Revisiting Milse - disappointed! :(

Last Sunday, LY organised a meetup to celebrate her birthday (even though she didn't want us to sing happy birthday we ended up cornering her against a locked door and singing it in the train station hahahaha)

I didn't get many photos unfortunately, but I managed to snap some of the food since other people were taking food pics too ^^

This is just copied from my instagram post (@snowrii).

We had dinner at The Conservatory in Wynyard Quarter. It's my first time eating over there, and my second time in Wynyard Quarter since it opened in...2012 or 2013!? LOL I am so behind ~.~

The restaurants there all seem pretty nice, at least the view and ambience is great! The only downside is that the restaurants don't show their name very obviously, so I walked into a random restaurant before finding The Conservatory. Awkward.

Just a quick review of our dinner - the lamb (18"?) pizza was delicious! They cut it in huge slices and I felt so hungus, but omg it was so yum. Chips seasoned with rosemary is also quite nice! They didn't prepare it very crispy unfortunately (same goes for the calamari), but the idea of rosemary and chips is new to me and I love it! The garden platter was pretty average, the cabbage wasn't fresh enough and the artichoke heart was average. I wonder if their chef took a day off yesterday?

Now on to Milse! For those of you that follow Confetti, you will know that I had posted about the store several times (first review, second documented visit), mostly favorably. TL;DR on the links - when we first started the blog, Cora and I had a little celebration reviewing the store and it was truly lovely! Then, the verrines became much smaller than they used to be. This time, it was even worse!

Macarons of all different shapes and sizes, messily displayed.

Beautiful shot capturing the ONE giant macaron sandwich and the sloppy presentation of the green tea gateaux, courtesy of JY.

Let me just number them to make it easy for reading:

1. The presentation is inconsistent and sloppy - macarons were all different sizes, placed inctheir rows messily, and some were almost half a size bigger than others! If you think I'm being picky here, please visit my first review of Milse and you can understand why I have my expectations.

2. The cabinet was unkempt, even though it was a Sunday and they were really only moderately busy. Considering all the tarts sit directly in the cabinet, I would think that cleanness should be of high priority?

3. Macarons (the only thing I bought this time) varied in quality. The salted caramel JY bought was just as good as I remembered, but the other 3 that we shared (including the 2 in my photo collage at the top of this post) were very crumbly, hollow, and hard. Inconsistent, yet again.

Unfortunately I didn't try verrines or tarts or a gateaux this time, so I can't comment on those, but at least the presentation of the gateaux was pretty bad just like the macarons.

It has only been just over a year since they opened. I am honestly quite disappointed, and probably will not visit Milse quite as often as I used to.

Just FYI.

=^.^=

Girls' Night @ Skycity last Friday

I ended up spending the entire weekend being sleep deprived and hazy during the day, and legit sleeping, but somehow still not resting enough through the night!? am I anemic???

Anyway, L happened to have a free pass to stay at Skycity's hotel for a night this month, so she invited all of us girls in the high school gang to stay over and catch up >w<

It's super sweet of her to invite us!! Even though we have met up many times through this summer, we rarely met in the past few years since HS ;w;

Sometimes I feel like I have no idea what's even happening with some people anymore, and don't know how to even begin asking,,, *sigh*

Anyway, it really irks me how people in our group never check facebook notifications. Like, I'm pretty sure people get notified every time someone posts in a group (unless they turned it off) right!? It's not like anyone spams in there, why turn it off ==

And then some people are like - oh yeah I'm keen! and then when details are confirmed and everything, you don't hear from them. Just, wtf??? I know you've been online cause you PMed me about other stuff!!

Rant aside, the night ended up just being L and I, which was perfectly fine since it's been a long time since we had a date between the two of us. L was the only person I ever gossiped about the guys we knew back in HS I think? hahaha I'm not much of a gossiper...

As usual, I was late... BUT this time I had a legit reason. I seriously did leave the house on time, but the gigantic winds in Greenlane + umbrella in 1 hand and luggage in the other was not something I was prepared for. Seriously, what is with the winds in Greenlane!?

So we dropped everything off at the hotel, and in the lobby there was a performance for CNY! I didn't take any photos though, I was too busy staring at this girl who had really really nice legs.... (in the most non-creeper way ever.)

For dinner we went to Sushi Factory, a restaurant L frequents and which I went to once. That one time I went there with my ex two years ago omg. Most gluttonous dinner ever. <writing it down, in the unlikely case that I forget it one day lol.

L had a tempura udon and a variety sushi plate, and I had the chicken katsudon set~

Collaged everything together for instagram *lazy*

Next time we agreed to go for one of the party platters. the 55$ one looks really yummy ~~

It was actually pretty good value IMO, I think I spent around 15~20$? Many items on their menu is overpriced af, but the sets are alright, and one or two of the party platters are alright.

Now I wanna eat ramen.... buttercorn ramen~~~~ ;w;

Anyway, after dinner, we decided to go to Milse for some dessert. The original plan was to go to a bar, but the weather was shitty all afternoon/evening so we settled for dessert.

Milse was busy, as usual. The wait list for a table was at about 40 minutes. Pretty sure we spent about 20 minutes picking what we wanted anyway, but in the end we didn't stay in the restaurant to enjoy our dessert. The outside courtyard was covered though, and it's a really nice place to eat in the evening~ (you can see pics of the area in my Milse review, together with a good range of their desserts).

L had the Valrhona caramelia, coffee, and hazelnut gateaux (you can see what it looks like, and its review here), and I had a matcha green tea and strawberry gelato stick. The gelato stick was a bit of a let down... It was extremely difficult to eat and melted all over the place, plus the green tea wasn't strong and had quite an indistinct taste that wasn't matcha-y at all :(

After dessert we bought some dessert wine (dessert #2!) and chippies to munch on while we discussed life, future, pregnancy (LOL no pregnancy for those that love sashimi!!), and other serious af topics while watching cartoon network. The line between childhood and adulthood blurs more every day xD

Hardly any gossip went down that night, but the little that did...eurgh I'd rather clear from my mind kthx ;;;;

Gotta have those selfies. :D

The next morning, we decided the walk to viaduct would not be worth it for an overpriced breakfast, when there isn't even a pretty sunrise to watch, so we headed to The Shelf. It was my first time there, and I wish I had brought my DSLR because the interior deco was super nice!

We both had egg benedict, mushroom for L, and bacon (fatty fatty) for myself. I also tried The Shelf's specialty Iced Coffee which was pretty awesome cause they use coffee to make the ice cubes! Plus, the amount of chocolate in the form of both hard chocolate, and chocolate sauce was like mmmmmmmn

Not sure how I felt about an iced coffee priced at $7 though .-. those are few and far in between, in nz....

We had a little time left after that, so we dropped by smith and caugheys to get L a new concealer. MAC's concealer is actually really good for heavy coverage! I didn't end up buying anything though, still on the hunt for a nice NATURAL hime-style lipstick... (every time I buy a lipstick from Chanel, it ends up looking different to what I actually wanted fml. Probably will end up buying from Chanel again though, their lipsticks are still the nicest ;w;)

We both love staying in hotels, so it was extra nice that we got to spend the night at SkyCity ^^

And that concludes our girls' night!

=^.^=

Chinese New Year and another visit to Milse! [Confetti]

First of all, happy Chinese/Lunar New Year everyone! For all the horses out there, I hope you stocked up on your red knickers for the year! (jks, does anyone even still believe that superstition???)


It’s been a long-standing Chinese tradition to stuff one’s face full of yummy food and Chinese spirits on new year’s eve with the extended family. But all my relatives are in China and I didn’t get to go back this year for a visit :/

My mom and I spent the NYE at our family friends’, and in fact they’re pretty much our ‘family’! We went over for Christmas as well (you can see the food, and all my selfies with their dog Rainnie here), but our CNY feast is thankfully much more humble.

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Milse

So yesterday, I had my first dinner of the lunar new year in the company of two girls I rarely get to meet up with. One of them left the city to go back to uni, so I won’t be seeing her for another couple months (T_T) and the other just came back from an exchange to the States!

I had such a good time catching up with these girls I’ve known since high school (omg so many years ago!), over some of Milse’s new desserts of the season~ I hope we can do it again next time everyone is in Auckland! （*´▽｀*）

Here are some of the desserts from last night. A couple of them were long demolished before I arrived and made sure everything was captured on camera though :’(

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KTV Girl's Night last Saturday, and wishing you a happy Chinese New Year! :D

Recently I've been on a singing streak, going ktv at least once every weekend @_@

Perhaps it's because I hardly went ktv at all last year, so this year I'm catching up? lol at least my throat hasn't started hurting!

Last weekend I was taking photos for some reviews, so I brought along my DSLR and took some photos with my girls. Silly me hadn't charged the battery in at least a fortnight, so I didn't get many photos :'(

I took out the drunk looking selfies - even though no-one was actually drunk. It's just lovely how my DSLR is so great at taking photos when people are half-blinking LOL.

I haven't gone out with my high school girls in at least a couple months. In fact we rarely meet up during the year because they're so hardout at uni, studying in the library (or hermit-ing in the architecture building) from morning to night and only leaving for classes ==

And also, some aren't even in the city during the year :'(


One of these girls is going back down to Dunedin on Saturday, so we're seeing her off with some dessert at Milse where I once binged at for the sake of reviewing. #bloggerexcuses



I ALMOST FORGOT! It's Chinese New Year's Eve today! Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Have a great year of the horse! ^^