Category: Café

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Café

Baby Finger – Camperdown NSW Restaurant Review

I like to eat food first and foremost, and I’ve always thought that an all-day menu is a key component of success to the operation of a good cafe. There’s only so many different ways you can do avocadoes on toast or an eggs benedict, and I’ve spent far too many breakfasts being sad about not being able to order from the lunch menu. Luckily, Cafe Baby Finger’s all-day menu gives visitors the option of both breakfast food and – let’s be honest – real food, all day long.

Much of Baby Finger’s all-day menu is quite potato forward, and the two dishes that we picked were no exception. The salmon potato cake ($26) was a umami combination of potato and cured (though it seemed cooked, or at least hot cured?) salmon, nicely seasoned with dill, topped with caramelised onion and watercress, and served with two poached eggs.

Though not much to look at, the starchy potato texture, light but umami flavours, and luxurious aoili made for quite a yummy dish.

The other dish we had was the ‘nduja smoky beans ($25) from their specials board, basically a potato hash with speck, ‘nduja, caramelised onion, a single excellently poached egg, all in a beany tomatoey sauce, topped with manchego and served with two pieces of focaccia. I enjoyed all the different textures and flavours that were present in this dish, even the unexpected pops of saltiness in some bites and the sweetness of the tomato base that came out in others.

The speck was portioned generously and cut to quite large pieces to provide a quite meaty chew, balancing out the otherwise meatless meal (the ‘nduja being mixed into the sauce and difficult to macroscopically identify).

The size of the dish was quite large (the photos don’t do it justice) , which meant that I found that two pieces of focaccia were insufficient to eat all of the saucy goodness with. A third piece would’ve been great.

Overall we enjoyed both things we had here, and can recommend it to a friend or colleague. The food kind of reminded me of Circa’s greatest hits. More like this!

Baby Finger
Unit 27/12 Layton St, Camperdown NSW 2050

Categories
Café

Cafe Lewi – Lewisham NSW Restaurant Review

We had an uncharacteristically nice meal for a weekday morning in a narrow little Inner West cafe that doesn’t quite have an all day menu, but does have some relatively elaborate options for breakfast. This was actually our second attempt at eating here, our first visit foiled by an extreme Saturday morning wait for one of their few tables.

The cafe’s physical space was very narrow, however brightly lit with large windows and nice artwork, it reminded me of a inner-west house I could not afford to live in.


We had the very photogenic confit king salmon with salmon roe ($33), a pyramid of salmon, sorrel, and avocado puree on a deep fried potato bed. I enjoyed the taste of the herbs together with the salty and umami pops of salmon roe, the crunch and oiliness of the fried potato, and the soft and fatty semi-cooked salmon. It was really something reminiscent of when we used to eat small food on a large plate. My wife was less impressed by this whole thing, having been socialised (by me) over the last few years to appreciate larger foods on larger plates for fewer dollars.

My only complaint would be that I thought that the salmon would’ve been better served warm than how it was, which was cold.

The hot cross bun ($8) was one of the best HXB I’ve had in probably years ,and that includes looking forwards in time and considering the one I had today from Cherry Moon.

This hot cross bun had an unusually buttery and soft interior texture, as well as a filling of even more buttery sauce. The little raisins had the perfect dimensions of a little bit of sweetness with a touch of bitterness that made the hot cross bun feel extra premium.

I was less fond of this cheese scone ($8), which I thought was a lesson in dryness.

I think it’s a hard balance to strike, and this in house scone, despite its microplaned cheesiness, did not hit it. (The one I had today from Cherry Moon was better. You winsome, you lose some.)

Overall pretty nice! Everything baked is baked in-house, which is a plus, and the under-renovation photos of their space on their Instagram really shows what a bit of imagination and a couple of million dollars can get you a few suburbs west of the CBD. $1.2M in 2021 is unreal, but you really have to have that kind of vision.

Cafe Lewi
8A Victoria St, Lewisham NSW 2049



Categories
Bakery Café

Wang Bakehouse – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

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.

Wang Bakehouse
34 George St, Burwood NSW 2134

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Café

Halfday Deli – Wollongong NSW Restaurant Review

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

Categories
Café Dessert French

Saltie Dog – Wollongong NSW Restaurant Review

My partner snuck off and got herself a coffee and a lemon crepe whilst I was waiting for my order of fried chicken at Rainbow Fried Delights.

This did not wow me, with only a very minimal suggestion of lemon within the crepe that if I wasn’t told about it I might not have noticed. FOr what it’s worth, she enjoyed it.

Saltie Dog
Level 1 food court, Wollongong Central, 200 Crown St, Wollongong NSW 2500