Category: Café

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Asian Fusion Café Indonesian

ASLAN Coffee Roasters – St Peters NSW Cafe Review

The first thing my partner said upon reviewing the choices on Aslan’s all-day menu was “I really appreciate you always looking for places for us to eat, and I know it can be hard to always pick winners”. Though technically Indonesian-inspired, the majority of items on Aslan’s menu are classic brunch fare. As pursuers of the fine art of Asian fusion cuisine we opted for the two Asianmost looking items available. It was with these two choices that I would, over the next half hour, make her eat a great meal and also her words.

The Hot Smoked Salmon Kedgeree ($16.50) was an aromatic dish of tumeric rice with slaw and salmon mixed in, topped with an egg and a trail of shichimi and served with a small pot of curry sauce. Despite her initial misgivings my partner came to enjoy this dish. She really liked that the slaw was mixed into the rice, providing a crisp and crunchy texture with each bite. The hot smoked salmon provided a good umami flavour without being too salty, and the lemon added an element of freshness to balance out the otherwise quite substantial meal. The little pot of curry came with a warning from our waitress – “be careful, it is very spicy” – though was very good and just the right amount of spice for us to add all of it in.

I have to admit that I enjoyed the multicoloured ?prawn crackers in the Beef Rendang Indonesian Style ($16.50) way more than I should have. They were just warm, freshly fried, crispy crackers filled with umami goodness – far more addictive than they had any right to be. The stated star of the show – the beef rendang, was very generously portioned, with a mixture of melty fatty bits as well as healthier leaner bits. The turmeric rice and salad, though similar to that in the kedgeree, was not as good owing to the discordant placement of its ingredients. We much preferred to have the salad mixed in with the rice. There was adequate sauce for all of the rice, salad, beef, and crackers.

Our soy cappuccino came with an apology – soy is hard to work with to make latte art, though this wouldn’t have even registered with us had it not been mentioned. ASLAN prides itself on its specialty coffee, and their house blend as pretty alright.

VERDICT
Though ASLAN’s St Peters menu is pretty light on original Asian fusion dishes, what they do have is pretty good, as well as pretty cheap. I’d recommend a visit if you’re in the area. Just look out for the giant lion’s head mural.

ASLAN Coffee Roasters – St Peters
1 Council St, St Peters NSW 2044
0488 827 526

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Asian Fusion Café French

Auvers Cafe – Rhodes NSW Restaurant Review

Our recent return to living and working in Western Sydney has given us ample opportunity to revisit some of our favourite cafes from before our 12 month Eastern Suburbs sojourn. Auvers Cafe is the Rhodes counterpart to Auvers Dining in Darling Square, and keeps the tradition of Asian-French fusion alive in a more casual daytime venue.

For drinks we had fun milk in two varieties – black sesame and hojicha. Both were quite good, though I wish their fun milk was offered with some caffeine included.

The first food I want to talk about is this bargain basement scrambled egg ($4). It’s not the best scrambled egg I’ve ever hard (Dopa’s furikake scrambled egg don takes the cake by far), but at $4 is an absolute steal.

The Beef Curry Pasta ($23) was seriously good. It’s been one of our favourites over the last three years, frequently brought home by my partner in a takeaway box after a night shift. While it was good back then, having it fresh in person brought a whole level of previously unknown joy. Eat-in plating of this pasta was quite beautiful, similar to the Ox Tongue Soba Cabonara at their Darling Square store. The curry sauce, though not written down explicitly any more, was a tasty and flavourful rendang style base that coated each strand of pasta perfectly. The serving of beef was generous and tender, and the parmesan crisp added a nice and upmarket feeling variation in texture to the dish. I particularly liked the addition of tomato salsa on top, which added a delicious freshness and contrasting flavours. A can’t miss.

The Squid Roulade ($22) was a bit of a confusing and overall non-satisfying dish. The main attraction was essentially a squid tube filled with dry and almost gamey tasting “wagyu” beef mince. This tube was situated on a bed of black rice with edamame and pomegranate seeds mixed in, topped with crunchy fried kale. The rest of the squid was battered and deep fried, served aside the roulade and next to a swirl of black cauliflower puree.

I thought that this dish ultimately failed in both taste and composition. The taste of the squid roulade was too mild and unexciting, and the mince inside so dry that I doubt it being wagyu made any difference at all. The rice mixed with edamame and pomegranate was fine but difficult to pick up and eat with the fork provided. The fried kale was my partner’s favourite part of the dish – she does like fried foods in general – but I felt didn’t fit with the theme of the rest of the dish. I would avoid this one.

The chocolate croissant looked very plain but was actually surprisingly full of chocolate cream. Quite good.

SUBSEQUENT VISIT

The Soy Cured Salmon ($26) was an interesting, beautifully presented near miss for me. The fatty cured sashimi salmon was soft and delicate, but let down by the blobs of radish and yuzu gel, which I felt were too salty, even though I enjoyed the citrus notes. The accompanying salad was probably better than the main attraction. I really enjoyed the fresh little pickled radishes, which just tasted so bright and crisp. The avruga caviar, which I am told is not actually caviar, was also great mixed into the quinoa to give it a bit of umami and salty flavour and set it apart from all the dull quinoa out there.

I quite enjoyed the Grilled Wagyu Soft Tacos ($28), even though in my weakened state I was not allowed to enjoy all of it. The wagyu beef cubes were juicy and tender, worked well with the yakiniku sauce mayonnaise, which is something I’ve never seen anywhere else. The perfectly light and moist scrambled eggs also benefited from the yakinku sauce, while the salsa with coriander added an element of freshness. The hot chips, of which I only had a single chip, were sadly extremely good and fresh. I can’t comment on the naan bread (a weirdly thick choice for a “taco”) as neither my partner nor I had any of it.

Overall I can recommend Auvers Cafe in Rhodes as one of the best places for an all-day Asian fusion brunch menu out West. Service is speedy, and the food is great.

5 French gauge stars

Auvers Cafe
 2/42 Walker St, Rhodes NSW 2138
(02) 8040 2403

Categories
Asian Fusion Café Japanese

Devon – Surry Hills NSW Restaurant Review

My partner and I are big fans of Dopa – Devon’s offshoot donburi restaurant in Darling Square. We’ve been going regularly over the past few months, however it had been a long time since we had dined at the mothership in Surry Hills.

We went suckered in by pictures of uni laden foods on instagram, and I made my partner promise me that she would let us leave and eat somewhere else if they had run out (as is often the case at Dopa, I’m sick of being baited and switched).

We dined on a Sunday morning in an empty restaurant, much different to how it was like when we had last dined in 2019. As predicted, they were out of uni, however a craving for a pork katsu sandwich prevented us from leaving.

My partner had a matcha latte while I, as an inferior Asian, had an iced matcha soy latte. While I can’t speak for my partner’s drink, I can say that my iced matcha soy latte was not as good as the one that I had at 101kissa. There was just something so powdery and nice about the iced matcha soy lattte from 101kissa, whereas this one was a weird blend of sweet and bitter that didn’t tickle my tastebuds in quite the right way.

Devon’s pork katsu sando ($16) is cut into two portions and served in a cardboard box. The sauce is spread evenly through the sandwich, which is a selling point, however this is where the compliments end. I felt that the pork itself was not as juicy or tender as in the pork katsu sandwich I had at Cafe Kentaro. I also felt that the sandwich was overbreaded, with the bread to filling ratio too great, adding an unneeded and unwanted blandness to the taste. The size and construction of the sandwich halves were also inferior to the three pieces at Kentaro, and made the sandwich difficult to eat.

While Devon’s pork katsu sando probably stands fine on its own to a person who has never had a good pork katsu sando, it fails in comparison to that at Kentaro, a few kilometres away.

I didn’t enjoy the salted egg yolk cheesy curly fries ($13). Perhaps it’s because we’ve had just so much salted egg yolk foods in the past few weeks that I’m sick of it, but I think the more likely reason is that these chips were oily but dry. Their thinness did not help, as the higher surface area to volume ratio increased the radiative heat loss from the food, making them too cool and yucky too quickly.

My partner ordered the omurice with salmon sashimi in ponzu sauce. We were quite surprised to find that the omurice was served separately to the salmon. The salmon was cold but the omurice was warm. While the omurice itself was quite delicious with its mushroomy gravy, I don’t think it really worked as a combination. I wonder if it’s the responsibility of the wait staff to sway you away from bad choices. Either way, that was not what happened here. What happened here was a thoroughly noncohesive dish.

I’m sad to say that I didn’t really enjoy our trip to Devon. While I love their rice bowls at their Haymarket offshoot Dopa, our trip back to the mothership was disappointing.

Devon Cafe
76 Devonshire St, Surry Hills NSW 2010
(02) 9211 8777

Categories
Café

Saint Marks – Randwick NSW Cafe Review

Saint Marks on Clovelly Road is just one of two unrelated establishments with the same name in Randwick. The one we’re interested in today is a cafe – the other, a hotel on Rae St, will not be mentioned again in this post.

The sweet corn fritter stack was quite well plated and visually appealing. My partner, who as you may know by now is a big fan of corn fritters really enjoyed it. She liked the sweetness of the fritter, which helped this dish stand out from the rest. A further point of distinction was the texture of these fritters, which were quite loose and corny, in a good way. Unfortunately the poached eggs that were added on for an additional fee were not good. As you can see from the photo one of them was very well cooked. No good.

The Saint Marks Burger (with extra patty and cheese – $20) was a tall but very expensive burger. The patties were slightly underseasoned but otherwise had good texture with a very meaty mouthfeel. The pickles were tangy and I appreciated that there were both internal pickles as well as external pickles. At the $20 price tag I would have expected this burger to at least have come with some chips.

DISCUSSION
Despite the good internal airflow supplied by large ceiling fans we chose to dine in Saint Marks’ outdoor seating due to extra risk-averse nature (and in view of recent new COVID-19 cases in the area). Towards the end of our meal, whilst all internal customers had left we started to hear the staff inside make a series of seal noises. This was quite odd.

3.5/5 – (lean 3, egg no good)

Saint Marks
80 Clovelly Rd, Randwick NSW 2031

Categories
Café

Naked Brew – Erskineville NSW Restaurant Review

Let me tell you first about a vibe, and then about the food.

We try to avoid the Inner West as much as possible, as I’m terrified of parking in small spaces and crowded streets. Naked Brew was an exception to this, and we were able to find street parking not far from the cafe on a weekday morning.

My partner and I are currently working week on, week off schedules, which means that even though we live in the same apartment we don’t get to see each other for 7*24 hours in a row, and then we spend the whoe next 7 days together. This is good and bad.

Our waitress made note of the fact that we had turned up to eat at 10AM on a weekday, and made significant and quite consistent conversation about how nice it was that we were able to spend time with each other. She told us that she and her partner never had days off together, as she was working in the cafe most days and him at his job. She reflected with us on how sad it was for her and how nice it was for us, and I am empathetic to her situation.

The Buddha Bowl was great. We had it with pork belly and poached egg. All of the components – the seeds, the carrots, corn – complemented each other well, and the dressing was nice and creamy as well.

To be completely honest I have no recollection of what this dish was, nor can I identify it from the currently online menu. I also don’t recall how it tasted but I think we liked it because I remember liking the restaurant overall and I don’t think I would’ve if only one of our two dishes were good.

I can recommend Naked Brew to a friend or colleague. Food is good. Vibe is fine if you like to chat. Dog friendly.

Naked Brew
110 Swanson St, Erskineville New South Wales 2043
(02) 9557 1628