04 December 2011

Noodle Kingdom - Adelaide, South Australia

If you want some tasty cheap eats with plenty of choices, check out Noodle Kingdom on Gouger Street. As you walk in, you might see some of their fresh noodles being made by hand. Everything is better handmade and these noodles are no exception.

making noodles at the front window

The menu includes more than 100 items such as dumplings, buns, noodles, rice, soups, and more. Because of the huge menu ordering can be a little overwhelming, especially on your first visit. But don't be deterred because regardless of what you choose, you're likely to get a large, cheap and appetizing serve. Service is usually pretty fast too. The menu also includes pictures as well as names of dishes so you can pick whatever looks good to you. Here's the Spicy Pork Fried Noodle ($9.50).

Spicy Pork Fried Noodle

As an added bonus, they also make good quality and reasonably priced bubble teas and other drinks.

Food, Drinks & Fish Tank

Their soups are massive and quite tasty too. Here's a huge bowl of Beef Noodle Soup ($8.50) with more of those hand pulled noodles.

massive Beef Noodle Soup $8.50

The piggy bank is where you line up to pay your bill.

Piggy Bank

They also sell their bubble teas and other drinks in takeaway cups.

Taro bubble tea & Papaya ice crush

With handmade noodles, fun drinks, good prices, and a ridiculously long list of Chinese food choices, Noodle Kingdom is hard to pass up.

Noodle Kingdom on Urbanspoon

01 December 2011

Mother's Crepe - Adelaide, South Australia

Little old Adelaide seems to be coming of age. We have our first Mother's Crepe location! Other Mother's Crepe locations can be found in Japan, USA, Canada, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Amazingly, the only other Australian locations are in Sydney, Parramatta, and Chatswood in New South Wales. They came to Adelaide before Melbourne or Brisbane. I can't believe it!

Mother's Crepe is in Adelaide!

As you can see in the photo above, the Grote Street location is a semi-shared space with Chatime, who specialise in bubble teas. Mother's specialises in crepes. In fact they have 135 different crepe options on the menu. It's a good idea to include the crepe's menu number when ordering since many of the names are very similar. Check out the plastic displays (pictured below), the full menu located just past the counter, or the tv screens near the cash register to attempt to make the difficult decision of what to order.

plastic crepes

There is ample colourful seating, shared with Chatime. The booths look to be especially nice.

Chatime and Mother's Crepe seating

On our first visit, we ordered one of the Premium Hot Chocolate Crepes - #108 Strawberry, Custard & Bitter Chocolate ($5.50). We received a receipt with the Order Number listed at the top. While we waited for our number to be called, we watched the staff build their magical crepe creations.

the final fold

They claim that they only use Free Range Eggs, their whipped cream is vegetable based (50% less fat), and their crepe mix contains oat bran. We've only had one crepe so far from Mother's but I have to say it was fantastic! Our "bitter chocolate" was melted dark chocolate. They say that they use Hershey's chocolate and Nutella. The chocolate completely overpowered the custard, but it was OH.EM.GEE amazing with the strawberries. A definite winner! The prices here range from $4 to $7 for a crepe, which is much more reasonable than The Crepe's Story in Rundle Mall where a crepe costs about $7 to $9. Mother's Crepe also sell some non-crepe desserts which were much more expensive (about $12 to $15) but crepes are obviously their specialty. If you try Mother's, let me know which crepe is your favourite!

Update 17 Dec 2011:
We've revisited Mother's Crepe a few more times and have found that we really like the vanilla soft ice cream. We also tried the green tea soft ice cream which is nice too but the vanilla is the winner between the two. There are only about 6 ice cream crepes on the menu that come with the soft ice cream but I am pretty sure you could request it to be added to any of the other cold crepes as well. Here's #34 Caramel Strawberry Cheesecake Soft Ice Cream ($6.80):

#34 Caramel Strawberry Cheesecake Soft Ice Cream ($6.80)
Front & Back views

Update May 2012:
Sadly, Mother's Crepe no longer offers soft ice cream in their crepes. You can still get normal ice cream in your crepe, but I miss the soft ice cream. :(

Mother's Crepe on Urbanspoon