Home made si chet kauk sway

Si chet kauk sway or Si chet kauk swee. Home made. Garlicky. Tasted like the chicken version of bak chor mee. Crystal! 👋🏼

Supper Inn (宵夜店), Celestial Avenue, Melbourne CBD

This old school Cantonese restaurant (Level 1/15 Celestial Avenue, Melbourne, tel : +61 3 9663 4759) which opens late into the night is apparently an institution in Melbourne's Chinatown. From what I gather, it's been in business for almost half a century.

The portal and the path beyond was filled with scripts from past visitors that attempted to immortalise their visits in very small ways.

We had half a roast duck. The bird was much better tasting that its mundane looks suggested. Fat under the skin, tender even for breast meat and adequately flavoured. Plum sauce was the proverbial icing on the cake if one was into the icing.

A popular dish from their restaurant was their pippies in XO sauce and Chinese donuts (it's 油条/油炸鬼 and a separate charge applies). Pippies are clams if anyone was wondering. These were sautéed in a mildly spicy umami brown sauce with 油条 below. Clams were plump and not bad tasting. The XO sauce didn't taste like the ones that I am familiar with.  

I was looking forward to their blood curd congee. Did not like it. It has a flavour like pig intestines that hadn't been properly processed and that flavour was also present in the blood curds. I was disappointed by it.

There's a special fried rice on their menu which is what many would typically recognise as yang zhou fried rice. Eggs, bits of char siew, prawns, bean sprouts and spring onions. Flavour's passable, not memorable. I think it lacked smokiness or fish sauce. Or both.

There was a claypot braised lamb brisket special when we were there. Sauce was nice and there's adequate intrinsic flavour from the lamb. Would have been great if the lamb was much more tender but it kinda stopped being good there. Pity.

Crystal's fried rice and mohinga

Another home cooked special. Thanks Crystal! The fried rice was so good with the balachaung - those spicy fried onions, garlic, dried shrimp, and chilies thingy. Mohinga is a Burmese fish broth with rice noodles. I liked it for the fish flavour in the broth. The only other fish broth I think might share similarity in flavour was the one we had from Porta Porta ages ago. Odd but true.

A fish briyani

This one was a home cooked special. Apparently this briyani was a blend of Indian and South African styles. Notice that there are chunks of potatoes in it. Deliciously savoury with a great spice infusion.

Operator Diner, Lonsdale Street, Melbourne CBD

Operator Diner (Shop 2/130 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, tel : +61 3 8395 6341) is an American styled diner in the CBD.

Long black's sour. Flat white was......ok.

Got ourselves a breakfast muffin call Usual Suspect. Went big with the bacon and sausage combo which is topped with poached egg, cheese, their BBQ bacon chutney and a hash brown on the side.

Muffin was too wobbly to eat by hand. Not bad tasting. The sausage was pretty tasty.

Had an order of their Love Me Tender (chicken tenders) because they mentioned blue cheese sauce. Sauce was cheesy but we didn't get any blue cheese flavour and it was pre-mixed. How did we know it was pre-mixed? We asked if they could have it with more blue cheese and they told us so. Pretty disappointing. The tenders and fries were nicely done though.

Some drink called The Big Apple - single origin coffee (not that I could tell), apple juice, spiced chai, brown sugar foam and cinnamon. Not bad.

Pecan pie was too sweet. Didn't think much of it.

Apparently, Zac Efron was here. Filming. Pretty sure they marked the seat he was at just like what was done when Harry met Sally at Katz's Deli. I just never found out which one was it.

Hosted home BBQ

BBQ from friends that hosted us in this trip. There were drumlets and lamb t-bones and duck fat potatoes.

And also the obligatory salad, beans, corn and hotdogs. Those dogs were good.