CYI ate – One Shot Spotlight: Millé & B, Patisserie in Melbourne, Australia

Like literally, take a look. You will understand

Millé & B

Shop 3, 28 Bouverie St, Carlton

Victoria

3053

Tues-Fri: 8am-6pm
Sat-Sun: 10am-4pm

So. in between these two apartment buildings on Swanston St, there’s a sort of half-indoor courtyard on the ground floor. Therein lies the cute little cake shop that goes by the name of Millé & B. Hard to find since it’s so hidden just by looking at the street, but super worth it if you do!

We are located in the ‘Winter Garden’ -accessible to public.
(Entrance via 551 Swanston St or up the stairs located on the left of 28 Bouverie St)

FAQ, From the Millé & B website

We love a good cake cafe. And this location is actually Millé & B’s first brick and mortar shop, whereas the company began and still continues as an online business, selling their full-sized cakes that way.

I wish I could’ve tried all the cakes because there were maybe 6, 7? choices total, all with gorgeous colouring and design. The shop sells a combination of their signature “thousand-layers” crepe cakes the company got their start with and Japanese shortcakes with flavours inspired by seasonal fruits. There are also a variety drink and cookie options.

From my visit, I picked up these two (and I couldn’t be happier):

Left: Lychee Longan Japanese Shortcake
Right: Matcha & Adzuki Mille Crepe Cake

If my memory serves me correctly *crosses fingers and prays*, I believe each cake was about 8.5 A$, which might come across as expensive but it’s seriously so worth it to try at least once. (And once is all you need to get hooked.)

sometimes one bite is more than enough
to know you want more of the thing you just got a taste of

It Only Takes A Taste, Waitress the Musical

Seriously, not only are these cakes absolute stunning, they taste spectacular too!

Matcha & Adzuki Mille Crepe Cake

Matcha and red bean is one of my ideal flavour combinations, so you bet I had to pick this one up, especially in all its crepe cake glory.

One thing I really liked about the cake is that it’s not too sweet, which I think can easily happen with crepe cakes because of all the cream. It was also relatively light considering all the cream, which can be another pitfall with such a cake.

The cake is definitely more matcha centred than red bean, since really the only red bean is on top, whereas the cream and crepes themselves are green with matcha. However, I did see in pictures on Millé & B’s website that have red bean actually integrated within the white cream layers of the cake, so maybe that’s something that occurs when you order a full-size cake. There’s also two little mochi(? I think?) bits also on top that I think compliment the texture and overall aesthetic really well.

Lychee Longan Japanese Shortcake

it’s so hard to choose a favourite, but I thiiink this might be it? Maybe?? It’s a l i t t l e bit lighter (not just in colour ha), and a l i t t l e bit less sweet, both of which I think are understandable due to the nature of the cakes themselves – this one just has less cream so. And maybe I’m biased towards having not just fruit, but lychee and longan (dragon’s eye) which tasted so good, perfect sweetness and fresh! Like One Cake, there’s a decent amount (like so many pieces!) of fruit lying in the cream layers of the cake, once more minimizing the actual amount of cream. We love that slightly less fat content for the *health*.

Can I also just mention how I really appreciate how clean cut this cake is though, since the One Cake slices can look a little bit messy around the edges, but I mean look at how sharp those fruit slices look.

Though I gotta say, in terms of the cake’s topping decorations, while I think this shortcake looks more pleasing (we love a variety of colours, and flowers! and more fruit!), I prefer the taste of the red bean x matcha powder x mochi bits. Edible flowers aren’t really my thing taste-wise (they don’t taste like anything!) and the extra thick extra cream on top is definitely not necessary to add more sweetness.

I do really like those other cake bits on top of the shortcake though; I think they were matcha flavoured (*green*), and they tasted amazing, a slightly richer texture than the rest of the cake, almost bordering on brownie-consistency. ahh, brownies..

anyways

in grand conclusion…

We already know this cake is beautiful, but let me just say I had a great little photoshoot with these two cakes, which you can probably tell by the amount of photos I have surrounding just two food items.

Also, maybe it should be noted that I bought these to-go (which is why I could have such an intense photo shoot with them ha at home) and stored them in the fridge for like 5-8 hours before eating them that night. Just to say the beautiful aesthetics and taste still hold without needing to eat them right away, as they should, or as one hopes they would.

I love these cakes so much too bad they don’t ship internationally ha. But they do offer delivery of full-sized cakes 5km within the CBD in Melbourne, and you can take a look at their menu online, or even design and order your own custom cake.

P l e a s e stop by this shop if you’re in Melbourne and craving quality cake. Who knows when I’ll next visit but I hope to come back one day to try the rest of the flavours, or at least live vicariously through anyone who goes on my recommendation.

Lastly, a question: is it cream or creme when talking about the… cre(a)m(e) in cakes? Or are they just interchangeable?

CYI ate: Milkcow in Melbourne, Australia

Instead of sharing food from places in the city I actually live in, I’m continuing on with the Melbourne series! ha. ha. ha.

Milkcow, Melbourne

287 Swanston St, Melbourne

Victoria

3000

Sun-Thurs: 12pm-10pm
Fri-Sat: 12pm-11pm

We have Milkcow in Vancouver, but I’ve never been (though I intend to soon! because summer! and ice cream!). And I kept passing by a Milkcow stand when I was in Melbourne, so I thought I’d take a peek at their menu, and lo and behold, there it was:

Dirty.
Boba.
Soft.
Serve!!

As far as I know, “dirty” in bubble tea language usually means brown sugar (or, a new up and coming regular, oreo!), which is one of those trigger words for me now that will immediately pique my interest because the brown sugar boba trend is very real and very much a part of my foodie life.

A Detour From Our Scheduled Programming

I tried this amazing black tea/hojicha soft serve that also had pearls in it when I was in New York last month (see picture below) and that was one of the best things I’d eaten in my life like ever and I’ve been wanting to eat more soft-serve/boba combinations so I was very very excited to see this addition to Milkcow’s menu.

black tea + hojicha swirl soft serve with “bubbles” from Bar Pa Tea in New York City – $6 USD

Comments Questions Concerns?

This dirty boba soft serve was unfortunately not quite as fantastic as the one I had in New York, but one of them had to come out on top.

The soft serve was regular, like your average IKEA cone, which is definitely not an insult(!), because IKEA soft serve is great. But the kick with the IKEA soft serve is that it’s only $1 CAD. This one was 6.5x more expensive. Probably because of the pearls. And the fact that it’s not IKEA. But continuing on..

Dirty Boba Soft Serve. (about 6.5 A$)

In comparison to the Bar Pa Tea soft serve, the ice cream looks a little lacking, almost. Like it doesn’t quite fill the cup as much as it could.

And maybe I should’ve realized this earlier, but brown sugar pearls are really sweet. Like no kidding, but soft serve is also quite sweet on its own, as ice creams go. My point is the combination of the two… is really sweet. I mean I like 100% sugar just fine in my bubble tea (though I usually go for 50 because health?) but this was really. sweet. So unless you have a major sweet tooth, I’d proceed with caution. Beyond that, it’s a pretty decent brown sugar syrup.

The pearls were also on the small side, and because of that they were a bit harder to chew too. That’s understandable considering this is an ice cream shop and not a bubble tea shop, so they’re really only making pearls for this one ice cream they got. However, judging solely on the quality of the pearls, not my favourite.

I will say there was a decent pearl to ice cream ratio. And depending on where you get it (like Tiger Sugar – $7-ish CAD vs Coco – $5.5 CAD), it can cost less than your favourite brown sugar bubble tea. But maybe you pay in other ways?

In the end, I don’t think I’ll be scrambling to try this particular flavour should Milkcow Vancouver ever invite it to the West Coast party. There definitely wasn’t anything really wrong with each component, more so my overall impression was more lacklustre than I’d hoped, though maybe that’s my fault for having high expectations. Still, I do think the soft serve x pearls is a really fun trend going around and I can’t wait to see (eat) more.

And I am of course still interested to see what else Milkcow has to offer with its more classic flavours. In particular I want to try that watermelon soft serve thing they serve in the summer, with the soft serve in the watermelon. So even though I wasn’t the most impressed with the dirty soft serve, Milkcow still has food items that excite me that I want to try. So I’ll definitely be back.

The Tea? Some News!

Also! Milkcow Toronto has just started serving this brown sugar boba soft serve concoction, so my East Coast Canadian friends (wow what a niche group that must be), maybe stop on by and see for yourself: is the brown sugar trend past its peak already *insert some joke about brown sugar just being bs here*, or is this just the next step in an ultimate grand brown sugar ploy? Either way, I’m probably already hooked.

CYI ate – One Shot Spotlight: Banoi, Vietnamese Eatery in Melbourne, Australia

“Vancouver-based food blog”

ha

But anyways, I was just in Melbourne! and I ate things!

Even though there’s bubble tea every which way you look, of which I tried a fair share, my first Melbourne-based post is shining the spotlight on a Vietnamese restaurant my family stumbled upon on Google maps on our way to the Docklands library (which, let me just say, is an all-around beautiful place to spend time in).

I didn’t fully realize just how many Asian people there are in Melbourne until I got here. It reminds me of home a bit, since like Vancouver this city is filled with immigrants – specifically Asian immigrants – which is nice. It’s also nice because a lot of Asian people means a lot of opportunity to try a lot of Asian food things. And I am most definitely a fan of that.

Banoi

807 Bourke St, Docklands

Victoria

3008

Mon-Sat: 11:30am-9pm

Website: https://www.banoi.com.au

First Impressions

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to think about the potential food quality walking in, since I’d heard that Australia (or Melbourne, at least) lacks quality and authentic Vietnamese food. I’m not Vietnamese myself, nor do I eat Viet food all that often (beyond pho) so I can’t really judge on authenticity, however, after ordering and eating the delicious and aesthetically pleasing plates, I would definitely recommend this restaurant to anyone visiting the city.

Yeah, I think that about sums it up: delicious and aesthetically pleasing. I mean, look:

Left: Pork & Prawn Dry Combination Noodles / Hủ Tiếu Mì Khô Tôm
Thịt – 16 A$
Right: Chicken Curry / Bún Cà Ri Gà – 16.5 A$

Steamed Taco Buns / Bánh Bao Kẹp – 5.3 A$ each
Left: Pork Belly / Bánh Bao Kẹp Thịt Heo
Right: Salt & Pepper Tofu / Bánh Bao Kẹp Đậu Hũ

*Looks*

The restaurant looks very hip, so not your average mom-and-pop shop, but it was opened by Viet cousins and their story began with recreations of their grandma’s old recipes.

It’s a smaller space and the internal lighting is a bit dim, but each table is pressed against the wide expanse of windows which not only opens up the space but also provides really nice lighting for photos (at least in the afternoon, which is when we went), just in case that’s a thing anyone takes into account when deciding what restaurant to go to.

the inside!

They have a really interesting menu, with a wide variety of options, some of which I haven’t really seen before in Viet restaurants. I would’ve loved to try them all if I had the time to come back or the stomach to eat more at a time.

Also! I should mention that there are two other locations beyond Docklands, one in the CBD (Central Business District) and one in Brisbane, both of which were opened following the success of their Docklands restaurant.

The Food!

Steamed BBQ Pork Bun / Bánh Bao Xá Xíu – 3.5 A$

One of the first things I noticed on the menu was that they served steamed BBQ Pork Buns. It seemed like a bit of an odd choice considering it is a Chinese dish, but, it’s also one of my weaknesses so I of course I had to try it.

It was good! Bun was soft, filling was sweet, the pork wasn’t too fatty, and it was one of the first dishes to come out, as it should be (as it usually is at dim sum). I’d probably recommend eating it asap especially since it isn’t in a steamer so it can get real cool real quick but I mean what else are you going to do in a restaurant right? It’s a bit larger in comparison to what you get at your average dim sum restaurant which usually serves the buns in threes, but I think that just makes it more worth it for its price.

Back: BBQ Pork Patty Skewers / Nem Nướng – 10 A$
Front: Steamed Taco Buns / Bánh Bao Kẹp – 5.3 A$ each

While I enjoyed the skewers, I thought the dish was a bit small for the price. They’re cooked well and have a nice sweet sauce/glaze thing going on though!

I thought the steamed buns were really cute since there are four different types and you order by the single. Each one has a different meat type – the other options were grilled chicken and BBQ pork patty – and a different sauce that comes with it (as far as I know, at least the two we ordered had difference sauces), which I think makes each one more unique since you know they’re not just recycling the same sauce and only changing the meat. Slight spice alert for the tofu one though, but it’s a small bun so shouldn’t be much a problem unless you truly cannot handle the spice.

Chicken Curry / Bún Cà Ri Gà – 16.5 A$

psa the chicken curry’s a bit spicy, and I say that as a person who can’t really handle spice, coming from a family who can’t really handle spice. It has a kick, I guess, so it’s relatively manageable, the average person who can actually eat spicy food would probably say it’s not spicy, but there is something more there (a kick).

I still quite enjoyed this one, since it’s a curry pho, which is a combination that you’ll see some places and not others but I think should be more widespread. Having curry makes the soup thicker which I personally enjoy, and along with chicken there’s vegetables such as carrots and potato (potato and curry is also a classic combination in my opinion) pieces inside too!

Pork & Prawn Dry Combination Noodles / Hủ Tiếu Mì Khô Tôm
Thịt – 16 A$

I think this dish was my favourite, the pork and prawn noodles, since it has a sweeter sauce (similar to the skewers’ glaze) and I have a sweet tooth in case you weren’t already aware. But maybe it was just the fact that it was easier to eat than the curry (because spice) that drew me to it. But I also like the fact that there are lots of vegetables on top because health is important and it balances the sweetness out. There’s extra sauce they give you on the side but it’s not really necessary since there’s some integrated within the noodles already.

Final thoughts

Odd note but I really like the plates they use (my kind of colour scheme). My family and I had a really fun time eating here, from ogling and debating the options on the menu to taking selfies/foodstagrams when the food came to the actual eating of the food. Furniture’s comfortable, there’s a nice sink outside the actual bathroom so you don’t have to go all the way in to wash your hands, and those little touches make the overall aesthetic that much more pleasing.

I’d call this a slightly elevated take on comfort food. If there was somewhere like this in Vancouver (maybe there is, let me know!), it’d be the kind of place I’d come to when I’m out with friends and we want a nice-looking tasty meal for a decent price.

Give this place a try if you’re ever in Melbourne and you like Vietnamese food!

***

*The CYI ate – One Shot Spotlight is my way to shed light and spread the joy on some places I find while travelling, since it’s not entirely likely I’ll be able to visit them again, and at least not anytime soon

**All prices are listed in Australian currency

Spilling the Bubble Tea: My Experience at Tiger Sugar in Flushing, New York City

guess I’m really just out here talking about a different country’s food things in my second post.

hello!

Recently, I had the chance to wait 30 minutes in line before getting to try Tiger Sugar at its first North American location in Flushing, New York City. The shop opened at the beginning of May 2019, but the brand has long been popularized since its inception in Taiwan, beginning a widespread of franchises throughout Asia, and now into the western hemisphere. Specializing in brown sugar pearls, its name reflects the brown sugar “tiger stripes” that line the inside of each bubble tea cup.

Tiger Sugar NYC

40-10 #A, Main St

Flushing, NY

11354

Daily: 11am-9:30pm

My first impression of Tiger Sugar was a “oh look at that long line over there what’s that” kind of moment. which turned into a “wait look it’s that bubble tea place I saw on instagram” kind of moment. It was helpful since I didn’t even have to look for it coming out of the subway station.

So let’s get into it! And read to the end if you want some tips about where Tiger Sugar’s going next!

A good many other random passersby having a “what’s this” moment

The (Bubble) Tea!

Order: Brown Sugar Boba Milk, $5.50 USD (before tax)

The pearls. are. super. soft.

!!

Brown Sugar Boba Milk

After the conversion to CAD dollars, a Tiger Sugar probably costs about the same as a brown sugar milk tea from Yi Fang in Vancouver, but it’s smaller, definitely, and there’s a fair amount of ice (I don’t think they give you options). Still, on the singular quality of the pearls — they’re sooo soft — I would not spill this bubble tea. Each drop costs too much and tastes too good.

I would not spill this bubble tea

me, just now

I’ve tried my fair share of brown sugar pearls, but I think this one definitely survived the hype, even with the long line adding more weight to my already heavy expectations. The milk tea also tasted really fresh and I actually really like the look of the “tiger stripes” more than your average Yi Fang boba that’s just split midway into brown sugar pearls, and not. And I think the ice does help cut down the sweetness a bit.

*How-to*

Tiger Sugar the company recommends you shake the tea 15 times before drinking (though I’m not sure if that’s all teas, or just their brown sugar ones), but I personally always love taking that first sip of brown sugar pearls at their most saturated right when you poke the straw in… and then mixing with the rest of the milk tea afterwards so as not to seem like a c o m p l e t e heathen. 

The Environment

This isn’t your typical bubble tea cafe since the shop isn’t really an actual store so much as a booth, so everyone has to line up on the sidewalk and basically be a big nuisance to all the other pedestrians. The line’s split up so that there’s a walking path, but in turn a lot of people don’t even realize there’s a second part to the line (busy New York streets be like that) and have to be redirected by workers when they walk right up to the front of the shop. 

You’re on the street the entire time so it’s noisy, and crowded, and you’ll probably want to leave as soon as you get your drink. But I also like seeing when random (not bubble tea fanatic) pedestrians walk by and stop to take pictures or videos of the line, or look at the store front trying to infer what all the hype’s about. makes me feel like I’m part of something important haha. 

Line Time

The line took about a half hour, maybe 40 minutes at most, not including everything that comes after ordering, but I mean you’re in NYC so you can always just marvel at the fact that you’re in New York City like the tourist you are (I am) and waste some time that way.

The Menu

My encounter with the menu was brief and superficial at best.

The unfortunate part about the split line is the fact that once you get to the first part under the canopy of the store and the menu is actually in view, there’s only maybe one or two people in front of you. Which means you have to make your decision, fast. Which is really unfortunate for an indecisive person such as myself.

I was literally hovering behind the two girls in front of me to sneak my peeks at the menu because I was stressed to be forced to make an immediate decision right when I reached the window.

Your insider look at the Tiger Sugar Flushing menu so that you may not have to suffer as I did

My only question is: what’s the difference between boba and pearls? Because I always thought they were synonymous, but on the menu they’re segregated into a “Boba Series” and a “Pearl Series”. After a bit of research and consulting some other sources, I think pearls are a bit smaller? I’ll probably try the pearl milk next. Let me know if you know!

The new(s) tea!

The exciting news is that Tiger Sugar is opening their first Canadian franchise in Toronto in mid-July, with a location in Vancouver soon to follow! Exact dates have yet to be announced, but I’ll definitely be heading over when the time comes.

* Spilling the Bubble Tea is a series in which I will not necessarily have anything really all that scandalous to say, but will bring focus to bubble tea shops and cafes I visit throughout my grand foodie lifetime