New Brisbane Noodle and Rice (by Biggs)

I hung out at Bonnie's house tonight and she'd suggested we get a curry for dinner. After we assessed my recent meals - Indian for dinner, Indian for breakfast, Indian for lunch - we decided to go with noodles instead.

Bonnie knew of a new noodle place that had opened up near her house so we went with that. We couldn't resist the allure of the charming name: "New Brisbane Noodle & Rice". Yep. And, with the brilliant byline of "Healthy Noodle Low in Fat" we were convinced.

We ordered a few dishes to share and some steamed dim sims. Char Kuai Teow (flat rice noodle with pork, shrimp, egg, veges and a dark soy sauce), Com Chow Mein (crispy noodle with beef, pork, chicken, veges and oyster sauce) and.....ummm, one with egg noodles. I'm perusing the take away menu after the fact and can't quite work out what the third dish we ordered was. The menu is a list of 50 meals with only slight variations on the noodle, meat, vege, sauce combos so it's tricky to pick one from the bunch.

I must admit, my expectations were low but, boy, they were blown out of the water. Dinner was delicious. Turns out any combo of noodle, meat, vege, sauce is pretty great!

After dinner we had a slice of 'apple continental' cake and a cup of tea. It's pretty rare I have cake and tea, in fact I can't remember the last time I had it but I can see what the old ladies are on about. A lovely way to top off dinner. Thanks Bonnie!

Pork Cutlet with Miso Sauce...(by G)

...and sake with fugu lips.

Curry (by G)

Take-away Indian (by Biggs)

Today is pay day so a great excuse for putting off cooking for another night. I decided on Indian and given it's been a while between vegetables I went for a couple of vegetarian currys.

The best one was the Malai Kofta - balls of potato and cheese in an almond sauce. I also ordered a Palak Paneer in honour of my friend Katie - it's her favourite.

The naan was pretty good but the most amazing thing was the Chicken Pakoda. It was like battered and deep-fried tandoori chicken. Indian KFC - brilliant.

Yakatori and Oden (by G)

Back in Tokyo, just for one nigh, I was in the mood for Yakitori. The one place I know you are guaranteed to get yakitori is in Shinjuku, so I headed out there.

I picked a bit badly with the bar I went to - all the food was grilled out back and brought to the dining area. I went with omakasi, not really in that it was a defined set of skewers. Liver, chicken mince, leg meat, something else and skin. It was okay, somewhere between not great and average. I'm still not a huge fan of the liver.

After I was done with the chicken I contemplated the oden menu, keen observers of the blog will know that I was set to get oden some days ago but ended up getting wasted instead.

I would have liked to get the daikon, I'm a fan of that particular vegetable but I was sat right in front of the oden vats and saw how big it was, so I took a pass.

Instead I went with an egg, potato, tofu, chicken balls, and the weirdest looking thing that I could see - I thought it might have been a section of lotus root.

Turns out the lotus root was actually a cylindrical sausage - awesome. The tofu was about the best tofu I've ever had, the chicken balls were great, an egg is always a welcome dinner item - the highlight, however, was the potato. As with Biggs' famous Louisiana Shrimp boil the potato soaked up all the flavour of the broth - and the texture was similar, crumbly and creamy. Amazing.

The oden was the highlight of this dinner.

Spinach and Ricotta Things (by Biggs)

Okay, I've taken a bit of a dive and decided against cooking tonight. Instead, I got a packet of these things. They were frozen (until I cooked them). They were shit. I swear I used to live off these but when I moved in with G I was introduced to flavour country and that country seems far far away right now.

Japanese Beer Hall (by G)

In my meanderings around Hakodate I had noticed a beer hall - a beer hall that served beer... and sausages.

 

For my last night in Hakodate, and despite the ready availability of fresh seafood, I went to the beer hall.

 

I had my order sorted before I even walked in - the 4 beer sampler and sausages with cheese to finish.

 

I ordered straight away - even before I realised how terrible the place was. The highlight was the young woman, who had obviously only recently taken up music, beating out Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel classics on a crapped out piano. I was distracted, briefly, when my quartet of beers came. They were pretty good - locally brewed, if you believe the literature. The wiesbier was my favourite, so I ordered another half a litre of that, then another. By that point I could not help but notice that my sausages had not arrived. I asked a waitress about them and saw her walk back and talk to the guy who ran the microwave, she came back and said they would be 5 minutes.

 

She did the right thing, assessed the situation and got the order expedited, I would have like her to say that the order was missed, but whatever. The sausages came within 5 minutes so I was happy again. The were great, my favourite was the brown pork one at the bottom. And there was just a snifter of sauerkraut - the perfect amount.

 

After the sausages were bellied I ordered the cheese. It came within about 30 seconds, clearly it had been plated some weeks before I had even arrived in Hakodate, glad wrapped and refrigerated. Only 3 crackers for that amount of cheese?  Actually, it was still good - the blue cheese was excellent.

 

I pushed out of the beer hall as soon as possible (not before having to sit through an amateur version of the theme from Titanic). I was initially disappointed with the whole experience but, on reflection, it was satisfyingly awful.