Last Saturday I went down to the city to celebrate Arif's 21st birthday. Once again, it was dinner in a restaurant along Lygon Street. This time, we tried this Italian restaurant called Universal. It was a weekend, so the restaurant was really packed. I think you'll have to make bookings for any of the restaurants in the city if you want to secure a place for dinner or else.... Join the queue... LOL!!!

Amelia's Gourmet Italian Style Pizza - Chicken Avacado consists of tomatoes, cheese, mushroom, grilled chicken tenders & fresh avacado.

Chris's Universal's Fillet of Rump with Red wine sauce. The rump was sooo juicy and sweet and let me tell you, the red wine sauce, SUPERB!!!!

And the BEST and MOST worthwhile meal of the night... It feeds 2 -3 tummies. And if you love meat, and can't make up your mind of which meat dish to order here in Universal, just order this dish. You can have all kinds of meat you want, all in 1 plate! Pork, beef and chicken; and not to mention some beer battered fries and salad as sides. And did I mention that this dish will most certainly NOT burn a hole in your wallet.

For $49.90 shared between 2 -3 meat lovers, I present you the ultimate BBQ Platter!

This BBQ Platter consists of Grilled beefsteak & chicken tenders, marinated pork ribs & buffalo wings, oven baked veal salt in bocca & Chorizo sausage!

The meats were very well marinated, seasoned and beautifully cooked to a point where the meats are still soft, tender, juicy and sweet. Simply D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S!

And for dessert, don't miss this fantastic-yummy-dense-moist Chocolate Mud Pudding, served with chocolate fudge, corinthian wafer and macadamia nut ice-cream. OOOOOOO EEEEEMMM GGGEEEE!!! That's all I can say... 9/10 :)

This other dessert is not so bad too...

Vanilla bean & honey flavored panna cotta,

with wild berry soup, caramel toffee shard & Persian fairy floss!

They don't really have a wide range of desserts, but sometimes, I think that's good coz then you won't have trouble ordering desserts after having to go through the trouble to decide on your main dish. hehehe :)

Overall, I think it's really worth eating at Universals because the food they serve is really really delicious and it's not that expensive either. But one thing about this restaurant, it's really busy, so do make reservations if you want to dine in, especially weekends and night time.

Went to Lygon Street for dinner again on Sunday. This time, tried something asian - Thai Cuisine :) Name of the restaurant is Chiang Mai Thai Cuisine, next to Mercadante Woodfired Pizzaria (The awesome pizza place I blogged about before.) It was a little farewell dinner for Vipul and Vaishnav. They'll be leaving for India end of this month. You guys will be missed :(

Anyway, we kick started this delicious dinner with a glass of champaign each. (Well, I only drank like 2 sips, and Vipul drank the rest. Hehe)

From me (Clockwise): Me, Maekhoo, Daniel, Vaishnav and Vipul

Now to the food!!!!

We were a bit hesitant to enter this restaurant at first, because it was so empty, and you know how there's a saying 'if the restaurant is empty, means that the food suck'? But this restaurant is the total opposite. We took the chance to try this restaurant because we're sick of walking in the cold trying to pick a restaurant to eat. And I have to say, it wasn't a bad choice at all! Every dish we ordered, turned out pretty yummy!

This is a MUST TRY dish in every thai restaurant you go to and a MUST EAT dish when you're in Thailand.

Som Tum - Green Papaya Salad with prawns and peanuts. But in Thailand, they don't usually serve it with prawns but dried shrimps. My favourite salad!!!

And this is the rest of our dishes. They were all so freaking yummy! I had 3 plates of rice just to enjoy more of their yummy gravy. :D

*click on the picture to have a clearer view*

Ratings for this restaurant = 8/10. Definitely must try! I wasn't disappointed at all :)

So I watched the 3rd part of the Twilight Saga with AmandaChoe the other day. And I have to say, I really enjoyed it. The 1st one was good of course, the second was just boring and slow and Edward's abs were just such a turn off but Jacob was... well he left me speechless :D

To me, this third part was just better! They really stuck to the book, every detail, not adding anything they think would make the movie better. In this 3rd part, the action scenes were really thrilling. And I thought Bryce Dallas Howard played Victoria really well too. The wolves were just MASSIVE!!! The part where the Cullens and the wolves meet for their training, the part where the wolves walks out from the woods, really reminded me of Narnia whenever Azlan appears. Lol...

And the part where Jacob, in his wolve-form, standing next to bella, just makes me jealous! I want a pet wolf! :( And his body, still takes my breath away! And Bella got to cuddle in his arms, feelings those HUGE muscled chests and abs! JEALOUS!!!

The only let down of the movie was that the Cullens didn't look as pretty and handsome as they did in the first movie. :( Their make-up just didn't look nice at all. And somehow at the starting of the movie, Edward's sideburns looked like stick-ons to me. lol!

Other than that, the movie was great! Loved the actions and lil funny lines in between. :) I'll rate it an 8.5/10.

And I'm currently nerding on this book, also by Stephanie Meyers.

This book is about this lil Vampire from Victoria's army. Her part of the story. Stephanie couldn't mention much about her because the Twilight Saga was mainly based on Bella, Edward and Jacob's point. So this book is all about this little vampire girl named Bree Tanner. The little vampire that the Cullens tried to protect in Eclipse. And so far, I'm enjoying it as much as the Twilight Saga. :)

NiniekSugiartiNiniek's Day 2 was just all around Melbourne City, Queen Victoria Market and DFO South Warth.. Nothing special. Had dinner at Claypot King which NiniekSugiartiNiniek's mom loved so much that every time we asked her what would she like to eat, that's the place she'll answer. Haha! Its the typical chinese claypot rice which were really not bad. Reasonable price for the amount they offer. It's along Swanston Street heading towards Melbourne Central where all the other food outlets are.

NiniekSugiartiNiniek's Day 3 was spent in St.Kilda's Sunday Market. She loved it there even without buying anything. She wanted to go there every Sunday if she could! Lol.. Aris joined us that day despite looking all soo VERY tired from watching the game the night before.

Us, everywhere in St. Kilda Beach.

oh, and NiniekSugiartiNiniek's mom was sooooo cute that day. She was feeding a seagull and as always, 1 comes, the rest comes. And she loved it. She even fed it off her hand! She was like the center of attention that moment - The Bird Goddess. After we left, I saw another lady who tried to do the same thing, but all the seagulls just flew away. haha!!

Headed back to the city and had our first taste of Max Brenner's Hot Chocolate and boy was it yummy!!! Niniek and I tried their chocolate souffle that Aris recommended and ooooohhhhhh it was magical!!! Just looking at these photos makes me want more more more!!! Oh and Jeng joined us there too and had dinner together that night.

Max Brenners!! why can't they have an outlet in Kingsbury! would sooo make it a daily routine to go there!!!!

NiniekSugiartiNiniek dropped by for a 4-Days visit with her mom last weekend. Indulged in a scrumptious meal to kickstart her visit at DiMattinas's Restaurant and Bar on Lygon Street along with Maekhoo, Shane, Dinesh and the Twins - Arif & Aris. (I hope I got their names right this time).

We started our meal with 2 servings of Garlic Bread. It was not bad. Very buttery and garlic-ky which I like. But the bread was a lil too soft.

Us girls ended our meal with a plate of Gnocchi Matriciana - gnocchi served with scallops, bacon, capsicum with spicy tomato based sauce. This I find it delicious just that the gnocchi was a lil over cooked. But overall it was still yummy.

The main highlight of our dinner was the Sweet & Sour Pork Ribs. It had 3 stacks of ribs per serving and we had 3 servings!!! The 3rd picture below is the end result of the ribs... Soooo yummy but its a lil salty, so too much of it will sort of salt up your taste buds. hehe...

And of course a group picture! We can't leave without at least a group picture right....

Yummy food + great company = Tons of fun :D

The boys' last day in Aussie Land. It was a Sunday, so St.Kilda beach it was for the sunday market along the beach area. They have this sort of flea market there every Sunday.

Met up with Keith, and had lunch at the 'Fish n Chips shop' that I ate at the last time I was there. Tried the 'Ocean Pack' this time. It had 2 fish fillets, 3 fried calamari, 2 kings prawns, 2 potato cakes and chips. And after lunch, headed to Trampoline for some really awesome-orgasmic-icecreams!!

oooo!!! oh so yummy!!!

Then the boys (except Andrew) and I headed back to Docklands to get Z-the-rapper's Band Hero. Was suppose to get it the day before at Northland but they didn't have the free game he wanted, so we headed back to Docklands to get it while Maekhoo and Andrew went dating in the city.

Keith was sooo nice to drive us to Docklands. Got a lil lost along the way and almost headed to Geelong!!! that was some funny moments in the car but we still made it... phew~~~

Keith couldn't join us for dinner so he just dropped us back in the city and headed home. But before heading back to the city, it was important to have a group shot of Z-the-rapper and his Band Hero.

Back in the city, Keith dropped us off at Crowns where we were suppose to have dinner at. When we were there, Maekhoo and Andrew decided to watch a movie together before he heads home, so the boys and I waited at the Crowns for an hour plus. While waiting we tried this famous expensive cakes from Greco. Its about 10aud per piece, super delicious, and you get quite a big piece for some cakes. Worth a try, really!

Z-the-rapper and I went to buy while the Low Brothers sat down and waited.

And obviously, we were spoilt for choice, again!

Just look at the choices!!!

Finally decided on a piece of baked cheese cake and mud cake. The cheesecake was oh-so-orgasmic but the mud cake was pretty disappointing. It was so dry and flaky...

After finishing, we still had a lot of time to stall and wait for the couple to finish their movie. Sat there and stoned til an hour plus then decided to head to Melbourne Central (where they were watching their movie) to wait for them. Before that, headed to woolsworth in BigW for some last minute snack-shopping and time-stalling. Went over to Melbourne Central and look around for what to have for dinner and we still had time to stall so we were like stoning around the cinema area.

This was the 1st time since... forever? that we decided on what to eat in less than 5mins.

Had our last dinner together at Melbourne Central Lion Hotel. No, it wasn't exactly in a hotel, it's just the name.

I didn't take picture of everyone's food because they started eating before mine came :D

I had Chunky Beef Stew. It was really good, I loved it :D

It's basically just diced pieces of steak braised in beef stock with a dash of cinnamon served with potato mash and vegetables provencale. 19aud for quite a big portion.

Eng's Bangers and Mash - Baked cumberland sausage served with mash potato, frilled portobello mushroom and garden pea pikelets. Garnished with battered onion rings.

This was pretty good!

Z-the-rapper's Minced Beef Lasagna

The portions were so big that everyone had problem finishing their food even the 2 big eaters in our group - Yao and I. LOL!!! But it was quite a good choice of restaurant for our grand finale. Good atmosphere, delicious food, awesome company :D

Back home, everyone was dead tired and slept pretty early except Eng and I who stayed up chatting till like 5 in the morning. Oh and the funniest thing was Z-the-rapper couldn't sleep well coz the both of us just kept disturbing him.. haha!!! A good chat and a really fun night. :D:D:D:D:D

Miss you guys the moment you guys left in the yellow cab :'(

This is a continuation from the last post in Docklands - The Dinner Post.

After much walking and strolling along the waterfront deciding on what and where to have dinner, we decided to head back to Harbour Town shopping centre which was opposite the fireworks area. Strolled again and finally decided to eat at the Groove Train.

There was this solo performer that night, and he was pretty good. A good choice of songs too.

My dinner - Pasta with bacon, cheddar cheese, olives (lots of them >.<) and ham in a slightly spicy tomato based sauce.

This was what Eng ate, I can't remember what its called.

But it was HUGE!! and so well well presented.. Looks sooo good and tasted really good too!

On the 2nd of July, brought the boys to Queen Victoria Market for some lil munching and looksy-looksy. Met up with UY for awhile and headed over to DFO South Warth for some retail outlet shopping for the boys.. And finally after trying on the checkered converse for like 5-6 times and passing 'Z'-the-Zapper's bunch of questions, I finally decided to get it. And I'm really happy with my buy :D:D:D

Later on we headed to meet up with Jeng and Hazel and went over to Docklands for some fireworks actions...

The pretty colourful lanterns along the path...

I love pictures like this...

At 7pm, the fireworks started. To me, I'm someone who L-O-V-E-S fairy lights.. all the sparkly lights just puts a wide smile on my face :D And so does fireworks!

This picture is out of focus but I like how the fireworks spreads out, so just gotta show you :D

The fireworks lasted for about 20-30mins, but it felt like just 10 minutes to me.. Before heading for dinner, there were this couple doing their own fireworks of fire twirling.

All the lights in 1 night... Weeee :D

Next post, Dinner! Stay tune..

For now, you can read about the boy's 1st day in Melbourne here : Day 1