Bridie O Reilly's

This place is in South Yarra and its another Irish place. There seems to be quite a few Irish places in Melbourne. I didn't really like PJ's Sidebar all that much and its another Irish bar but I loved the other Bridie O Reilly's.

This place does some great specials and they have a huge beer list featuring a few Irish beers. And they seem to be doing well in that department with their popular pint special which is $7.

The Irish service is great and they mingle with their customers well.

I went on a Wednesday after my run and they had $12 special of pizza and beer. The beer they choose for you but you can choose your own pizza. Of course me promising everyone on Healthyintstudents site that I would have vegetarian, I did just that. And I only had to pay $6 for mine as I had the Entertainment book voucher. You can buy the Entertainment book off their site.

The pizza did take a while to make but it was well worth it in the end. It went well with the Brick Pale lager as it was not strong in alcohol or taste. The pumpkin was really good and the feta made the pizza taste really good. It was creamy. As for the tomato sauce, there wasn't a lot on there which is good.

Do come by this Irish place when you can and make sure that you buy the book from us to support the Salvation Army.

Seoul Seoul

Seoul Seoul is a place in Victoria st Richmond. I had a hankering for going there from not having been there for a while. Marathon training has eaten most of my time last year.

Victoria st has changed a lot. Here Vintage cellars used to be there and then there are more Westernized places opening up.

But it has always been the home of the Vietnamese and it will stay that way.

Here I had the bibimbab and it was all good but a little bit too bland for me. It was vegetarian. Even the lady at the other table said that hers was bland too.

I might give the Dosirock a try though another day.

The Imperial Hotel

RNIS received a free Good Food gift card, but they bought their own drinks.

The Imperial Hotel is in the city on the Parliament end. It was the end of the year and I invited kristian.barker to join me. He was yet to receive a present from me.

Here they were quite busy and it was quite some time before we got a table. They take the Entertainment book voucher.

Here food is really big. Kristian had two glasses of coke and I had two different types of beer. One was from Little Creatures and the other one was a City lager. The City lager tasted like weed as it was bitter. Kristian did not like this and after one sip he decided no more. As for my non-alcoholic, it was water.

We both had burgers and mine was vegetarian as promised to Healthy International students. This worked well with the Little Creatures Original Pilsner beer. I had been to Little Creatures before so I knew that this would work well with a burger. My vegetarian one had a hash brown in it which I thought was odd. Other than that I really enjoyed it. The chips were the frozen sort but they worked well with the HSP sauce.

Kristian enjoyed his burger and complimented me online. And he said thanks.

Do come here for good food.

Gyoza Gyoza in Melbourne Central

Gyoza Gyoza has opened up in Melbourne Central and when they had the $10 discount voucher I wanted to try the place.

I have had good food in the other Gyoza Gyoza stores so I had wanted to see. The other Gyoza Gyoza did not charge me $3.50 for pink ginger and they gave me a small pink ginger and not a big bowl.

The udon for $6.80 was small and alright. I prefer Emporium's one though.

They had a special of 5 Gyoza for $4.80 which is not too bad. Like the other place, they give out all the ginger sauce etc. But they forgot to let me choose which sauce.

The seaweed salad was nothing special. It was store bought. I needed my greens and irons to balance out the meal.

But the miso for $2.50 was very salty though. The one I get at Emporium is much better and less salty.  Its like they put too much miso stock in there.

The Agedashi tofu did wow me though. Here they were in cubes and they didn't use a lot of sauce though. It was freshly fried the way it should.

The oysters in yuzu sauce were fresh but they had too much sauce on them. The sauce drowned out the flavour. But I loved the tang from the yuzu.

Rating: 12/20-  overall disappointing. I hope that they can improve within time. 

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!