Station Street – ohdenny

Irodori House

May 29, 2015 Posted in Box Hill, Japanese2 Comments

Irodori House on Station Street, Box Hill serves Japanese style cuisine with an a la carte menu as well as set lunch boxes. The food here is surprisingly decent hidden in an area with a wealth of Chinese eateries. What I like about Irodori House is the flavours of their dishes.

Their Beef Sukiyaki has tender beef with a pleasant tasting light ginger taste. I’m not a big fan of ginger (although I love gingerbread) but here all the ingredients make for a pretty tasty dish.

Japanese Egg Custard’s are some of the good things in life. A savoury custard that is so silky smooth, with just enough saltiness to bring out the egg flavour and served warm.

Their tapas menu has an array of choices, Irodori’s Crumbed Fish with the mayonnaise had a good balance of crispiness and still moist on the inside. It goes really well with the mayonnaise served with it as it need a dipping sauce of sorts to complement the slight dryness of a fried fish.

The Oyako Don comes with salad, miso soup and two sides. The Oyako Don wasn’t particularly memorable but the chicken was tender but lacking in a bit of flavour.

Impressions

Overall, I found Irodori House to excel in most of their dishes and it’s the reason why I would return. It may not be the most authentic Japanese restaurant or the most amazing dishes but it still provides a tasty meal and that’s all I would want.

Pho 888 Box Hill

November 1, 2013 Posted in Box Hill, Food Reviews, Restaurant Reviews, VietnameseLeave a comment

Pho 888 Box Hill on Station Street, is one of the few Vietnamese restaurants in Box Hill. Primarily serving Pho, it does have a small selection of rice dishes and entrees as well. The restaurant is one of your typical Pho joints that you may find on Victoria Street, Richmond or Springvale, how does it compare? Lets see

I ordered the Beef sausage Pho just to try something a bit different (a bit unusual), the soup base lacks a bit of flavour and I also noticed they do not add coriander as a garnish to their soup. That’s not to say the soup was bland, it definitely has a nice flavour to it but compared with the greats in Melbourne, it is just a bit lacking.

The plentiful of onions they add are very strong in taste, probably too much onions for my liking but some might be preferential to their generosity. The beef sausage falls apart very easily, I’m not sure how it’s made because it’s almost like eating mince meat with a bit of pepper balls as seasoning. Not the best sausage I must admit, I think the beef and chicken would actually taste better together.

Finding good Vietnamese food in Box Hill is a challenge, so my opinion on Pho 888 is that it’s sufficient but if you miss great Vietnamese food from places in Richmond and Springvale, or maybe even Footscray, you may be a bit disappointed.

Pho 888 Box Hill

552 Station Street
Box Hill VIC 3128

Lu Yang Dumpling House

October 11, 2013 Posted in Box Hill, Chinese, Food Reviews, Restaurant ReviewsLeave a comment

Lu Yang Dumpling House is a popular Chinese restaurant in Box Hill, and one of the many Chinese restaurants around. It always seems to be full around lunchtime. Wanting to see for ourselves whether the place lives up to its popularity we gave it a try.

Their menu has a large selection of dumplings, pork, chicken, beef, seafood, vegetarian as well as Chinese stir-fried noodles and rice dishes. As the name of the restaurant seems to suggest, they specialise in dumplings so we ordered a mix of steamed dumplings consisting of seafood, pork, and beef, vegetarian dumplings.

I found the skin of the dumplings to be the right thickness but it seemed to be steamed for too long, making the skins to be too soft and when you bite into it, it all falls apart. The dumpling flavours all were unfortunately nothing out of the ordinary. I really couldn’t say any of the ones I tried had great flavours. Even the most commonly made dumpling, pork dumplings lacked ginger and chives. Overall I found the dumplings on the bland side of things.

We also wanted to try the pan fried dumplings, these were the pork specialty as mentioned above it was a bit bland and the overall balance of flavours was not quite there. You had to either eat them with the dipping sauce (Predominantly Chinkiang vinegar) or the chilli oil/seeds to give it a bit of a kick. Another negative was the dumplings were swimming in oil. Taking a bite into them you’ll find oil squirting out of them. Not a particularly pleasant experience and the old Bob’s Kitchen in Glen Waverley (now RaRamen Glen Waverley) makes one of the better dumplings around town.

A pleasant surprise was their Szechuan Noodles, again slightly too oily, but that’s okay because overall the seasoning, sauce all had a good balance. Not overly seasoned with salt, and the fresh vegetables stir fried in with the noodles made it a tasty dish indeed.

Impressions

Lu Yang Dumpling House is a bit hit and miss, and I’m uncertain why it seems to be so popular. I’d also like to mention the service is a bit slow, I believe we waited around 20 or so minutes before the first order arrived with no apology from the waitresses that served us. I guess I can’t expect much from Chinese restaurants. I’d give the dumplings a miss, you can definitely find better dumplings (with overall better skin to filling ratio) elsewhere.

Lu Yang Dumpling House

617 Station Street

Box Hill VIC 3128