Categories
Chinese

Cheng’s Xi’an Traditional Foods (程记西安名吃) – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

I want to skip forward and just say that this place is on the elite tier of Chinese food in Burwood.

The first time we contemplated eating at Cheng’s Xi’an Traditional Foods we peered in from outside to a completely empty, dingey looking restaurant, and decided to go somewhere else instead. This was clearly a mistake, because the next time we walked past, the place was completely bar one table, and once we were seated, others had to line up outside behind us.

The food was really quite good.

We had these 12 chicken and mushroom fried dumplings 鸡肉香菇煎饺(12个) ($13.80), which weren’t my first choice in terms of dumplings but were quite delicious despite that. The wrappers were relatively thin and crispy, with a nice lace applied to the bottom. The filing was plentiful and juicy, and the dipping sauce was an extraordinary mix of vinegar and chilli crisp. My partner reflected as we walked back to our car that despite eating dumplings for decades in all kinds of situations, she was still surprised by the quality and tastiness of this sauce. I’d like to come back for some more traditionally filled dumplings in the near future.

The Xi’an Stewed Pork Burger 肉夹馍 Roujiamo ($8.50) was less good but still not terrible. It featured quite a tasty filling with a mixture of lean and fatty pork, albeit without any chillies or capsicums or other green fillings that these often have. Where it fell down, however, was the bread, which I found to be quite dry, a problem that not even the juicy meat could compensate for. There are better roujiamo in Burwood for sure.

The Xi’an Home-Style Pork Spinach-Noodles 陕西哨子干拌菠菜面 ($18.80) was truly very delicious, some of the best noodles I’ve had in some time. This is a dry bowl of noodles, with vinegar and chilli oil, some cubed celery, potato and carrot (mixed bag of frozen veggies from the supermarket-style, but probably cut in house given the dimensions and irregularity of the cubes), tofu, scallions, green noodles, and fatty pork.

The noodles are clearly made in house, green due to the addition of spinach juice to the dough, and are quite springy without being raw – a distinct feeling of jīn dào (筋道) in opposition to the rawness of some Italian pastas marketed as al dente. Mixed up together before eating, the flavour was extremely good, with each strand of noodle being well coated by oil and sauce and an excellent balance of flavour – spiciness but not too spicy, a bit of tanginess from the vinegar, and a whole lot of umami.

THOUGHTS
Delicious. Skipping Cheng’s Xi’an based purely on external appearance would be a mistake. I’d like to go back.

Cheng’s Xi’an Traditional Foods (程记西安名吃)
9/258 Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134

Categories
Middle Eastern

Kebabmia & Pizza – Sydney NSW Restaurant Review

I’ve cleared the backlog of reviews to write, and so here’s a blast from the past that I’ll post outside of the regular queue. Kebabmia & Pizza on Liverpool St used to be a go-to spot for me back in the mid 2010s (RIP, according to Google Maps Streetview, by October 2015 – the venue has since changed hands several times).

This was from an era before the halal snack pack had entered mainstream consciousness, (you will see from the photo of the board above that it does not exist on it), but I will take credit for being an early adopter of a kind of neo-halal snack pack. My order was usually a box of chicken meat with tabouli rather than chips, tabouli being in my opinion the most elite salad accompaniment to kebab meat, even if it’s not of authentically Turkish origin.

The meat was tasty, and from the photos, believably meat. The salad was fresh. I’m sure it was less than $10 at the time, as well.

10/10 no notes. RIP.

Kebabmia & Pizza
79 Liverpool St, Sydney NSW 2000

Categories
Café

Baby Finger – Camperdown NSW Restaurant Review

I like to eat food first and foremost, and I’ve always thought that an all-day menu is a key component of success to the operation of a good cafe. There’s only so many different ways you can do avocadoes on toast or an eggs benedict, and I’ve spent far too many breakfasts being sad about not being able to order from the lunch menu. Luckily, Cafe Baby Finger’s all-day menu gives visitors the option of both breakfast food and – let’s be honest – real food, all day long.

Much of Baby Finger’s all-day menu is quite potato forward, and the two dishes that we picked were no exception. The salmon potato cake ($26) was a umami combination of potato and cured (though it seemed cooked, or at least hot cured?) salmon, nicely seasoned with dill, topped with caramelised onion and watercress, and served with two poached eggs.

Though not much to look at, the starchy potato texture, light but umami flavours, and luxurious aoili made for quite a yummy dish.

The other dish we had was the ‘nduja smoky beans ($25) from their specials board, basically a potato hash with speck, ‘nduja, caramelised onion, a single excellently poached egg, all in a beany tomatoey sauce, topped with manchego and served with two pieces of focaccia. I enjoyed all the different textures and flavours that were present in this dish, even the unexpected pops of saltiness in some bites and the sweetness of the tomato base that came out in others.

The speck was portioned generously and cut to quite large pieces to provide a quite meaty chew, balancing out the otherwise meatless meal (the ‘nduja being mixed into the sauce and difficult to macroscopically identify).

The size of the dish was quite large (the photos don’t do it justice) , which meant that I found that two pieces of focaccia were insufficient to eat all of the saucy goodness with. A third piece would’ve been great.

Overall we enjoyed both things we had here, and can recommend it to a friend or colleague. The food kind of reminded me of Circa’s greatest hits. More like this!

Baby Finger
Unit 27/12 Layton St, Camperdown NSW 2050

Categories
Chinese 四川 (Sìchuān/Sichuan)

Sanku Maots’ai 三顾冒菜 – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

We tried this new malatang* restaurant in Burwood, after I promised my wife that we’d just go out for a light Chinese meal “probably something quick like noodles… not something heavy, like hotpot, or anything like that”. Though 576 Google Maps reviews with an average score of 5.0 is quite suspicious, I wasn’t offered any inducements or discounts for posting a review, and the food was actually quite good.

Priced at $42.80/kg, there is quite a reasonable selection of seafood, meat, vegetable, and processed items. All soup bases other than their traditional beef base are advertised as vegan, though I can’t really see how this would factor into things, as it’s surely impossible to keep vegan in a place like this.

The shared tongs ensure a reasonable degree of pendelluft between ingredient tubs, and I’d not think that many would be keen to pay $42.80 for boiled vegetables either.

I aimed to avoid heavily processed foods like fish balls, and chose a 526 gram bowl ($22.51) of mostly seafood (prawns, clams, sliced black fish – great), marinated meat (no frozen sliced meat rolls), tofu, with a small quantity of vegetables in the Signature Szechuan Broth – medium spiciness 经典川味 broth.

Service was slick, quick, and the meal was tasty. The medium level of spiciness was the perfect level for me, and the soup was fragrant, tasty, and warming. The chicken was unusually good.

My “not-hungry” wife chose a 548 gram bowl ($23.45) with more vegetables, some thin rice noodles, and zero seafood in the Herbal Three-Fresh Healthy Broth 草本三鲜锅底. This broth was also quite tasty and flavourful, and the noodles here did help to bring up some of the flavour that is often lost when having a non/low-carb malatang.

Overall, the meal was good. I’m still a little press X to doubt about the 5.0 star review, but you’re right. I’d also not have any reason to dock it stars, I guess.

*: I am informed by netizens that maocai and malatang are actually somewhat distinct concepts, with maocai featuring a smaller volume of soup, and being designed to be eaten with rice. That would certainly explain the rice cookers filled with all-you-can-spoon rice, which we completely ignored.

Sanku Maots’ai 三顾冒菜
228 Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134

Categories
Thai

Tay – Rosebery NSW Restaurant Review

Social media darling Tay has been tearing up the feeds for a couple of months now, and a recent wifeless weekday off provided the opportunity to put their gai yang Thai roast chicken ($20) to the ultimate test – my parents.

The chicken was pretty good, and importantly dissimilar to anything I’d had before. The marinade was sweet and slightly spicy, with a strong pepper flavour to it. Though roasted, the skin was not crispy, likely the result of the drenching of marinade. The meat was adequately juicy, though not extraordinarily so, and overall well received by both my parents as well as my wife (reheated in the microwave that night).

The small chips ($6) were freshly fried and crispy, seasoned with chicken salt. Only about half of these brave potato soldiers survived the drive to my parents’ place.

Notes – parking around the restaurant is not that plentiful, though the Botany Rd clearway is not in effect between the hours of 10AM-5:30PM and that might be your best bet. Limited numbers of chickens available per day however means that if you’re going to rock up after 10AM it would be best to pre-order via text message earlier in the day to avoid disappointment.

Tay
781A Botany Rd, Rosebery NSW 2018