I’m STUFFED. STUFFED. For a fiver!

Garwin Liu, the guy from Facebook who told me about the Star Pizza place on Talbot Street that I did a few weeks ago, came up with the venue for today’s feed. He was responding to my whinge about restaurants on Parnell Street having two menus, one usually in Chinese and he suggested that I go to the Oriental Emporium at the Luas Jervis stop on Abbey Street where I could just point. So that’s what I did.

I had been in this place before, and its cousins in South Great George’s Street (not sure it’s still there), the one in Rathmines and, just because I was driving past it, the one in Rathcoole. All offer a phenomenal range of goods, from fish, to all sorts of vegetables, meat, tinned goods, sauces, rice, noodles, fruit, and so on. The smell of them alone is likely to get your juices running. And if you attempt (as I sometimes do) to cook something oriental but don’t want to use the over-sweetened crap that comes from supermarket sachets, then a visit to one of these shops or the Asia Market on Drury Street is a must.

Anyway, as I say, I had been in here before but I didn’t notice or pay attention to the fact that it had a hot food counter.

Hard to miss …

… but there you go.

Various signs indicate the different types of food on offer and slap bang in the middle of them is one saying “Hot Food €5”. Unambiguous.

I asked the helpful man behind the counter what I could get for my fiver and he indicated the section of the massive selection of dishes from which I could choose three. I pointed to three ones I liked the look of and he put a generous spoonful of each into a plastic container. I said I wanted to eat in (most people I saw subsequently took their food away) and he gave me another container of rice and a pair of disposable chopsticks.

My fiver paid over, I found myself a seat. There isn’t a huge seating area: 8 seats around two tables. Each table had a selection of condiments, a box of tissues and this sign …

… fair enough.

My food …

… comprised belly of beef with mooli (or daikon), aubergine with minced pork, and pak choi with ginger.

The beef was absolutely gorgeous: rich, almost like oxtail, and tender. The aubergine was soft and unctuous. And the pak choi still slightly crunchy, tempered with the taste of fresh ginger. There was lots of it. And I ate it ALL …

This seems to be a popular place both for grocery shopping and for buying prepared food. There is a huge selection of dishes both hot and cold so it’s a place for possible culinary exploration. And it’s great value. Try it. Do.

Garwin (and a bloke who calls himself Benjamin L Willard and who went to school with the big lad) also suggested another place nearby: Han Sung on Great Strand Street just opposite the National Hyperbaric Centre, the location of which I’m sure you’re familiar with. If you’re not, Great Strand Street runs parallel to Abbey Street, closer to the quays. This is the place …

Again, it’s a shop, with a food counter at the back. A lot more seats and an interesting range of Korean, Japanese and Chinese food. All from about €5.50, so just above my budget but, judging from the number of people eating there and the heaps of food being consumed, excellent value.

So, it’s Hallowe’en.

Woooooooo!

My knowledge of the Chinese language (or indeed any of the languages spoken in Asia) is, sadly, poor. When I say poor, I mean non-existent. On most days, this lack doesn’t matter much. I get by. Today, however, it was a bit of an issue.

It’s my impression that several of the restaurants on Parnell Street have two menus: one English language menu with the standard ‘Chinese Restaurant’ fare, catering for western tastes and the other, often in Chinese script, with, I’m kind of assuming, the more authentic (and more interesting) regional offerings.

If you happen to pop in to one when business is slow, you can maybe go through the various options in some detail to get an idea of what’s in offer. On the other hand, when you go in at lunch time and there’s a queue, and few staff, and you’re only going to spend a fiver, you kind of feel that it wouldn’t be fair to either the staff or the other customers to take up everybody’s time asking too many questions.

So, you tend to either drift towards the familiar or, as happened today (where there wasn’t actually a menu at all), you are respectfully directed towards the westernised dishes.

I was in Parnell Street with the older lad today, hoping to try out the Dan Dan Noodles in Sichuan (sic) House, as suggested in a Facebook message by Garwin Liu, who has a keen eye for the fiver deals in various parts of the city. Sichuan House has since closed, we discovered, so undeterred, we wandered along Parnell Street in the rain looking for other options.

Wok Station is at the junction with North Cumberland Street.

There are no menus or prices on display outside so we went in speculatively.

It’s a bright, clean and quite sizeable space, with seats for about 24 or more at a guess. A counter with pre-prepared food takes up one wall. There must have been about 18 dishes on display, 8 or so of which were familiar looking: variations on a theme with pork, chicken, beef, tofu and (unusually) lamb. These were the ones we were directed towards. The ones on the left included chicken feet, fish, various types of vegetables, duck eggs, pancakes and, I think, seaweed. There just wasn’t enough common language or time really to explore all the options especially, as I said above, if all we were about to spend was a fiver each and as a small queue was beginning to form behind us.

Probably a little wimpily, we ordered from the familiar dishes. Food to eat on the premises and to take away costs the same. For your fiver, you get plain rice and two dishes, or two portions of the same dish. If you opt for fried rice, the meal costs €6. With noodles, it’s €6.50, I think.

The older lad chose spicy chicken in batter and a lamb dish

while I chose pork and tofu, and the same spicy lamb.

Good size portions. Certainly enough for both of us. The food wasn’t that hot temperature-wise so you wouldn’t really want to linger over your lunch. It was tasty though. Both of us enjoyed the lamb best. It was spicy, with peppers and a discernible taste of cumin seeds. I enjoyed my pork and tofu dish too. The pork was tender and the sauce was OK. The least favoured dish was the chicken which didn’t really taste of much at all.

The older lad. Looking pleased.

As we were finishing up, a bunch of students from DIT on Mountjoy Square came in. Some of them obviously regulars, they were greeted warmly. It’s a regular Friday haunt for them, one told us. Fair enough.

I’d be dead keen, outside the eatforafiver restrictions, to explore fully what the different restaurants on Parnell Street have to offer in terms of authentic food from different parts of China, Korea and other countries.