A Disappointing Day of Eating

I was really enjoying my time, eating through Melbourne, when it finally happened.  I had a whole day of very subpar food.

I was really looking forward to eating at Mamak, as I heard that they have the best roti and since I love trying Malaysian food, this was one of the places I wanted to eat at the most.  I decided to try the roti as well as some Malaysia fried chicken.

I think it might be because I had tried Uncle Man’s roti in Auckland the week before, but I found Mamak’s roti to be quite underwhelming.  It was served with dhal, fish curry and a sambal sauce.  None of which lived up to the standards of Uncle Man’s curry from Auckland.  The fried chicken was juicy but not overly flavourful.

The second disappointing restaurant of the day goes to Shandong Mama.  I had read that this place served really unique dumplings, including their popular mackerel dumpling and a squid ink dumpling.   For the mackerel dumplings, you can choose to have them either boiled or pan fried, but the squid ink dumplings could only be boiled.  Both were massive in size, as one order or dumplings would likely be enough. 

The mackerel dumplings consisted of chopped up mackerel, mixed with cilantro, ginger and garlic chives.  The squid ink dumplings had squid, chicken, salmon roe, cilantro and basil, and was served with garlic and olive oil.  The waitress told me that it was probably better to eat the squid ink ones first, as the mackerel ones could be taken away.  I did find the squid ink ones more appetizing and took the waitress’ advice and finished those ones.  However, I would likely not return again, even though the service was really good.