Grill'd Brookfield Place, Perth
Posted by Burgers & Snags, Fast Food, Perth, Restaurants, Vegetarian | Categories:Since opening earlier this year, Brookfield Place has quickly become something of a food haven in the centre of the CBD. With a plethora of bars, restaurants and cafes all in one complex it’s a wonder those who work in the city ever want to leave! From fine dining at Print Hall and The Trustee, more casual bistro style eating at The Heritage, Asian fusion at The Apple Daily and sweet treats at Theobroma Chocolate Lounge there is sure to be something for everyone.
Grill’d burgers have been around since 2004 and have grown from humble beginnings of a single Hawthorn store in Victoria to now being found across Australia in 50 stores. To coincide with their opening in Brookfield Place, they kindly invited a number of Perth bloggers to come and try the burgers for themselves.
Grill’d burgers are made with fresh, locally sourced ingredients and all burgers are made to order. It was easy negotiating what on their menu I could eat and their chips totally gluten free too. No missing out this time round!
I was impressed to see that this national company still maintained its roots of servicing the local community as a small amount from every burger sold goes toward a local charity of your choice. I chose to donate to “Convicts for a Cause.” This is a fundraising event jointly organised by the Rotary Clubs of Perth and Mt Lawley, Cystic Fibrosis WA and Liver Foundation of WA. Participants in the event opt to be “locked up” in Fremantle Prison and each raises a minimum $500 bail to support people impacted by cystic fibrosis, polio and liver disease.
Seeing as one of my dearest friends is affected by CF, it was obvious to me that this would be my choice. I plopped both of our bottle caps in the jar and waited for our burgers to arrive.
We had spent the earlier part of the evening at the Yelp Elite event at the Terrace Hotel and I was feeling a little on the intoxicated side. I really wasn’t in the mood for any meat and was excited to see that there were several veggie burgers on offer. It was no surprise to many that my choice of burger was the Field of Dreams: a mushroom burger. Mushrooms are amongst my favourite foods and form a daily staple for me in at least one meal a day.
The gluten free buns appeared to be very similar to those found at Snags & Sons and V Burger Bar. Nestled inside the bun sat a succulent grilled field mushroom coated with herbed mayo and topped with tasty cheese. Underneath the ‘shroom were soft roasted peppers and bringing it all together was a massive dollop of basil pesto on the bottom bun. Curiously despite all this juiciness, the bun held together perfectly with no signs of collapsing despite my distinct lack of coordination in eating it.
Boys need real burgers and my beloved Boy was no exception. He ordered the Summer Sunset despite my suggestions that after all the lovely food he ate at The Terrace Hotel; it may push him into the realms of seriously full. I underestimated his appetite this time! His burger contained a thick grilled lean beef pattie that had just the perfect hint of pink in the centre. Grill’d use grass-fed beef which is generally lower in fat meaning if not cooked correctly can taste a little dry and chewy. Thankfully the guys behind the Grill’d grill knew what they were doing and the Boys’ beef was bursting with just as much moist flavour as my mushroom was. His burger also contained avocado, pineapple, crispy bacon and herbed mayo.
Everyone knows a burger isn’t exactly a healthy meal but looking at way Grill’d prepare their burgers and the ingredients they use, you can come pretty close to being somewhat healthy without sacrificing taste. Many burger joints have thankfully jumped on the gluten free bandwagon yet not all of them have gone the whole hog and many do not serve gluten free chips. I was thankful I could enjoy a proper burger meal this time and left vowing to eat bride food for the rest of the week.
Grill’d Brookfield Place 125 St Georges Terrace, Perth 6000 | (08) 9226 4888 | www.grilld.com.au Price: $ Food: 8/10 (up there with the best burgers IMHO) Service: 4/5 (energetic, chatty staff who know their menu) Ambience: 4/5 (music was cranking, dimmed lights, perfect for an after drinks bite) Total: 16/20 Chompchomp was partly compensated with vouchers by Grill’d to write this review of Grill’d Brookfield Place. This in no way affected my option, all opinions are my own. Please read my disclosure policy for further information.Stuffing my face at V Burger Bar
Posted by Burgers & Snags, Desserts, Fast Food, Perth, Pub, Restaurants | Categories:We are not big eaters of classic fast food; I’m talking burgers, pizza, kebabs and the like. Ultimately I prefer much more refined dining but let’s be honest, one simply cannot afford to do that every weekend. At least not on my income. So when we both got a craving for junk, we decided to head to our local V Burger Bar excited about our naughty treat. Last year our initial attempts at visiting this popular place resulted in us being diverted over to Pancho’s Mexican Villa due to a lack of gluten free buns. Now that was some night…..sloppy microwaved food, blistering burns and a scathing retaliation from a fan (or owner) in the wake of my review; the Pancho’s post has certainly become infamous!
We stopped in at The Balmoral for a couple of pre-dinner drinks and bumped into some old friends that we hadn’t seen for a long time. As we chatted away a local band called Retriofit set up in full view of our tables and started playing some funky acoustic covers. After some time our friends departed to make their own dinner reservations leaving us sitting alone together. We were both in such a fabulous mood so we took the opportunity of using some interesting mood lighting to take portraits of each other with Gordon my SLR (yes, I named my camera!)
After several rounds of drinks and photos my post-run hunger started to climax and was accompanied by some rather unladylike noises erupting from deep in my stomach. We skipped across the road to V Burger Bar nearly drooling in anticipation. I had already called ahead to make sure they had gluten free buns in stock.
After briefly scanning their menu my not-so-sober eyes saw the words “fried egg, beetroot, cheese and bacon” and without giving it one more second of thought my decision was made. I vaguely remember the Boy making some comment about how enormous my burger choice was but in my hunger and excitement I didn’t really register or pay much attention. I was quite disappointed to hear that all the sides on their menu are not gluten free but we ordered a serve of their beer battered chips for the Boy anyway.
Our burgers came out in super quick time and we tucked into them immediately. I observed that my F.B.A. (Full Blooded Aussie) burger had a significant amount of extra height in comparison to the Boy’s Blue Mushie burger choice. I actually struggled to get both by hands around it let alone my mouth! As the Boy finished his burger he started to make wise cracks about my eyes being much bigger than my stomach as I was only half way through mine. Thankfully earlier in the day I had run 12 kilometres around the river at a cracking good pace so like a horse being whipped into action I successfully polished off all of my delicious juicy burger! It was faultless!
The Boy really enjoyed his Blue Mushie too. He was surprised how well the burger held together and didn’t crumble or fall apart in his hands. He loved the hint of blue cheese with earthy undertones of the mushrooms and the succulent perfectly cooked meat patty. The chips were less impressive, they lacked the expected crunch of beer battered chips and needed extra seasoning.
Despite feeling like I was literally going to explode I needed something sweet on my palate to end the night. I had recently read about Taro Taro on WenY Wonders Why and was desperate to check it out. I have always LOVED Asian desserts however there isn’t a great amount of options available here in Perth. Given that Taro Taro is a mere ten minutes’ walk from our front door I had high hopes it would be awesome.
It was getting quite late and much of the bustle of the café strip had started to die off however at Taro Taro it was absolutely packed full of customers. We shuffled into the brightly lit store and felt like we had been transported into another world! Despite being such a fan of Asian desserts I have to be honest, I haven’t got to try nearly as many as I would like. This was my first experience trying herbal jelly and taro.
If you are not familiar with Taiwanese desserts the menu can be a little confusing, so to simplify things for ourselves we ordered the Taro Taro Signature Herbal Jelly ice which contained herbal ice, dark black folds of herbal jelly, balls of sweet potato, sago and taro and lots and lots of sugar. Underneath all the intense sweetness, the flavours were quite soft and delicate and the texture of each type of ball was slightly different ranging from jelly like to nearly chewy. I honestly really enjoyed it but I realise it probably isn’t for every Westerner’s palate.
As we sat outside on a park beach we watched more and more cars turned up full of hungry customers all looking for their taro hit. Such a hive of activity in sleepy Vic Park! We will definitely return again but this time I might be brave enough to create my own dessert of the custom menu.
Keep up with the latest on Facebook or Twitter!
The Balmoral Hotel 901 Albany Hwy, Victoria Park 6100 | (08) 9355 4533 | www.thebalmoral.com.au/ Price: $$$ (Entrees $7-23, Mains $22-35, accepts Entertainment Card) V Burger Bar 12/910 Albany Highway, East Victoria Park 6101 | (08) 9355 3702 | www.vburgerbar.com.au/ Price: $$ ($10-15 burgers, accepts Entertainment Card) Food: 7/10 (excellent burgers need to be accompanied by excellent chips) Service: 3/5 (functional and no fuss) Ambience: 3/5 (it’s a burger bar……I don’t expect it to be cosy!) Total: 13/20 Taro Taro Shop 2/ 393 Albany Hwy, Victoria Park 6100 | (08) 9361 0098 | https://www.facebook.com/TaroTaroTaiwan Price: $ ($10-15 desserts) Food: 4/5 (if you love your Asian dessert worth a try!) Service: 4/5 (very efficient considering how busy they are) Ambience: 2/5 (bright white and gleaming) Drinks: 4/5 (good range of teas and other Taiwanese drinks) Total: 15.5/20Mexican Madness I A tale of two restaurants: Pancho's Mexican Villa
Posted by Mexican, Perth, Restaurants | Categories:Part One | Part Two
I have been keen to try the popular V Burger Bar for absolutely ages, so after creating much hype with the boy all day (including performing a little dance that he calls my Homer dance), we journeyed down to the Albany Highway café strip to give their burgers a shot. To my extreme disappointment I was to find they had run out of gluten-free buns! I was so devastated! I had been conjuring up images of sinking my teeth deep into a juicy burger for much of the day and nearly stamped my feet like a child in the middle of the restaurant due to my exasperation.
Walking out of the restaurant I could see the dismay on the boy’s face too. I know how much he loves nachos, so I made what ended up being a very bad decision and suggested we stroll over to Pancho’s Mexican Villa instead. We walked by all the tried and tested Thai and other Asian joints and walked down the dirty mall corridor into a packed and noisy restaurant.
Service started off a little slow leaving us sitting thirsty and peckish for long enough to notice. As I perused the menu I was pleased to see there were plenty of gluten-free options and figured that all I needed to do was stay well away from any salsas to avoid the onion. We started off with some strawberry daiquiris – this is the boy’s favourite drink when we were in Thailand. Unfortunately none of our memories came flooding back to us when presented with this toxic looking beverage. It came out a strange bright fluorescent red colour and was sickeningly sweet presumably with the A to Z of all things artificial. Not exactly my kind of drink but with a half of a bottle of Cloudy Bay Chardonnay already in me I was willing to compromise and just go with the flow.
For entrées we ordered some dips with corn chips and some potato skins to share. Our dips came out after a short delay without the accompanying potato skins entrée. As we chatted and tapped our feet to the horrific mix of 80’s tunes playing, we ate our first half of our entrée and I began to wish we had stopped at Little Ying Thai instead. The corn chips tasted commercially made and the dips were very oily and bland. The guacamole was basically just mashed avocado with minimal lemon juice, tomato, spices or salt added. The Queso dip tasted like the plastic cheese that you get in little cheese sticks for children’s lunch boxes but melted down into goop a bowl. I avoided most of the chilli con carne dip as I figured it would most likely have some onion in it. I had a very small taste of it which proved to be watery and as tasteless as the rest of the dips.
As we nibbled away and wondered where our skins were, a waiter zoomed past our table with a sizzling plate of hot food. As he walked past us big spats of hot oil came showering over the top of me and left a couple of blisters on my neck. I wasn’t sure if I was being a bit of a sook but it was stinging a fair bit! The boy gave a quick glance at my neck in the dim light and could see little blisters starting to form on my skin! I gestured to the waiter and explained to him what had happened. He said he would talk to his manager however unfortunately that was all we heard from him all night. No apology was forthcoming, nor was any discount or compensation offered.
Slowly but surely we managed to work our way through our fairly dismal entrées. We are normally fairly speedy eaters but these dips were by no means delicious. Finally our mains were brought to our table however we were still without our second entrée. We let the waiter know that we were expecting another entrée and we were informed that it was on the way.
I ordered the Cajun camarons – this was described on the menu as northwest sizzling prawns, dusted in spices, served with rice and vegetables. I figured a meat dish with spices and no sauces would be an easy way to avoid onion as it was already marked on the menu as gluten-free. The prawns came out sizzling in about half a cup of stale oil which drenched through the whole remainder of the dish. The vegetables that accompanied the meal consisted of a soggy slop of cooked grated carrot, zucchini and capsicum with micro-heads of mushy broccoli. It was so overcooked the vegetables had progressed in texture to become more of a stringy mash. The oil from the prawns soaked right through the vegetables to give everything on the plate an unpleasant and nearly rancid aftertaste. The rice was about the only thing edible on the plate and although that was a little overcooked; in my hunger I still ate it.
The boy ordered his beef nachos. They were unmemorable and a bit soggy and he had very little to comment about them at all.
Once we had both finished our main meals our second entrée finally appeared. At this point in time we had to laugh. I was expecting some crisp skins, ones that you could eat with your fingers – a little like wedges but less meaty, with maybe some kind of sauce (we chose beef). Nothing prepared me for the mountain of mush that was put in front of us. We started to eat it but found all the oil, cheese and sour cream piled high on top of a barely existent poor potato skin proved as inedible as the rest of our meals. I gestured to the waiter to take it away before I started to feel ill.
It has been nearly ten years since I have eaten Mexican – we ate it often when we lived in London as there were a couple of favourite places we used to visit. I am reluctant to even eat it again after this experience but we are going to give it another shot and hit up another Mexican place in my next blog …. Stay tuned……
Price: $$ ($10-16 Entrée, $17-27 Mains) Food: 0.5/5 (near on revolting) Service: 2/5 (service with a smile and a scar to make sure you never forget) Ambience: 3/5 (a packed restaurant gives good vibe) Drinks: 2/5 (too toxic and artificial for me but cheap) Pancho’s Mexican Villa Restaurant 885 Albany Hwy, East Victoria Park 6101 | (08) 9361 2135 | www.panchos.com.au