Tonight I caught up with Hamish and Kate for dinner at the relatively new Jaz Restaurant and Bar in Toowong. Situated where The Malaysian Experience used to be, Jaz reintroduces the unique stone grilling meals back to Brisbane all inside a fashionably modern setting (Hamish tells me of a place in The Ville near UQ that no longer exists that also served this). The novel stone grilling approach involves providing each diner with a heated stone block that continues to provide enough heat to cook a selected piece of meat throughout the entire meal. Although the stonegrill experience is what most people select when they go to Jaz, their menu still offers enough of a diverse range of meals to satiate any sort of appetite.

I started the meal with their garlic bread and was pleased to bite into the crisp bread pieces and encounter the sufficiently salty and strong flavour of their garlic butter. Soon enough I was cutting up pieces of prime rump to be seared on the stone grill in front of me that continually radiated with extreme heat throughout the meal. Each stone grill meal is accompanied with either roast vegetables or a salad and chips, and the consensus from all parties last night is the recommendation of the salad and chips as we were all surprised by Kate’s roast “vegetables”, consisting of a single roast potato chunk and a few small carrot and pumpkin pieces. Although you can get bigger steaks elsewhere, I was pretty satisfied by the quality and tenderness of the rump. It seems that the restaurant also expects this to be pretty consistent since the only utility they provide for slicing pieces off your meat is a butter knife.

Details: Jaz Restaurant and Bar
Found on: 80 Jephson St, Toowong
Contactable via: 3870 1111
Highlights of the place: Who wouldn’t want an individual sizzling platter where you can slice and sear your own bite sized chunks of meat? The menu seemed to have an affordable yet diverse range of dishes that should appease most people
Room for improvement: Though modern, the atmosphere still seemed a little excessively sterile but may improve as it becomes more popular.

July 2004 saw Brisbane welcome the latest sister restaurant (named the same) of the apparently very popular Mecca Bah, first opened in Melbourne. Its Middle Eastern theme heavily influences all aspects of its new home situated at The Emporium in Fortitude Valley, from its oddly shaped yet vastly fashionable indoor and outdoor eating areas, the intricately decorated plates, bowls and dishes and finally its food and cocktail menu.

Although open for some time (or maybe because of it), this restaurant, that does not take bookings, is still hugely popular, with a living testament being a decent sized queue waiting to be seated through our entire evening there on Saturday night. The menu offers enough variety not to overwhelm, with decently priced main meals ranging from several types of tangines (casserole-like dishes), various middle eastern grill and (stick-style) kebabs both served with couscous as well as a good variety of turkish pizzas. They do offer starters (which we did indulge in) but we skipped their dessert offerings.

Dishes from all sections of the main menu were ordered by all. The Moroccan spice calamari with Turkish bean salad was extremely tender and my swordfish kebab packed full of flavour from its Middle Eastern spices went down a treat with its couscous salad (though not at all very spicy as described on the menu). The tangines were apparently okay, but the most striking dishes of the night had to be the uniquely shaped and great value for money Turkish Pizzas, enjoyed by all those that ordered them but could not be finished by them.

Service was pretty good especially considering the restaurant reached full capacity early on. Our waitress was extremely polite and responded extremely well to a number of our questions.

The Kua Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

I ended up having dinner at the new Wagamama restaurant at the Emporium in the Valley tonight (courtesy of Suz and Al and a very entertaining evening with a friend of their’s, Josh- thanks guys!). I had heard good things about the other members of this chain (mainly centred in Sydney and Melbourne for Australia, but with many other numerous locations around the world), but was sad to leave the Brisbane one with a lot of my expectations shattered. Read more “Wagamama Wa Sugokunai Desu Ne!”

Tonight I had dinner with Andy and Amelia at Bruno’s Tables. Hidden away in an old Queenslander, and surrounded solely by other residential properties, this little find has a big reputation for fine dining and serving modern French food. The head chef, Bruno Loubet, is well known for creating intensely-flavoured food and amongst his many other roles as restaurateur and chef, contributes to Brisbane News for their cuisine section. Read more “Bruno’s Tables”

Last night marked my last Christmas function for the year, and was a simple celebratory dinner with the usual gang at the GPO Hotel. The GPO Hotel is situated in Fortitude Valley and, as the name suggests, is actually the now renovated and currently heritage listed General Post Office building. Styled with warm Italian colours and fitted with modern decor, the building can cater for many different groups having numerous function rooms, a couple of bars, a wine cellar and restaurant.

We spent most of our time in restaurant part of the GPO Hotel called The Telegraph Rib Room, sitting at their biggest table for the night. The actual dining area does not fit that many people but it was good to see that they did not try to overcrowd the area with too many tables. The table service was excellent for most of the night, with little things such as plates being taken away, or water being continually filled without request, all completed without any noticeable distraction to the diners.

The menu is well presented but be warned that the selection of dishes available for both entrees and main are rather limited because it apparently changes from week to week. Our menu tended to be fairly steak-heavy so there were not many options for vegetarians. For starters, we all decided to get some turkish bread that was accompanied with a rather bland hummus dip and a salty goat’s cheese spread that actually went quite well with the bread. It seemed like the two most popular dishes for the evening was the Steak and Bugs, and the Duck. I was told that the steak was cooked quite well, but the bug meat did not appear to be very much and was seemingly cooked from a defrosted state. The duck (which I had) was cooked to a perfect state although we all found the dish was not very balanced. The fruit sauce in addition to the caramelised onions made the dish excessively sweet. The sweetness overpowered the natural flavour of the duck and could have been balanced by something that was relatively salty.

It was still a good night overall and a great time to catch up with everyone.

I want to extend a big thanks to all the people that managed to make it to dinner this Saturday just gone. Perfect evening weather made for a fantastic dinner held at one of the best Indian restaurants in Brisbane, Punjabi Palace.

Read more “Punjabi Dinner Delight”

I’d heard a fair amount of good things about the Gun Shop Cafe at West End from a number of people and thanks to Sarah, was finally able to experience all these good things today. Try to get past all the things that might actually detract from your experience such as having to wait for a table (they do not take bookings) and the not-so-attentive wait-staff because the food is definitely worth it. The menu was a simple, printed menu, something that we all joked about (maybe hoping) it being an indicator that they changed regularly.

Read more “A breakfast at point blank”