Category: Chinese

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Chinese

Swanky Noodle – Parramatta NSW Restaurant Review

When we first ate at Swanky Noodle back in 2019, we were very impressed by the dingy decor, the no fuss service, and the excellent Northern Chinese cuisine. Flash forward to 2023, and we found ourselves back at Swanky Noodle for dinner in between acute stroke calls, a particularly interesting part of the public health service where a non-radiologist is tasked with reading a CT Angiogram, CT Perfusion, and non-contrast CT Brain and making a decision as to whether or not someone should get thrombolytic therapy within the course of minutes.

Good as ever was this Hot Stewed Beef with Noodle Soup ($13.80). It was a large and well priced bowl, with chewy, twangy housemade hand-pulled noodles in a richly umami soup. There was plenty of very tender beef, and it’s easy to see why this is one of their most popular dishes.

Less good were these pan-fried dumplings ($13.80), which most importantly were pan-fried, rather than boiled, like we asked for. The boiled dumplings were great back in 2019, but pan-fried dumplings are just lower effort in general. They were very meaty.

The spring pancake ($13.80) I also didn’t love, mainly because they were dryer than expected and filled with vermicelli, complicated by the fact that of the two separate guys in the kitchen one guy had cooked the filling but the other guy had forgotten the wrapper until a bit later. The equivalent of this dish that we had back in the day was full of chives (I have photo evidence from the 8th of September 2019) and much better.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

The beef soup noodles were as good as ever, but the other things we had were complicated by mishaps and also just not being what we wanted. It is true that we visited half an hour before closing, but we weren’t the last table to enter and be served, and would’ve rathered a maximum of one accident per meal. I’m upset because I had really quite fond memories of this place. If only we had stopped at the noodle, the fondness would’ve remained

Swanky Noodle
131 Church St, Parramatta NSW 2150
(02) 9633 1173

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Chinese

A Bowl Of Noodles 一碗面 – Haymarket NSW Restaurant Review

Unfortunately my dinner at A Bowl of Noodles did not live up to the expectations set by following their social media over the past year or so.

The Yellow Croaker Noodles ($23.80), one of the restaurant’s signature dishes, did not amaze me. It had unfortunately and probably unavoidably quite a fishy smell to it, though to its credit it did not actually taste fishy. The flavour of the soup was quite light, umami, and pleasant, though pleasant not to the degree that we wanted to finish it.

The Pan Fried Pork Buns (sheng jian bao 生煎包 – $11.80) were fine on the outside with good dough and crispiness, but oddly gooey on the inside. I won’t go so far as to say uncooked, because I don’t know for a fact and I didn’t get sick after my meal, but these buns were generally unpleasant for me.

The chive and pork dumplings (10 for $13.90) were actually very good. They stood alone as a dish that met expectations and were the highlight of the meal.

I kind of felt that the xiao long bao ($9.80) would be a dish that I could trust that a Shanghainese specialty restaurant would do well, but I was of course mistaken. These XLBs were quite dry and devoid of soup, without even any holes in the skin that could explain it. I’ve had much better steamed from a box from the frozen section of my local Asian supermarket.

COMMENTS. I didn’t find what I was looking for.

A Bowl Of Noodles 一碗面
735 George St, Haymarket NSW 2000
0415 483 140

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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

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Chinese

Feng You Dim Sim 逢友点心 – Hurstville NSW Restaurant Review

Feng You Dim Sim 逢友点心 is pretty good. It is a small dim sum restaurant in Hurstville with both indoors and outdoors seating, where you order at the table by drawing ticks or circles on a paper menu. The obvious benefit of this system is that you don’t have to worry about having to catch the eye of roaming aunties with trolleys and hoping that you’re in a good table position to get the prime items before they run out. There is also a full colour menu with prices and item names in English, taking away another part of the mystery of ordering, making it all very accessible to non-Chinese reading or speaking folks.

This is the Meat Roll ($8.30), a name which doesn’t really express that it is wrapped in a sheet of bean curd. The bean curd sheet was a bit harder than expected, which gave it better structural integrity at the cost of more pleasant mouthfeel. This was prawnless, which seems to be a deviation from the standard, but my partner thought that this made it friendlier to a broader audience.

The steam pork ribs with black bean sauce ($8.30) were not bad, though it was odd tos ee it come with taro (is it usually like that?) as well as green chilli, which was not what was pictured on the photo menu. I can only assume it’s a seasonal thing?

The chicken feet with black bean sauce ($8.30) were solid, though again with green chilli. Please note that while this photo only depicts three feet, it came with four. My dining partner could not wait to sink her teeth in.

The chicken feet came with peanuts? How odd.

I’m not usually a lover of radish cakes, but the combination fried cakes ($8.30) with a selection of radish, taro (too starchy), and water chestnut (too sweet with a weird gelatinous texture) made me appreciate the radish one, which was honestly not too bad and quite umami.

The mushroom & chinese broccoli rice noodle wrap ($10.80) I could’ve lived without, especially as the prawn ones are the same price.

The chives and prawn dumpling ($8.30) were wow. The best I’ve had in a long time. Extremely fragrant, fresh and tasty chives and a good filling of prawn also. It would be worth going back just for this.

The chew chow style dumpling ($8.30) were fine. They kind of came 15 minutes after the previous dish, by which point we were pretty full. I suspect they were forgotten, and will note that they did forget some of the dishes for some of the other customers.

OVERALL

A solid yum cha experience, super accessible to non-Chinese readers and speakers, with killer jiu cai jiao. Worth coming back just for those alone.

Feng You Dim Sim 逢友点心
7/11 The Avenue, Hurstville NSW 2220
(02) 9580 2251

Categories
Bakery Chinese

Diamond Bakery – Hurstville NSW Restaurant Review

A quit review of some Chinese breads from Diamond Bakery, a Taiwanese bread shop next to its sister Taiwanese cafe.

I normally love a puff pastry egg tart ($2.50), but you just can’t beat a fresh one from yum cha (or the freezer aisle of an Asian grocery store with a quick trip in the toaster oven) with a cold store-bought alternative. It looked highly promising with a layer of wetness on top, and a 50c premium over the shortcrust variety ($2), but ultimately didn’t do it for me. I don’t know if you can time it so that you get them fresh out of the oven. Not too sweet.

This taro (yam) pineapple bun ($3.50) was actually huge and quite good. Not too sweet, with the yam filling adding an additional dimension to the standard bun. Very filling at only $3.50. Can recommend.

This lychee rose pastry ($5.80) was a bit expensive for its diminutive size, but at the end of the day is the product of multiple layers of skillful eggy baking, the likes of which would also attract a price premium at a Western bakery. The filling of rosewater with some lychee flesh embedded within was on the sweeter side of the Asian dessert spectrum, but still quite pleasant. I don’t know that I’d have it again, but overall it wasn’t a bad dense ball.

Diamond Bakery
95 Forest Rd, Hurstville NSW 2220