The Royal

On Friday 25th September we decided to cycle to East Perth and back (from the Lake House).  We headed off late at 10am after buying a couple of doggy toys and bones for Mum’s 6 month old pup Bonnie so she would did up J&P’s garden in our absence.

The round trip was 40kms and we stoped near the river in East Perth for lunch at “The Royal”.  Pol had the seafood risotto, Jules had the cajun chicken salad and I had the tasting plate (which scored a 10/10) and probably took me the 40km cycle to work the calories off.

Stuffed Prawns at Joe

Bike Ride Friday and J, P and I decided to do a longer ride today seeing as I was finally over my flu.  We set off at 9am from Brentwood and followed the river to Fremantle.  We had lunch at Joe’s Fish Shack.  They advertise a lot on the tv and their menu looked pretty good.  We had trouble deciding what to have.  Normally we try to stick to non-fried food for lunch (too hard to cycle home on a stomach of fried food!) preferring salads.  However, as we were at a seafood restaurant we decided instead to have seafood!  J ordered a salmon steak which was served on peppery mash with vegetables.  It looked great and she said it tasted lovely.  P and I couldn’t decide so we each ordered a meal and thought we’d share.  I ordered the stuffed & battered prawns and P ordered pepper squid.  The photo is my meal with 3 prawns (gave 3 to P) and some of the pepper squid.  There was a mountain of chips on mine and I only managed to eat about 10 of them.  The prawns were very nice and stuffed with spinish and bacon but after two of them I started to feel the icky oily affect of the fried food.  The squid was mostly ‘baby octopus’ and unfortunately the peppery batter was not the least bit battery. 6/10.

Bs 21st Dinner

Last night B, M, Cliff and I went to Wagamama Noodle Bar in Fremantle for B’s 21st birthday dinner.  Cliff and I had previously been to the Subiaco restaurant and it was a nice meal.  The Fremantle noodle bar apparently has been open since December however it would have been one of the most disorganised restaurants I have every been to.

They do not have their liquor licence yet so only soft drinks could be ordered (not that that was a problem).  The staff were very inattentive but they took our order after 10 minutes of menu looking.  Cliff’s barramundi however was not available so he had to re choose.  Our meals came one at a time over 10 minutes… Cliff had to wait until we had almost finished our meals to receive his.

B had a chicken soba noodle soup… she said it was very tasteless.  M had teriaki chicken with rice and salad which he said was nice.  Cliff had beef salad and the beef had a lovely flavour and was very tender.  However, although we love chilli this salad would have had no less than 2 whole red chillies cut up and dispersed throughout it making it extremely hot to eat.  I had the chicken kare loman noodle soup… which was spicy and delicious.

Shonky desert - $9.80!!

It had lemon grass, coconut milk, shrimp paste, chillies, fresh ginger and galangal, served with ramen noodles. garnished with a marinated grilled chicken breast, bean sprouts, cucumber, lime and fresh coriander.

We shared side meals of Chilli Squid, Ebi Gyoza which are deep fried prawn dumplings, sweet potatos chipped with black sesame seeds and a wasabi mayonaise dipping sauce.  Cliff and I also had Miso that was serves with Japanese pickles.

We had to wait about 20 minutes to be able to catch the eye of a wait staff member to order desert.  They seemed to avoid customers like the plague! I did not order desert but Cliff had a fried banana with icecream which he said was nice but was not served with the honey/cinnamon sauce it stated on the menu.  M had two scoops of ice cream - coconut and lychee which he said was delicious.  B had a rich choc mud cake with icecream which was supposed to be served with wasabi chocolate sauce (but came with plain choc sauce).

Over all we gave the experience a 5 out of 20!  The service was poor, the meals were not served as the menu said.  The worst meal was B’s desert which was a horrendous $9.80 for a small slice of what seemed like a Woolworth’s mud cake with a small scoop of plain ice cream which would have cost them under a $1.  This desert was, by far, the worst I have ever seen and for $10 you really expect a cafe style mud cake rather than something you’d buy in your weekly shopping!  Each of the mains was around $20 but I think was very overpriced for B’s main of tasteless watery soup with noodles in it and a couple of slices of chicken.

The meal total (with a softdrink each) came to $162 and I don’t think we will eat there again soon!

(The photo of B was taken as we left the restaurant, with the chefs in the background.  Her expression says it all!)