I've been wanting to come here since I heard that their omakase is one of the best in Melbourne. Mum has been here before and said the lunch special was very good, so we went to try it out. All three of us picked different lunch specials (ranging between $18.50-19.50 each). I had the sushi, mum had sashimi and dad had the chirashi don. We started off with pickles and an unusual appetiser of noodles. Mum particularly liked these noodles and tried to figure out what ingredients were used in...

I'd heard that the udon served at Nama Nama are handmade and have been wanting to visit for a while. I chose the pork udon, whilst mum had a bento. The udon noodles, while not as good as they are in Japan, were smooth and slightly chewy. I was surprised that the quail egg was slightly runny, meaning they used fresh eggs rather than canned ones. The components mum picked for her bento were: Cabbage and daikon with ponzu mayo, kingfish sahimi, grilled eel onigiri, pork neck roll with sake miso...

I forgot to bring my camera so there are no photos for this post, but it was a visit that both mum and I particularly enjoyed. Suzuran is a Japanese grocery store in Camberwell, which has a discreet, take-away only sushi bar attached to it. Instead of going for a la carte we chose 2 trays of prepared sushi: a tray of 10 maki (~$8, tuna, salmon, avocado, cucumber and something else) and a tray of 5 slices of California roll futomaki and 5 nigiri ($13, salmon, tuna, ?kingfish)....

Because there were still a few dishes we were wanting to try, we decided to return a week later for a birthday dinner. The chicken was, obviously very hot. It didn't have as much pepper as the dishes last week so it had a different sort of bite. Surprisingly, the beer added to the duck dish gave a lovely subtle flavour to the broth and I quite enjoyed it. [gallery order="DESC" columns="2" type="rectangular" ids="2974,2973"] Dainty Sichuan 176 Toorak Rd South Yarra, VIC, 3141 (03) 9078 1686 ...

Mum and I have heard many good things about this restaurant but we haven't had the opportunity to visit it until now. As expected, the dishes were pretty spicy, but thankfully, not as oily as some Sichuan restaurant food I've had. All the dishes were great: the fish in the soup wasn't overcooked and the ham choi gave it the right amount of sourness, the eggplant was crispy (and slightly sweet) on the outside with a soft centre. The kung pao chicken and ma po tofu were also...

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