This restaurant is the second restaurant in the Omah group and we thought great, we no longer need to run half way across town to enjoy great Malaysian food!

Unfortunately I think the cook for this location has a different take on things and the regular dishes we enjoy at Omah's Port Melbourne lacked authenticity.

Our regular dishes include Belachan Kangkong, Beef Rendang, Curry Puffs, Lobak, and coconut prawns along with lots of coconut rice!

The kangkong veggies despite asking for mild came out really spicy so we ended up eating as much rice as we could to reduce the intensity of the chilli heat!

The Rendang tasted more like a regular watery curry instead of thick semi dry pieces of beef soaked in the curry. There was a fair amount of oil on display instead of curry!

The curry puffs were ok and like Omah's in Port Melbourne.

The prawns were okay as well.

The Lobak (a fried roll with ingredients inside similar to spring rolls)

What lowers Omah's score was the quality of the cooking was not as tasty or delicious as the other store and prices tend to be at the upper end of middle class style dining. Expect to pay around $35 for each main which by Malaysian restaurants in Australia standards is quite high.

Approximate cost: $28

This place has some great Italian food, and something we tried recently was some of the tapas style dishes - small serves of "finger style" food to share including meat balls, fish/chicken pieces and vegetables. The meat balls are great - order them and you will understand!!

Service is friendly and the waitress checks in to make sure that everything is okay during the dining experience.

Our order did take some time despite it not being busy that day. Not sure what happened in the kitchen!

Pricing represents reasonable value for money with most dishes around the $20 mark and tapas style items around $6 to $9.

Approximate cost: $20

This restaurant is a who's who of Flower Drum alumni. Many of the staff were ex Flower Drum or had an association with Flower Drum, Melbourne's top Cantonese Chinese restaurant.

Food quality here is high and service generally matches the quality as the place was intended to be a suburban version of Flower Drum. As a result over time the food quality has maintained however the prices do not reflect as much value for money as they used to. Some dishes are in fact more than what you would pay at a top restaurant in the city.

Dishes we like here include the pot sticker dumplings as an entree, steamed coral trout fish (when available), sweet and sour pork and crispy fried chicken.

Approximate cost: $25

We visited this restaurant with friends who insisted we try this place because the chef used to be in another famous Peking Duck restaurant called Old Kingdom in Collingwood.

Unfortunately we found that the service was average and the duck was incredibly oily.

The waiter originally walked around placing a single pancake on our plate and then a slice of cucumber. The duck was bought out and the neck ripped off infront of us and the oil from the duck was going all over the table. They then proceeded to cut slices, however the slices were so laden with oil that the pancake ended up dripping with oil and fat from the skin of the duck. I ended up having to take the skin out and scrape the fat off the skin otherwise it would have been fat overload! Whilst they wore plastic gloves to try and ensure hygiene, it was dissapointing to see them collecting scraps with the same gloves and heading to another table to clear up with no change in gloves. In the end we insisted on cutting the duck ourselves!

Pricing is average value for the quality. At around $70 per duck we needed three ducks for six people.

I recommend if you are after great Peking Duck - head over to Bamboo House - less oil and fat, better service, around the same price for a duck!

Approximate cost: $70

A new fast food Japanese store opened in Doncaster a couple of months ago and I thought ok, let's try this out.

The menu is a bit deceptive because on the menu are large pictures of the dishes with the prices of the small sized dishes in large font with the large size prices in small font.

The small size is really not much bigger than a cup noodle you would buy in the supermarket which made the value for money equation poor. The quality of the food was okay, but nothing exciting. It was interesting because I ordered Tempura on Rice and there was no dipping sauce provided. When I asked about dipping sauce for the Tempura they advised that it did not come with the dish. So I ended up with dry tempura on rice. The sauce they did put in had already sunk to the bottom of the bowl but was not the tempura sauce but a soy sauce. At almost $9 for a small bowl it was disappointing. Better value can be found at the place further back of the food mall at the Sushi store or I love teppanyaki!

Approximate cost: $9

Yet another temple to the cacao bean, Ganache provides a range of gourmet chocolates, coffees, hot chocolates and more! I got some Macaroons last week and they were crisp outer shells with melt in the mouth insides... mmm.... regular flavors such as pistachio, passionfruit, chocolate and more! The hot chocolates are quite thick and frothy giving a full bodied chocolate flavor. They even have drinks for kids called babycinos - frothed up milk so that the kids feel as they're part of the scene too!

Approximate cost: $10

Okay, at first glance I thought oh no, not another Chinese Japanese restaurant where the place is run by Chinese who pretend to prepare Japanese food.

Wrong! The head chef for sushi and sashimi is Japanese! If you are ever after value for money and enjoy your sushi and sashimi - head down this way. One of the best deals here is to order the deluxe sushi boat which runs about $80 and has about 60 pieces of sushi and sashimi - enough for two to three people!

Also enjoyable here are the Gyoza and some of the other a la carte sushi such as the Aburi salmon - slivers of salmon atop a bed of rice and heated just so with a gas flame. A mayonnaise type sauce is then added to the top of the salmon to create a smooth creamy effect.

Rice or noodle dishes are also good here and very generous in size. If you order Chicken and rice or Beef Sukiyaki and rice you'll find the bowl enough to share!

If you're up to it they also have a Sukiyaki at the table which is where they will bring fresh veggies, meats and/or seafoods and cook them fresh at your table, although most of the time we can't get through all the sushi and sashimi!

Last but not least try the Green tea ice cream - 2 scoops for $5 which is very reasonable or try some of the Japanese desserts.

Pricing is very reasonable and the quality is very good. A place worth visiting with a few friends so you can share plates and try a few things!

Warning! This place is regularly full so booking ahead is recommended.

Approximate cost: $15

If you want a slice of Bangkok in Brunswick, this is the restaurant to be. Around five to six cooks at the front of the restaurant are non stop busy cooking all sorts of Thai dishes and the fragrance of their cooking permeates the restaurant. You can smell the authentic Thai flavors of chillies, fish sauce, curries and more. Their Pat Thai (Thai Glass noodles) is just like what you'd find in Bangkok at a busy store and the curries can be made so that they're not hot but full of flavor - have plenty of rice ready as you dine through different styles of curries. Realise that this is not your usual Thai restaurant, they don't do fish or prawn cakes - a limited menu of stir fries plus plus plus, but dishes are full of flavor.

Service can be a bit testy, you may need to flag down the waitress a few times to get what you want. I guess when you're that popular it's not always easy being a waitress here with everyone wanting things in a hurry!

After that, there's Gelo bar a few shops down - a great way to end the meal with some fantastic gelati!

Approximate cost: $15

This place bears the name of a famous shop in Singapore that is known for it's roti (or prata as it is called in Singapore) and murtabak, and other Malaysian-Indian Style breads and noodles.

I have tried the murtabak (roti bread with a mix of mince beef, onions, curry powder and spices) and the mee goreng noodles and the quality and taste are very good. Being in the heart of the shopping district of the city you would also expect prices to be a bit higher, but this is not the case - prices are reasonable and you can get a good lunch/meal for around 12. It's not quite what you would find from Zam Zam in Singapore, but it's not too far off either. Sometimes I don't have enough time, so I buy takeaway and the food is still very good when I arrive home.

Approximate cost: $12

Nestled at the rear of a whole lot of buildings behind a Chinese Gate in Northbridge is a restaurant called Uncle Billy's Chinese Restaurant.

I think Uncle Billy's no longer the cook there, however that said the place looks a bit tired. The toilets needed a clean and there were no papers to wipe your hands after going and the drying machine did not work!

The service was average as we had to constantly call waiters and ask a few times before something arrived. So if we wanted more tea, or rice, we had to flag down the waiter and then get another waiter because the first one forgot!!

The food was generally okay. We ordered live seafood from the tank (Snow Crab) to find that apart from being expensive (about $250 for six people) the preparation with spring onions and ginger was okay and nothing exciting. Other dishes included Yam Duck (a house specialty) however when it arrived it was very oily (the fried yam had not been drained well) and the mushroom gravy/sauce that went with it was gluggy - did the kitchen microwaved the sauce so it went cold quickly? The fried spinach with garlic was good, however again, nothing to really write home about. The Crispy skin chicken was also just okay, the skin was not as crisp as it should be, slightly wet, and the meat a little dry.

Overall an average place for dining. I guess many people go there because they are open late after clubbing or pubbing. I guess by that stage many of the people there don't really worry how good it is so long as it's filling!

Approximate cost: $25