So last Saturday night a friend and I decided to go see Captain America 2, which just came out! The closest movie theater is in South Bank, a restaurant/park district of Brisbane. We had planned on catching an early 6:20p movie and then eating dinner later, but the early movie was full. So we decided to buy tickets for a later 9:30p movie and grab some dinner instead. After a walk around to look at all out options we decided on Ginga Sushi Bar, because they had Udon and a recently priced authentic japanese menu. I was really happy because they also had okonomiyaki (above)! Okonmiayaki is a type of savory japanese pancake, they put different mixings in a savory batter and fry it up. It's a very regional dish so its different everywhere you try it. I was especially pleased because they had a vegetarian one, so I was able to get it. It was really good, cabbage and a bunch of other veggies in a yummy crispy batter. It was topped with a special garlic aoli and bbq sauce (typical Australian condiments which made me laugh) and Nori (seaweed). The flavors of the salty nori and the tangy condiments meshed really well with the mild and crispy pancake making it a really satisfying dish. My friend ordered ramen and her's unfortunately came out really late, so that made the service a bit less than subpar here, but that didn't stop us from enjoying the great food. Also the atmosphere was wonderful, it had japanese culture decorations and an anime was playing on a tv at the back on the restaurant. They also had a really cool sushi bar, that we came back for the next week, so I'll talk about that in a later blog post :)
After dinner we still had some time to kill before the movie so we decided to get some dessert/after dinner drinks. We went to Chocolate Pavilion, one of 4 chocolate bars around Southbank! This one is unique because it is the only one with a liquor license so it is able to sell alcoholic dessert drinks. I ordered a chocolate expresso martini (above), which was decadent and deadly. It was a combination of expresso, milk, chocolate ganache, Bacardi and vanilla. Basically, a mocha with rum. It was also presented in a gorgeous manner. I'm glad we finally got around to trying this place, it was a wonderful end to a really yummy dinner.
We had about 45 minutes before the movie, so we walked back to the movie theater. So both my friend and I are of the mentality that if you are going to a movie you need some form of movie snack, so we both had to get something. I ended up with a mixed penny candy bag of Aussie Lollies (encouraged by my tasting earlier this week) (above let). Some new ones that were in this mix were Chicos (basically chocolate gummies), which were weird… but kinda good once I got used to them. Jelly Babies (thicker gummies shaped like babies), I was excited to try them because I'm a Doctor Who fan :), they were decent but I like gummy bears better. And there were some of those in the mix as well, and they were the amazing 10 flavors kind. I also had something called red frogs, which were basically the Aussie equivalent of swedish fish.
My friend got ginger beer, which is an Aussie soda. Armed with our snacks we entered the movie. It. Was. So. Good. I loved it so much! I'm a huge Marvel movie fan so I was so happy that I was able to see the movie so soon after it opened. It was so intense, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I highly recommend it. Also apparently, there was a part of the movie that changed depending on what country you saw it in! There's a part where Capt pulls out a list of pop culture things he's missed (Star Wars was on it :) ). We also noticed that the list had Tim Tams and Steve Erwin on it… and thought how weird it was that Tim Tams were on Captain America's list (although I do agree with Steve that Tim Tams are definitely a list worthy development). Well I found out later that there were a few items on the list that changed depending on country (Below America on the top, England in the middle, and Australia on the bottom). This made it very special for me to see here. A movie from a franchise that I love, made unique for my study abroad experience!
This was such a fun evening, I hope that I get to see more movies when I'm here but I'll probably have to be really selective, so I'm glad that this is one of the ones I was able to see!
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