Category: Café

Categories
Bakery Café

Brasserie Bread – Banksmeadow NSW Cafe Review

Another day, another feed. Today’s breakfast was eaten at Brasserie Bread, a bakery and cafe a mere ten minutes walk from our home.

The bulk of this review is actually about the second time I ate food from Brasserie Bread – the first time was a couple of takeaway sandwiches following a night shift several weeks before. The Smoked Chicken Sambo with avo, provolone cheese, roast tomato & aioli ($14) was quite good, while The Brasserie BLT Sambo with bacon, iceberg, tomato on Sourdough Batard ($12) was very middling.

While the wait for just a couple of sandwiches the first time felt like forever, the wait for dining in was actually very minimal. This is my story.

This glossy looking rhubarb and strawberry tart I must admit was only okay. I thought it was a bit too cakey and not tarty enough for my liking. Beautiful, though.

The apple crumble, in contrast, was relatively divine. Absolutely great interplay of crispy pastry textures, crumble, apple, and sauce.

My partner ordered the Eggs Your Way on Toast with Pepe Saya Butter, a mere $10 for a delicious and wholesome meal. She loved it so much that I caught her making heart eyes at the perfectly liquid yolk atop Pepe’s cultured butter. The chorizo that I spent $4 adding on was a waste – an absolutely not necessary addition to this already perfect dish.

The Slow Cooked Beef Brisket Sambo with housemade pickled cabbage slaw ($14), in comparison with the simple wholesomeness of the eggs on toast, was a letdown. I found the beef a bit unflavourful, a disappointment matched with its boring texture. Not even the yummy pickled cabbage slaw and sauce could save it. The second letdown of the dish was the oppressive quantity of soft crusty bread. I understand that Brasserie Bread is first and foremost a bakery, but I feel that they really missed the mark on the filling to bread ratio, and consequently I cannot recommend this sandwich.

COMMENT

I liked the little pastries and I liked the simple toast and eggs. The beef brisket sandwich was a bit of a letdown, but from memory their smoked chicken sandwich was actually quite nice. It was a cheap and cheerful local breakfast.

4/5 sauerkrauts

Brasserie Bread
1737 Botany Rd, Banksmeadow NSW 2019
1300 966 845

Categories
Café Middle Eastern

Kepos Street Kitchen – Redfern NSW Cafe Review

Kepos Street Kitchen came highly recommended by a vegetarian colleague of ours. Naturally we went without him to share a meat-heavy meal before a swing at nearby Moore Park.

The Charred broccolini salad, shredded chicken, coarse burghul, herbs ($18) was delicious. As a group we are not the biggest fans of salad, but all members of our party ended up enjoying it. There is a surprisingly generous amount of chicken tucked in with all the greens and grains.

The Burrata cheese, Persian eggplant, pine nuts, volcanic salt ($22) was pretty good. The cheese was firm on the outside and less firm on the inside, as expected. The real star of this dish was the crusty, freshly toasted bread. Delicious.

The Grilled prawns, chermoula, grilled lemon ($27) came with five prawns. The prawns were quite large and tasty, and the lemon was too (though I was tricked by a colleague into an entire quarter of the lemon pictured in one mouthful by itself). I’m still trying to come to terms with paying $5.40 per prawn though.

Kepos meatball sub, coriander paste, grated haloumi, ciabatta ($18) was very good. Plenty of meat and red sauce on crusty warm bread. Very yum and a good serving of meat. A strong recommendation for this one.

The Arayes pita of wagyu mince seasoned with parsley, onion, olive oil, cumin and paprika, chili tomato salad, tahini, pita ($18) started off good, however quickly we found it to be too flavourful and too saucy. You will recognise this complaint of “too tasty” from many of my reviews, and in this case you can rest assured that this was a view that was held by the majority of our group. I would not recommend Kepos Street Kitchen’s Arayes pita.

Pictured here is a half serve of chips, which were provided complimentary as they had forgotten to make our chips. Even this half serving was quite a lot of chips. The chips were fresh and fluffy on the inside, with a cripsy exterior. They may just be the best hot chips I’ve had in a long long time. There’s definitely something special going on, owing perhaps to a proprietary cooking method. At $7 (for twice the chips listed) I would give them a go.

Overall

Pretty much everything we had hit the spot. I can recommend.

5/5

Kepos Street Kitchen
96 Kepos St, Redfern NSW 2016
(02) 9319 3919

Categories
Café Dessert Korean

Cafe Crop – Strathfield NSW Restaurant Review

Teeming with high school kids on a weekday afternoon, Cafe Crop in Strathfield provides quite good quality, bat-adjacent bingsoo,

We had a mini mixed fruit bingsu ($11.50), with our mini size served within a plastic container while larger sizes are served in Pyrex measuring cups. The shaved ice had a nice creamy taste to it, and we really enjoyed the assortment of fruits – strawberry, melon, grape, mango, (and unfortunately seemingly canned pineapple) – that was included. The addition of some mochi (rice cake) and what I’m pretty sure is Milo cereal also added a nice variation in textures and flavours. The squeezy container of condensed milk was left essentially unused, as the dessert was tasty and sweet enough without it.

On a subsequent visit we had a small mixed fruit bingsoo ($21), a larger, pyrex cup variety of the same one that we had the first time. The scoop of ice cream in the medium size is decorated with milo cereal to form a spooky but cute pig face.

While I thought the bingsoos were good and good value, the pomegranatade coming in at $7.50 I thought was much worse value. While I don’t know the intricacies that go into it – perhaps they have a staff member squeezing the juice out of each pomegranate pip in painstaking fashion – what it tasted like was cordial and in my opinion not worth the price.

VERDICT

Bingsoo good. Pomegranateade bad.

Can recommend.

Categories
Bakery Café Chinese

Bengong Black – Darling Square Haymarket NSW Bubble Tea and Bakery Review

Let me tell you about a vibe.

Back when my partner worked in Concord, she would often come home with milk tea from Bengong. We always enjoyed their milk tea, imbued with a stronger tea flavour than most outfits. We were therefore suitably surprised and a little bit proud when we found that they had opened up a branch in Darling Square. The Concord Hospital boba tea shop had finally made it.

I really enjoyed this Tea Cube Milk Tea when I first had it. I was confused when they asked me to choose a flavour, and I chose lychee. I thought it was so cool that they had somehow created this drink where they put concentrated tea into jellies. I went back a couple of days later and asked for one but without fruit flavouring, and the staff member looked at me as if I were crazy but was ultimately happy to oblige. What I got was a simple milk tea with a lot of ice. I was an idiot. The tea cubes weren’t actually tea cubes, merely fruit cubes.

The Wuwu Oreo Sundae was pretty good! Just a soft serve over hot brown sugar and boba syrup, with an oreo on top. It melts quickly so be sure to eat it just as fast.

Bread is bread. This particular strawberry flavoured bread was not that good.

Bengong Black Haymarket
91 Harbour St, Haymarket NSW 2000

Categories
Café Thai

Boon Cafe – Haymarket NSW Thai Cafe Review

We walked past many enticing restaurants this morning to eat at Boon Cafe, a Thai cafe, restaurant and grocery store in the Sydney CBD.

Boon Cafe has minimal dining space, we counted a total of five tables and not much room for expansion. The tables were small, but somehow able to fit all of our food, condiments, and even some flowers snugly.

We started with a Pork Skewer ($3.50), which was pretty standard fare. I found the skewer a bit too tasty/salty to eat by itself, and think it would’ve been better with some rice (which luckily they offer as a meal) .

I really enjoyed the Chicken and Ginger Congee ($12), to which we added a Century Egg ($3). They got the flavours just right, with a generous serving of ginger. The century egg I would regard as essential for this dish, to add another dimension of umami flavour and texture. We found that the congee was very wholesome and warming, and can strongly recommend this. My girlfriend remarked that as a child she hated congee, but as an adult, getting to eat these wholesome and varied congees has really taught her to love it.

The chicken wings were nothing to really write home about but not bad either. They were a little on the dry side, but the flavours were good, as was the dipping sauce. They were split in half for ease of consumption, which was a nice touch.

The Khao Dtom Sen ($14) is a member of the Winter Special menu, and not to our taste. I thought that the soup had a bit of an undesirable coat-your-mouth feel, and my partner thought it was fishy however I suspect that’s just her brain’s explanation of something she doesn’t like.

I ended up quite liking Boon Cafe, in particular the congee. I would definitely consider going back and just getting more congee! I wouldn’t stray too far from that though (although I can’t speak for the lunch or dinner menus).

This is a handsome little street cat from around the area.

Boon Cafe
1/425 Pitt St, Haymarket NSW 2000
(02) 9281 2114

Boon Cafe Eatery & Jarern Chai Grocer Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato