Boubar

Address: 31A Hampden Road, Nedlands Perth WA

Telephone: 9386 9301

Atmosphere: It has a nice atmosphere there with seating inside and outside. It can be a bit cramped on a Sunday and Saturday afternoon as it is always really busy.

Interior of Boubar

Experience: I've been here many times as it is a cafe that serves great breakfast and coffee. Its a local place to us so I have almost made it a habit to come here every weekend (well at least for say the last 2 months). They are also quite consistent with what they serve. Best of all, they SERVE BREAKFAST UNTIL 3 PM. It's hard to find a place that serves good breakfast until late in the afternoon. The service is generally good but you do need to go up to the counter to make your order. However, they bring you out the drinks and food.

Food: The food at Boubar can be quite expensive. A breakfast is roughly from memory about $15-18. I usually have the eggs benedict but on the day of doing the review I thought I would give it a change and ordered scrambled eggs on toast with bacon and a fresh watermelon and orange juice. The bacon was a bit burnt on the sides but it was really crispy. I love the way they put the bread on the side rather then under your eggs. Most cafes will but the eggs on top of the bread but I hate that as it makes your bread go soggy. I love the bread they use at Boubar as it is always crunchy. The scrambled eggs were moist and perfect. The coffee at Boubar is great too.

Scrambled eggs and bacon on toast

Watermelon and Orange Juice

Theobroma Chocolate Lounge

Address: Shop 47 Waterford Plaza, cnr Kent Street and Manning Road, Karawara WA 6152

Telephone: 9313 2060

Opening Times: 

Monday - Wednesday: 10.00 am to 9.00 pm

Thursday - Saturday: 10.00 am to 10.00 pm

Sunday: 11.00 am to 10.00 pm

Other: Closed Days - Good Friday, Christmas and New Years.

Atmosphere: This chocolate lounge had a nice atmosphere to it where you can hang around with a group of friends or just to kill time alone.

Experience: Chocolate cafe and desserts has recently been quite popular in Perth. Cafes like Koko Black, San Churo and now Theobroma Chocolate Lounge. Overall, it was a nice experience but I would prefer going to other chocolate cafes as I've tried better places then Theobroma Chocolate Lounge. I didn't find anything too exciting about this cafe after visiting Koko Black. Furthermore, the chocolate used in the drinks and desserts at Theobroma Chocolate Lounge was rather normal.

Food:

Some of the things we tried were:

 Milk Hot Chocolate with tea warmer

 New York Baked Cheese cake

 Toblerone Cheese cake

Waffles

I found it quite smart to use a tea warmer for the mug of hot chocolate as it does keep the hot chocolate warm. However, the downside is that it does cost you more to have the tea warmer which I think is unreasonable. The standard hot chocolate is just a cup size and if you want the tea warmer, then you will need to order the mug size. The hot chocolate was only average as I didn't find the chocolate they used too fascinating but it wasn't too heavy which was good. The waffles were great and fresh. You could add strawberries to it too if you want but of course, nothing is free so you will need to pay a little bit extra for the strawberries.

The New York Cheese cake and Toblerone  Cheese cake was good. I only tried the Toblerone cheesecake off my friend and was glad I didn't order it as it was quite heavy. If you have tried this place and liked it, then I recommend you to try Koko Black too :)

Nine Fine Food

Address: 227/ 229 Bulwer Street Highgate WA 6003

Telephone: 9227 9999

Opening Times: Monday - Saturday; 6.30 pm - 10.00 pm

Price Range:

This restaurant is considered fine dinning and is quite expensive. We had a four course and it was $65 per head. There was also a  3 course option which was around the $55 mark. You could also order the entrees and mains separately.

Atmosphere:


Romantic :) The lighting at this restaurant was dimmed and there was either a tea light candle or one of those lamps that showed the fake tea light effect. On the night that we went (Thursday), majority of the people there were couples.


Experience:


I've actually always wanted to try out this place after hearing about it from a friend. The reviews online also rated it highly so before going there I did have high expectations and I wasn't disappointed. In fact, it is one of my top 3 restaurants now. I was taken there by my partner for my birthday. I haven't had much experience with fine dinning apart from C Restaurant and Bistro Felix. I found it incomparable to my other fine dinning experiences. When I go fine dining, at the end of the meal I always ask myself whether it was worth that price.  Most of the time I would come up with the answer - I'm paying for the atmosphere rather then the food and the food was only so so. However with my experience at Nine Fine Food, I actually thought it was worth the price. I think I enjoyed it a lot as I haven't tried modern Japanese influenced by Western cuisine before. All the food were presented very nicely to the point where I didn't want to spoil the presentation by eating it. The service is also good but I am unsure about the weekend when it gets really busy.


Food:


I'm actually quite excited to talk about the food as I enjoyed it so much. However, I have to apologise in advance as the photos may not be the best photos that could've been taken. I didn't actually take the photos myself (partner did) and we weren't sure whether we were allowed to take photos of the food as my partner told me that he read on another review that they were told off by the staff.

We had the 4 course dinner and there were several options for each category- the entrees, mains and the desserts. The four course included two entrees, a main and a dessert. We tried to order different things so we could try a taste of everything.

Beef Tataki (entree)

 Sashimi (entree)

 Fried chilli seafood platter (fish, squid, prawns) - entree

 Lamb with scallop (entree)

 Beef  with Miso sauce (main)

 Duck with Mash (main)

All the food were cooked very nicely. The Sashimi was fresh and there was small amounts of different types of fishes. Some of the Sashimi was marinated. Beef Tataki is usually my favourite Japanese dish as I love the sour taste and the texture of thinly sliced beef with thinly sliced onions. However, if you have tried Beef Tataki before, you can see that Nine Fine Food's Beef Tataki is quite different just from looking at the photo. The dish wasn't bad but the sauce didn't have that sour taste or the onions and the beef was sliced quite thickly. I was a little bit disappointed with the Tataki. 

My favourite dish of the night was the Chilli seafood platter. The orange sauce you could see in the photo is a chilli creamy sauce and the green one is a Wasabi sauce. The dish was perfect and I wanted more of it. I loved the sauce so much that I couldn't get enough of it. The presentation of dish was also very pretty as the chef stacked it very nicely layering the fish, prawns, salad and squid. Now with the lamb..... my partner loved it and the lamb was really soft and cooked very well. It was so soft that it would basically melt in your mouth. However, I personally found the taste of the lamb too strong and overpowering. I can usually eat lamb but some people don't eat lamb because of the strong taste/ flavour it has. The lamb had a scallop with it too and the scallop was cooked PERFECTLY - not overcooked or undercooked.

The duck was very nice too as it was really soft and the sauce complimented it very well. The mash was really smooth yet not buttery. For dessert we had the black sesame ice cream and cream brulee. At the bottom of cream brulee, it had a layer of green tea pudding which went well with the brulee. The black sesame ice cream had a nice balance in terms of the amount of black sesame in it and it was really smooth. 

I highly recommend this restaurant if you are planning a special occasion or giving yourself a special treat.