Categories
Malaysian

Curry Mee 北馬咖喱面 – Homebush NSW Restaurant Review

Parramatta Road is normally a bypass for me on my Monday-Sunday weeks, given I am able to incur $112 in road tolls in those calendar weeks with a $60 capped payment. While it’s unusual for me to pass up a free trip on the M4, the promise of good food ‘on-the-way’ home from work led me to terrible quality surface roads and Curry Mee 北馬咖喱面 in Homebush.

I wasn’t able to eat at the restaurant, even though there was seating available, as my girlfriend wanted to get home quickly and go to sleep. Food was therefore eaten about twenty minutes post preparation, but remained delicious throughout.

I enjoyed this Sweet Red Sauce Chicken Rice 红酱饭 ($13.90) quite thoroughly. The chicken maryland was tasty, with a nice slightly sweet, slightly fermented red sauce flavour. I had hoped to get the chicken without rice, and sad to find that it wasn’t available as an extra on its own, however upon taking my first mouthful of the rice I realised that I was wrong. The rice was not merely just rice, but a delicious chicken rice – oily and umami and tasty.

This was excellent flavour and value for $13.90 and I’d recommend it to anyone.

The seafood curry mee 海鲜咖喱面 ($17.90) was surprisingly good. It had a mixture of egg noodles and thin rice noodles, an assortment of balls, mussels, tofu and other seafoods. Despite it being white, it still tasted red, with a rich curry laksa flavour but not too much spicy. Also pretty good,

Overall thoughts
A pretty good meal , and well priced. Would potentially come back.

Curry Mee 北馬咖喱面
131 Parramatta Rd, Homebush NSW 2140

Categories
Asian Fusion Café Indonesian

Kooks Cafe – Ultimo NSW Restaurant Review

Kooks Cafe is an Indonesian breakfast joint in the inner city that just so happens to be deeply David Bowie themed.

We started with a masala chai helix ($9.90), which is basically this roti based croissant like structure. It is quite large, covered in cinnamon and powdered sugar, and filled with a smattering of masala chai spices that are ultimately a bit sweet but not too sweet. Multi-layered, multi-sticky, and quite delicious.

We enjoyed also the beef rendang wrap ($21.45) which was a bit expensive for its size. It was composed of quite a crispy kind of pastry with a nice filling of beef rendang, inclusive of flavour and beefy chew. Despite this strong showing, factors against its favour however included a quite wet and drippy bottom (a bit of leakage), and its overall price to size ratio.

The most breakfasty item we got was the roti telur ($13.20), which we didn’t love. The best way that I could describe it to someone who couldn’t see images would be if you could imagine a gozleme like structure filled with egg, a slight amount of extremely mild chilli and some onion, and an overall lack of flavour.

The pastry was quite soft and unexciting, kind of felt like what you would get if you steamed a pancake, though my partner won’t say that she regret getting it as she really wanted to try some of Kook’s sambal, and this was her window to it. To me, it really kind of felt like something you could make in the microwave or in the steamer at home, and I wouldn’t get it again.

Kooks Cafe
63 Mountain St, Ultimo NSW 2007
0480 336 869

Categories
Middle Eastern

Munoushee – Concord NSW Restaurant Review

I treated myself to breakfast at Munoushee which is basically a Western Sydney restaurant in the Inner West following a Western Sydney night shift. I had the chili, meat and cheese wrap ($14), and had quite mixed thoughts about it. I thought the wrap was good, the bread was thin and the the entire unit was flavourful but sadly I really had a lot of difficulty identifying any meat.

Completely uncharacteristically of me (call it a post-nights loss of frontal function) I went and asked the man working the counter if I had been provided the right meal. I really couldn’t find the meat in this chili meat and cheese wrap but he told me that yes this was the right meal, they just can’t put as much meat in the wrap as they do in a pizza and that the meat in a wrap would need to be quite thin otherwise it would be soggy.

Given that the only meat I could macroscopically identify is circled in the above photo, I absolutely would not have minded a soggy wrap.

I guess this is what I get for trying to have Western Sydney food outside of Western Sydney.

Munoushee
39 Majors Bay Rd, Concord NSW 2137

Categories
American Middle Eastern

Albeik Shawarma – Granville NSW Restaurant Review

One of the fellows I work with has never said no to some physically unhealthy but spiritually permitted fast food overnight. Though we mostly order from a few known locals, we do on occasion get to branch out.

The fried chicken pieces (3 for $11) were excellent – some of the best post-midnight fried chicken I’ve had in Western Sydney. It was perfectly crispy on the outside, and extremely juicy on the inside. My only regret is that I wasn’t able to get a photo of the meat inside, and my only complaint is that the spiciness of the spicy version could be a little spicier.

Unfortunately the chicken shawarma wrap ($13), which you would expect to be the restaurant’s specialty, was nowhere near as excellent. The wrap, though size-appropriate and chicken-filled, presented as dry, and could’ve used much more garlic sauce/toum than was provided. I’ve certainly had better in the vague local area, including Armani Restaurant in Parramatta, and Babylon Bakery in Fairfield Heights.

Albeik (Al Beik) Shawarma
48 Railway Parade, Granville NSW 2142
(02) 8626 9839

Categories
American

Extra Crispy – Merrylands NSW Restaurant Review

There is this rumour going around Western Sydney that the Extra Crispy group of fried chicken restaurants was originally a set of Broaster Chicken franchises that broke off and renamed themselves in order to avoid the licensing fees surrounding the Broaster name whilst continuing to use the broasting equipment. Whilst I cannot independently confirm nor deny this, it does seem like the chicken that they have is extremely similar to that which is provided by the Broaster chain, with the one exception that the level of salt at the Extra Crispy chains in Western Sydney varies considerably store to store – often a bit oversalted.

Whilst I normally avoid taking part in the night time Extra Crispy orders, one particular night I had a Crispy Classic Chicken Burger ($12) featuring a crispy chicken patty, halal beef bacon, lettuce, American cheese, pickles and spicy sauce. It was actually quite good. The size and value for money was on point, the flavour was good and for once in my life it was not extremely salty.

I also shared in a number of 10 Buffalo Hot Wings ($12.50) which I felt could have been just a little bit more buffalo than what we received. The photos on the electronic menu does make the buffalo sauce appear more substantial than what we received and if they were hoping to cater for customers who wanted only a mildly buffalo experience when ordering buffalo wings, they could have at least added more buffalo sauce on the side. Were I to order this again, I would at least try and add a comment asking to smother the wings in sauce.

Extra Crispy Merrylands
1/228 Merrylands Rd, Merrylands NSW 2160