Siam Pagoda - Hamilton

Thai food is one of those cuisines that I eat occasionally but am still slowly learning the nuances of. So when we received a gracious invite to try the dishes at Siam Pagoda in Hamilton, we took it as a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the cuisine. Situated along the ever busy Park Road in Hamilton, it was recently relocated from Clayfield. Parking wasn't difficult as there was a parking lot behind the restaurant.

It was very busy on the Friday evening that we went and booking is definitely recommended. The menu was huge and very poppy. It actually reminded me a lot of the menu at New Season Asian which we went to not too long ago. Each dish conveniently came with a picture and we had a hard time deciding what to choose. Service was very friendly but given how busy the restaurant was, it was a tad slow.

Mrs Brisvegustation and Dr L both enjoyed a lemon lime bitters. They came in huge glasses and had ample ice for the very warm evening.

Wanting to save my calories for the food, I had a coke zero and it came equally chilled. 

Our food started coming without too much of a delay, but there were significant time gaps between dishes. First up was the Oyster with garlic, onion and crab egg. I'm fairly sure that it was topped with tobiko rather than crab roe. Either way the oyster was fresh and the flavour profile was definitely something new for us. I really liked the savoury onion and crunch of the eggs. 

 

Moving on to other snacks some fried dishes of crab and prawn rolls and deep fried lotus roots came next. The crab and prawn rolls evidently came right out of the fryer and were crisp and hot whilst very moreish. The Lotus roots were fairly standard although the sweet sauce that it came with was quite a unique accompaniment. I prefer to eat it without sauce.

Baby Brisvegustation ordered a kids meal, and this was the satay chicken rice. For a kid's meal it was fairly substantial. For someone who enjoyed rice as much as he did, he really enjoyed it.

 

Continuing with the smaller dishes, next to arrive was the Silk tofu and Somtum thai soft shell crab. Again the tofu was fresh out of the fryer. Batter was a bit thick but super crispy. One serve was three pieces, just enough for us each to have one. The somtum was very tart and crunchy as expected, extra crunch also provided by the savoury salt and pepper soft shell crab. I only wish there was a bit more to share.

It took a bit of a wait for our bigger dishes to arrive but this was the Crab fried rice. The portion was fairly generous and there was also a significant portion of deshelled crab mixed in with the rice. It was definitely a crowd favourite that evening.

One of Siam Pagoda's signature dishes is the Red Island duck curry. We had it with a serve of coconut rice. Compared to the crab fried rice, the portion of the curry was significantly smaller, largely because it was limited to fitting within the shell of the pineapple. There was a really good amount of duck in the dish though and the curry was sweet and creamy without being spicy at all.

Another dish we had was the Grilled wagyu tiger crying. The photo had it cooked to a rare pink but this came out fairly well done. However since it was sliced thin, it wasn't too chewy or dry, particularly given the salad and sauce. I enjoyed the tanginess of the sauce but it was also a bit sweet for my liking.

It's hard to have thai food without pad thai, so we ordered one with chicken. The portion was decent and it came with the extra crunch of sprouts on top. Like the other dishes, this was a little bit on the sweeter side for my preference but otherwise the dish was very solid with soy umami undertones, soft chewy noodles and a good amount of chicken.

Rounding off the meal was my highlight of the evening, Panang King prawns. One serve came with four prawns but they were absolutely huge and battered with a light tempura batter and coated with the same sweet creamy curry. It went really well with the other rice dishes or alone. 

We thoroughly enjoyed our meal at Siam Pagoda, it was a nice treat for us to venture out of the southside to experience this gastronomical adventure and we appreciate the hospitality. If you want some solid Thai food outside of the bustle of the city, it is well worth a visit.

Espresso and Matcha dined as an invited guest of Siam Pagoda but as always, our opinions are solely our own.

Price Range: $50 - $70pp

Taste: 7.5/10

Value: 6/10

Service: 8/10

Environment:8/10 

Sizzling Birds - Mt Gravatt East

As someone who lives perpetually online, every now and again I see a post about charcoal chicken and I make a note that I should make the effort to go try it sometime. It's been on my list of things to try for sometime now, but when I saw that Sizzling Birds had half price on their whole charcoal chickens for a week, I decided it was time to live up to my promise and go try it out. It was particularly compelling that quite a few foodies in town rate them as the best charcoal chicken in town. Having seen their posts about selling out earlier in the week, I made sure to get there relatively early to ensure we could get our hands on one for dinner. At 6pm there were a couple people waiting outside and I was informed that it would be a 20 minute wait for the next batch of chicken to be cooked. It was lucky I ordered when I did though, because when I did go back in after 15 minutes, the next lady who came in was told that batch was sold out and she would need to wait another 50 minutes for the next batch.

Other than charcoal chicken, there were some wings and fries for sale as well as burgers.

For those who could withstand the smokey charcoal, you could get a front row seat to watch the chickens being grilled.

I got my chicken as soon as it was finished, paired it with medium chips and large garlic sauce and sped home to enjoy the chicken-y goodness.

The chicken was delightful. Juicy whilst fragrant with a decent amount of charring without being overly bitter, which was great. The downside though was that the chicken was fairly small. I had been pondering what to use the leftovers with, given Dr L and I usually have leftovers when sharing a rotisserie chicken, but we were easily able to polish this off with no difficulty whatsoever. At $9.99 a chicken, this would be good value, but for full price it is a little bit expensive for what ought to be a cheap takeaway meal given the size.

We also shared a medium serve of chips for $8.50, which was quite large in portion being fair for the price. It was particularly strategic that the restaurant timed their chips to be finished when the chicken was also finished so my chips were freshly fried and super crispy. They were also generously doused with chicken salt which ensured it was packed with salty umami-ness. 

In summary, we thoroughly enjoyed our dinner that night from Sizzling Birds, it was a delicious foray into the world of charcoal chicken, will not hesitate to return later.

Price Range: $10 - $20pp

Taste: 8.5/10

Value: 7.5/10

Service: 8/10

Environment: N/A

Soora - Mt Gravatt East

Ever since my meal at Queen's Bapsang, I've been fairly obsessed with eating as many Korean set meals as I could find, preferably not too far from home. After a bit of research, I found out about the relatively low key Soora, located conveniently in Mt Gravatt East. With some dinner plans falling through, Brisvegustation and I hit it up for a quick weeknight dinner a few weeks ago.

Arriving at 6.15pm, the restaurant was fairly empty but filled up quickly throughout the evening. Although there weren't many customers when we arrived, service was a bit lacking from the singular waitress working that evening and it took a lot of effort for us to get her attention.

 

Ordering was done by way of QR code or via table service (once you got the attention of the waitress). There are a selection of meals and sides, prices are very reasonable by 2024 standards.

It didn't take long after ordering for our food to arrive.

Brisvegustation had the bulgogi beef bibimbap. This was served in a hot stone bowl with a selection of veggies and beef bulgogi above a bed of rice. Compared to the usual, he noted that the bowl was a bit wetter than usual and the rice didn't have as much crispiness as it could. The accompanying hot sauce was also not as hot as other places, erring towards being sweet more than spicy.

Mini Brisvegustation had a serve of Pork Cutlet rice. For the price point, it was a generous portion with a large slice of crispy pork chop. It came with a small assortment of banchan which was not refilled. He enjoyed the meal thoroughly and finished it all.

Mrs Brisvegustation had the Veggie Japchae. This came out curiously wet. There was a good amount of toppings to noodles. Again the portion was good considering the price but the amount of sauces with this dish made it less appealing.

I had a serve of the Bulgogi Beef Jungsik. It came with rice, miso soup and three side dishes, one of which was curiously potato gems. My set meal was executed to a high standard but didn't stand out compared to a home cooked meal. Nevertheless for the price of $25, I consider this to be a good value dinner. The potato gems were crispy, as was the tofu. The kimchi tasted store-bought and there was more than enough bulgogi for me to have with my rice.

We also had a serve of garlic chicken wings to share. This was freshly fried, served hot and crispy. I liked the fact that there wasn't too much sauce to overwhelm the crispyness of the chicken as well as the generous serve of garlic chips. 

All in all, a solid meal from Soora, even though there were a couple of misses, the value proposition means that I would not object to coming back later for another meal.

Price Range: $15 - $25pp

Taste: 7/10

Value: 8/10

Service: 5/10

Environment: 6/10 

Little K - West End

As the cafe and restaurant scene in Brisbane matures, it comes with a greater development in the sophistication of food offerings. I would say that nothing else has grown as much as the matcha offerings in the city. What was originally a very niche dessert and drink has now become mainstream and the quality has substantially improved to the point where there are at least a handful of matcha specialists in town. One such cafe is Little K, situated on Jane St in West End. 

Little K offers a selection of brunch options as well as sliced cake to enjoy on site or whole cakes to order. In my opinion the thing I hate the most is their limited opening hours, closing shop in the afternoon every day means that I definitely can't go for dessert runs after dinner. 

Anyway, service was available at the counter, and the cake display was impressive. It is a rare situation where I waned to order every single slice to try but only had to settle on one. They were on the expensive side but it was a price that I'm willing to pay for the promise of quality.

Water was provided soon after ordering and I was easily able to find a seat on the Saturday afternoon. The dining area was open though, so it can easily get extremely hot during summer.

It didn't take long for both my drink and cake to show up.

Ordering my usual matcha with a shot of espresso ! ~ (˵•̀ᴗ - ˵ ), it was served with the requisite vibrant green tinted with brown. The cup was fairly large and the latte art was on point. The beverage itself was definitely one of the better offerings in Brisbane, with neither the matcha nor the espresso overpowering each other. The skim milk was frothed in a way that it was reasonably creamy, overall making for quite a delicious beverage.

I made the bold choice of trying to demolish a slice of matcha basque cheesecake by myself. It was strong in matcha taste, and intensely rich and decadent, almost to a point where I struggled to finish it by myself. Next time I will definitely bring a friend to share it with and try another slice of cake.

Price Range: $15 - $25pp

Taste: 9/10

Value: 7/10

Service: 8/10

Environment: 7/10 

Elios - Carina

Red tablecloths and the smell of sugo. Probably the spawning point of everyone's favourite orange feline, Garfield. But instead of Indiana, it's located in the heart of Carina. I found Elios outside of the standard social media bubble of instagram, ironically on the Chinese social media app, Red Note, which I have been relying on more and more to get intel on new openings and good deals, free of biased or sponsored advertising. I had read about their Wednesday nights couples deal which appeared almost too good to be true, so we grabbed another couple of friends, put on our investigative journalist hats and went off to try it out for ourselves. 

Given their deal only happens on a Wednesday, the place was absolutely packed. If you attempt to go on a Wednesday, definitely book. There were less than a dozen tables inside and some out the back. There was air conditioning but it wasn't too strong. 

 

The standard menu was fairly extensive with a lot of options for pizza and pasta at around the $20 - $30 price point as well as a selection of mains and sides. As alluded to, we were there for the couples menu which conveniently allowed for customisation and upgrades to our mains (of which small sizes were included). 

It's also notable that there are size references up on the wall of the restaurant which saves you from having to ask the staff what size the items are. Wanting to make sure we were full, we opted to upgrade our mains from regular sized to main size for an extra cost of $6 per person.

 

It didn't take long for our entrees to come out. Each couple had one dish to share and I tried both the olives as well as the arancini. Although called an entree, the portions were very generous. Our truffle arancini had five pieces, each fairly large and infused with delicious mushrooms inside. It is lucky we had friends to share it with because five of these would have been exceptionally filling for the two of us. The olives were likewise generous in portion and served with three pieces of herbed crispbread. The olives struck me as surprisingly salty and definitely needed crispbread to wash it down.

As aforementioned, we decided to upsize our mains because we weren't sure how small they would be, but after spying on our dining neighbour's food come out, small was actually the perfect portion to be enjoying with the set menu. The full sized mains were far too much for us and we ended up taking home half a pizza. The pizza we ordered was the Quatro Carne, topped with beef, bacon, ham, pepperoni and bbq sauce. The pizza was far larger than what you would get at dominoes these days with probably double the amount of toppings. The base wasn't too thin but it also retained a fair bit of crunch and we particularly enjoyed the spicy pepperoni on top. This is definitely not comparable to Julius, but for the price, there are definitely no complaints from me.

Our pasta was the Fettucini chicken pesto. Again the portions were huge compared to what you could reasonably get at Vapianos. I found their pasta to be a bit less impressive compared to their pizza. The pasta was a little bit overcooked and on the softer side whilst the amount of chicken and pesto could have been a bit more generous. The quality reminded me fondly of the long gone fasta pasta. Nonetheless, it was tasty and I would be keen to try another pasta later down the track. For reference, our companions had the lamb pasta, which was topped with many slices of lamb.

We already couldn't finish our mains, and was therefore shocked by how big the dessert portions were. I ordered the tiramisu and it came in a fairly large bowl. Their tiramisu is described as saviordi biscuit, coffee, mascarpone, marsala and chocolate sauce. It was fairly different from what I make at home, with their mascarpone being thoroughly whipped to a foamy consistency. I appreciated the rich coffee flavours and delicious chocolate sauce and chocolate nibs on top. 

Dr L had the Zeppole, ricotta filled doughnuts, cinnamon, maple syrup with caramel sauce. It was served with a side of vanilla gelato. I really enjoyed this dessert even though I was stuffed. The doughnuts were fresh out of the fryer, the ricotta ensured that it wasn't overly decadent and the gelato offered a contrast to the temperature. I really recommend this and would order it again next time I'm back.

Although the set meal said that one coffee or tea was included, the majority of our table asked to swap our drink with a coke zero, given how hot it was. This request was graciously accommodated which meant that only one of our party had a latte. This was enjoyed with no complaints and given how serious their coffee setup was in store, I have no doubts that it was good. I will make a point to come back when it's cooler and enjoy the coffee then. 

For a price of $25pp ($31 with the upgraded mains), our dinner at Elios represents unparalleled value in this day and age. I also really like the fact that they are able to get substantial foot traffic without reliance on the perpetual social media machine. Needless to say, I highly recommend it and will be back soon to try out more of their food.

Price Range: $25 - $35pp

Taste: 7/10

Value: 9.5/10

Service: 7/10

Environment: 6/10