Sri Lankan Archives - PEGFeeds

Muthu Curry Restaurant – Toongabbie NSW Restaurant Review

We’ve been alternating between Circa and unexciting local cafes within walking distance of work for the past 5 years, and so it was very cool for us to go to a completely different Western Sydney restaurant for a completely different kind of Western Sydney breakfast this past Monday morning after night shift.

We had a bit of an omakase cultural immersion experience, led by our Tamil friend and colleague, for whom Muthu Curry Restaurant has been a frequent haunt ever since his university days. That is, he picked, we ate. Read on to discover what little I understood of the delicious things we had.

We started with some fried foods from the hot fried food counter. I know not what these are – I can only relate them to what I know, which is to say that they were similar to spring rolls or egg rolls on the outside, but filled with potato and proteinaceous filling on the inside. Google tells me these are known as ‘short eats’ or ‘Chinese rolls’. I cannot independently verify.

The different fillings were all pretty similar, and we were able to sample some with fish, mutton, and pure vegetable. Were it not for the discrete chunk of meat in the mutton, I would have thought it identical to the ones without. They were fine. They were not bad. But they were so similar to each other that were it not an omakase experience needing to cater to several different levels of meat and non-meat eaters, I wouldn’t get a bunch of different ones.

We had two dosas that looked externally identical, and so only one photo is provided above. They were served with what was described to me as a selection of sambal, curry dip, and white curry.

Diving into dosa, the paneer dosa ($12.90) was excellent, with a mild creamy paneer filling, a light and slightly crispy pastry, and of course the three flavourings to eat the dosa with. It’s just incredible what they can accomplish in taste, size, and variety, for the price.

The keema dosa ($14.90) had some meat in it, which was fine, but really the paneer dosa is the one to get here. Given the meat was in chunks it was also harder to ensure that each mouthful had some filling, whereas the paneer was more homogeneous and spreadable.

We also had two plates of egg roti and curry. The first to be discussed is egg roti ($8) with lamb curry ($10) and dal. The egg roti was mild – egg sandwiched between layers of soft, non-crispy roti – and a perfect spongy vehicle to soak up both the dal and the curry sauce. The lamb was appropriately tender, non-gristly, though did not excite.

The same dish but with chicken curry ($9) was much more fruitily spicy and exciting, though I guess it was important to have both the flavours.

This is going to sound really uncultured but I prefer prana chai made in my kitchen to this masala chai ($3) that was probably made in the proper art and way.

Overall
We had a lot of food for just $16 per person for a group of five, and I enjoyed the meal overall, even though they didn’t have the kothu roti that I was originally keen on (they only start kothu roti around noon). I’d definitely come back, or otherwise go to a different local restaurant in the area.

Muthu Curry Restaurant
7/8 Portico Parade, Toongabbie NSW 2146
(02) 9688 5990

The Fold – Dulwich Hill NSW Restaurant Review

Though I’ve lived in Wentworthville in the heart of Sydney’s South Asian community for a total of eleven years now in two separate runs, I still don’t really have a good gauge on South Asian food. It’s hard for me, as someone who didn’t grow up in the culture, to know what’s actually good and what’s actually bad, so I must apologise in advance if my thoughts about Dulwich Hill’s The Fold are coloured by my complete lack of cultural competency.

We started our meal with this quite-good Sri Lankan Iced Coffee ($7.50), which was essentially a mixture of chai spices, coffee, and vanilla ice cream (AKA a cold dirty chai). It was quite enjoyable, though a bit expensive, and I had no qualms about recommending it to a random vegetarian who walked into the restaurant just as we were leaving.

The Appa-Appa with free range chicken curry ($24) was a plate consisting of two plain hoppers and one hopper with an egg in it, along with side pots of a mild chicken curry, lunu miris (sambal paste), and seeni sambol (a less spicy onion sambal). We enjoyed the chicken curry, though found it to be extremely mild – likely a product of the restaurant being in Dulwich Hill rather than Pendle Hill. I have literally no standard to compare these hoppers with, but can remark that I enjoyed the crispy thin edges much more than the bases, which I felt were a bit too thick and bready. Again, I have no idea if that’s how it’s meant to be. This is just how I feel.

To illustrate how out of my depth I am here, after eating it as a taco I found out via the internet that you are not meant to eat hoppers as a taco.

The Butterfruit Pann with two poached eggs ($21) was really just another name for avocado toast, but with one delicious twist. This otherwise standard avo toast came with a tiny but delicious pot of pineapple chili relish, with a fascinating sweetness that went incredibly well with the bread and avocado, and elevated each and every bite. I only wish that the pot were a bit larger as we ran out two thirds throughout our meal.

Look at this SICK cutlery.

INTERIM THOUGHTS
The food at The Fold was really not bad, and even the otherwise standard avo toast had a nice little twist that elevated it to a new level. Their pastries on display also looked quite good, and though I don’t know if they’re made on site I think I will end up coming back at some point to eat them all.

RETURN
On a subsequent visit to grab some pastries I learned that they are in fact all made on site. There’s an assortment of relatively standard French as well as South-Asian inspired pastries, though for this visit I erred on the side of caution.

The Plain Croissant ($5.50) was certainly, as described, a plain croissant. I took a leaf from my friend the Sydney Croissant Hunter’s book and brought a serated knife to capture a cross-section from my visit, though in doing so left quite a mess on their table. I wasn’t blown away by this croissant – it was adequately crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, but keep in mind that I’m not a croissant expert, and I got this about half an hour before closing, so it wasn’t quite fresh out of the oven.

Next up is this Salted Caramel & Macadamia Scroll ($8.50), a hefty and dense bread-like creation that was a meal in and of itself. Entire bites of this were devoid of any caramel, but this was not so much a problem as this scroll truly reminded me of my love for bread. The salted caramel swirl tasted a little bit dark-cooked (I don’t want to say burnt, I doubt it was ever on fire), and ultimately I think my craving would have been equally served by some stock standard brioche or something.

The Portuguese Tart was a bit sweeter than I usually like, but I enjoyed the flavour as well as the pastry. Even my partner, who doesn’t usually like Portuguese tarts, enjoyed this. It is a shame that she dropped it on the floor before she was finished.

I actually really enjoyed this Black Forest Cake ($8.50). I often get black forest cake thinking that I’ll like it, but it’s never really lived up to my expectation until now. The Fold’s black forest cake was absolutely lovely, with plenty of moistness, dark chocolate, and a discrete and highly tasty cherry layer sandwiched between two layers of dark sponge. Every part of this cake, including the well proportioned mousse-like icing was well executed, and this is now the best black forest cake I’ve ever had.

The Fold. Sri Lankan Inspired
402 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill NSW 2203
(02) 8068 2226