Pho @ My's Vietnamese, Canberra

I'll just come right out and say it: best pho in Canberra.

Until I tried the one at My's I thought Pho Phu Quoc in Dickson was the best pho in Canberra. When assessing a good pho, I look out for three things: the noodles (they have to be fresh\and they have to have a bit of integrity and chew—soft mushy noodles is a no no); the beef (it should be super thin and actually rare/raw when the pho gets to the table); and most of all, the broth (it should have a depth of flavour and you should be able to taste the spices—cinnamon, star anise etc).

The pho at My's ticks all those boxes but at $14.95 a bowl, it is kinda pricey for pho, perhaps even by Canberra standards. Still, that and the fact that Weston Creek isn't exactly close to where I live are definitely not enough for me to turn me off—evidenced by my going back for a second bowl only a few days after I had my first.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend their other stuff though, the two other dishes we tried (their beef hotpot and caramel pork) weren't exactly spectacular.

#throwbackthursday review: lunch @ Galvin at Windows, London

This is a semi repost from my tumblr.

Located on the 28th floor of the Park Lane Hilton Hotel, this restaurant has stunning 360º views of London. Unfortunately on the day that we went, it was typical London weather so the view wasn't as spectacular as it could have been.

M was in town visiting and we wanted to check out Galvin and their (£30p.p??) lunch special  before bounding off for some shopping on nearby Bond St. Nothing we had that day appears on their menu anymore so I won’t be talking in too much detail about the food.

As is common with these sorts of things, we started off with a 'complimentary' amuse bouche of (if I remember correctly) a jerusalem artichoke puree. For starters I had the slow cooked hen's egg* (the first time they were serving this dish at Galvin) while M opted for the soup with chicken liver parfait. My dish was probably the best of what we had that day while M's was pretty forgettable. My main was skate wing with mussels, sea vegetables and salsify in a seafood broth while M got ever ubiquitous pork belly. Neither mains were spectacular but I did enjoy the addition of salsify to my main, after having recently introduced to the vegetable during our outing at Dinner by Heston (review to come). My main ended up being gifted because the chef had left a pastry brush bristle in the dish. Honestly, I didn’t even notice; I picked it out and put it on the side of my plate but I thought it was a frond from a mussel or from one of the vegetables but our waiter informed us (through some adorably staggered English; he was French like most/all the waitstaff at Galvin) that it was a brush bristle and that for this reason it would be comped. To finish, we got some cute house-made marshmallows and chocolates. As you would expect, the restaurant itself was gorgeous and the service was pleasant and very attentive. All in all it was a pleasant experience aided by nice service, the setting and the best company I could have asked for.

*I always find it hilarious when restaurants describe eggs as a 'hen's egg' to try and jazz up the stock standard egg. I can obviously understand when it's something like a duck or quail egg but those aren't stock standard eggs so the description actually adds something, but such is not the case with 'hen's eggs'.

Food photo of the week: canelés

Bought these from a cute French boy at a market stall on UCL campus. He also sold macarons but I only had eyes for these bad boys (a bargain @ 3 for £1!). Knowing what I know now about canelés, these weren't the greatest and they were almost certainly baked in silicon not copper. However,  they were still delicious and were my first foray into the wonderful world of canelés.

Soju Girl, Canberra

A few weeks ago a few of us from work bounded over to the Soju Girl in Civic to check out if it was worth the hype. One of the group, W, had been before and loved it so was keen to go back. I had also heard great things from other friends so was happy to try it out despite them no longer offering their 2 for 1 small plates deal. A few of us got cocktails (these were $10, not sure if it was some special deal on the night we went) but I stuck to a mango nectar.

Soju girl have been described as 'Asian fusion', a tag which generally makes me wary of the restaurant it is slapped on, and Soju Girl themselves seem ambivalent at best about the term given their reference to it at the start of their menu. Basically it was modern Asian-ish tapas so share plates galore. The first dish of the night was the wagyu carpaccio, which although nice was a tiny serving. I can barely recall how it tasted given splitting the dish between 5 meant we got to each have about 1 cubic centrimetre's worth.

The others also ordered stuffed zucchini flowers, an ingredient I normally love, but the description of the dish (it was stuffed with sushi rice and served with a capsicum based sauce) didn't appeal to me so I skipped it. The people who got it rated it highly, however.

This dish was described as Korean Gnocchi on the menu. As far as I could tell it definitely wasn't gnocchi as we normally know it (i.e. potato pasta) but given the lovely chewy texture and the menu description I suspect it was a version of Korean rice cake (or Tteok). This was probably my favourite dish of the night.

Next we had we had seared tuna with battered and fried sushi. This was tasty but pretty unmemorable.

Our last small plate was the pork belly which was the dish I had been looking forward to the most; a friend had gone on about how it good it was. However, most of us agreed that it was disappointing. It was a rather fatty bit of meat, even by pork belly standards. I generally prefer the fat on my pork belly a lot more rendered, which generally requires a good amount of cooking. Additionally despite it being described as 'crispy pork' and being (I suspect) deep fried , something I definitely don't object to, the crackling was about as crispy as a soggy biscuit. The flavour was also nothing to write home about and I thought the addition of bacon to the dish was a bit of gimmick that didn't really work. 

Our first large plate was beef with king oyster mushrooms and asparagus on a pumpkin puree. This wasn't bad but I thought the quality of the meat could have been better.

Our last dish of the night was duck breast with some sort of grapefruit asian inspired salad. The duck was just OK and the salad wasn't particularly pleasant. Even putting my dislike of grapefruit aside, the dressing was too acidic, to the point that the leaves in the salad were very heavily wilted. It was overall quite bland and uninspired.

The ambience was ok, decor and service were very middle of the road. The price wasn't too bad, though—came out to a bit over two hunge for the 5 of us. Overall it was a pretty pleasant experience but I wouldn't be rushing to go back.

Breaking the fast

So this will be a food blog...mostly. There might be smatterings of travel, shopping/fashion and other miscellaneous hedonistic (my idea of hedonism) pursuits but mostly this will be a Melbourne food blog. And yes, I am well aware that Melbourne, Australia, and certainly the world doesn't need another food blog but every now and again, the crowd gets it right.

I'll try to post fairly regularly, including some retrospectively (mostly from my travels in Europe). If anyone cares, I use a Leica V-Lux 4, because I'm neiter cool nor skilled enough to wield a DSLR, but sometimes they're just iPhone photos.

Let me leave you with one of the best things I've ever eaten—proving that great food neither needs to be complex nor fancy—baby squid and beans cooked in squid ink and balsamic reduction at Bar Pinotxo at La Boqueria markets in Barcelona: