Eating Ethnic in Oz: SQ221 to Sydney in New A380 Economy, and Qantas Biz to Melbourne

[yflyer]

A beautiful sunset in Sydney that day...



One hour plus flight to Melbourne in clear weather...



Sparking water prior to take-off...



New safety video featuring scenes from different Qantas destinations...



Short taxi to the runway, holding short to let an aircraft land...what aircraft was on final approach?



...a Qatar A380 operating QR 908 from Doha!



And then it was our turn...



I found the A330 to be very quiet on take-off from the front cabin...

[yflyer]

A push of a button allows you to extend the tray table...



A very large and sturdy surface, great for work and dining...



Meal service began with a choice of beverages...I opted for white wine: a Riesling "Kalgan River" from Willoughby Park...



On this short flight, 3 meal choices were offered to J pax: a soup, a dish of pork with rice, or a cheese platter, which meant you had a choice of a snack or a proper meal, depending on your preference.

I opted for the pork with rice, which was an Asian-style dish that came in a generously sized casserole, garnished with vegetables and a slice of lime.



While there was no tablecloth, a cloth napkin was provided, and a real ceramic casserole and proper coffee cup were provided, along with metal cutlery.



I found this to be a very satisfying meal...especially for a short flight like this one...



On this flight the cabin crew were great, especially the customer service manager (I believe this is the QF equivalent of the SQ IFM).

When they came round the cabin for refills, the customer service manager asked if I wanted more of the Riesling, and I requested a small tasting portion of one of their red wines instead...

She brought a bottle of Byron & Harold "Roses and Thorns" Shiraz...and poured me a taste...



...but not before going to the galley to get me a fresh glass, rather then refill my now-empty Riesling glass...and not before asking if I was sure I wanted just a taste, rather than a full glass...



...this was another very nice wine.

I find Qantas does a very good job of selecting wines to serve onboard their flights...this has been the case in Economy, where they offer a wide selection of mini-bottles of red and white, but especially in business class, both onboard and in their lounges, where many of the wines they serve are quite excellent.

[yflyer]

I dined as the sun set...



...and channel-surfed the IFE prior to landing...



...watching snippets of both Black Panther...



...and 12 Strong...



..before landing in Melbourne...



Overall a wonderful flight on this short sector. Based on this experience, I think Qantas have a strong J product on the A330, and is a worthy competitor to SQ on the Singapore-Australia segment. And now that Qantas has resumed flying the Kangaroo route to London via Singapore, passengers have a choice of flying to Australia on either the Qantas A330 or A380.

Interestingly, at this time, Qantas is still using their 1st generation A380 cabin, with great Y and PEY seats, but an older business class seat, in fully flat 2-2-2, which means some people may actually prefer the A330 to A380 when flying Qantas business, on account of the newer J product.

I caught the Skybus from Melbourne Airport to the Marriott Melbourne, located in the heart of the city.

To be continued!

[jammed]

Well done yflyer! Another fantastically detailed TR! After a long hiatus from SQtalk, its great to be greeted by yr TR again, almost transporting me into the plane(s) and visiting SYD and MEL again. The comparative analysis of teh PEY seats across the different metal, thats really useful for those of us who have different options to contemplate for particular routes. Good job! And looking forward to the next installment!

On a related note, KeithMEL must have been 10 yrs since we last met, in SIN, i believe. Looking good =)

[CarbonMan]

yflyer, your photos are getting more and more beautiful! It's absolutely professional standards. Many thanks for taking the trouble to do these TRs.

[SQfanatic]

Great TR, yflyer. Enjoyed the SQ and QF pics. Hope you enjoyed your trip to Australia.

[yflyer]

I haven't been to the (in)famous Atlas, which everyone is now raving about! We were last in Singapore a few days after Chinese New Year and it wasn't open. But that aside there are some brilliant ones, mainly around Chinatown or Boat Quay...
- 28 Hong Kong Street - number 25 on World's Top 50 bar list
- Ah Sam's Cold Drinks Stall - crazy flavour combos that work! With a very local twist as the name suggests. One of the most memorable drinks I've ever had was from here, involving dragon beard candy.
- Employees Only - needs no introduction
- Tippling Club - love their menus which allow you to taste an element of the cocktail before you order; last time I went it was a gummy bear menu and previously it was a scent menu. Number 31 on the World's Top 50 bar list and they also serve an amazing modern Australian degustation with an insane cocktail pairing. They were opened by the guys behind Der Raum, one of the best cocktail bars in Melbourne before they upped sticks overseas.
- Spiffy Dapper
- Butcher Boy
- Auld Alliance - for whisk(e)y. Has a pretty staid ambience but can't be beaten for scale and variety of whisk(e)y.

There are quite a few very good ones along Jalan Amoy and Keong Saik Road but I am bad with names... It's also comparatively expensive to bar hop in Singapore, relative to say Hong Kong, often feel like I need to sell an organ or 2 after a huge night lol. Food is competitively priced at the mid-high end restaurants by Asian standards so it probably all evens out.

Current fave for food - Cure (same owner as Butcher Boy). Very inventive yet stripped back and honest contemporary European menu and easy on the wallet. You can get Michelin star quality without the price tag here and the chef personally serves at least one of the courses and is more than happy to stick around your table for a chat. Of course I'd like to be able to eat at Odette or JAAN more frequently but I'd have a lot less to spend on cocktails and shopping.

Would love to try Labyrinth for food (next on my ever growing and long foodie list), a modern Singaporean hawker food degustation restaurant that turns familiar street foods on their heads. I've been asked to check out Burnt Ends and Cheek by Jowl, but it feels odd travelling to another country to try Aussie restaurants haha (Tippling Club aside but that's only because I know the guys from Der Raum) - then again some of my favourite French restaurants are in Shanghai...

Wow...that is a very useful guide to eating and drinking in Singapore! Thanks for sharing this, KeithMEL!

I have not been to quite a few on that list myself. Have not made it to Atlas either! Last time I tried going there, the place was full, and there was at least a 45 minute wait!

I have tried some of these places, and in fact covered them here on SQTalk too:

Labyrinth
Tipping Club
Burnt Ends

All great places!

[yflyer]

Well done yflyer! Another fantastically detailed TR! After a long hiatus from SQtalk, its great to be greeted by yr TR again, almost transporting me into the plane(s) and visiting SYD and MEL again. The comparative analysis of teh PEY seats across the different metal, thats really useful for those of us who have different options to contemplate for particular routes. Good job! And looking forward to the next installment!

Thanks, jammed! The rest of this TR to be posted this weekend! And here's a preview of the TR calendar for the rest of 2018: LA/Vegas on UA's non-stop Dreamliner SIN-LAX in Y (Aug/Sep) and Perth on SQ's 787-10 in J (Dec). Stay tuned!

yflyer, your photos are getting more and more beautiful! It's absolutely professional standards. Many thanks for taking the trouble to do these TRs.

Thanks, CarbonMan! Still not at the level of your amazing photography, but I do try to choose the best pics to post!

Great TR, yflyer. Enjoyed the SQ and QF pics. Hope you enjoyed your trip to Australia.

Thanks, SQfanatic! Yes, it was a short but fun trip!

[yflyer]

Continuing with the TR...

Compared to other hotels I have stayed at in Australia, the Marriott Melbourne might be considered a little ordinary, even mundane. Architecturally, it is fairly modest compared to the Sydney Harbour Marriott, and the rooms, while up to brand standards, will not win any design awards either.



However, it is in a superb location in the city, and has an excellent front office team, not to mention a decent Lounge with a perk that really endeared me to this hotel.

Another perk I quite liked was the fact that there were a couple of bottles of wine chilling in a bucket of ice on the check-in counter, and a complimentary glass was offered to guests as they were registered -- a very nice touch which I appreciated.

I checked in late in the evening and was upgraded to one of their Suites.



This was one of those suites which were made up of two adjoining rooms. Not my favourite design for a Suite (Two boring rectangular boxes) but it was always good to have extra space.



Bathroom...



The view onto the tree-lined street from the next morning...

[yflyer]

I arrived in MEL too late at night for a proper sit-down dinner, but the area around the Marriott is very lively, with many small eateries, including an outpost of Hawker Chan, which I headed to immediately after checking into the Marriott.



Hawker Chan serves a delicious soya sauce chicken rice dish, along with other Asian/Oriental casual eats, including noodles, roast pork, and roast duck.

Hawker Chan is one of just a handful of hawker stalls in Singapore that have been awarded one Michelin Star.

Whether it makes sense or not for the Michelin Guide to judge street food alongside fine dining establishments is a debate for another time, but I have personally never sampled Hawker Chan in Singapore.

Why not? Well, there is the matter of the dish itself: soya sauce chicken is comfort food...while undoubtedly tasty, the difference between a mediocre version of this dish and the best possible version of this dish is not as great as many other hawker dishes, for example char kway teow or mee pok. When locals are asked to list their favourite hawker dishes, or what we could term Singapore's heritage hawker fare, I don't think soya sauce chicken, with its HK origins, would rank high on that list -- I am not sure it would even appear on that list at all. I would travel long distances, and queue as long as it takes, to eat a good mee pok, chye tow kway, hokkien mee, or even a proper roti prata (A deceptively hard dish to get exactly right)...but soya sauce chicken? Any difference between the average and the best soya sauce chicken might actually be quite subtle. Maybe that just shows I am not a connoisseur of street food, but I have never figured out the ROI of queuing so long for this particular dish.

In the Singapore food centre, in Chinatown, where the original Hawker Chan still remains, pictured below, the queues are usually very long...





But you would not find me in that queue. Not for soya sauce chicken.

Of course, context is everything. In Melbourne, on a late, cold, night, craving an Asian Food fix, Hawker Chan looked very inviting...

I headed in to Hawker Chan's Melbourne outlet: a slightly more upmarket affair than the simple hawker stall in a food centre in Singapore...



And at the head of the queue, a gleaming row of perfectly glazed whole soya sauce chickens...



And at prices ranging from A$6.80 for a plate of soya sauce chicken and rice, to A$9.80 for char siew or roast pork noodles this was a bargain by Australian standards...





I watched as plate after plate of delectable Asian noodles and rice dishes were served up to an endless stream of customers...

I decided on a takeaway pack of their signature soya sauce chicken, which I brought back to my Suite at the Marriott...



The verdict? This was actually quite delicious. Glistening, moist chicken, perfectly seasoned on a bed of rice. The all important chilli sauce was good as well. A very satisfying meal. Would I queue for 30 minutes or longer for this in Singapore? Probably not, but that evening in Melbourne, this really hit the spot!

[yflyer]

The next morning, I headed to the Marriott Executive Lounge for breakfast. This lounge was decent, but unexceptional.

The decor here was not as striking as the Sydney Marriott, nor was this lounge as large as the one in Sydney.



This lounge was just about what you would expect from a Marriott Exec Lounge, no more no less.



The lounge serves a daily buffet breakfast...









In the evening, self service wine/liquor and snacks are offered...

[yflyer]

A variety of ethnic snacks were offered, which was a nice touch. These changed daily.







Cakes and dessert...

[yflyer]

So as far as ambience and F&B was concerned, this was a decent but unexceptional lounge...

That said, the Lounge did offer a unique service which might just sway me to stay here much more often in future: There is a bathroom and shower in the lounge, which is accessible to guests on the day of check-out, even after you have checked out.





That means, even if you have checked out in the morning, you can leave your luggage at the hotel, and return in the evening, say before your flight, or after an afternoon run, and take a proper shower in the lounge before heading to the airport.

On the day I checked out, I returned to the hotel in the evening before my flight and headed to the front desk and requested access to the lounge for a shower. The pleasant and helpful front desk staff verified my particulars, then cut me a lounge access key for me to do just that before my flight home. Believe me, that shower made a whole lot of difference!

A brilliant perk that made a difference to my comfort and travel/hotel experience! They should offer this in all hotels.

[yflyer]

As mentioned, this trip was a last minute thing, with hardly enough time to plan a proper meet up with either old friends/SQTalkers or new...

But at the last minute my schedule opened up and there was a small window of opportunity for a hastily planned meet up with Kyo and SQ228...

Date aside, there was that small matter of what to eat...

"...was suggesting a steak place...But it's in Kew...", Kyo proposed...

Kew? How far was that? My go-to steak place has always been the Rockpool Bar and Grill, but I was always ready to sample other steaks, especially if recommended by Kyo!

"Not a huge steak fan...", SQ228 replied, although he was perfectly willing to head there to sample anything else on their menu...

"Then we should go elsewhere", Kyo replied, and I agreed...we would save the steak pilgrimage for another time, with just the true devotees in attendance......

"Richmond has some amazing Vietnamese", SQ228 suggested...

"...The usual Thai etc..." Kyo added...

Hmmm...lots of options...the debate continued.

For someone who seldom strayed out of the Melbourne CBD, the range of suburbs and dining options in and around Melbourne was both eye-opening and mindboggling...I think I would have had to stay here for weeks or months in order to best appreciate the range of cuisines to be had....

[yflyer]

"Brunswick is best known for Turkish", SQ228 suggested...

"...lets eat Turkish then..." I proposed...

"Read my mind..." Kyo replied...

Finally consensus!

We ended up at Alasya, along Sydney Road in Brunswick...



Some restaurants, you walk into, and you just know you are going to get an authentic dining experience...this was one of those places...





A quick browse through the menu...



We decided on the meat lover's banquet...