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.
My partner was HIGHLY DOUBTFUL that there’d be any possibility of good Asian food in Campsie. We’d have to go to Burwood, she said, for anything yummy. Boy was she wrong.
The Stir-Fried Pork Belly with Salted Fish on Hot Plate ($23.90) was a very tasty dish that also comes as a cheaper and smaller combination with rice, which we foolishly chose to have its own. It had good but strong salty flavours, though probably not something I’d want again. I’m more of a red braised pork belly fan than a sliced pork belly fan.
The House Chilli Chicken Nasi Lemak ($18.90) was excellent. I must be honest that with my limited understanding of Malaysian food I did not know that this was essentially going to be just fried chicken with condiments. This was a huge serving of fried chicken, with wonderfully umami rich chilli sauce, served with rice seasoned with little anchovies and peanuts. Everything about this dish was so fragrant and delicious that it’s clear why this is one of Malaysia Small Chilli Restaurant’s signature dishes.
Not knowing that the house chilli chicken nasi lemak was essentially fried chicken, we also ordered the Chicken Wings with Shrimp Paste ($14). No one stopped us. I wish they had. There is less chicken than the Nasi Lemak, with less fun taste. Definitely not a double up we needed, and not even a double up we finished.
They didn’t ask how much sugar we wanted in our Iced Teh Tarik (Malaysian Iced Tea – $4.50). It was not too sweet, just as it should be. Excellent.
OTHER COMMENTS We had a good meal in Campsie, and hopefully opened my partner’s eyes to eating out in our suburb a little more, without having to travel elsewhere. I’d come back, possibly for their curry chicken, which my Malaysian friend BCSY has recommended.
UPDATE, VISIT 2
I wanted Malaysian food again, but was too shy to go back to neighbouring Ipoh Dynasty for the third time in a week.
This Hainan Chicken Rice ($17.90) was actually very good, perhaps the best I’ve had in recent memory. I loved how fragrant and oily the rice was, it being more delicious and more of the focus of the dish than the chicken itself. I’d definitely get this again from here.
The curry chickensignature laksa ($17.90) was ordered following my friend’s recommendation to try their curry chicken but with us not willing to order a full dish of just chicken itself without any roti available on the menu. This laksa was really pretty good, with a huge serving size, a rich creamy broth, and a really large amount of chicken that we struggled to finish, all at a good price. It even had pieces of potato in it. How crazy. Two carbs in one.
Malaysia Small Chilli Restaurant Campsie 148 Beamish St, Campsie NSW 2194 (02) 8068 2433
Beloved Marrickville Vietnamese restaurant Pho PhD didn’t blow my mind, and that’s OK.
The Pho Beef Special ($19) was absolutely reasonable, but not the best I’ve ever had. The serving size was actually quite large, even for the regular serving, but I didn’t feel as wowed as I have been at some restaurants by the complexity of their beef balls. I am spoiled by 2 Foodies, which to date is still my favourite pho, even though I understand it’s not the most traditional rendition out there. Now there’s a place I would award a PhD to in terms of original research and a genuine contribution to mankind’s understanding of the world around us.
This Crispy Chicken with Tomato Rice ($18.50) was pretty good, no complaints from me. It has an adequately crispy skin with a moist interior, I don’t necessarily think that Sydney has an absolute crispy skin chicken king.
This Lemongrass Pork Chop ($8) was the best thing I had of the night, very well priced, and well flavoured. You save a considerable amount of money if you just order the pork chop without the rice, and we already had plenty of rice from the crispy skin chicken and tomato rice dish to go around. Yum.
OVERALL THOUGHTS Pho PhD is a very busy eatery, seemingly popular with the inner-West late 20s crowd, as we happened to run into (and successfully avoid eye contac with0 someone we went to high school with. Their food was not mind blowing, but of a reasonable staple quality. Personally given the wide range of Vietnamese restaurants in Marrickville that I’ve yet to try, I think I will eat around before I think about going back.
Full disclosure, when I recommended this restaurant to my partner, her brother, and her father, I thought I was actually recommending Spicy Joint. Spice, it turns out, was a completely different, if mostly similar, restaurant in the same general geographical area.
Spice World’s physical footprint, unlike that of Spicy Joint, is quite easy to miss, inhabiting the first floor portion of a building on Sussex St with only a little bit of street-level signage that was obscured by a group of Chinese women on my first walk past. The interior of Spice World is quite well-adorned and opulent compared to its relatively nondescript entryway, with high ceilings, living crustaceans in tanks, a high degree of cleanliness, and numerous booths alongside large windows with a view of the street below. There were also two or three private dining areas on the interior of the room with larger tables.
We had a shared large hot pot with mushroom and tomato soup bases. It’s only now while writing this that I am realising the major difference in my childhood hotpot experiences to my adult ones. Hailing from the North, hotpot in our home was always cooked in plain water, with flavour added through the use of personal dipping sauces primarily composed of sesame sauce (麻酱) and fermented bean curd (酱豆腐) or other flavourings. Ever since I’ve been with my current partner, from the first time I sat opposite her mother at family Christmas and kept getting splashed items thrown into the hot pot that was placed far closer to my side of the table (I don’t distinctly remember being told to just keep quiet about it and suck it up, but it definitely felt I was meant to) to all the times we’ve had hotpot at restaurants in Sydney as well as at home just with the two of us, we’ve had a completely different form of hotpot with, different, flavour and sodium laden soup bases in which to boil our ingredients. This is a fundamental change in my life that I’ve been living with for seven years and only realised now.
Digression complete, the soup was ultimately fine, and I think the consensus around the table was that the mushroom soup base was superior, though we did not regret getting two different bases for a few extra dollars. There was an extra charge for sauces (which I, as a later arriver didn’t know about), so we didn’t get any of that.
We watched semi-excitedly as these automated vehicles carried orders to other customers, though when it came to our food it was all delivered to our table by regular humans. We did order a lot of food, perhaps too much for it to make sense to fit onto multiple robots.
The greens and shrooms were not cheap. The basa fillets ($18.90) I felt had a bit of a taste to them, but no one else found this problematic. The pork and chive dumplings (6 for $8.90) were enjoyed.
The meat was fine, but I wonder if it was better and better value at the Dolar Shop. I don’t think there was any clear guidance about the masses of each portion (“1 metre of lamb brisket” isn’t the SI unit for meat measurement). The wagyu striploin dressed barbie, for example, was $45.90 for an unknown quantity of meat, though stated to be 150g in one of their online menus. For reference this was probably the 2nd cheapest beef available on the menu. I didn’t feel particularly fulfilled by the meat, but the abundance of vegetable offset this a bit.
Oranges were exciting, but more exciting were these allegedly savoury peas that were made sweet by the orange juice. They were actually pretty yum.
OVERALL We paid $270 for 4 including 3 beers (teetotal life), which was significantly cheaper than we paid at The Dolar Shop the previous week, I think mostly owing to the significant cost savings of not having to spend $25 per person on soup base alone. I was less impressed by the meat options at Spice World, though the service was good and ultimately the meal was fine.
In summary, Memory Tongue ($45 pp in 2021) was better value for similar quality, whilst Dolar Shop ($85 pp in 2022) was slightly more money for better food. Based on these comparisons I would not go back to Spice World
We picked up a nice little cheesecake from Hanlip’s stall in Westfield Parramatta, a $14 reward for finding a bucket hat from one of the two outdoorsy stores on either side of it for my sun-protection-averse partner.
This yuzu mini cheesecake ($14) was quite enjoyable and recommendable, with a good texture, thick biscuit base, light citrusy flavour, and of course not too sweet (though the airy cream foam on top was sweeter). It was a bit expensive for the size and lack of any overheads such as seating for the café, but the taste was good and I guess I would just have a different complaint if I went to their flagship Redfern bakery-café and paid more for a cheesecake that could’ve been had for less in Parramatta.
Pretty good! And sorry for the lack of cross-sectional imaging.
