Chadz Chickenhaus
Posted: April 21, 2012 Filed under: Places we like to eat at | Tags: cheap eats, Filipino food, Filipino restaurants, Melbourne, Sunshine, western suburbs 7 Comments »
Chadz Chickenhaus, 475 Ballarat Rd, Sunshine.
It seems I may have hit Chadz Chickenhaus at a not particularly auspicious time.
There’s quite a few people milling about the front counter/bain-marie, waiting for various takeaway orders. Progress seems to be slow even though staff members are rushing here and there.
Despite having a somewhat rocky relationship with Filipino food, to me the bain-marie contents look pretty good.
But I stick with Plan A – I’ve come here to try their butterflied chicken and chips.
A little under half the tables are occupied, but all of them are littered with debris from previous meals and previous patrons.
Plates, bowls, cutlery, cans, straws, chicken bones and all sorts of food are all over the place – including on the floor.
After I place my order – half chicken chips with a can of soft drink ($10) – things look up as a young man starts to slowly clear the mess away. Slowly but methodically.
He gives it away, though, after clearing every table except mine. The floor stays the same.
I am summoned to the front counter to pick up my meal.
The serviette dispenser is empty.
The chips are poor and not hot enough, and the sweet, sticky sauce from the chicken has about half of them sodden.
I eat most of them anyway, on account of being hungry.
The chicken is just OK – far short of the sensation for which I am hoping. A bit tired and scrappy, lacking zing.
It’s tender enough, though, and the sauce is quite nice.
Average is the word.
As I leave, the scraps of my lunch join those of the table’s previous tenants.
Loving the sort of food we do at Consider The Sauce, and the kind of places that produce it, we learn to not be too fussy, to go with the flow and happily accept and even expect and joyfully embrace ups and down of various kinds with good humour and optimism.
We don’t like, want or expect fine dining or the service levels that go with it.
But … maybe just a bad day, eh?
For a different perspective on Chadz Chickenhaus, check out the review at Footscray Food Blog.
Kabayan Filipino Restaurant And Asian Groceries
Posted: March 7, 2011 Filed under: Places we like to eat at, Places we like to shop at | Tags: cheap eats, Filipino food, Filipino restaurants, Melbourne, western suburbs 10 Comments »
Cairnlea Town Centre, 100 Furlong Rd, Cairnlea. Phone 8390 1346
In its relatively short life, Consider The Sauce has written about just two Filipino eateries – Kabayan and Kowloon House.
Yet because of the nifty, superb blogging platform provided by wordpress.com, and some additional data from StatCounter, I know for a fact that the entries on both those Filipino western suburbs joints, along with Filipino food and restaurants in general, generates more interest and search engine terms than just about anything else.
The interest comes from all over the world, but mostly from the Philippines – of course! – and Melbourne.
And each time we’ve been to Kabayan, one or more of the Filipino customers has made inquiries:
“Do you like Filipino food?”
“Are you enjoying your meal?”
That interest and intrigue mirrors my own as I set off to check out the newly revamped and reopened Kabayan.
It’s been moved around the corner to larger premises that allow the incorporation of a modest grocery section.
Other than that, much seems the same as on our previous visit.
This time, though, I give the grilled-to-order meals a miss and try my luck with the pot food arrayed in the bain marie.
And this time, thanks to a young Filipino man who talks me through the dishes available, I have a good idea of what I’m eating.
Here’s the deal – two dishes with rice for $9.50.
I settle on afritada and paksiw.
The chicken afritada is a braise/stew affair, with chook pieces on the bone and vegetables in a reddish sauce/gravy. It’s a sweet dish with a dash of the piquant about it – thus making it a little like your old-school Cantonese sweet-and-sour concoction, but much wetter.
It’s OK, but the chicken pieces are of negligible flavour.
The paksiw is something else entirely.
From what I’ve since learnt, paksiw is apparently a vinegar-based stew, in my case of pork. The various recipes and info I find online make it sound interesting.
I wish what’s on my plate was half so appealing.
The dish has some tasty gravy that nevertheless seems bereft of vinegar zing, some fine and tender pork – but, oh my, there’s soooooo much fat.
In at least a couple of different contexts – traditional roast pork crackling and Chinese roast meats – I am usually easily swayed into enjoying such decadence.
But in this dish, there is nothing at all crackly or crunchy or alluring about the fat and skin – it’s all flabby, revolting, and mixed in with the sauce/gravy
Gross!
After eating what meat there is, I leave more than half the dish on my plate.
And so I depart Kabayan once more feeling that I am missing something, that I am simply not “getting it”.
Ah well, maybe that’s the way it’s meant to be – still, I find it surprising.
I am far from the most courageous diner around, but I like or love a wide range of cooking that ranges from the Mediterranean and the Middle East to the farthest reaches of East and South Asia.
Given that, I’ve been thinking Filipino food should be a natural fit.
But based on my very limited experience, the textures and flavours – not to mention the fat content! – are just too rich and unappealing for my palate.
Kabayan does fine grilled-to-order meals, of course, but at $12+ even those seem a stretch, given I can easily grab some Viet dishes that are similar, have more vegie contrasts and trimmings, and are cheaper and tastier.
And maybe that’s the rub right there …
Perhaps not so incoincidentally, as I am writing this Ms Baklover – reviewing First Taste at Footscray Food Blog – has opined:
My palate is heavily skewed towards fresh, light Vietnamese, Malaysian and South Indian flavours.
Very eloquent!
And, I suspect, the very reason I am struggling with Filipino food.
Kowloon House
Posted: October 31, 2010 Filed under: Places we like to eat at | Tags: cheap eats, Filipino food, Filipino restaurants, Kowloon House, Laverton, Melbourne, western suburbs 3 Comments »
1A Triholm Ave, Laverton. Phone: 9369 4121
One of my fondest (tastiest) memories of my St Kilda years is of a modest little food shop at the Espy end of Fitzroy St.
Cleopatra’s was basically a takeaway joint, though a couple of tables meant it could just about pass for a restaurant – and that’s precisely how I used it on countless occasions over many years.
The family that ran it was delightful and friendly, and their Lebanese food was stupendously fine – I have particularly mouth-watering recall of the chicken skewers and housemade lemonade.
As that end of Fitzroy St became increasingly cluttered with slick restaurants, Cleopatra’s migrated up the road to full restaurant status opposite the Junction Oval. By then I’d moved west, so visits were few.
And then it was gone.
(If anyone knows if the family concerned is still in the food business, please let me know!)
Cleopatra’s and its fine food had, of course, nothing at all to do with the famed empress or the land she ruled.
The name, I’ve always presumed, signalled an earlier and less sophisticated era of Australian foodiness, when citizens needed to be hit over the head with signposts of the most basic and banal and not necessarily all that accurate kind.
Same deal with Kowloon House in Laverton – likewise, it has little or nothing to do with Kowloon. Although it does trade in fried noodles, laksas and tom yum dishes, it’s another Filipino hot spot.
We’d already checked out Kabayan Filipino Restaurant in Cairnlea, and we’re very much looking forward to the Philippine Fiesta at the Melbourne Showgrounds in a couple of weeks.
So my solo trip to Kowloon House, which I’d spied on my many commutes by train to Geelong, on a typical Melbourne spring day (pelting down with rain) was more by way of tuning up.
It’s a cheerful and welcoming place, and whatever it’s dependence on clientele that prefers other southeast Asian dishes, it’s clearly Filipino at heart – as a bain marie of defiantly funky-looking stew dishes and array of groceries attest.
Once again I was confronted with the choice between bain marie and grilled dishes, opting for tapsilog, a rice-based dish that seems to be a breakfast meal that has come to have wider applications.
I liked it a lot.
The garlic rice was fluffy and flecked with egg. The fried egg was perfect. The marinated beef (I forgot to ask what exactly it was marinated in) was black, tough, chewy, but went real well with the little bowl of soy sauce-laced vinegar provided for dipping. And the little bundle of pickled papaya salad added another touch of piquancy.
It was a meal of happiness but also one of dubious healthiness!
The takeaway/catering menu of Kowloon House lists a revolving cast of daily specials: Tapsilob, halo-halo, pinakbet, sisig, caldareta, chicken adobo, monggo, dinuguan, ginatang langka, medudo, okoy, sinigang na baboy, turon.
Having just finished, ahem, digesting Google/Wikipedia explanations for most of them, I realise my Filpino food journey has a long way to go!
Kabayan Filipino Restaurant
Posted: October 17, 2010 Filed under: Places we like to eat at | Tags: Cairnlea, cheap eats, Filipino food, Filipino restaurants, Kabayan Filipino Restaurant, Melbourne, western suburbs 11 Comments »
Shop 10/100 Furlong Rd, Cairnlea. Phone: 8390 1346
PLEASE NOTE: More recent review of revamped Kabayan can be found here.
We’ve spied Filipino groceries in Footscray, Braybrook and St Albans, but we’ve never been to the Philippines, and the only Filipino food we’ve seen ready to buy and eat has been that of two stalls in the food hall of the Market That Doesn’t Allow Cameras.
And that food, to cowardly us, has always looked more than a little daunting.
Happily, we had a brief conversation with Adrian of Food Rehab at the Food Bloggers’ Mad Hatter Spring Picnic regarding Filipino food, him telling us that the stuff can sometimes look ugly but taste terrific. He also suggested some dishes for newbies, but I wasn’t on the ball enough to take notes, and gave us the tip on this fascinating eatery out Deer Park way.
We’re happy to have made its acquaintance, and have had some tasty food there, but are still far from convinced we have any sort of handle on Filippino food.
On a weekend lunch, Bennie and I bypass the bain marie and opt for the simple grilled dishes – he ordering the chicken skewers with garlic fried rice ($10.50) and me the pork chop with ditto accompaniment ($9.50).
It’s already been a long day and we’re Very Hungry, so we top up with a couple of segments of Filippino sausage ($1.50 each) and an interesting looking slab of fried eggplant ($5).
Our main dishes are tasty but plain. Bennie’s chicken is beaut – and has a distinct Japanese teriyaki sweetness about it. My two pork chops are a little less tender, but no less toothsome. I suspect the charred rind and fat is meant to be treated as simply part of the meal deal, but I fastidiously set it aside. The rice is OK, but nothing particularly notable.
These two platters are very similar to the meat and rice dishes we find in Viet restaurants, or the Hainan chicken rice and nasi lemak of Malay places, with similar trimmings of cucumber and tomato slices but much less seasoning or spiciness.
Bennie gobbles up the smallish sausage segments, but I find them dull.
In some ways, the eggplant is the star of the day. What I presume is half a large eggplant sliced in half lengthways has been flattened and coated an extremely eggy batter. It all tastes good, and has that delectable smoky tang we associate with eggplant dips of Middle Eastern cuisines. It’s hefty for a side dish – something like a vegetarian steak, in fact – and seems to lend credence to the “ugly but good” theory.
As we amble away quite satisfied, Bennie opines: “That was like Asian food but not really!”
I know what he means.
We would have liked to have known more about the food we were ordering and eating (including the correct Filipino names), but the staff were busy and, perhaps, a little shy or taken aback by our interest. However, whatever our disappointment with our experience here, we are happy to confess it surely has at least as much to do with our ignorance of Filipino food as anything else.
Next time, we’ll revert to bain marie mode. On a previous visit, I’d had a ridiculously oily but otherwise awesome beef stew with spuds and carrot in a sweetish red gravy, and a minced pork concoction with peas and potato. Served with plain rice, the combo cost $9.
On the day of our grilled lunch visit, the bain marie hosts an interesting looking dish of beef tongue with a mushroom sauce, another of beef on the bone in a peanut sauce and a couple of fish dishes.
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