Category: Café

Categories
Asian Fusion Café Chinese

Ladies & Gentlemen Cafe Diner – Marrickville NSW Restaurant Review

Looking at these photos from our meal at Ladies & Gentleman Cafe six months ago I wasn’t particularly excited, but then looking back at the notes that I took from our visit it looks like the taste and quality of the food was more impressive than its visual appeal alone. Allow me to try and represent faithfully what I was thinking of when I ate there.

This Porky Belly ($18) sandwich, in particular, did not look exciting from the photos. The visual side of things is decidedly boring, but my notes from our meal reflect that it was actually very good. I’ve made reference to the fatty and soft soy caramelised pork belly, the crisp and tart apple, and soft and sweet Japanese milk bread with the crust cut off – just like my mum used to never do, because who can afford to waste a crust?

The Ladies and Gentleman Rice Bowl ($22) with teriyaki salmon was also very good, with a runny onsen egg perfectly coating the sushi rice, delicious miso eggplant, and softly cooked salmon all adding up to a variety of different tastes and textures in one bowl.

All I have written down for the Taiwanese deep-fried pork chop ($8) is “Pork chop is just my gf secretly took me to hot star”.

Thoughts
Past-me thought it was very good. Reliving those previous photos and notes, I guess Asian-fusion brunch is right up my alley. Future-me might even go back.

Ladies & Gentlemen Cafe Diner
295 Enmore Rd, Marrickville NSW 2204

Categories
Bakery Café

Lucien Baked Goods – Parramatta NSW Restaurant Review

I’d wanted to go to Lucien, Circa’s new baked goods project [their second such embassy in Parramatta after Good George (née Georgie Boy)] for some time, but a combination of factors – primarily my period of Southward exile and the lack of easily-accessible free parking around the cafe’s vicinity – meant that I never had the opportunity to take my colleagues there for our fortnightly college-mandated post-nights breakfast. My temporary specialty change from intensive to aged care and the 8:30AM, Monday to Friday starts that came along with it has however provided me with new opportunities for a quick pre-work breakfast that I never had the energy to try when I was starting at 8.

This sujuk danish ($10) was first on the list of breakfasty snacks picked by my partner, a hater of manoosh but surprisingly a lover of this. This tasted exactly like an identical manoosh of sujuk and cheese, with a bit of mild green chilli inside and a laminated pastry rather than your typical manoosh base. It was pretty tasty and good, but I don’t know that it was better than a full $9 sujuk and cheese pizza pretty much anywhere (though I am more a fan of the half meat half cheese, as far as manooh goes). The serving of caramelised onion I did not feel added any goodness to the dish. I’m glad my girlfriend liked it though, because it means I got to have more of the next thing.

The next thing was this excellent fig tart ($7) that I don’t quite have the tart-focused vocabulary to describe. I’m quite bad at identifying individual components of baked goods without an itemised list from a menu, so I’m essentially going to lie to you and say that the positive attributes of this tart was the freshness of the fig, which as an Asian child growing up I only ever had dried, the lightness of the marscapone, and the buttery yet nutty texture of the possibly almond base. Again, I have no way to confirm that these were the actual components of the tart. I guess I could ask them on social media and see what they say. But nonetheless it was really good. I want another. (UPDATE: I am reliably informed that it was vanilla ricotta just under the figs, and a bottom of hazelnut paste with chopped hazelnut on top.

This pistachio and rosewater swirl ($8 – there are literally no official names for most of these items) was not bad. but not my favourite.. Made with croissant dough, but still a bit on the breadier side. Not too sweet. The almond cream filling within the swirl didn’t really do anything for me taste wise, but again, my partner liked it.

OTHER THOUGHTS
At the very least I’m glad that my partner and I liked different parts of our meal, which meant that I got to have more of what I liked, without the obligation of finishing what I didn’t. Worth a return visit.

Lucien Baked Goods
111 Phillip St, Parramatta NSW 2150

Categories
Café Vietnamese

Atom Espresso – Campsie NSW Restaurant Review

ATOM Espresso is one of our local cafes that we pass by regularly on our grocery run but have never had food from until now. A combination of high promises (5.0 average rating on Google Maps with 332 reviews) and a lack of easily accessible alternatives in my immediate post-cholecystectomy state led us to having a sliced pork banh mi ($8), lauded online as one of the best, ever.

Though I have explored Hot Bread shops and Vietnamese restaurants far and wide, this was my first time having banh mi from what was primarily a coffee shop. Despite them NOT being a bakery, the bread was surprisingly warm, fresh and crusty, likely owing to some toaster oven magic out back. It had a great crumbly texture that was easy to eat and did not cut the mouth.

The fillings of the roll were however less than standard, with a lack of Vietnamese mayo, the use of margarine , an unfortunately small volume of pate (my UGI surgeon did recommend a low fat diet, but there’s no way the guy making the banh mi would’ve known this), and perhaps most confusingly the use of tomato. I actually had to Google whether or not tomato was a standard banh mi component as I was eating this, as it was so strange that I just wasn’t sure anymore. The fillings honestly wasn’t bad, with the use of extra salad and less fatty spread probably making it a bit fresher than your average roll, but just not what I wanted, nor what I expected.

The combination of ingredient deviations from what I’ve come to expect from a banh mi (and I suspect that once this is published one of my Vietnamese friends will read this and tell me that I’m completely wrong, and these are all perfectly acceptable substitutions and additions to make) mean that I probably wouldn’t come back.

Dulwich Hill Pork Roll is not far away, and is pretty goodl

ATOM Espresso
Clemton Park Shopping Village, 60 Charlotte St, Clemton Park NSW 2206

Categories
Café

The Garden Berry – Berry NSW Restaurant Review

Il Locale’s extremely limited business hours meant that we ate at Berry’s The Garden Berry (apparently their official name) for lunch instead.

This scone ($7) with cream and jam was quite expensive, but actually really very delicious, better, in my opinion, than some cafes that might do scones as a main attraction. The scone was warm and fresh and soft, and the jam was just out of this world. Just take a look at those chunks of berry. The value proposition is better if you order two scones for $10 (with an appropriate increase in the quantity of cream and jam), and it is a regret that I will have to live with because I really wanted another one.

I can’t say that I loved this Chicken Cotoletta ($26), self-described by the restaurant as “a fancy chicken schnitzel”. Though the sourdough breading is clearly and visually greened up by garlic, parmesan and parsley, I couldn’t really taste a huge difference in quality compared to just a normal schnitzel. The meat of the chicken itself was also not exactly top tier in terms of moistness, and I know it’s going to sound like I have a complaint about every element of this dish, but for some reason the chips just didn’t hit right – perhaps undersalted? (Recognising there was salt on the table for us to add ourselves)

Back to a happier state, this trout salad ($25.50) was excellent. My resident at work (JDK – seriously a great guy and a great future doctor for the local area) had recently made me a hot smoked salmon salad, and I wanted to replicate that experience at The Garden Berry. This house smoked Tasmanian ocean trout was equally wonderful, moist and appropriately oily and smoky, with a generous serving to boot. I loved the crispy capers and roasted leak which added textural and taste interest to the underlying greenery. I didn’t love the random tiny potatoes, which I felt didn’t really have any flavour do them, but my partner did and was happy that she got to eat more than her fair share of them. The dill and horseradish dressing was not particularly perceptible, but did add to the flavour of the potatoes. Overall and excellent salad.

COMMENTS

We chose to sit outside (in the garden, in Berry), so I guess I shouldn’t complain at the random spider that we saw climbing up the pole next to us. During our lunch we had no less than four groups of people rotate through the table next to us, including a couple who moved to an indoors table, and another couple who left without ordering. Their server was kind enough to offer them suggestions as to where else to eat in Berry. Super nice of him.

Get the scones.

The Garden Berry
103 Queen St, Berry NSW 2535
(02) 4464 1920

Categories
Asian Fusion Café

Queen St Cafe – Berry NSW Restaurant Review

Queen St Cafe, not to be confused with Queen St Eatery, also on Queen St in Berry, is a quiet cafe tucked towards the back of an indoor arcade with what seems like a high tea focus, unusually with very large plates, and an assortment of unusual chairs (not photographed). We took advantage of my temporary residence in Nowra to explore Queen St Cafe’s non-high tea offerings, an all day lunch menu.

These is the lobster po boys ($30), which featured much bread within which was stuffed southern fried lobster tails, slaw, frie donions, shallots, coriander, and hot sauce. For an additional $2 (a total of $32 for this large plate of moderate food, our house fries were upgraded to truffle fries. This was no doubt an expensive choice from a menu of expensive choices. We do like a good lobster though, and this deep fried lobster did fulfill that craving. They did I think overuse the mayonnaise and probably also oversalted everything. The chips were fresh, which is what you would expect at this price point.

The Japanese pancake ($20) with cabbage, broccoli, carrot, red onion, wakame, sesame seeds, a poached egg, ginger, tokatsu sauce and mayonnaise was Berry’s local take on an okonomoyaki. Whilst there was a bit more flour that I would’ve expected from a usual okonomoyaki and they had run out of bonito flakes for the day, the flavours of this dish were actually quite accurate and pleasing – a mixture of salty, tangy and umami. It was honestly pretty good, though they could have standed being a little more light handed with the sauce.

COMMENTS At the end of the day, there are a lot of options for food in Berry. Whilst Queen St Cafe was not bad, it wasn’t what I would recommend if you only had time in town for one or two meals.

Queen St Cafe
94 Queen St Shop 5, Stan Burt Arcade, Berry NSW 2535
(02) 4444 4612