Eat Like Ushi

The first time I went to Cupping Room the wait ended up being too long for my stomach to handle. It was an impromptu visit after arriving at the airport that resulted in the second visit in the early afternoon and an immediate seat. Our waitress was a lovely lady whose accent I'm still trying to place - an unusual European or South American perhaps? Maybe I'll ask next time.

The coffee is proudly Ona's and I'm told it's good. I like how the menu espouses the quality of their "local real chai infused with Bonsoy" and I intend to try it one day, as few places make chai lattes with soy which certainly complements the flavour much more than cow's milk. However the barrier to this on both occasions has been this - Dark Chocolate, Cherry & Coconut King Shake. Imagine a cherry ripe blended, chilled and topped with additional desiccated coconut. It is as brilliant as it sounds and a sure fire menu item on my future imaginary cafe.

- Ham Hock, Corn & Potato Fritters (with two poached eggs, 'cuppers hot sauce' & a cress & alfalfa salad);
- Cascara Cured Salmon (with horseradish cream, cress, rye & curroway crutons, pickled fennel, beetroot jelly & a poached egg);
- Asian Honey-Glazed Pork Ribs (with purple slaw & lime) - meaty chewy ribs (rather than bone-slipping) with a reasonable glaze;
- special I can't quite remember with crumbed fish, potatoes and vibrant pickled vegetables.

The food is good, the drinks are great. I'll be back for the King Shake and a side serving of food.

I've previously only eaten in Fyshwick (the real Fyshwick area not the Sunday market) once - it was a surprisingly excellent breakfast at Ona Coffee House. On this occasion I was in the area to grab some padlocks from Bunnings and thought it was a good opportunity to find a quick lunch.

Located conveniently directly across from Ona is Elaine's. It's essentially a small cafe that looks like a milk bar/fish 'n' chip shop. They advertise award winning pies and thankfully the judges knew what they were talking about.

On two occasions I've visited and sampled Pepper Shepherds, (award winning) Beef Stroganoff, the giant vegetable pastie and a sausage roll. The specialty pies (Shepherds or not) seem to have a varying thickness of mash potato on top, a delicious crispy melted cheese coating, and some soft pastry lining the sides. Fillings can be chunky or smooth beef with the relevant pepper, stroganoff or other flavours within. Equally good is the sausage roll with the smoothest mince filling that slides down the throat. Possibly even better compared with the typical competitors is the pastie with a thin crisp pastry enclosing small vegetable chunks held together by mash potato.

The quality is all there as is the flavours. Excellent for a quick meal or takeaway for later in a park or at work.

Ebenezer Place seems to be the current trendy area for Adelaide's coffee and breakfast needs. At 745am, my first target was East End Providore (Urbanspoon 95%) which seems to be one of the newer ones and for that reason (or maybe it's also just plain good) the coolest of the lot. However considering the place didn't open until 8am, the ensuing 10minutes allowed me to read about it - that there is a limited menu (especially for breakfast) and some of the great ratings relate more to the providore/deli side of things. In any case it was more of a time factor that led me elsewhere on this occasion.

Wandering less than a minute in either direction or across the road gives the options of Sad Cafe (91%), Hey Jupiter (84%) and Nano (90%). Sad Cafe wasn't yet open (although already had 3 people waiting outside) and Nano was better rated than Hey Jupiter and seemed to be the oldest institution of the lot making the decision for me.

Clientele was a mixed combination of beards, suits and bike shorts with some random Italian phrases being thrown around too (presumably because the owners are Aussie-Italian). The menu reflects this and it largely Italian bread/pizza based with a slightly disappointing lack of fresher options (only saw one with yoghurt and fruit). In any case the Incarozza caught my eye (holy bread sauteed with egg, crispy pancetta, mozzarella, napoletana sugo) as interesting. It was a quite delicious thick serve of bread seemingly panfried on both sides embedded with fried egg. The topping had (not very crisp) pancetta, some melted cheese and a lovely tomato sugo and a few basil leaves (would definitely have appreciated more). It was reasonably heavy for early breakfast but a satisfying start to the morning.

Given the air was bordering on 30C, ice coffee was a welcome treat. Unlike the typical liquid versions with a token scoop of icecream, this was more of a blended smoothie incorporating coffee, icecream and (probably) ice into a thick smooth whip. It was great.

Next time I would order for lunch and test out some other bread/pizza options. I think for breakfast I'd try one of the other 3 places for something a bit lighter.

Over my last three trips to Adelaide, I've slowly starred more and more places on Google maps to remind myself of things worth trying. The list (admittedly) tends to be Asian focussed. So far the list entails Ricky's Kitchen (for chicken rice) or Warong (for Indo-Malaya laksa) or the nearby non-Asian United Latino Cocina (Mexican, fish tacos) which I discovered are sadly all only lunch options. Then there is Chinatown's Ying Chow (for duck and some kind of beans dish) or Concubine (other Chinese) which were a little too far away to walk to. Lastly near the Royal Adelaide Hospital is Golden Boy (modern Thai) which has a great sounding menu and I was very close to ending up in, but strangely only has average reviews (due to flavours, serving size, price).

In the end it came down to well rated dumplings place called Mandoo. I must admit I don't think I've ever had Korean dumplings, even in Seoul. My staple Korean dishes in Australia tend to be bibimbap and the occasional BBQ. Given the reviews and very high ratings, my curiosity and dumpling-cravings drew me in. Funnily enough just down the road looks like another reasonable Vietnamese-based place called Sit Lo which has the widespread open baos and pho as their specialty. Maybe next time.

Openly on display inside Mandoo is a large number of stacked metal steamers with the large parcels being assembled on a small bench in front. I positioned myself directly in front to watch the skilled action. The namesake dumplings come in two varieties - steamed or fried. From vast experience, I know that steamed are usually the basics and the marker of true greatness whereas my palate prefers the flavour and texture of fried. Luckily since all the servings are in 8, there is an option for half-half for $1 extra.

I ordered steamed kimchi mandoo (for the difference), fried pork mandoo (because fried pork is always the best flavoured) and beef bibimbap to wash it all down. They asked it I was ordering for 2. No, just 1. I smiled.

One of the reviews on Urbanspoon opined the mandoo themselves have little intrinsic flavour and it is the dipping sauce that brings it to life. I have to agree. Firstly the dumplings are huge (compared with typical Chinese or Japanese) each one being having a rounded diameter of 4-5cm. The steamed skins are thin and not too gelatinous which is fine but also means once you bite or dip, the large size is difficult to hold together and the filling comes out. The fried version on the other hand holds much better as expected. Kimchi filling was very very mild compared to usual kimchi vegetables. The pork filling wasn't very seasoned either but was fine. The dipping sauce of vinegar, chilli, sesame gave the dumplings a huge kick of flavour and intensity.

Bibimbap was a well sized bowl of steamed rice, lots of vegetable combinations, flavoursome beef and an excellent gochujang sauce with a perfect amount of chilli. One disappointment was my hope of serving or cooking in a stone pot with the bottom rice becoming crisp and burnt. This is my favourite textural element of bibimbap but didn't detract from the other nice flavours and textures. It also came with a small bowl of nice fish-konbu soup that would otherwise serve the base of their menu udon dish.

Next time I would order the fried chicken mandoo (to see what if they had more intrinsic flavour than the pork) and try either the udon or mandoo dumpling soup. For a one dish dinner, the bibimbap was more satisfying to me than the fried pork mandoo. But ideally try both and prepare to package a bit for takeaway.

After a tasty meal at Mandoo, I meandered back towards the Royal Adelaide Hospital (where I was staying). The scenic walk by the river in the evening heat of 34C was peaceful and a good way to settle the food load. After reaching my destination, part of me decided to continue walking through the streets nearby. Even though I'd like to think this was in order to get a bit more exercise and scope out a breakfast destination for a couple of days later, I'm realistic enough to know I also had a craving for ice-cream.

Not knowing anywhere specifically that had dessert (other than Steven ter Horst chocolatier which looks very nice but more expensive than I was willing to spend on myself), I was lucky to come across Cocolat. It's quite a large cafe and I would have treated it like a typical average Italian gelato place (ie. likely looked but ignored) if it wasn't for the sign that said "Australian Grand Dairy Awards - Back to Back Champion".

Looking on the website now, they won in 2011 for hazelnut-choc royale and 2012 for pistachio. Inside the store itself I only saw the award for the ferrero-roche (which the girl told me was the hazelnut-choc royale). I tried the pistachio as I simply do at every place, but even though the flavour was reasonable and mild, the intense green colour put me off slightly (NB. I like my pistachio dark green or brown).

Nonetheless I had a double scoop cup for $6.50 with hazelnut-choc royale and coconut. The lovely petite red-haired girl serving was in an ecstatic mood and gave me two enormous scoops. Even by her own admission she was feeling generous that day, which ended up being way too much for me alone but I appreciated her enthusiasm.

Both flavours were well blended and smooth, without any hint of ice crystals. The texture was broken up by pieces of ferrero-roche, chocolat slices and small coconut flesh. The coconut was the best version I've had (and also the favourite of the red-haired girl). I can see why the hazelnut-choc is popular but ended up being too sweet and intense for me. Nonetheless I'd happily go back again, especially if she is serving. If the flavour makers ever read this, coconut-pandan is the way to go. Hopefully next time.

There's a trip to India planned! It's only been a month in the planning, but I'm enjoying spending my time reading about the delights of Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan. One of the difficult decisions I've been trying to make is to decide where the final dinner of the trip should be. There are two options on my table - Bikhara and Dum Pukht in Delhi. It seemed like I needed to test a few dishes of both types of cooking to see which would be more memorable. Of all the Canberra Indian restaurants, Bollywood Masala is the only one that seemed to have different types of these regional specialties on the menu. I assume there isn't much difference between the Kingston and Dickson restaurants and Kingston is much closer and probably quieter. 6 people went to dinner tonight, to try and give a broad opinion of which cuisine reigns supreme (*Iron Chef joke*).

Dum Pukht is known for Awadhi cuisine. Dum is a slow cooked method of steam cooking using a claypot, sealed with a flour dough, and cooked over and under charcoal low and slow. Dum Pukht is apparently reputed for perfect biryanis, murg kundan qaliya chicken curry and fine lamb kakori kebabs. The awards include San Pellegrino Asia #17 (2013, not featured in 2014), Golden Fork (1989). On this night, I was lucky they had a special biryani that allowed me to pit two-on-two dishes.

- Dum ka murg (from Lucknow in North India - a slow (dum) cooked chicken dish prepared in a cashewnut and yoghurt base) - chicken curry in mild yellow creamy sauce. Tasty but quite simple;
- Lucknavi biryani - mildly spiced and flavoured rice, this one served with goat. Much less impacting than the Pakistani biryani that changed my culinary life at Needoo in London.

Bukhara is supposedly the most famous Indian restaurant in the world with a menu that hasn't changed in 35 years. It specialises in north-west frontier cuisine and largely tandoor based. Sikandari raan (whole leg of lamb marinated for 24 hours in malt vinegar, cinnamon and black cumin and finished in the tandoor) and the dal makhani (black lentil daal) and laccha paratha. The awards include San Pellegrino Asia #26 (2013) and World #37 (2007) and Golden Fork (1991).

- Bollywood leg of lamb (an off-the-bone ‘melt in the mouth’ Mughlai style combination of marinated leg of lamb, pan-cooked in a thick yoghurt-based sauce with a touch of rum and finished with Bollywood special herbs and home-ground spices) - oddly small leg of lamb with soft juicy meat flaked off and surrounding the bone in a rich creamy sauce;
- Daal Bollywood (a slow cooked combination of black lentils and red kidney beans enriched with cream) - simple smoky flavoured lentils, but not as smoothly blended as somehow I had envisioned.

Other than the 4 above dishes, the meal needed extra food, accompaniments and drinks to complete the meal.

- Chooza khas makhni (butter chicken) - a favourite of one of the diners. Not overly rich or or heavily tomato based. Kind of different but not what I'm used;
- Achari baingan (a delicious spicy combination of eggplant cooked in special pickle achari spices) - really fantastic heavily flavoured almost meaty eggplant curry;
- Saffron rice - ghee, rice, saffron, simple basic;
- Garlic naan - soft chewy naan topped with aromatic garlic;
- Peshawari naan (stuffed with a mix of spices, dried fruit and nuts) - chewy sweet naan. Nice but probably I'd stick to simple and plain next time to go with curries;
- Chai (traditional Indian beverage of white tea infused with aromatic spices) - mildly spiced and served without any added sweetness. Half a sugar brings out the flavour more;
- Rose lassi - sadly lassi seems to be made with syrups making them much too sweet. I'd stick to chai, water or BYO wine.

The meal is satisfying although I think I prefer heavier and more savoury curry flavours generally. The votes between the 5 were - 2 for dum style, 2 for Bukhara style and 1 for butter chicken. Although not as enamoured as I hoped to be, I think the more complex Bukhara-style flavours were my preferred too. Dinner is booked - hopefully will be the best ever.

(http://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/bukhara-delhi-01-2015)