Tim Ho Wan, Chatswood, New South Wales (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

Okay, something that I've just got to get out of the way first - just because a certain restaurant in a chain has a Michelin star does not mean that by extension all branches of that restaurant are Michelin Starred. Some branches will invariable be better than others and even a chef as illustrious as Joel Robuchon - who has more Michelin Stars than any other chef in the world - cannot claim to have consistent 3 Star level restaurants in every territory with a Michelin Guide. Likewise, if a restaurant with Michelin stars has a branch in a territory without a Guide , it may well be Michelin Star quality cooking, but it is not by definition Michelin Starred cooking.

While Tim Ho Wan's ventures out of Hong Kong never outright claim to have stars for each outlet, they push the Michelin angle very, very hard as a selling point. However when not even all the branches in Hong Kong can claim stars, there is something disingenuous about people referring to it as Michelin Starred Dim Sum. Still, having actually eaten at the impressive Michelin starred branch in Sham Shui Po as well as the less incredible but still good Orchard Rd branch in Singapore, the idea of a Tim Ho Wan in Australia really excited Alissa and I, and we were very interested to see if the recently opened Tim Ho Wan in Chatswood would live up to the standard to which its marketing aspires.

Copper Castle, Munnar, India (Alissa and Don Eat Asia Day 17, Part 1)

I sometimes worry I'm a little too generous and positive in my appraisals of restaurants. Perhaps its because I worked hard researching good places to eat, but the vast majority of our meals in India have left us feeling genuinely satisfied, even surprisingly so in the case of the very cheap Rapsy Restaurant. As a means of contrast, let me tell you about our meal at Copper Castle.

After a morning and early afternoon of doing the Munnar tourist drive to Top Station and back, our driver Das took us to town to eat at Silver Spoon. When we got to town, we found that it was indeed right smack in the middle of town as I had remembered however it was closed for what seemed like renovations. Having to go with a second choice, we chose to forgo a second meal at Rapsy and decided on lunch at the Trip Advisor recommended Copper Castle, which was down the road from our hotel. Little did we know we had just made a huge mistake. 

We arrived to sit at the empty dining room of the restaurant, something I've come to notice is fairly usual with hotel restaurants in India as the dinner trade seems to be when they are at their busiest. We looked through the menu and chose to go with the Malabari Fried Prawns and the Pepper Chicken, along with two serves of parotta. 

We received our drinks quickly enough and began to amuse ourselves with conversation and making funny faces at each other as we took photos. But then things started to go downhill. We waited for what seemed like a very long time before we received our first dish, and when it came out we were both a little taken aback by how small it was.

The Malabari Fried Prawns were a lot smaller than we had expected. I'm not sure if the photo does justice to just how small the prawns were, but they were really very tiny – more like the smaller size you'd expect from a cheap supermarket shrimp cocktail than the usual meatier size I'd expect as a main. We ate this quietly, both of us commenting on how surprisingly small the serve was while noting that it at least tasted good. We were thinking maybe we should have ordered something else or that we may have to order an additional main, however the slow pace that things were coming out at made us hesitant to ask for an additional order less we extend our meal any longer. I understand prawns are more expensive than chicken or lamb, but I would rather pay more for a reasonable serve (either larger prawns or more small ones) than get a plate so insubstantial.

Things got even worse when they collected our finished plate. Unbeknownst to myself as I was facing the other way, the chef and kitchen staff came out of the kitchen to stand and watch as the waiter interacted with us.

'How was the prawns?' the waiter asked as he took the plate.

'It was very good, thank you,' said Alissa, being polite.

When he returned to where the staff were waiting, he spoke to them and they all started laughing. We're not sure whether they were laughing because they knew we'd obviously been fleeced by a stingy serve that they knew was no good or whether they were laughing because Alissa being Caucasian made her seem strange or some other reason. Regardless of the fact, this is unacceptable behaviour in any restaurant. I've never seen anything like it before.

After waiting again for a long time, the Pepper Chicken came out. We were very hungry by this point so to be fair the photo I've taken was after I'd already dished out some of the gravy onto my plate, but you can see that three measly pieces was all the chicken that was served to us. By way of comparison, have a look at the amount of chicken served to us at Rapsy Restaurant the previous day and you'll see how this was terrible value for money. The food was again at least tasty, having nice spice, and the parotta served to us was probably the best we had in Munnar. However I would later learn from Alissa that the restaurant staff again stood at the back of the room and watched, which made her feel very uncomfortable and self-conscious.

The Verdict: Okay

In all of our journey, I'm fairly certain this was easily the worst dining experience and most disappointing. I've heard that the nighttime buffet service is quite good but a restaurant should be bringing its A-Game at all times, and this was amongst the worst restaurant services I've ever experienced and the stingiest serving sizes we've encountered in all of India. A dish per person has been the rule of thumb at every other Indian restaurant we've eaten at, and my feedback to Copper Castle would be I'd rather have paid more for decent serving sizes that be served an insufficiently filling meal. But then at four times the price of Rapsy, one could eat food of equal quality to their hearts content and have a better dining experience to boot. Our meal here was at least good tasting otherwise this would be getting an even worse rating, but I thoroughly recommend you save you money and go to Rapsy Restaurant for a lunch in Munnar rather than have the kind of terrible service only Copper Castle seems able to offer.

Hong Kong Disneyland (Alissa and Don Eat Asia Day 5, Part 1)

Friday was Alissa's day. When we first started looking at different places in Hong Kong, a very excited Alissa exclaimed with joy when she saw something she absolutely had to do - DISNEYLAND!

While we were here I thought we might as well try the food at Crystal Lotus, an award winning dim sum restaurant located within the Disneyland Hotel that specialised in Disney character dim sum if you book 48 hours prior. In the end however, we decided against eat there due to a number of factors.

Introduction & Dome, Perth Airport, Western Australia (Alissa and Don Eat Asia Day 1, Part 1)

As with all travelling stories in the de Souza family, it all starts with a coffee at Dome. Whenever any member of my family travels overseas we always make sure we’re at the airport with sufficient time for one last cup of coffee together, and in the ensuing years it’s become something of a family tradition. Not that the coffee at Dome is particularly special or there aren't any other options (albeit from Perth Airport’s very meager food and drink selection), but so entrenched is this familiar ritual that it just would not feel right to start a journey without it.

For most of these cups of coffee Dome was as far as I was going. This was my parents’ travelling story, and my role in the adventure ended with goodbyes at the departure gate. Sometimes I went with them too - in 2009 and 2011 I joined my parents on their then-biennial voyages to India. But this trip is different. For the first time it is my parents staying behind in Perth. For the first time this travelling story belongs to me – and my favourite dining partner.

Friday 25^th October, 2011 was the last time I went through those departure gates, travelling with my parents for a food odyssey to Hong Kong, Mumbai, Udaipur, Munnar and Singapore. This was an exciting trip that I’d been looking forward to for months; however a part of me didn’t want to go. See, just 5 days before departure I’d met a girl. Or rather, it wasn’t that I met her (we’d been friends of friends), but that we’d started seeing each other. And I liked her, and felt immediately that I’d found someone truly special. With the bad timing of my departure we chatted online just about every night I was away, and though we’d only been on two dates beforehand I felt even then that I wished she had been there with me for all of it.

6 months later we were engaged, with November 23^rd, 2013 being our wedding day. And now exactly 2 years after I left for my last overseas holiday, I’m correcting the wrong of that last trip by taking Alissa to all the cities I told her about every night I was overseas. With meals booked at 5 of San Pellegrino’s Top 50 Restaurants in Asia - 2 of which also boast 3 Michelin Stars – and 5 weeks of amazing meals planned it seems only fitting to open the Ministry of Gluttony with our first travelling story – Alissa and Don Eat Asia.

Alissa and I have talked about ratings for food. With food varying from 3 Star Michelin to a simple temple meal, how does one rate a meal on its own merits? Additionally, as people who enjoy eating we probably find most food is at least passable, therefore its probably more important to distinguish between varying levels of good. Rather than allocating a star rating of giving a score, we've come up with a rating system for our blog that we feel better reflects our experiences in a straightforward manner:

Poor - Food that is of an unacceptably low quality. Best avoided
Okay - Passable food of acceptable taste and quality. Not bad but not exactly 'good' food.

Good - Worth a try; a satisfying meal if not exactly mindblowing.

Very Good - Recommended food to eat if you are in the area; a satisfying meal +

Fxcellent - A very satisfying meal; food that you should eat if you are visiting this place.

Exceptional - The very best food of its class. Food and/or a food experience so good that you should make travel plans to eat here!

So with this in mind... back to Dome. Alissa and I ordered long macchiattos (a strong or double shot latte in correct terms) with Alissa eating a chicken wrap and a ham and cheese croissant for myself.

The coffee was okay. Not a bad or a particularly excellent coffee. It served its purpose of waking us up after getting out of bed for 3:15am. What wasn't so good though was the paper cup - I'm fairly certain that in the past we've been given proper cups at Dome, so someone made the unenvironmentally friendly decision to switch to disposable since our last trip. 

My croissant was not very good. The pastry had obviously been given the microwave reheat treatment and was lacking the crisp flakiness I associate with a good croissant. The filling was very poorly spaced out - so much so I basically ate half of my croissant before I even got to the ham and cheese, and then it felt as if they'd put way too much in this half as it seemed overly generous. I would have preferred a more evenly spread out filling, and I finished my meal wishing I had ordered something else, like Alissa's chicken wrap.

Alissa's order looked a lot more appetizing, and had clearly been seared in a sandwich toaster, making me wish mine had had a similar treatment. I had a bite and appreciated the well-seasoned chicken. Thankfully I hadn't taken a large enough bite to have noticed something Alissa later pointed out as a fault - as the wrap had been microwaved to reheat, the thickly sliced cucumber had become warm and semi-cooked with a weird texture. As someone who doesn't like thickly sliced cucumber, perhaps the ham and cheese croissant was not such a bad choice after all.

The Verdict: Okay
Its a family tradition, so we'll keep coming back. However, as the food is only of a passable standard I cannot exactly recommend it as a place of interest.