup is almost perfect and it's always loaded with abundant ingredients as well as fish. There's a fish head version too if you prefer. 

Given that I'm a fan of wat tan hor (which is basically fried flat rice noodles with egg gravy), I would order this dish whenever it's offered on the menu. In Laksa King, wat tan hor is named as Ipoh fried noodles on their menu. Again, this dish is packed with generous ingredients such as prawns, squids, pork slices as well as choy sum in the scrumptious egg gravy. To me, it is the best wat tan hor I could get so far as some other Malaysian restaurants tend to have too much burnt taste (wok-hei) for the rice noodles. 

Well, it would be ironic if you didn't try laksa from Laksa King. Similar to the other dishes, it has a generous portion. Interestingly, I love their laksa although I'm not really a fan of laksa. I particularly like the wee-bit of mint leaves garnish on the laksa which actually enhances the flavour quite a bit.

Needless to say, I like Laksa King a lot. It's one of the better Malaysian restaurants close to the city that serves reasonable priced and yummy Malaysian food.

Bak Kwa 肉干 recipe

I have still not gotten over Christmas & New Year and now Chinese New Year is around the corner! How time flies!? Well, it's time to get busy again. I bet a number of you who celebrate Chinese New Year might be busy cleaning, shopping, baking cookies as well as making yummy food such as Bak Kwa. 

Bak Kwa also known as "rou gan" in Chinese is a type of BBQ dried meat. It is easily available from some of the popular chains like Bee Cheng Hiang in Malaysia and Singapore. However, it's not commonly sold in Melbourne as compared to Malaysia. Although a few shops over here do sell Bak Kwa but I somehow never had the desire to try them. 

Well, when food is not easily available, you just create your own! So I made my own Bak Kwa. It's quite easy to make bak kwa at home. There are a lot of recipes on the Internet and I found that most of them are quite similar with slight difference in the portion of the seasoning. Hence, I just picked a recipe from Nasi Lemak Lover and adjusted the seasoning based on my own preference. The only tricky part for me is to evenly spread the minced meat on the baking tray. To me it's hard to make the layer thin, so my bak kwa ended up slightly on the thick side. Having said that, they are still yummy!

Recipe: 

500g Minced pork

100g sugar

1 teaspoon dark caramel sauce

1 tablespoon light soy sauce

1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine

1/2 tablespoon fish sauce

1 tablespoon oyster sauce

2 tablespoons honey

1/8 teaspoon five spice powder

Salt to taste

A few dashes of white pepper

1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl until the mixture is gluey. The gluey texture is important, otherwise the meat won't stick together. Store the meat in the fridge for several hours or overnight. 

2. Spread the marinated minced pork thinly and evenly on the baking tray. Some suggested to use a roller over a layer of cling wrap but I found that it's quite hard to apply the same pressure on the roller when spreading the meat across the baking tray. It ended up thinner on one side and thicker on the other. Besides that, the gluey meat tend to stick to the cling wrap when the cling wrap was being removed which was quite annoying. In the end, I literally used a metal spoon to touch up the surface. 

3. Bake in pre-heated oven at 160C for about 15mins. Remove the meat from the oven and increase the oven temperature to 220c.

4. When the meat on the baking tray is slightly cooled, cut them into your preferred size by using a scissors/knife/pizza cutter. Arrange the pieces back on the baking tray. 

5. Bake at grill mode (top heat only) at 220c for about 7mins or until it's brown.

6. Flip and grill on the other side for 5-7 mins at 220c. The timing and temperature setting vary depending on your oven. The rule of thumb is to bake/grill until the meat is brown (and with burnt bits if that's to your liking).

7. Remove it from the oven, let it cool and serve! (I find that the bak kwa tasted better on the following day after baking.)

Note: Adjust the oven temperature and timing accordingly as each oven is different. You might also be using different oven modes such as conventional, fan-forced or grill. Hence, the timing would be slightly different.