Shabu Shabu at MHCC

Shabu Shabu looks a bit lonely in the MHCC food court. A lot of people don't seem to know what to make of it. Even during the busiest lunch rush, there are always empty seats at the counter.

To be fair, the place is a bit confusing: part teppanyaki joint, part sushi roll bar, part Korean food outlet ... and both Korean and Japanese food can be a little daunting for first-timers without a guide.


That said, allow me to point out a few things worth trying.

First up, bibimbap, a selection of vegetables (some pickled, some cooked, some raw), chili paste, and a fried egg on a large bowl of rice.


This Korean dish is usually served with kimchi and some soup (below).

At $8 a serve, this dish performs very well on the price-performance curve ... and how can any self-respecting Fiji resident say no to a dish featuring chili paste? This particular bibimbap is also vegetarian, so it's not going to get you in trouble with PETA.


On the Japanese side of the fence, teriyaki beef (or you can get chicken or tuna ... whatever the edicts of your god permit).



This one gets cooked on the teppan in front of you, and is served with a selection of veges and rice. Not as big, impressive or filling as the bibimbap, but still a good meal. $8.



The rice from Shabu Shabu always seems to be on the cold side ... this is a little puzzling for an Asian restaurant, but doesn't detract too much from the meals.

Everything on the menu seems to come in between $7 and $8, except the ebi prawns.

A variety of sushi and sashimi selections are available, or start with the California rolls if you need a gentle introduction. The Korean version, kimbap, is also on offer.

The Korean soups are also worth a try: the chicken kalguksu is a good starting place. Shabu Shabu actually has a bigger selection of soups than Joji's so play the field a little and find something you like.

We've no idea how long this Korean-owned, would-be-Japanese eatery will survive, so try it while it's still around ... or there's always its parent restaurant in Ra Marama House, but that is a couple of magnitudes up the price scale.

For good value, a large selection of soups, having the balls to install a teppan in a food court, and confusing us all with an eclectic mix of Korean and Japanese, a tentative thumbs-up.

In Summary

Shabu Shabu

MHCC Food Court, Level 2, MH City Centre, sandwiched between Thompson St, Renwick Rd, and Nabukalou Creek.

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sun: 9:00am - 9:00pm

Spend:

$7 - $15 per person

Rating:

Thumbs-up

The Defence Club on Fridays

All the private clubs in Suva have a kitchen, the last remaining holdout was the Defence Club. With the demise of "Khana Kao" that used to be in the basement (selling something called "Indo-fijian cuisine"), the Defence Club has been without food for a couple of years (cheese, tamarind chutney, and breakfast crackers don't count).

Now the club is getting back into the lunch scene with a Friday cafeteria style offering. Usually only one or two options are offered, and the price ranges from $10 to $12. A lady named Joanna is in charge and apparently you can call her for orders as well (call the club at 3305037 and ask for her - Friday only).

The day we investigated the Seafood lunch was on offer and this menu included:

• Dalo
• Fried Fish in Lolo
• Ota
• Baked Kai
• Lumi
• Nama
• Fruits ( watermelon / pineapple)

Overall a stunning success - slightly over our $10 per head policy, but we can justify it by saying that its a Friday only treat. Its a large meal, and when coupled with the $1.60 beers that one will be tempted to wash down the lolo with, your afternoon productivity will be severely impacted. You are probably better off telling the boss that you won't be "out in the field" for the rest of the day.
Make sure you eat your fruits. The fibre will help you shit later, and god knows that you'll be needing to shit after such a serve.

The menu changes every week. Typical offerings include Lovo (pork, chicken, palusami, wacipoki) and Curry (lamb, bhindi, pumpkin, chutney, rice). Ask them to put you on the mailing list and they will tell you whats for lunch via email.

In Summary

Defence Club Friday Lunch

57 Gordon St

Phone: 3305037

Opening Hours:

1200 - 1430 - Friday only

Spend:

$15 per person (assuming two beers)

Rating:

Thumbs-up

Saturday special: Steamed buns from Dorothy's Kitchen

These chinese steamed buns, with a pork or chicken filling, are available at Dorothy's Kitchen only on Saturdays, and usually sold out early in the afternoon.


These are probably the best steamed buns in Suva (comments welcome). I have a distinct preference for the pork ones (pictured above) ... but if pork isn't on your menu, the chicken buns are quite good.

If you've got a hankering for steamed buns during the week, Hot & Spicy Kitchen sells an edible chicken-filled bun.

Joji's Noodle Bar at MHCC

After years of operating quietly from his hole in the wall under the Civic Centre on the Suva foreshore Joji finally decided it was time to expand the empire.

First, there was a tentative foray into new territory during Fiji Showcase. Judging by the lines, the hungry masses approved.

Joji pondered this validation of his culinary authority, and then went to see a man about an empty space in the MHCC food court.

And now Joji's Noodle Bar has a stall at the top of the escalators on the 2nd floor of MHCC. Judging by the lines during lunch hour, the hungry masses still approve.

As the name indicates, this place is all about noodles. Dalo is available with some dishes, but there is no rice available here.

Where there's noodle, there's soup. Combination long and short, Asian beef stew, chicken noodle, fish balls.

This is the combination long and short soup: chicken, beef, fish balls, wantons, your choice of noodles, in an peppery broth. There is no pork in the soup (or on the menu). They've also swapped out the usual Chinese cabbage with lettuce. This doesn't bother me, but Kania Tiko considers it to be an unforgivable deviation from the norm.

Takeaway soups are well packed.

Almost everything on the menu is cooked to order. The staple chow mein and chilli chicken dishes (with noodles of course) are cooked in bulk, but never more than is needed to keep the line moving.

New to the menu is the 'Hot, Sweet and Sour Noodles'. The proprietor describes it as being 'like a noodle salad.'

A brilliant combination of noodles and vegetables with a hot, tangy sauce holding it all together! This dish then evolved a little, and offered a choice of chicken or beef in the dish. It has since been removed from the display menu, but I am assured that they will prepare it on request.

The menu is priced a little higher than the original Joji's. This, in addition to the lack of rice and the introduction of soup, means they're not competing with their original shop. To that end, the MHCC outlet has also dropped the small serve.

Not content with the move to MHCC, they've also opened a bakery in the food court that serves up a variety of cakes, pastries and breads under the banner of Joji's Temptation ... but that is for another review.

For adding soup to the usual Joji's options, and a hot, sweet & sour noodle salad that rises above the usual takeaway offerings, a thumbs-up.

In Summary

Joji's Noodle Bar

MHCC Food Court, Level 2, MH City Centre, sandwiched between Thompson St, Renwick Rd, and Nabukalou Creek.

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sun: 9:00am - 9:00pm

Spend:

$6 - $7 per person

Rating:

Thumbs-up

Jody's @ MHCC

Closed ... as predicted by Kania Tiko. On the bright side, the location is just too good to go to waste ... so there'll eventually be another eatery here for us to scrutinise.

The MHCC complex has added a fast food place on the ground floor (on the Renwick Rd side) which the LiS team is duty bound to find out more about.
The interior looks like a typical fast food chain, obviously they've looked at the Macca's of the world and tried to copy what works. I can say that the ordering process is efficient and well thought out, however one doesn't always understand what the attendant is saying - the dude rattles off the options at a rate of knots in a language believed to be English.
There are a selection of toasted sandwiches, this is the pick of the bunch - egg with Jody's fire sauce (which seems to be some sort of Tamarind and chilli mix), but after eating one can't help but think that one could do a better job at home. Scramble some eggs, toast some bread, put on some tamarind chutney and tabasco, and you have a quick tasty breakfast. Kudos to Jody's for giving me the idea, but it's unlikely I'll be going back there for this one.

This the menu, it has far too many things on it.
This is a chicken burger - the smallest one that they offer as you can see from the $0.50 piece provided for scale. Its also one of the most boring burgers that we've ever eaten, not actually bad, just completely uninteresting.
This is their grilled fish with coleslaw. An utterly revolting meal - nothing short of a vile, disgusting abomination - in fact worth purchasing just to marvel with ones own senses at how bad cooking can get.
This the CSI pizza, and CSI does not refer to the forensic team that should be investigating the crime against food that the Grilled Fish is. CSI apparently means "Community Sourced Ingredients" which in this case are pumpkin, baigan, and tomato. This actually isn't a bad pizza, which is a good thing as their other pizza options are pretty horrible. This is the only thing I ate that I'd actually go back for.

A note about the price - this place is expensive! All the food above cost $28, and the two grown men eating it were not satiated at all and ended up taking the escalator to eat some noodles at Joji's.

I really have no idea what this place is trying to do, maybe it wants to be Indo-Fijian McDonald's, which might be a worthy goal if they could pull off more than one dish. Perhaps if they cut the menu in half and concentrate on a few winners (fried chicken, Indo-Fijian style pizza, funky roti parcels with some sort of original twist) they could make this work.

Judging by the empty tables we don't expect Jody's to be long for this world. It will not be missed.

In Summary

Jody's

Bottom Floor, MHCC, Renwick Rd Side

Opening Hours:

0900 - 2100 - 7 days a week

Spend:

$15 per person

Rating:

Thumbs-down

Hibiscus Festival 2009

The August school break has come upon us again, bringing with it Suva's so-called 'mother of all festivals,' The Hibiscus Festival.


Unlike past years, the weather has been kind (so far) and instead of the usual mud-pool, Albert Park is instead doing a very good impression of a dust bowl. So dry was it, that there was some confusion amongst the Lunch in Suva delegation as to whether we had accidentally arrived at the Sugar Festival by mistake.

Where the weather may have changed, the prevalance of BBQ stalls has not. The vast majority of stalls offer up the same boring combination: a lamb chop, a sausage, a bit of casava, and a bit of shredded vegetable matter all liberally drowned in the cheapest tomato sauce known to the market. Most stalls now offer a chicken option as well.


For most, the only differentiating factor seems to be the club running each stall (for example the QVS stall pictured above). Association patrons, relatives, and obliged people buy from the stall to whom they owe allegiance. All others buy from the stall that seems cleanest, nearest, or most generous.

There are a few highlights: stalls that attempted something different. Enter the first specimen: Tandoori Barbeque


Still a bit of a safe play for unimaginative punters, but giving the rest of the field a much needed kick up the behind, The Taste of Indian Muglai has seen fit to drop a bit of lemon and spice on their lamb and chicken, call it 'tandoori' and they seem to be doing rather well out of it.

Here's a little video of the process. There's no tandoor in sight, but we mustn't allow that to detract from their achievement.

Also worth a try are the Bombay kebabs from Aashnas stall (who also offer the more traditional, non-bbq form of tandoori chicken).


The kebabs are cooked out the front of the stall, on metal rods, charcoal beneath and an unusually hot Suva sun above.


The kebabs are served in a paper cup and are topped with green mango chutney.


Kania Tiko believes these to be both spicey enough and oily enough to merit a pairing with beer.

Doner kebabs have also put in a token appearance.


The wrap was a thick roti. The only sauce available was tomato. The meat was unremarkable. The salad of no consequence. And at $6 a serve, this otherwise welcome deviation from the line of bbq stalls wanders too far off the price/performance curve to be worth your while.


The Bible Society burger stall has become somewhat of a fixture at the festival.


In the past these burgers have been very good. The first year, they seemed serious about passing the taste test: mustard, relish, mayo and good tomato sauce were all part of the burger.


This $4 burger has since fallen on hard times.


A bit of lettuce, a slice of tomato, a few slivers of onion and a Foods Pacific lamb patty do not a good burger make. Reduced to a shadow of it's former self, this may now well be the worst performer on the Hibiscus dining price/performance curve.

And now, a few general comments:

First, this 'flame' falls deep in 'WTF' territory. Lunch in Suva objects to this waste of good cooking gas.


Second, it's a sad day for Fiji when carnival ice-cream cones are more expensive than a McDonald's softserve.


Finally, we leave you with this strange piece of fiction, designed (we presume) to draw the attention of young children to the sweeties.


You can click on the photo to read the large version. The 'dialogue' on the side of the stall is as follows:

Monkey:
Hey Mowgli come into the festive mood and party with me

Mowgli:
Oh! I'd love to party with u
U've got all my favourite candy floss, pop corn, sno cone and oh u also have my favourite Juice

Pooh Bear:
I hope the monkey didnt notice I took his pop corn

Eyore:
Oh i love my sno cone
yummy

Rabbit:
Hey Piglet
Will Eyore exchange his sno cone with my Candy floss

Piglet:
Well I dont know about him but i know i love my tasty Juice

What more could you possibly say about the Hibiscus Festival?

Tiko's Seafood Restaurant & Bar

So there is this guy, maybe his name is Tiko, maybe it isn't, either way no one seems to give a shit. Anyway so he gets hold of a boat somehow and turns into a floating restaurant. He moors it on Stinson Parade across from Sukuna Park, and starts charging the punters of Suva shitloads of money for steak and seafood. A legend of Suva eating ensues, and for the next three decades people with expense accounts and the bakewa that follow them eat well and in a unique setting.

Now this place is way out of the normal budget usually covered here at LiS, but when there are others willing to pay, and a half reasonable camera phone is handy, one is duty bound to bend guidelines and sacrifice one's time and stomach for a higher principle: "Never miss an opportunity to namu wealthier relatives".

So there is a menu on a blackboard, and the only thing in single figures is the soup, but since you're all like me and eating on someone else's dime, I'm sure you don't give a rats.

As a bakewa with some experience in these waters, I recommend the Grilled Nuqa with Miti, but you are pretty safe eating anything you are not allergic to. The main courses are large and come with either mash, dalo, or chips.

If you are boring, or are either physically or mentally under the age of 12, you could always have a serve of Fish and Chips. At $14 and no different to what one gets from Hook and Chook or Joli Fryer, it isn't a stunner on the price performance curve. Again, I know we aren't paying for this meal, but if we are going to namu, lets namu smartly!


If you aren't that hungry, ask for the entrée as a main. Above is the crumbed calamari and the grilled baby octopus, two entrées put together to make a lighter mains.

One should always eat ones greens, even if one is a freeloading bastard. Get thee to the salad bar and load up on rourou, bhindi, pumpkin, ota, baseisei, potatoes, pasta etc., and try the chilli vinaigrette and the thousand island dressing.


Vegetables are good for you. Eat your vegetables. Especially when they are paid for.

You can get steaks too, Surf and Turf and that sort of thing, I have no idea if they are any good, but one can rarely go wrong with steak.

It is not the best place for a one hour lunch break. Your order will probably take more than half an hour to get to you, leaving you about 15 minutes to wolf down your food and get back to work. You will also need the time to entertain your sponsor with your scintillating repartee and incisive wit (which is the least you can do for someone buying you lunch).

In Summary

Tiko's Seafood Restaurant & Bar

The boat moored opposite Sukuna Park, Stinson Pde, Suva

Opening Hours:

Buggered if I know but its open for lunch on the weekdays

Spend:

Shitloads

Rating:

Thumbs-up (if someone else is paying)

Maya Dhaba at MHCC

If you are well-connected in the world of internet trivia you may have seen reference to a certain raunchy Burger King ad, allegedly tempting the usually staid people of Singapore.

The good people at The Atlantic have seen fit to address our questions about the efficacy of this sort of food advertising. "No!" they say, "sexy ads drown out the product, diminish brand recall, and often don't reap dividends" ... and then embed a plethora of examples to prove their point.

Just because Fiji is spared this sort of advertising, doesn't mean that we are off the hook when it comes to "food with sexual innuendo."

Enter the mighty dhosa: an lusty South Indian delicacy with unavoidable phallic connotations, the signature dish of Maya Dhaba at MHCC.



Undeniable shock and awe value. A tasty, hearty meal, the chicken dosa goes for $8.90; the (vegetarian) masala dorsa for $6.90. Each is served up with a side of coconut chutney and a bowl of sambar.



The biryani ($8.90 for chicken, Goat/Lamb for $1 extra) is also worthy of your attention. Both the biryani and the dorsa are cooked to order.



Tandoori chicken starts at $3.50 for a quarter of a bird. The food warmer offers a variety of meat and vegetable curries in various combinations (with rice and drink) ranging up to $8.50. The usual caveats about eating food with a dairy component from the food warmer apply. Plain and garlic naan are also available.



The ever present scourge of the food court, the coke fridge, offers up the usual range. But! for those of you who demand a more authentic experience, there is a choice of Sweet or Mango Lassi.

An extensive range of Indian sweets rounds out this offering.

For me, the success of this little food court outlet is that every time I eat here, it makes me want to eat at their parent restaurant on Victoria Parade ... though that is an experience better suited to dinner and a larger budget than is sensible for lunch.

Thumbs-up for bucking the boring food-court routine, staying affordable and offering one of Suva's most visually provocative dishes.

In Summary

Maya Dhaba

MHCC Food Court, Thomson Street, Suva

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sun: 9:00am - 9:00pm

Spend:

$3.50 - $13 per person

Rating:

Thumbs-up

Joji's at Fiji Showcase

The annual abomination that is Fiji Showcase has rolled around again. The entry fee to the exhibition has gone up ($3.50 this year), the clown hasn't changed, and the same old exhibitors are touting their wares from the floor.

The "food" offerings aren't particularly inspiring this year either, though I do note and applaud the general effort to keep the number of BBQ stalls in check.

But ... Joji's was there! Yes, that Joji's. The Showcase Joji's is a special chicken-only version of the original from under the Civic Centre. $5 for the 'medium' serve, $6 for the large: in all the usual chicken combinations: chop suey, chowmein, chilli, fried rice and blackbean.

On that note, here's our first Lunch in Suva video special: 'Son of Joji' showing us how they make Chilli Chicken in 2 minutes 40 seconds flat.



Truly, the force is strong with this one: fire, wok and chicken do his bidding.

There are a couple of other stalls that bear mention:

There is a new entrant in the hot-dog category offering a "German frankfurter with sauerkraut". The frankfurter didn't look, taste or speak German (in fact it looked and tasted remarkably like the Foods Pacific 'dog being sold a few stalls down), but the sauerkraut was definitely sauerkraut. At $3.50, this is probably not a valid justification for a trip to Showcase ... but it may help redeem the visit if you were there for other reasons.

Also, worth a mention is the FRIEND's Fiji stall: I'm a fan of their excellent tamarind chutney, and supply of the big bottles is a little irregular in the supermarkets; so get yourself a stash straight from the source.

Most of the other food stalls can be ignored: Wish Bone, Curry House, KFC, et al can be got from their usual locations without paying the $3.50 Showcase tax.

Oh! And someone is selling cans of V for $2.50 each ... that's the cheapest I've seen it in a while.

Noodles King

Located in the old Fiji Times building on Gordon Street, Noodles King has dared to try something new: noodles! This latest addition to the asian dining scene (if you could call it that) sits opposite 2 other eateries that have challenged the status quo -- Singh's Curry House & Roma's Hook and Chook -- and so is in good company as it sets about provoking Suva's stagnant notions of what Chinese food should be.



There seems too have been some doubt about the name: the large light-box outside the shop seems, at first glance, to proclaim "Noodle King". Closer inspection reveals the addition of a small 's', reassuring us that this place deals exclusively in the plural (and more generous) style of noodle serve. Noodles King it is!

The menu is simple, the prices are cheap.

$6.80 will buy the house special, King Noodles (from Noodles King: clever, no?) (below) is a large bowl of thick home-made noodles in a bland broth topped with a bed of cabbage, chicken, pork, fish balls, a battered prawn, some raw carrots julienne and garnished with dhania/cilantro/corriander leaves.



The broth seems intended for personal customisation: bowls of chilli oil, soy sauce and salt are provided for this purpose (pictured below). The noodles are accompanied by a small side salad of shredded, vinegared vegetables: various combinations of radish, bean sprouts, carrot and slivers of raw onion have been sighted.



$7.00 gets you to the top of the pyramid: Prawn Noodles. Unless you've got a particular hankering for prawns, drop down to the King Noodles; they're far more interesting.

Noodles with gravy is the cheapest option at $3.80. The curiously named Fry sauce noodles (below) tops $4.20 worth of noodles with fried egg, soy sauce, sesame, and shallots. Other options are Beef, Chicken, Pork, Fish balls, and Egg (sunny-side-up). Takeaway or eat-in.



Suva's sad culinary bottom-feeders are also provided for in the form of chips with the usual chicken or sausage decoration, and a token smattering of the usual pseudo-chinese food-warmer offerings ... why anyone would want to eat this trash when coooked-to-order noodley goodness is available for the same price is beyond me. Coke and Pepsi fridges provide the usual drinks range.

This eatery seems a little haphazard in it's decor: yellow-green walls, blue and pink feature lights on the wall, silver ceiling fans. The eclectic ambience ranged from Eurodance to Chinese folk music to classical symphony: obviously from the well-shuffled MP3 collection of a rapacious download hero. The one redeeming touch was the food pictures on the walls: these were probably not taken in the shop, were not labelled and had "Noodle King" (rather than Noodles King) emblazoned across the bottom ... but to their great credit, all depicted food that could be ordered from the menu.



Kania Tiko held forth at some length on the shortcomings of the orange plastic seats: ill-considered ergonomics, a conspiracy to tip him onto the floor, and the unbucketly alignment of what looked like a bucket seat. Given that this is the worst criticism he could come up with -- and that it was not aimed at the food -- we should probably take this as a wholehearted endorsement of the product.

Places were set with a serviette and a little packet of 'Cool Air' breath mints, a nice touch.

Thumbs-up for trying something different and breaking the usual 'chop suey, chowmein, soup' menu rut that Suva's Chinese restaurants have become stuck in.

In Summary

Noodles King

Old Fiji Times Building, Gordon Street, Suva

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sat: 9:00am - 6:00pm

Spend:

$3.80 - $7 per person

Rating:

Thumbs-up

Le Pain de Mie

The Faith Based Encyclopaedia claims that "pain de mie" is "a type of sliced, packaged bread" similar to "pullman loaf or regular sandwich bread". Given that they don't sell anything like that there it seems like a moronic name, and since most of us don't speak frog we can't pronounce it properly anyway. Therefore most normal humans just call it either 'Samabula Bakery', 'French Bakery', or 'Big Red'.

This establishment sits at the base of Waimanu Road, across the road from the post office. It is a truly hideous building, I can only hope that the cheque from Vodafone was a large one.
Now lets look at their famous pie:

It is an impressive piece of pastry and meat, lets have a look inside.

Picky Eater disses this good shit and talks up the HBK alternative because of some pap about "moistness" vs "dryness" which is too nonsensical to repeat here. My only response is that the above looks and tastes like that it came from an actual chicken, whereas the HBK chicken pie filling is some sort of extruded chicken paste. The HBK might be moist, but is it real?

The pies are $3 each. The pastry is excellent. Get yourself some hot english mustard and work it into the filling and you have a splendid meal.

They also have danishes and quiches for $2 each and croissants for $0.80. I haven't eaten enough of these to have a useful opinion on them, but I'm certain they won't be able to sneak them into your South Beach diet.


The mince loaf is a favourite of the local FIT students, it is a long loaf cut along the spin and filled with curried mince.


They'll pretty much stick this curried mince on just about anything they sell. Order a whole loaf and they'll ask you how many pieces you want it divvied up into before they pack it. Not the healthiest meals you'll ever have, but certainly one of the cheapest at $1.80.

This is a cream loaf. It's a long loaf with cream in in it. Meh.

There are three Coke fridges, that aren't particularly well stocked. If you were looking for a bottle of Frank's or some other fancy drink you are shit out of luck. You usually will find a Coke or a sprite, but that it is not guaranteed.

There are no prices on the board. This is odd.

One other thing you can do here that is not particularly well advertised is that you can bring your own pork or chicken and stick in their ovens. The price varies according to size of the meat you bring, approximately $5 for two chickens or thereabouts.

For providing some of the cheapest lunches in Suva, thus really killing it on the price-performance curve, we give the Big Red Samabula French Bakery a thumbs up.

In Summary

Le Pain de Mie

Waimanu Rd, Samabula

Opening Hours:

Monday - Sunday: 24 hours/day

Spend

$0.60 - $3.00 per person

Verdict

Thumbs up