Category: Cuisines

Categories
Asian Fusion Café

Queen St Cafe – Berry NSW Restaurant Review

Queen St Cafe, not to be confused with Queen St Eatery, also on Queen St in Berry, is a quiet cafe tucked towards the back of an indoor arcade with what seems like a high tea focus, unusually with very large plates, and an assortment of unusual chairs (not photographed). We took advantage of my temporary residence in Nowra to explore Queen St Cafe’s non-high tea offerings, an all day lunch menu.

These is the lobster po boys ($30), which featured much bread within which was stuffed southern fried lobster tails, slaw, frie donions, shallots, coriander, and hot sauce. For an additional $2 (a total of $32 for this large plate of moderate food, our house fries were upgraded to truffle fries. This was no doubt an expensive choice from a menu of expensive choices. We do like a good lobster though, and this deep fried lobster did fulfill that craving. They did I think overuse the mayonnaise and probably also oversalted everything. The chips were fresh, which is what you would expect at this price point.

The Japanese pancake ($20) with cabbage, broccoli, carrot, red onion, wakame, sesame seeds, a poached egg, ginger, tokatsu sauce and mayonnaise was Berry’s local take on an okonomoyaki. Whilst there was a bit more flour that I would’ve expected from a usual okonomoyaki and they had run out of bonito flakes for the day, the flavours of this dish were actually quite accurate and pleasing – a mixture of salty, tangy and umami. It was honestly pretty good, though they could have standed being a little more light handed with the sauce.

COMMENTS At the end of the day, there are a lot of options for food in Berry. Whilst Queen St Cafe was not bad, it wasn’t what I would recommend if you only had time in town for one or two meals.

Queen St Cafe
94 Queen St Shop 5, Stan Burt Arcade, Berry NSW 2535
(02) 4444 4612

Categories
Korean Snacks

Seaworld Fried Baby Crab Chips 티각태각 꽃게부각

I went out of my way between night shfits looking for some deep fried mini shrimp heads to bring to work, but could only find these deep fried baby crabs.

As deep fried baby crabs go, these certainly did the job. They had quite a nice seafoody umami taste, though were quite oily and would be really at the apex of any food pyramid as a sometimes only treat.

The only bad thing about them is how slightly freaky the little crab bodies look. I recommend first having a few with your eyes closed, so that you can enjoy them before you look at them.

Seaworld Fried Baby Crab Chips 티각태각 꽃게부각
UPC 8809406282704

Categories
Chinese

Yang’s Dumpling – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

Whilst we’ve parked frequently outside Yang’s Dumpling on our way to other restaurants we’d not, until now, ventured inside. We ordered a surprising amount of food for two humans trying to save for a deposit for residential property in Sydney, and much to our detriment, it wasn’t all good.

We had a combination of pan-fried pork buns (3) and pan-fried pork & prawn buns (3) for $13.80, but sadly only received two pork and prawn buns and four usual pork buns, the sesame colour-scheme system clearly failing them and us. Whilst the pork and prawn ones were nice and fresh and tasty, the lack of a third bun meant that I didn’t get a good interior shot of them.

The pan-fried pork buns were sadly not as good as the pork and prawn buns because they simply weren’t hot and fresh. These buns are not quite sheng jiang bao as they were not filled with soup, though they did have (or were meant to have) a crispy base.

The pan-fried vegetable and pork buns (4 for $9.80) were pretty good though. It’s really heat dependent.

The xiao long bao (6 for $9.80) had a strange taste and we did not finish them.

The pan-fried vegetable and pork dumplings ($11.80) were also not warm!

Love a good tea/soy egg though.

GENERAL THOUGHTS
It was a real shame that a lot of what we ordered just wasn’t fresh and warm. The things that were fresh were pretty good, but the enjoyment of pan fried dumplings is really dependent on their warmth and crispiness. I guess they must not be cooked to order, which I think is below the bar set by most establishments that sell food.

Yang’s Dumpling Burwood
Shop 9, 11-15 Deane St, Burwood NSW 2134
(02) 8057 7109

Categories
Bakery

Baked by Keiran – Dulwich Hill Restaurant Review

I hadn’t realised, when I went, that Baked by Keiran was a bit of a successful enterprise with five bakeries spread throughout East and South Sydney. I had imagined at the time that the guy who had corrected my pronunciation and sold me these two baked goods was the Keiran written on the label, but it turns out after visiting their website and reading about the company that he was clearly just a guy who worked there.

I chose this orange almond & blackberry cake ($6.90) as the first of two items to supplement my haul from Dulwich Hill Pork Roll around the corner. This cake was on the denser side, in line with my partner’s preference, and happily not too sweet. I think the dominant flavour of the cake was cake itself, with some almond in it as well. The orange was subtle, and the blackberry was similarly present but reasonably scarce. I would’ve much preferred the fruits, in particular the blackberry, to have made a greater showing. It was overall good, however.

The first time I had a canelé ($3.50) I didn’t know what it was called. I admitted to as much in my review of Babyface Kitchen, where I really did what I could to avoid having to name it. Fast forward a year and while I know what it’s called, I still didn’t know how it’s called. I was a little embarrassed when the guy (not Keiran) corrected my pronunciation, but this is how we learn. I enjoyed the caramelise crust and the gooey, glutinous centre, though as a guy who doesn’t even know how to say the name I also don’t know what it’s meant to taste like. I’ve never had the benchmark or textbook canelé, though this tasting will of course inform subsequent ones.

Baked by Keiran Dulwich Hill
455 Marrickville Rd, Dulwich Hill NSW 2203
(02) 8065 6222

Categories
Korean

Pork Over Flowers (꽃보다 삼겹)- Strathfield NSW Restaurant Review

Pork Over Flowers differs from most Korean BBQ restaurants in that it focuses on grilling a majority-pork based menu together with kimchi, bean sprouts, and shallots, allowing the rendered fat and meat juices to soak through the vegetables as they cook.

Banchan selection was broad, but was not refilled even though we fully cleared most of the plates.

We had the fresh pork belly set ($89) with an additional serving of pork neck ($26). The meat was cooked at the table for us, and just as advertised the rendered pork fat and meat juices did combine to add a umami flavour to the mix of kimchi, bean sprouts, and shallots. This was pretty good, and also a pretty novel experience for us three Chinese guys who hadn’t had broad experience in different styles of Korean BBQ.

The Kimchi Pancake ($25) was not as bad as people online indicated it would be. It certainly didn’t stand out, but reading what others hand said you would think that it was poisonous.

There is allegedly soft serve ice cream included for all customers at no extra cost, though the machine was not working during our visit.

One problem I do have is that I noticed while writing this review that this restaurant offers freebies for positive Google reviews, which I feel really defeats the purpose of the review process. It’s already hard enough to find nice places to eat with all the social media influencers with undeclared paid partnerships, but when the Google review system is gamed it makes it really unfair. (On that note we did witness like five Instagram girls spend an extremely long time taking photos of their mountain of food only to not eat it).