Category: Middle Eastern

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Café Middle Eastern

Havenstone – North Parramatta NSW Restaurant Review

Walking to Havenstone from our place of work involves walking through the grounds of Cumberland Hospital, a heritage-listed sandstone building complex with a lovely set of grounds. Seeing people have their coffees in the courtyards as we attempted to stay awake following a 13-hour night shift really hammered home the concept of the road not taken, as I’m constantly reminded of the fact that I almost became a psychiatrist were it not for the influence of one particular senior early on in my working career. Thanks HWJ.

The Middle Eastern breakfast platter ($29) served inexplicably on a piece of wood rather than a more antibacterial medium such as a ceramic plate features plain pita bread, two fried eggs, a choice of Lebanese sausages or falafel (predictably I chose the Lebanese sausages) some labneh and hummus and a collection of multicoloured vegetables including pickled peppers, olives, very crispy radishes, cucumber and some cherry tomatoes. The plate was overall not bad, featuring a combination of ingredients and colours that made it feel like I was doing the right thing for my body and eating my traffic lights. Despite this however I just didn’t feel it was particularly special, especially compared to a local analogue which is the Phoenician Kafta Bowl at Little Miss Collins in Pamada which provides za’atar rather than just plain pita bread. I honestly wouldn’t even be offended if instead of plain pita they provided za’atar from a well-regarded local manoosh shop like Mina’s Bakery in Westmead. It would just add a little something extra to what is otherwise a somewhat unexciting mixed plate.

The Havenstack ($27) is a physically compact but surprisingly dense arrangement of a hash brown, wilted spinach, grilled portobello mushroom, smashed avocado, bacon topped with a poached egg, Lebanese sausage, halloumi and a layer of Hollandaise sauce. I really didn’t think that such a small footprint of food could make one full, but I was surprisingly wrong. The combination and variety of ingredients led to a pretty good meal, actually, and I guess the form factor did help each of the ingredients to maintain warmth, minimising radiative heat loss rather than it being spread out on a plate.

Havenstone
5 Fleet St, North Parramatta NSW 2151

Categories
Middle Eastern

Clayton Kebab House – Clayton VIC Restaurant Review

A fortnight ago I shared with you some memories of Kebabmia and Pizza on Liverpool Street in Sydney, which has been closed since 2015.

For today’s out-of-cycle low-effort post I bring to you a photo and some loose thoughts of a similar meal from Clayton Kebab House in Victoria, which is still open to this day.

I specifically remember that this kebab shop, and actually most kebab shops in Melbourne, had a realistic looking lamb option on the menu, something that has become rarer and rarer in Sydney over the last decade.

While the photo of this chicken meat plate with salad does not look particularly appealing, it’s probably reflects more the 2015 era smartphone camera than it does the food. It really can’t have been that bad, as I ate here a two digit number of times during my time in Victoria.

Clayton Kebab House
342A Clayton Rd, Clayton VIC 3168

Categories
Middle Eastern

Kebabmia & Pizza – Sydney NSW Restaurant Review

I’ve cleared the backlog of reviews to write, and so here’s a blast from the past that I’ll post outside of the regular queue. Kebabmia & Pizza on Liverpool St used to be a go-to spot for me back in the mid 2010s (RIP, according to Google Maps Streetview, by October 2015 – the venue has since changed hands several times).

This was from an era before the halal snack pack had entered mainstream consciousness, (you will see from the photo of the board above that it does not exist on it), but I will take credit for being an early adopter of a kind of neo-halal snack pack. My order was usually a box of chicken meat with tabouli rather than chips, tabouli being in my opinion the most elite salad accompaniment to kebab meat, even if it’s not of authentically Turkish origin.

The meat was tasty, and from the photos, believably meat. The salad was fresh. I’m sure it was less than $10 at the time, as well.

10/10 no notes. RIP.

Kebabmia & Pizza
79 Liverpool St, Sydney NSW 2000

Categories
Middle Eastern

Granville Kebab House – Granville NSW Restaurant Review

I sat out on the first order from Granville Kebab House on our run of nights, but after letting my colleagues test the waters on night one, I took part on night two.

Contrary to the opinions of my colleagues, I did not feel that this lamb kebab ($17.50) was the best. I would rate it in the bottom quartile of lamb kebabs I’ve had, purely because of the quality of the meat was lacking. While it’s usually nice to find a kebab with something resembling actual meat as opposed to mystery meat, I found the meat in this kebab to be unpleasantly chewy and gristly, with at least a couple of mouthfuls where the meat was impossible to chew to a small enough particle size to swallow, and had to be discreetly spat out instead. Factors counting in favour of this kebab however include its huge size, though another factor detracting is the $1 surcharge for tabouli. Perhaps a mystery-meat and chicken mix kebab would be a bit better.

I had only a single soggy bottom chip from this large snack pack ($22), but I wanted to add this photo to show just how huge and heaped it was. The concave upper lid was packed to the absolute max. I appreciate the effort, but would appreciate it more if the portion sizes and prices were both smaller.

Granville Kebab House
17 South St, Granville NSW 2142
0410 801 801

Categories
Middle Eastern

Smokey’s Kebabs – Enfield NSW Restaurant Review

In the days preceding a particularly tricky quiz, we gave up on cooking and essentially just ate out and ordered delivery – reactivating a long-dormant DoorDash account, which had been the source of much of this blog’s content in the 2020 to 2021 era.

We ordered a Medium Mix Snack Pack ($21) with garlic, hummus, and chilli sauce. As may be evident from the photo, they forgot to put the chilli sauce in, netting us a very small partial refund from the DoorDash platform (though I wish they had just put it on).

The mix of mystery doner meat and actual chicken was of a standard quality. The size of this medium snack pack was actually quite large, and I wish they would have offered a smaller version for an appropriately smaller price. The chips, not pictured in this photo as it was beneath the mountain of meat and the wrong combination of sauces were actually excellent – extremely crispy, despite surviving a delivery trip, and remained so throughout the meal. It’s just a shame the lack of chilli let it down. I consider it much more essential than hummus.

Luckily the regular mixed kebab ($18) with tabouli, garlic, chilli, and hummus came with all the requested ingredients. It was good, though I have to say $18 is getting up there for a kebab.

Smokey’s Kebabs
138 Liverpool Rd, Enfield NSW 2136