Saturday, February 5, 2011

Grain Asian Cafe, Box Hill

Melbourne City's Chinatown seems puny in comparison to the suburb of Box Hill. Seriously, there are Asian eateries all over the place here. We fancied a change from our usual haunt, Wong's Lucky Bar (which I have yet to write a review about)and decided to try Grain Asian Cafe which is located in Box Hill Shopping Centre.


However, the guys weren't hungry so I ended up ordering food for myself and they got drinks. Yeah, how weird is that? The only female eats while the guys just have a drink!!??

Anyway, I'm from Scotland so I LOVE anything deep fried. Can you guess what I chose to eat?


Pat yourself on the back if you answered correctly. I ordered the chicken rib with spiced salt on rice. The funny thing about this cafe is that once the waitress takes your order, you have to pay. A bit weird...but maybe they have had bad experiences with customers who left without paying??


I was pleasantly surprised at the large portion. The chicken ribs had been coated in a light batter and then deep fried perfectly. I enjoyed munching the crispy chicken skin. BUT I could feel the MSG burning my throat after I chowed down 2 ribs. I was also rather disappointed with the lack of spice - the topping of minced garlic, spring onions and specks of chilli were inadequate to satisfy me - it needed more fire. Also, because the ribs were dry, I found it really hard to swallow the dry rice. The dish needed something to help with the dryness, e.g. some cucumber or soy sauce would really help.

In the end, I only ate half and packed the rest into a plastic container to take home. It actually tasted even better when I reheated it for lunch the next day because I added soy sauce and chilli sauce.

Would I return to Grain Asian Cafe? Yes. I saw lots of people order dumplings with soup noodles - so that's something I want to try next time.

Grain-Asian Cafe on Urbanspoon

3 comments:

Melody said...

OMG I LOVE EATING THAT MMMMMM!
And yeah pshhh. China Town is nothing compared to like Box Hill and Springvale LOOLL x) <3

Ling said...

Melody - where is good to eat in Springvale? We haven't tried the Chinese food there yet.

Luke Evans said...

Cool page. Some of the asian fast-service cafes ask for payment at ordering. I thought it was unusual at first, but it speeds things up and reduces errors.

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