Loui & Jules Bremen

A while ago, I was discussing with someone about burgers and this person told me that the best burger in Bremen could be found at Louie & Jules. I filed that information away for another day. Well that day finally came. Someone owed me a dinner (heh) and when he suggested this place, I took the chance to try out the burger. 

Brioche bun, bacon...looks good

Tastes good! I definitely recommend this place and if their steaks are as good as their burgers, I might become a semi-regular...

A visit from Carlinho

ERMAGHERD!!! MEH FEHRST VESEHTEHR!!!

Carlinho was heading from Berlin to Frankfurt in order to fly home to Brazil for vacation and decided to swing by and see me on the way. What a sweetiepie. And like all great guests, he made me food! To be more precise, he made me coxinhas, a brazilian snackie whereby chicken is re-shaped into ...er...chicken.

Making them is both complicated and easy. Boiled pieces of shredded chicken breast is mixed with milk, cream cheese and chicken stock to make a paste and then enclosed in a mixture of mashed potato and flour, before being crumbed and cooked. It was just easier to let him do it.


Ready for baking! (No deep frying in my open-plan kitchen, kthnxbai


Also, coxinhas make great post-party food. *just saying*


They also held up well for breakfast!

PAH!!! (aka, pie)

Lack of pies has been one of my greatest challenges while living in Germs. I've managed to vaguely overcome it, either by buying pies, bringing them in my luggage, or just flat out flying to places where pies are more plentiful. But I never tried to make a pie.

Until now.

BEHOLD!!!

I mostly used Jamie Oliver's Aussie humble pie recipe but made modifications depending on whether I cbf getting the ingredients (e.g. make the pastry myself? Whatever)

Egg wash

Oh yeah!

It didn't just look good, it also tasted good! Except I think that next time I won't use Weissbier to make the sauce - I sometimes got that residual Weissbier/banana flavour kekeke.

And because I had leftover pastry and egg, I also made mini-quiches!

Dinner!

It's a few days late but a few friends and I decided to have our own version of the CNY reunion dinner. Being newbies in a city that has no Chinatown, we weren't exactly spoiled for choice when looking for places to eat. However, I had serendipitously made an acquaintance a few days before who told me that there was a restaurant that served peking duck - with pancakes and everything!

True story - it was almost the whole shebang!

It didn't come with the other stuff (soup made from the bones, noodle stir fly with the other meat), and it can't really compete with Simon's Peiking Duck. But as something to tide us over, it definitely hit the spot. 

Prima Taste Laksa Noodles

Now, I love laksa and it's a pretty hard to come by in Germany. To overcome my lack of laksa over the last few years, I've been trying to make it myself using various paste mixes. But then in 2014 on one of my trips to London, Pooey introduced me to Prima Taste Laksa Noodles. Yes, laksa flavoured instant noodles. 

THEY ARE THE BOMB. 

Like, they actually really taste like laksa! I'm just writing about them now because I had a bowl for lunch today and they made me really happy. The soup is thick and aromatic with the right mix of spice and coconut, and so long as you cook them following the directions, the hokkien-style noodles are chewy. Sometimes I also boil rice vemicelli noodles to add to my experience but instead I limited myself today to just a boiled egg, prawns, tofu cake, mint and coriander. It was worth it. 

But the best bit is I've found an asian grocery in Bremen sells them. I DON'T HAVE TO LOAD UP ON THEM IN LONDON ANYMORE!!! 

Love you long time, London

Because I am the new girl, work sent me to a meeting in London to meet other people I would be working with. Not gonna complain about that! Okay, I will complain a little bit - it was a two day meeting with an 8AM START on the second day. But the flipside of the early start was an early end, allowing me to catch up with some London peeps :D.

I caught up with Amandine, Mr J, Liz and Livvy at Lobster & Burger.

And like any self-respecting Asian, we all got lobster

I got mine grilled. yay. 

Afterwards we met with Angry Chris and headed to Bread St. Kitchen for cocktails. 

We also took this epic photobooth pic while at Bread St. because the pauses between shots were so long we weren't sure if it was done or not :D

And I strolled home from there and felt a great swelling in my heart for all my friends and how even though time may pass, we still had a great time together in this amazing city <3 .="" p="">

Also, a shoutout to Smee letting me crash and also making me squid ink pasta. Delizioso!

Epic Journey Home - NGV and Royal Croquet Club

There was a general sense of excitement with the news that I would be coming back. Time to do some of my favourite things - meet up with friends, eat food, and see what's new in the city! And preferably all three at the same time!

On my first day back, me and Pooey caught up with Rachie-Poo and her little fella at Hinoki!

Mmmmmm, love sushi and sashimi...
Also, this was the right size for the three of us :D

Then we went to Gelato Messina. I can't remember what I ordered but it was pretty delicious and look at this guy trying to grab it!

Next stop - NGV to see the Andy Warhol/Ai Wei Wei exhibit

The Waterwall was nice and cooling on this hot day

Ai's Chandelier with Restored Han Dynasty Lamps for the Emperor (2015)

I spent a lot of time running around Ai's and Warhol's interactive balloon exhibits. Pooey spent a lot of time documenting it.

The interactive "Studio Cats" is supposed to be for children but it's pretty damn awesome for adults as well! (Or we are just two big children).

Pooey and I were both really impressed with the exhibit. Or course, going into the exhibit I was more familiar with Warhol, but I walked out with a greater appreciation for Ai's works particularly the sense of playfulness masking serious commentary, or sometimes when the commentary wasn't masked. Anyway, go see it while you can - it's on at NGV International until April 24. 

After the gallery, Pooey and I crossed over the river to enjoy the Royal Croquet Club. 

Like a lady!

Enjoying watching the play

And the view

Taking part of the play!

Epic Journey Home - Leg 2 & 3, London and Singapore

I flew from Berlin to London Heathrow. You might ask me why did I choose to fly from London as opposed to Frankfurt or Munich. Long story short, it seemed the right thing to do when I bought the tickets and let us never speak of this topic again. Apart from the stress of getting to London and worrying about whether weather chaos would prevent my flying, I was looking forward to this leg. I new what kind of shops would be present in LHR and was looking forward to doing some UK shopping!

Like from this F&M popup stall that was also a giant Christmas hamper!!! Got some goodies for Pooey and Xmas pudd for frens :D

I also got myself a chicken pot pie from EAT - Pooey's favourite! And the best was the server confirmed that I got the last serving of the day!!! Take that all the people behind me! 

However my love for UK shopping was tested as I had 8 hours to kill there - too short to justify hauling all my luggage into the city centre to catch up with friends and too long to spend wandering around looking at the same shops over and over again. I'm sure the ppl at Cath Kidston were wondering if I was ever going to buy something. 

After a 14 hour flight and several movies, I landed in Singapore where my stopover was a more manageable 3.5 hours. 

CHICKEN RICE TIME!!!!

And then I had a moment of sadness as I realised the flight I normally take to get to Munich was literally leaving next to my flight to Sydney :(

But no more time to be sad! Off to Sydney!!! 

Asian food hunt continues!

Dr Pfft has a deep and abiding love for Chinese food which was reinforced when he went to Shanghai. So when he told me there was a good new restaurant in his hood, what else could I do but go check it out?!

Oh my god! It's taken me 4.7 years but I've finally found somewhere that makes chili wontons! 

Dr. Pfft raved about a pork belly dish so I had to order it. I have to say, I've never had this ever before but that's not a complaint - it was a bit like having peking duck!

And since I ordered a menu, I got to finish the meal with these fried glutinous rice cakes with green tea ice cream. 

My assessment? Why have you taken 4 years to open here?!?! I'll definitely be back!

Random food on my desk.

So I've been having a bit of a difficult time at work lately and to cheer me up, one of my colleagues left food on my desk with this sweet note. There was a bit of confusion as to who actually did it - I'm not really used to randomly receiving unsolicited food - but we figured out who the champion/culprit  was and I was thrilled!

Thanks Everyone's Sunshine! It was delicious!

Cake time!

I am now the consul for an online expatriate group. Our thing is to make newbies in the city feel welcome, but our actual theme is that we love chocolate. Yes, you know what this means. NOW I CAN OFFICIALLY GO OUT AND EAT CAKE IN THE NAME OF HELPING PEOPLE!!!

Our first location was Maelu - definitely a very important place for newbies to know. 

My pink lady cake - a combination of berry, lychee and rose. All washed down with a hot chocolate.

More Wiesn!

I scored a ticket to the Rischart Kaiserschmarrn Tent. As you might imagine, there was pretty good food to be had.  

Like this epic brotzeit platter

And this superhuge kaiserschmarrn that came with sparklers!

And this less wonderful schnapps. It was like drinking petrol. 

I do like the musicians catwalk in this tent. 

Girls day out!

A few weeks ago, a bunch of us girls decided that it would be nice for us to go to Lake Starnberg/Starnberger See on the outskirts of Munich to enjoy the 'beach' at the side of the lake. Unfortunately the weather didn't agree with out plans but that was okay - we still hung out at the beach club anyway!

Because we could spend the entire day drinking prosecco while sitting around the fireplaces embedded in their tables. 

We were seated at first in this awesome basket but the staff asked if it was okay for us to move to another place on the terrace since they were pretty sure it was going to rain. It didn't during the entire time we were there!

But it was a wonderfully relaxing afternoon catching up with friends, making new ones, gossiping, telling stories, eating food and sharing 6 bottles among the 8 of us over 5 hours :D

On the way back to Munich, we decided we weren't ready to stop eating and drinking yet so we paid a visit to Ver-O-Peso, a Brazilian restaurant that a few of us had been wanting to check out for a while.

COXINHAS!!!! Little balls of chicke, rolled into shape to look like chicken thighs and then deep fried. Yum. 

I think I actually preferred these though - bolinhos de bacalhau (codfish balls).

As soon as I saw this on the menu, it was destined to be my main dish. Moqueca de camarao - prawns in a spicy/coconut sauce with rice. 

Even though it was washed down with a cocktail, I wasn't done for the day! A handmade ice cream shop was next door and I had a chai-flavoured cone that was actually incredibly good. Clearly I need to spend more time around this end of town!

Spanish Sojourn Day 5

For our last full day in Spain, we decided to be less about the eating and more about the tourist action.

Except when we went to the Barri Goti (Gothic Quarter), it was still pretty much closed. 

Including this chapel dedicated to St. Christopher

So purdy

Tourists coming out...

Eventually we got hungry and had lunch in a bar at La Boqueria. The foie gras was good but everything else was kinda disappointing.

But we made up for the disappointment by going to Barceloneta to hang out on the beach.

Which was also kinda disappointing because the sand wasn't as fine as the sand at La Concha and wouldn't hold our sandcastles as well.

Having said that, I was pretty impressed with the castles that worked - check out the brickwork detailing! And they were only €2 from Ale-Hop!

As it is a bigger city and a smaller (man-made) beach, it was much more crowded and dirtier than La Concha (I need to stop comparing everything to San Seb). Having said that, it still made me happy and pretty relaxed. I made the rookie error of taking an actual siesta (i.e. I fell asleep) on the beach. The burn line was...interesting.

But then dinner came along again and we headed out the Cerveceria Catalana and got a table after 20-30 minutes.

And a jug of sangria not long after that!

Our mixed platter of jamon, lomo, chorizo and queso manchego 

Word to the wise - while the menu has an English translation, the specials menu is only in Spanish! Luckily for us, I knew that pulpito meant small octopus! These were really good actually. I kinda wished we'd had more.

The scallop wasn't as good as the octopus but still good.

And somewhere along the line, I figured out that pipis in garlic sauce was also a special. These were also pretty awesome!!! It kinda made me miss XO sauce though...

And some token vegetables.

The three of us were having a really good time; the food was excellent, the sangria was amazing, the atmosphere was pretty lively, and our waitress was a load of fun joking with us. I think the staff found a trio of small asian girls who ordered a lot to be quite funny. When it was time for dessert, we asked her opinion as to which was her favourite. She said it was difficult to choose because it would depend on what kind of flavours we liked.

So we decided to get a cake platter that had a coconut cake, an almond cake, lemon tart, and a cake that reminded me of Vietnamese creme caramel.

But it wasn't crema catalana because we also got this!

When dessert arrived, we all went 'woah' at how large the serving was and our waitress laughed at our reaction. She would come over every now and then to check on how we were doing (and maybe if we would be leaving soon - it was pretty busy). But then something happened. Something extraordinary that made us all go, "What is that?!"

Basically some people around us ordered bravas huevos (aka 'fries') and we wanted some! So we ordered some! The staff weren't laughing anymore. I think they were afraid. 

And so here we come to a wonderful end to our Spanish sojourn - terrifying the locals with our Asian endless pit stomachs.