This is my second time at the 360 Restaurant. I loved it the first time I ate there, but it was the winter and it was pretty dark. The skies were clear and we could see a lot of pretty lights, but this time the sun was out longer as it was summer and we could eat yummy food whilst watching the sunset. It was beautiful! The CN Tower is a place everyone must experience for themselves. CN Tower is the tallest tower in the world! What better to enjoy good food with a stunning view and the feeling like you’re on top of the world? :)

The beautiful sunset.

Here’s the food!

TRIO OF ATLANTIC SEAFOOD COCKTAIL
Jumbo lump crab, Maritime lobster, cold poached shrimp
Champagne vinaigrette, tarragon aïoli, horseradish cocktail sauce $48

CUMIN SCENTED ROAST RACK OF LAMB
Warm pancetta, potato and mint salad, natural jus $52

PAN ROASTED WILD BLACK COD
Wilted Swiss chard, preserved orange, fennel pollen, black olive vinaigrette $38

ORANGE RISOTTO WITH COINTREAU CRÈME FRAÎCHE
Passion fruit, dark chocolate, pistachios $14

Last Friday evening, Kaori and I went to Le Sélect Bistro for some delicious French cuisine for dinner. I’ve been here once before and I absolutely loved it. It’s hard to find French restaurants at decent prices but I must say that this place is the exception! The service is superb too – so friendly and quick.

We started off with French Onion Soup and Pâté for appetizers, then had salmon and scallops for our mains. Finished it off with creme brulee! Too good!

But not only was the food good, the atmosphere is so lovely. Tucked away on Wellington St and Spadina, it’s a quiet area for a beautiful patio. Kaori said that she felt she was in a Foreign country.

I didn’t take any photos of the patio, but I sure took photos of the food!

Soupe À Loignon Gratinée

Pâté De Capagne

Noix de St-Jacques Aux Poireaux

Saumon Rôti, Salade De Quinoa

Crème brûlée

Misty's Diner Restaurant Review
Food
Atmosphere
Service
Value

Overall
Awesome French food at decent prices. Total experience was very enjoyable!

Ever since my brother and I visited America, we’ve had a huge craving for good ol’ American burgers. Juicy, fatty, delicious burgers that is. We’ve been lingering for the taste of a good burger til we return to the States. I recently discovered that there is an American owned diner in Prahan, not far from the City of Melbourne, called Misty’s diner! We were so delighted that all the people that worked there still have their American accent! Hehehe.

Here’s the sign welcoming you to go in – Best American Style Burgers, Chili Fries, All Day Breakfast - how can anybody resist?!?!

This is the interior of the diner. Love the booths, the jukebox and the American car plates!

Here’s Peter and Hao patiently waiting for our food.

How good do these burgers look with chili fries!

Here’s Peter with his meal.

Here’s Hao’s burger!

And here’s Hao with his burger!

All of us at the booth! :) Good times. Haha.

Misty's Diner Restaurant Review
Food
Atmosphere
Service
Value

Overall
Good food at decent prices but love the great service. The people were lovely!

Ever since moving to Toronto, I’ve been missing Malaysian food. I miss the home cooked meals by my mother, and the availability of Malaysian restaurants closeby! I must say, I never really appreciated how easy it was to get Malaysian food in Melbourne and the food is pretty good too.

Was recommended to go to Matahari Bar & Grill Restaurant, which is located not far off Chinatown and features a blend Malay, Chinese, Peranakan (nyonya) and Indian cooking. Chinatown is very close to where I live at Harbourfront so it’s very convenient for me if I ever get the desire for Malaysian food!

We decided to try the most classic Malaysian dishes: Char Kuay Teow and Curry Laksa. Then we had a Pandan Crepe for dessert. Photos below. Yum!

Matahari Bar & Grill Restaurant Review
Food
Atmosphere
Service
Value

Overall
The Char Kuay Teow was good and authentic but the Curry Laksa was too sweet and wasn't spicy. The Pandan Crepe was delicious! The menu is a bit on the pricey scale, so might not be back too soon but will consider it when I get a huge craving for Malaysian food!

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I had one of those moments where I was absolutely starving and I had no idea what to eat! I opened up the freezer and saw that I’ve had a packet of udon which has been sitting there for a long time now because I had no idea what to do with it. I knew I had to use this up soon (especially since it’s taking up precious freezer space) so I googled some udon recipes and tried to throw something together with the ingredients I had!

I started off by boiling the udon in a saucepan. Cook this until it expands a little and is nice and firm, yet smooth and a bit soft.

While that’s cooking up, I fried some onions, spring onions (green onions), shitake mushroom and beensprout in a frying pan.

Add some soy sauce and seaweed and mixed this up. Cook this for about 2-5 minutes.

Once the  udon is done, add this to the pan and mix. I also added some black pepper (because I love pepper so much)

Then serve! :)

This was actually surprisingly more tasty that I expected! Must be the flavour from the shitake mushrooms and the seaweed! When I ate this, I added some Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese spice) and it was amazing. Yum yum.

In light of ANZAC Day, I decided to make ANZAC biscuits (or biccies!). I’ve grown up loving ANZAC biscuits (and not just because ANZAC Day is my birthday) but because they are truly delicious!

They are popular in Australia and New Zealand, being made out of rolled oats, flour, coconut, sugar, butter, golden syrup, bicarbonate of soda and boiling water.

I’ve been asked numerous amount of times why these biscuits are called ANZAC Biscuits and I have to be honest, I did not know. I did know however that ANZAC stands for the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps and ANZAC Day is a national day that we hold in honourary memory of them.

Upon some internet research, I found that the biscuits were sent by wives to soldiers abroad because they were worried about the nutrition of their husbands, and also the ingredients do not spoil easily and the biscuits kept well during naval transportation. These biccies can stand up to months unrefrigerated!

What I love even more about these biccies is that they are extremely easy to make with very little ingredients. I used this recipe I found online. Enjoy!

INGREDIENTS
1 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup desiccated coconut
1 cup plain flour
1 cup sugar
125g (4oz) butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon water

Preheat oven to 300F (150C)

Mix oats, flour, sugar and coconut together.
Melt syrup and butter together.
Mix soda with boiling water and add to melted butter and syrup.
Add to dry ingredients.
Place 1 tablespoonfuls of mixture on greased tray (allow room for spreading).
Bake for 20 minutes.
Loosen while warm, cool on trays.

While we were driving around Tassie, just after we passed Swansea on the way to Hobart we dropped by at Kate’s Berry Farm which is known for their cool climate berries. There are handcrafted chocolates, jams, sauces and jellies  - all made from Kate’s home grown fruit.

The desserts cafe offers freshly baked hot scones accompanied by a selection of Kate’s own jams and freshly whipped pure cream, hot crisp Belgium waffles with a luscious compote of poached berries and rich creamy ice cream, Kate’s fabulous fruit pies made from both her own berries and fresh local fruit when in season, in season berries with cream and ice cream, gluten free scones pies and other treats all made in her own kitchens. Also available are mellow espresso coffees, a selection of rich hot chocolate, fine leaf teas in heated china teapots, and milk shakes made with Kate’s own fruit and ice cream.

Check out the photos below to see some of the chocolates and icecream (which we couldn’t resist getting.. and it was extremely good!!)

Here’s a cute pic of my mummy & daddy:

So the other day I got back home from work absolutely starving! I needed to cook something QUICKLY. I searched my fridge and I had some left over beef, onion and green peppers. I then searched my cupboard and I found a brand new jar of Black Pepper Sauce.

Perfect! I can make Black Pepper Beef, but one thing was that I had never cooked it before. But because it’s one of my most loved dishes (and also because I was so starving) I thought I would attempt to make something up. So here we go…

So in went the beef on the pan with some oil. Sizzle sizzle.

This is my Black Pepper Sauce I bought from T&T.

Once the beef is done, add 3 tablespoons of the sauce and 3 tablespoons of water.

Add chopped up onion and green peppers. (By the way, I wish I also had red peppers which would’ve been nice but at this time I was too hungry to care)

And mix it up!

And then serve!

Looking pretty tasty for such a simple dish, right?

I was pretty ready to gobble this up right from the bowl as seen above, but I try to keep my rule consistent: one meat dish and one vegetable dish to eat with rice. So I added some bok choy and some oil to the wok.

Add some soya sauce.

And then serve!

YUM.

I love easy simple meals… Let me tell you – this was soooooo good. I was a very happy girl after this. Hahaha.

After arriving at Devonport, Tasmania by the Spirit of Tasmania we set on our journey to Hobart by driving down the East Coast. It really was beautiful to see the ocean crashing onto coast and the soft sand.

Having heard of the beautiful scenery at Coles Bay and Wine Glass Bay, we took a little detour down Freycinet Peninsula. On the way down, there’s a little shop known as Freycinet Marine Farm with fresh oysters, muscles and lobsters. What makes places such as these in Tasmania so special is that they are located where cool clean water is. Their website states:

“We have no other industries in the area except some forests, vineyards and farms, our water is pure and therefore so are our oysters, we need to neither depurate nor scrub our product before it leaves the farm, it comes straight from the leases to your plate. In fact you can taste the clean waters of Tasmania’s east coast with every oyster that passes your palate.”

As we drove in, we saw the most humongous sunflowers we have ever seen! They’re so beautiful, we had to take photos!

Then we ordered some oysters and muscles. Don’t they look exquisite!

In February of this year, I flew back home to Australia for three weeks. I hadn’t been home for one whole year and had accumulated quite a list of things I wanted to see and do. One of them being to visit Pie in the Sky in Mount Dandenongs.

I’ve heard many people speak highly of this place and while I live quite close by, I had never been! I’d grown up on the great Aussie meat pie. I especially remember after my weekly netball game, my parents would buy me a good ol’ Four-N-Twenty Meat Pie. There was indeed also those days where I was allowed to buy canteen food at school for lunch and I would get either a meat pie or a sausage roll – a typical Aussie school lunch.

So why was Pie in the Sky such a priority in my list of things to do in Australia? Well, Pie in the Sky is known to be awarded 11 Gold Medals for their famous meat pies and being number 1 in all of Victoria. The pies are presented as main courses, accompanied by salad or vegetables and chips. Or you can also opt for traditional peas and mashed potato. You can also take home some of their pies (as seen above) if you just couldn’t get enough (like I did, haha).

I just love chips so I went for a Beef Burgundy pie with salad and chips. Yum!

Here’s what a Curry pie looks like with mashed potatoes, peas and tomato sauce.. Nom nom.

The place is quite large and seats a number of people, but it sure gets packed during lunch time! Make sure you head there early. The service is so lovely, typical friendly small town Aussie service.

While Pie in the Sky had some amazing pies, they serve the best scones ever! If you want a good Devonshire Tea (a cream tea taken with a combination of scones, clotted or whipped cream, and jam),  make sure you make it to Pie in the Sky :)

Pie in the Sky Restaurant Review
Food
Atmosphere
Service
Value

Overall
The meal certainly fills your sweet spot. I'm sure to be back to try the rest of the menu!