West End Garden

West End Garden

190 Melbourne St South Brisbane

Value: Good

Quality: Good

Atmosphere: Good

View from outside dining area.

I’ve been to West End Garden before and my previous experiences might colour this review with a hint of nostalgia. West End Garden is sort of an institution – almost everyone has been there at least once  –  and the food is quite good. Usually what makes this place a warm memory in your heart is the history of dinners with good friends. This is the sort of place you can compare to your neighbourhood Chinese place growing up, where the food always tasted great until you moved out of home. West End Garden still has that hold over me, although I didn’t eat there until I was 19. I should really get on with the review itself.

West End Garden's major draw card is its outside area, which makes up 90% of the restaurant space. This area which is a tad tacky – it has a little water feature in the corner and is rimmed by fairy light –   but is very adaptable to different table sizes and seems quite conducive to sizable dining groups. This, provided you have the right company, usually results in great conversations and overall a pleasant experience. 

Vietnamese Duck

The staff here hasn’t changed in years; they still wear the “traditional” white dresses, and are still as attentive as they always have been. Really in general this place has changed little in the 4 or so years that have passed since I last went here. I’m pretty sure even the menu is still the same. The food was prompt, and was perfectly timed to coincide with us finishing our entrees. We ordered two dishes and shared them between us. The entree was spicy quail, a favourite of mine, which, though a little dry, carried a lovely flavour with the requisite refreshing spiciness. This was followed by the “Vietnamese Duck” which while it tasted like crispy skin boneless roast duck, came with fresh vegetables and what I’m pretty sure was sweet chilli sauce. The duck itself was cooked exactly right with just the right level of crispiness in the skin and juiciness in the flesh.  The vegetables while masterly cut to look wonderful, were just vegetables of decent quality.

West End Garden is open for lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday and is open only for dinner on Sundays and public holidays. Meals cost $6-$13 for entrees (the Spicy Quail we had cost $9.90)   Mains around $15-$36 with most meals being on the very less expensive end of the spectrum. The Vietnamese Duck we had cost $29.90 but was enough for two people. West End Garden also have many vegetarian options, which tend to be on the cheaper end of the spectrum as well.

Drinks start around the $5 mark for domestic beer and go up to $34 for bottles of wine (our beers which were Tsingtao’s cost $6, other imported beers are the same price. West End Garden is also BYO for wine only with corkage being $2.50 per person.

West End Garden have a Website with all their menus and their drinks list at www.westendgarden.com.au

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.

Sakura & Obaltan

Sakura 3.5/5
Obaltan 3/5
This double post is born out of the fact that i have been too lazy to post in a long time, also in the future i am going to take a camera with me to enhance this page from just text.

Sakura
9 Gladstone Road Highgate Hill
Sakura could be described as in Highgate hill, but by foot the best way is from South Bank Station (Vulture St) and on the corner of vulture st and highgate hill.
Sakura is easily one of the best Japanese restaurants in Brisbane, and i would say in my opinion has some of the best sashimi the capital has to offer, apparently being run by an ex-sumo makes your sashimi the best around. The staff are attentive and efficient, and the Ala carte food good, however in both times i have been there i have failed to get the hot pot (i suspect being the best part of the restaurant) however whilst the individual dishes are not the greatest to be found in Brisbane, starting off with a plate of sashimi will leave memories of fantastic food that will last beyond the above average mains. Additionally Sakura is fully licenced with a wide selection of Japanese beers (Yebisu!!) Sake, and also Shochu (Shochu Calpis highball!!). Also Sakura has the option of buying a bottle of Sake and if failing to finish it on this visit allows for the holding of the sake until your next visit (up to six months i think). Prices range from $15-$50 for food
3.5 out 5



Obaltan
91 Elizabeth St Brisbane City
Obaltan is a Korean style BBQ place in the row of Korean restaurants around where skinnys music used to be. From outside or inside the restaurant it appears to be well designed, with a nice aesthetic and at lunch or dinner a fair number of diners. Forgetting the main dishes on the menu other than charcoal BBQ (why go to a BBQ place for anything else), the food is quite good, with tasty and substantial cuts of meat ready for you to cut with scissors onto the grill. Oh i forgot to mention the grill sits over a tub of burning coals providing the meat with charcoal flavour, this is opposed to other BBQ places where gas is used to heat the grill. The table bells (a regular feature of Korean restaurants) assure prompt service, and the presence of Hite beer on tap provides many a pint to have over lunch, particularly recommended over lunch is cucumber soju, as its cool refreshing taste combines well with the bitterness in Hite, all of which combines well with the charcoal flavour of the meat and spiciness of the kimchi. My only real problem with this place is the price, which will undoubtedly end up over $50 each, however for a great dining experience i recommend it with a 3/5.



I've also eaten at Hunan Chinese restaurant recently, and while it was alright, and the service was excellent (admittedly we did eat at 3:30 on a Sunday) i wouldn't recommend it due to the presence of better restaurants in the area, and the food was just alright.

I need fellow diners to try out some restaurants I've been meaning to see for a while.
Contact me