Red Silks Restaurant and Bar (2nd Visit, Lunch Visit)

Level 1, 200 Bourke Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000

Melbourne weather: 40+ degs

Red Silks 2nd visit in a period of one month says something about this place doesn't it. When I blogged the last visit, a) it was for dinner and b) I didn't have pictures.
http://melb-licious.blogspot.com/2009/01/red-silks-restaurant-bar.html


For lunch they have a special lunch menu with about 8 dishes for around $8-9 and on top of that you can order a non-alcoholic drink for only an extra $1 and a house wine for $3. Talk about value. The drinks are around the $3.80. So think about that, that is even better than the drink discounts you get at Dessert House.


Overall the selection were pretty standard dishes but the quality was there whilst the quantity lacked. Though 4 of those dishes plus our drinks did fill most of us up. For an average of $10 it still ain't so bad.



Red Silk did not dissapoint and the service was very good. At first the waiter could only sit us in the corner where it was pretty hot, and without him even knowing that we felt hot there, a few minutes later he told us wecould move us to a cooler spot. Now that is customer service.

Pictures to Enjoy :)

Spicy Chicken

(Real Spicy for a 40 deg day)

Rice Noodle with Braised Beef
(Yummy and not a bad serving size)



Prawns with Egg Chiffon
(Maybe not the best dish to order if you want to get full, but overall not too bad)

Lemongrass Chicken

(Yummy)

Mango juice with pearls +
Passionfruit with pearls
(The drink wasn't cold enough to beat the heat)

7up with Icecream

(self explanatory)

~ Slow

Cho Gao, Singapore Chom Chom, Dessert House, Old Town Cafe, Mekong, Claypot King

This blog entry is just a quick entry to give a general jist of these places. Though most deserves their own entry I don't any pictures to back them up or put them down ofcourse.

Cho Gao (1 thumb up)
Melbourne Central, Level 3, 211 La Trobe St, Melbourne, VIC

A blast to the past (2007). Thanks to a friend I was able to try out a free sample of Cho Gao. From the exterior it already intriguing and when you step into it you know and appreciate that you are in Melbourne (if that makes sense on a certain level). The service was slow but that can be excused because they had just opened. For some pictures of the deco it can be easily searched up on the net.

Sadly again no pictures of the food. The prices listed though was abit too expensive for the average student and ofcourse is meant more for the true melbourne crowd or visiting tourists. If you go up to level 3 it isn't hard to miss.

Singapore Chom Chom (2 thumbs down)
188 Bourke St, Melbourne, Vic 3000

Back in my earlier years in Melbourne I used to like this place for the reasonable food and not so bad looking girls (I'm a guy so I can mention it right...). Then one day when we decided to eat there something happened...a 180. Very dissapointed and haven't stepped in since. There are many other places to eat. eg. Dessert House

Dessert House (2 thumbs up, Not such a dessert house)
313 Swanston St, Melbourne, VIC
OR
200 Bourke St, Melbourne, VIC

Take your pick in which location you want to eat because it is hardly going to make a difference. Any time you walk pass these locations (most of the time) it will be moderately or fully crowded. One of the best place to grab something which is a) a big serving, b) a reasonable price within the city, c) a pretty good tasting dish. Another I like about Dessert House is that none are located on Chinatown because you know there won't be lady workers at the front of the door trying to get you in. They also do a great discount on drinks when you eat there.

As for the desserts, well it ain't so bad but stick to the main dishes. I've tried a tuna dessert crepe (not worth it :) ).

Old Town Cafe (I think that is what it is called) (1 thumb down)
Swanston Street

If you ever walk along Swanston and see this place you might realize that it is almost the same concept and food menu as Dessert House. Had a wonton noodle soup. For the same price, I would walk another block towards Dessert House.

Mekong (2 thumbs up)
241 Swanston StMelbourne, VIC 3000

Bill Clinton had two bowls. Not to mention all the other asian celebrities on the walls.

Famous for the Pho, for a reasonable price, why not. Popular with anyone who is or comes to Melbourne. Mekong is worth it.

Claypot King (2 thumbs down)
Swanston Street

I've eaten here twice and personally I don't feel any love towards it. Something about it just leaves you feeling nothing.

Dragon Boat Palace (All you can eat for Lunch)

149 Lonsdale St. Melbourne 3000

NOTE: Not sure if the All You Can Eat Lunch is still on.

I'm sad because I don't have any pictures of the destruction we made. Using our trusty graphics calculator after we left we calculated we ate more per person than we paid. From my fading memory I remembered the food wasn't that great but reasonable considering it is all you can eat. Overall, it was worth it if you go when the lunch buffet starts, if you have time to spare, and if you and your friends are bears.

The only memory of it I have was located on my phone - Our final yum cha ticket.

Little Lamb

264 Russell Street, Melbourne, VIC

If you want to come here for a quick eat for dinner don't count on it. That was the idea going in...but we didn't realize it would take almost 2 hrs for dinner and we didn't even take the dinner all-you-can-eat for $23.90 option (Yep, you can order as much as you want).

Taken with my mobile phone here are pictures of what we ordered. Note that you have to order the soup to be able to cook the food and you had three options: 1 was $10, and the other 2 were $15.

A $15 Soup Pot (Half - Spicy)

Dumplings as a side dish. Pretty good.

The rest of the above were what we ordered to cook in the giant bowl of boiling soup.

It came to out to $50.50 for 3 of us so considering if we had more time I would have taken the all-you-can-eat. The chinese tea was again good :)

There are alot of Korean Places around Melbourne City so is this place value for money? Nothing was bad so if you had a big appetite head on over to Little Lamb.

Post-Deng Cafe

214-216 Little Bourke St

Melbourne 3000 VIC

I realized there is no structured style to my blogs and it all depends on my mood when writing one. So that being said I'm feeling about 30 degs at the moment.

Waking up late on a lazy Saturday morning and starving to death, my sister and I went in search of a place to eat. Ended up in Chinatown and since Lemon Bistro was closed for some reason (have to try another time), we ended up in Post-Deng Cafe. No, I didn't go into the place because the asian woman who always stands in front of the restaurant convinced me to. Personally I find most of them a turn off / annoying.

Having cheap lunch specials on their board was the convincing part but then inside we opted for the $12.50 per person (2 person) yum cha lunch banquet. There was another banquet called executive or business banquet for the same price.

Yum Cha Lunch Banquet

- a bowl of chicken corn soup (each)

- a plate of only 2 springrolls and 4 wontons

- a yum cha sample of a BBQ pork bun, a sweet bun, a shang hai dumpling, and those 2 other standard yum cha pieces that I can't seem to spell but you can easily work them out. (each)



- a bowl of rice or/ fried rice (each)


- unlimited chinese tea!

Verdict:

On the plus side it filled us up. On the downside most of it was way below average like I could even make better fried rice. The soup and the springrolls were average. The best part of the meal would be the yum cha items where each were atleast decent and didn't seem like they were frozen products. I could drink cups of chinese tea (as always).

From user reviews the service has been criticized and I shall second that. Though the girls seems like very nice people they were fooling around (eg. giggling, tickling, (yes, it all sounds good), and just talking loudly) when not attending customers (it wasn't busy at that time though). At one time when we wanted a chinese tea refill it took 5 mins to grab the attention of one of them because no one was even at the front half of the restaurant since I could see all of the staff gathered around the back.

Was it worth $12.50 each?

It would better to invest in maybe a nice sushi box. Melbourne Central Sushi Sushi on Lonsdale side $13.50 for the bento box...yummy! Or even the Hiyabishi box (might be spelled wrong) for $8.60 from O'Bento MC foodcourt.

The music was decent but everything else didn't seem to be up to standards. Maybe they perform better at dinner but I can't / wouldn't confirm that because I doubt I'll be going back to that place soon since there are many other better options in Chinatown.

The Melb-Licious Cookie Logo

" COOKIE LOGO V.1! "

~ Just wait till I bake the real one

The London

92 Beach Street
Port Melbourne, VIC

First time out in Port Melbourne for a 20th Birthday dinner. Situated right next to the beautiful bay, The London stands with its plain exterior so why go in?

"To see is to desire, to taste is to experience." - slow88

Personally I would have rathered desired.

Liftoff! I have pictures thanks to Superman's sidekick's friend.

Food?

The London Burger
I have no picture for this burger but I can tell you Superman liked it cause it was pack full of meat. Plus it came with a FREE golf ball (which wasn't described in the menu) thanks to certified Angus Beef Australia. Thank you golf ball for reassuring me that I wasn't given fake angus beef.

The sides were wedges with a chilli sour cream dipping and it was so good that I could eat a whole bowl full (no, it does not count as junk!).

Since I took the burger and so did Superman, I didn't really like it to be honest. It was abit too much.

Chicken Parma


Fettucine with salmon

The pasta would have been better with less salmon. A reasonable sized pasta for the price you pay.

Chicken Burger (99.99% sure that this is it)

Average dish prices for the above? $17-$20.

Deco?

The London was simple and simple is never a bad thing. We were sitted downstairs but the upstairs according to their website is elegant.

Music?

Now what really made this place great while some people might hate is OLD SCHOOL MUSIC. ..Aqua, Bewitched, 80s, 90s pop OMG + videoclips. Does this mean London loves their 90s? Go London. A great way to bring back childhood memories and to get occassional friends to randomly sing it cause they just can't help it.

Service?

Service was great maybe cause it wasn't so busy. The staff were patient, friendly, gave enough space for us to enjoy, and even stuck a photo of the bday girl as requested on the birthday cake (a cheaper way to do a photo cake btw. Imagine a cake and a photo just standing on top of it instead of flat on the cake).

Would I go back?

I've decided that I shan't do this question anymore cause I'm only one person, and one person cannot represent everyone.

Is it worth it for you to try?

If you around Port Melbourne and can't decide where to go then The London is worth a try and sit outside to experience the view. The prices are reasonable with the amount of food you get and the taste.

A place to hang with friends, eat, drink,...and listen to 90s music.

Welcome to Melb-licious

Welcome hungry people,

The quick, unnecessary introduction:

I've been in Melbourne for 3 years now and lived in the city for 2. I don't go around eating much though. Wish I could. So beware if things do get abit slow around here.

I have no grammer and sentence structure so if you get annoyed by missing commas (which I ignore the proper use of), and the over-use of 'ands',...

"WELCOME TO MELB-LICIOUS where all you get are food reviews and not english classes."

The purpose of this blog being written by someone who seems to write too much:

Being a student I require food in my tummy and sometimes I can't be bothered to cook at home or bring sandwiches to uni. I wouldn't say this blog is aimed more towards students or else I would be blogging Maccas and their Happy Meals (though their $1.95 double beef and cheese ain't so bad). I can't anyways cause my 09' resol is still in effect - 'no junk meals'.

I shall stop writing and hope you enjoy this food blog on Melbourne food as much as I hope to enjoy writing it. Please, please, please contribute by posting comments and letting me know there are readers.

Red Silks Restaurant & Bar

101/200 Bourke Street MELB, VIC

Sadly this first post contains no pictures because the first thing you should learn about me is that I'm embarrassed to take photos of food which would make this food blog boring.

"How am I suppose to choose what to eat if I can't see what it looks like in the menu? So how the heck is this guy going to convince me to eat there if there ain't any bloody pictures?"

A good excuse though would be that I didn't have a camera on me. I promise I'll try my best to get over my fear of taking pictures.

I remember coming to this place almost 2.5 years ago for the first ever Friday night dinner with my then-new uni friends but I was too cheap to even try anything. Today, Superman wanted to try it cause he heard it was popular with asian students... so it must be cheap. "Wait?" you ask..."Aren't you asian?" Yes I am.

Food Ordered: Red Silk Special Braised Pork ($20), Char Kui Teow ($8.50), XO sauce and crab meat chinese donut (NOTE: something like that haha) ($17).

Total Cost: Hmm taking away the Long Island Ice Tea cocktail ($12), that would be $45.50.

No. Of People Eating: 3.

Who? Me, my sister, and Superman.
Why Who? So you know who we are and what kindof food critic we are.

So...what did we think?

Red Silk Special Braised Pork:
Slices of pork + sauce +... wait for it...half an apple sliced into small thin pieces. Did it work? To a certain extent...wouldn't order it again but that would be cause I would want to try everything else of the menu first. The pork wasn't chewy and cooked very nicely. Something was missing though... Sis kept eating the apple slices, maybe cause we never really take fruit. Not to mention there was abit of chinese veges hidden below the reasonable serving of pork and the second thing to know about me is that I love chinese my chinese veges (especially chinese broccoli).

Char Kui Teow:
Dessert House is cheap and serves heaps. Red Silk is even cheaper (by a dollar I would think), serving is smaller (3 almost filled rice bowls), but I would have to say it was better than most places I've tried. It is what you want your char kui teow to be and a tad bit better.

XO sauce and crab meat chinese donut:
So glad we picked it cause it wasn't something I've ever tried before and I ate all the sauce which can't be healthy for me if I just ate the sauce. The donut was different and I like different. For $17 I would say this is more worth it than the pork. We got about 7-8 reasonable sized chinese donuts in a plate of yummy sauce.

Setting?

We sat inside because it was 37 deg today in Melbourne so yeah...we were asked whether we wanted inside or outside on the balcony, and Superman replied outside...the waiter asked again whether he was sure. Pictures of the place can be seen on other websites so you can be the judge. Deco wasn't so bad and the music was irritating at first. The third thing you should know about me is that I dislike music without words.

It wasn't full at the time so I can't really say what it would be like when RMIT / international students flock in.

Would I go back?

My sis said she would and I probably would too if I had the money to order the main dishes (since Red Silk main dishes tries to be different to your typical asian restaurant). If you are looking for a quick eat though and not so fussy on serving portions, based on the Char Kui Teow I would recommend the smaller one person dish where the prices fall around $8.50.

"One review under my belt makes me a food critic right?"