Category: Bakery

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Bakery Café Korean

Tenacious Bakehouse – Darlinghurst NSW Restaurant Review

I’ve been trying to arrange an all-purpose wedding and interview suit for a few weeks now, a process that has involved several trips into the city, with at least one more to come. On my first trip into the big smoke I wanted to try one of Yeongjin Park’s (ex-Lode) famous pastries at Picco Leo, however arrived there only to find that he had left the previous week, with his specialties off the menu and probably never to return. It was a dark period for the pastry community, with us adherents left in limbo as he moved his operation from the CBD to his new Darlinghurst digs, Tenacious Bakehouse.

I was able to visit Tenacious Bakehouse as a bit of a sidequest from my second of three attendances at SuitSupply. Incredibly small and nondescript, I actually walked past it and around the block through some garbage-smelling alleys before I was able to find what I was looking for.

This Portuguese Tart ($12) was the only thing that I knew I wanted before I went. I’m generally someone who enjoys a Portuguese tart, and this had come highly recommended by some of the city’s top pastryheads (though not the top pastryhead, who I believe is yet to go). Tenacious Bakehouse’s Portuguese Tart has a super-crispy multi-layered pastry, with a deep cup accommodating a huge mass of runny eggy custard. The egg custard filling was softer and runnier than your usual pastel de nata, but not to its detriment, just different. It was not too sweet, one of the defining positive characteristics of any Asian-influenced dessert or pastry. While I enjoyed the unexpected crispiness of the pastry, I did feel that the pastry got a bit bitter towards the edges. It’s certainly baked to a dark brown, as you can see from the photos, and I think probably a little darker than most normal food is baked. Was the pastry a bit burnt? Was it a bit of over-enthusiastic caramelisation? Was it completely intentional? I don’t know, I’m not an expert. Either way, it was easily overlookable, and didn’t really detract from the overall positive experience.

The Pork Mandu ($10) was actually very good. It was like a three-way cross between a croissant, one of those Maltese pastizzi things filled with ricotta and spinach from the freezer aisle at the supermarket, and a Chinese pork bun. (Understanding totally that this is a Korean bakery with Korean staff and literally told to be to be Korean in inspiration by the very nice Korean woman manning the counter, I just haven’t had that many mandus in my time to reference back to, and none that have tasted like this). The pastry here was absolutely top tier, soft, flaky, delicate, oily, and buttery. There was no suspicion of burning, only a sense of suspicion about how they managed to make bread and butter into something so good. The filling was delicious mix of pork and vegetables, with plenty of moistness and rich and savoury umami flavour. Officially/unofficially it was described as a big dumpling, and I love dumplings. I approve of this message.

Next was the extremely unassuming and unattractive Red Bean Pandoro ($10), also recommended to me because I look like I enjoy a good Asian snack. I think the majority of disfigurement comes from the surface layer dusting of yellow powder (I think it might be soy based, I have asked for further clarification – EDIT: Scarlett replied, it is injeolmi based, a Korean rice cake covered in red or mung or azuki or other bean powder), which fills in the Viennoiserie’s natural crevasses. Never having had a pandoro in my life and knowing what they are only from a quick Google, I think I would describe this more as a filled cronutuffin than anything else, with buttery laminated croissant pastry, custard cream filling reminiscent of a filled donut, and in the shape of a muffin. Shape analysis aside, I again quite enjoyed the richness and velvetiness of the internal pastry, which was complimented by this time a sweeter combination of custard cream and red bean paste. The custard cream was surprisingly light and not very viscous, while the red bean paste was more substantial, both in flavour and in texture. The red bean tasted a little bit different to what I had imagined from just looking at it – I wonder if this is because Korean red bean paste is different to Chinese red bean paste, or just because I haven’t had red bean in years because my partner refuses to have it. Either way this dessert as a whole was a little bit sweeter than the Portuguese tart, but very good, possibly better. I couldn’t tell you. I liked all three.

SECOND VISIT, OCTOBER 2022

I found myself back in the area, this time with my partner in tow, and took the opportunity to go back. We had this blueberry tart ($12), laminated pastry with a frangipane filling topped with pastry cream and plump and juicy blueberries. Interestingly the frangipane was a bit herbaceous, kind of basilly, though I am yet to get confirmation. Confirmation received, it was mint.

The other thing we had on our second visit was this banana tiramisu tart ($11). This was pretty good, essentially banoffee, I don’t know what the difference would be between something you’d call banoffee and something you’d call banana tiramisu. It was only whilst looking at my card transaction summary later on at home that I realised that I spent $11-12 a piece on a couple of pastries. I think that it’s easy to ignore the price when you’re there and buying it and then outside and munching it, but that actually is a bit of money, and perhaps why half a decade in the workforce and making a liveable wage (though not by the standards of for example someone even a couple of years into certain fields of finance) we have nothing to really show for it.

All in all, I think you should go. I think there’s probably a bit of a renaissance of Korean-run Viennoiserie on the East Coast at the moment. Maybe it’s my own personal bias as an Asian person, but from Bakemono in Melbourne to Tenacious here in Sydney, some of the highest quality and most interesting pastries are coming from Korean bakers who are able to create both excellent renditions of classics, as well as top-notch fusion offerings.

I’m going to recommend Tenacious Bakehouse to my friend, housemate, and colleague who works down the street at the local faith-based healing service, but he’ll probably tell me he’s had better tarts at some monastery somewhere. Can’t please that guy.

Tenacious Bakehouse
101 Oxford St, Darlinghurst NSW 2010

Categories
Bakery Café

Hyper Hyper and Punch the Ploughman – Nowra NSW Restaurant Review

This little cafe just opened up in the Hyper Hyper space in Nowra and I’m here for it. There’s plenty of outdoor seating, good vibes, really artisan food, and good tunes.

I had their Lemon Citrus and Strawberry Tart ($6) on my first visit, with a coffee from next door after a night shift and before my drive back to Sydney. It was really pretty good. Eggy, like a portuguese tart, with a good buttery pastry and a lightly tart component from the strawberry. The best part of all was that it was not too sweet, just the right amount of sweet and sour for a little treat.

This is only an initial impression – more to come as I go back and back. They’re only in their first days now, but I think they’re on their way to becoming a Nowra institution.

SUBSEQUENT VISITS

The Maple Bacon Tart ($8) with tomato, caramelised onion, bab spinach, parmesan, and egg was delicious. It was extremely quiche like but with a puff pastry rather than shortcrust, with a deliciously umami mixture of fillings, as well as a great and highly complex, mildly sweet optional chutney on top. At $8 this was quite well sized and punched above its pricing in terms of flavour and fulfillment. I later brought one of these to my friend and colleague DTC. He appeared to enjoy it.

The Drifter Toastie ($12) with roast beef, potato rosti,beetroot relish, horseradish mayo, Jarlsberg, cheddar, baby spinach and caramelised onion was also a treat. One of the best sandwiches, toasted or untoasted, that I’ve had in a while, each bite of Punch the Ploughman’s drifter was full of flavour and texture. The meat had a tinge of smoke and charcoal grill flavour to it, and the serving of Jarlsberg was very generous. My eating (and romantic) partner especially loved the texture and flavour added by the potato rosti, and yet again this sandwich is a star showing of Nowra’s finest.

Baked on site, this Rhubarb Tart ($6) was not very different to the strawberry tart above, though I think a little sweeter and less tarty given the different fruit.

The Handkerchief Treat ($4), also baked on site, is a delicious mix between a cookie and a cupcake, with a slightly crispy exterior crust and a richly buttery interior. Flavoured with spiced pear syrup, this little treat is not too sweet, reminiscent of nothing in particular from Cafe Cre Asion expect for maybe in its high quality.


The Blueberry Danish, another in-house creation (they get some of their other stuff from Brickfields, but I guess it’s really only worth writing about the stuff they bake on site), was not bad, but probably not as good as some of their other offerings. The pastry of this was quite dense and bready, and I found the filling of lemon curd and blueberry to be a bit sweeter than I’d like.

I’m not usually one for smashed avocado ($12) as I feel like there are often more interesting options available, but after ripping through most of Punch the Ploughman’s menu in our first few visits there was not much left uneaten. I shouldn’t have discounted their avo offering so easily – this particular smashed avo was quite delightful, with a bed of crispy grilled sourdough and a sprinkling of hemp seeds, tomato salsa and pomegranate. This dish, in two easily shareable pieces, exhibited an extremely high degree of freshness and would easily sell for 50% more at any Sydney cafe.

The Brekky Burrito ($15) with mildly-local South Coast Tilba Jersey milk haloumi (though to be honest, Tilba is further from Nowra than Nowra is from Sydney), dukkah scrambled eggs, tomato salsa, avocado, percorino and sriracha had amazing and unexpected kebab energy. Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good kebab, and the overall Middle-Easternness of this burrito (wrapped in a pita, not tortilla) elevated this above every other brekky burrito I’ve had to date.

A rare misstep for Punch the Ploughman is their Brekky Burger ($14), with bacon, scrambled egg, aioli and chilli jam, and avocado on Turkish bread. Though I’m a big fan of the brekky burrito, I had two areas of complaint for this burger, which appears intermittently on their specials board. The first is the bacon, which was in my opinion a bit harder than I would’ve liked. There is always a fine line between crispy and hard, and I didn’t feel like they walked on the right side of that tightrope. My second point of criticism would be about the chilli jam. I understand that it’s trying to be different from all the other bacon and egg offerings in town, but it was a flavour combination that personally did not tickle my pickle. Get the burrito instead. Maybe you can ask them to add bacon to it. I don’t know. I’d be too shy to.

Another item off the specials menu, another item I was less keen on is the Quiche of the Day with salad ($14). You can tell that by this point I’ve already eaten everything I actually want from them. Starting with the positives, the salad was quite good, with the surprise showing of a little bit of smashed avocado and feta. The quiche, however, did not live up to my expectations. It’s vegetarianess wasn’t stated on the specials board, and although I didn’t ask I don’t think that’s necessarily a given for all quiches. It was very pumpkin forward, and whilst I did like the egg and feta I felt that overall it was lesser than their much better maple bacon tart, which is extremely quiche-like in and of itself. I also felt that the special sauce from the maple bacon tart would’ve gone a long way to adding some more flavour to this, but I say that at risk of sounding like I should’ve just ordered the tart from the start. This quiche might be good for someone who is prohibited from having meat or bacon and who wouldn’t miss that extra dimension of umami that a good cured meat provides, but for the non-dietarily-restricted out there there’s definitely a better option already on the menu.

The Journeyman Toastie ($12), the second of their three toasties (the other is vegetarian and I have no plans to try it given my other experiences with their vegetarian food), both in order of me trying it as well as in my enjoyment. This particular toastie consisted of ham, tomato apple chutney, Jarslberg, cheddar, and a whole load of baby spinach. Though it was lesser than the Drifter, I found myself enjoying the synergy between the saltiness of the deceptively thick ham, the sourness of the pickle, and the BBQ-sauce-like tomato apple chutney. The intermingling of flavours was different and new, but also not crazy like that of the brekky burger. A very safe and good choice, though when I brought my colleague DTC a surprise toastie for lunch I got him the Drifter instead.

This vanilla custard tart ($5), baked in-house, was pretty good. It was substantially sized, with a soft and creamy and not-too-sweet filling with the occasional black dot of goodness. The pastry was also soft (sadly), which I did not like as much as the Portuguese tart at Hyper Hyper and supplied by The Portuguese Corner. It came room-temperature, and though I wanted to take it home and heat it up in the oven to see if it would make it any better, it did not survive the 850 metre drive home before it was eaten. There was a red traffic light along the way to blame for that.

This is an in-house raspberry muffin ($5), which was pretty good, with softness, sweetness, and some white custard-cream like substance baked in.

The 14th item I tried at Punch the Ploughman was this chocolate chai cake with strawberries, vanilla cream, and walnuts. My partner had actually saved me some of hers from her previous trip down to Nowra, but sadly one of our cats got to it before me. This cake was not too sweet, with an interesting chai presence and extreme moistness owing to the mountain of cream. The cake pieces were chocolately with a brownie like consistency, which was different. Not bad, but too much for one human.

I finally managed to try the steak and ale pie ($8) at Punch the Ploughman on my final morning in Nowra, after being in town for the last three months. Perhaps the pie was better as a concept rather than a reality, and perhaps I had hyped it up in my mind too much before finally getting to eat it, but sadly it did not hit the spot, flavour-wise. The topping of their house chutney rather than the standard tomato sauce was a good move, but the flavour of mirepox, beef, and ale was exactly as it should have been, but I’m afraid just didn’t hit the salty spot that I was looking for that day. Despite this, I can say with certainty that the consistency and ingredient-packed nature of the filling was far superior to local pie-based competitor Earnest Arthur, whose pies I have found too strong in gravy and too low in solids (but more to my preference in terms of flavours).

This lumberjack hummingbird cake ($6), made by a customer, was not bad. Relatively moist, with a good apple-like flavour and interesting textural differences between the top layer and the body of the cake. I don’t know if it will be a regular thing.

OVERALL I’ve eaten most of their menu, and all but one item that I actually want to eat from Punch the Ploughman. Most of their stuff is great, though their meat pies elude me, as they come on at around 10:30 (after I get home from a night shift) and disappear a few hours after that (before I wake up after my final night shift and drive back to Sydney). What can you do?

(EDIT: See above, finally got the pie)

Both their sweet stuff and their savoury stuff is good, but I would avoid their vegetarian stuff in favour of their meated stuff for the non-vegetarians out there.

Punch the Ploughman
85 North St, Nowra NSW 2541

Categories
Bakery

Goodwood Bakeshop – Marrickville NSW Restaurant Review

Our most recent Marrickville Vietnamese meal was desserted by a trip down the road to Goodwood Bakeshop, a new-ish bakery offering an assortment of savoury and sweet pastries as well as a range of breads baked on premises. Despite their popularity and a small line down the street, our experience was a festival of speed, with good clarity of displays (sans pricing), a limited and focused offering, and a lack of seating all contributing to fast service.

My first and favourite bite from Goodwood was of their Miso Peanut Butter Cookie ($4), a rich and buttery cookie with a soft centre and crunchy exterior, with umami miso and peanut butter flavours that were delicious and most importantly not too sweet. The light coating of roasted sesame seeds on the superior surface of this cookie served to enhance its Asian-ness, making it overall a good cookie that I would recommend to an Asian or non-Asian friend.

The aforementioned peanut butter cookie was eaten on the street outside the bakery, though the four other sweet treats that we tried were eaten at a secondary location.

The Apple Cardamom Hand Pie ($8) was my first non-cookie bite, and sadly too sweet for my taste. I enjoyed the multi-layered pie crust, but felt that the sticky, sweet filling was a bit overpowering of the whole.

I enjoyed the croissant portion of the Lemon & Hazelnut Twice Baked Croissant ($8), with its nice and crispy crust and buttery interior folds, but again felt that the additions, in particular the lemon marmalade filling, was too sweet for my liking.

At the risk of repeating myself, the Pecan Cardamom Orange Scroll ($8) was again too sweet for my liking. The pastry of this scroll was appropriately dense, and I enjoyed the spicy orange and cardamom flavour and generous helping of pecans within. This would’ve been a winner, in my opinion, if the top layer of icing sugar had been left out.

After hearing me complain about the last three pastries, you will be surprised to read of my thorough enjoyment of this vanilla slice($8). This slice offered a reprieve of the sugar load from our previous entries, with an unusually thick and viscous custardy filling complete with black dots, the universal sign of vanilla excellence. While the pastry wasn’t paradigm changing, the filling was in my opinion quite special and most importantly “not-too-sweet”. Excellent.

OVERALL THOUGHTS (AT INITIAL VISIT – JULY 2022)
The majority of what I had at Goodwood Festival of Sweetness was too sweet for my liking. As always, it’s possible that my preferences in terms of pastries are culture-bound, as “not-too-sweet” is used as a common phrase to denote praise of a dessert in Chinese culture. I’d like to come back for some savoury treats that will hopefully be not-too-salty.

REVISITED, MARCH 2023

This seasonal hot cross bun ($4) was really solid. There was a great amount of fruit – both of the citrus and dessicated grape variety, as well as a little bit of spice that set this HCB apart from from the crowd. Not too sweet at all.

This everything bagel croissant ($8), ordered for my fiancée in honour of the recent Academy Award winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once, was more than met the eye. I didn’t know, when I ordered that it would be filled with wilted spinach and some feta-like substance (I have reviewed the images and there was no description posted anywhere in the bakery), but I’m glad it was, because $8 would be too much for just a croissant encrusted in some seeds. This ended up being a really tasty combination, with the crunch of the croissant exterior, the butteriness of the pastry, the salty and fragrant sesame seeds and the savoury and creamy flavours from the filling all combining to create an almost spanakopita like croissant (a fitting prelude to the quarter-Greek wedding we went to later that day). This gets a thumbs up from me but not my partner (she does not like spinach, even though this was ordered specifically for her. How rude.)

I have no complaints at all about this miso, eggplant, pumpkin, and togarashi croissant ($7.50) which was yummy with all its vaguely Japanese inspired ingredients combined with good pastry-work.

The last item in our breakfast were these fig danishes ($8.50 each), which they gave us two of instead of one in a very nice gesture as they were nearing the end of day. These were not bad, and I know I’m being annoying because 1) I’m kind of looking a gift horse in the mouth, and 2) literally in my initial review of this place in July 2022 I complained extensively about things being a bit too sweet, but I did think these were not super flavourful. I don’t know exactly the reason – perhaps it was time based – but there just wasn’t a huge amount of flavour in the figs compared to the most recent fig pastry that I had at Lucien in Parramatta. Despite this, I did enjoy them, and in particular was impressed by how big and filling they were for the price, and again the quality of the laminated pastry at the base. We not only enjoyed the first danish on the day we got them, but also the second one on the following morning.

COMMENTS
This clearly wasn’t my doing, as Pegfeeds definitely doesn’t (and if I’m being honest, shouldn’t) have the readership or cone of influence to actually affect anyone’s business in any shape whatsoever, but I was really impressed that none of my complaints about extreme sweetness I had the first time around were applicable on my second visit. Instead, both the savoury and sweet flavours were well balanced on my second visit, though maybe a bit lacking in the fig danish.

Solid.

Goodwood Bakeshop
 297 Marrickville Rd, Marrickville NSW 2204
0420 543 837

Categories
Bakery Vietnamese

Xcel Roll & Bowl – Parramatta NSW Restaurant Review

My favourite Western Sydney pork roll of childhood was at Red Light Bakery in the now-demolished Wentworthville Mall. There was something truly special about the soft, non-hard bread that never hurt my delicate teenage mouth that I have not been able to find anywhere else. I was saddened to find, on my return to living in Wentworthville after a ten year absence that the Mall and its bakery had been levelled to make way for a new apartment block. Enter Xcel Roll.

Xcel Roll, branch name of Mascot favourite Hong Ham, delivers the goods to a seldom-matched level of perfection. On offer are banh mi with a variety of fillings, though early risers should note that their crackling roast pork roll is not available in the early hours of the morning. While you may expect to line up down the street for a banh mi at the Mascot mothership, Xcel Roll’s Parramatta branch seems not to have won the fame of its family members. The wait is short and the service is fast and sweet.

The Classic Pork Roll. What is there to say about a banh mi that so nearly approaches perfection? The salad is plentiful, the carrots are tangy but not soggy. The pate and lard are adequately proportioned. The birds eye chillis are hot as they should be. The meaty fillings are your standard trio, and most importantly of all, the bread is crunchy without causing unnecessary oral trauma. This is the gold standard.

The Roast Pork Roll ($8.50) is as good as their cold pork roll. The roast pork is accompanied by pork skin, warm and crunchy and fatty. This mixes well with the sauces, ultimately producing a more creamy mouthfeel than their standard cold meat pork roll. Again a very good roll.

SIDE NOTE
Since this review was first written Xcel Roll Parramatta has moved around the corner from 52 Macquarie St to 42 George St, and gone up a weight class from being a tiny hole in the wall bakery to now a small hole in the wall restaurant, offering basic pho and rice bowls atop it’s standard banh mi offering.

$12 makes for an unfortunately somewhat basic Beef Pho. While I thought that the provided chilli sauce was particularly good, shortcomings of this particular bowl included the somewhat basic tasting broth as well as the fully cooked through beef, with no rare option available. In my opinion I would always choose to spend the extra $2 for a special beef pho from Pho Master across the road.

While I was disappointed by Xcel Roll and Bowl’s beef pho, their Chicken Pho ($12) was actually quite good. The soup had a more complex flavour, and in this case the bowl did not suffer from the lack of rare meat, as you’d certainly want your chicken cooked all the way through. Other positive aspects of both this bowl of pho and the beef one are that they is served piping hot, and remained hot until I got home to be able to eat them, as well as the perfect sizing of the bowl, bean sprouts, and Thai basil, which meant that there was no juggling required between different bowls.

VERDICT
The success of nearby Destination Roll on Church St suggests to me that Xcel Roll has a ways to go with their marketing. Small hot bread shops essentially survive on word of mouth, and I hope that this review will help to bolster Xcel Roll’s place in Parramatta’s collective consciousness.

It’s good/5

Xcel Roll Parramatta
42 George St, Parramatta NSW 2150
0431 300 806

Xcel Roll Auburn
The Bell Tower, Unit 23/191 Parramatta Rd, Auburn NSW 2144

Categories
Bakery Café

Bench Coffee Co – Melbourne VIC Restaurant Review

We actually visited Bench Coffee Co a few hours before we did their sister store Saint Dreux. Truly falling for the hype and packaging, we spent a great deal of money on some Korean-style dacquoise (their only food offering) and coffee.

The flavour options on offer are Raspberry, Black Sesame, Vanilla Sea Salt, Matcha, and Chocolate, each sandwiched between identical nutty biscuits ($7 each). We chose a box with one of everything, because I am stupid, but at least it meant that we got a nice presentation box to put in the recycling.

The dacquoise at Bench played like a cross between a macaroon and a macaron as imagined by me as a child when I didn’t know the difference. The pastry, identical between all flavours, was semi-sweet, airy and compressible with a strongly nutty almond-like quality. There was possibly too much pastry after the third dacquoise, and certainly by the fifth.

My favourite of the batch was the raspberry, which was fresh and light in comparison to for example the vanilla sea salt which I felt was too oily and buttery. One positive aspect of these desserts is that no flavour was too over-sweet, but this did unfortunately mean that the oiliness and butteriness was able to come more, and probably too much.

The coffee ($4.50 for a long black and $5.50 for a soy latte) was expensive but only normal in quality. I will however commend them on their bottomless complimentary sparkling water on tap, which they even let us fill our drink bottle with.

IN SUMMARY

If there’s one thing I can surmise from my experiences at LT Cardigan’s two Melbourne stores Saint Dreux and Bench Coffee Co it’s that they have an extremely strong social media presence that is very much in excess of their actual food quality. While their food is by no means bad, one would think that, based on how much hype surrounds them online, that their cafes were unmissable Meccas for anyone venturing North of the Yarra. Ultimately what I think is that their marketing guy should get a raise.

Get one dacquoise for curiosity, maybe another if you enjoyed the first. Not the whole lot.

BENCH COFFEE CO. Lt Collins
321 Little Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000