Yu-u and yakitori

Despite talk about it having some of the best Japanese lunch sets in Melbourne, there's a lot of mystery that surrounds Yu-u. A quick google will find some Urbanspoon reviews and a couple blog posts about it, but don't expect to find an official website or any pictures of the food. Yu-u has earned the reputation of being one of Melbourne's best kept secrets, and judging by its nondescript entrance off in a side alley in the CBD and strict no photo-taking policy, it seems intent on keeping it that way.

on my plate - betel leaf topped with chicken @ red spice road

Places like Red Spice Road in the city make me glad I work in the city. Sure, the 45 minute commute on the train after the daily struggle to find a parking spot can be tough, but it makes being surrounded by hundreds of restaurants makes it worth it. Whether I actually have the money to afford eating at these places, is another story. 

I ended up bringing my lunch for two weeks in the lead up to my Red Spice Road lunch banquet, just to make sure I wouldn't feel guilty about the minor splurge. And guilty, I do not feel at all. The much-anticipated pork belly was not overhyped at all, and the watermelon and barramundi salad was also pretty good. Before all the mains arrived though,  came the betel leaf topped with chicken, coriander, and chilli.  Small, light, with a slight kick from the chilli, it had my mouth watering and excited about what was to come next. 

Red Spice Road

27 McKillop St, Melbourne

omurice

I don't know why Japanese people seem to be the only ones to have stumbled on the secret formula for amazing food - the addition of rice to other foods (Japanese or otherwise) will increase the awesomeness exponentially. 

Don't trust me? Then you have to try their taco rice. Or if you're looking for a more 'Italian' influence, maybe, some doria, which is essentially a gratin with rice in place of the pasta. And people in Nagasaki swear by their Toruko rice (Turkish rice). 

ga prow gai thai basil chicken

In hindsight, one of the benefits of working at the family restaurant when I was younger was the free meals that came with every shift. Request anything on the menu (and sometimes off the menu), and the cook would whip it up on the spot. Of course, being raised on Thai food my whole life meant I never really appreciated it, and just thought of it as 'food'. It was only when the restaurant closed down and my mum returned to Thailand did I then start to miss Thai food, and also realise that some of the other local Thai restaurants didn't really cut it for me.

It's been almost nine years since the restaurant closed, but I still remember the look the cook would give me every time I requested my meal: Khao Ga Prow Gai, hold the basil. With my limited Thai, I didn't realise what I was saying, and only on a recent trip to Thailand and talking to my mum, did it finally click.  I was asking for 'Basil chicken and rice' without the basil.

Those strange, judgemental looks I received finally make sense.

on my plate - honey soy chicken drumsticks

As much as I enjoy cooking pasta dishes, meat, and desserts, I still have days where I crave the flavours of my mum's home cooking, which for me, involves a lot of Asian food. The moment I saw Curtis Stone's recipe for chicken drumsticks marinated in honey and soy, memories of my mum's baked honey soy chicken wings came flooding back - slightly salty and sweet, juicy wings on a bed of steaming hot jasmine rice to soak up all the deliciously sticky sauce - and knew I had to make this the next day. 

While I stole a page from my mum's book and baked them instead of grilling, they still turned out just fine. The coriander and squeeze of lemon juice were just icing on the cake.... Well, icing on the chicken, anyway. 

curry puff pie

"You know, you should really open your own restaurant!"

It's probably a compliment that is thrown around quite frequently. And while it's only some of the time that people are being sincere and genuinely think that the complimentee (that's a word, right?) would in fact be successful as a restauranteur, even fewer complimentees would actually follow up on that.

My mum was that minority, and while I thought her food was alright, I think it was probably just due to the fact that Thai food wasn't as prevalent in Melbourne when she decided to open up her restaurant, and it was still an exotic, lesser-known food to many. Her food wasn't that unique or fancy; it was just traditional food you'd see regular people eat at home in Thailand.


But if there was one food that garnered the most compliments, it was definitely her curry puffs. These may have single-handedly been the reason why she got the got those "open your restaurants" compliments in the first place, which the made her consider doing the restaurant thing for a few years. Actually, scratch that. They are the sole reason my mum had a restaurant. My mum will never read this blog to deny it, so I'm just going make that statement and say that it's fact.