O'Connell's Hotel

RNIS was invited by Dimmi to spend $20 and they paid the rest themselves.

The O'Connell's Hotel is in South Melbourne and it's behind the South Melbourne Market. It took us a while to find and we did a run around it earlier so that we were not late. During my first year of the marathon, I learned that coming on time to everything is important. And it's not too late or too early.

The O'Connell's Hotel is like being in the tramcar restaurant. It has that fine dining feel to it. Here they have a huge wine list and a lot of good wines. I sampled a couple whilst there.

They do cater for functions and they have a lovely area outside.

To start off with I had the granita oyster ($4.5). Here they were really lemony and small and they had that lemony tang to it.

The complimentary bread was freshly baked and I really enjoyed the creaminess of the butter.

Then the main which is gnocchi ($22) was very cheesy and I liked it. Here they had a bit of kale in there to give it that crunch. The mint was very lovely in there.

And of course, to finish off I had the basil ice cream ($4.50). Here it was very minty and full of goodness. It was not too sweet.

Do come by O'Connell's Hotel when you want to celebrate something special. Oh and happy new year!

Arabasque cafe

This cafe is a little place on Elizabeth St near RMIT Carlton Campus. I had walked by it a few times and saw that they were always empty. I had always wanted to try but from the outside, they looked more like a Shisha bar.

That is until I went in and found that they were a friendly and very homely cafe.

 The owner told me that they were busy at night as they are also a Shisha bar.

The service was very friendly and the prices here are student friendly. For a start, they don't charge any more than $13 for a standard breakfast with lots of food. Normally in the city, it is $20-$22. And that's without coffee.

They mainly are a vegetarian place but they have just a few meat dishes.

Here their food is really healthy and Jordanian style. I never had this style of food before so I cannot comment much. I had the Jordanian style eggs which come with hummus and pita bread. And there are lots of bread in their freezer out the back. I loved the Jordanian eggs as it was so healthy. And that hummus is just like the way that my mum would make this at home with all the good fats.

The long black was just ok, but I loved the little sampler of chocolate bread for $1. It melted in the mouth and was not too sweet.

I would recommend this place to my students and any International students who live in Melbourne.

Hungry Bear

Hungry Bear is a new pizza place in town and they offered free pizza to all and a second free furphy for me.

But we paid for the arancini and the first Furphy which was $6.50. The arancini was on the small side and was $7. The last time we bought this was at the End of year run party and they were bigger balls. These were tiny.

Salt

Furphy

Arancini

The place is small and the old Chillipadi used to be there. I guess Chillipadi couldn't afford the fees and they left shop. Now Hungry Bear takes place. The owner is a lovely lady and her husband loves drinking beer. They really do know their beer.

The free pizza I had was good but tiny. I guess they wanted to do guilt free eating as too many people are overweight. It was Christmas ham with pineapple. Normally after 5pm it would be $5. This sized pizza is normally $14. Their pizzas take 90 seconds to make and the ingredients are fresh. All the ingredients are already prepared. All they need to do is put it in the quick oven which tells the server when the pizza is done.

I have had Furphy before and enjoyed it. This was not too bad and they had some fruity notes in there.

If you are around and are up for a drink come on by. I hope that they are featured as a bonus offer in the Entertainment book. 

Shaw Davey Slum

The Shaw Davey Slum has been there for a while now and they are featured in the Entertainment book. They are a student pub in Carlton which has cheap happy hours.

However, they have a minimum spend in the book which I did not know about. It turns out that you need to spend $30 on food alone and not the drinks part.

We got the three dishes for $22 and another arancini dish as well as a spiced rum for me and a coke for him. For the three dishes we chose the house chips, arancini and onion rings. The onion rings were heavily battered and not very nice. I don't recommend getting those.

The house chips were good though. They were crispy and crunchy and I loved the spiciness. I'd be happy to eat these without the aioli.

I loved the arancini balls as they were quite cheesey and gooey and not hard at all.

My spiced rum worked well with all the food with the exception of the onion rings.

Do come by to this cheap pub on a Friday afternoon.

Crust pizza bar

Crust Pizza bar is a chain store in Australia. And they are featured in the Entertainment book for 25% off the total bill for takeaway and dine in. Excludes online offers.

Here I went to the one in Lonsdale st and it is smallish. They weren't very busy as it was a warm night.

According to their claims of the pizzas take ten minutes to make- mine took a little longer as it was seafood. It was $14 with the Entertainment book voucher. And they forgot to apply the discount. It took them a little while to remember and when they did they gave me a free fanta.

But the seafood pizza was very nice. It didn't have too much sauce which I liked and it had a lot of fresh seafood. The base was just perfect.

Do come by for your pizzas and remember to buy the book off us as you'll save lots when you go out.