Buderim Tavern for Christmas Lunch

www.buderimtavern.com.au

This year for Christmas was spent with my family at Mooloolaba. Usually a home cooked dinner is in order for Christmas Day, however this year Dad decided to book us in for a lunch at Buderim Tavern. He emailed me the menu and so it was decided.

The last time I recall going to Buderim Tavern was when I was a kid, and that memory is as vague as remembering they had good vanilla icecream with chocolate topping..... hmmmm.

The Christmas lunch was a set course for $89 per person for a four course meal. Drinks cost extra at the bar. 

We arrived and were promptly seated along with what seemed like hundreds of other people. The great thing about Buderim Tavern is the ‘million dollar views’ of the Sunshine Coast out to the sea. It was certainly worth it just for the view alone.

The bad thing was that as soon as we were seated EVERYONE decided they wanted drinks, so there was a huge queue up at the bar. Fortunately there were 4-5 people serving and they managed to get the line moving quickly enough. 

Little Singapore Uptown

http://www.littlesingapore.com.au/

We’ve already blogged about Little Singapore at Sunnybank, the main branch of the Little Singapore chain. The owners have two other restaurants in the city, one located on Charlotte St and one in the cute little Albert Lane wherein also lies Vapiano and The Tea Centre.

I always complain because there seems to be a lack of places open on a Sunday to eat in the city. All the places I want to go or try are usually shut. On this occasion it was also raining so we didn’t want to hike too far in the wet. I suggested that we walk down to Ajisen Ramen but this idea was quickly shot down by a major downpour. We ducked into Albert Lane and so our choice was made.

Ginga

www.gingarestaurant.com.au

Having Mondays off work, we are sometimes hard-pressed to find somewhere open on a Monday evening to go out for dinner. Throw in a sister who ONLY wants Japanese and the Christmas period and its even more difficult. The only place we thought of was Ginga at South Brisbane. 

We walked around the various restaurants first, and noted with interest there’s a new Japanese place at the performing arts centre end of the restaurant area at Little Stanley/Grey Sts. There was absolutely no one in there though which wasn’t promising, and they didn’t have any salmon sashimi on the menu (another thing little sis was after) so we headed back down to Ginga.

The Rare Pear

www.therarepear.com.au

We’ve visited the Rare Pear at Holland Park for breakfast several times now, but have not been for lunch up until today. Their breakfast menu is fantastic with more than the usual fare, offering things like breakfast bruschetta with tomatoes, asparagus and fetta, French brioche toast, and corn fritters with apple balsamic glaze and chilli jam.

Today we visited for lunch, and found it was fairly busy even on a Monday. It seems a popular place for “ladies who lunch”, as well as for all the local business people. 

The Rare Pear is situated on busy Logan Road, and has an outdoor eating area with only a few tables indoors. There is a large display cabinet offering most of the lunch choices – quiches, pies, wraps, sandwiches, and savoury crepes. Other offerings on the menu include a steak sandwich, savoury mince on corn dough bread and a haloumi open grill. 

Beccofino

www.beccofino.com.au

Last night we had a pre-Christmas gathering with friends at Beccofino at Newstead. I was very keen to go there once I had learnt that was our venue of choice, as I have heard about their amazing pizzas. I was also so in the mood for pizza, having had a very asian themed week with regards to food, I needed some serious carbs. I had also just had a hugenormous workout at the gym so didn't feel nervous about all the pizza calories.

We ordered a couple of bottles of Catalina Sounds Sauvignon Blanc between the 5 of us ($43 per bottle), then decided we would just order 5 pizzas between us to share. I think it might have been a bit presumptuous to think we would all eat a pizza each (the boys would have no troubles but I was a bit worried about us girls), however we definitely wanted to sample a wide range of their pizzas.

Beccofino have two lists; pizza rosse (with their tomato sauce base) and pizza bianche (no sauce base). They also have a range of entrees, mains and pastas but I didn’t really even get beyond the pizza part of the menu to tell you the truth, as soon as I read the list of pizzas I developed a huge creepy smile on my face in anticipation.

The Euro

www.urbanerestaurant.com/the-euro/

It was my birthday last week and I decided to treat myself by convincing L to book us in for dinner at The Euro. We pretty much never go out in the city for dinner and after driving around a few blocks looking for a park, we passed a few interesting looking restaurants and so I’ve decided we need to expand our horizons and try a few of these city options in future.

The Euro is situated right next door to its more expensive sister restaurant Urbane. So we treated ourselves to dinner, but we didn’t TREAT ourselves to dinner! Dinner at Urbane probably requires a more special occasion than my birthday!

Thats certainly not to say The Euro is the ugly stepsister to Urbanes Cinderella. The Euro has a quite impressive menu and a stylish interior. Inside, its a long narrow restaurant with dining areas at the front and rear, separated by a bar area. The ceiling has interesting fluoro red and yellow coloured light fixtures which looked really cool. Unfortunately because of the dark lighting throughout the restaurant and of course me feeling self conscious with the camera as usual, I didn’t take any photos of the interior. All the photos that follow in this post are really dark, sorry!

Little Hong Kong

Lazy day off, had to drive L’s car to the smash repairs (he drove into a pole at the shopping centre), which was near Sunnybank, and decided to stop in somewhere for some lunch.

We drove to Market Square and as usual walked around for ten minutes before finally choosing a place to eat. Finally, we perused the menu outside at Little Hong Kong and decided we would enjoy the food, so went in. 

Little Hong Kong is part of the Little Singapore restaurant chain. There are a few BBQ meat options on the menu, as well as a large variety of noodle, rice and soup dishes. 

Cream Patisserie Boulangerie

www.creamstyle.com.au

Last weekend I had to work ALLLLLLL weekend and by Monday I was tired and grumpy. I had heard one of my workmates go on about her amazing breakfast that she had gone out for on Saturday morning and I decided that it was high time L and I went out for a good breakfast meal. This is something we rarely do, a) because we hardly get up early enough for breakfast on my days off and b) because L doesn’t really like to spend a lot of money on breakfast when he could be spending it on a good lunch or dinner.

I vaguely remembered reading about a couple of places at Coorparoo which isn’t too far from our place so we set off driving in the rain. It doesn’t happen to be very fun trying to find a place that you’ve never been to before in the rain but we somehow managed. We had intended to go to Flute Fine Food on Cavendish Rd, however decided the breakfasts were a bit expensive for us, so sat down at Cream Patisserie instead. 

Cream Patisserie Boulangerie is a quaint French style cafe that offers breakfast, lunches and dinners and also has a large range of pastries in their window for purchase. They offer high teas as well (something that I noted might be good for an occasion or with nanna!) and make specialty cakes for purchase.

Moroccan Lamb Tagine with Sweet Tomato Jam

L got this Moroccan cookbook for Christmas last year and so far has managed to make only one thing out of it, but its been such a success that we've had it a few times and I thought I would share it. 

This is the cookbook here;

The recipe:

• 1.5kg ripe tomatoes
• 1kg lamb shoulder or leg steaks
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 onions coarsely grated
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1/4 tsp saffron threads
• 3 tbsp tomato paste
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1 and 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 30g butter
• 40g blanched almonds

serves 4-6

Siam Samrarn

Siam Samrarn is our “go-to” for Thai food in Brisbane. We went on a huge holiday to Thailand earlier this year and when we returned we were on a hunt for authentic Thai food. A few of the Thai places i’ve visited in Brisbane just haven’t been up to scratch unfortunately. 

When in Thailand, L was in his element, being a chilli freak, he was on the hunt for the spiciest food he could find (I think he even ended up munching on some fresh birds eye chillies just to freak out our fellow tour go-ers). I stuck to trying to find the least spicy foods although I am proud to say I built up more of a tolerance to chilli than I previously had. The most eaten foods for myself were the good ol’ Pad Thai, Mussaman Curry, Tom Kha gai (coconut soup) and stirfried chicken with cashew nuts. Aaaaaaaah, good food times.

Anyway, back to Siam Samrarn. Its located attached to the Coles shopping centre in West End and is ALWAYS packed out. We’ve eaten there too many times to count, but L always orders the same damn dish!!