Category: Bakery

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Bakery Vietnamese

Happy Snack Cafe House – Homebush West NSW Restaurant Review

I found these photos on my computer from a year and a half ago, and realised I had never written anything about these porks roll. Searching through my Whatsapp chat with my girlfriend where sometimes feelings about banhs mi go, there was nothing noted, suggesting that these were neither memorably good nor memorably bad.

It doesn’t seem particularly fair, therefore, to even put up a post about Happy Snack Cafe, except for a fact that it acts as a reminder to myself that I’ve been here and that I don’t have to ever go back, unless it is to try some of their sit down options.

A completely unrelated flashback from the past is that it looks like we picked up these porks roll as we were actively worried about the possible impending death of our cat Evie. She had started wobbling all over the place, falling over, and had stopped eating. We had taken her to a couple of different vets who had given her IV fluids and each time she seemed to get better, but got worse again post-discharge.

Eventually we took her to the Small Animal Specialist Hospital (SASH) at North Ryde, where for the cost of $8,000 or so they put her in the MRI scanner under GA, took a CSF sample (from just under the occiput in cats!), and a bunch of other specialised tests. Seen by neurology, ophthalmology, dermatology, general surgery, and internal medicine, the presumptive diagnosis was thiamine deficiency based on increased signal intensity of bilateral basal nuclei. Some thiamine supplementation, and she didn’t have to die, and she’s been fine ever since.

These pork rolls were picked up on our way to pick up Evie from SASH. Here she is, in the car, with her neck all shaved for vascular access. I love her.

I honestly don’t remember enough about the porks roll to recommend Happy Snack Cafe House, but I remember a lot about SASH and can definitely recommend them to a friend or colleague.

Happy Snack Cafe House
104 The Crescent, Homebush West NSW 2140

Categories
Bakery Dessert

La PaTEAsserie – Epping NSW Restaurant Review

I fell victim to a targeted ad for La PaTEAsserie’s cake whilst on the hunt for something to serve at our wedding.

My wife and I each got to choose a cake and my choice was the Tie Guan Yin & Orange Cake (8 inch, serves 8-12, $90), which we ordered two of. Whilst it was certainly not bad, it did unfortunately pale in comparison to its competitor, the Lemon Dream from Flour and Stone.

The majority of components of this cake were tea-infused. The chiffon, a very light sponge, was infused with tieguanyin and had a very light taste, probably a victim of the Lemon Dream that was served before it. The Tieguanyin mousse with a hint of orange zest was pretty good though overall I felt that the cake lacked in flavour and took the concept of not too sweet a little too far.

It’s a shame that we had this cake second, and I fully accept that it’s very possible that I would have enjoyed this cake significantly more had I eaten it first before eating something else that was much stronger in flavour, but it is what it is.

Again, one cake served 20 people, and the second cake that was untouched for service was sliced up by the restaurant staff at Sunny Seafood Restaurant Central Park Mall to be taken home.

We had ours in the hotel room that night.

La PaTEAsserie (online order and pickup/delivery)
35 Oxford Street, Epping, NSW


Categories
Bakery Dessert

Flour and Stone – Woolloomooloo NSW Restaurant Review

My wife and I each picked a cake to have at our wedding, and her choice was the Lemon Dream Cake from Flower and Stone Bakery in Woolloomooloo. It’s not a wedding cake in particular, but it was something that she had been wanting to try for some time, and this was finally an opportunity to do so.

I really enjoyed this cake, and I think it was easily the better of the two that we had, the other being my choice. The cake component was very rich and decadent and heavy, whilst remaining moist. The cream and lemon curd filling was delicious, and the meringue was light, with a bit of an eggy taste. Overall it was sweeter than the other cake that we had, but importantly it was not too sweet, and was well received by our fully Asian group of family-only guests.

The cake we ordered was the 12 inch cake, which was said to serve 20-30 for $165, however I think based on our experience, especially given on its density and richness, it could easily feed 30-40 people.

Flour and Stone
3 Riley St, Woolloomooloo NSW 2011


Categories
Bakery Café

Self Raised Bread Shoppe – Carlton NSW Restaurant Review

My recent wife has decided that my parents’ place is the optimal place for her to study, far away from the cats and other homely distractions, and so I took the opportunity to take us to a semi-local sandwich shop that had been on the radar for some time.

Sadly, the tart display case was near empty by the time we arrived, and so we did not have the opportunity to try the Cacio e Pepe tart, nor any number of other yummy-looking fruit tarts pictured elsewhere on the internet.

We instead had two sandwiches. The hoagie ($19), a cold sandwich of mortadella, salami, lettuce, cheese, beef, red peppers and a sauce that was allegedly mayonnaise but tasted more like Thousand Island was okay but not life-changing.

I enjoyed the ciabatta and especially the sesame seeds which added a nice dimension of flavour, as well as the generous serving of meats, however each bite of this $19 sandwich merely served to remind me of the excellent $15 sandwich we had from Ranieri’s Delicatessen nearer to home. Unfortunately while I have no specific complaints, this sandwich did just fail to amaze, and I do think that sandwiches should be evaluated in their broader context of their alternatives.

The fish burger ($17), featuring a panko crumbed hake fillet, melted American cheese, onion, pickles, and house tartare sauce between a milk bun was my wife’s choice. She quite enjoyed it with its flaky fish fillet and crispy panko crumb, however I personally felt that the tartare sauce could have been applied more generously, a la Kosta.

Again it was difficult not to draw a direct comparison to our nearby fish burger favorite, which in my opinion it falls short of.

Overall, neither of the two sandwiches I had blew me away. It’s a competitive market for sandwich makers out there.

Self Raised Bread Shoppe
45 Jubilee Ave, Carlton NSW 2218

Categories
Bakery Vietnamese

Thuan Thien Bakery – North Strathfield NSW Restaurant Review

Not to be outdone by the banh mi my junior brought for me at work from Nguyen Hot Bread in Canley Vale during our last fortnight together, I picked up a variety of three options and an almond croissant to share on my way to work.

We had a selection of banhs mi. The first to be pictured and discussed is the roasted pork roll ($7), eaten by me, ultra fresh, walking through the hallway at work so that I can provide an accurate account of its quality for the internet. The bread was nice and fresh, slightly crusty on the outside and soft on the inside – no complaints or painful mouth cutting here. The filling sadly was not ideal, with the pork being really quite dry, and uninspiring (again, note that I’ve eaten it fresh in this case.) On subsequent visits the pork has actually been quite good, and I’ve now had banh mi from here at least six times.

The pate I will discuss in this subsequent paragraph dedicated to the original pork roll ($6.50), which was much better than the roast pork. Unlike most porks roll that I’ve had, the pate at Thuan Thien was very thin and spread with a spoon rather than a knife, which I didn’t find too problematic but my Vietnamese friend did not find satisfying. Whilst I agree the volume administered was on the lower end of the spectrum, she was quite disappointed by it. Luckily the standard collection of cold cuts in the original pork roll meant that there was little opportunity for error, and this is overall a pretty good roll, even eaten at our late lunch period after 6 hours in the fridge. There was no mention of the option of extra pate on the menu, but I suspect it’s something you could convince them to do for a little extra. but I now have learned to just ask for it, and it makes it all delicious.

It’s hard to know if this next roll, which I ate at lunch 6 hours after purchase, is the same roll as the roast pork roll, or in fact the BBQ pork roll ($7), which I had also ordered. I guess I should assume that it’s the BBQ pork roll which I had ordered, but it kind of looks nothing like the menu photograph, with not a smidge of crackling in site. Either way, it was surprisingly not as dry as the first roll I had that morning, so there’s a chance that it was in fact different. I should note the inclusion of red onion on this banh mi, which I feel is not that common an ingredient, whilst my friend and colleague, an influencer in her own right, decried the lack of daikon in this store’s offerings (not a problem for me.) I appreciated also the inclusion of a proper buttery Vietnamese mayonnaise, rather than margarine from a tub, which is passed off as acceptable at some establishments.

The almond croissant ($4) was pretty good. Lots of custard inside, and cheaper than Zouki.

Overall thoughts
Will I add Thuan Thien bakery into the rotation? It’s possible – but only because it’s somewhat on the way, now that I’ve started taking tolls to work and A) XCel Roll has dropped off in quality and B) Nhu Y Kings Hot Bread requires a more significant detour.

Update, mid 2025. The quality was better on every subsequent visit, and this is now my regular haunt.

Thuan Thien bakery
199 Concord Rd, North Strathfield NSW 2137