Eating Out: Michael's Oriental

With the closure of close-to-my-house favourites Su Life and Pu Kwong (RIP beautiful bean curd rolls), it was with great excitement that I heard about the vegan menu at Michael's Oriental. This place is literally around the corner from me, a three minute drive! And they deliver! Sounds perfect, right? After getting a delivery from them last year, it seemed like the perfect place to go for dinner with the family when my brother and his girlfriend were visiting at the beginning of this year. (Though at the end the owner came out to talk to us about the meal and have a chat and please I don't want to talk to anyone let me be an anti-social hermit and scurry off home after I finish my meal in peace.)

Keen to maximise the experience, I ordered some Peking Duck Pancakes and Sweet Corn and Chicken soup to start. I love peking pancakes, and these were very nice. The soup came in what looked like a huge tureen, but ended up being a warmer with a smaller bowl on top. It took a while for it to cool down enough for me to eat it without scalding my tongue, but it was good soup.





I was glad I ordered two starters. When my main came out, the Vegan Char Kway Teow, I couldn't eat it. It was unexpectedly so spicy and hurt so much. But thankfully my brother was able to eat it. I have had Char Kway Teow at heaps of other places before, and it has never been spicy, so this was a shock! So I had some steamed rice and some of the greens in garlic sauce (not pictured) that we had ordered for my main. Ahhhh, just like the old days of being a vegan. Speaking of spicy, my brother also ordered the Ma Po Tofu off the vegan menu, but I didn't try any because spicy!





On their last night before going back to the UK, we ordered some Michael's to be delivered. We ordered Cashew Chicken, Hokkien Noodles, Singapore Noodles (which my brother ordered with wide rice noodles), vegetables in garlic sauce, and vegan fried rice. Sadly, this was... not great. Very oily, not a lot of flavour, the vegetables were so overcooked they were just mush. Needless to say, it has kind of turned me off from ordering from there again. I have tried most of the things on the vegan menu I can, they have heaps and heaps of spicy dishes I can't eat. Oh well. It is there in a pinch! And a lot of other people like it, I assume they can eat the spicy things, so my opinion may be skewed. Plus I did like it the first time we ordered from there, so who knows. Perhaps a bad day.



Michael's Oriental - 223 Padstow Rd, Eight Mile Plains, QLD

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Food may sometimes be disappointing, but Jed never is. Check him out looking smart in his bow tie!