Restaurant Review – Suminoya, Sydney

Suminoya is the sister restaurant of Rengaya (North Sydney) and Koh Ya (now in Randwick) that serves Japanese yakiniku, either buffet style or ala carte. It is located at a little alley way near Martin Place, which may not be easy to find if you haven’t looked it up on map beforehand. I reckon they are almost always busy, so booking ahead is definitely recommended. When I made the booking for dinner buffet option over the phone, I was offered two slots of time: 5.30 pm (when they just open) or 7.30 pm, which of course we chose the earliest šŸ™‚

They offered two options of yakiniku buffet: Gourmet Buffet and Premium Buffet. Gourmet buffet is priced at $45 pp, whereas Premium buffet is priced at $55 pp.Ā As seen on their menu, there are more options to choose from the Premium Buffet option, such as sashimi, wagyu beef loin, pork loin, and many more. Also on the Premium Buffet option, you can get unlimited order of beef tongue which was limited to one per person on the Gourmet option. I think their beef tongue is best, thin, tender and just lightly seasoned.

On our first time visit, we opted for the Premium Buffet, which was not disappointing at all. The salmon sashimi are delicious and very fresh, of course we ordered heaps of those beef tongue, beef harami, wagyu beef loin, beef ribs, marinated chicken pieces, salad, soup, edamame, eel rice, garlic prawn, and many more. Indeed as many people said, the 90 minutes just went by really quick; nevertheless we left the restaurant with super full tummies šŸ˜€ But sadly they don’t have gyoza on the menu, we love the gyoza at Koh Ya when in was still located in Double Bay area.

Without further ado, here are some pictures we “remembered” to take on our dining trip to Suminoya. A lot of the time, we were just way into the bbq-ing and forgot to take pictures as the ordered were delivered or as we cooked them.

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The entrance and shop front

 

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Various meat on bbq, seaweed salad, garlic butter prawn, eel rice, mashed potato, and green tea-black sesame ice cream

Suminoya Japanese Restaurant

1 Hosking Pl, Sydney NSW 2000

Phone:Ā (02) 9231 2177

www.yakiniku.com.au/

 

 

 

Restaurant Review – Tan Thai, Campsie NSW

We went to Campsie lastĀ weekend to replenish our stash of Indonesian condiments and seasonings. That was the first time we had to since we came back from our Indonesia trip, September last year and mainly due to we finally run out of Sambal ABC Ekstra Pedas šŸ˜€ We bought back like three refill packs of those chili sauce from Bali and it finally ran out after about three months and here goes time to replenish our stash again. So, while we were in the area, we decided to have lunch there and try something new. The first option was Cinta Ria but sadly they were still closed for new year holiday and we walked along the street then saw this Tan Thai restaurant. If you followed my blog posts, you’d know we love Thai food – weĀ agreed to try the food there.

Looking briefly from the outside, the restaurant looks small with mainly dark color interior with few tables and chairs and a see-through glass wall to separate the dining area with kitchen area. Then there is a curved archway at the back leading to more seating with a water feature in the middle. The seating at this area is mostly of wooden materials and kind of dim lighting. Then another small seating area with mostly white walls at the far back of the restaurant (see the picture below) with brighter lighting.

Tan Thai

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The menu on offer are mainly Thai dishes consists of stir fries, noodles, rice, curry, and the usual entrees options. For our lunch, we tried their Duck Red Curry and Crispy Soft Shell Crab Salad with rice.

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Duck Red Curry $15.90
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Crispy Soft Shell Crab Salad $15.90

We think the red curry is more of sweet tone than our favorite at Green PeppercornĀ also the duck itself is not as tender. But the crispy soft shell crab salad is awesome, pack with flavors and the soft shell crab was truly crispy and huge! We love the sauce on the salad, just a nice balance of sweet, salty, sour, spicy and generous coriander-mint on top. Overall we had a nice meal at Tan Thai and may come back again for the soft shell crab saladĀ (ć£Ė˜Ś”Ė˜Ļ‚)

Tan Thai

148 Beamish St, Campsie NSW 2194

Phone:Ā (02) 9789 0003

www.tanthai.com.au

Garuda Indonesia – Business Class (SYD-DPS-SYD)

First of all, please do not take this post as me trying to show off or braggingĀ or anything, I just wanted to share our honest opinions and experiences on our flight in business class with Garuda Indonesia. Although we have pretty much always flown with Garuda Indonesia whenever we went back to Indonesia or within Indonesia domestically, this is the very first time we flew on Business Class ticket. It started with a promotion and one thing led to another, hubby suggested that we tried this, maybe even for once in a life time hehehe

I think we paid about almost half the normal cost with the promotion, so that really was great saving. But at the same time also made it affordable to us, because without the promotion I really doubted we would have gone for these tickets! By the way, the luggage allowance for each business class ticket is 40 kg; it is usually 30 kg for economy class ticket.

Continue reading “Garuda Indonesia – Business Class (SYD-DPS-SYD)”

Restaurant Review – Chat Thai, Sydney

Our Saturdays usually consist of going to church then wander around in the city, window shopping, actual grocery shopping, lunch, and then head back home. Deciding what or where to have lunch is typically not an easy task, as there are soooo many options available and although we tend to go back to places that we love, sometimes we ended up trying new places or back to places that we haven’t been back for ages.

This was what happened on that Saturday: all activities as usual until the time we decided to have lunch. After some “serious” thinking, we decided to go for Thai food. Hubby’s first choice would be to go to Green PeppercornĀ and I would love to, too; but we were there too early and they haven’t opened yet. So we thought, maybe just walk around in the city first then we’ll be back when they started serving lunch. What happened after that was we walked past Chat Thai, which usually has queues especially for dinner. And I suggested to hubby, why don’t we have our lunch here since it already open, there was no queue, and his first time eating there. I had been here only couple times long time ago and never been back since, so I would be keen to know how the food tastes like now. And there we went for our lunch!

chat thai

Food tasted great, the vegies were cooked really well, crisp and tasty. A little on salty side for our liking, but went really well with white rice. We tried the crepes dessert and they are lovely, so light and delicate with just enough sweetness.

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Crispy pork belly with gai lan – we loooveeee this…
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Chicken lard na
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Various desserts, we tried to crepes and they are yummyy

Chat Thai

20 Campbell St

Haymarket, Sydney NSW 2000

Phone: (02)Ā 9211 1808

http://www.chatthai.com.au/

A month ago…

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This is what our view likeĀ just moments after our flight took off from Sydney International Airport. A clear blue sky and very beautiful day…

(ļ¾‰ā—•ćƒ®ā—•)ļ¾‰*:ļ½„ļ¾Ÿāœ§

Stay tuned for more blog posts from our four weeks holiday in Indonesia \ (ā€¢ā—”ā€¢) /