~ Curious Charlie ~

Grill'd with H @ Tuesday, March 13, 2012

"Recently" (a few months ago) a Grill'd opened up near us, and they sent out postcards, offering a 2-for-1 deal on their burgers/sandwiches/salads, being a fan of Grill'd I found ourselves there yesterday for dinner with H. At the counter we were offered the choice of a panini (white sourdough) or “traditional” wholemeal blend bun, not being a fan of sourdough (to me it tastes off) I went for the wholemeal. My first few experiences with Grill'd were their kid's meal after debating (Grill'd being the closest source of food, and conveniently on the other side of the street, less than a mile away), I tried the beef and the chicken burgers. Though both amazing, I prefer the beef (more iron). This time I ordered 'Simon Says' without Bacon. While H opted for something a bit lighter, in the form of a Chicken Caesar Salad.

"Grilled chicken breast, avocado, salad, relish & herbed mayo."

The chicken was perfect (though it's not as hard to cook as beef - for me anyway), there wasn't much avocado sadly, and it was a spread as oppose to slices. The salad consisted of onion, a few slices of freshly cut tomato and 2 massive leaves. I didn't enjoy the leafy greens, as I hate midribs (the stem-ish, hard middle part of a leaf). I have trypophobia, so perhaps looking at it under a microscope wasn't such a good idea... The burger was very nice, though I'd like to try something else next time. For the price of $12, it's a bit pricey for fast-ish food, but perhaps it's better as a treat now and then again.

Unless you're going to Grill'd just to get a salad, which is like going to McD and not getting fries :P you have to get the chips. Grill'd makes the most amazing hot chips, they're crispy and not oily on the outside, and fluffy and light on the inside. "...seasoned with salt, perfumed with rosemary..." - considerthesauce.net. This being the 2nd time H's being to Grill'd we ordered two sauces, Tomato Relish & Sweet Chilli Mayo, for 70c each. The mayo was amazing as always, unfortunately the relish was really just tomato with chunks in it. And on the counter they have bottles of free tomato sauce, like Nandos. Won't be getting that again.

"Grilled chicken breast, crispy trim bacon, free range egg,

Parmesan, baby cos, dressing & croutons."

H enjoyed his salad, the egg being nicely done, not overcooked and rubbery. For $12.50 it was decent, like the chicken to salad ratio, though he says it would have been nice to have more chicken. It was interesting that the croutons came as a mini loaf rather than small pieces, though in this version it does look more visually appealing.

As the amazing picnik (which I wished came as a program on a cd) is closing down and we're migrating to Google+ picture editor, we're trying to make the best of out time left with picnik. So that might explain a few more pictures than usual.

If you have any suggestions for an easy to use photo editing program, I'd love to know *pokes cbox*.

The features I normally use are:

- resize

- crop (though I do this half the time on the MS img editor)

- adjust lighting (dark/brighten)
- sharpen
- add text with different fonts/colours (and be able to move it around, unlike in paint)
- add borders (rounded edges)
- has collages (2+ imgs in a grid)