Pjs Steaks

PJ's Steaks

2/173 Boundary St, West End

Value: Good

Quality: Good

Atmosphere: Adequate

Uniqueness: Recommended

I don’t tend to go to West End much at the moment, so I noticed PJ's only the other day. I was initially surprised to see a cheesesteak place in Brisbane, but on reflection I was surprised I hadn’t seen one sooner. Brisbane has seen a boom of American diner-style venues in the last couple of years, with Blue Smoke then Carolina Kitchen and now PJ's. Brisbane has got Yankee fever, and while this is definitely not a bad thing (I love American comfort food as much as the next man if not more so), its certainly an interesting phenomenon. Despite the New York Giants banner hanging in the window, PJ's steak house offers one of the more (in)famous of American regional comfort food specialties, the legendary Philadelphia cheesesteak. This, and variations on the same base, are all they offer.

PJ's appears to be run by three or four Americans, and they’re pretty sociable and easygoing, at least as far as I can tell. When it comes to atmosphere, PJ's is nothing special; it's basically a grill inside a hole in the wall. This adds some charm considering what they sell, but it’s mostly utilitarian in the same sense of all casual food joints. The staff make PJ's a pleasant place to be with a positive attitude and a promptness not often seen in casual fast food chains. The fact that they sell beer may help with that, including some American beers that aren’t merely piss-coloured water. Brooklyn Lager is particularly good.

A cheesesteak is almost exactly what it sounds like. It's shredded steak covered in melted cheese (unfortunately not Cheez Whiz) in a long roll. Add some condiments generally, mustard and ketchup( I prefer the term tomato sauce or t-sauce but context allows some  Americanisms) and voilà  you’ve got yourself a monster (in a good way) of a lunch. It's very tasty, but how can melted cheese and steak not be tasty? It must be said that, while delicious, the food here tends to be quite greasy as comfort food tends to be. Regardless of any criticism, PJ's serves a great sandwich that epitomises all that is good about American food, and I recommend you get one soon.

Pj’s Steaks is open 11am-10pm

The Original Cheesesteaks we ordered cost $9.90 and they go up to about $15 Beers start about $6 and go up to $9

They don’t have a website currently however they do have a facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/PJs-Steaks

Beastie Burgers

Beastie Burgers

Shop 6a Little Stanley St South Brisbane

Value: Adequate

Quality: Good

Atmosphere: Adequate

Beastie Burgers is one of the joints along South Bank that give me hope that South Bank is no longer the tacky tourist trap it used to be. Southbank was Street's Beach and stereotypical Australiana when I was a kid, even as recently as when I first moved to Brisbane back in 2006. These memories made me resistant to the idea of eating out in South Bank until very recently.  Finally getting over my preconceptions, I ventured over there the other day for lunch to discuss some work with a colleague, and thus the review.

Beastie Burgers is very bare-bones, but it's not a big deal. It is a burger place after all and they make it work pretty well. Service is simple and easy (order at the bar, pay and then a find a seat, they’ll bring your burger when its ready) then again it's a burger joint, so fair enough.  What impresses me most about Beastie is that unlike some chains I won’t mention here, they aren’t seduced by the dark side of gourmet burgers. They don’t have so many superfluous ingredients that the burger is too tall for a human mouth, nor do fillings try to rocket out from between the buns like they're on a slip-and-slide. For their commitment to this less-is-more philosophy I congratulate them, especially in the face of a rapidly expanding southern burger chain that certainly has a more-is-more philosophy.

Limiting the number of ingredients allows the quality of the patty to shine through. They're well packed mincemeat with little of that mince flavour that dominates home-made burgers, just a tinge of pink in the middle and nice charring on the outside of the patty itself.  The spartan ingredients kept the flavours simple and allowed the whole burger to meld into a single taste experience, rather than a confusing array of a dozen different things. The bun is also a positive, being appropriately toasted and firm as to not induce collapse, while being soft enough to not have the unpleasantness that biting into an overtoasted bun can have. The vegetables were also of a reasonably high quality and were suitably minimalist, compared to to many of their competitors.

Beastie Burgers is open 11am-10pm every day

My meal was the lunch special on the day and cost $10.50 with a can of drink, their burgers start around this price and go up to around $15-16.

Beastie Burgers is licensed however I didn’t drink this day and therefore didn’t get the price of their drinks.

Taro's Ramen Cafe

Taro’s Ramen Café

363 Adelaide St, Brisbane

Value: Good

Quality: Good

Atmosphere: Good

Uniqueness: Recommended (Its only real competitor that I know of is Ajisen; you can’t compare the ramen at Hanaichi or Kadoya to Taros)

Taro’s Ramen Café has been around for a while now and I’ve been frequenting the place since its opening, but have held off on reviewing it till now. Taro’s has quite a large menu (especially at dinner) but people really go there for one thing, which is Ramen.

When I first ate Taro’s tonkotsu ramen, their house speciality, it was like a magical experience. Each slurp reminding me of the great ramen I’ve had in Japan, the perfect noodle carrying its delicious life affirming broth down my throat and bringing with it the memories of great times had abroad.

This experience remained largely unchanged for a year, but towards the end of last year I noticed; the broth became weaker, the noodles softer and the servings felt smaller than they previously were. In my mind, I brushed aside these critiques as I felt that it was perhaps a side-effect of my growing familiarity with this ramen.

But, on a recent trip to Japan (visiting family) all my uneasiness rose again to the surface, as I had several bowls of ramen that blew my mind. I started to examine in my mind what I felt had changed. The noodles no longer picked up the flavour of the broth like they had and they gave in far too easily. The egg no longer tasted mostly of yolky pork and less of half a hard-boiled egg, and the velvety film of fat on the surface looked moth-eaten and pockmarked. I no longer felt like I needed a post-ramen shower to wash off the massive salt and fat overload that makes a tonkotsu so good. 

The decline in quality is why I have rated it Good instead of Recommended. By Australian standards the ramen is still a good tasty ramen and above the average, but in knowing what it used to be, it has lost its edge. It has become a toned-down, bland version of its former self.

 By way of physical specifications, Taro’s is a café so service is not really an issue. The food is fairly prompt and you can’t help the lunch line at a busy CBD café, although the move to self-serve condiments is a disappointing one that conspicuously coincided with the decline in quality.

The place is pretty barebones, which has a certain charm, but is very utilitarian in its laminex tables and cane wrapped steel frame chairs. The view of the story bridge and down onto river end of Queen Street bumps this up to a Good from an Adequate and the people-watching on Adelaide Street is fine enough if you can stand the traffic noise and fumes.

Taro’s Ramen Café is open for lunch and dinner 7 days a week; with the ramen mains costing around $15 (tonkotsu ramen costs $14.90). The presence of Japanese beers and alcohol is a big plus as many are quite rare in Brisbane. Domestic and light beers start at around $5-6, imported beers are around $7 and the price increases dramatically for particular shochus and sakes (not without reason). They do have sake tasting sets for those who are unfamiliar or want variety.

Taros have a website at http://www.taros.com.au/ which has all the menus and other details.

Pearl Cafe

Long time no posts people, sorry about that but i hope to be back for good this time. I hope you enjoy this post, it was fun to write.

Pearl Café

28 Logan Road Woolloongabba

2/5

I went to Pearl Café the other day. It was cold and rainy and the place’s attempt at belle époque charm warmed me and made it an almost perfect venue to have a late lunch (around 3pm).

We’d missed regular service, but the small all-day menu is written up on a chalk board at the back of the cafe. It had four or five items on it and this is probably the extent of the positives. (Other than the carafe of wine which was tempranillo which is nice choice and was quite nice for $10)

Unfortunately they lacked the only thing on the menu that I had the desire to eat (a duck sandwich) and my current policy of trying to avoid tuna (due to overfishing pressures -  yeah I get it, it’s a bit dumb and hypocritical for a hedonist like me to be conscious and judgemental) immediately took one of the items off the menu (I should clarify that the presence of tuna on the menu is not a negative in any way at all) however that left a waldorf salad and the hamburger that I got.

Two things people; mustard works with hamburgers if it is balanced with other flavours, but there aren’t many things that taste worse than a mouthful of pure mustard and not the mild stuff but the more serious stuff (albeit good quality).

And if you make a hamburger that is impossible to pick up, give the person an appropriate knife, you don’t see bread knives with little serrations because bread is tough to cut with a little old dinner knife. I should have started by describing the hamburger instead of just leaping in with critique, but I like it this way.

Anyway so the hamburger was covered in melted cheese (a good thing) with mustard and some other stuff which I can’t remember due to the massive mustard presence I think there were onions and pickles, but it’s hard to tell. It also came with a tiny bucket of shoestring fries. A few problems, other than the ones I’ve already mentioned, hamburger patties need to hold together, they shouldn’t disintegrate entirely under the pressure of a knife and they shouldn’t taste like dodgy mince like the ones I make at home.

I don’t know what else to say, I find it unusual that the wine is served in tumblers. I know it’s probably what they do in Spain or France, but as an Anglo Australian it just makes me feel like I’m drinking from a jam glass in someone’s lounge room.

That’s all I really have to say, I would go back to see if it’s just an anomaly, however it is in that strip full of restaurants at Woolloongabba and I would probably just go elsewhere.

One more thing before I go; really bright lights mounted in the floor look great from the outside, but are really annoying when you’re trying to eat and talk.

Pearl Café is open during the day and night Tuesday to Saturday and their prices are around the $20 mark for mains (my food cost $22 if I remember correctly) the wine cost $10 for a 250ml carafe and was actually quite nice.

Pearl café don’t have a website I could find.

Thanks to Theo For doing the Editing on this article. 

Funny Funny Res Pub

Funny Funny Res Pub

85 George St Brisbane City

2/5

I know I’ve been hitting up a lot of Korean places recently, but bear with me because there can’t be that many more left and my desire for chilli is surely on the wane.

 Funny Funny occupies the same place as the Lands Office Hotel used to be, on the corner of Mary and George streets, and as the name of the place suggests is a hybrid of pub and restaurant.

The place has, for a restaurant, a great funky setup; the gloss black walls are adorned with stylised white graffiti, contrasted by the pale wooden decor. Feeling almost like an edgier more hip-hop Madtongsan II which is probably its opposite more k-poppy outlet, which could perhaps be attributed to the pub aspect they’re going for. 

Like almost all of the Korean restaurants kicking around now, they have call buttons on the tables. However, an issue with the call buttons at Funny Funny is how loud they are; they make you feel like apologising every time you press one, compounding this is that even with the call buttons the service is slower than at other comparable establishments.

Food wise Funny Funny is alright, but it lacks anything that defines it especially from its competitors except for perhaps a general quality of tasting ever so slightly worse than its rivals. It’s not particularly cheaper than other Korean in Brisbane either and drinks are the same price as anywhere else at $6 each (for Cass or Hite) making it not a particularly appealing place to drink, although it does look like there are domestic Australian beers for cheaper than that. This obviously dampens my disposition in treating it like a pub and while there were a significant number of people there on the day in question, I feel that generally the bar/pub functions of the place are played down in favour of a more restaurant style menu, while unfortunately lacking a particularly strong restaurant aesthetic.

What is notable about the food is the serving size, with our order of Kimchi pancake being the size of a large serving plate, meaning we ended up ordering way too much food for the two of us, we also got “Nakgi Somyun” which was spicy octopus with noodles without realizing that it was also large enough to comfortably feed two people as well as a noodle soup that was a large single serving. In the face of this Everest-sized challenge, we proceeded to call in reinforcements to help finish off the mass of chilli and seafood that was present.

Overall, I think Funny Funny is alright and if you are up that end of town it’s an option, however, the other Korean options in this city are better, are comparatively priced and are probably worth the short walk to get to them.

Funny Funny is open lunch and dinner every day.

Our meals cost around ~$10-~$25 and the beers cost $6 each which at a place like this adds up quickly.

Thanks again to Theo for doing the editing of this review

Shabuhouse

Shabuhouse

Level 1 70 Mary St Brisbane

2.5/5

Shabuhouse has caught my eye for a while now, but with university obligations and a challenging living situation for the last few months I haven’t had the chance to try it out. I finally got a Friday free and after scrounging up a dining partner, it was the first place on my mind. Its promising premise was something I couldn’t ignore, being the voracious fan of hotpot that I am; always on the lookout for a new hotpot I haven’t eaten a dozen times before.

Shabuhouse has a great design; the heavy use of pine combined with fake potted plants gives it a fresh, clean appearance. The service, like many of the new Asian restaurants in this city, is great. Call bells on the table alert waiters and a particularity was their accommodation in serving outside their published hours (we ordered at around quarter past 3pm and their kitchen closes at 3pm).

As with all reviews, we must move onto the specifics, the Shabu Shabu (Wikipedia has more on Shabu-shabu), which is both disappointing and satisfying at the same time. The hotpots are served individually and surprisingly take very little of the excitement and energy out of the very social activity that hotpot is.

However, the shape of the pots used at Shabuhouse make the activity feel slightly cramped, there’s very little space to reach into the deep pots while trying to avoid being burnt.

Also disappointing was the use of frozen meat. In the scheme of things, being frozen or not makes very little difference, but the presentation of frozen meat makes you question its quality.

Other than those few complaints I could find little to whine about and thought the food was good, with the broth having the expected strong fishy flavour.

I will return to Shabuhouse very soon, partially because the love with illusion of place the decor creates for me, but also because it’s a cheap hotpot without having to go to Spring Hill (Bishamon in spring hill).

Shabuhouse is open Monday to Saturday for Lunch and Dinner.

Our meals cost $12.80 each for shabu shabu with beef. However, this is the lunch price and it is more expensive for dinner

Shabuhouse is BYO with a $2 per person corkage charge

Shabuhouse’s website is at http://www.shabuhouse.com.au

 

Thank-you to Theo for doing the editing. I'm pretty dreadful at editing my own work.