Cinco de Mayo in Hawthorn

I have been to the Hawthorn Guzman Y gomez a couple of times and really enjoyed it. I have bought one full priced mini burrito and this time I came back for the $5 Cinco de Mayo special and free chips.

The mini burrito was not good. It was lukewarm and soggy. I thought that since I have not written about this store I thought that I would give them another chance. That is on a busy day like today. The city stores were packed to the brim with workers.

Here you order and pay and then they give you a number. Whilst waiting you can help yourself to condiments and cutlery by their station. And then you find your seat. You can site outside or inside.  Because the shop is small many people like to get take away.

For the spiciness you can choose mild or hot spices. My burrito was not too spicy but I did add some jalepinos to give it that spice. It was a fish burrito since it was meat free May and I had to stick by the rules. The barramundi was fresh and the beans were plentiful.

The free chips were the best ones at Guzman Y gomez so far! And so was the guac. The guacamole was freshly made.

Do come by to the Hawthorn one as it is the better one out of all of them.

Ajisen Ramen in Hawthorn

Today there was another big protest at work and I wanted to stay away. It was the one about making education free.

Ajisen Ramen is a chain store and I heard some good things about it from Confessions of a little pigy and other bloggers about their good meal sets.

This store in Hawthorn was run by the Chinese.

Here they have all their meal sets under $15 with some of their premium ones for under $20. They don't come with miso soup- you have to buy it yourself. for an extra $2 per set. This miso soup was worth the $2 as it had generous amount of seaweed and other things.

I had the yasai bento and I have had better at Highpoint where there was lost of seaweed. Here they forgot the sesame seeds on the rice. The tofu for the yasai bento was a bit overcooked. It was a bit soft and it drowned in a lot of sauce.

I didn't really like the corn salad. It had waaay too much mayo in there and I could not taste the corn. The edamame was just ok.

Rating: 13/20-hmm I've had better ok. And Glenferrie has quite a few other places around.

Glenferrie road festival and Grilld

Glenferrie Road festival is a festival about wine, arts, crafts, food and coffee. But it is also about community with many of the gyms and community organisations taking part. In recent years I have heard that there is a waffle stall but not this year. This year they featured cakes and desserts in a jar, all of which look yummy but I can't eat it. Why you ask? It is because I'm trying to quit sugar.

So instead I take a look at all the non sugary options and there were a few except for the ones that have a lot of BBQ sauce to it. I tried Oporto's chicken and chips as they were samples and it was good. I really didn't like the sauces as they have no taste.

Getting there was no problem, there were trams, trains and the walk from Gardiners creek and Merri trail for those that are more adventurous. There wasn't any free water tank for people to refill their bottles. People had to buy their own drink which was $1-$3 and on a hot 26C day you would want to have water available.

Grilld had their beers for people to try as well as free avocado chips for those that bought a burger. So I went in and they were flat out busy. Here I had their field of dreams. I wanted to add an egg in it but the.y were flat out. And eggs cost an extra $1- $2. All the drinks they had were sweet except kombucha.

Inside Grilld 

The burger was good, but the lady's on the table beside me looked even better. It was a Mighty Melbourne.

Lulo 

Dog outside Lulo

Grilld had beers but I liked Lulo bar's sangria offer of $7 per cup and I was curious to try it. It is a red wine fruity drink. It is also really sweet and alcoholic just like Spain. This drink is a very popular Spanish bar drink. What I didn't know was that it has 16 grams of sugar in there.

Menu for a Japanese restaurant

Connect 4

$3 pizza slices

Another dog

On the top end of Glenferrie road there were more bars and craft stalls. Restaurants advertise their wares and promotions. Many dogs were out enjoying the fine sunshine.

Do go to next years one as this one was a lot of fun.

Mutekiya

Mutekiya is a Japanese restaurant and its at 708 Glenferrie Road. Here they are run by Chinese and they don't have sushi. Rather they are a noodle and rice restaurant.

They had just been opened for three days and the flowers were outside. When I saw the flowers I thought that a new Chinese/Malaysian place had just opened but I was wrong

I was greeted by a glum waitress. It was after lunch on a Friday and here they were quiet. In fact the whole of Glenferrie Road was quiet. Originally I was going to visit Osha Thai but it turns out that they have a happy hour special of beer and meal and I wanted to try the beer.

Back to Mutekiya now. The place is clean and small. The bathrooms are through a door out the back. You have to turn right and then look right for them. They are unisex and are clean.

Here I had their bento. It was $14.95 for your choice of chicken or beef, miso soup, rice, salad, fried prawn and takoyaki. The takoyaki was terrible. It tasted more like potato balls than octopus. The fake crab salad was awful. It had that very sweet taste to it. As for the chicken teriyaki there was too much to it and after a while the chicken was very tough. Also the teriyaki sauce was too sweet.

The prawns were alright and so was the rice but who could complain. At least the rice was real Japanese ones

The miso soup was the only thing that could save the meal, but where was the tofu?

Rating: 11/20- it was just ok. I wouldn't go out of my way to get there again unless asked.

Santoni

Here the place is small, but they have two levels of seating (upstairs and downstairs). Here I chose the seat by the window.

There are only five other reviews and after 2:30pm on a Tuesday I was the only customer there. All the Swinburne students are having their mid semester break and same as RMIT.
Santoni is a pizza place in Hawthorn and this business has liked a lot of my Instagram photos. So I thought it was time to pay them a visit just to say thanks.

The place is right near Glenferrie station

The service was very friendly and the guy actually smiled. It was really casual.

Her the pizzas are yum and I loved the thin base as it is good for me as I am on a diet. I now don't like pizzas with a thick base as it is just too much for me and waaaay too many calories. I had the vegetarian pizza and added some caramelised onions to it for an extra $3.50. The pizza itself was $20 and here they had lots of vegetables and cheesey goodness.


Rating: 15/20- liked this. Would love it better with wine but I am running later on in the day. Do come by for dinner or drinks after your movie session in Lido.