Welcoming the Sheep, Goat, Ram- Whatever!

Happy Lunar New Year! There is no other way to celebrate than to have a cold beer on this hot day. Love going to Base at The Parade, Norwood as they carry Little Creatures.  

And ooh, they give out free popcorn!

 

 

Chicken wings and salt and pepper calamari to share-

I do apologise for the lack of posts; being lazy and overwhelmed with the many happenings of life. I will try to be better this year!

Base Bar
234 The Parade
Norwood
Adelaide

Fruity Friday

Friday after work drinks are sometimes necessary, especially in this hot and humid Perth summer. I don’t usually order beer but this one is an exception. The Bellevue, a fruit beer, is easy to drink. Made from cherries, this cold sweet beer is much needed to cool one down.

Belgian Beer Cafe
Corner King and Murray Streets, Perth

A cold summer's night

The reason to make it another night of chocolate and more chocolate! Now I am pretty confident anyone could guess what the top mug is- ta da~ the chilli hot chocolate! A friend of mine ordered this on a summer's night and my only comment was ''Seriously?'' I should have taken a picture of him, he was walking around town with a cat's tail. The people in Food Obsession is obviously obsessed with food. He, on the other hand, is obsessed with cats and many others.

Another really good dessert to order off the menu is their icecream bomb. Three flavours to choose from, baileys and scorched almonds, vanilla as well as chocolate mud. My personal favourite is the baileys and scorched almonds. Must have been my friend's favourite too!

Finally it was my turn! And look at the pretty glass. =) The coffee crunch, loaded with ice cream, honeycomb, chocolate chips and more honey with double shots of coffee. It was bitter sweet. With the overload of fresh honeycomb and honey, I went through a phase of sugar rush before having to deal with the coffee and ice cream at the bottom of the glass. Did I mention that I requested for a change from vanilla ice cream to baileys and scorched almonds? It made sense to keep it as vanilla ice cream as the strong flavours totally overpowered the baileys ice cream.

Love the night of sugar rush and caffeine- it kept me awake all night!
Note: Be there for the chocolate, not for the service.

Bracegirdle's Tooraks
389-391 Greenhill Road
Tooraks Garden

Long awaited Korean B.B.Q.!

This dinner took months to plan! It was either postponed or cancelled, but finally, we made it in the end! We really wanted to do Korean B.B.Q. during our summer break and I heard that Tong 86 is one of the best in Perth!

We were lucky; it was a cold (yes, cold) summer night. Perfect weather for B.B.Q.! With 2/3 of us not red meat eaters, we ordered the mushroom set, seafood jeon and my favourite kimchi jeon! My other friend ordered a set of pork belly and steak.

*sizzling goodness*

Kimchi jeon vs. Seafood jeon!

What did I think of the meal?

I wish they had something else other than beef or pork but the barbequed enoki mushrooms were delicious! And kimchi jeon beats seafood jeon hands down. Maybe next time we will order shoju to complement our meals!

Notes: The only problem with this place is that you will get that smokiness in your hair. Just a warning, make sure you wash your hair after the meal!

Tong 86
86 Beaufort Street
Perth, WA 6000

Dreaming a little chocolate dream...

My colleagues and I were talking about an international food trip around Perth and we finally managed to get together for a Spanish dessert lunch a few weeks ago.

Yes, you read right. *Dessert* lunch. Four girls. Two plates of Fondue for Two. Yum!

Look at the melted chocolate dip. On the tasting plate, we have churros, bananas, nuts, caramel popcorn, strawberries, chocolate brownies, pretzels and marshy mallows! All worthy of chocolate dipping!

I thought we should have eaten a proper lunch first, but I am glad we didn't. I was stuffed and so hyped with sugar (and loaded with all those calories)!

San Churro Chocolateria
132 James Street
Northbridge, Western Australia

Summer drinks

Dearest Perth, I thought the thunderstorms today would cool you down. Apparently not. Sitting outside on the rooftop bar of The Aviary after work was not a good idea. Even after two rounds of drinks did not help! Quite expensive too!

Vodka Lemon and Lime Bitters. $9.

Gingerale? Or Gin and Gingerale? I am not sure actually what was ordered. It was nice though.

Nevertheless, it was worth it; anything to celebrate one's going away. We will miss all of you. =(

Cheers for the new year!

Apologies for my 'disappearance' from the blogging world for such a long time. Things have been pretty hectic lately causing me to 'slack off'. But I promise, there will be lots of awesome posts throughout the year. Maybe that can be my resolution for 2012.

Thank you for reading Food Obsession and cheers to all of you! *raises glass*

My first ever sweet martini. A cool drink for the summer.

*Note: It didn't taste sweet at all! But as we always say, it's the company that you are with that matters. ^_^*

How was your Christmas?

As for me, I shared it with some friends. We started off with some home made shandy, a recipe from Nigella's, followed by many others which I stopped snapping photos of. =) I absolutely adore the glass.

Thought I'll post this up too, our table display.  

Another recipe of Nigella's, Parmesan and Breadcrumbs coated Lamb Cutlets, as well as a 1kg turkey breast at the background. We also had a large bowl of salad which again I thought wasn't significant enough to be photographed. Haha.

For desserts, plum pudding served with brandy custard and vanilla icecream. I just had to make myself an Affogato. The meal lasted us hours, from lunch to dinner with breaks in the middle.

We planned a bit too much as we weren't able to

X build our gingerbread house and decorate it with lollies

X cook our chicken wings

X finish our chips

X make brandied cherries.

But, who wouldn't love amazing times like this? I've

✓played board and card games. 

✓watched a comedy

✓played more games on the Ipad

✓had a quiet rest on the couch. One of us had a nap.

✓listened to Christmas carols. One of us actually sang Christmas carols really loudly at the neighbourhood, I had to run away in embarassment.

✓had bunny ears around the neighbourhood while others had bumble bee ears or reindeer ears and nose.

The list goes on...but all I can say, I have had an amazing day bonding with friends my way. SLACK. clinks glasses with Jin. 

Hope your Christmas has been just as amazing, in your way.

Christmas lunch with the team!

I really have to apologise for the lack of updates recently. It has been an extremely busy and crazy few weeks. This includes random Christmas lunches back to back!

My first work lunch was with the 'family' from work. I say family because I spend who knows how many hours per day with the team and we look forward to this one afternoon every December to unwind and destress.

This year we decided to dine at the Belgian Beer Cafe. What can I say? It was delicious!

There is no better way to kick start the summer with a glass of cold **vodka** lemon and lime bitters!

My colleague and I regretted for not ordering mains that came with hot chips. So we decided to get some on the side anyway.

Yum! We were just taken away by the presentation.

For mains, I had the pan-fried salmon. I rarely order seafood thanks to my pickiness but I did not have any regrets with this one. It did not taste or smell fishy (if you know what I mean). That's my kind of seafood!


In summary, even though it is slightly on the expensive side, I recommend this place if you fancy good quality pub meals.

Belgian Beer Cafe
Corner of King and Murray Streets
Perth WA

Kick start summer with a jug of margarita!

The title of this post is almost a bit too long but I just had to do it. And I'll do it again! Kick start summer with a jug of margarita!!! It took us 3 attempts, week after week [It is the busy month of the year after all], before we could finally dine at Grace the Establishment.

It was one of their Thursday specials where a jug of margarita costs only $15 instead of the usual $25. We are mindful that margarita is served with salt at the rim of the glass, however, our first word was ''Salty''. The whole jug did last us the entire sitting.

Fried chicken with buttermilk dipping sauce $9.50. We were disappointed. Chicken wasn't cripsy hot and the buttermilk dipping sauce also did not bring the fried bits to life.

Boston Bay Mussels with chorizo, lemon thyme and cider $24. Interesting flavours. If you do not know me by now, I get sucked into dishes with chorizo on the menu. =D

Slow-cooked pork belly with pickled daikon heirloom carrots $27. We thought this dish was a little overpriced and we weren't particularly impressed by the flavours. We were impressed with the presentation but I guess we do pay for that effort. The rhubarb was left on the plate only because we discovered we did not enjoy it cooked this way.

For the finale, Chocolate bar salted caramel and peanut nougat $7.50. Again, it wasn't what I had imagined. For some reason, I was expecting three separate distinctive elements on the plate. Having said that, we were glad we ordered a dessert to share as it was truly rich and satisfying to end our night.

I have to say we went to Grace with a different set of expectations. We were not allowed to order food from the bar, it does not help that the menu does look a lot more interesting at the bar. Live music was again not up to expectations and the place was loud, even at the restaurant itself. Nevertheless, I did have fun and will most definitely return to dine at the bar.

Grace the Establishment
127 The Parade
Norwood SA 5067.
0883331007.