The road may be busy and you can just hear the trains, but that doesn’t seem to matter once you step inside the tastefully decorated Montra Thai Day Spa.  The owner, I gather her name is Mon by the newsclipping proudly displayed by the entrance, is a lovely gentle soul who greets you with a seat, a smile and camomile tea. After some form filling, it was not long before I was taken into a  comfortable, clean private room, which was set at a warm balmy temperature, just right for me, but may be a bit warm for some.

I’ve had my fair share (or should that be unfair share?) of massages and this was certainly up there with the best. I was lucky enough to get Mon herself and she certainly knew what she was doing. I had 60 minutes of the traditional Thai message with oil. I was told that without oil, the massage targets pressure points and is a bit harder, whereas with oil is more for relaxation. Best of all, I was completely at ease with Mon and felt I could let her know if I thought the massage was too hard or too soft (it was neither). And there was none of the “hmmm, not too sure about this, that’s my spine, ooh, spinal cord…” which I have experienced in the past. I felt I was in safe hands.

After being given the full hour, and then some, I came out of my room to a small tray with a glass of water, more tea and two crispy spring rolls. I’m not too sure if the spring rolls come standard as it was lunch time, but it’s these small inexpensive touches which always impress me. 

Montra Thai Day Spa does a range of massage types (including for pregnancy), body scrubs, facials and reflexology starting from $90. Full details are on their informative website. They are having a special at the moment: $99 for 1.5hrs including traditional thai massage with oil, hydrating facial, foot spa ritual and light Thai meal. Not sure when that special ends.

Montra Thai Day Spa is open 9am to 9pm, 7 days a week. It’s not clear to me when Mon sleeps, but I will definitely be back and send friends and rellies her way.  Sorry, no pics for this one!

• Montra Thai Day Spa – 117 Annerley Rd, Dutton Park

Until 10am that morning, the other half of Brek had thought we were actually attending a live performance of Pucinni’s La Boheme. Gently, I explained to him that we weren’t actually going to see a live opera, but rather a screening of an opera. Sure, there would be a darkened theatre, an audience, and even an intermission – but there won’t be live performers on stage or an orchestra to applaud. Just a movie screen and surround sound.

Despite these inauspicious beginnings, it didn’t take long for the music and the quality of the performance to take hold and draw us in. The atmosphere, of course, is never going to be quite that same as being there, but on the other hand you get to see the highest calibre of performer in one of the best opera theatres in the world. Let’s face it, in Brisbane, we aren’t going to get this lavish a production, with as many top quality chorus members or as opulent sets and costuming, or if we do, it’s a Boondall or Riverside extravaganza where the opera experience is sorely compromised. And certainly, getting to see an opera for a fraction of the usual price is a great attraction.

The idea is to emulate a live performance of the Royal Opera at the Royal Opera House – Covent Garden. It is filmed at a live production, including audio of the audience applause and scheduled intermission.  The camera does not sit still, panning and zooming to focus your attention on the important parts of the more complex scenes. The close-ups let you see details that otherwise wouldn’t be obvious back in row X of an opera theatre; the beads of sweat on Rodolfo’s brow, although slightly at odds with the freezing winter setting, really helped us to engage with the performance. In some ways, this made it a more intense experience than actually being there, particularly for us, as we are usually too cheap or slow to get decent seats at a real opera.

The music of La Boheme is utterly beautiful, with an amazing spine tingling quality. The highlight of this production, though, was the wonderful performances. Male brek thought the stand out was Teodor Ilincai, as the lead tenor who plays Rodolfo. For me, I was fixated on the 2 sopranos – Inna Dukach was sparkling and gorgeous, everything a Musetta should be; Hibla Gerzmava put all she had into her performance as Mimi and was exhausted at the final curtain.

Would a lesser opera have held us so entranced in this format? Difficult to say. We can say, though, that we saw this opera live at the Lyric Theatre some years back, and have very little memory of it. But we will probably remember this screening.

So in summary, it is a HOT, but only if (a) you like operas, and (b) you’re not expecting the same kind of atmosphere you would have in an opera theatre.

More information, including a trailer, can be found at http://www.palaceoperaandballet.com.au/

• La Boheme, Palace Opera & Ballet Screenings, The Barracks Palace Theatre, 61 Petrie Terrace Brisbane 1300 627 385

The menu is par for the course in modern Aussie cuisine these days – meat-centric, with some reasonably inventive accompaniments and a rich and delicate jus or similar kind of sauce. To their credit, Azafran also offers a page full of vegetarian options – none of which tempted us, but it was nice of them to be so considerate. The meat-based mains were $34.50 and the vegetarian mains were $29.50, with entrees between $18.50 – $22.50. Apart from the strange 50 cent fetish, these are reasonable prices for the quality of food.

The standout main at our table was probably the crispy szechuan duck, spicy braised eggplant with soy and mandarin sauce. It was very tasty, although a whole plate was maybe a little too much flavour. The dukkah-covered, crispy-skinned salmon (a special) was also an enjoyable meal, and matched well with a side of pear and vinaigrette salad ($8.50).

Capping off the night at Azafran was the turkish delight pannacotta with pistachio ice-cream and fairy floss (yes, real fairy floss – goes in like cotton, then transforms itself into liquid sugar). Fittingly, the 50 cent obsession continued over into the deserts – all $14.50.

Friends of ours live practically next door and are regulars – a testament to Azafran’s consistency. However, being tucked away in Annerley, it might be a little out of the way for some; North-siders in particular.  If the quality of a restaurant can be measured by the distance you would be willing to drive to get there, I would rate this one… 35 min. But since that would be in breach of the editorial policy of the world’s most decisive review website, I’ll just go the whole hog, and give Azafran a hot!

• Azafran, 97 Ekibin Rd, Annerley, +61 7 3892 1776

Perhaps it is because specialty organic restaurants are not that common, and tend to attract the more discerning diners. Organic eaters, who obviously have a high level of concern about how their food has been grown and nurtured throughout its entire lifecycle, are perhaps more likely to have a sharp eye for how it is prepared and presented. Nothing but perfection for the modern metro-hippie.

Being only simple folk who are not burdened with such high standards, we were impressed. We went on a Friday evening for the Mondo Supper Club, which promised a “lighter menu to enjoy with a cocktail or a wine or two, for bar or street dinning only” (6pm to late, Tuesday to Saturday). Braving the early evening humidity, we happily downed some simple $10 cocktails, and then ordered some tapas to share for a light dinner. The spring zucchini flowers filled with king prawn mousse ($14) were a little less exciting than they sounded, but the washed rind cheese with lavosh crisp bread ($9) and rocket, radicchio, walnut, raisin and vincotto salad ($8.50) were very nice.

The standout, though, was the crunchy potato squares with aioli ($8.50). These little cubes were the most amazing potato-based product we’ve ever tasted – a day in the making, we were informed enthusiastically by our waiter. They had been boiled, mashed, put through some kind of mechanical sifter, mashed again, baked in a tray, cut into cubes and then deep fried. Worth a visit on their own.

The restaurant offers organic everything, of course, as well as gluten free and dairy free for many of the menu items.

All in all, a pleasant evening with no complaints and a few highlights – certainly not worthy of some of the negative reviews I’ve read. Maybe we set the bar too high for organic foods. It’s already good for you and for the environment; maybe we should be happy that the food tastes good, rather than expecting something amazing.

• Mondo Organics Restaurant, 166 Hardgrave Rd, West End +61 7 3844 1132

Bamboo Basket is new addition to the increasingly vibrant and unapologetically modern South Bank precinct. Located at the eastern end of Grey St, there was always the danger that when this Chinese restaurant opened a few months ago it would be a little far from the action. But it hasn’t taken long for it to create its own.

It is a restaurant that oozes confidence even from the outside, making a feature of their steamy kitchen, filled with professional chefs and (you guessed it) lots of bamboo baskets. The interior is sleek, full of striking reds and blacks, but maybe a little showy.

The stand-out performer at Bamboo Basket is definitely the noodles. They are made fresh, very fresh – practically right in front of you – making for some delicious noodle soups and awesome dumplings. We tried two of their very reasonably priced lunch specials ($10.90). The wonton noodle soup was delicious and the BBQ pork disappeared very quickly. Definitely worth fighting over! They are certainly not complicated meals, just simple and good.

Chinese restaurants in Brisbane have really had to improve since the dingy suburban takeaways of the 90s. Sweet and sour pork and black bean beef just doesn’t cut it any more. Bamboo Basket is certainly a cut above those greasy memories of my childhood, and well worth a visit.

[Editor: Bamboo Basket is so popular that the Jetsetting Parents also visited recently. Here's their take on the restaurant.]

There was a continuous stream of onlookers on the foot-path, peering through a big glass window into the open kitchen of Bamboo Basket Chinese Restaurant. They were watching with interest (and probably salivating at the same time) at the dexterous skills demonstrated by the chefs inside who were busy rolling out dough, filling and pinching up dumplings, making noodles by repeated “pull, loop, pull” action, etc.

Inside the restaurant, all tables were either filled up or reserved by 12 noon, half-an-hour after opening , with the staff moving briskly around taking orders and delivering dishes. A small queue was always waiting at the entrance despite the fairly quick turnover of the tables. This set the tone for the lunch for Jetsetting Dad and myself.

The decor of the restaurant is simple yet stylish with a touch of red for a Chinese flair. From its extensive menu, we chose a few which we thought would be indicative of the skills of the dumplings and noodle chefs.

The four xiao lung bao (steamed pork dumplings, S7.90) arrived at our table in a bamboo basket. They were outstanding. The abundant soup/juice simply burst out in our mouth when we bit into it. It’s amazing how the delicate skin could hold up the weight of the soup and meat without breaking even when the dumpling was lifted out of the basket by chopsticks. I reckon the recipe for the dough and the rolling technique must have to be perfect.

Next we had pan-fried pork dumplings (6 for $11.90). From our experience, a good one has to have a juicy meat filling with a nice crispy bottom while the rest of the skin is thin and soft. So these were the qualities we were looking for in our order and happily, we were not disappointed, though I would still prefer a crisper base.

The hot and sour soup ($ 8.90) was a thickened soup with strips of pork, woody fungus, tofu, bamboo shoots and eggs. It was authentic but quite ordinary in taste – I even found it a bit too vinegary.

A big bowl of Langzhou pull-noodles in soup with beef ($17.90) was another outstanding dish. The fresh noodles were thick and al-dente (borrowing the Italian description). Again, it demands a good dough as well as some well-practiced pull and loop skills from the chef. The soup was tasty, too, without being greasy.

When we complimented on the food at the end of our meal, we were told that the chefs are mostly recruited from Shanghai.  Bamboo Basket is the restaurant we have been waiting for and I hope that the chefs will stick to their successful recipes and continue to offer us authentic and good-quality dumplings and noodles.

• Bamboo Basket, 189 Grey St, South Brisbane

We try to have a new food adventure at least once a week. But there are some times when you just need the old locale, a place where you can be guaranteed a quick, cheap and tasty feed. And then you arrive at 8.15pm and find the place packed to the rafters, so you go two doors down the street.

And that’s how we ended at Dakbla Restaurant.

The street signage touts Dakbla to be “Vietnamese and Asian cuisine”. Already, foodies will have been deterred by the boast of being able to produce all of Asia’s cuisines, or worse, lumping them all together. Nevertheless, the place was busy for a Tuesday night, with only a couple of small tables to spare.

I ordered the grilled pork vermicelli salad aka “summer noodles” ($10.90). It was fine – I was hungry and ate it all. But there was nothing special about it. The noodles were quite soggy, there was no separate serving of bean sprouts and coriander, and the vegies mixed in the salad were not terribly fresh. The meat was tender and tasty and probably saved the meal.

My other half ordered the flame grilled pork ($14.90). To me it looked like a plate of chopped pork pieces, on the bone, and a few slices of raw onion. The menu says there was also lemon grass. I am told that although the meat was quite tasty, the dish as a whole was unremarkable.

Service was friendly and efficient. Iced water was provided without having to ask and there were complementary slices of orange at the end of the meal.

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last time, that I eat at Dakbla. When I used to work up the road, Vietnamese was a once a week event, and you‘d get tired of eating at the one place, no matter how cheap or how good the food was. I have had at least one great meal at Dakbla – I think it was some sort of vegetarian salad.

However, there’s more than one Vietnamese restaurant in this little strip of shops and Dakbla would not be my first pick. If you must try Dakbla, then maybe lunch, when business is far quieter and the cook has time to prepare a meal, is the best time to go.

Food Bling Brisbane seemed to like it more, check out the review here.

• Dakbla Restaurant, 65 Hardgrave Rd, West End +61 7 3844 0594

On a recent visit with friends we had Turkish bread with homemade jam and homemade crumpets. Most of the foods are quite original, and a pleasant change from the usual breakfast staples of bacon, eggs and sausages with extra grease.

Don’t expect a peaceful experience, though – the staff do not shy away from a bit of noisy banter with the locals. Between that, and the tapping of espresso machine filters and the Stanley Street traffic, it is not exactly serene. But it is fun.

• Desmond and Molly Jones, 615 Stanley St, Woolloongabba +61 7 3391 8594

Gusto da Gianni is an Italian restaurant, located on the river in the stylish but unpretentious Portside Wharf precinct. Although we chose it more for its location than for its reputation, we were rewarded with a pleasant experience.

The first thing we noticed on arriving was the funky chandelier made from about 20 desk lamps, pointing inwards and shaped like a UFO. The second thing we noticed was that the wait staff appear to have been flown in specially from Italy, complete with thick accents, to add that extra touch of authenticity. Impressive attention to detail!

A classic bruschetta was a nice way to start the meal ($9), and the billiard ball-sized ricotta and olive fritters with onion jam were an interesting and flavoursome entrée ($19).

Then on to the mains. I remember a (actual) restaurant critic saying once that the way judge the quality of an Italian restaurant is to order risotto or gnocchi. Risotto, I know from experience, takes quite a lot of time and manual labour. Gnocchi, I know from having watched MasterChef, takes a fine balance of ingredients and a very careful amount of cooking.

After years of being disappointed by exquisite-sounding risottos, we have just about given up on that particular acid-test – which leaves the gnocchi. Or, in the case of Gusto da Gianni, the “gnochetti”, which presumably means “small gnocchi” ($27). For me, the pleasure of gnocchi is as much about the texture as the taste, and on that score I couldn’t fault it. The taste, however, from the sauce of Moreton Bay bugs, chilli and tomato, was a little overpowering. The flavour was fine, but there was just too much of it. The other meals around the table – a Moreton Bay bug, tomato and red onion salad and a crumbed lamb rack – were much better balanced and well presented. Unlike my photography.

Overall, the experience was a good one at Gusto da Gianni. It may seem strange to judge an Italian restaurant without trying the pizza, but honestly, how hard is it to do a decent pizza?

• Gusto da Gianni, Portside Wharf, Remora Rd, Hamilton +61 7 3868 2011

I had the confit duck leg with white bean and porcini puree, red cabbage marmalade and duck neck and pistachio sausage. Sounds good, right? It was divine. My better half had the slow cooked pork belly and blacklip mussels with thai basil, saffron coconut milk and crispy prosciutto – also excellent. Most of the mains were $32 and the starters $19, and the quality more than lives up to the price. For desert, I highly recommend the brazzo mercedes, a meringue with a butterscotch fudge centre. It’s served with an expresso which you can pour over the top. Sounds strange, but the contrast between the slight bitterness of the coffee and the sweet butterscotch works perfectly.

I have a habit of ordering anything I don’t understand (just for the hell of it), and occasionally it brings me unstuck. Peking duck cappuccino? I couldn’t resist. Served in expresso cups, these $3.50 starters looked kind of like actual cappuccinos, complete with a generous head of foam, but there the similarities end. It was essentially a duck stock with – forgive me – a healthy layer of scum on top. Intriguing, inventive… but just a bit wrong.

But please don’t let me turn you off because of that one little detail. Overall the experience at Sprout was excellent. The atmosphere was lively and the service friendly. The wooden floors and walls gives it a slightly echo-ey acoustic that might be a bit loud for older diners, but it didn’t worry us too much.

It’s great to have a chef who is willing to push the boundaries and be a bit adventurous. All Brisbanites should give Sprout a try at least once.

• Sprout Cafe, 111 Haig Rd, Auchenflower +61 7 3870 3030

But The Hi-Fi earns more than just a pass mark. In its short 6 months of existence, it has already played host to two of the best gigs we’ve been to – Little Birdy in May, and Gomez, a few weeks ago. Of course, that has a lot to do with the quality of the music, but the venue definitely played its part well. It’s a comfortable, well air-conditioned space that is just big enough to attract the major acts, but not so big that you can get stuck a long way from the action. There is a bar and a balcony at the back, and a large open area that is slightly sloped so that everyone has a good view of the stage.

The biggest plus for me is the quality of the sound engineering. I’ve often thought that this is an underrated skill, not because I know anything about it, but because I’ve heard it done badly so many times. Often the sound guys seem to think that the way to get the place rocking is to crank all their dials to 11. Sure, it will get the crowd going – most people just want to bounce collectively to songs they have heard a thousand times before – but for me the result is a poor sound, lots of distortion, and a smidgen of hearing damage.

Not at The Hi-Fi. The instruments and vocals were well balanced, and the quality of the sound was actually better than the CDs, in my opinion. And for Gomez, this was done with the major handicap of having all of their instruments lost by the airline that afternoon on the way from Sydney. They were playing with totally unfamiliar borrowed instruments, and we wouldn’t have known if they hadn’t told us towards the end of the set. (Admittedly the fact that one of their sound effects was played by holding an iPhone up to the mic should have been a give-away!) At least some of the credit for that success should go to the venue – it can’t have been easy to get everything sounding great under those circumstances.

So if a band you want to see is coming to The Hi-Fi, definitely give it a go.

If you want to check out Jetsetting Joyce’s review of the Jamie T playing The Hi-Fi in Melbourne, click here.

Need tickets for gigs in Brisbane? Check out the BrisbaneTix Posse store.

• The Hi-Fi, 125 Boundary Street, West End

I called on Saturday afternoon to book for dinner, and was told we could come at 8. It was a tad late (this is Brisbane after all), but clearly this was a popular place and they were lucky to fit us in at all, right? Wrong. We arrived at 8 to find barely a third of the tables occupied. So that got us off on the wrong foot.

Perusing the menus, we were surprised at the high prices – all of the mains were $35 – and felt misled by their ad in the Entertainment Book which priced the mains at $22 to $32. That was strike two. So we tempered our appetites and ordered a few tapas-style sharing plates rather than full mains.

There was nothing particularly wrong with the food or the cocktails at Salon, but nor were they particularly remarkable. Passable but expensive.

Strike three, for us, was the service. Don’t get me wrong, it was polite and reasonably prompt, but we detected an air of suppressed snobbery. It was as if our waiter had taken one look at us, presumed that we were neither rich nor stylish enough to be Teneriffe regulars, but decided to be overly friendly in a way that was almost patronising; as if to say “You’re not good enough for this place, but I’m going to be nice to you anyway, even though you don’t deserve it, because that’s how good a waiter I am”. This may sound a bit harsh, but it just made the experience a bit uncomfortable.

We wouldn’t recommend you go out of your way for Salon, it’s not worth it.

• Salon, Shop 5A, 110 Macquarie St (Cnr Florence St), Teneriffe +61 7 3252 3911