Culinary Shock! LING NAM

Hi! How you doing?

Have you ever had a favourite restaurant where the food and price is fabulous, but the service and staff are ridiculously bad ass?

Well let me introduce you to “LING NAM” the place for great food but bad services. It’s in the heart of Melbourne's CBD - China Town, the owners and staff here are mostly Chinese (from Hong Kong to be exact), they speak multiple languages ie. Vietnamese and Mandarin but mostly Cantonese (its one of those blunt heavy dialect, they sound as if they are swearing all the time – no offence to Cantonese people, hence you’d find them rude, that’s just part of their culture). Waiters are quick on their toes in Hong Kong, from once you sit down (they expect you to know what you want in 5mins), after ordering the first dish, it should not take longer than 15mins to come out. You see, to them time is money, its valuable, so they become pushy, you come in (its rare to have a meet and greet session and “what’s on the special menu tonight” kinda convo) and you finish with a full stomach having everything served to you as ordered, that’s a job well done on their behalf. 
Do you know why there are so many Asians who eat here? It’s because Crown Casino is an Asian filled place located near the CBD, once these gamblers are done at Crown they feast at LING NAM, it’s the norm (regular habit they tend to do), they become regulars and hence the staff doesn’t really care about new or old customers. Who else would know what’s good and what’s bad Chinese food, but the creators themselves – THE CHINESE! So it must be good food to be filled with Asians and customers for a very long period of time.

A few years back they were caught out by the food hygiene council, they re-opened again after they cleaned up their mess (lets hope they stay that way)

TIP: if you like Chinese/ Asian food, find Chinese/Asian friends to recommend you a place to dine, Italian food (find Italian people for tips), Greek Food (find Greek people to ask)… so on and so forth.

Don’t expect much from them, you are just there to eat their food, and it’s GREAT FOOD for the price you pay.

Lets get into the dishes I usually order (from the top of my head without the menu - yes I'm a regular here) majority are all good to the taste buds, not too salty not too sweet:

Ling Nam sign at the front door

 Lobster with XO Sauce

 Pipis in XO Sauce - gotta order extra Chinese Fried Doughnut to dip into that sauce

 Steamed Oysters with XO Sauce

 Live Fresh Water Shrimp/Prawns from their tank fastly deep fried with Salt and Pepper - its cruel to eat this because the prawns are still alive before being thrown into the frying pan, but theirs nothing like fresh prawn, its amazing (my favourite). They charge per pound, I think its $60/$80 per pound depending on the season.

 Crab & Shark Fin Soup. I prefer their sweet and sour soup (didn't eat it this time so couldn't take a photo for this post)

Mud Crab in XO Sauce... YES WE LOVE OUR XO (and its not a alcohol)

I hope I didn’t offend anyone =) It’s just a cultural shock to see such rudeness in a culinary context (but it's actually really normal), do you know of other cultural behaviours that are not normal to the majority of our population? Feel free to comment.

Enjoy the rest of your days… ladies and gents stay beautiful, healthy, wealthy and wise
xox take care :)

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with anything above, everything on my blog is my honest opinions, so I am not being paid or given free products to review or promote. My opinions are of personal experience and thoughts, so feel free to comment if you agree or disagree so I can also learn more from you.

Guhng (The Palace)

Hey,

How you’ll doing?

This is a mini review of a restaurant named “Guhng” (its Korean for: The Palace). This is my second time back and we had to share this wonderful service and atmosphere with my lovely family. You know how all mums think their cooking is “the best” and there’s nothing like home made food… I am not saying this is one of the best restaurants, but I did take the family out to this particular restaurant just to taste something different, the night life culture of the city which we’ve made our home for the past two decades and to taste some Korean BBQ.

To start with Soju (Korean alcohole – dunno what the brand was but it was meant to be for the faint hearted)

Kim chi over all was good something out of the ordinary, ie. Like our Vietnamese salad and herbs mum and dad would put on the dinner table on our usual home cooked meals (not complaining I love fresh herbs, we grow them in our backyard)

Beef salad was another entrée this was decent but achievable at home.

Seafood and pork Kim chi spicy hot pot – well imaging eating hot rahman, pouring all the 10 red hot packet of spices into one hot pot, that’s what this taste like with extra tofu, greens, white cabbage, prawns, octopus, seafood… yep very spicy with a seafood after taste, our family enjoyed it cause they bite fresh chili daily (white rice, fresh chili and fish sauce should never be missed at a Vietnamese dinner table)

 

Everything else was charcoal grilled: marinated pork, chicken, beef, ribs, scallop, oysters and abalone. It was wonderful. I don’t remember what set menu we got but it turned out great, the marinated pork and beef were flavorsome. Abalone was chewy but doable (sounds fancy but could be skipped if you don’t want to spend too much for something you would find hard to swallow if not cooked correctly)

Dessert platter – SWEET LOVERS MUST TRY, tiramisu, pudding, fudge, floss, sugar, candy, green tea cake … looks enticing cause it does sure taste that way (I am no sweet lover, prefer my fruit any day)

Ladies, gents that’s all from me hope you enjoy your weekend, stay healthy, wealthy and wise ;) xox  

Nobu Melbourne

It was our Anniversary a few months back, I have kept these photos for ages but haven’t had time to post up my review

We went to Nobu (Melbourne) a very well known Japanese restaurant.

It was classy, dark and gloomy, when we entered, you’ll be greeted with a warm welcome from the reception (that’s if you’ve booked a table, if not the receptionist might tell you there will be a wait depending on how busy it was that night)

As you walk down the flights of stairs away from the entrance, you are greeted by the many staffs and chefs with a big shout out in Japanese (didn’t understand, I guess it was a polite Welcome)

Service was amazing, but for a bottle of cold water the cost was nearly $12! So as time goes by you would realize you are going to put a big hole in your wallet. But it’s a special occasion, we’ll be happy to dine finely and not complain about the final bill.

The waiters would bring around this Salt-boiled Edamame dressed in extra sea salt

This is a berry/ cherry Fruit Punch – it was a little sour and tangy for my likings but my other half thought it was fine. I guess I don’t like alcohol so even a mock-tail wouldn’t entice my palate.

Tuna Tataki with Tozasu – this was good too, sweet and sour combo in your mouth

Yellowtail Sashimi with Jalapeño – I love this dish (even though I am not a fan of sashimi). I love the sourness and the spice of the jalapenos YUMMY, it didn’t taste raw – must order dish

Scallop Sashimi with Dried Miso – raw scallop is so sweet, and the crispy fried garlic chip made the soft uncooked scallop crunchy, a mixture of texture.

Beef Tataki with Ponzu and Garlic Chips – OMG another raw dish, this was good but at this stage my mouth didn’t like the overwhelming garlic chip taste from the last dish and this dish added together – eww garlic breath on an anniversary hehehehe

Lobster Salad with Spicy Lemon Dressing – this was disappointing for the price you pay, but we’d thought it doesn’t hurt to try. It wasn’t bad but I wouldn’t order this again, few pieces of lobster, lettuce, mushroom and more garlic chip + lemon dressing (I reckon it could be achievable at home) for $42 yep.. Now you see why I said they put garlic chip garnish on everything

Black Cod with Miso – after a few bites the good sweetness in your mouth just becomes so overwhelming, I’d recommend add this with white rice to balance out the saltiness and sweetness of the sauce. But if this was one of the first dishes I tried I wouldn’t have such a bad after taste. There was a special hajikami stalk left on top as a garnish which tasted like Garlic, it was crunchy and refreshing in the mouth, I think this was to balance out the black code sauce, it complimented well but extra rice in my opinion would have been even better.

This is Wagu Beef with a hot stone and 3 different types of dipping sauces – this was $150 worth of a dish, was the Wagu worth $1 per/gram, HELL NO. There was nothing special about the taste of this dish besides its presentation!

Overall I loved Nobu’s atmosphere, services and food. Just don’t go trying something that is worth $1 a gram and majority of the garlic chip garnishing wouldn’t have been better substituted with something else, when you know your customer had been consuming so much from their previous dishes. All the sashimi and cold dishes were wonderful.

 I had a discount card and the final bill still came out to be that total!

Overall rating:

4/5 starts

I liked some of the food we ate, but the final price (due to the Wagu beef) was ridiculous.

Well I hope you enjoy Nobu just as much as I did!
have a great night everyone