Smiths of Smithfield

For my first morning after touching down in London, Smee and I went for brunch at Smiths of Smithfield.  This restaurant is actually four level restaurant complex housed in a former warehouse or factory (I'm not sure) and reminds me much of the brunch cafes that have popped up around in Melbourne.  Interesting fact - the guy who runs the joint is John Torode, a former Melbournite!  Smee and I had eaten here before but it was for dinner at the top floor and we were super impressed with the steak.  

Having knuckled Three Bags Full under my belt, I felt I was in a good position to compare how London breakfasts stack up against Melbourne breakfasts.  It's not as though I've never eaten breakfast in London, I've just never had it at a 'nice' place.  This isn't your usual corner shop-truckie-cabbie fry up cafe and the crowd reflects that.  

I had the No. 3 Big Breakfast (~£9) but substituted the black pudding for spinach.   

Smee had a big breakfast too but decided on a more unhealthy option which included chips and a hash brown.  

The obvious difference between breakfasts served in Australia and the UK is the attitude to baked beans.  Despite the colonial ties and accessibility, I've rarely come across baked bean options in an Australian cafe whereas it's always served in London ones.

Anyway the breakfast was good but Three Bags Full was better.  The photos sure give the impression that the food was very tasty but I found my breakfast a bit flavourless and the sausage too salty.  I love a good snag so I was a bit :( about that.  The sausage wasn't very large either and despite being a Supergut, I had difficulty finishing it.  I actually started craving Spu's big breakfast while eating my SOS breakfast!!  Sure the TBF big breakfast worked out to be a bit more expensive than SOS's but the difference is only about $3 and portions were larger (two eggs, two bacon rashers!).  

I guess you can't really draw comparisons between breakfast in London versus Australia but today's minor disappointment just made me realise the awesomeness of Three Bags Full!  I'll still go back and eat at SOS though - it's our local cafe and way better than the truckie fry ups nearby.  

Three Bags Full

Before flying back to Old Blighty tonight, Spu and I decided to check out the brunch offering at Three Bags Full cafe.  The reviews are favourable plus we both had a desire to gorge on a massive brunch.  

The cafe was oh-so-coolly situated within the walls of a converted hat factory but the location itself was a bit weird.  I've driven down this street many times having never paid attention to the factory buildings and small Victorian cottages.  I also recall that it was always kinda empty.  Anyway, despite it being a weekday, Three Bags Full certainly wasn't empty and some of the patrons even looked 'worky'.  From where do these mystery work people emerge?  I needed to find out!!!  Upon investigating I discovered that the converted hat factory is part residential and part office building.  Aaaaah, so that's where they come from.  Of course, the other major crowd players are the gentrified, non-working folk living nearby.  

The stools were made of old street signs.  

I like coffee but I rarely drink it.  Today I decided I wanted one.   

Watermelon and something else juice.  I can't remember.  

I had the ricotta cakes with poached fruit ($14.50).  Nice but I think mine were a bit underdone.  

Spuey had the big breakfast which as standard included eggs, bacon, tomato, spinach, cheese kranksy and relish ($17.50).  I told him to add avocado to make it 'healthy'.  I was damn jealous.  I should have ordered this!  Spuey did a pretty job at polishing it off (I helped a little!) and was congratulated by the waiter.  

I'm not too sure why people rave about this place.  Don't get me wrong, -the food was certainly very good, but I didn't think it was anything above and beyond most other breakfast/brunch cafes found in Melbourne like St. Ali and the cafes you find in other inner city areas such as South Melbourne, Brunswick and Camberwell.  Maybe it's just me, maybe I only eat at nice brunch cafes!

Huxtable

Huxtable has been on my to-eat list for a while.  I had read about their tasty morsels and thought 'Gimme a bit of that'.  Not being a fan of dining alone, Tina and Shazza joined in on the fun.  The 'hangout' status of the southern end of Smith Street has been elevated in recent times, fueled by the restaurant revival in the area.   I was there last night across the road at Easy Tiger!

Like many newish eateries, communal dining reigns supreme here and our aim tonight was to eat into excess.

Not one to say no to wine, I had a glass of the Mojo shiraz.  Naice. 

Jalapeno and cheddar croquette.  I love croquettes and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they didn't dumb down the chilli flavour.  More, more!! 

Steamed crab and corn rice noodle with XO chilli.  Yummy too.  

(L-R) Tempura eggplant prawn fritter and shiso.  Yummy.  We also had the special - king salmon with fresh wasabi.    Well, sashimi is sashimi.  If it's good, it's good and if it's bad, it's really bad and like at Matteo's, it was weird to eat raw fish without chopsticks.  Korean BBQ pork ribs with spicy slaw and chilli gherkin.  I heard many good words about this and I sure wasn't disappointed.  My arteries were clogging but how could I say no to crispy crackling, melt in your mouth fatty pork?  My red wine was going to offset any bad stuff anyway!

(L-R) Red wine braised short rib with parsnip puree and persillade.  Melt in your mouth pork and now melt in your mouth beef.  Freaking yummy.  Quinoa with zucchini flowers, pomegranate and goats cheese.  I'm really digging the combination of goats cheese and quinoa.  This was our healthy dish to balance the meal.  Lightly smoked duck breast, figs, chevre, honey and frisee.  Not the highlight dish of the night but still nice.

I was full but dessert was not going to be given up that easily.

Shazza had the dark chocolate delice, jaffa, raspberry sorbet and pistachio.  Tina and I each had a cinnamon ice cream and fudge sandwich.  It was massive with a big chunk of fudge in the centre of the ice-cream.  Next time, I probably won't try to eat it alone and I should've realised it was going to be huge by the $12 price tag.

Yes I was impressed with Huxtable especially given my so-so reaction to Easy Tiger.  Our dinner was about $80 per head which makes it sit comfortably in the moderately priced dining category.  I would have convulsed at paying such a price a year ago but I've come to terms with the increased cost of living in Australia and now expect dinner to be between $50-$100.  Service here was friendly and not intrusive and yep, it'll be a matter of time before I eat here again.  Num nums!

Easy Tiger

Mmmm I was out of form tonight and in the rush of leaving the house, forgot to take my camera.  Hence there are no photos to accompany this blog about our dining experience at Easy Tiger.

Tonight was going to be a good night no matter what.  First of all it was a Yetapee Appreciation Society meeting.  All hail the great Yetapee.  Where would we all be without Yetapee?  I wouldn't have graduated from my university degree, that's for sure.  Not only that but I was actually going to physically be in Yetapee's presence along with Mischka, VT and Dr. R - all of whom I hadn't seen in months.  The other thing was that I was going to be dining WITH PEOPLE.  Something I had been deprived of while staying in Rad-City.  

The food at Easy Tiger is South East Asian/Thai influenced and the trendy contribution of 'eating Asian-style' is communal dining.  Or platter sharing if you will.  This ain't new - I've had to share food my whole life!  We happily settled on the banquet between the five of us.

Our dishes comprised of the following:

• Ma hor (prawn, pork & chicken mince cooked in palm sugar, served on fresh watermelon).  Very tasty bite sized starter.  
• Seared hervey bay scallop with fermented yellow bean dressing.  Tasty too. 
• Betel leaf with prawn and fresh coconut.  Very nice too.
• Coconut and galangal soup with shimeiji mushrooms.  Nice at first but starting tasting a bit too salty halfway through.
• Son in law eggs.  I like my eggs with a soft yolk and these were definitely runny.  I like runny eggs on rice but I had always thought that son in law eggs should have a slightly harder yolk?  
• Duck curry - can't recall the details.  Quite nice, I love duck.
• Beef curry - can't recall the details.  A bit too salty. 
• Iceberg, witlof and chive salad.  It's iceberg people, it's not exciting.  For some reason the dressing was a bit too salty.  
• Coconut sago pudding with agar agar, banana fritter and palm sugar sauce.  Well bananas are a premium product nowadays ($12/kg!!).  Yes I did like dessert.  Nothing like a sago pudding to end the night. 

Service was friendly if somewhat a bit superfluous at times.  I'm sure it's a case of the waiter has an instructive spiel which is repeated to all tables but dude, if the dishes have been brought out, if we've already started digging in and if 3.5 out of 5 of us are Asian, there's no need to come over and tell us how to eat rice and curry.  Mixing curry with the rice is like a reflex action.  It was nice of him to not assume though.  Good to see you're doing your job! 

Overall the food was nice enough but there was nothing really outstanding for me.  Some dishes were a fair bit over-salted which left my mouth dry by the end of the night.  It's not enough for me to have a huge whinge but enough for me to take note.

The staff were nice, the food was edible and had it's tasty bursts but I'm feeling quite neutral about the whole experience.  I can sum it up like this: Not bad enough to tell people to avoid the place, but not good enough for me to rave and recommend.  Easy Tiger is not going on my 'must return' list but I'm not averse to eating there again - I'm just not in a hurry to do so.  

Things You Eat When You're Alone Part XI

I try to eat healthy most of the time.  I like to hit up the brown rice, brown bread and organic stuff when I can.  But I'm not a masochist - why deprive yourself?  Eat, drink and be merry!

I had seen McDonalds' new Oven-Baked range on TV.  Fish bakes, chicken skewers, maple McGriddles and a fondant-like choc pot!  Hmmm I was sold.  I wanted that choc pot dammit.  I informed Moo of the new range and she was immediately envious and felt sad that she was missing out.  I dunno what she is whining about - Europe have some pretty good Macca's specials.  She gave me the extra shove of approval I was seeking and off I tottered to McDonalds.

My intention was to go get the choc pot and then come back to my apartment and eat it.  I had assumed that the soft serve which was included with the choc pot would be served on the side.  But no, it was put directly onto the warm choc pot and immediately started melting when it was handed over to me.  So as I shuffled as fast as I could back to my apartment, I had to shovel choc pot and soft serve into my mouth.  I hope this activity made my choc-pot calorie neutral.

This is what the choc pot looked like by the time I got back.

This is how it is advertised.  It looks like for about 5 seconds and then the soft serve starts melting into the warm, warm cake.  

Anyway, by the time I finished the choc pot I kinda felt sick.  I told Moo she wasn't missing out on much.  If anything, eating this choc pot reminded me to stop eating crap.

Not Much Happening (except for some template issues)

Yeah.  Nothing much is happening in Pooeytown.  I am counting down the work days until this stint in Rad-City ends.  Just five more days to go.  Only five.  But the last two weeks have really been dragging on....  Boooo

On the blogging front, I've had a problem with my template for a few months now and it is really bringing out the OCD, anal retentive side of me.  As loyal readers (I like to call them fans) of this blog will know, I changed my template almost two years ago.  I thought I was pretty smart because I managed to tweak to the HTML code of my chosen base template.  It wasn't very fun.  I also managed to modify the HTML codes for the 'Recent Comments' and 'Label Cloud' widgets.  The 'Recent Comment' widget supplied by Blogger does something weird and doesn't colour co-ordinate the font colours (very important for aesthetics!) and the standard Blogger 'Label Cloud' widget wasn't 'cloudy' enough  for me.  Compare my cloud with Mooey's and Kahoon's cloud - you'll see what I mean. Anal, indeed.

So, when Blogger introduced their template designer about a year later, I pretty annoyed.  About frigging time!  I had a play around with the new feature and saw that it very user-friendly.  Excellent for non-IT folk like me.  Where were you 12 months ago?  I was so impressed with the designer, I told Moo to change her template.

Anyway, so the problem with my template now lies in the blog archive.  See those little triangles?  When you click on them, they're meant to expand and list the titles of my previous posts.  I noticed they stopped working on my blog sometime last year.   I thought it was a Blogger issue, but nope, the archive expands on other people's blogs.

So I googled for an answer.  It seems I'm not the only one with the problem but I can't seem to find a way to rectify it.  I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling the widget.  I've tried altering the style of widget to drop-down and flatlist, saving it, republishing, exiting and then going back to change it to the original hierarchy style.  Nup, didn't work.  I tried finding a new HTML code.  Gave up cos I couldn't be arsed reading all that technical stuff.

I think it's got something to do with the Blogger Template Designer and the new templates having different basic HTML design to their predecessors.  Of course, my template would have been based on the older format.  Who bloody knows, I am not a programmer, IT person, computer script writing person.

If I can't find a way to fix it soon, I might have to use the template designer to change the look of the blog again.  That should fix it!