Category: Middle Eastern

Categories
Middle Eastern

Al Aseel – Alexandria NSW Lebanese Restaurant Review

Our favourite Lebanese restaurant in Sydney has to be Jasmin1, but living in South East Sydney it’s quite rare for us to make it out to Auburn. Al Aseel is a surprisingly upscale Lebanese restaurant in Alexandria, and while it is more expensive, is a fitting substitute.

We went for a late lunch, and did not have to wait. I am told that there is a long queue for dinner and it’s best to try and book ahead.

Special mention needs to be made of the decor and layout of the restaurant. Al Aseel is located in the same complex as South Dowling Sandwiches and Pholosphy, and there is adequate guest parking. It is a far more upscale establishment than Jasmin1, featuring a very extensive bar and a large dining area. The dining tables themselves are huge for just two people, which is a mark of the restaurant’s commitment to a slightly finer dining experience.

The Mansaf Rice ($9) was very nutty! It was good value for a reasonably sized bowl of rice, nuts, and a small amount of mince. It had a mild, nutty flavour, but more than the flavour I felt the nuts really helped to make the texture interesting. Went great with the excess garlic and lemon sauce from the garlic and lemon chicken.

The Meat and Onion Samobusek (4 for $14) was pretty standard. The pastry was good but not great, the filling was quite good but a bit salty.

If online reviews are to believed, Al Aseel’s Lemon & Garlic Chicken ($26) are their “unmissable” “flagship” dish. I had expected something truly extraodinary and out of the box, but what I found for $26 was actually a bit pedestrian. Their lemon and garlic chicken is simply tawouk absolutely drowned in a lake’s worth of garlic sauce and lemon juice. That’s not to say that it’s bad – it’s actually very good – just not what I was expecting. The chicken is in particular cooked very well, tender, and the sauces very flavourful.

It is the curse of all Lebanese restaurants in Sydney to be compared with Jasmin1. While I enjoyed the food at Al Aseel, I definitely felt that it was more of an upscale establishment, in terms of decor, the fitout, but also in terms of the price. While $49 at Jasmin1 can feed a small army, the same is not true of Al Aseel. Having said that, I do see myself coming back to Al Aseel more, just based on the proximity alone.

4/5 yums

Al Aseel Alexandria
42a/110-116 Bourke Rd, Alexandria NSW 2015
(02) 8399 3433

Categories
Middle Eastern

Beverly Hills Kebab and Pide House – Beverly Hills NSW Restaurant Review

It was July 2020, and my Melbourne based colleague had just snuck across the border into NSW and was keen for a meal.

I had Beverly Hills Kebab and Pide House’s Mixed kebab plate with hummus, garlic, and chilli ($18). It was a large portion for the price and I had difficulty finishing it despite not having eaten during the preceding 12 and a half hour shift. The quality of the meat and ingredients were standard, nothing to write home about, but nothing specifically wrong either.

I don’t think I’d come back, but it was worth trying.

3/5

Beverly Hills Kebab and Pide House
520 King Georges Rd, Beverly Hills NSW 2209
+61 (02) 9580 9229

Categories
Café Middle Eastern

Kepos Street Kitchen – Redfern NSW Cafe Review

Kepos Street Kitchen came highly recommended by a vegetarian colleague of ours. Naturally we went without him to share a meat-heavy meal before a swing at nearby Moore Park.

The Charred broccolini salad, shredded chicken, coarse burghul, herbs ($18) was delicious. As a group we are not the biggest fans of salad, but all members of our party ended up enjoying it. There is a surprisingly generous amount of chicken tucked in with all the greens and grains.

The Burrata cheese, Persian eggplant, pine nuts, volcanic salt ($22) was pretty good. The cheese was firm on the outside and less firm on the inside, as expected. The real star of this dish was the crusty, freshly toasted bread. Delicious.

The Grilled prawns, chermoula, grilled lemon ($27) came with five prawns. The prawns were quite large and tasty, and the lemon was too (though I was tricked by a colleague into an entire quarter of the lemon pictured in one mouthful by itself). I’m still trying to come to terms with paying $5.40 per prawn though.

Kepos meatball sub, coriander paste, grated haloumi, ciabatta ($18) was very good. Plenty of meat and red sauce on crusty warm bread. Very yum and a good serving of meat. A strong recommendation for this one.

The Arayes pita of wagyu mince seasoned with parsley, onion, olive oil, cumin and paprika, chili tomato salad, tahini, pita ($18) started off good, however quickly we found it to be too flavourful and too saucy. You will recognise this complaint of “too tasty” from many of my reviews, and in this case you can rest assured that this was a view that was held by the majority of our group. I would not recommend Kepos Street Kitchen’s Arayes pita.

Pictured here is a half serve of chips, which were provided complimentary as they had forgotten to make our chips. Even this half serving was quite a lot of chips. The chips were fresh and fluffy on the inside, with a cripsy exterior. They may just be the best hot chips I’ve had in a long long time. There’s definitely something special going on, owing perhaps to a proprietary cooking method. At $7 (for twice the chips listed) I would give them a go.

Overall

Pretty much everything we had hit the spot. I can recommend.

5/5

Kepos Street Kitchen
96 Kepos St, Redfern NSW 2016
(02) 9319 3919

Categories
Middle Eastern

Mascot Kebab & Deli (Bourke St) – Mascot NSW Kebab Review

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.

Mascot Kebab & Deli good. Salt. Yum.

Mascot Kebab & Deli
59/7 Bourke St, Mascot NSW 2020
(02) 8958 7737

Categories
Fine Dining Italian Middle Eastern

Bart Jr. – Redfern NSW Restaurant Review

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.

Bart Jr.
92 Pitt St, Redfern NSW 2016
0401 899 845

Dog tax, mid-corkscrew vs giraffe toy

Diners: JW, PX, NYL and dog, LH