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 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.
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.
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?
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
