San Churros: Northbridge

Ahh, chocolate. It's got itself so many followers, all hooked and all in deep addiction.
Who doesn't love this sticky, ooey gooey sweet thing in all its various forms?

I, for one. *GASP*?!
Yeah. I'm not an avid screaming fan of chocolate like the many unanimous maniacs out there who worship chocolate.
I dislike sweet comas and I think I have a sweet tooth that has grown old and frail and is now scared of too much dessert.
I've slowly grown into a more savoury food person but that doesn't mean I'm not a sweet person still ;)

But I mean, I don't hate it, I don't love it, heck I probably don't even like it.
I guess I'm indifferent to it.
Take it or leave it, doesn't really bother me.

WELL, there's my autobiography for today.

...

But that doesn't mean I'll say no to San Churros. Cause yeah, they're a chocolatier, but they predominantly specialise in churros too, which are what I fell deep in love with when I tried them the very first time. Love at first bite, for sureee.

So here we were, at the newest store opened in Perth, right in the heart and soul of Northbridge.
I'm ready! We were all ready!...Then took a heck of a long time to decide what to order between 9 people. Zzzzz.

Then we finally came to a conclusion.
Party Fiesta, anyone?
Gosh that was some painstaking decision making involved.

Various dips

Now THIS was awesome. The Party Fiesta involved some 18 sticks of churros, with 6 tubs of dips. Now I thought this only included the choices of melted milk or dark chocolate, or caramel.

BUT GUESS WHAT?!
You can get ice creams as dips! PHWOARRR :D

So there you see above, from L-R are 6 handsome churro dips, which are basically dessert on their own, without the churro. But I guess for $34.95, one should be entitled to a wider variety of choice anyways. So back to my original point, L-R: dark chocolate, vanilla/white chocolate (LOL I'm terrible), milk chocolate ICE CREAMS then white/dark/milk melted chocolates.

Thought I should point out the obvious.

Churros

How beautiful are these babies! Long, slender and thin and utterly good looking. So attractive to look at, good for the eyes and even better in the mouth ;)

These sticks are affectionately known as THE churros, a kind of Spanish donut (to my vague understanding) and are deep fried dough sticks. Sounds pretty average but I guess these are heaven when they're done hot and when they're done perfectly. And most of the time, they are.
18 of these, separated onto 2 plates, which sorta disillusions how epic it would all look on a single plate.

A mountain of churros. Oohhh man, bring it on.

They're crunchy to the bite with the texture enhanced by all those riggedy raggedy edges protruding from the golden tube. You get the choice of cinnamon or icing sugar being dusted on top, and naturally we chose cinnamon sugar here. It just sounds more exotic don't you think?
Exotic things always taste better in my head.

...

Since the opening of this newish San Churros, business looks as if it's going good. It's in an awesome location, right in the middle of the entertainment precinct of Perth, meaning you'd get the day crowds and drunk/party/normal night crowds also. They've established well, because the few eateries prequeling San Churros kept dying. They'd open for a while, hang around but then ultimately end up saying goodbye. It's like a curse. Unfortunate.

The store is huuuge and you don't have the distinguishable San Churros setup, where typically you get tables aligned so close to each other that it gets awkward trying to squeeze through people and tables. You gotta brush against people and everyone shuffles their chairs and convos get disrupted trying to let you pass. It all makes you feel a bit...large.

But this store has none of that and has heaps of seating, both indoors and a nice outdoor alfresco area out the back. It caters for table service as well, the only store I've seen that being used! Definitely a bonus but I'm still getting accustomed to feeling like a king and being served while not needing to leave my ass from the chair. What a grand oily indulgence.

AND ISN'T IT SO EXCITING TO WALK PAST WHEN FREE SAMPLES ARE GIVEN?! Or maybe that's just me. I've never seen sampling done for Churros, but they did! Just free offers on the street on a quiet Monday night. I sorta did a double take and did a u-turn at the end of the street and happened to walk past again. LOL :P
I think if that was on this Fiesta night, no Fiesta would have been ordered. Each of us probably would have taken the sample, diverge directions, then unsuspiciously came back for seconds. Schemers. No brains involved here, only guts and some thick-skin.

With my first experiences of San Churros, they were very hit and miss. At times they are heaven on a stick, other times they really need to change the oil, and sometimes they just need to change the fryer. As in like, the person doing the frying. (Not that I am a good fryer at all!) so just to be sure, I'm not being all stuck up or assume any (if any) superior cooking skillz.

The first time I experienced Northbridge San Churros wasn't memorable, because I came near closing time and maybe the oil was colder than usual, and the churros weren't cooked thoroughly in the middle.
Puhhhhh. I think my dining companion mixed those bits in with the thick chocolate sludge and made, well, poop. Hard, solid clumps of little droppings. A little pile of them. It was delightful.

But yeah, despite this little act, there are no implications whatsoever :)
San Churros is definitely not shit.

Grill'd: Mount Lawley

M: "Lets go dinner!"
Me: "Yaaayy!!!!!!!"
M: "Grill'd?"
Me: "Yaa - whaaat? Nooooo not again, lets go somewhere else"
M: "Yeah ok. You decide."

So few days later, after some serious pondering and research, here we were.

At Grill'd.

Ahh, I'm just so damn good at decision making. It's great.
At least it's a different location? Which makes it a bit more exciting -.-
Damn indecisiveness - I just can't get rid of that stupid trait, it follows me around everywhere! Like seriously just go away.

I was starvinggg having not eaten for about 7 hours. It kills me inside and it kills me outside as well, cause sometimes I appear physically grumpier without something in my stomach. It's not my fault food makes my world go round.
Food also makes my face go round. Considering the foods you see on here and how frequently and how much I eat.
*Tear*

Moroccan Lamb

Apologies for the quite out of focus picture above. That wasn't the only thing out of focus, the cousin was also out of focus when she made this order.

You'd think someone who had such a strong hate for capsicum wouldn't order a burger containing a grilled lean lamb pattie, ROASTED PEPPERS, tzatziki, salad and relish. I think it just didn't click in her little head that capsicum goes by another name of peppers.

And she didn't know what tzatziki was either. I think she may have very well just took a chance with this burger. I was secretly hoping she'd reject the capsicum and so I could have it instead.
I was crushed to hear that she actually quite liked it.

Garden Goodness

I think I'm scaring myself with the amount I can eat. I reckon subconsciously my brain told me to GO FOR SOMETHING HEALTHIER WILL YOU?! So I did :/ I would have NEVER done this. But SOMEHOW I was out of my mind and I did. And I will never do it again.

Oh for the love of God I don't think I can ever turn vegetarian! Sorry animals, I love you way too much to let any of you go.

I also reckon this looked so much bigger than all the other meat burgers I've had. It's like they make it up for you not picking meat so they give you a bigger garden in return, for not killing any animals.

So I went to the counter and said, "Can I please grab a Garden Goodness?" Oh gawddd that sounds terrible in my head LOL, I just ate tree leaves in my last post and now I'm moving onto eating a whole garden. It really puts a grand image in my head: garden, vegetables, dirt, compost and mulch. The Lot.

But of course, instead of a nutritious manure patty, there sat a thick hefty "premium quality veggie pattie" with beetroot, cheese, avocado, salad, relish and herbed mayo. I forgot to ask for no beetroot and thus my burger was stained disgustingly pink. Beetroot always tastes like the earth and its dirt. Not that I've eaten dirt...maybe.

Vague emoticon patty

HA HA HA! I didn't even notice the smiley face on this until someone pointed it out. Such a sad observation...

But of course, this picture wasn't intended to show you the happy happy pattie, but rather the level of burntness it had suffered through before getting into my burger bun.
Sigh, I ordered a vegie burger to steer away from the blackness this Grill'd store always gets my patties to. I can't escape this curse.

The vegie pattie was made with a mixture of bits of carrot and corn and not much else from my memory, even though I know there had to be a lot more in there. Must take more notice next time. Forgot that I'm never ordering this again. There's nothing wrong with the burger itself, just not to the best of my liking.

I don't think I would have ordered this if avocado wasn't in there. Good old avocado. Always the superhero in my eyes. It made me go vego for dinner :O AND EAT BEETROOT :'( Peh!

Hot chips & Sweet Chilli Mayo

Fat hot chips! More vegetables! I was on a rolllllllll on my healthy streak that night :P
I wouldn't exactly call them crunchy chips, cause they're not crunchy. But that doesn't make them not good.

They're fat and fluffy and sprinkled with a few herbs which I'm guessing are Grill'd specialty. They're soo addictive with that sweet chilli mayo dip. I spread that dip in my burger to become my sauce and then I eat whatever's leftover in the little tub.

Ok, I think my addiction is towards the dip, and not so much the chips as much. Creamy stuff is always addictive... ;)

...

I got a stomach ache after this. Cramps, to be precise. But I must stress it was not at all Grill'd Burgers' fault. I think I was being overambitious and stomach did this to get back at me for aimlessly but mindlessly overfilling it up and completely challenged its digesting ability.
Cause after my own burger and the chips, I went on to demolish the rest of the Back Bar Steak Sandwich that my friend could not finish.

Ahh I'm going to die from over eating one day. No surprises there. But what a pleasant way to die right?

Parking is somewhat a hassle on Beaufort Street when night time comes to play. The lively street is abundant with eateries, bars, cafes, convenience stores and various entertainment precincts, which is GREAT, but as a result, you really gotta fight for your parking.
And when you try to do street parking, you end up feeling self conscious and fat for creating a line of traffic behind you.

As for the quality of food, Grill'd has got to be doing something right, they're giving birth to multiple stores rapidly! Which is a good sign that everything's all good and people are loving the product. If I had to choose, I would stay the Claremont stall reigns superior.
Simply cause my patties don't get burnt as bad :P

It's even more awesome if you have the Entertainment Book voucher with you, with its very enticing Buy One Get One Free deal. It makes the burger that much sweeter :) You pay half the price for your burger, but I'd have to pay full price cause I'd probably claim both the burgers.

Sharing in life is good. You give a little, you take a little, but when it comes to food, then just take the whole lot. It's always best to be selfish there. Tee hee hee :D