Night Out in Northbridge

My fiance and I went to Northbridge last night.  It was just because 1: we wanted to have time away from his parents (:p), 2: my fiance’s friend and his girlfriend flew from Singapore/Malaysia 2 days ago and staying in Perth for 5 days, so maybe we could catch up with them.  Though we weren’t so hungry we were just wondering around to find a place where we can sit down and call the friends what they’re doing. As we enter the centre of Northbridge I noticed there are lots of racing-type cars and many people were gathering around them. …wow what’s going on? :p

My fiance told me that maybe they just finish a race somewhere and were having dinner. The road was closed and these cars were parked on James St.

Then we proceeded to find a place to sit down!  We didn’t feel like eating “proper dinner food”, so we decided to munch on a kebab.

We went to Alto’s Kebab House on 39 Lake St. I had a chicken kebab with sour cream and sweet chili sauce. It’s nice that you can choose as many kinds of sauces as you want. ( I only got 2 sauces anyway though)

The bread (pitta?) was not that thin but not too thick, and kinda chewy. I remember I had a kebab in somewhere Margaret River and the bread was like 1.5 cm thick, and I didn’t like it :p I liked this chewy texture on Alto’s bread, but I also don’t mind if it was little thinner and crispy texture.

In the end we found out that friends were watching movie at Garden City, so we just headed to il gelato and I had a scoop of chocolate cinnamon – flavor of the month. My fiance had a scoop of pistachio at Gelare.

While we were eating dessert, all the racers started to drive away. .. with a extreme noise. :p   That recalled a memory of a Tokyo trip when I was 15.  It was a school trip to Tokyo Disneyland and the surrounding area, and we were staying at Tokyo Bay hotel.  That night, as it was almost 1 am and I was so tired after a whole day at Tokyo Disneyland, I was in the bed about to sleep.  Then, suddenly I heard a huge noise thru the window.  A noise of cars or motorbikes!  Some people must had been enjoying their night race or something… but it was toooo noisy! (>0<)  I couldn’t sleep.  After a while the noise stopped, (I think someone called polices maybe) but I was really pissed that night..   Watching car race is fun!  but not when you want to sleep ..

Soy Sauce

There are numbers of ingredients which are essential in Japanese cuisine.  The most important one is soy sauce, I believe.  Some people think that all Japanese food is seasoned with soy sauce (which is not true :p ) Some Japanese people do carry a small bottle of soy sauce when travel around the world.   Now, what is soy sauce anyway?  Soy sauce is called “Shouyu” in Japanese, and there are variety of flavors.  Standard soy sauce is a fermented sauce made from soy beans, roasted wheat, salt and water.  From what I have read the roasted wheat gives the aroma to the soy sauce.

Here are 8 popular types used in Japan (and in other world too).

Koikuchi:

This is the “standard” of Japanese soy sauce.  It is made from equal amounts of soy beans and wheat.

Usukuchi: 

This is a light Japanese soy sauce. It is used regularly in cooking. Even though its name means “light seasoned”and “Thin Taste”, Usukuchi soy sauce actually contains more salt than the standard Koikuchi sauce.  This soy sauce has lighter color than normal soy sauces, so it doens’t overwhelm the color of food.  Therefore people chose to use this soy sauce when they want to retain the color of ingredients in the dish.  (eg: Osuimono (clear soup)

Tamari: 

This sauce is made mainly from soy beans. There is only a small amount of wheat added. The flavor is richer than Koikuchi Shoyu.

These days..

It’s been rainy days …   I found that the roads in Perth tend to have lots of small puddles when it rains.  These puddles really scare me off … when I drive in the rain my car floats on the water, and I think “aah, this is the end of my life ..” :p  Never had such experience before I came to Perth..  I think the road condition or drain system is not really good here.

By the way Matsuri Japanese restaurant opened it’s second shop today.  The new place is not a restaurant, it’s a takeaway shop, so I think they open only for lunch time selling bento or donburi type of food.  It’s in the city, near the new Woolworth on St George Tce.

Next Cafe

Next Cafe, a newly opened car themed cafe is located on Ardross street in Applecross. Although the size of the cafe is not that big, I was pretty impressed by their service and menu.

As I entered the cafe a lady (staff) gave me a big smile and kindly showed us their menu. I had to sit down and think what to have… they have a wide range of drink menu.

They have normal cappuccino and also some unique flavored coffees such as Iced Strawberry Espresso with Soda and Hawaiian Coffee, as well as Iced Red Bean and Iced Fruit Punch. One of their menu “Passion Me” is often consumed in Italy in summer, as the combination of passion fruit juice and coffee gives very sweet and refreshing taste. “Alpes Coffe” is named after its looking – a white snow (thick milk froth) topped on a double espresso and hazelnut syrup.

After browsing the menu for few minutes, my fiance and I decided to have orange latte and coconut cappuccino.

The staff asked me if I needed some sugar with coffee. I told her “no” as I don’t usually put sugar to my coffee. Then she said “this coffee is already pretty sweet.” I tasted orange latte, and it was, yes, really sweet! Ummm it was too sweet to me but I’m sure lots of people will like this type of sweet coffee. Then I tried coconut cappuccino; it smelled coconut syrup, but didn’t really taste coconut. :p Well, I loved nicely brewed coffee and fluffy milk froth very much though. The decoration on the milk froth was really cute, and I could feel that these coffee were made with care.

i will definitely come back here to try other drinks. Currently they are doing “$2.00 coffee on Tuesday” and “$3.50 cake on Thursday”.

Oh, and, I loved their interior too

Kit Kat in Japan-2

I’ve wrote about Kit Kat long time ago (here) featuring the unique flavors of Japanese Kit Kat, and recently I had a chance to try few of them. A couple, friends of mine, just came back from Japan last week and brought me some Kit Kat as a souvenir.

I still like Sakura flavor, Maccha green tea flavor and strawberry cheesecake flavor!