The contents of this blog are matters of opinion formed over one more visits. There has been some artistry applied and metaphors and similes should not necessarily be taken literally.
We ate here in early 2020, and I only just came across these photos accidentally on my Dropbox. This is now no use to anyone, as they’ve since gone out of business many years ago. I think it’s now an unrelated restaurant, which is quite a shame, as their hotpot focused fitout, with recessed boilers, was quite nice. I hope their equipment found a good home elsewhere.
The meal was good, if relatively expensive. I think I remember paying $100 for 2 for lunch.
I like to think that this business could’ve thrived if it were started today. It’s just a shame that they opened in late 2019 before everything closed down for the next three years.
Hot Pot And BBQ House Wolli Creek Suite 1/8-10 Brodie Spark Dr, Wolli Creek NSW 2205
We spent $104 at Wonder Skewers in Burwood, which was definitely too much, and got us enough food to last two meals for two people.
The problem, kind of like in yum cha, is that everything came in groups of 3-5 skewers. This meant that to have any decent amount of variety as well as to not to eat repeats, you really need to come here with a few friends, not just one other person.
The variety of meats on offer was quite broad. We had lamb (5 for $13.80), beef tendon (4 for $12.80), ox tongue (4 for $13.80), pork with gristle (5 for $12.80), chicken wings (3, but really 6 wings for $12.80), beef ribs (5 for $13.80), and eggplant ($7.80), and scallops (2 for $13.80).
All food was cooked in the kitchen, and brought out to us once ready, rested on a bed which itself rested over a series of tealights, to keep the food warm as we ate. This is a pro gamer move, as oily, BBQ food tends to get much less appetizing once cold.
The chicken wings were in particular very juicy and tasty, with a crispy skin on the exterior.
A relatively special mention should also go to the beef tendon, which had a really gooey and fun texture, though was definitely too much to have all on my own, as my partner decided this was the day that beef tendon would be too weird for her.
The pork with gristle (at the left of the above photo), was really more like pork with soft bones, and quite yummy and good to crunch between the teeth.
The scallops were really overloaded with garlic, but at least had a different flavour to the barbequed meats, which to be honest all tasted very similar to one another.
Sadly the garlic eggplant was then the same flavour as the scallop.
My thoughts are these. The food was good, but definitely got quite repetitive, as essentially all of the BBQ meat had one flavour, and then the sides had another flavour. Two flavours over the $104 of food we ordered. As already mentioned, it is imperative to go with more than one person, unless you’re someone who really just wants to have 2-4 skewers of the same meat, and not try anything else.
Another interesting thing we noticed was that there was a notice on their ordering webpage (via QR code at the table) asking patrons not to abuse their staff for cooking slowly. No idea what that is about, we were served within 5-10 minutes of ordering.
Look, this is really a review of a cookie that I had at Blair St Dairy, because that was closest to where we were and had to be again within a 45 minute window (some kind of magnesium sulfate floaty thing in Bondi Junction – my partner’s idea, but I agreed to go because she wanted me to, and magnesium sulfate is probably my most used drug). It really doesn’t matter though, because it’s only a cookie, and both places are run by the same people.
So what can I tell you about this chocolate chip cookie ($?6.50) that you can’t tell just from the photos? It was big, it was thick. It was warmed up for us before serving, which made it quite nice and soft. It was initially though to be not-too-sweet based on cookie, but opinion was changed to too-sweet once the taste of chocolate chip was established. The oiliness and sweetness of the cookie didn’t quite fit with the overall vibe of The Bondi Local, but these are probably the people who have some extra calories to spare anyway.
We had fun looking at all the Halloween displays outside the homes between our car and the café. You don’t get that as much when your house is worth less than $3 million of inter-generational wealth.
Anyway if you want the cookie and have an acceptable Trigs/HDL/LDL/HbA1c it’s probably more efficient to buy their cookie dough from the shops and bake your own.
We had a hard night of moving hard rubbish between our new place and the hard rubbish pickup at our old apartment complex, which took multiple, completely unnecessary trips because it turned out to be extremely easy to book hard rubbish pickup in the Inner West Council area. By the time we had finished moving all our stuff, all planned locations for a late night meal were closed, and we ended up at Brothers Kebabs in Annandale for a late night feed.
This halal snack pack with lamb and chicken was good, but expensive. I’m not sure of the price any more, but I want to say that it was in the neighbourhood of $22, which is quite pricey but I guess reflects the rising cost of everything these days. The meat was good, the chips fresh and crispy, and the saucing generous, though we were given the chilli sauce out of the squeeze bottle, not the luxurious looking spooned-from-the-tub chilli sauce that they were putting on the kebabs. I will have to ask for that next time.
I hadn’t had a pide for a good long time, and this chicken type pide hit the spot. Again, post midnight, I did not manage to remember to get prices or even the name of the menu item down. I wish it had come with more lemon, but I’m sure I could’ve asked for more.
A pretty good meal, good hours, and a rare finding of lamb.
I don’t remember much about this Western Sydney Hyderabadi restaurant, even though it hasn’t been so long since I ate at it. I will instead attempt to entertain you with a few pictures, some scattered thoughts, and a fun fact that I learned from my Western Sydney North Indian friend (ES).
I enjoyed the chicken 65 ($15 – actually listed as $14.99, but they don’t carry 1 cent coins), though it was a bit wetter and saltier than others that I’ve had. I was surprised to find that my friend had never had this before. Maybe I’ve just had it a lot because there have been a lot of Indo-Chinese restaurants in the places I’ve lived.
My interesting fact of the day, relating to this mutton biryani ($16 – $15.99, who are they trying to fool?), is that mutton biryani can refer to biryani with meat from either goat or sheep, and it’s not possible to know which one it is unless you ask. Where in Australian English we always mean old sheep, mutton almost always refers to goat in the Subcontinent, and therefore in a Indian restaurant in Sydney it could literally be a flip of the coin. This mutton, whatever animal it may have been, was not too gamey (which is my usual concern with old sheep).
My not so interesting fact about this arachi chicken (let’s just call it $16) is that I’m not the only one who couldn’t recognise this based on the photo. See below a screenshot from a Google Review by ali rizvi838.
I don’t know what this is. I’m waiting on my friend to text me back at time of writing. (EDIT: it is ladoo) It was soft, sweet, and drowned in syrup. It was pretty good.
General comments It’s weird that I don’t remember much about this place, but the general vibe was that it was good and affordable. Much more memorable was the weird fact that I learned about mutton.
