Category: Cuisines

Categories
American

Burgerville – Merrylands NSW Restaurant Review

I hadn’t taken part in the night-shift delivery order in months, but a set of unexpected circumstances put an end to the health kick. I was recently involved in a minor motor vehicle accident which left me physically OK (long-term sequelae yet to be seen) but the car not so much. My insurance doesn’t cover a hire car in my situation, and so I was left with the choice of either an 1.5 hour public transport trip each way between home or work, or simply staying at work between shifts in one of the on-call rooms in the dungeon under the unit. It was a Saturday between night shifts where my partner was working the day, so not only could she not pick me up, but I would’ve had no crossover with her at home had I actually gone home that day. So I stayed at the suggestion of a colleague (thanks GD), had extremely poor sleep, and had since I was completely unprepared for this at-work siesta I had nothing to eat either.

Enter Burgerville’s Double Down ($13), two halal beef smash patties fused together by cheese, vegetablised with shredded lettuce and seasoned with pickles, onions, lettuce, and ketchup between a brioche bun. This was a pretty good burger, with a good ratio of fillings to bread, with juicy patties, reasonable freshness, and tasty condimentation. My esteemed fellow MTNMK, who asked specifically to be quoted, remarked upon biting into his similar burger that “brioche buns are so soft, it’s like chewing on a pillow”.

Though visually attractive, the chilli chicken ribs (5 for $8) were quite dry and not really that flavoured, with I think mostly the suggestion of chilli. I ate two, and there are three still left forgotten in the fridge. I wouldn’t recommend these. I only have a short break before my next run of nights (shout out only one day shift among 11 night shifts in the month of December), so I’ll throw them away once I’m back at work.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
The beef burger was pretty good, and though I wasn’t game enough to order the triple-patty pounder burger, it might’ve been even better with a bit more meat. I wouldn’t recommend the ribs though, an MTNMK also preferred his beef burger over his chicken burger. RIP MX-5.

Burgerville Merrylands
227 Merrylands Rd, Merrylands NSW 2160
(02) 8628 0135

Categories
Japanese Korean

Suminoya – Sydney NSW Restaurant Review

My partner’s younger brother took us to his favourite Korean-run Japanese BBQ restaurant in Sydney. We had the $89 pp deluxe BBQ buffet with a 70 minute ordering window and a 90 minute seating time and access to the restaurant’s full selection of meat and non-meat foods. The meat quality was good, and he ordered a literal kilogram of wagyu straight off the bat, which was definitely too much, and kept us well occupied throughout the entire meal.

Alternative meats were of course available, and we did sample some pork jowl as well as some duck. I didn’t love the duck, which I found chewy. but respect that this could’ve been a result of my poor cooking skills.

We did eat other things. We had an unusually large amount of aburi wagyu nigiri (too rare for me), aburi salmon nigiri, one single slice of salmon sashimi (my partner had difficulty understanding the ordering quantities), some mushroom, some garlic butter, and all of the available desserts, of which the calpis jelly was our favourite.

It was overall a good experience, though I have a major complaint about this seemingly unnecessary charge for a new grille. Rather than pay the $2-3 per BBQ grill change on top of our already $267 bill between three, we just chose to have more cancer.

Why nickel and dime?

Suminoya
1 Hosking Pl, Sydney NSW 2000
(02) 9231 2177

Categories
Bakery Vietnamese

Dulwich Hill Pork Roll – Dulwich Hill NSW Restaurant Review

The grilled chicken roll ($8.50) was ordered not on purpose but because the BBQ pork roll was unavailable. It turned out to be pretty good, though with an unexpected amount of shredded lettuce. The chicken meat was tasty with a little bit of sweetness, moist, and plentiful. The bread, and this goes for the bread used in all three rolls, was a little bit crispy but did not cut the mouth. Pretty good all round, and not a type of roll filling I’ve ever ordered before.

The roasted pork roll ($9) was your classic roast pork roll with diced roast pork and crispy pork skin. It was good, and again extra fresh from the lettuce, which I don’t think you see as a common filling in these rolls. I do wish that perhaps more pork could’ve been in this roll, especially as it is on the more expensive side of things (compared to XCel Roll’s well filled $8.50 roast pork roll).

What can I say about this classic Vietnamese pork roll ($7)? It was pretty good, but in no way did it stand out against any competitor. It was standard to a standard tee, happily lacking the shredded lettuce of the two rolls above. It just tasted completely normal, and I can think of no other words to describe it.

Overall thoughts
Dulwich Hill Pork Roll is a pretty standard pork roll place with banh mi of a reliable quality that do not really chart any new boundaries. The ladies who work there were really nice though, and I thought the bread was particularly good as it managed to be both crispy and not give me mouth pain.

Dulwich Hill Pork Roll
6/471 Marrickville Rd, Dulwich Hill NSW 2203
(02) 9518 1964

Categories
Malaysian

Ipoh Dynasty 怡保山城 – Campsie NSW Restaurant Review

Ipoh Dynasty has become one of the most frequent enemies of our shared transaction account in recent times, with my partner having gotten into the practice of ordering delivery on a fairly regular basis. With her interstate on an examination preparation course, and me being at home with little motivation for cooking after working a greater than 1.5 FTE, I ate in at Ipoh Dynasty twice in the same week.

On my first visit I had this Maggie Goreng Mamak ($16.90), a really nice stir fried noodle dish with tofu, large juicy prawns, and chicken. It had only a slightly spicy flavour, and was great with the entire lemon squeezed in, which is not how I normally use lemon at restaurants. I really enjoyed this, part of why I went back for a second visit only days later.

The Ipoh Dynasty Special Curry Noodle (curry mee) ($18.90) were also quite good, this time a larger portion than could be handled by me at 8:30PM on a completely empty stomach barring a protein shake at 7AM. It was just a really huge hot bowl of a curry broth filled with tofu, again giant prawns, and char siu with only rice noodles as they had run out of egg noodles for the day. The broth was really tasty and really rich, and really just quite enjoyable. I tipped them the remaining $1.10 of my $20 note out of the shame of not being able to finish it as a full grown adult.

Other thoughts
I quite enjoyed both meals I had at Ipoh Dynasty, but I feel like they probably only merely tolerate me, which is fine, and probably my own fault for looking like I speak a decent amount of Chinese when I really don’t.

Third visit (within a week)

My partner came back home, and this time we went together, for the third time in 7 days. I essentially can never go back.

The roti canai with curry chicken ($10 or so) was a pretty solid warm bowl of curry chicken with potato and a very flaky and crispy roti canai, with a strong structure and no flop at all. The taste was good, as was the price, though I think with the relatively good sized serving of curry chicken for the price I would advise punters to order an extra roti to make maximal use of the curry sauce.


The roasted pork wanton noodle ($18.90) was a dry noodle dish that wasn’t too dry, with a good slightly sweet and salty soy sauce flavour to the noodles, kind-of harder roast pork (it’s hard to be superior to a place that actually does roast pork as a main attraction), and super meaty pork wontons. Perhaps the star of the dish were the slightly sweet and tangy fermented green chillis, which provided a textural difference and a fresh change in taste every few mouthfuls. Like their other noodles, this was quite a good dish overall.

This Hotplate Homemate Toufu ($19.90) was a combination of mushroom, tofu, and mince on a sizzling hot plate in gravy. The flavour was good, though the type of tofu used was not to my preference. It had a sponge-like texture, essentially what I would expect from firm tofu after freezing, rather than a more silken texture that I would have preferred. I have no idea what is more authentic to Malaysian cuisine, however, so I speak only from personal preference.

Ipoh Dynasty
Shop 2/43 N Parade, Campsie NSW 2194
0439 838 888

Categories
Vietnamese

Thuy Huong – Marrickville NSW Restaurant Review

At the recommendation of my learned friend BCSY (who had the same dish in the same restaurant twice in one week) I visited Thuy Huong to have their famous (to him) Fish Cake Noodle Soup (bún chả cá – $15). Sitting as a solo diner next to some kind of nurse and her friend who were kind enough to share their table with me, I had this giant piping hot bowl of noodle soup, dilled to the max with a topping of fish cake and a crispy fried battered fish fillet. I enjoyed a number of things about this bowl of noodle soup, including its excellent high temperature,w hich allowed it to heat the random salad ingredients that I had put in it, the melon, with its general lack of any strong personality, and the dill, the taste of which permeated my entire body. My only qualm as an outsider was that I did not know that the bun rieu also had fish cake, and that the real difference between the fish cake noodle soup and the crab noodle soup was not the fish cake but actually the piece of fried fish on top. Even though the fish fillet was yummy, I wonder if might’ve chosen the crabby alternative had I fully appreciated this subtle difference.

Either way, a solid bowl of noodles.

Thuy Huong
304 Illawarra Rd, Marrickville NSW 2204
(02) 9558 4023