After dinner, we went for a ride at Melbourne Star at Docklands. We didn’t expect the degustation dinner would stretch over two hours, so by the time it finished we really had to rush. We took the tram to Docklands and practically ran to the ticket booth. I was really worried that we would miss out the last flight departure of the night.
Wheew so relieved to get these – ready to go up to level 1 for departing queue…
Melbourne Star is that giant 120 metres height observation wheel located in waterfront Docklands area of Melbourne. There are 21 spacious, fully enclosed and air-conditioned cabins all together with audio commentary along the whole 30 minutes ride. Each cabin capacity is 20 people and made of floor-to-ceiling glass that allows people to walk around and have 360-degree view of the city and surrounding.
Here are the shots we took during the 30 minutes ride – view was magnificent from up there. And we are truly happy that the weather had been nice, it hadn’t rained that whole day. Alas it would probably be quite frightening to be up there when it is pouring with strong wind. Also, we are lucky to have the whole cabin to ourselves, so that we won’t be bothering other people to take pictures 🙂
How cute is this?!Melbourne Star made of Lego – it’s amazing how detailed this model is
To summarize, it is definitely worth the efforts to come and have that night ride. However, I imagine day ride would be just as amazing, maybe we’ll do that next trip 🙂 The feeling of being kids again, so priceless!
We did the 13-course Spring Renewal Degustation at Kobe Jones finally. Have been wanting to do that for a while now and went for it while we were at Melbourne. You’d ask why do a Kobe Jones degustation at Melbourne while we also have Kobe Jones at Sydney. Well, we were looking for something special for our anniversary dinner and remembered I still had that Best Restaurant gift card which is expiring really soon. Then hubby said why don’t we go to Kobe Jones, something we have already been want to do. And as it happens our anniversary was while we were at Melbourne, hence the Riverside Melbourne branch.
Booking was easy enough through their website or phone them. We booked for 6pm thinking we’d have lots of spare time after dinner to catch the Melbourne Star ferris wheel ride. Obviously 6 pm is early for dinner, the restaurant was pretty much empty when we got there. The restaurant is made up of two sections, a larger section (our guess is the main section) consists of their kitchen and teppanyaki style seating; then on a separate smaller section is the sleek riverside seating area for Kobe Jones dining.
One of the great thing about degustation is that we don’t need to make any decisions, no fuss over which menu to order etc. And on top of that, you’ll get to taste a little bit of many dishes, excellent! The original Spring Revival degustation is a 12-course, but we upgraded to include their famous lobster and glass of champagne. Without further ado, let’s get into our courses of the night:
Glass of Möet & Chandon Brut Impérial NV
Edamame
Number One Special – crab salad with avocado wrapped in Hiramasa kingfish and nori, baked in a secret sauce and topped with bittersweet soy glaze. This tasted soooooo good…. My second favorite of all dishes that night.
Crab croquette – creamy crab and corn croquettes shallow-fried in soybean oil with jalapeno salsa and tonkatsu sauce. Love the crispy outside and creamy inside texture, not oily at all.
Wagyu Tataki – seared, chilled and topped with bush herbs and soy onion dressing. The wagyu are tender with delicate seasoning, a very refreshing dish.
Dragon Egg – tuna tartare sushi mixed with chipotle mayonnaise on a shiso leaf, topped with avocado and finished with ponzu sauce. This is hubby’s favorite dish of the night, actually this picture really didn’t do justice of the taste. It is very delicious.
Volcano Roll – oven-baked scallops layered on a crab salad avocado roll with special cream sauce and sesame seed and shallot sprinkle. Another pretty dish, but also delicately delicious!
Somen and tofu salad – somen noodles and crispy tofu with mixed leaves and soy dressing. Love the dressings and those crispy tofu. Up to this point, I started feeling full and yet we were only half way through.
Kobe’s Miso Soup – house made dashi with a blend of red and white miso to create the perfect umami flavour. We love that the miso soup is very well seasoned, not too salty as you might find it in many places.
Whiting Slider – tempura sand whiting served in a brioche bun with shredded cabbage, mayonnaise, Japanese pickle and egg. Honestly, I’d prefer to have it without the brioche 🙂
Yakitori – robata-grilled skewers of marinated chicken with baby leeks and teriyaki sauce. This is probably our least favorite dish, we both found it too bland and not enough sauce or not marinated enough. But, the chicken is well cooked and succulent.
Wagyu hot rock – self-cook your own wagyu sirloin AA5+ just the way you like it, with dipping sauces. This dish is a bit of fun dish where they were delivered raw sitting on top of the hot rock and you can cook them to your liking. Probably we left ours a tad too long, hence slightly chewy beef.
Miso Citrus Lobster Tail – baby lobster tail lightly cooked in a wafu thermidor sauce, drizzled with miso citrus sauce and served on a bed of steamed vegetables. My favorite dish for the night! I love everything about this dish, yummy lobster tail with yummy sauce.
Flaming Anko – green tea crème brûlée with red bean served flaming to the table for a caramelised finish. Now this one is definitely theatrical, it is served flaming – we were too amazed to take pictures and by the time we remembered, the flame has gone. This dessert is a great way to close the degustation, very creamy and has the earthy matcha flavour, not overly sweet. I would have eaten a lot of this, had I not been too full.
It was a superb experience for us, we enjoyed almost every single dish they have. And don’t be fooled by the size of each course. We left with super full and heavy stomach ლ(´ڡ`ლ) For me, I was already so full after course 8 and for the rest I just tasted a little, except the lobster tail. It is evident that they have used fresh and good quality of produce, not to mention the beautiful plating up. Definitely give this a try if you are into Japanese fusion meal, and lobster upgrade is absolutely a must!
There are many parks near by Melbourne CBD, isn’t it? There are several I wanted to go to, but today we decided to walk over to Southbank to The Royal Botanic Gardens. Thank goodness it was a fine day, clear blue sky and breezy – perfect weather for strolling! Let these photos tell the rest of the story 🙂 By the way, here is the link to lists of parks in CBD which I find very handy.
Alexandra GardensQueen Victoria GardensRoyal Botanic GardensRoyal Botanic Gardens
On the way back, we stopped at Dukes Coffee Roasters for a quick afternoon caffeine fix. We had a takeaway skim flat white again, but I feel the coffee tasted too bitter for my liking, it’s a strong hit on the tongue. A truly wake up punch 🙂
Dukes Coffee Roasters – front windowAfternoon coffees, anyone?
And to balance out the bitter coffee, we also stopped by Doughboys Doughnuts 😛 We seems to eat a lot on this trip and still barely enough to try all the places on my to-go-list! Probably because we came after 3 pm, there were not many doughnuts to choose from – might be all sold out for the day. These doughnuts are more of your typical doughnuts texture wise, with interesting flavor combinations and fillings. In that sense, they are different to ones at Shortstop. We both tend to prefer the Shortstop donuts better than ones here.
The counter and doughnuts displayMint Slice – we definitely prefer this one over the Matcha Pop ? Too busy eating that we forgot to take picture of the doughnut with cream filling.Matcha Pop – We ordered this thinking it will pack with matcha flavours. Unfortunately, the filling turned out to be berry flavoured custard cream with couple pieces of lightly-matcha-coated popcorns toppings
I think during our stay in Melbourne, we probably had too much coffee per day. But then again, how can you resist those little coffee shops with long queue? Another coffee shop we found from online review is Patricia Coffee Brewers and as it turned out also located nearby to City Tempo, we decided to go.
A short walk from the hotel and thanks to the trusted Google Map we reached this little coffee shop. There were already many people lining up in front of that tiny door for their morning dose of caffeine. And so were we joining in the queue, which didn’t take too long at all. By the looks of it, a lot of the customers are regulars that all the staffs seemed to know their names. Love such places, don’t you? The cafe is small and only standing room (no seating area inside as far as I can tell) and only few chairs outside. The staff will serve sparkling water to waiting patrons, which we think was a great service.
A friendly lady at the cashier took our orders efficiently and since we couldn’t decide which coffee blend we wanted, we just ordered one of each. And both single origin and house blend were very nice, one is smooth while more fruity taste on the other. Service was really quick, coffee were at good temperature, everything was just spot on.
Look at people lining up in front of that tiny door!Glimpse of coffee counter from outside, it was too crowded inside to take pictures 😛
From here we walked around to Queen Victoria Market then took a tram back to city centre and walk through shopping arcades and lane ways. It was a fun walk, so much to see and got excited about! Suddenly we came out on Flinders Stations and decided to take the tourist tram and complete a full city circle ride 🙂 The ride went up to Docklands and then made a way back to LaTrobe St, which then we took off near Swanston St.
We were amazed at how spacious the isles are and how clean and organised those vegies on displayOur most favorite place of the market – the deli section! Super clean, no any funky smell or whatsoever. And seriously look at those cheeses and antipasto, bread, pasta, and the list goes on – beautiful!
Even wines and tea and coffee…The arcades and alleyways
We headed to Mr Burger, a place we spotted on our first day arriving at Melbourne. This one is located on corner Swanston St and LaTrobe St. There are about five or six tables in front of the “truck”with couple of high tools surround each table. Hubby chose a Mr Hot; whereas I got the Mr Chicken, still not sure why I made that choice. We also shared a large Trucker Chips, which was sooooo yummy…..
The buns are soft with a very slight hint of sweetness that balances the sauces and meat really well. They are generous with the sauces and yes it always messy when you eat a good burger. The chicken was actually very succulent with crispy on the outside, but we felt it was just ok, nothing to rave about. Hubby’s Mr Hot was really good, with crispy bacon and although it says Mr Hot, it was not very spicy at all. The chips are great, lots of spicy mayo and cheese with tiny bits of bacon, we were over the moon ~(˘▾˘~) (~˘▾˘)~
Patricia Coffee Brewers
493-495 Little Bourke Street (Corner Little Burke and Little Williams St), Melbourne VIC
We were dropped back in Collins St after the Yarra Valley winery tour around 5-ish and decided to walk around while deciding where to have dinner. Hubby had been wanting to have burger and so the final decision was to go to Grand Trailer Park Taverna. It is close by and we read many positive reviews of the place before, sounds like a good choice, right? The weather was miserably cold and windy, plus I was truly in need of greasy food after all those wine 😛
The front door and staircases leading to seating area, ain’t that cool?
Honestly, I was a little skeptical when looking at the front door. It looks cool but at the same time reminds me of old style pubs where people got drunk 😛 Then I looked up on the ceiling and saw all that fairy lights and it made me feel better about this place.
One side felt more retro, while the other side has a more rustic old barn feels (in my opinion) 🙂
Maybe because we came in a little too early, it was not busy at all when we got in. But by the time we started eating, we can see more people came in and seats were filling up soon.
The menu
Hubby decided to have Francis Underwood with a beer, while I opted for the Atomic and we had a large beer battered chips to share.
Francis Underwood Burger and Beer Battered ChipsAtomic BurgerThe beer with our table number …
I like the Atomic burger, very flavorsome and tasty. Beer battered chips was also very nice, crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Hubby thought his burger was super delicious and that creamy cheese macaroni croquettes was a bomb. Although he reckons that next time we go there, he wanted to have a burger, chips, and cheese macaroni croquettes by itself.
Definitely a place that we will go back to next time we are in town! I’d love to try their shakes with alcohol, they sound really interesting with unique flavor combination.
