You must be my Lucky Star!!

Ok ... so everyone has their favourite "Friday Night Can't Be Arsed Cooking" joint that they go to ... ours chops and changes with the seasons ... but we have been going to Lucky Star on Barkly St Footscray on quite a few of these nights. Its one of those unassuming places ... looks like every other damn chinese/vietnamese restaurant with the fishtanks ... but one thing that caught our fancy was that there was scarcely a white face to be seen amongst the punters ... Good Sign!!! And as testament to the quality of this place, when we went there for the very first time ... we had a massive row and barely spoke to each other over our plate of Salt Fish Chicken Fried Rice. But there chilli oil sauce came with ikan billis (cripsy fried anchovies) ... TDF!!! That sealed the deal as far as we're concerned and since then we have not had a single dish that we could find fault with, nor did we think we would ever discover something completely new .. but we did this last friday night just gone.

Goat's Brisket Hot Pot!!

Well we noticed another table having the same dish so I asked our friendly waitress (is this still PC??) what it was. She couldn't quite remember how to say it in English so she went to get the menu and pointed at the listing. And considering we were up to trying something new and that it was a cold night ... we decided what the hey ...

So the goats brisket stew comes in one of those claypot shaped metal containers that sits on top of a portable gas stove. The stew itself is flavoured mainly by aniseed and 5 spice and ginger, with a couple of varieties of beancurd, chestnuts and lotus root. The dish is served with a egg noodles and a massive pile of spinach which you dip into the sauce to blanch. Brilliant!!

I wish I had pics to show you, but you really need to check it out. We noticed that 3 other tables after us ordered the same thing ... so we were inspired and in turn inspired others ... !!

PS ... listening to the fretless bass wonder that is Peter Gabriel's 3rd solo album while I write this - ok everybody sing "Jeux sans frontieres"