Boom Boom - Brisbane CBD

Lately I've been watching a lot of movies at the Myer Centre, it was inevitable that I would eventually try Boom Boom, the Korean Restaurant outside the cinemas ๑•́ㅿ•̀๑.

We waited for a while downstairs at the entrance whilst perusing the menu, for someone to come and lead us to a table. After a period of time, we ventured upstairs to investigate, where we were then promptly shown a table, and given menus.

It seems to be a popular trend for new Korean Restaurants to have tables fitted with electronic bells to buzz for service (I forgot to take a photo of this). In a way its very efficient, because waiters do not need to wander around waiting for requests, but it feels a bit weird that there's no one wandering around ヾ(๑ ³ㅿ³)ﾉ .

Upon ordering, we were provided with cutlery and water. I found the water container to be really cute and homey.

After waiting for a while, we were provided with a selection of KimChi. This included seaweed, preserved sour radish, and the usual spicy cabbage. I know it's probably not traditional, but I do really enjoy the creamy pasta that other Korean restaurants provide.

Gradually, our food started to arrive. We were blown away by the portion sizes. With my rough estimation skills the rice accompanying the pork cutlets would be at least two bowls worth. The pork cutlets were also very big.

Whilst we were shocked at the portion size of the Pork Cutlet Rice, we were completely blown away by the size of the Black Bean Seafood Noodles. For size reference purposes, you can see that there's an egg on the middle of the dish. Taste wise, it was interesting that whilst the dish was advertised as not spicy on the menu, it had quite a bit of chili in it ⸜₍๑•⌔•๑ ₎⸝ .

Every time I go to a Korean Restaurant, I usually order the rice cake dumplings. The rice cake is the same as the ones offered in New Shanghai. It was served in a mild beef kind of soup, mixed with a lot of egg. I really enjoyed this meal, it was mild, nourishing and comforting. I note the portions were not as big as my associates though, but I found it ample, and filling.

The spring rolls were also really large for a snack. While other places may provide 4 or 5 rolls in a serving, Boom Boom provided 9. They were nice, filled with vegetables and crispy.

I enjoyed my time at Boom Boom, and was particularly impressed with their generous portion sizes, and its convenient location next to the movie cinemas.

Price Range: $10 - $20 per person

Taste: 7/10
Value: 9/10
Service: 5/10
Environment: 6/10

New Shanghai - Brisbane CBD

Other than Sushi, my second life passion is Shanghai Food. Having gone to cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Toronto, it was fairly apparent that Brisbane was quite lacking in its offering of authentic Shanghai Cuisine. It may be due to this, that there New Shanghai very popular, having to line up almost every time I go there. 

It seems that there is a trend for a lot of the new Chinese Restaurants to have an 'outdoors indoors' look, where they set the place out like its a winding alleyway with cobbled steps, like 8 Street and like Little Red Dumpling. I dont mind it, but I would prefer to eat in a more well lit kind of environment.

Upon sitting down, the menu is available for each person as a place mat. 

Table water is also provided as a priority.

The Hot and Sour Soup is my usual starting point. The soup itself isnt very hot or sour, but instead the end user is supposed to add their own vinegar and pepper to their liking. Many people are unaware of this, and end up questioning why the soup is not hot or sour enough.

The Shanghai noodles were quite disappointing to be honest. The portion in itself was small, and the meat and vegetables were really quite minimal. Other than the soy sauce in the noodles, there wasn't much flavour.

Xiao Long Bao is what I use to gauge the quality of a Shanghai Restaurant. This can be broken into three parts, the skin, the soup and the filling.

The skin was a decent thickness, I have had thinner at Din Tai Fung (the ultimate dumpling destination), and the top was scrunched up to make it quite hard. But still, much better than the other offerings in Brisbane. Soup was in ample quality, and had a strong meaty and gingery taste to it. The meet itself was finely minced and had that gingery soup in it. 

The pan fried pork buns are New Shanghai's brand name dish. Indeed it is one of the best pan fried pork dumplings in Brisbane. The fillings and soup are the same as Xiao Long Bao, a friend mentioned she found it unoriginal for that reason and suggested that they should make slight differences in the two. Personally though, I could eat the Xiao Long Bao and pan fried pork dumplings every day for the rest of my life. The outside was crispy on the bottom, and soft and squishy on the top.

I found the deep fried radish pastries to be slightly harder and not as flaky as other ones I've had at a number of yum cha places. Otherwise, the filling was piping hot and had a fairly decent amount of radish.

One of my personal favourites when it comes to New Shanghai, is the Vegetable and Pork Wanton. Even within the classification of Wanton, there are different classifications between the types depending on their origin. Traditionally speaking, the wanton from the northern areas in China, i.e. Beijing and Shanghai etc, usually have pork (and occasionally chicken), and vegetables wrapped in them. Southern areas such as Guangdong and Hong Kong wrap things like prawn, fungi and bamboo shoots within a meat paste. The Wantons in New Shanghai were of the former category. They were a decent size, being significantly larger than the ones offered in other shops. The soup was light and also very enjoyable.

The fillings in the pan fried dumplings are the same as Xiao Long Bao, as well as Pan Fried Buns. I didnt actually enjoy it as much, because the soup fell out of the dumplings due to the cracks in the folds. Other than that, I do really enjoy the crispy bottom. I would think the skin was a bit thick too though.

This is the stir fried shredded pork rice cake. What is rice cake you ask? It's a flavourless 'cake' made of glutinous rice that has been ground into powder, mixed with water to become a dough, and then steamed. It usually has a chewy springy kind of texture. The rice cake as nice and chewy in this instance, and the pork was also nice. The portion was a bit small though.

In relation to the Crispy Skin Chicken with Noodles, I dont really have much to say about it other than I like that they separated the chicken from the soup. Other than that, the taste and portion sizes is pretty much the same generic crispy skin chicken noodle you'd find at any other restaurant.

The Braised Dried Bean Curd was better than my expectations, although I do not usually like cold dishes, it was refreshing and the sauce was very strong. The bean curd had a nice rough texture which was different to the usual smoothness.

I was surprised that combination fried rice was offered, although its a generic dish originated in the south of China (i.e. not Shanghai), it was executed quite well, despite being a bit on the oily side.

I was quite skeptical when my friend suggested we also order the Rainbow Beef. It sounded too colourful for my liking. However what was served to us was not in fact rainbow. It was a sort of deep fried beef strips in sweet and sour sauce with some chilies in it. It was surprisingly very nice.

I find New Shanghai a really consistent and reliable place to go when craving Shanghai food. I do go regularly, and thoroughly enjoy the food there.

Price Range: $15 - $20 per person

Taste: 8/10
Value: 6/10
Service: 5/10 (waiters are busy and tend to ignore patrons...)
Environment: 8/10

That Viet Place - Sunnybank

Anyone who has gone to Sunnybank lately will notice a large assortment of new restaurants opening on a previously unused side of SunnyPark Shopping Centre. One recent addition to that area is That Viet Place.

That Viet Place has a portion of outdoor seating, and a portion of indoor seating. As an indoors person, there was no question I would choose to sit inside.

The menu consists of two pages. We found it rather amusing to find that Udon was an option in a Vietnamese Restaurant. Other than that, the usual pho, bun and broken rice etc were offered.

Each table had an assortment of sauces, the waiter was kind enough to come around after we had ordered to explain the different types of sauces and which dishes they accompany.

My usual at any Vietnamese restaurant is always Pho. As mentioned in my post on Fat Noodle, I judge whether a pho is good based upon its soup, noodles and beef. As you can see, the soup was rather oily, and a bit lacking in flavour, not unsimilar to Fat Noodle actually. The noodles itself were fresh and smooth. The beef was a bit overcooked in my opinion, but that's just a personal preference.

This is the Special Beef Noodle. It has the same soup base, and the same noodles, but with additional beef tripe, tendons and beef balls. 

The Broken Rice, on the other hand, was quite nice. The pork chop was very tasty, and I really enjoyed the complimentary soup. The two types of egg provided a nice contrast, whilst the rice was of good texture.

This is the anchovy vermicelli noodle soup. My buddy who ordered it definitely had very mixed feelings about it. She was hoping for something decidedly lighter and less meaty, which was why we had expected noodles with soup. What we were served actually was noodles in anchovy soup, with pork belly and vietnamese sausage. So whilst I enjoyed the spiciness and flavour of the soup, it wasnt what I was looking for.

I guess that for a newly opened store, That Viet Place has quite a few areas of improvement, but the service was really friendly and made up for what was lacking. I did thoroughly enjoy my time there.

Price Range: $9 - $15 per person

Taste: 6/10

Value: 8/10

Service: 8/10

Environment: 7/10

Golden BBQ - Fortitude Valley

On a lazy Friday afternoon, a few colleagues and I decided we wanted to go get lunch somewhere. A regular place we frequent is Golden BBQ, so off we headed. Golden BBQ is situated on Wickham Street, in China Town. It's been there as long as I can remember, which goes to show how long it's managed to stay around for. It also apparently holds a reputation within the Asian circles as to having the best roasted pork in Brisbane ～(^з^)-♡. 

Upon entering, you can see the prices for takeaway bbq are listed on the wall. Apparently they are slightly higher than the norm that you would find in Sunnybank, however difference in quality is definitely worth that little bit more.

We arrived at 12.30, and they were already almost sold out!

The environment and seating provided are very basic, but Golden BBQ tends to go for efficiency and speed rather than ambiance. Whilst it was very busy today, and we had to wait outside for a vacancy, what I found particularly impressive was that the owner took initiative to take our orders whilst we were waiting outside, and food was promptly served as soon as we sat down. A point to note though, is that water is on a self serve basis.

A complementary soup is provided for all rice and dry noodles ordered. Today's soup was a Chinese Vegetable soup, with leafy greens. It was a refreshing start to what would be a very meaty meal.

This is the Roast Duck Rice. The portion of duck provided was very generous, and I hear that the texture of the rice, and the sauce was nice.

What I found particularly impressive about this BBQ pork rice, was the lack of fat. As a (mildly) health conscious individual, when I see a strip of fat on my meat, I make some effort to avoid eating it. My usual experience with BBQ pork is that it has a section of fat on it. I really liked how the BBQ pork at Golden BBQ didnt have that there.

This is the two combination with dried noodle, the two choices being Roast Duck and Roast Pork. The servings were very generous. 

Being a die hard fan of noodles and soup, I got a Roast Pork with noodles and soup. The noodles were a nice springy texture, not over or under cooked. I really like how they took the initiative to separate the roast pork from the soup. Some of the other restaurants that I have been to do not recognise that by putting crispy foods into soup make it soggy and less appealing, so I highly commend Golden BBQ for being able to do this without being asked to. The amount of pork provided probably is double what you'd expect to get in other places. The skin was very crispy, and the meat was tender and nicely seasoned.

Special mention also goes to their famous chili sauce, which is super super spicy.

Overall, I'd say I really enjoy going to Golden BBQ, it offers a generous portion of food, at a consistent standard for a good price. 

Price Range: $10-$15 per person

Taste: 8/10

Value: 8/10

Service: 6/10

Environment: 4/10