The Coffee Club, West End

On new years eve I decided to go to The Coffee Club where I figured I could get a decent burger or steak to mark the occasion.  When I was seated and had perused the menu, the 200g eye fillet looked the most appealing, so I ordered it rare with mushroom sauce.  It came with chips and a salad, the latter of which I had no intention of eating.  The chips had a nice crispiness to them and were seasoned with barbecue salt, which I appreciated.  However, other than that, they were fairly standard cafe chips.  I could tell right away that the steak I received was not rare.  It was medium-rare to medium.  Moreover it looked to be of low quality, but as I soon learned looks can be deceiving.  The accompanying mushroom sauce was perhaps the most thin that I have encountered, which would not necessarily be a problem but for the fact that it was a little lacking in flavour.  This was a pity because the flavour that was present was quite pleasant.  As a side note, the mushrooms themselves were actually pretty good.  As I bit into my poor looking steak, I received a welcome surprise.  It tasted a lot better than it looked which almost compensated for it not being cooked to my liking.  Similarly, the lack of flavour in the mushroom sauce was almost compensated for by hefty doses of salt and pepper.  There was a little fat in the steak, but its juiciness and taste dominated.  Despite my complaints, this was actually quite a satisfying meal.  However, a stronger mushroom sauce and a less overdone steak would have left me all the more satisfied.  I have certainly had better steaks from places that specialise in them, but for a cafe steak priced around the $20 mark, I don't think you can do much better.

Top In Town Indian, West End

On Christmas eve I went down to the Coffee Club to have a celebratory yuletide steak or burger.  Unfortunately, it was closed for the occasion.  As it happens, I was going to pick up some Indian food from Top In Town for my parents, so I figured I'd get something for myself as well.  My favourite dish from Top In Town is their chicken 65.  However, Top In Town do not have a set menu.  They just put whatever they feel like cooking on the day into their bain maries.  Apparently on this day they didn't feel like cooking chicken 65, so I was forced to try something else.  I'll provide a little background first.  The first time I tried Top In Town's butter chicken, I found it to be sickly sweet, and basically inedible.  Recently though, I have discovered that Top In Town offer two different butter chicken dishes.  The one I had sampled is their mildest dish for those that do not like hot curries.  The other one is a medium curry which I figured would be more in line with my tastes.  So I ordered this butter chicken and Manchurian chicken (a dish I had never sampled before), as well as some naan.  The naan was massive, but it was also a little flaky, and unfortunately, neither of my curries were particularly saucy.  So I would say that the naan was the least enjoyable part of my meal.  However, usually when I dine at Indian restaurants, the opposite is true.  Luckily, the curries were considerably better.  The butter chicken was probably the spiciest preparation of this dish that I have encountered.  In fact, I wish all butter chickens were this spicy.  As I said before, the butter chicken was less saucy than I'm used to, and what sauce was present had less flavour than I would have liked (other than the spiciness).  This is a slight shame as what little flavour there was was quite pleasant.  With the Manchurian chicken I was not sure what to expect.  It was even less saucy than the butter chicken, but it struck me as the kind of curry that need not be particularly saucy.  When I tasted it, I got a welcome surprise.  It tasted like Chinese food, which I suppose is fitting, given that Manchuria is in China.  I have never had a dish like this from an Indian restaurant before.  I'm not entirely sure what the exact ingredients were, but it tasted similar to Chinese black bean and garlic dishes, which I like.  The chicken itself in both dishes was for the most part quality, only dampened by a little fat and gristle.  Despite the shortcomings I have just addressed, both of these curries were for the most part enjoyable as far as cheap, casual Indian dinging goes.  I would say that overall, this experience confirmed by belief that Top In Town is the best casual Indian restaurant I know of.

Subway, University of Queensland, St Lucia

Three Mondays ago, it was the week leading up to Christmas, and as a result most of the food outlets at the University of Queensland had closed for the year, but not Subway.  Partially because it was one of the only places open and partially for the sake of this blog, I went to Subway on my break from work that day.  Keen followers of this blog (yeah right!) will remember that my last experience at Subway was a negative one.  So this time I decided to try something a little bit different.  I ordered toasted pepperoni and cheese on an Italian herb and cheese sub with olives and marinara sauce and a chocolate chip biscuit (erroneously referred to as a "cookie").  I guess you could call this a pizza sub.  The pepperoni was good.  In fact it was much spicier than I would have expected from a place like Subway.  So that was a plus.  The cheese was decent.  I would have liked more of it though.  The olives were nothing special, but I like even average olives.  However, the olives were cool, whereas the sub itself was naturally hot.  I suppose this is unavoidable at Subway because they toast your sandwhich before adding the salad options.  The marinara sauce was pretty good too.  If I were to order an actual pizza and get this sauce, I'd be happy enough.  The Italian herb and cheese bread was as good as it needed to be, but was otherwise fairly unremarkable.  I seem to have it in my memory that Subway's biscuits are of quite a high standard as far as biscuits go, but the biscuit I got was the sort of biscuit one would expect to get from any number of supermarkets, only bigger.  However, I was there for the sandwhiches and not the biscuits, and even so the biscuit was fine.  So, overall this was a fairly positive experience that has restored some modicum of my faith in the Subway chain.  To use a pizza analogy, I would rate this sub as a damn sight better than the likes of Domino's or Pizza Hut, but not as good as some of the other pizza places I have reviewed in this blog; Pizza Capers or Donini's for example.