Review of American Diner/Grillers

If you have ever had a girlfriend you would know how important it is to keep her fed. I apologised to my boyfriend yesterday at the restaurant when we went there for lunch since I will never be the girl that only orders a salad.

That being said he picked the perfect place for us to stuff our faces! American Diner (also known as Grillers) in Newton Park- just thinking back to the food I feel full!

They have such friendly service, even the car guard was super friendly!

Grillers has regular specials as well as specials for each day of the week. My boyfriend and I opted to order from the daily specials. He chose the monkey gland burger and I had the chicken schnitzel. Our plates were overflowing with food. We decided to have water with our meals until I saw the alcoholic drinks menu that is.

The lady had already brought our water to the table, and I did some vivid hand gestures and accidentally knocked over my entire glass of water. I decided to save myself from the embarrassment a little bit by saying that when I noticed there was alcohol I realised I didn’t need the water anymore.

I was really blown away by their prices on the alcohol, less than R15 per glass. I had a glass of semi-sweet white wine and it was actually quite a nice wine. The wine tasted much better than I expected for that price.

I barely had my first sip of wine before our food was brought to the table, I expected a much longer wait as they make a comment on the menu that the food might take long.

The food was delicious, we both opted for veggies with our meals, green beans & pumpkin. Wow was it delicious! In my dish I got two large pieces of chicken and ended up giving most of the one piece to my boyfriend. It was really way too much food I do think, though it is part of the novelty of Grillers to receive such large portions. My boyfriend had me taste the sauce on his monkey gland burger, it tasted almost like a barbeque sauce with some added sugar – a bit too sweet for my taste.

I still can’t believe we did this, but we had dessert on top of our way too much food lunch. My boyfriend and his brother discovered long ago that you can order a waffle with bar-one sauce even though it isn’t on the menu.

It was amazing, we opted for cream & ice cream on this bar-one sauce waffle! It was thoroughly enjoyable although it was quite sweet, the ice cream did a good job of breaking the sweetness. I must say we waited longer for the waffle than we did for our food.

My biggest criticism is that it’s too much food but that’s why take aways exist. I promise this is a non-biased review, and if you don’t believe me please go check them out for yourself!

Oh yes I almost forgot our bill (before tip) was about R196, that’s for lunch & dessert (although we shared the waffle) for 2 people! Definite value for money!

Jo’s Take Aways

The right person will love you as you are, huge appetite and all
Be mindful of your actions in a restaurant
Even though dessert goes to the heart, make sure you have space!

Remember to follow @imjoxo on Instagram!

Sushi Search Part 2 (long awaited)

IMG_20190726_164850 So if you’re a frequent follower of my blog you’ll know that I tend to be slightly more budget conscious than most.

Sadly there is not a single place that sells sushi in the town where I stay- we used to have an Ocean Basket but sadly they closed down. I have a feeling my superior consumption of their delicious bread may have contributed to their closing.

Whenever I wish to consume sushi there is always other costs like the travel costs to get to whichever establishment I intend on consuming sushi at. Therefore for this review I went to the closest sushi place only one town over.

Despatch SuperSpar – yes they are a supermarket but they have an amazing sushi chef on staff.

Friday afternoon I decided to treat my friend and myself to some delicious sushi. I was very surprised when I walked into Spar at about 14:30 that the sushi chef was on lunch. Strange timing – month end weekend, just as the schools have come out. I don’t pretend to know how their scheduling works though- just found it odd.

Luckily there was some sushi in the fridge! I ended up getting two trays of salmon packed sushi! I have always wanted to try Graca wine with sushi (I think this might have been inspired by the John Dory’s ad) and decided this was the day! The wine was amazing with and without the sushi – tasted similar to champagne but better.

To my surprise the wine was on special for R38.99 at TOPS so I was over the moon. I ended up buying R160 worth of sushi and R40 of wine. So the food and drink cost me R200 and the fuel R50. So sushi for two people worked out to be R250.

When I finally got to my friend’s house later that afternoon I realised that I had forgotten to take chopsticks. This made for a very interesting finger food experience, I don’t like getting my hands dirty so luckily my friend did offer me a set of chopsticks she had at home.

The sushi itself was delicious! I would have preferred more mayonnaise on some of the items, like the salmon roses but sadly since the chef was on lunch I wasn’t able to get extra mayo. I must say only one of my pieces of sushi broke and that was more my error than anything else. I would also have loved to get some sashimi but once again could only get what was available on the shelf.

There is a definite level of convenience being able to get some take away sushi just one town over, but also has its drawbacks like the chef being on lunch.

I would buy sushi there again, as it’s the closest sushi place to me and is really affordable. Sometimes it pays to stay home.

May you find delicious & affordable take away places in your life!

Love Jo xo

Jo’s Take Aways

Know when the chef goes on lunch
You don’t need to spend a boat load of money for something great
When wine goes on special buy lots!

Mid-month Budget Busters

Firstly I need to apologise for my lengthy absence from the blogosphere. I’m certain if you are a fellow South African you would be well aware that the flu going around is particularly bad. This particularly bad flu decided to chew me up and spit me out into my bed with meds that knocked me out for most of the last while and my editor got married making it more difficult to get my posts back, love you Em. I am back now however and should be bugging you with posts at least once a week!

So all of us know that (okay maybe not all of us, just those of us who are financially challenged) know that a few weeks into the month the grocery cupboard starts to look a bit bleak.

This month ours look particularly bleak as we opted to not buy groceries but rather purchase ready cooked meals from a local chef. Really well priced and delicious! These meals however are only from Monday – Friday and only dinner. I don’t know if we forgot that weekends existed or that you’re supposed to have more than one meal a day but our cupboards only had the remnants of last month’s grocery shopping to show, which really wasn’t much.

Luckily I am always up for a challenge and absolutely love the opportunity to be creative, even in my cooking! I think some of the greatest combinations of food must have come out from people having hard times and trying anything to feed their families.

Similar to how I discovered that cheap two minute noodles tastes amazing with some melted butter mixed in! A meal I’ll have again even if my cupboards aren’t so bleak!

Also a very nice, affordable and non-fattening snack to have is popcorn! You don’t even need gas or oil if you have the right apparatus (which my sister conveniently forgot she had when we realised she had no oil and I really wanted popcorn, only to find the microwave popcorn maker the next morning…needless to say I still haven’t had my popcorn).

We are very privileged to have a large 4 burner gas stove with an oven which works amazing to cook some scrumptious things – it has one problem though. It runs out of gas! This isn’t a problem when you plan and budget for it, however when we forget that we’re supposed to eat on weekends we also forget to plan for the gas running out – after all, we’re getting ready cooked meals!

So my life without gas has been pretty interesting, and so has my bleak cupboards as the combination of the two really brought out my creative side.

I present to you condensed milk chicken! Yes, you read that correctly! There was a special on whole chicken last month at one of my favourite supermarkets so I decided to buy one. Saturday I decided that would be a decent Sunday lunch- throw it in the crock pot over night and ta-da- super soft delicious chicken. I had a problem though, I usually do this with cream and I didn’t have the cash flow to purchase cream at the time. I racked my brain as to what there was in my pretty bleak cupboards until I remembered the condensed milk I had purchased (actually for the melk kos recipe I still want to try) and decided this is perfect! Just to give it that creamy texture. I put the chicken, some baby potatoes, some frozen veg, a soup powder- minestrone I think- and braai relish into my crock pot. I rubbed some condensed milk onto the chicken, added water till it was just above the chicken closed the pot and put the setting on auto throughout the night. I forgot that the chicken had giblets so when I opened the pot the next morning (since I cooked the chicken from frozen) found the giblets floating in their packet on the top of the pot – I of course found this very amusing. The end result was absolutely delicious! It wasn’t sweet, but did have a sweeter taste than chicken would normally have. Not overbearing though and it had a soft smooth taste like that which I would usually accomplish through using cream. Definitely a recipe I would try again and add mushrooms!

My last few notes on life without gas is my absolute love for the random apparatuses that I have to cook with. From my electric frying pan with which I made egg and sausage for breakfast, to the microwave in which I made mash (although I should have left the potatoes in a bit longer as they were still a little bit hard here and there even after they were mashed), my crockpot in which I made the delicious condensed milk chicken and lastly my microwave omelette maker which works wonders!

Thankfully payday is around the corner and the bleak cupboard will soon be replenished, till then I’ll let my creative side run wild!

Love Jo xo

Jo’s Take Aways

Be prepared to be creative
Have apparatuses to help
Don’t be discouraged when things look bleak, something good can still come from it