Domaine Chandon, Yarra Valley

Finally I get to enjoy a mini trip again with my best friends now that my annual leave has taken place just after Christmas. I am extremely happy to be able to spend some time with the girls outside of Melbourne city away from the hustle and buzzle of Melbourne CBD. We decided on a last minute plan to visit the winery near Yarra Valley, which is about 44 minutes drive from the main city.
There's a wide range of winery around Yarra Valley, so we decided to visit the more popular ones such as Domaine Chandon. This winery owns 50 hectares of the vineyard with Champagne varieties such as Chardonnay, Pinot Noir & Pinot Meunier.

Does this bottle of Champagne look familiar to you? I don't know much about Champagne or wine so I will not write any gibberish here. *Image is not from my own, google image searched and found this.

It wasn't too long of a drive and the place was extremely easy to find. It was also a very fine day, so lucky us! Especially when you live in a 4-season-in-one-day country, this kind of day is hard to come by.  I was all equipped with my digital camera and a newly bought tripod (so excited to try it out as I was so sick of having to ask random people to take the pictures and they always turn out not the way you wanted them to be, don't you agree???).

Arriving at the main entrance of Domaine Chandon. This winery is one of the most popular tourist attractions, just outside at the car park area, there were a couple of tour buses and a flock of tourists marching to this winery for wine tasting, food exploration and just simply enjoy the beautiful valley. A perfect place to wind down after a long year (for me that is).

Pardon me, lots of selfies in this blog entry. I usually only have photos of me but this time, I didn't take many photos of just myself. Having a tripod is not the most convenient thing to carry around but obviously it was worth it as it took more stable photos and nobody needed to hold it for you. My only concern at that time was that it was super windy at times and I was worried that my tripod was going to fall and break my camera, lucky enough my camera is pretty sturdy so it weights down the tripod just fine.

and more selfie...

The restaurant and the wine tasting bar. It has indoor and outdoor seatings but it was too windy for us so we decided to sit inside instead.

More selfie before going in, typical Asian behaviour.

We ordered 4 dishes to share among 3 of us. First one was fresh oysters and believe me when I say this, they can't get any more fresh than this!! One of the best I've tasted. They also put a touch of fried garlic on top of it!! YUM~~~~

and then we had bruschetta which was also yum but I wouldn't say "Wahhh". The dish on the left is a duck dish and I wouldn't say wahh too as I don't think the duck absorbs the sauce well enough, pretty much like ordinary duck dish same with the hapuka dish on the right. The mash potato and the rest of the hollandaise-like sauce tasted great but the fish itself has not enough flavour and freshness to it.

Overall, it costs us about $35 each which is not too bad to be honest and considering we all shared the dishes. Unfortunately those dishes didn't fill us up so we had to find dessert elsewhere.

This is Dominique Portet winery just about 3 minutes away from Domaine Chandon, a smaller one and they don't have much here. Behind us is the shop selling varieties of wine and selection of patisseries.

More models wannabes.. Can't get enough of the awesome weather at 35 degrees celcius!
Let the nature do the talking!

We decided to move on to the famous chocolate factory just about 15 minutes drive from Domaine Chandon in Healesville.

I couldn't take many photos with the tripod at this location because of the extreme wind condition. I literally had to hold everything with my hands or everything was gonna fly away!

The front entrance of the chocolaterie and ice-creamery.

The shop has a transparent glass window where you can see staff baking chocolate fresh from scratch.
It has a selection of sweets and ice-cream and they also sell them in beautiful and cute packages. They are also very affordable so people should probably stock up for Valentine's Day LOL

Look! Perfect for Christmas gifts but a little too late now. Well, at least you know where to get from next time.

We rested at Lilydale lake afterwards as we were all extremely tired and it was 35 degrees at the time but in 1 minute, I saw a gust of dust moving towards us from the lake direction and Holy Moly I thought we were all gonna die in a sandstorm and I yelled out to my friend to have their back turned to the other side so not to face the lake and the whole park was covered in dust and strong gust of wind that my shoes almost flew away. A lot of people we setting up tents with their families and some families were having BBQs but the wind and sand just ruined everything. People screaming, no one dared to move and kids were crying. It was one of the most horrible things I've ever experienced in my life and in my mind I thought, what about when Tsunami happened?? I am glad that I am still alive. When we drove out, trees branches were everywhere scattered on the road.

MORAL OF THE STORY?? Take a good care of yourself during this festive season and drive safe!!

Till next year.... :)

Noodle Night Markets at Alexandra Gardens

City of Melbourne finally hosts an Asian night markets event!!!! Yayyy~~ About time!

Well, even though to be honest, this night market is alot more posh than the normal night markets you see in Southeast Asia countries. You can tell the difference right away, especially when it comes to the eating cost! Honestly, that night I spent more that what I would usually spend dining in a restaurant.
It was blardy expensive, however bear in mind that most of the food stalls come from popular fusion Asian food. You won't see authentic Asian food there but who cares, it's all about the atmosphere, recreating the sense of "home" for every Asian and for the locals to get the feel of what Asian night markets are all about. At the same time, the setting resembles a spacious beer garden that enables people to mingle around with good glass of beer, there's a DJ to spice up some music and there's food. LOTS OF FOOD!

This Noodle Night Markets is only held for 2 weeks since 18th November 2013 so I was lucky to check it out before it wraps up. Don't expect dirt cheap food because then might as well go to a restaurant but who cares about the price when you can hang out with a couple of friends on a Friday night or weekend and discuss on the queuing strategies, which food stall to visit next and after you get tired of queuing, sit on the lawn (if the tables are all fully occupied already) and enjoy some house tunes? That's more original than say, visiting pubs.

The market opens to public everyday but finishes early during the week. I can't remember exactly what time but on the weekend, it opens from 4-10 pm. Great place to bring family as well. The location is in Alexandra Gardens just after you cross the bridge from Flinders train station or just after Federation square. There's also an invention called Google if you're still lost.

If you still don't know, follow the Asians who are flocking down to visit the night markets.

The entire gardens are so jammed packed with people and lit up with bulbs that it's impossible to miss it :)  What I saw as I was making my way down the stairs. They have dim sums in this area. The stall is set up by a restaurant called "let's do Yum Cha". I've never tried it and I didn't try it when I was there too just because yum cha is not the best in Australia and everywhere you go, it's gonna taste more or less the same as opposed to say, Hong Kong/Malaysia.

The entrance to the markets.

These people are queuing btw. The queue for food is pretty long but they're pretty quick as most of them are prepared in advance and just need to add sauce etc. Also, the food choices are not too many as they're meant to be quick and efficient. Hence, even though they represent some really popular fusion restaurants but to decrease the price, it also means the choices are limited and quantity is also compromised.

Such as this food stall, Longrain. This is an "up-class" Thai fusion restaurant in the city and usually costs a bit to dine in. We tried to book once and it was fully booked. The cost of food in Noodle Night Markets ranges from about $10-ish to $14-ish (the ones that I tried) so it's not too bad. I'm pretty sure the cheapest ones were WonderBao (we'll get there shortly).

Yea I know, all the queues for what??? For the experience of course. Why else would people go to night markets and queue for food rather than walk into a restaurant straight away? Also to enable you to sample different restaurants in one space!

This is Grilled chicken, rice noodles, coriander and yellow bean $14. Not cheap eh? Well, considering it's from Longrain, price-wise is justifiable. Quality wise though, hmm.... It's not that bad. It's different and not your usual Chinese broad noodle. Like I said, most of the food here is fusion, so if you don't enjoy fusion food, then there's no point of visiting noodles night markets. Whereas for me, I enjoy different type of food and I love to explore outside my comfort zone BUT if I don't like it, I rarely would ever try it again.

For me, this this is about 7 out of 10.

The grilled chicken is very ordinary, but the sauce is pretty amazing.

While we were savouring our noodle, we queued up the next stall, Wonder Bao. People have been raving about these buns and the rating on urbanspoon is pretty high too. We visited the restaurant the other day but they closed down for renovation :( Well, at least we got to sample it here.

I think the top one is BBQ Pork and the bottom one is Chicken. I prefer the pork one just because it has that smokey BBQ pork flavour and it is really smokey and juicy. I don't mind one right now actually.

The buns are really soft too. I must dine in one day!!!! They taste so good that you need at least two! They are quite a small serve unfortunately. Well, I suppose it's night markets afterall. The whole point of small servings is to enable your stomach to fit for more food, therefore spending more money. Duh... consumer marketing 101.

After gobbling all those up, next stop is to get some mini pancakes because we've seen people walking past and the mini pancakes look all fluffled up with maple syrup and sugar icing.. Slrrrrppp...
We made a mistake by choosing the chocolate one where in fact, sticking to traditional maple syrup would've been a lot better. The first time I tried Dutch mini pancake was when I went to Tesselar Tulip Festival up in Lilydale and God, they were the best mini pancakes I've ever tried.

Looks yum right? Don't be fooled. It's ok, it's not bad. Who doesn't like pancakes anyways? Regardless of how they're gonna taste like, they're pancakes! This costs $10 and I wanted more but by then, I think we've spent about $65 on food already.

We thought that was it until we saw..

Chin Chin is quite a popular fusion restaurant as well. I've dined in there before and the food was great down to the dessert. Unfortunately, again, your choices are very limited here. We ended up trying the Massaman Curry if Braised brisket & peanuts sauce with rice $12.

It might not look very appetising but trust me, it's pretty rich with flavour and if you've ever tried Asian "satay" dish in the past, it's kind of like satay sauce in terms of the peanut sauce on top of the rice. Satay is typically Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean dish. I'm not a fan though I am Indonesian. Probably one of a few who doesn't like peanut sauce on rice. Just find it a bit out of sync.

While I was waiting,

This atmosphere is what I was raving about. The beer garden atmosphere, especially during summer. Music was pumping, sound of laughters, joy, celebration. Picture conveys a thousand words people say. How much do you think is true?

Go and visit the markets while it lasts. I think this is probably the last week of the night markets. The event is I think "sponsored" by The Age. Visit their website here.

Christmas is here everyone, have you done your shopping yet? Get into the festive right now!!