It Just Has To Be Delicious

Posts tagged ‘Joondalup’

Heng Ong’s, Joondalup

This little Malaysian cafe popped up a few months ago and has become a firm favourite. It’s in the Joondalup Square complex near Bunnings, and the word is obviously spreading. Even if we turn up early there is no guarantee of a table, and there is always a steady stream of takeaway customers coming and going. It was lovely that hostess Carina and her husband asked us what we thought of the food, it’s a place where they care about the food that they serve.

It’s one of the few places locally where you can find Lo Bak – the deep fried dish of minced pork/prawn in a beancurd skin. Wonderfully crispy and very tasty – this is always a dish that we order. There is always sweet chilli dipping sauce available:


Another great dish is salt and pepper prawns. It’s a generous serving of prawns with wonderfully crispy fried onion and chilli – yum:

Our go to favourite is the sambal prawns. Every family seems to have their own sambal recipe. Made with chef’s homemade special sambal sauce, it’s a wonderful blend of spice and piquancy:

Special fried rice is so good that you can eat it as a dish in it’s own right, but it’s also a great accompaniment to those sambal prawns:

Another great starter is prawn toast – generous prawn on superbly crispy toast meets all expectations nicely.

It’s definitely worth a try, because this neighbourhood gem serves some of the best Malaysian food in Perth.

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OEC Sushi, Joondalup

OEC Sushi is a venue that I have been meaning to try for a long time, but the cafe only opened mid week. It is now open at weekends, and we excitedly visited for breakfast a few weeks ago. The cafe is a little outside of Joondalup town centre, at the end of Regents Park Road, and has seating inside and on the pavement.

Service is friendly and enthusiastic, and the menu is full of wonderful options that make you want to try them all. On the first visit, my partner was feeling a little under the weather with a cold, and we both chose the udon noodle soup with vegetarian tempura. This was absolutely delicious, and even though the tempura were served half in the soup and had softened, they still had a crispness to them and a wonderful umami flavour.

On our next visit we both chose chicken dishes (it’s rare for us to eat chicken, preferring vegetarian options, but we both wanted chicken on this occasion). I chose the crispy chicken bowl with crispy kale, pickles, salad and rice.

My partner chose the spicy chicken bowl which was not overly spicy, but very delicious with pickles, rice and salad.

We also chose vegetarian gyoza, which were good and tasty with kewpie mayo.

All dishes were amazingly good, and we can’t wait to go back and try other menu options. This cafe is sure to be a weekend favourite for us.

Visit date – January 2021 – this is a local favourite now – we are always visiting!

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CXpresso, Joondalup

This is just a short blog post about one of the better coffee outlets in Joondalup. CXpresso is on the ground floor near Woolworths and KMart. I have visited a few times and found the cakes and pastries to always be fresh (I hate it when cafes freeze muffins and then microwave them the next day to make them ‘seem’ fresh).

We ordered soy decaf, and as usual, this was no problem, we were presented with two very nice coffees.

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We shared a muffin, which was fresh as if it had just come out of the oven. Apple and cinnamon crumble – lovely texture, subtle cinnamon and a sweet hint of apple.

cx 2Definitely worth checking out as your coffee stop when shopping at Joondalup Lakeside.

Last Visit Date – July 2020

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2 Fat Indians, Joondalup

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This Joondalup restaurant is one of the latest venues in the 2 Fat Indians chain. Bold and brash, it occupies a large area near the station concourse.

We originally had several takeaways from here when our local favourite Imli closed during the Covid pandemic, and found the food to be good quality with plenty of vegan/veggie options.

This was our first sit-down experience and the restaurant was busy with customers keen to return after the lockdown. Takeaway business was booming with several UberEats bags stacked up ready for collection, and we perused the menu looking for some vegan and vegetarian favourites.

We chose a pappadom basket to start with tamarind pickle and mint sauce. This was a little dissapointing, some of the pappadoms were underdone, and a bit tough – not the lovely crispy bubbly rounds that I am used to. The pickles were good.

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For mains we chose a Diwani Handi – mixed vegetables in a medium curry sauce with fenugreek. A wonderful mix of carrot, corn, sweet potato and peas – thoroughly delicious.

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We also chose tadka dhal which is a good staple of red lentils with turmeric and spices to give it the lovely yellow hue.

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The naan was a garlic naan – a delicious mix of soft and crispy.

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Jeera rice was served in a little pot.

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All in all the meal was good quality, the service was very quick which meant that we didn’t linger in the restaurant. You definitely get larger portions when you order a takeaway, but the meal was certainly enough for two and we really did enjoy our visit.

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Restaurant review, Vegan/Vegetarian

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Tao, Joondalup

Tao sits on the corner of Boas Avenue and Grand Boulevard in Joondalup and was quite busy on the Sunday afternoon that we visited.

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The restaurant is dominated by a sushi train, and food offered on the menu is
predominantly Japanese with Thai and Vietnamese options. I always wonder why restaurants offer a variety of cuisines rather than sticking to one and making it really good, however, I had heard good things about Tao and wanted to give it a try. I ordered fresh coconut to drink, which arrived in the coconut shell, so it was lovely and fresh.

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While we perused the menu we chose some crab claws from the sushi train. The flavour was good, but they had been on the train too long and were cold, which detracted from our enjoyment. We also chose a crab/potato cake plate which was quite nice, and again could have been warmer.

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Eventually we decided on a mixed tempura, a karaage bento and a crazy crab roll.

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The bento box was dominated by orangey yellow sauces – chilli mayo for the karaage and an odd dressing for the salad (which had separated making the salad quite wet). The miso was good, and the karaage was okay but could have been crispier.

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The tempura was a bit bland. The prawns were fresh, but the veggies and ponzu sauce were a bit tasteless and I added plenty of wasabi to ramp up the flavours. I like tempura when you get a little heap of grated radish to add to the sauce, but sadly this was missing, and I have had much better tempura than Tao provided.

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The crab roll was lovely – nice tasty flavours, but not very tightly wrapped, so it fell apart while eating it. It was accompanied by deep fried soft shell crab in the middle of the plate, but this could have been crispier, it was a bit oily and soggy. Despite a fairly lacklustre meal, I was impressed with the array of cakes in the display cabinet and on the sushi train. They really looked appealing.

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The wait staff were a little mixed, the guy was lovely and apologised profusely that the freshly prepared ordered items were taking a while (I didn’t actually mind – I prefer to wait for fresh food), whereas the lady was a bit brusque and not very attentive. It was a cold night and we were seated close to the door, so every times somebody came in or out, we felt a draught and had to keep getting up to close the door. I probably wouldn’t go back to Tao. It’s not cheap, but portions are large. Sadly the big portions are not matched by big flavour, and it was a meal that I didn’t really enjoy enough to return. If I did come back, it would be for tea and cake.

Visit Date – June 2019

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Shingle Inn, Joondalup

I fancied a sandwich for lunch, and Shingle Inn at Lakeside Mall always has nice gourmet sandwiches. I had eaten here before and found the food a little uncaringly constructed, but decided to give it another go, and this time we were pleasantly surprised.
I chose a turkey and cranberry sandwich on multigrain. They helpfully made it without butter and spread mayo instead. It was really good with a nice quantity of avocado and turkey in the sandwich and a great side salad with honey mustard dressing.

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My partner chose the club sandwich which was equally good.

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He chose an orange juice. It would have been nice if it were freshly squeezed, but he ended up with a bottled variety.
I chose a mint and lime frappe which was tasty but had a slightly fake manufactured flavour. It would be really easy to make this with fresh lime and mint, but it was okay.

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The sandwiches here have definitely improved, but the restaurant still needs some care and organisation. There were lots of tables that needed cleaning and nobody really seemed to be attending to them. It’s nice here but it could be so much better.

Last Visit Date – January 2023

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Coffee shop review, Restaurant review

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Pavilion, Joondalup

Pavilion is a restaurant located at the West Coast Institute in Joondalup. It is a restaurant where hospitality staff are trained, so it’s best to bear this in mind when attending. Sometimes everything runs perfectly smoothly, and sometimes not so, but everybody has to train somewhere, and this aspect is reflected in the price of the food. I went there for lunch with work colleagues, and the floor was full of eager beaver trainee wait staff who served us admirably, especially young Bella who was assigned to our table.
The menu does not have a massive choice and there is usually only one vegetarian option. The regular choices are 3-4 entrees, mains and desserts. It’s not particularly inventive or masterchef-like, but then again, the objective here is to train wait staff, and to have an over complicated menu would add an extra dimension of difficulty to proceedings. That said, all the food here is very tasty and well prepared.
We ate a set menu for a special staff function. Our starter was a pumpkin and coconut soup. Lovely and smooth, with a bit of a spice kick to it, and perfectly prepared croutons, I enjoyed this very much.

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Then we had a ‘go up and serve yourself’ carvery with a choice of pork or lamb. I chose the pork, and the chef served up a slightly clumsily carved thick slice of pork, when a few smaller slices would have been preferable. This was served with apple sauce, potatoes dauphinoise, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, pumpkin, crispy roast potato cubes and gravy. I really enjoyed the food, despite having to cut large chunks off of my ginormous slice of pork. The veggies were a little underdone, but this is probably intentional as carvery vegetable sit around on the heaters for a while (and probably eventually become overdone).

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Dessert was a lemon tart or an orange chocolate mousse. The orange chocolate mousse was luscious and very moreish with some wonderful candied nuts on top. The lemon tart was nicely made and served with fruit.

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We were offered tea and coffee and the meal was complete. There were a few ‘accidents’ in the dining room, a few dropped glasses, and some service mistakes here and there, but generally it was a very pleasant meal and the staff tried very hard to ensure that we had everything that we needed.
If you are happy to be served by young trainees, and don’t mind that the service is a little slow and deliberate at times, you will end up having quite a good value delicious meal. The trainees are really enthusiastic and pleasant to chat to. If you are looking for silver service and perfection, then look elsewhere. I liked it, and would be happy to return.

Visit Date – March 2018

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Moments, Joondalup

Moments cafe is on Davidson Terrace in Joondalup, an area that is a little hub of eateries outside of the main shopping centre area. Nestled in between an Indian cafe and a Chinese restaurant, not far from Dome and the newly opened Paper Avenue, it has quite a lot of competition. Moments is quite popular and always busy.
The menu is huge and consists of all day breakfast, toasties, sandwiches, gourmet sandwiches, burgers, wraps, cakes, various options in the chilled cabinet and some hot options like noodles and Asian fare in ready to go takeaway containers. We chose to dine in and our food was cooked fresh. Everything is lovingly prepared and ‘no frills’ style. The drinks menu is equally enormous, and I ordered a chilled soy chai.

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My partner ordered a pot of tea which arrived on quirky spotty crockery. The whole cafe is filled with quirky posters and ornaments and they have a thing about moustaches.

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I fancied a bacon and egg muffin, which was very nice, and they asked if I wanted HP sauce (of course I do – I’m of English heritage), which was a nice touch. This was tasty with good quality ingredients and certainly made a nice light lunch.

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My partner chose a cheese, tomato and chicken toastie. Again simple and nicely made with a good amount of filling and very tasty too.

Moments is a sweet little cafe and certainly worth a visit. Strangely it’s not open on Saturdays, but it is open every other day, and definitely a local favourite.

Last Visit Date – April 2018

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Coffee shop review, Restaurant review

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Katsuya, Joondalup

Katsuya is a wonderful Japanese restaurant/cafe in the centre of Joondalup CBD located in the Central Walk area between Reid Promenade and Boas Avenue.
It is quite spacious inside with plenty of seating, and has a busy takeaway service and a faithful lunch patronage. The menu consists of many regular japanese starters – gyoza, spring rolls, octopus balls, agedashi tofu, crab claws etc. They also provide a range of sushi rolls, sashimi, tempura, bento boxes and katsu/teriyaki sets. Unlicensed, there is a range of soft drinks and Asian drinks in the fridge, and the waiters are always happy to provide chilled tap water.
We chose some spring rolls and gyoza to share. There are 5 in each portion but I forgot to take the spring roll picture before we ate some.

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The spring rolls were nice, served with a sweet chilli sauce, and the gyoza were plump and juicy. A very good start.
I chose a high protein meal of agedashi tofu and mixed sashimi. The agedashi consisted of three large pieces of tofu and some tempura vegetables in a lovely tentsuyu broth. The silken tofu is dusted with potato starch and deep fried giving a lovely contrast of textures.

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The mixed sashimi was beautifully fresh and skilfully cut, served with spinach,
light soy and wasabi. Some of the best sashimi I have tasted worldwide.

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My companions ate teriyaki salmon bento and a katsu curry set.
The bento boxes contained a portion of teriyaki salmon with rice, salad, edamame, and miso soup. Every element was well presented and tasty, the salmon very fresh, and the sauce sweet and luscious.

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The katsu curry was also well presented. The chicken was a nice thickness in a lovely crispy crumb with a mild and fruity flavoured curry sauce. It was accompanied by a miso soup and a bowl of salad.

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The staff at Katsuya are very helpful and willing to answer all questions about the menu. Everything is served with a smile and created with care. This restaurant serves food of a high standard and is well loved by the locals. I will definitely be a regular at Katsuya.

Last Visit Date – March 2020

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Gipsy Boy, Joondalup

Gipsy Boy is a boutique and cafe situated on Regents Park Road in Joondalup. The staff are friendly, and the cabinet of cakes and savouries always looks appealing here.
I popped in one morning for a coffee and some fruit toast. Unfortunately they didn’t have any non-dairy spread, but they offered some jam, and I sat there quite happy with my big mug of cappuccino and my toasty treat.
The fruit toast was delightful – more fruit than bread and nicely spiced.

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The coffee was delicious, a good blend and well made.

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Gipsy Boy is well worth a visit – a nice little neighbourhood gem.

Last Visit Date – August 2019

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