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 stopped by this small Chinese bakery/cafe in Burwood on an eat-pray-love of our local area, the second in three stops for a late lunch that day.
All we had was this uji matcha canelé ($6.50), quite expensive for such a small item, but quite tasty. It had a nice crunchy exterior, with a soft and gooey interior, amplified further by the inclusion of a matcha cream central filling. The canelé was overall not too sweet (as expected from a Chinese bakery), with a pleasant bitter dimension from the matcha.
Overall quite a satisfying little treat. They also sell a 6 inch cake for $88, which is kind of wild pricing, in my opinion.
It’s rare for me to pay so much attention to the fitout of a cafe or restaurant, but Halfday Deli’s grey and red colour scheme really got me going – looking more like something out of the inner city than a shop on the podium level of a Wollongong apartment building.
The food was good, though our first and second choices were sold out for the day.
The beef & dip ($20) was a sandwich on ciabatta with three key ingredients – roast beef, provolone, and horseradish dressing, and the alleged inclusion of pickled fennel, which was neither here nor there. The tanginess of the mustard dressing was strong and delicious mixed with the roast beef, which, though less pink than in the online marketing photos, was still adequately moist and tender.
I enjoyed every bite of this sandwich both with and without the chicken gravy dip, though my wife thought that the dip was necessary to add saltiness and temper down the strong tangy horseradish taste.
The sausage & egg ($18) with a pork and fennel sausage patty and a slab of egg was the lesser of the two sandwiches (in my opinion), with a relatively mild unexciting flavour and texture carried mostly by the yoghurt ranch and dill pickles. Not something I’d visit for, though the beef and dip definitely was. Seeing as the chicken cotoletta focaccia option was not available, the staff were gracious enough to make this one for us on focaccia rather than the ciabatta that it usually comes with.
We also chose to add a small giardiniera salad and two hashbrowns for $9.50, which was the right choice. My wife enjoyed the crispy pickled vegetables, especially the cauliflower, as well as the sweet roasted walnuts – to name just a couple of the salad’s components.
The dressing of yoghurt ranch was the same white fluid that carried the sausage and egg, and equally enjoyable drizzled on vegetables as it was in the sandwich.
The hash browns were decent – crispy on the outside, unusually soft on the inside, and definitely too salty to eat by themselves.
Overall Really quite a good sandwich, and a good salad, from an outlet with many more options I’d like to try. I’d be open to coming back both for breakfast/lunch and their pizza dinner.
Halfday Deli Shop 1/38 Atchison St, Wollongong NSW 2500
Google Maps lists Yummy Noodle King 巴蜀小面 as a self-service restaurant rather than a Chinese restaurant, and in a sense that’s true.
We walked in with no expectations and asked for two noodles to be recommended by the staff, resulting in two noodle dishes and a plate of dumplings.
The pork and peas noodle 特色豌杂面 ($14.80) was really yummy, with great umami flavour from the soy braised pork mince, as well as a bit of chilli oil and the weird creaminess of the corn. The dish was, I thought, better eaten as pictured rather than mixed together, as mixing it up made the pea goo go everywhere, making it impossible to avoid when I wanted at times to just have a purely meaty mouthful.
The braised beef noodle soup 红烧牛腩面 ($15.80) was quite delicious, apart from the actual beef, which I had mixed feelings about. The taste of the broth was good, as was the presence of the sour Chinese pickles, though the beef itself had a bit of a corned beef or silverside flavour, which was weird to contemplate in the setting of a Chinese noodle bowl. Overall, I don’t think this made the bowl unenjoyable, however, I probably would have preferred a more Chinese tasting braised beef.
The pork and chive dumplings 水饺, which were 12 pieces for $13.80, were below par for the local area. Though the filling was reasonable, with sweet chives, the wrappers were a bit thicker than I would have liked, making the dumplings more floury and less meaty.
Overall, quite a nice restaurant, and we do have vague inclinations to come back, probably before this post is published.
The self-service nature of this restaurant refers to the fact that once the food is ready, our number was called and we had to go pick it up from the counter. The restaurant, similar to My Aunt’s Handmade Noodles, offers free noodle topups, though we did not take advantage of this as the shop was closing and we were very full already.
I saw Gaza Cola being sold at Cairo Takeaway recently, and rather than spend $5 on a single can, decided to maybe buy a case.
I ended up buying a slab of Gaza Cola sugar free and compared it to the memories of some Salaam Cola No Sugar that I had lying around as well as your average can of Diet Coke.
A direct head-to-head comparison was not performed, as the Salaam Cola, which I had first been introduced to by a member of the trade union movement, had somehow deflated in my pantry, and I was not comfortable drinking it.
In comparison to the Salaam Cola, the Gaza Cola was a bit lighter almost as if echoing the comparison between Diet Coke and Coke No Sugar. The bubbles seemed to be a little bit larger on the tongue and the taste was similarly less sharp almost in keeping with the different colours here.
Whilst I might enjoy a Salaam Cola No Sugar on occasion (honestly quite good with a squeeze of lime), I still think that Diet Coke is the most superior non-sugared diet cola for a sugarfree cokehead.
The Gaza Cola Sugar Free was really not that good, and now I have like 20 more of them to go and nowhere to really put them. (I no longer work in Western Sydney).
Maybe I should have just spent the $5 on a single Gaza Cola rather than $39.60 on a 24 pack case if I didn’t know if I’d like them.
Lovin’ Lamb was closed, and this stall in Burwood Chinatown was the nearest alternative.
We had these spicy but less spicy secret recipe lamb skewers ($12.60), which presented a good mixture of fatty and lean lamb coated in an enjoyable chilli-cumin seasoning.
