Exciting news just in: rolling out just exactly this week over at Vapiano is their new Winter Warmers menu! I was very lucky to be invited to an exclusive tasting of this new menu last week where I also met a handful of other amazing food bloggers. We were given such a generous amount of food and drinks and asked to give feedback about the dishes. This was my first time at an event like this and I really really enjoyed everything about it. Vapiano, thank you so much for having us! ❤️

This was also my first time at Vapiano despite my best friends constantly recommending this place to me over the years. And the experience I had here made me feel like all those years I have been missing out!

Vapiano is located at the edge of the Grace Hotel on the corner of York St and King St. A step inside through the doors reveals a really beautiful restaurant space with high ceilings and two levels of seating. I love the stylish, fresh and simple decor. We're greeted at the front desk by a really friendly staff member who directs us upstairs to where the tasting event is taking place.

The cafeteria style ordering.

Two long tables are exclusively reserved for the event with plates, utensils, menu and a complementary bag of pasta (so cute) all laid out.

Francis and I are one of the first foodies to arrive!

The Winter Warmers Menu 2017

Entree

Prosciutto Bruschetta

Tomato Soup

Mains

Pasta Puttanesca

Pizza Vesuvio

Dessert

Nutella Dessert Pizza

Drinks

Spice Pumpkin Martini

Squid Fist Sangiovese

Pikes Pale Ale

The upstairs is just as beautiful as downstairs! 

The tables are also very suitable for dining with a group or dining alone. The vibe is very relaxed and casual.

The gift bag with pasta in it! Never could there be a more perfect present from Vapiano's.

Pikes Pale Ale

Lets begin with the drink! I didn't drink this night because I had an assignment that I needed to stay up for and complete but Francis ordered the Pikes Pale Ale. I tried a bit of this and while pale ale is actually my least favourite type of beer, this was REALLY good. It had a darker and richer taste than normal pale ale, that made it an ideal pairing to everything on this winter menu.

ENTREES

Prosciutto Bruschetta

Thick slices of toasted bread topped with long slabs of creamy buffalo mozzarella cheese and salty prosciutto. The size of this is a little intimidating but every mouthful is delicious! Our hosts recommend we try it with a little drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and what a good suggestion that was. The olive oil helps if you feel the mouthful of bread is on the dry side. And the balsamic vinegar adds a rich and zesty zing of flavour!

Tomato Soup

Not your traditional thick and creamy tomato soup! In fact this one is a watery consistency with large croutons and melted cheese. I don't mind the difference at all and find this soup the peeeerfeccct entree to warm me up on the cold winter night!

MAINS

Pizza Vesuvio

Looking around, people are either eating a whole pasta or whole pizza to themselves. The size of the pizza is huge! And so is the pasta! So to all us foodies surprise, we all received our own huge bowls of pasta and pizza to share between two. 

Pizza Vesuvio is a spicy ground beef pizza with a generous amount of green capsicums and red onion and yogurt sauce. I love the combination of flavours! However it was indicated this pizza would be spicy but it was quite mild to everyones surprise. Still delicious though. 

Pasta Puttanesca

Does this remind anyone of A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix? Hehe. This is a very tasty and rich tomato-based pasta with a subtle anchovy flavour in the sauce. I feel like you can't go wrong with this choice! You can also choose to add extra cheese with your pasta.

DESSERT

OOOH NUTELLA PIZZA. AND TWO TYPES TOO!

Nutella Dessert Pizza

We were given two types to try: one with a thick, fluffy dough base and the other with a thin crispy base. The popular consensus was that the thick dough was our favourite! So so good. The bananas melted perfectly into the base and the strawberries were sweet. A good amount of Nutella too, for all you Nutella lovers!

Overall Francis and I are big fans of Vapiano's new winter warmers menu! Our favourites that we have to recommend to you all would be the Pizza Vesuvio with a tall glass of Pikes Pale Ale. We both really hope everyone has the chance to stop by Vapiano's and check it out! xx

Happy June, everyone! IT'S MY BIRTHDAY MONTH so if you have any suggestions for where I can dine at to celebrate my birthday that would be greatly appreciated. Last year, Vanessa took me to Saké which was so lovely 😍

A few weeks ago, I went on a date with a guy who took us to have dinner at Bon Japanese Restaurant in Canterbury. Really happy because this means I get a restaurant review out of it too hehe! Let's talk about the restaurant itself first since I only had time and courage to take photos of the food. The restaurant is really small and cosy. The lighting is quite dim which gives it that soft and casual feel. 

I admit it could've been an extremely perfect date location but what comes with being a smaller restaurant is that it gets extremely busy. Bon is also quite popular and I highly recommend you do your best to make a booking in advance if you choose to visit this place. It will help you secure a spot! We didn't make a booking when we went here but we were SO lucky to still be able to get a table and have most of the food we wanted to try be available. The owner who served us advised us that since we didn't have a booking, our food might take much longer to all be ready - say over half an hour? But it turns out the time the food was served was absolutely fine. It didn't all come out at once but it came in a perfect sequential as soon as we were about to finish each plate. STILL, I say make a booking if you're coming here!

We started off with some drinks and besides the alcohol section they have a small selection of Japanese teas and soda. Getting to know each other was a little difficult over how loud and noisy this little restaurant and I must've asked "What?" like a billion times 😂 One of my worst nightmares because I hate having to repeat myself to be honest. 

But thankfully our first order arrived early and we then had more to do than just try to hear each other over the noise:

Assorted Sushi and Sashimi (Small)

Such a lovely and colourful little platter with a nice range of choices! I still don't know my sashimi names very well but as you can see there's quite a few different ones. In terms of taste, the sashimi was okay but not the best. I found the salmon to be slightly stringy, and the tuna to be unusually dry. I would like to assume it was fresh but the textures certainly were disappointing. 

The nigiri sushi was nice, but the maki rolls were too big for me and leaving them aside for the duration of the meal really turned the wrapped seaweed into a chewy mess. 

Pork Gyoza $8

This arrived on a sizzling hot plate and all 5 pieces of gyoza had a beautiful golden brown crispiness to them! A tasty pork filling, although I was left mores unimpressed with how oily this entire dish was.  

Scampi Nigiri

I think this was listed on a separate special menu at a pretty expensive price but my date ordered this for us anyway because I mentioned I had never tried scampi before. This was literally the highlight of the entire dinner because hands down: Best. Nigiri. Ever!!!! The rice was much softer than that of the sushi on our assorted plate, and each had a small and very welcome dab of wasabi. This was topped with the most fresh, sweet and succulent piece of scampi sashimi ever! It was slightly seared and garnished with sauces and roe and oh my goodness it was sooooo good. I would come back just for this because that is how much I loved it.

Taro Chips

When we ordered taro chips we did not expect for it to look like this! The taro chips were round semi spheres deep fried and topped with a drizzle of what I believe is tonkatsu sauce, and lots of parmesan cheese. It was quite nice but very unexpected! The taste reminded me of a chicken flavour like Double Decker chips haha

Torigara Soy Ramen $11

And last but not least, the ramen! Torigara wasn't the first choice as Tonkotsu was so what did I say about enquiring in advance? Anyway torigara ramen at Bon stands for a chicken soup stock with kaeshi, which is a dashi stock base. The ramen also has lots of toppings in it such as chashu (sliced roast pork), black fungi, bamboo shoots, soy marinated egg, shallots, beansprouts and sesame seeds. In the end though, we both found the ramen to be very bland and disappointing. 

Overall the Japanese food at Bon wasn't that great to me but my date thought much more highly of it than I did. I do think the food is generally very simple and it goes very well with the cosy and casual vibe of the restaurant, but because of how noisy it was in there I wouldn't take anyone except a group of friends here who are likely to be just as loud haha! 

Let me know in the comments if you have been here and how your experience was, xx