This was a rather atas-looking Thai restaurant, with ATMs located within the restaurant 😮 But we wanted to grab dinner fast, before walking over to Docklands for a good spot to watch fireworks display, so we decided to just head into it.
Australia
BangPop @South Wharf, Melbourne
Categories: Australia, Dinner, Melbourne, Travel
Tags: green curry, kailan, pad thai, restaurant, South Wharf, Thai, tofu
1 Comment
South Melbourne Market @South Melbourne, Melbourne
After a visit to National Gallery of Victoria, we decided to take a stroll (~30mins) to South Melbourne Market (since it’s on the same side of the river). It was a good exercise for us since we had such a filling breakfast and good time to catch up with each other as we chatted along the walk.
I have been to Queen Victoria Market every time I was in Melbourne, but had never come to South Melbourne Market. Google describes it as a Lively indoor market with stalls for produce, meat & seafood & cafes serving global fare. The market has been opened since 1867, and will be celebrating 150 years next year! It is the quintessential village market, a place where people come not only to purchase fresh food, but to meet, eat, drink, shop, discover, share and connect.
The Quarter @Degraves Street, Melbourne
Degraves Street appeared to be a most happening place, with an entire street filled with breakfast options, and today was the day to try it out!
We ended up at The Quarter, and tried the (clockwise from top left) Sunny Side Up (2 fried eggs with bacon and hash browns, served on toasted sourdough) (A$12.50), Haloumi Eggs (2 poached eggs served on haloumi, accompanied with basil pesto & sourdough toast, topped off w Spartan olive oil) (A$13), Eggs Florentine (2 poached eggs, double smoked gypsy ham on toasted English muffins + hollandaise sauce) (A$15.50), and Brioche Special (2 soft poached eggs, with spinach on toasted brioche spread with goats cheese & drizzled with Dijon mustard mayo) (A$17).
Such an eggy breakfast! Well, as usual, the eggs were always fantastic, and the veggies were super fresh.
What stood out was the vibe of the place; it was a Friday morning, and this lively place was just so filled with people chatting away! Somehow, we were all caught up in it and time flew by real quickly.
Contact:
|
Categories: Australia, Breakfast, Melbourne, Travel
Tags: cafe, Degraves Street, egg benedict, Smoked Salmon
1 Comment
Seasons Provedore @Lygon Street, Melbourne
We were walking along Lygon Street (known as Little Italy in Melbourne) after our morning trip to Brighton Beach, trying to figure out which of the (many) Italian restaurant we should try, when JJ pointed out Seasons Provedore to us, as she had dined here before with good experience.
Trusting her precious good experience, we decided to have our lunch here too.
The Chicken Curry Pie (A$10.50) was a gorgeous huge pie served warmed, with buttery pastry and oh-so-juicy huge chicken chunks filling up the pie entirely, and curry filling up the gaps! This is how chicken pies should be, filled with huge chicken chunks instead of potatoes and frozen peas and carrots. Oh, and this is an award-winning pie!
Categories: Australia, Lunch, Melbourne, Travel
Tags: chicken pie, gnocchi, Italian, Lygon Street, pizza, restaurant
1 Comment
Half-Day Trip to Brighton Beach @Middle Brighton, Melbourne
The weather seemed quite good today, so we decided to go check out Brighton Beach with its colourful bathing boxes after our wonderful breakfast!
The bathing boxes are known to have existed as far back as 1862, although the current stretch of bathing boxes on the south of Middle Brighton were reconstructed from 1934.
In those days, bathing in the open during daylight hours was strictly prohibited. This led to the construction of bathing boxes or huts which were generally used as a shelter from the sun or wind, changing into and out of swimman easy 23-minute ride away bying costumes and for the safe storing of some personal belongings. Some huts incorporated simple facilities for preparing food and hot drinks by either bottled gas or occasionally mains electricity.
Hopetoun Tea Rooms @Collins Street, Melbourne
So we past by The Block Arcade during our walking tour on our first day in Melbourne and the beautiful display of cakes and tarts, as well as the classic decor of an English tea room at Hopetoun Tea Rooms wowed us (not to mention the snaking queue outside the cafe)!
So we made a secret pact to come back here for it’s popular 3-tier High Tea (everyday from 10am-2:30pm). But when we found out that the High Tea was fully booked months ago (and also the prohibitive price of A$50 per person), we decided we would just come back for breakfast since we stayed very near.
And so here we are today, early in the morning at 9am, the 3rd customers of the day at the tea room! 🙂
Minamishima @Richmond, Melbourne
We were put on waiting list for this very popular Japanese restaurant that only serves dinner omakase, and were delighted when we received a call the day before that there was a table available at 7.30pm! We were so excited and decided to give up having dinner at the Queen Victoria Winter Night Market.
It was an easy tram ride to Richmond, and though we arrived 30 minutes ahead of time, we were ushered to our table to rest in the warmth of the restaurant.
There were some specials available today, but we decided to just stick to the standard omakase meal of A$150.
Manchester Press @Rankins Lane, Melbourne
Located in a little alley, we decided to have our coffee break here, after searching through Google ratings!
Truth be told, we had wanted to go Brother Baba Budan (higher rating, haha) but it was very crowded and didn’t looked like it’s a place for sit-downs. So we wandered along and suddenly caught sight of the MP signboard when we peered into the little alley..
And so we had, clockwise from top left:
- Matcha Latte (A$5): This was a very smooth cup of matcha latte, not overly sweet, and it had an ending tone of slightly bitter matcha flavour. We liked it!
- Hot Chocolate (A$4): A rich and sweeter chocolate drink compared to what we had at Waves Port Campbell.
- Flat White (A$4): Smooth and milky, not bad at all.
- Mocha (A$4.50): A stronger cup of coffee. My first sip of mocha, so not very sure if it was good or not.
- Blueberry Muffin (A$4.8): We gathered that bagels were definitely more popular than muffins, for our blueberry muffin became a blueberry bagel when served! Haha, maybe we should not have clarified and sticked with the bagel, for the muffin was super sweet! The blueberries were very juicy though.
This was a rather large cafe with nice wall art, and it was not crowded during the afternoon that we were here, so we could chill here till we felt fully recharged!
Contact:
|
Categories: Australia, Coffee/Tea Break, Melbourne, Travel
Tags: cafe, chocolate, flat white, matcha latte, Melbourne CBD, muffin
1 Comment
Hardware Société @Hardware Street, Melbourne
We slept in today because we had a long day yesterday and met up for brunch at this (becoming) very popular cafe. We read that there’s a perpetual long queue here and it would be best to come early.
Luckily, it was a weekday morning, so we only had to queue for a short 15 minutes.
The cafe was not big with only about 4-5 tables on the inside and another 4-5 tables outside. We were assigned the alfresco seats and fortunately there were heaters around and it didn’t felt that cold but we had to keep our jackets on. 🙂
Everything looked good (while we were queueing and observing other people’s plates 🙂 ), but we had limited stomach spaces, so we could only try:
Categories: Australia, Breakfast, Melbourne, Travel
Tags: cafe, chai latte, egg benedict, French, french toast, latte, Melbourne CBD
Leave a comment
Day trip to Great Ocean Road, Melbourne
No trip to Melbourne is complete without a drive to Great Ocean Road (GOR), one of the world’s most scenic coastal drives! We did our day trip with A Tour with a Difference, which was a company run by a lovely couple.
Grace was our guide for the day, and there were 5 of us in this tour today. Being a small company, they take in a maximum of 11 people for each tour, so we were really lucky to have such a cosy size, for that meant we were all very comfortably seated in the 7-seater Mercedes!
We gathered at a common location for pick up around 7.30am. From there, it was a 1.5 hour drive to our first stop for morning tea break, with Grace giving explanation and pointing out to various location of interest throughout.
Eat.Eat.Walk.Walk . 吃吃走走 