Category: Cuisines

Categories
Malaysian

Malaysia Small Chilli – Campsie NSW Restaurant Review

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 chicken signature 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

Categories
Vietnamese

Pho PhD – Marrickville NSW Restaurant Review

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.

Pho PhD Vietnamese Restaurant
260 Marrickville Rd, Marrickville NSW 2204
(02) 9090 2869

Categories
Chinese

Spice World – Haymarket NSW Restaurant Review

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

Spice World
405/411 Sussex St, Haymarket NSW 2000
0406 697 900

Categories
Bakery Dessert

Hanlip Dessert – Parramatta NSW Restaurant Review

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.

Hanlip Dessert Parramatta Westfield
Level 2/159-175 Church St, Parramatta NSW 2150
0432 025 302

Categories
Chinese

Tian Jin Shi Tang 天津食堂 – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

As someone with limited calories in a day I suffer immensely from food-related indecision. One of my partner’s worst daily bugbears is my inability to decide where we’re going to eat, as I have both extremely high standards and a lack of willingness to cede control. Though Tianjin Shi Tang has been on my radar for a couple of years as a Tianjin-food devotee, multiple trips to the restaurant have been abandoned close to the mark after seeing negative reviews about them on Google. There have been several times where we have parked down the road, and I have made a last minute decision to go somewhere else.

Tian Jin Shi Tang is testament to the fact that Google reviewers don’t always know good food, and that sometimes risking it all on a 3.1 star restaurant with more 1-star reviews than 5-star reviews is worth it. Common complaints about food safety and worker ethic were not issues that we experienced, and in fact we had a very positive overall experience.

The thing I was most keen for was this jianbing guozi (chinese egg pancake) with smoked pork ($12.80). I think that jianbing is one of the key regional dishes of Tianjin that you have to try at any restaurant that offers it, and while I don’t remember the specific taste of any specific jianbing guozi that I had in China, what I can say is that every single one I’ve had in Sydney has been quite enjoyable, this one included. The base jianbing guozi at Tian Jin Shi Tang is $8.80, and though I’d never had it with a meaty filling before, the smoked meat filling (a $4 supplement) as recommended by one guy on Google who will be remembered as being on the right side of history was tasty, umami, and well worth it to put a spin on this classic dish. The lady serving us asked if I wanted chilli on it, and I must have said yes with just little enough conviction that she gave us only a little bit (stated as “less spicy” on our tax invoice). Overall this was not the traditional 煎饼馃子 that I’m used to, with the addition of smoked pork and with chilli sauce rather than sweet bean sauce (甜面酱), but still a delicious play on the concept.

The Tian Jin Wonton Soup ($8.80), pictured above in two almost identical photos chosen to put on show both wonton and soup facets of the dish, was a cheap and hearty breakfast bowl. Presented as a claypot filled with peppery soup, a crackled and slightly scrambled egg, seaweed, coriander, and small-type wontons, this is a dish that could easily form the staple of some late teen to early twenties Burwood high-rise dwelling international student. The meat filling, though relatively small compared to that of a dumpling, made up for its small size with its high density of meat and flavour, and numbered sufficiently to avoid sadness at the end of the meal (Danny Katz of the Sydney Morning Herald makes reference to the appropriate number of wontons in a bowl of wonton soup in the linked article, though this is not the Confucian wonton parable that I remember from my childhood). My only comment would be that this soup was far more peppery than I had anticipated – not overpoweringly so, it’s just that I didn’t expect white pepper to be the main flavour of the soup.

The pork and chive potstickers (12 for $14.80) were again very good. The dumplings and buns at Tian Jin Shi Tang are made fresh to order, and so we had no problems with the short 20 minute wait which we were pre-warned of whilst ordering, during which time we were eating the rest of our meal anyway. Though other online reviewers have complained about twenty minute waits for their food, we understand that fresh handmade food is something that takes time to get right, and I was actually quite impressed by the precision of the dumpling making process, watching the chef weigh out the filling for each individual dumpling, adding and subtracting as necessary as she made them in order to achieve the target ratios and weights. Though I would’ve preferred boiled dumplings (also available on the menu – a sign of self-confidence in a dumpling restaurant’s art) and any sort of order of pan-fried dumplings is usually the doing of my partner, I really did enjoy the freshly fried crispiness of the wrapper, as well as the juiciness of the filling within. These pork and chive dumplings had a bit more of a soy flavour and a stronger taste than I’m used to, but good all the same.

RETURN VISIT, JUNE 2024

The pork and chive steamed buns (8 for $13.80) were large and well priced, though we asked for pan fried ones and they must have misheard us. Very filling.

The zha jiang mien ($13.80) was a large portion, again well priced. The gravy of mince and stir fried bean paste was suitably tasty when mixed through the noodles, but of course too salty when eaten alone. This bowl came with some scramble-fried egg, which was soft and pillowy, and unexpected as I am not used to egg in my zha jiang mien. A recommend though.

COMMENTS
Online reviews of Tian Jin Shi Tang are pretty well divided into lovers and haters of the place. Our experience was overwhelmingly positive, and I suspect that some of the difference in experience might be due to the fact that we went in the morning at 9:30AM but they’re open up until 1-2AM, which is a long time to keep up quality. We would not hesitate to go back.

Big respect also to a venue that gives a tax invoice for a cash purchase without being asked. It’s sad that operating a company that doesn’t steal from the rest of society is something to be praised, but where so many in the hospitality industry don’t do the right thing, it’s important to pay homage to the ones who do.