Monday, 29 April 2013

Superbowl - Cabramatta

Today, I ended up in Cabramatta searching for a place to dine and came across 'Superbowl'. For those that don't know Superbowl is a very popular supper (10pm-2am) dining place located in Chinatown. I was surprised that they had one in Cabramatta and as such decided to dine here this evening.

The whole design of the restaurant is MUCH MUCH better and cleaner than their Chinatown counterpart, and overall I think a very nice place for a casual dinner.








At entry, knowing this IS the under the same establishment as the Chinatown Superbowl, I wasn't really expecting much... however, on entry we were greeted and offered a nice table to sit at. The menus came and  we quickly made our orders. 

After ordering, we were offered complimentary soup and some snacks, the soup was very very nice and the flavouring of the 'dried vegetables' in the soup was very imminent..

Also bought coke, they looked awesome so I thought I'd take a photo. Don't see these often. (300mL tall cans)



Quickly following the soup, came the Salt and Pepper Prawns. Their Salt and Pepper cooking style was top-notch, crunchy-ness was well controlled, the spices well balanced and wasn't too salty, nor too spicy. Very nice!



 After that came the Peking Duck pancakes. Peking Duck in most restaurants provide a 2-course choice, first is the pancake and second, a selection between Shredded Duck Noodles or Duck Sang Chow Bow. as Traditional Peking Duck pancakes only use the skin and little meat of the duck, thus the remaining meat of the duck will be used on your second course. We picked the Sang Chow Bow.


The Peking Duck here was of very top quality, good Peking Duck is defined by golden crunchy skin, with a touch of meat and tiny bit of fat, most, if not all pieces of the duck for the pancakes met these requirements. As with all Peking duck pancakes, there is some green inside each, these are normally raw cucumber, shallots or radish. Here we had cucumber and shallots. Cucumber was fresh and the shallots were very juicy and easy to bite through.
They provided 12 pancakes for a full duck and 6 for half.

 This is the Sang Chow Bow it came with, 6 pieces for full and 3 pieces for half. Very well fried with a touch of lightly fried red onions creating a different and delicious taste.


 Following up we had Ginger Shallot Steamed Baby Abalone, it looked too good when they presented it as such this is all I had left after I quickly consumed it. The amount of ginger and shallot provided was very abundant and was steamed to a point where it was easy to bite through.Baby Abalones are fresh picked from the tank and you can see them pick them out of the tank. The Sweet Seafood Soy Sauce was very well mixed and overall a very nice dish.

I'm not sure when this arrived on the table, but this is the Curry Calamari. It follows closely with the original Hong Kong taste of Curry Fishballs but made with Calamari. Little bit hot for my liking but as I said, the 'original Hong Kong taste'. It should be immediately available as these are readily available for purchase at the front counter in a pan.

When we were done with all the food, we were offered complimentary dessert 'Bitter Melon Pudding'. Their Bitter Melon Pudding was very very nice. Didn't taste the bitterness in the bitter melon at all, soft and jelly and topped with coconut cream with sago at the bottom of the bowl, just perfect.



All in all, this was a VERY pleasant dining experience for me, especially for a casual dinner and I practically have nothing bad  to say about this place, service was great, food was great and pricing is very reasonable.

Casual Dinner
My Rating: 9.5/10


-Samuel.



Saturday, 27 April 2013

Nishiki Wagyu Yakiniku - Crows Nest

Hello everyone!

Sometime around last week I went to Crows Nest to try a Japanese BBQ (Yakiniku) buffet restaurant called Nishiki.

I've always wanted to visit Nishiki ever since their other store in Chinatown called Nagoya stopped opperating.

Since my experience at Nagoya was always excellent, I expected Nishiki to be better or not far behind.

This is their buffet menu.
We chose the A+B selection buffet $54.80/pp limited all you can eat for 100minutes
















They also have a whole chart of the cow and a full details the type of wagyu they serve.




















After we ordered all our food, the waiters served our sauces for the BBQ.
From left to right: soy sauce, BBQ sauce, sesame oil with black pepper, and some vinegar-like sour sauce.
















First thing that came was Wagyu Yukke, raw wagyu beef topped with raw egg, lettuce and flavored with sauce. The raw beef was really fresh and juicy, but I think the sauce was a little bit salty.

















After finishing the Wagyu Yukke, they served us our Lobster Salad, garlic butter, rice, mushroom, cucumber and lettuce wrap. The Lobster Salad was like the filling you get on sushi, too sweet but alright for a starter.

















Then came the delicious Ox Tongue.

















Here we are cooking the Ox Tongue and melting the garlic butter.
Their Ox Tongue was top quality, very tender, and melts into your mouth at first bite.

















Then we got our Gyoza, Garlic Prawns, Takoyaki, Wagyu Outside Skirt and more mushrooms.
The Gyoza were average good tasting gyoza, but next time I will skip this one. The takoyaki was nice though, it would be perfect if they gave more sauce. The garlic prawns were the best, but the serving was rather small.
















Calamari, and Chicken Caesar Salad.
I'm not a fan of salads, but this one manage to satisfy me, it was really well mixed with the sauce.
















More wagyu being cooked.
















Wagyu Rib Meat, Wagyu Flap meat, edamame, pumpkin, and asparagus.
The Wagyu Rib Meat was also really good, juicy and tender, but I was disappointed on the Wagyu Flap Meat, it was too chewy and hard to bite through, I gave up eating that. The edamame is the best I've ever had at a restaurant so far.


















When our dining time was almost up, the waitress came up to and took our last order.

Here's what we ordered for dessert.
Sesame Ice-cream, Green Tea Ice-cream, Vanilla Ice-cream, and Almond Puddings.
















Green Tea Ice-cream is my absolute favorite out of all three flavors. Sesame Ice-cream tasted like a Chinese black sesame porridge dessert and the Vanilla Ice-cream was just like any other vanilla ice-cream. The Almond Pudding was topped with fruit salad, but you can taste that both the pudding and the fruit came from a can and tasted very artificial.




My experience at Nishiki was not bad at all, and I thought it was better than Nagoya.

The meat was fresh, all the food we ordered tasted superb, and I didn't get sick after eating the raw meat.

So overall I would give it score of 8 out of 10

Unfortunately the only thing that they are lacking is their customer service.

Their waiters and waitress have no facial expressions and all look like they're really tired.

It also took quite a long wait for some of our food to come, and we had to remind the waiters quite a few times to bring us a jug of water.

Their food servings are also quite small too. In the photos we took, we actually have like 3-5 servings of beef on each dish.

But I won't complain since it's all you can eat, and they probably don't want customers to waste food, so they give smaller servings.

To be honest, I think their prices are a bit too high for a buffet, but I didn't mind too much in the end because their food was really good.

Also a friendly reminder, if you want your BBQ mesh to be changed you will be charged $2 once, and you can change it as many times you want.


I had a really enjoyable time dining at Nishiki.

I would definitely go back, hopefully soon if I can get someone to drive me there.


Thanks for reading my review.


Hope too see you all soon!


-Kumi.