Of course after breakfast at Choux, came lunch. And even though it was Mother’s Day, it was Mum who cooked!

Stir fried canned luncheon meat is kind of a special meal for us. Luncheon meat is like a really, really bad quality Spam (if you think eating Spam is an abomination, you ain’t seen nothing yet) that we like to stir fry with lots of onions, garlic, chilli and dark soy sauce.

It’s salty, oily, spicy and all round bad for you, but trust me it’s good! (Great with plain white rice.)

The funny thing is, against the laws of common sense, good quality pork just does not work in this dish. It has to be the cheap stuff. The secret ingredient is Mum’s cooking. She somehow transforms this pink forced meat into an endearing, delicious plate of food. And I can never get it to taste like hers.

So this is what we had for Mother’s Day lunch, just me and Mum. I hope all you guys had a great Mother’s Day. x

Mum.

©2012 libertine eats | perth food blog. All Rights Reserved.

Mum’s going to get her almond croissant, even if it kills me. You see, it’s Mother’s Day and Choux Cafe has been practically ransacked. There’s a queue almost to the door, the bread baskets are empty and mon dieu there is only one éclair left!

Croissants are being snapped up out of sight, even before they hit the counter. The chocolate croissants are gone within seconds. One, two, three, five almond croissants are bought at once. There are two people ahead of me and there’s only one almond croissant left..!

I hold my breath and – nobody buys the croissant. With a sigh of relief, I retain my right to being a good daughter for at least one more year.

Mum’s almond croissant is warm, filled with soft, squishy frangipane with a crown of toasted almonds. The pastry is crisp and flaky and smells like a good stick of butter (probably contains a stick of butter too). Every bite was worth the trek to Swanbourne, but if the drive sounds too much, you can make them at home from Emmanuel Mollois’ recipe. But really, it was so good, I forgot to take a photo of it.

Instead, here’s a photo of my snail, still warm from the oven. It’s crackly crisp and yields to hollow, airy, puffy layers within. It’s so buttery yet very light. A smear of custard and plump sultanas separate each curl.

After the first couple of bites, I habitually unfurl the snail and dunk it into coffee (I have a delusion this makes it less oily, which doesn’t quite make sense when you drink the coffee too). The big French bowl of coffee’s not bad and keeps me buzzing for the rest of the day.

As we make our way through the tight squeeze of tables, we hear murmurs of impatience. They’ve run out of croissants again and the next batch is thirty minutes away. Instead of walking away, every single customer stays in line – the pastries are simply worth the wait. We bid adieu to the macarons (the pineapple and avocado ones look interesting) and count our blessings that we don’t live close by, as we’d be here waiting every weekend too.

Choux Cafe
93 Shenton Road  Swanbourne WA 6010
T: (08) 9385 4227
W: http://chouxcafe.com.au/

After breakfast we drove around Mosman Park to see how the other half live and found this lookout in Bay View Park. What a view!

Next: what we had for lunch…

©2012 libertine eats | perth food blog. All Rights Reserved.

Creamy, spicy crab.

As every person enters Nobu, a chorus of greetings are shouted out. It’s a slightly embarrassing start to our Japanese-Peruvian fusion dinner. You read right – Japanese-Peruvian. It’s not as weird as it sounds. Peru has a sizeable Japanese population, even having a one Alberto Fujimori as president. But he was prosecuted for crimes against humanity so we won’t talk about him.

A lot of people are curious about Nobu – it’s well known around the world and has a celebrity name attached to it. (Nobu Matsuhisa himself has an interesting back story, let alone co-owner Robert De Niro.) But the real question is, is the food – fusion food at that – any good?

To answer that, you’ll have to read on and decide for yourself, because Nobu’s food is polarising, you’ll either love it or hate it. To be honest, our visit was about four months ago, so this is just a quick one with lots of food porn. (Watch this space for another Nobu post,  specifically the teppanyaki service.)

We found the a la carte food service is very quick, perhaps too quick for some. All the dishes came out in surprisingly rapid succession – but this is especially good if seeing a show in the complex.

Left: Nobu style ceviche with mixed seafood. Right: Prawn Butter Ponzu

One of the more Peruvian dishes at Nobu, the seafood ceviche was well balanced. With lots of crunchy vegetables, the semi firm seafood and its sharp sauce was refreshing on the palate. I would order this again, purely because unlike the other dishes, there’s no show factor to this dish – it’s simply a good ceviche.

Another gratuitous shot of prawn butter ponzu.

The prawn butter ponzu – crisp, bursty and light and so, so more-ish. However, there was a deceiving amount of salad propping up the dish (seriously, how much rocket is really needed with the prawns?). Definitely order one of these per couple, they are that addictive.

Yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno.

I’m not quite convinced about the yellowtail sashimi swimming in soy based sauce, though the jalapeno did give it a nice kick.

Nobu’s signature black cod miso.

Black cod miso is THE Nobu signature dish. It’s $42 a pop (!) but before you close this window – it’s not like you can get black cod everywhere in Perth. And this my friends, covered in sugary, white miso marinade, is a mighty good way to eat it. Black cod is firm in texture with big flakes – similar to Patagonian toothfish. When it’s grilled, it’s buttery, melt in the mouth and delicious… Even more so within a crust of pure umami.

However, you can make this dish at home by substituting with salmon. It’s not quite the same but at a quarter of the price, pretty tasty.

Pork belly miso.

Even though it was everything pork belly should be – crisp and tender – the pork belly miso was simply outshone by the other dishes. Especially the next one…

Creamy spicy crab.

The creamy spicy crab so, so delicious. Chunks of crab meat and spring onions sing under lashings of what seemed to be some sort of hollandaise, mayonnaise type sauce. This was one plate that was scraped clean. Only wished there was more.

Mushroom soup.

Left: Tofu toban-yaki. Right: Sushi chefs hard at work.

The tofu toban-yaki, plus the soup, were in essence, plain. I’m not one for delicate tastes, however they were both perfectly executed.

(I really have to learn to love healthy food.)

(One day.)

Soft shell crab sushi roll.

We weren’t quite full so I ordered the soft shell crab on impulse. As far as impulse purchases go, this was a good buy. Freshly made, the battered crab filling was soft and juicy. Tempered with creamy avocado, the crunchiness was multiplied with paper thin daikon radish and pops of flying fish roe.

Money shot! Bento box of chocolate moelleux and green tea ice cream.

Now if the sushi above sounds blissful, the sweets at Nobu are even better.

The bento box dessert is one of the best value desserts we’ve come across. Fresh from the oven, the chocolate moelleux was irresistibly gooey in the centre. Not too sweet, the molten chocolate cake cascaded into the green tea ice cream, so there’s a winning chocolate-y, earthy combination. Seriously good stuff.

The dessert bento is a must order. If anything (let’s say you don’t like Japanese food) come to Nobu just for this dessert. Or rather, skip the sweets at Rockpool and have dessert and a cocktail at Nobu. (They do a mean champagne cocktail.)

Satandagi filled with white chocolate and ginger. Served with raspberry coulis and coffee ice cream.

Hot from the fryer, the satandagi have liquefied centres of white chocolate and ginger, which surprisingly heighten each other’s fragrance. Each is an ooey gooey mess with the satisfaction of a donut. The coffee ice cream seems out of place, but brings the sweetness down to earth.

Nobu’s chandeliers. They remind me of toffee.

Okay so that’s it for now, because I’m about to run out of superlatives!

If you are curious about Nobu, you should go and try it for yourself. It’d be hard to be disappointed with the food, if anything, it’s an expensive place to eat. There are so many tempting options on the menu – stay away from the regular things – like pork belly (it can only be cooked so many ways) – and go hard on the exotics like sea urchin, specialities with Peruvian flair or the hot desserts. The private collection sake is particularly good too.

Make sure to book ahead, Nobu is crazy busy, even on weeknights.

Nobu
Burswood Entertainment Complex Great Eastern Hwy, Burswood, WA 6100
T: (08) 9362 7551
W: http://www.burswood.com.au/Restaurants/Premium/Nobu/About

Lunch Tue – Sun; Dinner 7 days

©2012 libertine eats | perth food blog. All Rights Reserved.