Hey guys! I recently went to the new restaurant in Stanmore Bay, Auckland, called Paprika. My dad and I went there for dinner to try it out and overall, it's a good restaurant, in my opinion.

FOOD
We're cheap and always budget and spend as little as possible haha so we ordered:

• 'Meat lovers tasting platter' (my dad really wanted to try it and eat a bit 'fancier' instead of only ordering two mains.) - $26. To me, it was very average but I'm not a fan of meat and try to avoid it. However, regardless of that, it's not worth it due to the price. The different sauces/seasonings do taste good but for the price, there wasn't much on the platter. (About two of each delicacy.)
• 'Malai Kofta: mild' (a vegetarian main dish and I wanted to try it because I've never heard of it before.) - $15. There was around 3 or 4 little balls (size of a meatball) in a bowl of curry. I really enjoyed it and would order it again. The curry is quite sweet and the balls only taste good when they are fully covered in the sauce. For the garnish, there is also almonds and raisins which weren't bad, I liked the extra texture.
• Lamb curry: medium (I forgot the name of the dish that my dad ordered but it was some sort of curry with lamb) - $15. It's a good proportion but not sure if it was enough to make my dad full haha (maybe that's why he wanted to order the platter as a safety measure.) 

From top to bottom: Lamb curry, meat platter, malai kofta

SERVICE
All the waiters there are lovely and from what I experienced and saw, they do their jobs well. I've got no complaints at all. Their service is also very fast and efficient.

Food took around 15 minutes (If I recall correctly) and it wasn't a quiet night either, there were around 6+ tables there also.

AMBIENCE 
The music that they play are nice, and like all typical restaurants, they light candles on the table - which I'm glad are real candles and not fake battery operated ones haha

OVERALL
I would recommend this restaurant, it's cheap compared to the other restaurants around the area (since the price for two people is around $60) and the food tastes good! But if you wanted something more formal and fancy with a three-course meal, this probably isn't the perfect restaurant for that.


I hope this helped you make your decision on whether or not to go try this restaurant out! If you've been here before, what did you order and do you recommend it?


Love,
Elaine

Hey guys! So if you read my blog regularly, you would've read that I went to a restaurant for my birthday dinner. It was a restaurant called Chaits Tapa and Bar. It is an indian restaurant where you can buy the original mains like butter chicken. I have never been to the restaurant before yesterday. I always enjoy trying out new restaurants because why stick to just one when you can experience so many more!

My first thought of the restaurant is that it is quite small with not the largest dining space. It's not like it was too small and we were all crammed together, but there aren't a lot of tables available. The decoration is quite nice because they have fairy lights up. They don't have any special decoration relating to Indian cuisine I think. Well I didn't see any.

Before the food arrived, the waitress came over to our table with a beautiful drink. It was only orange juice, nothing too fancy but it was good. It looked really nice as well.

Taking the first sip

I ordered a Himalayan chicken which includes rice, naan, salad and poppadom.
As you can see from the image above, the salad is very small. There's one poppadom and three or four pieces of naan bread. It allows you to refill the curry but not the rice or other things. Normally restaurants allow people to get more rice instead of getting more meat. This is quite a good deal but it'd be even more amazing if they gave you more rice haha because you can normally eat a lot of the rice because of the sauce.

My meal cost me $18 which is quite expensive considering that some other Indian restaurants around my area does special deals of having a main cost $10 with unlimited rice but not unlimited meat. If this meal costed me a few dollars less, I'll give it more stars because in my opinion, it's a bit overpriced even though it includes naan bread and a poppadom.

I rate Chaits Tapa and Bar a ★★★/★★★★★

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! haha I turned 17 yesterday! Wow, where has my childhood gone? My old innocent little self has now matured. I'm nearly an adult!? Say what! Like honestly, the past few years are just like a major blur. Not that I don't remember anything, but it has just gone so quick! I still remember celebrating my 10th birthday and that didn't seem like that long ago.

So here's how my day went:
I woke up at 7am with a sudden burst of energy. Like I wasn't even sleepy when I first opened my eyes! That has got to be a first haha I pretty much jumped out of bed because I was not tired at all.

From 9-12pm, my mum and I went to our local shopping mall to buy groceries and just see what goodies are on sale. I ended up buying two long sleeve, plain shirts for $8. It was originally $5 each but Jay Jay's always has this special mate rate deal on where if you buy two things, the price would be cheaper than just buying one. The price depends on the item you choose and how much the item originally is. I'm glad I bought the shirts because they're pretty thin so it wouldn't get too hot if I wore it during the Summer time. We also bought a black forest gateau which is delicious! My mum also bought me the game Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts.

Once we got home, it was 12pm and I made mini pizzas using pita bread and having the typical pizza toppings of pepperoni, lots of cheese and sun dried tomatoes. It was so good! I haven't had pizza in ages.After eating, I started playing Banjo-Kazooie but I only had time to play one of the mini games because it was already close to 4pm which meant that I had to start getting ready because my friend would be over at 5pm.

When it was 5.30pm, my friend and I began to walk to the restaurant. The restaurant is only 15 minutes away and it's still bright nowadays due to day light savings. By the time it was 6pm, we were all seated in the restaurant. There was only 5 people (including me) at dinner which was actually really nice because it was easier to just all talk as a group. We placed our orders (I'll talk more about the restaurant in a review which I will post up soon hopefully.) and we were all just goofing around, taking photos, then suddenly the waitress comes to our table holding a fancy looking drink. I didn't even think about anything at all and then she said that it's for the birthday girl! Aww, that was honestly so sweet! haha I wasn't even expecting it. The drink was just orange juice but it had two layers with red at the bottom and orange at the top.

Excited to eat!

7.30pm was around the time when we finished our dinner and walked out. Man, I was freezing! haha it was still bright outside but the sun was setting and it was windy so we were cold. Before heading back home, we all went to this playground that is really close to the restaurant and just swung on the swings haha! I love swings! You can never get sick of swinging on swings and I always get that adrenaline rush when I go really high up! I was so cold because I forgot to bring a stupid cardigan or jacket or something to keep me warm!

After the playground, we went back to mine just pretty much just played some Raving Rabbids, watched quite a few episodes of Gilmore Girls and sleep. hahah I was so exhausted after the day but we stayed up until 5am, watching Gilmore Girls.

That was my whole day yesterday! :)


Love,
Elaine

Hey! EXAMS ARE OVERRRR for this year! YAY! So happy! I'm free! I had my last exam today, which was biology. It was actually easy than I expected so hopefully I get a good grade for it. :D Anyways, enough exam talk. After my exam, Yvonne and my mum came to pick me up from school and we went straight to Westfield, Albany. We spent quite a long time at the city. Especially since I was shopping with a pregnant woman (Yvonne) and my mum who gets tired and sore feet easily. We arrived there at around 1pm and came back home at 9.30pm. That is quite a long time because normally, mum just wants to buy groceries from Asian super markets instead of actually shopping for clothes. I didn't actually buy that many things, but I'm going to make a haul video for the things I bought and also, add in things that I'm buying over these holidays. I'm going to like add up all the items I buy and do one big haul for it. So stay tuned on my Youtube channel to see when that comes out. :)

McDonald's recently came out with a new item... frozen sprite! There are a few flavours that you can choose from like cotton candy, bubble gum, green apple and a few more. Me, being a cotton candy lover of course had to get the cotton candy flavoured one first. It looks quite pretty, with the strips of red. It costed only $1 as well! Pretty good and my cup was a small size. I didn't choose medium or large because I was afraid that it would get too sickly after drinking too much.

Selfie with my love ;)

After that, my mum went shopping in Asian supermarkets so Yvonne and I went to a Korean mart store and bought ice cream! Who wouldn't want to eat a frozen sprite then an ice cream? ;)

Sitting in the car eating the ice cream haha

See how my ice cream has a bite taken out of it? It's was actually my sisters ice cream originally but I might've sneezed and got some spit on it hahahahaahahahah Okay, don't say that I'm gross. It was an unexpected sneeze okay :(

We sat in the car for ages! Mum likes to take her time while grocery shopping haha. When she finally came back, we went shopping and just looked at clothes pretty much! I didn't find anything too nice so I didn't buy any clothes. After shopping, we left to go to a restaurant. I think it's a korean restaurant. We kind of got lost on the way there because Yvonne's so bad with directions but we finally found the place! haha

We ordered three main dishes and a few sides to share between us three.

All the dishes that we got.

Spicy fish roe soup

Free coffee from the restaurant.

As you can see from the coffee photo, the sky is still pretty bright due to daylight savings. The time of the photo would have been around 9pm! I love daylight savings because the day always seem to last longer.

Off to paint my nails now! I'll be making a tutorial on how to do christmas themed nail art soon so stay tuned on my youtube. :)


Love,
Elaine

Hey guys! So tonight for dinner, my dad and I went to this local restaurant called Jambalaya. It is in Manly, Auckland. It is an American style restaurant that doesn't have much variation but it was fine because my dad and I was going only for the ribs there because it's known for the nice real american style ribs. I've never been to america so I can't honestly say whether or not it's just like american ribs but they were some pretty delicious ribs! We ordered 6 chicken wings and two sets of 1/2 rack ribs that comes along with coleslaw and fries.

The chicken wings were good I reckon! Like the special sauce they used was a little spicy and it also came along with a little bit of aioli and coleslaw. It was a great starter. It was great because I was starving when I got there haha and it was delivered to us after a few minutes of ordering it.


I looovvveeeddd the sauce that they used for the ribs! It was fruity and just so good! :D And you can't see it in this photo but there are lots of french fries underneath the ribs! And I just love the ketchup hahah it's good. Reminds me of the ketchup at Wendy's because it's got a strong tomato taste.

Most of the photos taken were a little blurry because of the dim lighting in the restaurant. Just look at how big the ribs are! haha I honestly expected maybe half the size? Because we barely ever go out to eat, let alone eat ribs at a restaurant.

We didn't buy anything else because my dad mainly wanted to come to try out the ribs. But if I go there again, I might try another thing just to experience and see what the best thing is. :)

Love,
Elaine