Category: Asian Fusion

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
Asian Fusion

It’s Corn – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

Writing about the fourth restaurant in Burwood Chinatown in a row made this feel a bit too much like a job rather than a hobby again, so here are just some thoughts about the flagship It’s Corn ($9.50) product:

  • I can’t believe they made a restaurant purely out of a meme
  • The whipped cream was a mistake, but it wasn’t a mistake to get it on the side so that we could try it
  • I’ve never paid this much for a cob of corn, and I hope I never will again
  • I don’t even know what category of cuisine to put this under – with “premium” cheese, chilli, butter, mayo, whipped cream, parsley as the toppings it’s hard to say it’s definitely even Asian inspired, but other options on the menu do have gochujang and black sessame, so I guess it’ll just be vaguely “Asian fusion”, the first time the label has been applied to anything this unfancy.
  • I’m a microplane stan since 2024
  • It’s overall pretty missable given the glut of other options available.

It’s Corn
Shop 9A / 127/133 Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134

Categories
Asian Fusion Café Chinese

Ladies & Gentlemen Cafe Diner – Marrickville NSW Restaurant Review

Looking at these photos from our meal at Ladies & Gentleman Cafe six months ago I wasn’t particularly excited, but then looking back at the notes that I took from our visit it looks like the taste and quality of the food was more impressive than its visual appeal alone. Allow me to try and represent faithfully what I was thinking of when I ate there.

This Porky Belly ($18) sandwich, in particular, did not look exciting from the photos. The visual side of things is decidedly boring, but my notes from our meal reflect that it was actually very good. I’ve made reference to the fatty and soft soy caramelised pork belly, the crisp and tart apple, and soft and sweet Japanese milk bread with the crust cut off – just like my mum used to never do, because who can afford to waste a crust?

The Ladies and Gentleman Rice Bowl ($22) with teriyaki salmon was also very good, with a runny onsen egg perfectly coating the sushi rice, delicious miso eggplant, and softly cooked salmon all adding up to a variety of different tastes and textures in one bowl.

All I have written down for the Taiwanese deep-fried pork chop ($8) is “Pork chop is just my gf secretly took me to hot star”.

Thoughts
Past-me thought it was very good. Reliving those previous photos and notes, I guess Asian-fusion brunch is right up my alley. Future-me might even go back.

Ladies & Gentlemen Cafe Diner
295 Enmore Rd, Marrickville NSW 2204

Categories
Asian Fusion Café

Queen St Cafe – Berry NSW Restaurant Review

Queen St Cafe, not to be confused with Queen St Eatery, also on Queen St in Berry, is a quiet cafe tucked towards the back of an indoor arcade with what seems like a high tea focus, unusually with very large plates, and an assortment of unusual chairs (not photographed). We took advantage of my temporary residence in Nowra to explore Queen St Cafe’s non-high tea offerings, an all day lunch menu.

These is the lobster po boys ($30), which featured much bread within which was stuffed southern fried lobster tails, slaw, frie donions, shallots, coriander, and hot sauce. For an additional $2 (a total of $32 for this large plate of moderate food, our house fries were upgraded to truffle fries. This was no doubt an expensive choice from a menu of expensive choices. We do like a good lobster though, and this deep fried lobster did fulfill that craving. They did I think overuse the mayonnaise and probably also oversalted everything. The chips were fresh, which is what you would expect at this price point.

The Japanese pancake ($20) with cabbage, broccoli, carrot, red onion, wakame, sesame seeds, a poached egg, ginger, tokatsu sauce and mayonnaise was Berry’s local take on an okonomoyaki. Whilst there was a bit more flour that I would’ve expected from a usual okonomoyaki and they had run out of bonito flakes for the day, the flavours of this dish were actually quite accurate and pleasing – a mixture of salty, tangy and umami. It was honestly pretty good, though they could have standed being a little more light handed with the sauce.

COMMENTS At the end of the day, there are a lot of options for food in Berry. Whilst Queen St Cafe was not bad, it wasn’t what I would recommend if you only had time in town for one or two meals.

Queen St Cafe
94 Queen St Shop 5, Stan Burt Arcade, Berry NSW 2535
(02) 4444 4612

Categories
Asian Fusion Café

Leaf Cafe & Co – Clemton Park NSW Restaurant Review

Today we review a cafe local to our new digs in mild-Inner-South-West Sydney, a place where my partner’s consultant once took her to celebrate the end of internship and the beginning of many more years of service.

We had the Chicken Katsu Sando ($18), an unexpectedly large mass of food consisting of thick cut crumbed and deep fried chicken breast, sauce and slaw between similarly thick cut pieces of toast, on a bed of fries. Though the food was not what I expected, I have absolutely no complaints about the quantity provided. This was a mass of carbohydrate, fats, and proteins for only $18, though I do take exception to the vast quantity of bread provided. In my imagination (based on past experience, mind you – see my reviews of Devon, Ippuku, Sandoitchi, Kentaro) the chicken in this sandwich would have come between soft fluffy untoasted white bread, which while I will admit is generally thick, is much more palatable in a malleable, untoasted form. The sandwich otherwise had good saucing with a bit of sweet okonomoyaki style sauce and Kewpie mayonnaise, as well as a surprisingly huge amount of chicken. The chips were fresh and fine.

The Halloumi Benedict ($18), but note the asbence of halloumi in the photo and exchange for ham, was quite a competent benedict with quite a good hollandaise sauce. Readers of this blog will note that we eat probably fewer benedicts than the average brunch-goer, usually opting for a more unusual or diverse item if available on the menu. Though I was not too fond of the eggplant, I did enjoy every other part of this benedict, even if the egg was a little more cooked than I would’ve liked. I particularly enjoyed the English muffin, which had both a nice crispiness on the exterior layer and a good absorbency for the hollandaise sauce on the interior surface. Would be sick to see this muffin used for a sausage and egg muffin like Haberfield’s finest.

$6.50 is no small amount to pay for a chocolate malt milkshake but it was what my partner wanted and I was in no position to resist. It was fine. Quite airy.

THOUGHTS
Nothing really bad happened to me during my visit to Leaf Cafe & Co but I have exhausted all of the things I wanted to try there, and would definitely circle the block to the other local restaurants and cafes before coming back.

Leaf Cafe & Co Clemton Park
12/60 Charlotte St, Clemton Park NSW 2194
(02) 8057 4784