Category: Cuisines

Categories
Café

Halfday Deli – Wollongong NSW Restaurant Review

It’s rare for me to pay so much attention to the fitout of a cafe or restaurant, but Halfday Deli’s grey and red colour scheme really got me going – looking more like something out of the inner city than a shop on the podium level of a Wollongong apartment building.

The food was good, though our first and second choices were sold out for the day.

The beef & dip ($20) was a sandwich on ciabatta with three key ingredients – roast beef, provolone, and horseradish dressing, and the alleged inclusion of pickled fennel, which was neither here nor there. The tanginess of the mustard dressing was strong and delicious mixed with the roast beef, which, though less pink than in the online marketing photos, was still adequately moist and tender.

I enjoyed every bite of this sandwich both with and without the chicken gravy dip, though my wife thought that the dip was necessary to add saltiness and temper down the strong tangy horseradish taste.

The sausage & egg ($18) with a pork and fennel sausage patty and a slab of egg was the lesser of the two sandwiches (in my opinion), with a relatively mild unexciting flavour and texture carried mostly by the yoghurt ranch and dill pickles. Not something I’d visit for, though the beef and dip definitely was. Seeing as the chicken cotoletta focaccia option was not available, the staff were gracious enough to make this one for us on focaccia rather than the ciabatta that it usually comes with.

We also chose to add a small giardiniera salad and two hashbrowns for $9.50, which was the right choice. My wife enjoyed the crispy pickled vegetables, especially the cauliflower, as well as the sweet roasted walnuts – to name just a couple of the salad’s components.

The dressing of yoghurt ranch was the same white fluid that carried the sausage and egg, and equally enjoyable drizzled on vegetables as it was in the sandwich.

The hash browns were decent – crispy on the outside, unusually soft on the inside, and definitely too salty to eat by themselves.

Overall Really quite a good sandwich, and a good salad, from an outlet with many more options I’d like to try. I’d be open to coming back both for breakfast/lunch and their pizza dinner.

Halfday Deli
Shop 1/38 Atchison St, Wollongong NSW 2500

Categories
Chinese

Yummy Noodle King 巴蜀小面 – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

Google Maps lists Yummy Noodle King 巴蜀小面 as a self-service restaurant rather than a Chinese restaurant, and in a sense that’s true.

We walked in with no expectations and asked for two noodles to be recommended by the staff, resulting in two noodle dishes and a plate of dumplings.

The pork and peas noodle 特色豌杂面 ($14.80) was really yummy, with great umami flavour from the soy braised pork mince, as well as a bit of chilli oil and the weird creaminess of the corn. The dish was, I thought, better eaten as pictured rather than mixed together, as mixing it up made the pea goo go everywhere, making it impossible to avoid when I wanted at times to just have a purely meaty mouthful.

The braised beef noodle soup 红烧牛腩面 ($15.80) was quite delicious, apart from the actual beef, which I had mixed feelings about. The taste of the broth was good, as was the presence of the sour Chinese pickles, though the beef itself had a bit of a corned beef or silverside flavour, which was weird to contemplate in the setting of a Chinese noodle bowl. Overall, I don’t think this made the bowl unenjoyable, however, I probably would have preferred a more Chinese tasting braised beef.

The pork and chive dumplings 水饺, which were 12 pieces for $13.80, were below par for the local area. Though the filling was reasonable, with sweet chives, the wrappers were a bit thicker than I would have liked, making the dumplings more floury and less meaty.

Overall, quite a nice restaurant, and we do have vague inclinations to come back, probably before this post is published.

The self-service nature of this restaurant refers to the fact that once the food is ready, our number was called and we had to go pick it up from the counter. The restaurant, similar to My Aunt’s Handmade Noodles, offers free noodle topups, though we did not take advantage of this as the shop was closing and we were very full already.

Yummy Noodle King 巴蜀小面
181C Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134


Categories
Chinese

Skewer House 串家 – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

Lovin’ Lamb was closed, and this stall in Burwood Chinatown was the nearest alternative.

We had these spicy but less spicy secret recipe lamb skewers ($12.60), which presented a good mixture of fatty and lean lamb coated in an enjoyable chilli-cumin seasoning.

Absolutely comparable to Lovin’ Lamb. No notes.

Skewer House 串家
Burwood Chinatown
127-133 Burwood Road Burwood NSW 2134

Categories
Chinese Groceries

Ruyee Chive and Egg Dumplings, (如意 韭菜盒子) – Grocery Review

I had the PLEASURE of eating these chive and egg “dumplings” from Ruyee a few minutes ago. They were new to my local Asian grocery store, and what a delight they were.

Though labelled dumplings, I would not really characterise them as such as they were each quite large (shown in a 10-inch carbon steel pan above). The Chinese label, 韭菜盒子, is much more accurate, indicating that they’re more of an egg and chive pocket. The cooking instructions suggested heating them in a small amount of oil for a total of six minutes, however due to the three dimensional shape of the pockest I found it neccessary to hold the straight sided edge against the pan to ensure that that portion of the pocket was not left raw.

The taste of these, however, was really good. There was a strong chive taste, with an excellent filling to dough ratio – honestly even better than ones I’ve paid for at literal restaurants and food stalls.

At a pack of 5 for $6-7, I have no notes – hopefully I will be able to find more yummy frozen snacks from this company in the future.

Ruyee Chive and Egg Dumplings 如意 韭菜盒子
UPC 936999818197

Categories
Chinese 广东 (Guǎngdōng/Cantonese)

Steamup Cantonese Restaurant – Eastwood NSW Restaurant Review

I gave my partner a number of non-Cantonese options in Eastwood, as well as this single Cantonese option, and this is the one she chose. We visited Steamup Cantonese Restaurant’s Jusco Centre branch, which is not the one cited for “Fail to store potentially hazardous food under temperature control – Previous warnings given” on 10th July 2024, by the NSW Food Authority/City of Ryde. That one was their store on Progress Avenue.

We ordered a number of items from their electronic menu. Interestingly, the online menu provides an indication of what items are popular that given day, helping customers to choose not just what the restaurant believes to be its house specialties, but also what the customers think is good.

We had this fried dough 油条 you tiao ($3.50), which was fine, not the best, definitely not particularly crispy or fresh, with a bit of a self-raised taste to it.

This BBQ pork rice roll 叉烧肠粉 cha shao chang fen $15.80 was OK at the time, but pales in comparison to a better one that I had at Traditional Chinese Tate in Burwood about 6 weeks after this meal. The one here at Steamup was in comparison less bulgingly full, with a char siu that wasn’t as good as the standard of char siu you’d get at most Cantonese BBQ restaurants.

We ordered also this chinese bacon & chinese sausage claypot rice 腊肉腊肠煎仔饭 ($18.80), into which lightly gingered soy sauce was poured by the server, tableside with resultant sizzle, in an act of showmanship. I didn’t love it at first, particularly not enjoying the flavour of the preserved meat, but it did grow on me.

The bottom of the claypot rice was lightly charred and crispy, as it should be.

The egg tarts 蛋挞 (2 for $5) were terrible. The pastry wasn’t flaky, and the filling was too set and solid rather than soft, and also without an eggy flavour. The freezer aisle at your local Asian grocery store has better options. I would be embarrassed to sell this.

Unlimited refills of ginseng tea was also on offer, with the tiniest cups and the longest walk to the urn to minimise wasteage.

Overall the food was OK, and enjoyed much more by my partner than me. What this trip really did open our eyes to was the deep variety and availability of Chinese foods in Eastwood, a place we haven’t really been to much given we’ve always lived in a relatively Southern part of the city. Perhaps one day when our financial circumstances improve we’ll be able to go back to Eastwood.

Steamup Cantonese Restaurant Jusco Branch
8A-9A/1 Lakeside Rd, Eastwood NSW 2122