The contents of this blog are matters of opinion formed over one more visits. There has been some artistry applied and metaphors and similes should not necessarily be taken literally. All meals are independently paid for - the author has no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?
Memento Mori is one of the spookiest cafes in all of Rosebery. The constant reminder of our impending deaths is something I usually only experience while hanging out with one of my senior intensive care colleagues. I never thought that such a feeling could be distilled into a cafe, but the wizards behind Mentmore and Morley named their restaurant just so.
Wow. Let me tell you about these textured plates. They’re from IKEA, but I couldn’t identify them on IKEA’s online store. Again wow.
While I cannot quite tell you the name of this veal scaloppine style dish with assorted vegetables, I can tell you that it was quite good. I especially enjoyed the tomatoes.
Pork knuckle and Vietnamese slaw
The seasonal special, pork knuckle with Vietnamese slaw was around $30. It was a whole pork knuckle, slow roasted with skin on. The skin was quite crispy and delicious, and the meat tender. I was initially skeptical of the Vietnamese slaw, but the acidic flavours helped cut through the fat perfectly. A good pairing.
Coffee was no better or worse than standard.
While the name of Memento Mori was spooky, this did not extend to the food, which was a mixture of Italian and Vietnamese cuisines. I can recommend going to get spooked.
My partner will freely volunteer that I don’t usually pay much attention to my surroundings, both whilst eating, and also in general. Henry Lee’s was a bit of an exception – I thought it was a cool use of an old factory space – very Melbourne-esque – , with a nice sunny internal courtyard that we ate in.
Purple Fields + Soft Shell Crab
My partner picked The Purple Fields ($18) (braised broccoli, sweet corn, garlic & parsley puree, scrambled eggs, prosciutto dust, crispy fried kale, marinated feta served on sourdough) with an additional soft shelled crab ($5). I was nervous about the choice as it was one of the least appealing items on the menu for me, but I did not speak out. I did not enjoy this dish outside of the scrambled eggs and soft shelled crab. I did not enjoy the taste of the braised broccoli, and I could not identify the prosciutto dust (from a marketing perspective, why not just omit this unidentifiable meat component and just mark it as vegetarian?). The sourdough also got quite soggy with the scrambled eggs sitting on it. The only saving grace was that we spent an additional $5 on a soft shelled crab, which was fried nicely but I felt had a bit of a bitter taste (my partner did not share this concern.) Overall a $23 that I would rather not have spent.
The Benny Munro
The Benny Munro ($21) (Five spice braised pork belly, purple slaw, turmeric pickled zucchini and crispy prosciutto with poached eggs & chipotle hollandaise, served on sweet corn & cauliflower croquettes) I enjoyed significantly more. The chipotle hollandaise, poached eggs, and slaw were a good combination. I did enjoy the single pickled zucchini that was allocated to me. One of the things I will mention is that when you order a dish with pork belly as the first ingredient listed you would assume that it would be a main component of the show. Instead what we got was two very small, somewhat dry pieces of pork belly, one under each egg. Having had a really good pork belly at The Cupping Room in Canberra in 2017, a dish that uses pork belly to its full potential, I expected much different and much better.
Hot beverages are one of the places where Henry Lee’s shines. I had the Tea Latte (left -$5), which was a lavender infused earl grey latte. It was my first tea latte (excluding the million chais), and I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed both the taste as well as the flower petal presentation. My partner had the Aztec Chili Hot Chocolate (right – $7) and it even came with a real chili! I was not sold on it but she enjoyed it a lot.
I went to Henry Lee’s today in search of Asian fusion brunch food, but ended up leaving disappointed. In retrospect I should’ve delved further rather than take the name at face value – it’s a reference to a Nick Cave song – and realised that while the menu had some Asian fusion elements these were more of an afterthought.
La Vigne, with a name you probably shouldn’t say in front of your mother, is one of Eastwood’s many places to get a bingsu on a hot Summer’s day. The surprisingly large cafe features two internal dining areas separated by a sun-drenched courtyard (very warm).
I enjoyed the mango bingsu with flavoured ice, mango, mango sauce and cake blocks. My partner, the driving force behind our recent bingsu binges, was less pleased with the artificial taste of the mango sauce, though this didn’t stop us from finishing the whole thing.
The citron pastry was not very good.
The chocolate cream puff was quite good, though I didn’t expect it to have chocolate filling.
During a subsequenttrip to La Vigne with colleagues KSEL, ACHT, KS, MJC we had the mixed fruit and red bean bingsu ($25). I think it was better than just plain mango, and despite it having red bean my partner might have liked it more.
Overall I can recommend a quick visit to La Vigne to a friend or colleague.
COOH’s Bourke Road restaurant has long been on my list of places to eat at this year. We’ve driven past it countless times on our way to the other restaurants, but it’s taken us over nine months of living in the area to finally pay a visit.
COOH is situated in a high-ceilinged warehouse on Bourke Road. There is no parking available, and minimal street parking in the area, so we did a sneaky and parked at Grounds of Alexandria around the corner. It is a beautiful, large room setup, with a large bar and kitchen area on show. We had lunch on a Wednesday, the same time as what appeared to be a local mum and bubs group.
The potato chips with aioli ($8) were salty and ultimately unsatisfying. It is difficult to pinpoint what was wrong with them, and it was probably more a constellation of things that did not quite meet the mark. We found that we were quite aioli dependent with these chips, and ran out of the aioli early. Luckily we were able to get additional aioli at no charge.
I ordered the seared tuna with a spice crust, spiralised salad, jalapeno salsa, and avocado puree ($26). This was a dish I was quite excited about – there are some beautiful photos online of essentially sashimi tuna with a seared crust, and that’s what I thought I would be getting. I was wrong. The tuna that I ate today was almost fully cooked through, nowhere near as rare or raw as expected. While I enjoyed the flavours in the spiced crust I felt like the overcooking lead to a strange and unpleasant texture – no better than what I could make by myself at home. I enjoyed the spiralised salad, as well as the avocado puree, and thought the plating was quite nice. I could not identify any jalapeno salsa, and indeed didn’t realise it was meant to be part of it until I took another look at the menu whilst writing this review. I would not recommend this dish.
The Morrocan lamb and quinoa ($28) I enjoyed even less than the seared tuna. Most disappointing was the inexplicable lukewarm temperature of the lamb, almost as if it had been cooked and left to rest for far too long. The quinoa was also cold, which I just don’t feel goes well with a meat such as lamb, which is meant to be served hot. I enjoyed every other element of the dish – the plating, the mint yoghurt, the sweet potato, currants, and pomegranate seeds, but unfortunately the two title ingredients were a let down.
My trip to COOH was ultimately a let down. I didn’t really enjoy anything we had, despite the restaurant having generally good reviews online. My partner had good things to say about the space, and even considered it for some kind of formal occasion in the future, however the food was such a let down that it would be a veto.
A month ago if you had asked me about the racial demographics of Wolli Creek I would’ve told you that its expansive high rise apartments were mostly full of international students of Chinese descent. There are just so many Chinese restaurants, Chinese groceries, and Chinese people everywhere you look – my girlfriend’s brother included.
It was a surprise to me, therefore, to find a Brazilian restaurant and a Brazilian gym tucked away in Wolli Creek. off the beaten track. It was also a surprise to me to have looked after four patients of Brazilian descent in the ED over the Christmas-New Year period, having not seen any all year. I guess I was just not aware.
Coffee served at Chachii is from Gabriel Coffee. It was good anti-headache and anti-sleep therapy before a long day of apartment hunting in Westmead followed by a return to the ED in Kogarah. The surprise addition of a small cookie is always welcome.
I played it safe on my first visit to Chachii with a serving of Chachii’s Lamb ($19). It was a well priced plate of two well poached eggs (in a good way, not the bad way), confit cherry tomatoes (similar to my last experience with confit cherry tomatoes I wonder why they even bother), and slow cooked lamb on catupiry cheese with cassava and bacon crumbs dusted around the plate. The 12-hour slow cooked lamb was flavourful and delicious, but not too tasty as some other local lambs have been. The catupiry cheese, a Brazilians brand of creamy cow’s milk cheese, was reminiscent of a whipped feta but with a very mild flavour – great at adding moisture and creaminess to the dish. This was really good.
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I went back to Chachii with a couple of post-night shift mates a few days after my initial visit.
The beef pastel ($8) was surprisingly huge, much larger than other empanada s I’ve had at Pochito in Mascot. It had a crispy, thin pastry skin and was filled with a tasty beef mince filling. I quite enjoyed this and can recommend it.
The Coxinha ($6), made of shredded chicken surrounded in dough was also delicious. Maybe we just like deep fried foods. I thought it was better without the sauce.
The Coracao Sandwich ($13) is a sandwich of chicken hearts cooked in beer and spices in a baguette roll. It tasted OK, mostly a salty, slightly umami however with no significant differences in texture or taste throughout the sandwich it did get to feel a bit samey. Whilst I don’t mind chicken heart I normally prefer it in smaller quantities.
The X-Calabresa Sandwich ($15) is a sandwich with a large serving of Brazilian chorizo, cheese, caramelised onion, smoked mayo and a tiny amount of cos lettuce and tomato. It was my favourite sandwich of our visit, owing to the variety of ingredients and flavours (tangy, salty, sweet) contained within. The Brazilian chorizo tasted quite different to any chorizo I’ve ever had.
The Mortadella Sandwich ($13) is a national food of Brazil. As a recent convert to mortadella fanhood (especially LP’s mortadella) I was really keen to try this sandwich, and very glad that one of my friends wanted to try it as well. Whilst mortadella is generally less salty a meat, the sheer quantity of grilled mortadella (300g in this sandwich) and melted cheese meant that the sandwich overall was quite salty. Similarly to the Coracao sandwich I feel like this would get a bit old towards the last bite (though I only had a quarter of the pictured rolls). Chips, which were an additional $3, were fresh and good.
VERDICT Chachii is one of Sydney’s only Brazilian restaurants open before noon. Everything on their menu is distinctly Brazilian, and I think if you, like me, are not very familiar with the cuisine it’s worth the adventure.
