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.
I was fresh off the plane, with my luggage at Southern Cross, looking for some viennoiserie at 2:30PM. Sadly there were no obvious nearby locations available, and I settled on an acceptable alternative within a short walk.
The first of two bagels I had was this absolutely loaded Salt ‘N Sauer ($15), packed with an unreasonable quantity of salted beef, a mountain of saukerkraut, and a small amount of dijon mustard on a sesame seed topped rye bagel. This was truly quite filling for something relatively compact in two-dimensional space, though true to its name was quite flavourful, erring on the edge of being too salty (but not too sauer).
After eating half of the above bagel, I then turned my attentions to the Miss U Lox ($16.50), a classical kind of smoked salmon bagel with cream cheese, pickled red onion, and cress, again on rye. This bagel was more expensive but much smaller than the other, reflecting recent increases in price across all brands for smoked salmon products. The filling was simple but clean feeling and tasty, though this did tend to mean that certain bites leant the other way into having inadequate flavour. The sweet pickles came in handy in dealing with the excess bread.
Overall I had a pretty enjoyable meal, but it turns out I was the schmuck, because I went to a bagel shop looking for ‘classical’ bagels, not realising that it was run by Asians and thus missing out on a likely good quality Asian-fusion menu. Maybe I’d try a miso tuna.
I picked this up from the freezer aisle of a local Asian grocery store. The picture on the label promised juicy, fatty, braised pork with pickles. I expected the pickles to not be a major ingredient, firstly because they were left out of the picture, but also because of the text that said “meat only goodness”.
The pickles were, in fact, a major component. The bowl, heated up via a combination effort of steaming and microwaving, was probably 50/50 pork and mustard greens.
The flavour of the food was quite strong and salty, though we ate it by itself rather than accompanied by rice, which I assume is how it was designed. The mustard greens and sichuan pepper contributed the majority of the flavour, in addition to an enthusiastic quantity of soy sauce.
The pork was a combination of fatty pork belly as well as pieces of lean meat. The pork belly bits were delicious, fatty, and delivered the characteristic melt-in-your-mouth quality despite having been frozen and reheated two ways. The lean bits of pork were in my opinion too lean to be enjoyable.
Overall thoughts: Promising, but way too salty for me to buy again to eat without rice.
Xianjiuji Sichuan Braised Pork with Pickles 香九记四川扣肉 EAN 9301168240064
The first time and only time we ate at Mary’s would’ve probably been somewhere between 2015 and 2018. I remember first hearing about the place on the now-defunct platform Zomato, (which was still alive when this blog first started), and waiting in line a non-insignificant period of time to have our promised fried chicken. Though almost ten years have passed since that visit, I still remember going upstairs, the dim lighting, the loud music – all things that were there for people who were not us. All we wanted to do was have what was allegedly very good fried chicken. And I think it was good.
Now, around ten years later, we’ve once again eaten Mary’s fried chicken, this time skipping the grunge bar vibes and consuming it from the safety of our own home. The half bird ($24) has increased in price, but remains very good, with a craggly batter. The thigh piece was really juicy and excellent, though the breast piece, less so.
The fries ($5) were fries. No better worse than those from your local global fast food chain.
The gravy ($3) was truly terrible. It had this extremely burnt taste and was nigh-inedible. I hope it was a problem with the batch rather than their standard recipe, because I would not be able to put my name to this gravy had I made it.
Overall thoughts The fried chicken was good, but avoid the gravy. Ordering online means that you won’t have to subject yourself to the darkness and loud noises inside.
We’ve been alternating between Circa and unexcitinglocal cafes within walking distance of work for the past 5 years, and so it was very cool for us to go to a completely different Western Sydney restaurant for a completely different kind of Western Sydney breakfast this past Monday morning after night shift.
We had a bit of an omakase cultural immersion experience, led by our Tamil friend and colleague, for whom Muthu Curry Restaurant has been a frequent haunt ever since his university days. That is, he picked, we ate. Read on to discover what little I understood of the delicious things we had.
We started with some fried foods from the hot fried food counter. I know not what these are – I can only relate them to what I know, which is to say that they were similar to spring rolls or egg rolls on the outside, but filled with potato and proteinaceous filling on the inside. Google tells me these are known as ‘short eats’ or ‘Chinese rolls’. I cannot independently verify.
The different fillings were all pretty similar, and we were able to sample some with fish, mutton, and pure vegetable. Were it not for the discrete chunk of meat in the mutton, I would have thought it identical to the ones without. They were fine. They were not bad. But they were so similar to each other that were it not an omakase experience needing to cater to several different levels of meat and non-meat eaters, I wouldn’t get a bunch of different ones.
We had two dosas that looked externally identical, and so only one photo is provided above. They were served with what was described to me as a selection of sambal, curry dip, and white curry.
Diving into dosa, the paneer dosa ($12.90) was excellent, with a mild creamy paneer filling, a light and slightly crispy pastry, and of course the three flavourings to eat the dosa with. It’s just incredible what they can accomplish in taste, size, and variety, for the price.
The keema dosa ($14.90) had some meat in it, which was fine, but really the paneer dosa is the one to get here. Given the meat was in chunks it was also harder to ensure that each mouthful had some filling, whereas the paneer was more homogeneous and spreadable.
We also had two plates of egg roti and curry. The first to be discussed is eggroti ($8) with lamb curry ($10) and dal. The egg roti was mild – egg sandwiched between layers of soft, non-crispy roti – and a perfect spongy vehicle to soak up both the dal and the curry sauce. The lamb was appropriately tender, non-gristly, though did not excite.
The same dish but with chicken curry ($9) was much more fruitily spicy and exciting, though I guess it was important to have both the flavours.
This is going to sound really uncultured but I prefer prana chai made in my kitchen to this masala chai ($3) that was probably made in the proper art and way.
Overall We had a lot of food for just $16 per person for a group of five, and I enjoyed the meal overall, even though they didn’t have the kothu roti that I was originally keen on (they only start kothu roti around noon). I’d definitely come back, or otherwise go to a different local restaurant in the area.
