Archive for the 'Tapas' Category

16
Jan
12

Five Bar, Mt Lawley

By S.M. Leave a Comment
Categories: Modern Australian and Tapas
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Website: https://www.facebook.com/FiveBarPerth

Having heard interesting reviews about this place, SK and I decided to check this place out on arvo, and with a nice warm day in the books, I couldn’t find any reason not to enjoy a pint of beer with what we’d hope to be some awesome food.

We came here to actually check the place out more than anything, to have a drink and some snacks because we were intending to end the evening at the beloved Andaluz bar in Perth. We found ourselves a neat parking lot just directly opposite the bar and found ourselves waltzing in to find a range of seating areas to suit different styles – vintage, bar, casual window, high tables and a lovely back area that we fell in love with comprising of crates and roof window that opens up when the day is lovely to let all that light stream in. No second guesses as to where we sat! Oh, not forgetting a pool table! I have yet to exercise my long-lost skills on that table, but I know I will one day.

Anyway, we had a look at the menu, and my first impression was, “wow, what a long list of beer!”… they weren’t all tap, but they did have a very intriguing list of beers – how I wish I have the capacity to actually all those beers! We scanned through the food choices too, and finally ordered:

  • Serve of Chips (served with a special aioli)
  • Marinated Octopus
  • Sassy Red
  • Blanche de Namur
  • Pilsner Urquell

On other occasions (yes we have been back… and back… and back. It almost feels like a second home – to me at least), we have ordered:

  • James Squire Apple Cider on Tap
  • Field Mushrooms with Danish Feta and Balsamic Vinegar
  • Reuben Sandwich
  • Open Pork Sandwich
  • Champagne Jelly with Strawberries & Cream
  • Brownie with Ice Cream
  • Tiramisu
 

The chips are always a favourite whenever I feel like some good fat potato strips fried in oil – because that’s exactly what they are. If you prefer the Macca’s type of chips (i.e. slim, skinny, not too much potato), then this may not be your cuppa. I personally would order this only on a case by case basis, though the taste of the chips and the aioli do have a great combination.

 

The marinated octopus was lovely. Enjoyed it thoroughly, and I would have had more if not for my abstinence from eating too much seafood. Not too sure if this is still available on their menu though – it does change with the seasons! More variety. Yay!

My personal favourites of this place are really the field mushrooms and the open pork sandwich, both of which are becoming regular orders whenever I visit this establishment. The field mushrooms is a must order if you love mushrooms because the combination of those ingredients is just AWESOME. Lovely. Such a great dish. MmMm. I want some now! The open pork sandwich grows on you bit by bit by bit. The initial bite, you would think, “Hmm, it’s alright”… then you take another bite, and go, “hmm. Nice”… and before you know it you keep taking bites until there is none left and you still want some more! Dangerous effect I say.

 

The reuben sandwich is great if you like your meat and your cheese because it is just packed full of it (as it should be). According to our friends at Wikipedia, The Reuben sandwich is a hot sandwich of layered meat, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese, with a dressing. These are grilled between slices of pumpernickel or rye. And Five did exactly that. Got a bit much for me since I have reduced my meat consumption over the past 2 years, but it is a delight to eat. Would order it again if I was feeling like a carnivore.

I’ve tried all three main desserts that Five Bar has to offer, and my personal favourite is the Brownie with Ice Cream. It wasn’t overly sweet and the brownie wasn’t too dry as well. Lovely.

 

The rest of the desserts are absolutely stunning in presentation, but not really to my palate unfortunately. The Champagne Jelly sounded so enticing that I ordered it because I was just curious, and I thoroughly enjoyed the strawberries and cream, but am not too used to the flavour that the champagne jelly brought. The tiramisu had a nice coffee taste on the base, but a tad too much cream for my liking – so if you like your cream with tiramisu, then this would be for you!

My favourite drink by far at Five Bar would be having their James Squire Apple Cider. Yummo! And here’s the best part – it goes so well with their food!

With so many different areas to choose from to sit depending on how you feel on the day, you would actually want to go back just to try their different seating areas! I do anyway. The service has always been spot on, and now that I’ve gotten to know some of the staff members, it is always a delight coming back. Based on my initial experience, there was this level of friendliness in the staff that I was really impressed with.

Overall, such a great bar to go back to, even if it is just for 1 hour, to chill, relax and have a pint of their gorgeous James Squire Apple Cider! And look out for their new 2012 food and drink menu too!

Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars

Rating by: S.T. a.k.a Miss Egg

Five Bar
Telephone: 0467 534 267
Address:  560 Beaufort Street, Mt Lawley

Five Bar on Urbanspoon

08
Jan
12

Amphoras, West Perth

By S.M. Leave a Comment
Categories: Tapas
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Website: http://www.amphorasbar.com.au

At one stage, Miss Anise, SK, DP and myself had this thing for tapas, and so we set up a relatively short-lived-but-fun-while-it-lasted tapas club in which we visited various places serving tapas.

This occasion we found ourselves in Amphoras Bar in West Perth.

We invited Miss Anise’s lovely husband JT along as well. The more the merrier for tapas, after all, right? *wink*

Upon arriving, we found the bar already pretty packed out, with people having the usual after work drinks on a Friday – and why not! The bar had a nice feel to it, and because of the dim lights, created a somewhat cosy and romantic feel.

Deliberating the menu wasn’t too easy a task, but we managed to get by with the help of a little booze. We finally ordered:

  • Trumer Pils (for moi)
  • Bottle of Red (not too sure what the real name was, but it is what I think nicknamed “Mother’s Ruin”.
  • Pedro Ximenez glazed Rosa’s  chorizo w/ corn bread
  • Margaret River wagyu meat balls with porcini mushroom jus
  • Pork Cheek and Scallop
  • Special for the day – stuffed squid
  • Prawns with special made sauce (you can tell I have forgotten what this dish was called!)
  • Dorper lamb pintxos, sweet potato puree, broccolini
  • Apple, rocket, beetroot salad

Mmmm. Let’s just get started on the photos!

 

 

The chorizo soaked with pedro ximenez was probably the favourite dish of the night amongst everyone. It had such a nice amount of pedro in it, and mixed with that spiciness of that chorizo, yummo!!

The salad was pretty good too – it was simple, and it was a risk for us (namely SK and myself) because we were not biggest fans of beetroot. But I have to say, this was a salad that changed the opinions of us not-so-much-beetroot fans. We were happy with the taste of the salad, though I wouldn’t rave too much about it since a salad is a salad. I would say it was a good combination of ingredients.

The pork cheek and scallop was a disappointment for us with the taste being a far cry from the one served at Andaluz. It didn’t have that character that we were looking for in this sweet-as combination. The taste was alright, but not fantastic either. Wouldn’t be ordering this dish again for sure.

The stuffed squid sounded lovely on the menu and when described by the wait staff, but it wasn’t all that appetising in reality. I am off squid these days, so I had to rely on the reviews of Miss Anise and the gang this evening for this dish and it was really quite average from the response of my fellow diners.

So we have 2 up and 2 down.

 

I am not the biggest fan of lamb because eating too much of this meat actually causes a real increase of heat in my body (i.e. lamb gives me fever) … yes, unfortunate I know. =( But anyway! I had a little bit of the lamb served with broccolini… and it was actually rather tasty! I wouldn’t know if this was exceptional lamb since I am not a lamb person, but I didn’t get a real ‘wow’ out from the gang, so I would suppose this is quite the average dish.

The prawns… well, average, really. It didn’t really live up to how it did sound on the menu (and I cannot even remember how the menu described it to be! eek)

The wagyu meat balls were probably the next best dish (for me personally at least), next to the Chorizos. It had a nice moist texture, but what really brought the flavour out was the porcini mushroom jus! And LOTS of jus for that matter!! Just the way I like it… we liked it so much that we used the corn bread to soak in all that jus too! Whee.

Service here was a hit and miss in my opinion, somewhat like the food. We got served by different waitstaff, and whilst some were friendly/helpful, others were a bit distracted (for lack of a better word).

I would come back for the chorizo and the meatballs, but I wouldn’t be rushing back here in all honesty because there is just so many other tapas places to try.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Rating by: S.T. a.k.a Miss Egg

Amphoras Bar
Telephone: (08) 9226 4666
Address: 1303 Hay Street, West Perth

Amphoras Bar on Urbanspoon

03
Feb
11

Andaluz, Perth

By S.M. 2 Comments
Categories: Tapas
Tags:

Website: http://www.andaluzbar.com.au/

So the girlfriends and myself decided we should try one of the most talked about Tapas bar in Perth, Andaluz before I flew off on my big trip. Didn’t really know what to expect but just reading the menu, I was definitely excited to see what this place had to offer. :)

This place is situated along Howard Street in the city. For those who know where the Greenhouse is, it’s directly opposite, and on the right hand side facing the Esplanade. Quite easily missed by the unsuspecting eye, so keep a lookout!

As I entered the venue that evening, I had this really good classy elegant vibe from the place, and why not with all the beautiful decor and the rustic but yet vintage feel of the place, I was already impressed (not that difficult to impress this simple girl).

We all needed a nice little cocktail to start us off. Apologies for not being able to remember the names, but here are some photos (to those bartenders reading, if you can help me out, that’d be wonderful!) :

All three cocktails were beautiful, and was a nice way to start the evening for sure. They were all wonderful concoctions.

Being the crazy ladies we were, we decided to also order a bottle of the Petit Chablis… carefully chosen by our dearest D.P. Lovely bottle of wine – so easy to drink it was actually dangerous!

So moving on from the drinks… let’s see what we had for dinner:

- New Norcia Bread, olive oil and balsamic

- Flash fried whole school prawns, paprika aioli (and we were only interested because of the aioli!)

- Black angus beef carpaccio, machego and herbs, hazelnut dressing

- Seared scallops, Berkshire pork cheek confit, sticky alvear PX and muscatels

- Slow cooked octopus, shallots, preserved lemon and chilli

- House smoked ocean trout, labna, vanilla, apple and horseradish

- Smoked Cod, Egg and Morcilla Croquettes

I will stop here before the desserts, because there is already so many to talk about!

The bread was actually a way of filling my tummy up because I was really hungry that evening, and I needed to be considerate of my other dining mates (wouldn’t want to deprive them of the good food!).

The prawns was actually such a nice nibbler that it finished before we even could say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Okay, so I lie, but it was just one of those nice things to munch on whilst having a good chat with mates. The paprika aioli wasn’t too bad, tho’ I thought a little more paprika wouldn’t hurt. =)

The carpaccio was lovely. But I maybe biased because I am a big fan of it. Served beautifully, we had an equal share each, which was great!

The scallops were the highlight for us over the range of tapas we ordered. that melt-in-your-mouth sensation of the pork cheeks, coupled with the sheer chewiness of the scallops seared to perfection – Oooh la la! Sexy dish. Sexy.

The octopus was rather tasty and provided a nice change to the smoked/fried/cured food that we ordered.

The smoked trout was beautiful with the radish – amazing combination of flavours really. I was a bit wary of how it might would taste like, but hey, the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding delivered!

The croquettes had a taste that was on the stronger/heavier side, but nothing too overwhelming, which is good. The fact that they had morcilla (i.e. black pudding) in there was probably one of the reasons behind the heaviness of the dish. Overall, I’m glad I tried it.

Just like everyone else, we all have various taste buds, and my personal favourites for the evening were the prawns, smoked trout and scallops. Don’t get me wrong tho’, the rest were lovely too. Just that these three tapas dishes left a deep impression without a doubt.

So you thought we were done. Where is dessert?!

There were four desserts on special, and we decided to have one each since there were four of us anyway. How perfect!

Once again, my lovely memory has failed me for two of the desserts. one of them the chocolate dessert, the other (from what I can recall), a semifreddo with pistachio biscotti (a big one!). The other two were a lemon tart, and a ice cream cookie with caramel milkshake!

My personal favourite, oddly enough was the lemon tart. The simplest of them all. But the thing about this lemon tart was that it was such a simple dessert but it tasted so exquisite. I couldn’t stop feeding myself. By far the best lemon tart I have tasted. =)

The others were good too, with special credit to the idea of the caramel milkshake being put in a little milk bottle! We found the whole idea ingenious. The chocolate dessert and semifreddo were on par for me. Good stuff.

If you think you’re going to keep ordering food/drinks over the duration of your stay, just ask the friendly (and they were very friendly indeed!) wait staff for a tab card, in which you exchange with your credit card for. Lovely system I say!

We ate all of the above and drank everything for about $60 each, which is probably worth the moolah because of the food quality. I will definitely be heading back to Andaluz in the near future!

Those sexy scallops……….

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Rating by: S.T. a.k.a Miss Egg

Andaluz Bar and Tapas
Telephone: (08) 9481 0092
Address: 21 Howard Street, Perth

Andaluz Bar & Tapas on Urbanspoon

22
Jan
11

Just Wine and Tapas Bar, Como

By natashalam 2 Comments
Categories: Tapas and Use your Entertainment Book!
Tags:

Website: www.justbar.com.au

Entertainment Book Card : 25% off (up to a value of $50)

Just Wine and Tapas Bar is located on Preston Street in Como right next to the Cygnet Cinema.  Our main aim that night was to attend a Women In Engineering (WIE) movie function in Cygnet Cinema – the premiere of “Eat, Love, Pray” and decided to find a joint in Como to catch-up over dinner beforehand.  Looking through the Entertainment Book, we found this restaurant offering a sumptuous tapas-style degustation menu of 11 tapas for only $50pp!  Taking the discount into account, it was only $37.50pp, what a great deal!  We all agreed in one accord.  A note – they also offer an 18 tapas option which includes some dessert for $70pp.  As we only had an hour period for dinner, we did not go for the bigger menu. 

Just Wine and Tapas Bar has a great outlook both inside and out.  The joint is not too big, with probably 6-7 tables on the inside and a semi-alfresco area making up the rest.  They have quite stylish decor and a chic back wallpaper, I was admiring it from where I was sitting!  It’s similar to what they use in the Red Room and Blue Room in the MinQ Bar, a velvety patterned material.  I love it!  I’d actually observed a few restaurants adopting this, maybe it’s a new trend :) 

Just Bar also has a semi-open kitchen (you can see the chef running around during the busy times and admire his great multi-tasking skills! bravo!) with a wine display counter mounted at the back.  And what a fine and extensive selection of wine to complement the menu.  Nice!

 

We didn’t actually get a menu of the degustation menu so we trustingly waited for the staff to bring them out and explain what they were.  Poor me was trying to remember the names so I could blog about them – Iphone to the rescue :)

PS:  Please excuse the light exposure in some of the photos – they are inconsistent and mostly overexposed, my camera doesn’t take good night photo!  I need a new one!!

Anyways, back to the menu, here we go:

  • Potato and celeriac soup - the soup came in a cute little white cup and was thick and tasty.  Like. 
  • Thai papaya salad – simple dish and complemented the meat dishes well.

 

  • Bread, olives and dip – great bread, soft and warm and went well with the olive/balsamic, olive and white bean dip, you can never go wrong with this starter!
  • Duck liver and brandy pate with port and cranberry jelly and baguette - this dish seem to be an acquired taste and I was a convert since last year after tasting a few in various degus, so a win for me.  It was very good!

 

  • Smoked ham terrine - a fancy ham pate/meatloaf, didn’t quite like the smoked ham taste but it was an ok dish.
  • Exmouth king prawn with Singapore sauce - lovely big prawns with an interesting sauce, almost reminded me of the singapore chilli crab..except with prawns.

 

  • Goldband snapper with chervil and butter sauce – my favourite dish that night with the snapper skin grilled to crisp whilst retaining the flesh softness and finished with a creamy butter sauce.  Yum!
  • Aged sirloin with field mushroom – my 2nd favourite dish as it was a meat dish (needed something to fill me up!) and the field mushroom is a bonus, love them!
  • Lamb fillet with Dijon mustard and drunken currant - after the previous 2 dishes, this didn’t quite compare :p

  

  • Broccolini - love this veggie, becoming popular recently and great accompaniment to any dish!
  • Kiwi and midori granita – had a cleansing effect in between dishes, great!

 

Overall it was an awesome night and a great degus menu.  We only had one hour to dine and they managed to serve everything in time.  Service was great – staff was friendly and took time to explain each dish to us.  The only thing I missed was the dessert, I think I need to go back and try the other degus option!  A great option for a nice and reasonably priced tapas degustation dinner! 

Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

Rating by: N.L.   

Just Wine and Tapas Bar
Telephone: 08 9474 1977
Address: 20 Preston Street, Como
Just Bar on Urbanspoon

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