Melbourne Day 10: Yu - U

We were surprised this place even had a name!

From the looks of it, it's one of the wierdest restaurants that we've ever come across. Located on Flinders Lane on the Russell Side, it really takes all the street smart intelligence to be able to find this place. Somehow we got the feeling that it seemed to be saying Please don't come if you can't find us.

Roger had been talking about Yu- U since the day we arrived in Melbourne. But somehow, we've only been able to fit it into our schedule on our very last day, 3 hours before our flight.

Yeah, right. This place really needed advance booking alright... NOT.

We really didn't know if they were really full all the time, or just plain eccentric Japanese.




But, in spite of all its eccentricity, the food IS good, and not overly priced, and they looked like this:

Do not touch your mouse. Do not reload this page. There is nothing wrong. As part of its eccentricity, Yu U does not allow food photography in its restaurant. That is like probably saying, Bugger off bloggers, we dont need business. The whole place is exuding. We're not doing business. We're only opening a restaurant!

We apologise for camwhoring. Left with no photos of the food, this is the only thing that we can offer you.

Day 9: Vietnamese Pho and Brunetti

One of the things that I really miss during my student days in Melbourne is Vietnamese pho. There's nothing quite like it there. And most of the time, when we mention about going to Melbourne to almost anybody, we'd usually get the same 4 syllable response - VIET-NA-MESE PHO!

So naturally we had to have pho when we were there. On one particular evening, Roger brought us to this place. I can't remember what it was called but I think it's Vietnamese Noodle Place along Swanston St in the City, the stretch between Bourke St and Londsdale St.

This is one of those places that you can expect plate-throwing action with food in gigantic portions. I've always missed the broken rice in Melbourne, but this plate of rice is not broken. Fail!
Nevertheless, the Vietnamese pho here still tasted good, especially on a chilly evening. But they were not really as great as the ones we had before. Maybe we should have just headed for Richmond, where Vietnamese food is supposedly more authentic.

Deprived of his Teh-C-Peng Special for more than a week already, Greg was desperately looking for something similar. I think if he had the chance, he would have ordered every special drink on the menu. But fortunately he doesn't have bowels of that size to hold that volume of water. So he settled for the greenish ang tau peng-like drink. This is called the Four colours but it only has 3 ingredients, which is why it used to be called Three colours. Get it? I know it's strange. It's like a name upgrade without actually upgrading the ingredients.

This was the Vietnamese Spring roll. You wrap it with fresh lettuce. This never fails to please us!


Vietnames rolls in rice paper wrap to be dipped with sesame dip.

Since this was our last night in Melbourne, we decided to stuff ourselves and go for dessert at Brunetti. There isn't anyone in Melbourne who does not know Brunetti, which supposedly has heavenly cakes and desserts. We've been hearing Roger talking non-stop about this place. He's been at it since like 4 years ago or something like that but somehow we've never been there.

Well, actually come to think of it, I was there once but just could not remember how things were like. Probably because it was so packed that we did not manage to order anything. I think i used to be like 1/2 of the current size. These people are really making big bucks.

It has certainly grown in size and variety. This is the coffee counter.

Pastry section.

Cookies & macaroons & everything else in between those two.

The savoury section for quick bites.

Then the almighty cakes part. The following is for selling off the rack for some who forget to order a birthday.

The gelato bar.


Choc fondue on display. If you drink from it, you'd probably get a nose bleed & experience a bloody volcanic erruption of the acne kind on your face.

There were lots of stuff to try but this was all we could manage:

Coffee ~ Vienna, latte and mocha

Italian cheese cake

Royale ~ chocolate with hazelnut i think.

Some mousse thingy which i could not remember the name.

I really don't know but it could just be me. All the cakes look very professional (I wouldn't be able to make cake decors like that) but seriously I was not that impressed. I mean they all taste pretty good and definitely better than Starbucks, Coffee Bean and Secret Recipe put together.

Maybe my tongue is really jaded when it comes to cakes. I have this bad habit of figuring out what's inside something that I'm eating. So if it's too easy, I'm not impressed. My world certainly was not rocked. With the abundance of ingredients available in Melbourne like top class choc, fresh fruits and whatever you need, to come out with these is really nothing much to shout about. I think Brunetti is kind of overrated and slightly too commercial for my taste. But still, it would be a good place for all ages for a day or night out.

A Sarawakian Laksa in Melbourne: Day 7

There is something about Sarawakians and our laksa. It's like the English & their tea. We could travel all the way to Melbourne, & we'd still want our laksa there.

On the 7th day in Melbourne, I cooked laksa for Roger & his housemate, Anson. He practically slurped the whole thing up & proclaimed it as being as close to the real thing. Anson of course didn't know what it was but he has been hearing Roger yakking about it.

I know it probably looked like the real thing, but I also think that Roger has been away from Kuching for far too long. He has been talking about Sarawak laksa, even to girls he just met.

This one's made from Mrs Yeo's paste, brought all the way from Kuching, for the boys in Melbourne. Will blog the recipe one day.

Melbourne Day 7: Victoria Market

The life of a city is usually found in the markets. That's where you can see the real stuff & the real people. In the city, everyone's fake... Just kidding-lah.

That's why when you're in Kuching, you'd have to drop by the Sunday Market at Satok. And similarly, when you're down in Melbourne, you'd have to go to Victoria Market.

Even if you're not buying stuff like me (Nee does all the shopping, I do all the carrying) it's still an interesting place to visit. In the vegie section of the market, you'd usually be able to see yelling Italians. Unfortunately I didn't have a picture of that cos I didn't see them there that morning.
And in the other seafood/butcher section of the market, an Asian guy was also yelling in deep undiscernible Australian accent, something about the meat going cheap & prices coming down. I hesitated to take a photo of him cos judging from the strength of his coarse voice, I didn't want to play the fool.




Roger mentioned something before about female pork tasting better. I think he's right cos they do make a point to differentiate between the sexes.


This is where I got my new supply of honey, something that I don't think I can live without. I can't survive a bout of diarrhea without it.


Nope. Didn't try that, but thought of it - not the rabbit, but the kangaroo meat. I thought it'd be like eating a national symbol. Like eating the Hornbill or Orang Utan in Sarawak. Or eating the kiwi bird in NZ, or eating the Bald Eagle in the US.


Oh, look! Malaysian satay in the most unexpected place. I saw the sign but I didn't see the satay that I expected.

I really didn't expected this. I guess Australia has been pretty strong in its trade protection. It looks like American products from the 1950s just made it into the market now.

Day 6: Oritai in South Yarra

Oritai is a Japanese Fusion restaurant owned by a Japanese Chef who considers his cooking as works of fine art.

So naturally, we expected to find fineness and the attention to details here in our food. Located in South Yarra, Jackson St, this place is all that we expected and more. It's little more on the classy side and has the food to match, as well as the price.

The was the Duck with miso sauce platter.

Rib eye steak with terrayaki sauce.

Japanese fried rice with veg

We ordered the sashimi platter which came as this huge serving of various entre goodies, all of them beautifully done. As we gobbled them down, we slowly came to the realisation that this might be too good to be true. All this for just AUD32??!!

And the truth was revealed when the bill came. It was AUD59 instead. Apparently the waiter took the wrong order and gave us a platter of everything instead. I remember my mom always say that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Hai...

Expensive Sashimi

And unlike other Aussie restaurants which would just charge you the original AUD 32, the Japanese lady supervisor insisted on us paying AUD 59 and she did that when we were filling in the feedback form. That's some good business sense there woman.

Expensive prawn roll

This place was turning out to be excellent in the beginning, but it ended up average instead. Our evening did not end in such a high note, but it was a pretty good meal after all.

Expensive Beef