Category: Cuisines

Categories
Chinese

Wonder Skewers – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

We spent $104 at Wonder Skewers in Burwood, which was definitely too much, and got us enough food to last two meals for two people.

The problem, kind of like in yum cha, is that everything came in groups of 3-5 skewers. This meant that to have any decent amount of variety as well as to not to eat repeats, you really need to come here with a few friends, not just one other person.

The variety of meats on offer was quite broad. We had lamb (5 for $13.80), beef tendon (4 for $12.80), ox tongue (4 for $13.80), pork with gristle (5 for $12.80), chicken wings (3, but really 6 wings for $12.80), beef ribs (5 for $13.80), and eggplant ($7.80), and scallops (2 for $13.80).

All food was cooked in the kitchen, and brought out to us once ready, rested on a bed which itself rested over a series of tealights, to keep the food warm as we ate. This is a pro gamer move, as oily, BBQ food tends to get much less appetizing once cold.

The chicken wings were in particular very juicy and tasty, with a crispy skin on the exterior.

A relatively special mention should also go to the beef tendon, which had a really gooey and fun texture, though was definitely too much to have all on my own, as my partner decided this was the day that beef tendon would be too weird for her.

The pork with gristle (at the left of the above photo), was really more like pork with soft bones, and quite yummy and good to crunch between the teeth.

The scallops were really overloaded with garlic, but at least had a different flavour to the barbequed meats, which to be honest all tasted very similar to one another.

Sadly the garlic eggplant was then the same flavour as the scallop.

My thoughts are these. The food was good, but definitely got quite repetitive, as essentially all of the BBQ meat had one flavour, and then the sides had another flavour. Two flavours over the $104 of food we ordered. As already mentioned, it is imperative to go with more than one person, unless you’re someone who really just wants to have 2-4 skewers of the same meat, and not try anything else.

Another interesting thing we noticed was that there was a notice on their ordering webpage (via QR code at the table) asking patrons not to abuse their staff for cooking slowly. No idea what that is about, we were served within 5-10 minutes of ordering.

Wonder Skewers
77 Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134
0413 735 979

Categories
Bakery Café

Bennett Street Dairy – Bondi NSW Restaurant Review

Look, this is really a review of a cookie that I had at Blair St Dairy, because that was closest to where we were and had to be again within a 45 minute window (some kind of magnesium sulfate floaty thing in Bondi Junction – my partner’s idea, but I agreed to go because she wanted me to, and magnesium sulfate is probably my most used drug). It really doesn’t matter though, because it’s only a cookie, and both places are run by the same people.

So what can I tell you about this chocolate chip cookie ($?6.50) that you can’t tell just from the photos? It was big, it was thick. It was warmed up for us before serving, which made it quite nice and soft. It was initially though to be not-too-sweet based on cookie, but opinion was changed to too-sweet once the taste of chocolate chip was established. The oiliness and sweetness of the cookie didn’t quite fit with the overall vibe of The Bondi Local, but these are probably the people who have some extra calories to spare anyway.

We had fun looking at all the Halloween displays outside the homes between our car and the café. You don’t get that as much when your house is worth less than $3 million of inter-generational wealth.

Anyway if you want the cookie and have an acceptable Trigs/HDL/LDL/HbA1c it’s probably more efficient to buy their cookie dough from the shops and bake your own.

Bennett St Bakery
(02) 8387 2149
73 Bondi Rd, Bondi NSW 2026

Categories
Middle Eastern

Brothers Kebabs and Burgers – Annandale NSW Restaurant Review

We had a hard night of moving hard rubbish between our new place and the hard rubbish pickup at our old apartment complex, which took multiple, completely unnecessary trips because it turned out to be extremely easy to book hard rubbish pickup in the Inner West Council area. By the time we had finished moving all our stuff, all planned locations for a late night meal were closed, and we ended up at Brothers Kebabs in Annandale for a late night feed.

This halal snack pack with lamb and chicken was good, but expensive. I’m not sure of the price any more, but I want to say that it was in the neighbourhood of $22, which is quite pricey but I guess reflects the rising cost of everything these days. The meat was good, the chips fresh and crispy, and the saucing generous, though we were given the chilli sauce out of the squeeze bottle, not the luxurious looking spooned-from-the-tub chilli sauce that they were putting on the kebabs. I will have to ask for that next time.

I hadn’t had a pide for a good long time, and this chicken type pide hit the spot. Again, post midnight, I did not manage to remember to get prices or even the name of the menu item down. I wish it had come with more lemon, but I’m sure I could’ve asked for more.

A pretty good meal, good hours, and a rare finding of lamb.

UPDATE OCTOBER 2025

My wife picked up some kebabs and chilli sauce on the way home from work.

Kebab was fine.

One was lamb and the other was beef, but they tasted more or less the same.

The housemade chilli sauce ($1) that I was looking at last time didn’t end up being that good. It was sweeter than it was spicy, kind of reminiscent of a romesco.

Brothers Kebabs and Burgers Annandale
257 Parramatta Rd, Annandale NSW 2038
(02) 9569 6229

Categories
Indian

Mehfil – Auburn NSW Restaurant Review

I don’t remember much about this Western Sydney Hyderabadi restaurant, even though it hasn’t been so long since I ate at it. I will instead attempt to entertain you with a few pictures, some scattered thoughts, and a fun fact that I learned from my Western Sydney North Indian friend (ES).

I enjoyed the chicken 65 ($15 – actually listed as $14.99, but they don’t carry 1 cent coins), though it was a bit wetter and saltier than others that I’ve had. I was surprised to find that my friend had never had this before. Maybe I’ve just had it a lot because there have been a lot of Indo-Chinese restaurants in the places I’ve lived.

My interesting fact of the day, relating to this mutton biryani ($16 – $15.99, who are they trying to fool?), is that mutton biryani can refer to biryani with meat from either goat or sheep, and it’s not possible to know which one it is unless you ask. Where in Australian English we always mean old sheep, mutton almost always refers to goat in the Subcontinent, and therefore in a Indian restaurant in Sydney it could literally be a flip of the coin. This mutton, whatever animal it may have been, was not too gamey (which is my usual concern with old sheep).

My not so interesting fact about this arachi chicken (let’s just call it $16) is that I’m not the only one who couldn’t recognise this based on the photo. See below a screenshot from a Google Review by ali rizvi838.

I don’t know what this is. I’m waiting on my friend to text me back at time of writing. (EDIT: it is ladoo) It was soft, sweet, and drowned in syrup. It was pretty good.

General comments
It’s weird that I don’t remember much about this place, but the general vibe was that it was good and affordable. Much more memorable was the weird fact that I learned about mutton.

Update – Delivery Order
I didn’t feel like this was worth a separate post, but I had a subsequent delivery app meal around 3am one night from the Mehfil branch in Merrylands. Both the Chicken 65 Biryani and the Chicken Tikka 4-Piece were excellent.

The Chicken 65 Biryani ($17) included not only Chicken 65, but Biryani rice with chicken inside it, a surprising outcome as some restaurants try to get away with a protein-free biryani if the meal is already topped with Chicken 65.

The Chicken Tikka (4 piece for $18) was tender, tasty, juicy and made me feel quite happy. The combination of the two things I ordered made me feel very satisfied and energised me to continue the rest of the night.

Mehfil
52 Auburn Rd, Auburn NSW 2144
240 Merrylands Rd, Merrylands NSW 2160
(02) 8123 8052

Categories
Middle Eastern

Pazar Food Collective – Canterbury NSW Restaurant Review

Pazar Food Collective identifies as an Inner-West restaurant, which as someone who lives two minutes down the road I think it’s a bit laughable. As I told our dining companions on the night, the only people who consider where we live to be the Inner-West seem to be real estate agents. Regardless of which highly-priced clique of Sydney we were or weren’t in, we had a pretty good meal. Prices noted below are inclusive of a 10% weekend surcharge, which, given they’re only open Thursday-Saturday, I think bears mentioning.

We started with this wood baked sesame nigella bread with salted wild oregano butter ($17.05 – $13.20 without the butter). Both the bread and the butter tasted good and fragrant, with a density that might just be in keeping with its own style. Though I enjoyed the bread, I do wish that there could have been a cheaper or even no-cost option (like a flatbread or something, especially because we ended up getting multiple servings, given that such a large number of their entrees are so sauce focused.

People liked the muhamarra ($18.70), but I didn’t. It is a dip that that the menu describes as consisting of roasted almonds and walnuts blended with blistered red peppers, pomegranate molasses, and chilli. It’s hard to pinpoint why I didn’t like it – I think it was a bit loose and watery textured, though clearly no one else around the table had any problems with it. Bread was essential, and again a bit of pita would’ve gone a long way.

I am a lover of meet, and yes the sujuk with hummus and blistered tomatoes ($25.30) was enjoyable. The sujuk was helpfully presented as a mince rather than as slices of sausage, which made a lot of sense for a dish that ultimately surmounted to a multi-textured dip. I tend to eat quite a bit of sujuk during my Western Sydney culinary adventures, often without enjoying it, but I must say that this time I was thoroughly impressed by both the flavour and texture of the mince. Similar to the last dip, the reds were again blistered to this time produce cherry tomatoes that brought with them discrete pops of juice and flavour. The hummus didn’t really register for me. It was merely a creamy carrier for the other tasty ingredients rather than the focus of the dish.

Wow, another sauce, and need for another bread. The braised Japanese eggplant ($23.10) with roasted red pepper tomato sauce, garlic labneh, and chilli crisp did nothing for me. Apart from the slices of eggplant itself (which did not feel extremely Japanese to me) this tomato and capsicum dish felt more or less the same as a combination of the other two dips. Quite missable in my opinion.

We chose to have both the mains to share between us. This is the wood smoked roast lamb ($51.70 – 2 person serving size), atop a bed of bulgur pilav and garnished with pickled chillis, sumac herb and red onion salad. Though I wasn’t wowed by the meat, I did enjoy the bright pickled chillis, herbs, and lemon, which helped to keep mouthfuls of lamb moist and flavourful. This was my first time having bulgur pilav, which from what I can gather by my mouth and by Google is a wholegrain dish very similar to but distinct from wholewheat couscous and quinoa. It had rice energy.

Tied favourite with the sujuk mince was this terribly photographed harissa roasted chicken ($40.7). This half chicken, roasted on charcoal, was super tender and flavourful, marinated in a tahini lemon sauce, and served with chilli garlic and green chilli toum. Each bite of the chicken was really superb, and though it didn’t need the salad to help keep it fresh and moist, its presence was appreciated because it gave me something to eat whilst I respectfully let my co-diners have their fair share of the chicken. Strong recommend on this one.

Comments
This restaurant really has a lot of saucey and dippy entrees for a place that only offers $13.20 servings of bread. It would really make a lot more sense to just have bottomless pita, but it would probably cut into their bottom line and $13 bread sales. The sujuk and the chicken were particular standouts. We also had some pretty good sangria, which I promise I only had a couple of sips of.

Pazar Food Collective
325 Canterbury Rd, Canterbury NSW 2193, Australia
+61 411 727 874