Monday – SRM and I grabbed takeaway from Sushi @ Royal (Shop 2, 131 Royal St). SRM had chicken and avocado uramaki (inside-out sushi) with a little seaweed salad on the side.

I had tamago (omelette) and cucumber sushi with a tuna chef’s salad. The salad was delicious but I was a little disappointed with the sushi – the rice seemed a mushier and soggier than it should be. I think the Japanese we used to eat in Subiaco was far superior to our East Perth sushi experience so far. One of my readers who also works in East Perth kindly sent me an email with lunch ideas shortly after we moved into our office – she described the sushi from Sushi @ Royal as “a bit hit and miss” – and I can really see that now, a few weeks in.

Tuesday – I grabbed a large garlic chicken stir-fry with rice (AU$7.00) at 88 Royal (88a Royal St, East Perth). The garlic was lovely (see the pieces of garlic throughout?) and the chicken pieces tender, but I thought the sauce could’ve had more flavour – it could’ve been so much tastier.

Wednesday – J and I both had laksa (AU$8.50) at Munch Terrace (Shop 6, 230 Hay St, Corner Bennett St East Perth). Our verdict: yummy! We’ll eat this again, definitely! The curry soup was delicious, not too spicy-hot, but a lovely, strong curry flavour, with just a hint of tanginess from some sort of citrus juice – probably lemon, as they are cheaper than limes. In the curry soup was beehoon (thin rice noodles), chicken, thinly sliced yee peng (fish cake), fried tofu, beansprouts, and two plump, bursty prawns. Without a bib, the only way to eat this without spraying curry all over one’s front is to lean right in, close to the bowl, fogging up one’s glasses :). It was steaming hot and difficult to eat quickly – make sure you have plenty of time to eat if you order this dish, so you can relax and enjoy every slurp and mouthful. :)

Thursday – I went to Sushi &@ Royal to have a chicken karaage and rice meal. Since I hadn’t tried Sushi @ Royal’s miso soup, I also got myself a cup. It was pretty good, with a couple of tiny cubes of soft white tofu as well as chopped dried seaweed and fresh spring onion.

You get a good feed for AU$8.00. The chicken was succulent, gingery and most satisfying. The rice was the perfect consistency for eating with chopsticks. It’s a shame I haven’t enjoyed their sushi as much.

The trickiest part of eating this meal is making sure there’s enough mayo to mix through the salad, but also to smear on each piece of chicken before eating. The mayo goes so well with the chicken.

Next to Munch Terrace is a shop called Stuzzico (232 Hay St, East Perth), which sells gourmet pizza and panini. The last couple of times J and I went to Munch Terrace, we did feel tempted to try the pizza (I guess though, when you’ve got a craving for chicken rice or laksa you really ought to feed it, because from experience, those cravings don’t go away easily!). Friday was definitely to be Pizza Day. We ummed and aahed over what to have and decided to share The Lot (salami, mushroom and ham). Most pizzas are available by the slice, by the quarter, half or full (see the menu here, complete with pizza photos!) – The Lot was only available as a half (AU$20) or full (AU$36). $10 each sounded good enough – so we ordered a half pizza to share. Now, maybe we were delirious with hunger and weren’t really thinking straight, but we didn’t really think how much pizza we’d get in a half. J carried the pizza box as we walked back to the office – the very long box. We opened it up when we were halfway back to the office and were blown away by how much pizza we’d been given. Was it a mistake? Was this a full pizza, rather than a half?

Back at the office, our workmate L reminded us that the menu had specified that a half pizza was 75cm. We checked with a ruler and were amazed and impressed – all this pizza for $20! Bargain of the week! See how far away I had to be to fit the whole pizza in the photo? Incidentally, you may like to know that a full pizza is a whopping 1.5 metres or4.92125984 feet!

The pizza, close-up, photos taken left to right across the box – here’s the left side…

the middle…

and right side. At this stage I must say thank you again to J for her patience as I took these photos. But I think she was so impressed with the pizza that she really wanted me to take the photos so I could share it with you all.

Although our workmates had opted for other lunches, we invited them to try some pizza – there was no way J and I would be able to get through all that ourselves, even though J has almost as hearty an appetite as me! The individual pieces were quite small, and boy, were they moreish. It was difficult to stop eating. The salami was mild -which I much prefer than the blow-your-socks-off spicy varieties – and the ham tasted like mortadella.

The pizza crust was fantastic – it was thin and not too bready, much lighter than typical pizza crust. I think that was part of the reason it was so moreish. Seriously though, I think in future we could grab a couple of these and enjoy them with drinks after work – cheap group catering!

With everyone’s help, all that remained were six slices of pizza. We didn’t have containers to take pizza home, so J wrapped them up with a plastic bag and popped them in the fridge. She brought in homemade soup for both of us on Monday – soup and pizza for lunch! Isn’t that sweet of her? Those photos will of course be featured in the next Work Lunches post.