Our last house viewing was to take place after my father finished work so we decided to wait. While waiting for my father, I was trying to be Asian. I haven't camwhored in forever and so I'm so very rusty. I'm going to have to up my game and polish my image way better!!
That and I'm going to have to clean that mirror!
The houses we viewed today were in Papatoetoe, South Auckland. That suburb is on the rise... the last house we viewed today was a tidy brick and tile house with a large backyard which was clear that the landlord had long given up on using a lawn mower. My father wandered through the forest grass and muttered to himself "who needs a lawn mower, just have a couple of cows and she'll be right".
My only disappointment about that house is that it's the third house behind two large ones. It does have its own driveway, although straight as it is... that driveway is probably over 25 metres long.
After leaving the place, we decided to go have dinner at a small restaurant that goes by the name of MAKODO in Botany/Howick area. It is run by a chef that used to work in the restaurant I work at. He's by ethnicity a Chinese man, but he learnt and trained in Japan and by Japanese chefs. Apparently the kanji he used for the restaurant name is meant to be pronounced "makoto" but I'm going to stand on his side and assume he chose to use "makodo" to protect his ass since there will probably be haters who will riot "that restaurant isn't even authentic" then the owner can easily say "I'm not claiming to be authentic!"
EXTREMELY hot miso soup!
My parents are vegetarian and since this chef is strictly vegetarian on certain days of the month for religious reasons, his vegetarian cooking is very strict as well (he does cook meat food since he's not vegetarian all the time). He has two deep fryers - which considering the size of his restaurant, two is one more than enough. One of the fryers is strictly for vegetarians and the other has meat products go through it.
Deep fried tofu pieces with sweet miso paste. Garnished with coriander and sesame seeds.
Some of his dishes are very obviously "inspired" from the restaurant I work at. It's cheaper as well but there's no obvious competition. We also ordered a bowl of udon soup. It came with tofu, mushroom, seaweed, cucumber and was once again garnished with coriander. Udon is a thick type of noodles.
MAKODO's vegetarian udon soup.
Vegetarian box set - served with rice and miso soup.
This is surprisingly cheap! Set at NZD$12 for all that! That box contains spinach dipped in a thick, sweet miso paste, salad dressed with delicious Japanese sesame dressing, vegetarian sushi (avocado, carrots and pickles) and three slices of "vegetarian fish" (soy based). I love the sesame dressing! I once bought a small bottle and it was practically all we ate until the bottle ran out.
Vegetable tempura
This was a dish of kumara, eggplant, okra and pumpkin slices deep fried in a tempura style! Taking into account that the fryer has extra clean oil (has only ever deep fried these vegetables), these came out really good. The tempura taste was very distinct and although the oil could have been drained better (I've had tempura made by the same chef so I know he could have drained the oil a bit better), you could taste that the oil was very clean (not mixed with meat, cleaned often etc).
That dish was made so well that my mother ordered another serving for takeaway! It's obvious this chef puts a lot of effort into his dishes even though he runs a small restaurant and there aren't many customers. Wish him luck and hope he'll gain lots of customers or enough money to move to a better location!
No comments:
Post a Comment