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.
l’appel du vide (abstract noun, French) The self-destructive craving for salt, carbohydrates, and fat that can be satisified only by a good kebab.
Some of my fondest childhood memories revolve around eating kebabs, often as a reward for accompanying my parents to unenjoyable (for a six year old) activities such as shopping for the week’s fresh produce at Flemington markets. While the prices are no longer $5, and the food hygiene is probably much higher, this love of kebabs has remained with me ever since those formative days.
Mascot Kebab & Deli on Bourke St, not to be confused with Mascot Kebab on Botany Road, is one of the many kebab shops that deliver to my home. It is also one of the best.
This mixed kebab roll with chili and garlic sauces and tabouli ($14.50) is an excellent kebab. The fresh salad and tabouli to meat ratio is perfect. The meat is standard kebab meat for both “beef” and “chicken”, and do not stand out from the crowd. The sauce ratio is perfect, and the size is good. There are no complaints with the wrapping or packaging. I can only tell you what my mouth told me, which was that this kebab filled all the cravings that I had.
The mixed snack pack with garlic and chili sauce ($20) was good but too expensive. I would usually expect to pay around $12 for this size snack pack. Price aside, the chips were fresh and crunchy, despite having been delivered. The amount of sauce was perfect, however the amount of meat was perhaps a bit too high – a rare complaint from me.
Our recently dog-positive Redfern based friend took us to one of Redfern’s many dog-positive night time venues. We had the $65 per person feed me tasting menu, with the addition of a round of raw beef toast for the table.
I’m not very well versed in olive culture, but these green Sicilian olives were pleasantly crisp and only lightly salted. Not bad, but not something I’d willingly order from the a la carte menu for $5.
The ricotta, potato & leek fritter with smoked tomato sago and aioli was the first non-olive dish of the night, and also the start of what was essentially an abuse of shaved pecorino. Whilst I’m usually quite anti-fritter, these frittery balls were coated in a nice tomato sauce, with good internal texture and flavour. Not bad.
This visually interesting dish is Bart Jr’s kingfish & scallop crudo with yuzu kosho, buttermilk, cucumber, poppy seeds, and dill. I’m pretty sure there’s some salmon and pomegranate snuck in as well. This was a fresh tasting sashimi based dish, and whilst many of the ingredients – for example buttermilk and poppy seed didn’t make a huge difference in flavour, the dill really shone through. Dill generally pairs quite well with seafood, and this was no exception. Well liked around the table. Pretty good.
The raw beef toast with duck dripping, chives, pecorino di fossa, and crispy onion atop grilled garlicky sourdough ($9 supplement each) was not included in our tasting menu but probably the best morsel of the night, and a must get. Each bite of these juicy, thickly topped slices of sourdough was extremely decadent, with the cheeses, sauces, and raw meat all melting together in the mouth. A nice hit of umami that I wish there were more of. A really elevated snack.
The sheep’s halloumi in rosemary butter with burnt honey, verjuice, currants and hazelnuts is the rare sweet halloumi dish. Despite the multiple sources of sweetness and the contrasting innate saltiness of the halloumi this dish was able to avoid being over-flavoured. It was pretty nice, but I think a bit of bread served with it would’ve gone a long way.
Speaking of bread, the next dish on the menu was the rosemary and garlic focaccia with fermented chilli butter and olive oil. My feelings towards this bread dish are not as fond as some of our friends. I think that the fermented chilli butter, whilst good, was wasted on the focaccia which was already quite adequately flavoured and salted on its own. I would’ve preferred to have the chilli butter (as well as the preceding halloumi) with some more plain bread so that it could’ve been enjoyed more on its own merit. The combination of bread and chilli butter was, in my opinion, the combination of two strong and non-complimentary flavours.
The pasta formosa with lamb shoulder ragu, green peas, pecorino and pangrattato was the third appearance of Bart Jr’s overreliance on pecorino. The pasta was quite al dente, moreso than I normally like, but still pretty good. The serving of beef was generous, and while the ragu flavours were good, they were no more special than any other ragu at any other restaurant we’ve been to recently.
The salad dish was made of baby gem leaves, eschallot vinaigrette, pecorino, and fennel seed pangrattato. Are you starting to see a trend? Maybe pecorino was on sale at the supplier.
Whilst I didn’t really enjoy the roasted hasselback potatoes with creme fraiche and aleppo pepper, thinking to be a bit too dry even with the sauce, my potato-positive partner thought that it was “a fine potato”
The charred ocean trout skewer with caramelised fennel, harissa, yoghurt, and mint was NYL’s least favourite dish, and in my opinion probably the weaker of the two options for mains. It is a 200 gram skewer of trout cooked in a Middle Eastern style. The fish is well cooked, to a safe degree whilst still retaining a semi-rare moist inside. I wasn’t a big fan of the fennel, however, and I thought the harrisa-heavy flavour, though not bad on its own, was a bit incongruous with the tone set by the rest of the meal.
I get highly anxious about driving after any quantity of alcohol, so this Heiwa Shuzo ‘Tsuruume’ Yuzushu was perfect as an inclusion on Bart Jr’s tasting menu. It was pretty tasty and refreshing (tart, not too sweet), but takes this somewhat disordered journey from Italy, to the Middle East, and now Japan.
VERDICT Bart Jr’s was generally pretty good, with the major standout being the raw beef toast. They have a minimum spend of $60 per head, so you might have to get some other food and drinks unless you want 7 pieces.
When I was a urology intern in Western Sydney my colleague and good friend told me that we had to go to Jasmin1. He said that it was the best Lebanese restaurant in Sydney and he was not wrong. We never made it there together during our two years at the foot of the Blue Mountains, and it was six months after we had parted ways that I managed to make it there with my partner.
The food at Jasmin1 was excellent. The servings were plentiful and the price was very cheap. I really enjoyed the mixed platter so much that I’ve had it every time I’ve been. The meat was perfectly tender and juicy, the servings large, and the dips infinite. It is just consistent quality.
A wide array of fresh and pickled vegetables.
The sambousek was great – delicious pastries with mince and onion filling.
I did not so much enjoy the fattoush (left) or the potato and pomegranate salad (right), as I thought they were too sour. The fact that we had loaded on the previous two dishes didn’t help but couldn’t be helped – they were just so yum.
I don’t know why on our second visit we got fries. Probably my partner’s doing.
DISCUSSION/VERDICT
The only thing I might add is that the service was too attentive and made me feel watched. I also thought the bathroom wasn’t the cleanest, but that was all.
Overall excellent and both better and cheaper than Al Aseel in Alexandria. Just a bit too far West to easily get to for us these days.
Nineteen43 is a Lebanese cafe in Rockdale, only a few minutes drive from my work. I visited for a quick breakfast after a night shift, and a takeaway meal to bring home to my partner.
Hummus & Lamb
The Hummus & Lamb ($18), with 12 hour slow cooked lamb shawarma shoulder served w/ Smokey paprika, burnt butter & pickled chillies with a side of fresh baked flat bread looked and sounded like it would be good.
The beautiful plating of lamb floating on a bed of red-sprinkled hummus was really quite appealing – it’s just unfortunate that the taste did not live up to what the eyes predicted. I found the meat to be way too overmarinated and oversalted. It was just too tasty. I had hoped that the hummus would provide some sort of reprieve from the oral salt bath that was the meat, however it itself was also quite tasty. The flat bread was fresh and actually quite delicious, but given the amount of salt in the meal the quantity of bread was just plainly inadequate.
Portuguese Tart
The Portuguese Tart was OK if you’re a fan of the big floppy ones. The filling was quite floppy inside, however I thought that the pastry was actually quite good.
Breakfast Pan
This is the takeaway version of the Breakfast Pan ($23), with two poached eggs, grilled haloumi, sujoq, garlic mushrooms, roasted tomatoes, crumbled feta, avocado and toasted sourdough.
I wonder if the dining-in version really is served in a pan, or merely a plate. I also wonder if the name indicates that all the ingredients were cooked in the same pan, but find that unlikely given that the eggs are poached. My partner quite enjoyed this. She liked basically all of the key components of the meal, barring the feta which she thought was a bit too baa for her. I also indulged in a few choice bites, and can safely say that this dish does not suffer from the sodium load issues of the hummus and lamb. I can recommend this one – a bit like a big breakfast.
Smoked Wagyu Kaak
I didn’t think I would go back to Nineteen43 after the eat-in dishes above, but given the buzz around their toasties/kaaks I thought I would give it a try. I’m glad I did. The Smoked Wagyu Kaak ($19, chips included) is actual wow. The thin slice of Jack’s Creek smoked wagyu was all that was needed to give the kaak a strong and delicious umami flavour. The pickles, slaw, and harissa mayonnaise added a great tanginess to the smoked wagyu kaak, one that I can still imagine on my tongue now. The chips that came with the smoked wagyu kaak were fresh shoestring fries, however I wonder if it can be ordered without them as the kaak stands well on its own without any need for additional carbs. I can definitely recommend this.
The Sujoq & Egg Kaak ($11, $14 pictured) with cream cheese, Sujoq (Middle Eastern Chorizo), Fetta shallots, & two fried eggs and the addition of halloumi ($3) was good but didn’t quite live up to the standard set by the Smoked Wagyu Kaak. I liked the taste of their sujoq, which I often don’t, and I thought that the addition of two eggs in this toastie was quite generous. The flavours were salty and eggy, just as a bacon and egg or chorizo and egg roll should be, however I found myself missing the zesty taste of the Wagyu Kaak’s pickles and slaw. I’d still recommend this – just not quite what I was looking for at the time.
Four Cheese Kaak with Pastrami and Tomato
The Four Cheese Kaak with Pastrami and Tomato ($14.50) was pretty good, but again not as good as the smoked wagyu kaak. I’ve never been a fan of cheese by itself, and I think that the tomato and pastrami were essential addons to the base four cheese. I would rate this above the egg and sujuk kaak just thanks to the freshness afforded by the addition of tomato. I wish I could add some smoked wagyu onto this so that I could have their smoked wagyu kaak for breakfast.
Lebanese chicken Foldover
The Lebanese chicken Foldover ($17) with Marinated free range chicken, slaw, Lebanese pickles, harissa mayonnaise dressing served w/ a side of French fries is a weaker offering than Nineteen43’s kaaks. While the kaaks offered a crispiness in the dough, this was not achieved by the bread wrapped around this foldover. The flavours erred towards the slightly-too-tasty side of things and reminded me of the first bad meal I had at Nineteen43, however thankfully this was tempered by the freshness of the Lebanese pickles. The chips in this dish were seasoned with a bit of spicy seasoning, as opposed to coming plain salted as they did with the wagyu kaak. Ultimately not a bad dish but not as good as the others on offer.
VERDICT
Would I come to Nineteen43 again? Yes- it is close enough to my work with enough unlimited parking in the council railway carkpark around the clock (there’s all day parking which was still available around 11:30AM, and also 15 minute parking suitable for takeaway). I would definitely warn any friends and colleagues away from the lamb and hummus (unless you’re on oral salt replacement – in which case eat away), but recommend the kaaks wholeheartedly.
We’ve had Capri’s Kebab and Pizza n-number of times over our numerous night shifts. Capri’s has the distinction of being open until very late most nights, late enough for us to reliably order at the end of a long night shift ward round.
The establishment itself is actually quite confusing, as it shares a location and phone number with Megabite Pizza, however there appears to be two separate menus, with Megabite providing Middle Eastern kebabs and pizza and Capri’s the Greek version.
Mixed Yiros (roll $13) – Delicious yiros meat in a wrap with hot chip, salad and tzatziki. Just what you need to keep your will to live during a night shift.
Capri Special Pide ($18) – Fresh and hot and cheesy, an unfaultable pide for the time of night.
One problem that I will point out about Capri is that they charge an additional $2 for tabouli, which, on top of a $14 charge for the base kebab is a bit steep. Tabouli is in my humble opinion an essential component of your kebab, and a $16 kebab is just too much. The other thing I’d mention is that I prefer the beef and chicken mixed kebab over the lamb kebab at Capri’s (neither are pictured). This is because while the lamb in the lamb kebab is indeed real lamb, it is extremely fatty, whereas the beef and chicken are your regular doner fare.
In my opinion Capri’s delivers a known quantity of good quality food, and is my personal pick for the night shift grind. This is not an opinion held by all of my colleagues, however, some of whom prefer Capri’s arch nemesis Adam.
