Categories
Market Stall Middle Eastern

Sev’s Turkish Gozleme – Sutherland NSW Restaurant Review

I’ve been relocated to a small health facility west of the Western Sydney location I was previously at, and there is on a semi-regular basis a gozleme stand. I had this mixed gozleme ($16) with chicken, beef, mushroom, spinach and feta – essentially everything they had to offer.

It was really not bad, kind of on the top end of what you’d expect to pay for a gozleme, and could have done with a bit more cheese and spinach, but overall competent and highly edible in comparison to the usual stuff that’s available at a health facility of this stature.

Though I had this in Western Sydney and the company lists itself on its social media in Greystanes, from an online search it appears that their most frequent location appears to be the Shire Farmers Market in Sutherland, and thus this is where I have chosen to drop the pin.

Sev’s Turkish Gozleme
Occasionally in Blacktown, Occasionally at the Shire Farmer’s Market
131 Flora St, Sutherland NSW 2232

Categories
Japanese

Kashiwa Yakiniku – Crows Nest NSW Restaurant Review

My wife recently tried her hand at sitting her second quiz for the first time, a feat that she suspects she’ll have to do more than once. I happily took the opportunity to take us to dinner afterwards at nearby Yakiniku restaurant, not knowing at this point that such restaurants may or may not be more local to me from 2026 onwards (wow! I never thought I’d get to see this side of the bridge!)

Our assortment of expensive self-cooked meats include chicken thigh fillets in shioyaki marinade ($14.90), pork jowl in tontoro spicy miso ($19.90 – pictured above), special wagyu beef rib ($27.90) and ox tongue ($24.90).

I think it’s kind of hard to differentiate between a really good yakiniku restaurant and one that’s merely moderately OK. All meats were edible, even when imperfectly cooked by the two of us. The marinades were tasty but not overpowering. I wonder if it would’ve been more economical to order a set.

I personally feel like $10.90 for some veggie wrap , ie, lettuce and bean paste, was poor value for something you often get for free.

The signature tebasaki chicken wings ($13.80), in comparison to the raw meats for barbequing, was actually very special. They had a really interesting slightly sour, sweet, and salty taste, very crunchy with a light batter, and moist on the inside. They were some of the best and most different wings I’ve had in some time, and will now be something I actively search for on other menus.

We were not satisfied after our $112.30 meal, and got a shawarma elsewhere.

Kashiwa Yakiniku
17 Falcon St, Crows Nest NSW 2065

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