Baan Latsamy Thai Restaurant re-run

My friend was leaving Canberra to move to Sydney and we saw the weeks leading up to her final day as an eating check list that needed to be completed and satisfied before she left. One of those checkboxes was a laksa from Baan Latsamy Thai.

Entree~

Crunchy Eggplant with Chicken and Prawn deep fried sliced eggplant wrapped with minced chicken and prawn served with chilli sauce. I wanted to order something outside of the norm, not spring rolls, fish cakes or (my norm) chicken wings, so I suggested this option. Unfortunately it didn’t have much taste outside of the accompanying sweet chilli sauce other than a deep-fried oily batter. You couldn’t taste the much of the eggplant or any chicken and prawn which was really disappointing. I wouldn’t recommend this entree.Yes there was only two of us but we needed to get more dishes so it allowed my friend to get a takeaway for lunch the next day.

Mains~

Prawn Laksa Soup mild laksa soup with rice noodles, hokkien noodles and green vegetables topped with fried onion. I tried a bit of her soup, it was really rich and had different depths of flavour as the broth passed through my mouth. They were rather generous with the amount of prawns but my favourite is the tofu puffs that soak up all the soup. Crispy pork belly, mushrooms, wedges of onion and chilli. Instead of fat cubes of crispy pork belly, it was more like thin strips which meant the skin was more crispy but the meat was a little dry. This dish had my favourite combinations of flavours but I couldn’t just eat this one dish with rice as it was oily and could get rather salty.Duck & Lychee Red Curry with bamboo shoots, beans, peas and basil leaves cooked in coconut milk. This curry had spice to it! I used the sauce sparingly on my rice and enjoyed the duck and basil leaves. It was a really nice curry if you like spicy curries.The staff were super friendly although not the most attentive to water on the table (I happen to be the third person to ask for some more water in a space of 5 minutes). I don’t know how consistent the food is here because the last time my friends and I came here, the laksa was not as good as their previous visit.

Don’t forget it is in your Entertainment book! See my previous blog post here.

Advertisement

Joe’s Thai Food

I’ve started to develop an addiction to Joe’s Thai food, I’m going to make a bold statement and say they have one of the best stir fried noodles in Canberra. I had snuck in a tasty takeaway previously, but this blog post is about when I went to dine there with some friends and family.

Joe’s Thai Food is a wonderful addition to the Wanniassa shops.A fully booked out restaurant is just another night at Joe’s Thai and they do plenty of takeaways too.I love the origami lotus flower napkins they fold for every plate. Entree~

Tom Yum Goong traditional Thai hot and sour soup with prawns ($8.00). Each of us who tasted the soup all had different sharp initial tastes: sweet, sour or salty. I think the flavours of the soup are too strong but the prawns were really nice and big. Tod Mun Pla Thai fish cakes (4 per serve $7.00). I didn’t get to taste one but everyone who did really enjoyed these. Peek Gai Tod Thai style marinated fried chicken wings ($6.00). I’ve never seen any restaurant make much of an effort to coat their chicken wings (batter doesn’t count) but here they have coated it in a lovely curry powder and lemon grass *licks lips*. Spring rolls vegetarian (4 per serve $6.00).Mains~

Panang curry traditional Thai thick and rich curry with duck ($18.00). I really enjoyed this curry, it had a bit of a bite to it and the curry itself came with a very generous serve of vegetables and it wasn’t just some sauce and a little bit of protein.Pad Med Ma Muang Hin Ma Paan cashew nut stir-fry with chicken ($14.00). We ordered this so there was more options for people who didn’t like chili. TimmyC really enjoyed this dish.Pad Khi Mao the drunken noodle stir-fry with beef ($13.50). Hot stir-fried noodles is my weakness and there was a nice bit of spiciness to the flavour. I could have greedily eaten this all to myself.Pad Khing ginger and shallot stir-fry with seafood ($16.00). This dish wasn’t as exciting as the others and the mixture of seafood wasn’t particularly appetizing, although the calamari was stupidly soft and tender. I did enjoy the flavours of ginger and shallots, I think this would have been better if it was served with chicken.Chef’s Special~

Stuffed eggplant with chicken mince and seafood ($18.00). Everyone really enjoyed this dish. The eggplant was cooked well although you couldn’t distinguish the flavours of what it was stuffed with and it was all drizzled in a lovely savoury sauce.Thai crispy snapper with special topping with mango salad ($32.00). My friend rang ahead and made sure this was available that night. It is highly recommended that you order this if there is more than two people as the serving is HUUGE. The fish fillets are removed, battered and fried before being placed back on the fish frame and topped with a green mango salad that is slightly (chili) hot. I would also love to try this with ginger and shallots.A close up of the beautiful shredded topping.Dessert~ I really wanted to try a more Asian dessert but they ran out of the green tea cupcake and that is what I really wanted to try.

Plain ice-cream a generous scoop of vanilla ice-cream with caramel topping ($5.00). It really was a  generous serving even though you can’t really tell in the photo, but there was a LOT of ice-cream.They also gave us complimentary oranges.Crispy banana fritters served with ice-cream with a choice of topping ($8.00). The fritter was nice and crispy. I shared my dessert and even between us, we still couldn’t finish the large amount of ice-cream that was served with it. Nothing special about this dessert but it was made really well.The service was very friendly although they did need some prompting for more water or tea. Joe himself came out to say hello, he was also very friendly and was happy to share his secret to delicious chicken wings.

I really enjoyed the food here and the menu items seem genuinely authentic. It’s nice to have a decent Thai restaurant on the South side!

 

Venue: Joe’s Thai Food

Address: Wanniassa Shopping Centre, Shop 20 Sangster Pl Wanniassa, ACT 2903

Phone: 02 6231 9100

 

 

Baan Latsamy Thai Restaurant

A group of my friends have come here several times without me. They just assumed I had eaten at Baan Latsamy before and they accused me of always being busy eating with other friends, so this particular Friday I made sure I was available and off we headed to eat Thai in Manuka.

Entrees~

Spring rolls deep fried spring rolls containing minced chicken, vermicelli noodles and vegetables served with chilli sauce ($8.90). Nothing particularly special although I was disappointed that the sauce was just a sweet chilli sauce.

Rice paper rolls fresh rice paper rolls with chicken and prawns, lettuce, cucumber, carrot and mint served with special dipping sauce ($9.90). The fresh paper rolls could have done with a bit more herbs but it was moist and packed with lots of ingredients.

Mains~

Massaman curry with potato and roast peanuts, cooked in a thick curry, coconut milk sauce ($19.90). I usually use pad thai as my measuring stick between Thai restaurants but because we were getting rice accompaniments, I thought getting the beef massaman would go better.

The curry had big chunks of tender beef, just the way I like it but the sauce itself, even though it was very mild as expected, was extremely nutty. It was nice enough but I didn’t drown my rice in it as I usually would with less nutty sauces.Very tender pieces of beef. 

Hot wok stir fry Thai basil with capsicum, onions, beans, bamboo shoots, fresh chilli and basil leaves in the chef’s special sauce ($22.90).The prawns had a slight hint of chilli although the overwhelming flavour to this dish was bamboo. I’m not the biggest fan of bamboo so I just ate the prawns and a bit of the vegetables but I didn’t go out of my way to get the bamboo or the sauce.

We didn’t order anything that my friends had tried before. My friends were more disappointed than I was with the overall food. Everything that they had ordered previously like other stir fries and laksa had been so great that they had big cravings and that’s why they came back with me so quickly since their previous visit. I wouldn’t completely write* this place off, I’ll come back and try what they had previously ordered and definitely a pad thai too.
** Thomas reads my blog!!

Venue: Baan Latsamy Thai Restaurant

Address: Flinders Way, Manuka, ACT 2603

Phone: (02) 6295 0426

Entertainment book: yes don’t forget to use your card!

Oriental kitchen

Long before I was a food blogger, I was a uni student who liked to eat at one Chinese restaurant in the city and was always served by a guy who looked like Monkey Magic, we always ordered the same thing, I would always eat too much rice and the meal would be perfect. I was really sadden when Oriental Kitchen closed up, or so I thought it was. During my quest to find fish and chips in Charnwood, I was delighted to come across Oriental Kitchen again in its new location (well new to me) and I vowed to come again ASAP to see if anything other than the location had changed.

As we sat there and waited for our meal, countless people came in and our collecting their take aways, this place was really popular with the locals (I assumed they were locals and not crazy like us eating at the other side of town).

Short soup. I found this bowl completely impractical, even when the waitress was sitting it down she was finding it hard not to spill the short soup. The short soup was nice enough, not overly salty and a decent amount of dumplings inside. 

Spring rolls. Nothing particularly special about these spring rolls although they were served piping hot.

‘Surf and turf’ hot pot with black pepper fillet steak, snow peas and prawns. This was no longer on the menu but the waitress said that they could replicate it, after all, this is what we came for. As soon as it came out on the sizzling hot plate, I knew it wasn’t going to be the same. The beef was tender but it wasn’t in cubes (yes shape makes a big difference) and the sauce was heavily doused with black pepper.

Chicken chow mein. This is my measuring stuck for a Chinese restaurant, my pad Thai for Thai and butter chicken for Indian equivalent. I could tell right away by looking at the noodles that this wasn’t the type of noodle that I liked. The chicken pieces were nice and tender but overall, even with the abundant amount of greens (it was 85%+ worth of greens), it was too salty.

Overall the service was friendly, the food came out fast and cheap but it wasn’t what I remembered the food to be like, if it was, I would travel a lot more frequently to Charnwood. It is just a typical local Australian Chinese restaurant.

Venue: Oriental Kitchen

Address: Shop 2 / Charnwood Shopping Centre, Charnwood Pl, Charnwood, ACT, 2615

Phone: (02) 62588184

Opening hours:

closed Monday and Sunday lunch

Tuesday – Saturday 12 – 2:30pm

open for dinner 5 – 10pm 7 days

Grilled pork with lemongrass and sticky rice is where it’s at!

Ready or not, here it comes!

It’s that time of the year again folks where you dodgely park in the streets of Yarralumla, dust off the picnic rug and eat as many chicken satay sticks as you can. Who’s with me!

Morks Restaurant

Morks is one of those restaurants where I have been meaning to go for years, waaaaay before I even started blogging. I’ve heard many things about this place: it’s a Thai restaurant, it has a tiny dining room and you definitely need to book, they have a cool blog etc but nothing prepared me for what I saw in the menu. It had main and entree dishes with Asian elements  but what surprised me was the fine dining fancy tasting menu available for $65.00 per person. How odd… I did not expect that. 

I was torn, do I come here and try more Thai types of dishes that I was expecting to eat or do I have the fancy schmancy tasting menu? After our hesitation of which banquet to choose, we found out that they don’t usually serve the tasting menu past 8pm. We smiled ever so politely and they were able to accommodate for us even though we also had dietary requirements on our table.

Tasting menu – ($65.00 per person).

Springs rolls with meat (non seafood alternative).

Scallop and pig – pan seared scallops and pig ear terrine with a delicately balanced relish of coriander root, garlic, chilli and lemon juice served with grilled spring onion. I’m not the most adventurous eater so I don’t know if I didn’t like the odd gristley texture of the cold terrine or just the thought of eating a pig’s ear. The scallop was very nice though.

Eggplant– grilled eggplant salad with chilli jam dressing, fried shallots and coriander. This might be bias because I love eggplant, but this was one of my favourite dishes. The salad leaves were fresh, I loved the dressing and the eggplant wasn’t overly oily.

Chicken satay skewer (non seafood alternative). Apparently it was really juicy and succulent and even though it was just a simple skewer, it was fabulous.

John Dory – John Dory fillet with kaffir lime leaf based curry served with steamed wombok. A fantastic delicate fish with the most amazing intense curry on top.

Sorbet – lychee sorbet to cleanse your palette. A lovely refreshing sorbet to take away the spicy sauce from the John Dory.

Cauliflower – cauliflower fritters with white lime sauce garnish served on bean sprouts tossed in basil oil and finished with a drizzle of chilli oil. Not much to look at but easily one of my favourite dishes. The crunch of the bean sprouts with the crispiness of the battered cauliflower left a yummy buttery taste in my mouth.

Asparagus – asparagus served with a mild green curry, coconut milk infused with Brie and crispy rice noodles (no seafood alternative). Spicier than the curry from the John Dory and the asparagus was cooked perfectly.

Prawns – open wonton of green curry prawns on a bed of basil and pea mash. I don’t like peas so I didn’t know if I was going to like this dish. Comparatively it probably didn’t impress me, the green curry was nice but it was just a prawn on a wonton blanket. The individual peas were very hard, I just left them on the plate.

Pork ribs – pork ribs with caramelised sweet and sour soy glaze with round beans and mustard leaves. This was the make or break dish that made us choose this tasting menu. Even though it was amazingly delicious and tender, it was bordering on too salty and sweet but could be balanced out by the rice.

Coconut – coconut ice cream with a passionfruit coulis and warm sticky rice. The ice cream had an icy texture and it was probably tasted better when it was melted down into the warm sticky rice. The passionfruit coulis was unnecessary and slightly tart.

Not part of the banquet~

Fried ice-cream – vanilla ice cream wrapped with butter cake, coated in egg yolk ($8.50). We were worried that by the end of the tasting menu that we would still be hungry, so during the cauliflower course we preemptively ordered a deep fried ice cream. Better than you average deep fried ice cream, the caramel topping was the best in my opinion.

It was rather quite big.

I was overly impressed by this hidden gem. The food, the service, the food… Despite being fully booked, the wait staff (well just one guy) was very attentive, the kitchen was flexible and kindly adjusted to our dietary requirements and it was not at all what I expected (I thought we were just going to be eating pad Thai and Massaman curry).

Morks are still set to move to Kingston but they will continue service until the end of the month and open mid September in in their new location near the Aurora apartments.

I understand that the take away menu is entirely different and definitely worth a try!

Venue: Morks restaurant

Address: 37 Kesteven St, Florey, ACT 

Phone: (02) 6259 0112

Website: http://morks.com.au/

So good #favourite #food #foodies #foodblog #sydney #thai

A quick overview of what we ate at the Thai food fair that was held in Lyneham last Sunday. I couldn’t walk away from chicken wings and sticky rice, we also indulged in homemade fish cakes, fresh rice paper rolls, a prawn ‘donut’, the mandatory chicken satay skewers and prawns covered in noodles.

Drinks– to quench our thirst, explore more flavours and cool our mouths down from the chili we tried the tamarind drink, iced longan drink and a watermelon ice crush.

Not wanting to miss out on dessert but definitely not having any room in our tummys, we took two desserts home. 

Left – sweet potato, jellys etc with coconut milk

Right – tapioca balls in coconut milk

There were crazy amounts of people, parking was a nightmare and a lot of plants were damaged, but I hope the temple was able to raise enough funds for their building. I hope they keep fund raising because Canberra loves eating and supporting their cause.

Thai food fair

Looks like that time of year again for delicious food and crowded parking!                             

THAI FOOD FAIR
80 ARCHIBALD ST, LYNEHAM, ACT, 2602

14th Sunday April

10am – 4 pm

Cookie

With a bustling city like Melbourne where there is so much fashion to look at and so many restaurant shop fronts to peer into, I never think to look up, so when I went on the hunt for Cookie located on Swanston street, I was surprised to find such a busy restaurant on the first floor of a building that I had walked past a hundred times before.

As I walked in I had to double check the sign on the door. The decor didn’t resemble an Asian restaurant at all.

The service staff was friendly and attentive and if you beat the lunch rush, the food comes out very fast.

Small dish~

Peppered pork sticks wrapped in betel leaves with pork and peanut relish ($12.50). It’s really hard to describe the taste but the pork was really  crispy and juicy and it was the nicest dish during lunch.

Medium dishes~

Salmon, prawn and pomelo salad with ginger and lemongrass ($24.50). With such a large menu and not knowing where to begin, we took ordering advice from the waiter and he suggested a refreshing salad with the hot weather. I’m not the biggest fan of big chunks of salmon but I found the pomelo flesh (that looked waaaay too similar to wobbly raw fish) more off putting. I also didn’t think that the salad components went well together and the only thing that made it ‘Asian’ was the shallot, coriander, lemongrass and ginger that was just thrown on top. 

Pad thai rice noodles with egg, bean curd and sprouts ($17.50). I don’t know if it was just our dish and the chef just made a bad batch but this was crazily salty even when I squeezed a lot of lime on top. It wasn’t too bad the first serve but when I went back for seconds after eating something else, it was definitely evident that there was too much salt.

Cute receipt holder.

Even on a Friday and with so many neighbouring restaurants, Cookie was packed by 1pm with everyone around me enjoying a casual drink with their lunch. So I couldn’t figure it out, did I just happen to order the wrong things or did everyone around me like different food? With so many places in Melbourne to eat, I’m not sure if I’d come back to find out.

Venue: Cookie

Address: CBD 252 Swanston St, Melbourne

Phone: (03) 9663 7660

 

Thai Food Festival

——-23/09/2012——-

It was a great sunny day to be outdoors and eating Thai food. My friend and I braved the crazy car parking scene around the embassy to embark on a day of Thai food eating. There were many stalls from Thai restaurants I haven’t been to before, I saw that Thip’s Thai had a stall this year and headed straight for their line.

Pad Thai– One of the better ones I have had and with the high turn over, the noodles were fresh and hot.

Fish cakes– This was really really good, had a bit of a kick to it too, YUM!

Chicken satay skewers– A mandatory food to have on the day.

BBQ grilled pork- Nothing too outstanding, would have been better on a bed of rice.

Vietnamese pancake– This was a risk ordering this considering we had no idea what was in it. It is a thin crepe with delicious pork, nuts and bean sprouts inside. I’m definitely ordering this again next year!

Pork dumplings– I didn’t expect for them to have dumplings here but I was happy to eat them.

Steamed fish curry in a banana leaf– if I hadn’t eaten the delicious fish cakes from Thip’s first, I would have thought this tasted like a nice fish cake with a different texture, but since I didn’t it, tasted bland in comparison.

Dried beef– MMMM fast becoming one of my favourite foods, of course I had it with sticky rice.

Papaya salad– This was a picture of my friend’s salad, she didn’t think the first one was hot enough so she bought another one from a different stall and said it was much better.

Banana fritter– A little oil but a lovely sweet way to finish the meal.

I had a go at the wishing tree where everyone gets a prize, I didn’t get a trip to Thailand for two but I did get a bag of rice and a bottle of oyster sauce. YAY!

Maybe I’ll see you next year? 

Beautiful fruit carving from the Thai festival #food #thai #fruit #beautiful (Taken with Instagram)

Thai Basil

——-02/09/2012——-

With Father’s day being on a Sunday, it left us limited options for dinner. We opted for Thai basil with lots of convenient parking and being close by.

Entree~

Vegetarian and meat spring rolls ($7.50), chicken wings ($7.50), vegetable fritters ($9.00) and chicken satay ($9.00). I couldn’t help myself but to try an array of entrees. Spring rolls were average, the chicken wings were nice and hot and I really liked the chicken satay. The vegetable fritters didn’t look like very appetising but it was surprisingly not oily and very crispy.

Mains~

Paad Thai stir fried rice noodles with chicken, bean curd, beansprouts, tamarind sauce and crushed peanut topping ($15.00)-Looking suspiciously red, I didn’t have high hopes for this noodle dish. It was way too sweet and didn’t taste like how a pad thai should taste.

Boiled rice for the table ($3.00pp) I thought $3.00 per person was a bit steep for just plain rice.

Paad moo Kratiem Prik Thai stir-fried pork with garlic and pepper– I didn’t think the pork wasn’t great quality  and I couldn’t really taste much garlic or pepper.

Massaman Nuea curry beef with potatoes, peanuts and spices with coconut milk ($16.50) – it was nice that they cut the potato into smaller chunks when I’ve had many that have had potatoes that were barely even cut. There wasn’t much meat in this at all but what little meat there was, it was nice and tender.

Paad Pak Preow Waan mixed vegetables with sweet and sour sauce ($16.50)– A nice mixture of vegetables.

Paad tofu Med Ma Muang Him Ma Paan– stir fried bean curd with cashew nuts in chilli jam ($15.00)– This was supposed to be ‘one chilli rating’ hot but we didn’t find this spicy at all and I thought the ribbed tofu was an odd choice.

Not to be confused with Thai herb out in the G (I got a little confused), although you must admit their names are very similar and they both have incorporated a basil leaf into their sign. I don’t think I would come here again knowing that there are still so many Thai restaurants to try.

Venue: Thai Basil

Address: 1b/38-70 Gartside Street  Wanniassa ACT 2903

Phone: (02) 6231 2365

Thip’s thai lunch box

——-02/08/2012——-

Where did all the tasty cheap Thai places go? Lucky for me, I found one that still exists. Thip’s Thai Lunch box might not look like much and has limited parking (unless you park at Belconnen Westfield Mall at least that’s two hours of free parking) and it’s in this weird place called the Belconnen Churches centre but it is a hidden gem where many people go to grab a cheap delicious meal.

If you’re getting take away then you can be in and out pretty fast despite the long line during the lunch rush, as there are already made selection of dishes to choose from.

Pad See Yew– served hot and delicious, the best noodles I’ve had in a long time!

Beef with Thai basil with chilli (medium) ($14.50) I could only just eat this (with lots of rice of course), not only it didn’t have heat but you could taste the chilli which was very good with the basil and beef.

There isn’t any glowing service, it’s more of an in and out rushed experience, but the food comes out pretty fast and hot with great flavour to everything. I can’t wait to come back and try more dishes. 

Venue: Thip’s Thai

Address: Level 1 Churches centre, Benjamin Way, Belconnen

Phone: (02) 6251 5555