One of the things that Melbourne offers, and KL lacks, is a good cup of coffee. The coffee drinking culture here is very mature, literally a cafe in every street corner within the CBD.
Cafenatics also offers good sandwiches and muffins
Breakfast places like MART 130 and even chocolate drinks specialists at Max Brenner serve up good coffee, but for really awesome coffee, you have to go to a dedicated coffee place like Cafenatics.
Cafenatics is small cafe chain based in Melbourne CBD, with about half a dozen stores across the city. The one we went to is located conveniently at QV, just a few doors down from Max Brenner.
a glass of flat white after a meal, yums
I have taken a liking to enjoy a cup of flat white after a good lunch. Flat white is pretty much the same as latte, but served in a ceramic cup instead of glasses. Both drinks consist of steamed milk poured over a shot of espresso, but due to the smaller size of ceramic cups, flat whites usually end up slightly stronger.
The aroma of coffee here is really good, and with the very fresh and super creamy milk makes the drink very smooth. This of course, is done by very experienced and skillful barista who packed beans properly and made sure the milk is prepared perfectly. Not bad for $3.30 a cup right?
For those who are stuck in Malaysia, there’s always places like Cafe Le Passione at Hartamas Shopping Centre.
Address:
Cafenatics
Red Cape Lane, QV
Melbourne 3000 Victoria, Australia
GPS: -37.810657,144.965587
Tel: 03-9654 9096
On the second day at Melbourne, Mellissa and I went to the very busy Centre Place during lunch hours for some good old fashion quick meal at a fish and chips place called BluFish. The restaurant is located between Flinders Lane and Collins in a quirky small lane packed with lunch crowd.
BluFish, serving fish, scallops, prawns, and calamari
The menu at BluFish is pretty simple, grilled fish, calamari, prawns, scallops, salmon, chips, salad, soup, and a few choices of burgers. Seats are pretty limited with only a handful of tables, a place designed for express meals or take-away, nothing more.
scallop pack and grilled fish salad
We met up with Singz and Greame, two of Mellissa’s friends at Melbourne. Singz, of course, is the daughter of Mama Wong who cooked excellent prawn mee and laksa for us in KL just a month plus ago.
For lunch, the others ordered grilled fish salad ($9.80 alternatively, with chips), while I just couldn’t resist myself with the scallop pack ($13.50).
look at the big fresh scallop!
I can’t really identify the fish used but the grilled fillet was pretty tasty and goes especially well with their special white sauce that is slightly sourish (not tartar sauce though). The potato salad and coleslaw too were quite good.
Scallop pack came with plenty of thick chips with 5 very good size deep fried scallops. The seafood were very juicy and fresh, with the sweetness of scallop sealed in the batter despite the rather straight forward method of cooking. Again, the white sauce fits perfectly. I had no complains.
BluFish is only open for lunch, close on Sundays.
Address:
BluFish
16, Centre Pl,
Melbourne VIC 3000,
Australia
GPS: -37.816624,144.96578
Tel: 03-9663 0738
Nasi Lemak is, of course, one of the most well known national dishes of Malaysia. Other dishes that I would consider representative of our beloved country would be satay, roti telur, char kueh teow, and of course, bak kut teh. But today, lets concentrate on nasi lemak.
glorious nasi lemak with egg, ikan bilis, peanuts, chicken, and sambal
The last nasi lemak I had was the in flight meal at Air Asia X from KL to Melbourne just a little over 2 days ago. While most things Air Asia isn’t exactly awesome (flight was delayed for almost 2 hours, seats aren’t exactly recline-able), I must say that their nasi lemak is one of the bests out there.
AAX meal with nasi lemak and water – RM 15
Ikan bilis and peanuts come in separate container to ensure freshness and especially the crunchiness, with fragrance rice, curry chicken, half a hard boiled egg, and sambal that isn’t exactly spicy but carries all the flavor you’d expect. This nasi lemak isn’t just good compared to other in flight meal from any airlines, it is good even when you put it next to any good nasi lemak you get.
It is so good that Mellissa wanted to order one for the 1.5 hour flight from KL to Krabi. The RM 15 meal used to come with the nasi lemak, a bottle of water, and a Chunky Kit Kat the last time I had it, but it seems like the Kit Kat is gone now. Bad economy calls for cost reduction perhaps?
If you’re flying Air Asia, be sure to choose the nasi lemak. I’ve tried 1-2 other meals, they are not exactly very palatable (can’t remember what I had, but I didn’t finish it)
feels like you’re 2075 meter high, Air Asia in flight portable entertainment
The flight from KL to Melbourne takes about 7.5 hours, genius ol’ me forgot to bring a book for the journey and only had an hour’s worth of videos on the blackberry. So I bit the bullet and ordered the RM 30 in flight entertainment since they have Watchmen on it, among a few other films.
Turns out, the portable entertainment module is actually just a customized version of Archos 705 media player. A free al cheapo version of earphones is provided (and for you to take home), but I used my own since I had brought a better one anyway.
The player worked pretty well and I watched almost 2 movies on it. Battery’s supposed to last 6 hours but mine somehow went flat after 3, luckily the stewardess provided a replacement after some explanations from my part. Time goes by so much quicker with there’s an interesting movie or two to watch.
Hello everyone! Just landed at Melbourne late last night thanks to Air Asia’s 2 hour delay. Didn’t manage to get the Wifi key at Mellissa‘s last night.
We went to a satisfying quick lunch at this grilled fish salad place called Blue Fish at Flinders Lane this afternoon (will write about that soon enough) and then a cup of flat white at Cafenetics, QV. I think the milk makes all the difference, nothing beats wholesome fat laden milk in your coffee, yums.
a very rare Starbucks Cafe at Melbourne
Just got back to the apartment after watching Public Enemy (Jonny Deep & Christian Bale), a pretty good show albeit a little long. A$16 for entrance, gotta say cinemas in Malaysia are still better, but at least nothing is censored and there’s no subtitles taking up 20% of screen space either.
Going off for Mellissa’s Birthday dinner and a bit of drinking in 20 minutes with the gang in Melbourne. Will write more soon. Have a nice weekend guys!
One of my favorite hawker foods from Penang not called char kueh teow would be prawn mee and loh mee. While the those two dishes are related (as served by places such as Mee Yoke), classic Penang loh mee actually do differs from prawn mee in several ways.
a bowl of classic loh mee in an old school kopitiam
The most obvious distinction between loh mee and prawn mee would be the soup. Instead of prawn shell and pork based soup, the soup for loh mee is a gooey broth made from starch and beaten eggs. The chili paste/sauce used for loh mee too is often more fluid, and vinegared garlic is often available as another condiment to add to the taste. Hard boiled egg and pork too are standard with loh mee.
One of my favorite loh mee stalls in Penang would be at Hai Beng kopitiam located just right next to the Goddess of Mercy Temple (Kuan Yin Teng) in Penang.
pork skin, intestine, hard boiled egg, fried shallots, prawns. yums!
The loh mee here is a s classic as you can get. I love mine with pork skin, meat, and intestine to go with the standard ingredients of hard boiled egg, boiled prawns (prawn mee style), fried shallots, bean sprouts, noodle and mee hun. A good dosage of vinegared garlic and chili paste is essential too.
The smooth texture of the soup combined with the taste of pork and complexity added from the condiments makes it a very satisfying breakfast or late afternoon dish especially if you pair it with a good old fashion Penang black iced coffee.
Hai Beng Kopitiam is located next to Kuan Ying Ting (Goddess of Mercy Temple)
The loh mee goes for RM 3.50 (small), and RM 5.00 (big). Of course, extra charges for extra ingredients. If I remember correctly, the bowl I had was something like RM 4.50?
Now I’m really hungry.
Address:
Hai Beng Kopitiam
Lorong Stewart,
10200 Penang
GPS: 5.418358,100.338548
