Categories
Bakery

Tuga Pastries – Alexandria NSW Restaurant Review

Another day, another bakery – this one just a stone’s throw away from my partner’s GP, who has a particular interest in promoting long-term behavioural change where it comes to modifiable risk factors for non-communicable disease.

Tuga Pastries is perhaps best known for their Pastel de Nata (Portuguese Tart – $4.50), often being mentioned in the same breath as Sweet Belem when it comes to Sydney’s pastry tier lists. Though I’ve had Tuga’s Portuguese tarts at other cafes like Ashbury’s 3 Tomatoes, the experience was far better eating it fresh from the source. The filling on this tart was extremely gooey and creamy, with a fresh-out-of-the-oven warmth that coated and curled around the tongue. The pastry was similarly warm, fresh, buttery, and flaky, though if I had one complaint about this pastel de nata overall would be that it was a bit too sweet for my taste. Despite this, I would rate this above Sweet Belem‘s based on textural factors.

This great big slab is the Pork, Lamb and Harrisa Sausage Roll ($9), an attempt to fancy up the humble Australian classic that I feel met quite limited success. It features quite a thick block of finely minced meat wrapped in puff pastry, served with an extremely stock standard tomato sauce that for some reason we couldn’t get enough of. I personally found this sausage roll a bit lamby for my liking, and would’ve liked a coarser texture than what was offered here. Wouldn’t get it again.

I had no love for this 3 Cheese Toastie ($13), which I found quite dry, especially with all its seeds. I think the only way to make it better would be to add some kind of moist vegetable or meat to it, which would ruin the concept of it being a cheese only toastie. Maybe I just don’t like cheese-only toasties, but my partner, who chose this item, did not like it either.

This pear danish ($6) was really quite good. I enjoyed the flaky, buttery pastry, but more suprisingly I enjoyed the pear, which looked sweeter than it actually tasted. It was, in fact, not too sweet.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by how dense and ricotta-y this blueberry ricotta tart ($6.50) was. Didn’t love it.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Though much of what we had at Tuga was a bit hit and miss, there’s no denying the high quality of their pastel de natas. These are probably my favourite Portuguese tarts in Sydney right now, and for that reason alone I’m looking forward to the next time I have to take my partner to the doctor to hear about why we shouldn’t be eating so much.

Tuga Pastries Alexandria
10/112 McEvoy St, Alexandria NSW 2015
0412 664 165

Categories
Bakery Café

Earnest Arthur – South Nowra NSW Restaurant Review

So I’ve been wanting a pie from Punch the Ploughman for weeks now, but their pie times are completely at odds with my waking-and-eating hours. Unless I purposely stay up after work for two and a half hours after I finish my night shift or unless I somehow send my resident out of the hospital to grab lunch there is just no way for me to get the pies that come out at 10:30AM and run out by 12:30PM. Earnest Arthur, one of the Shoalhaven area’s premier pie stops was a promising alternative for a couple of post nights feeds.

This Peking duck sausage roll ($6.50) did not hit the spot at all. I read on one of their Google reviews that a customer was disappointed that they had missed out on one of these rolls when they were there, a disappointment that only induced me to try it myself. Sadly I don’t really think they missed out on much, as I found that the filling was quite floury or carby, kind of like the stuffing of a supermarket rotisserie chicken, but denser and dryer. It was difficult to appreciate any duck at all, though I’m sure that it’s in there somewhere. Even assuming that there is some duck in there, I don’t know, as a guy from the Beijing region, what about this was particularly Peking. It piqued my interest but did not peak my tastebuds. I think a bit of tomato sauce could’ve gone a long way, but whilst I’m sure it is available within the store it was clearly on display or not freely offered on either of my two visits.

The surf and turf pie ($8.40) was a big improvement over the duck sausage roll, with clearly appreciable big and juicy prawns, and limited but large chunks of meat. This would begin a trend that would continue for the rest of the pies that I had at Earnest Arthur. Their pies are much gravy with limited in number but large sized chunks of protein. Not bad.

The jalapeno, beef and cheese pie ($8.40) was the strongest of the four foods that I tried at Earnest Arthur over my two visits. Making up for the meat-limited approach of this bakery was the use of jalapeno and cheese within the filling, thereby taking up room with something other than gravy. The flavours of jalapeno pepper and cheese were actually quite complimentary, with senses both of freshness and umami.

The dill and snapper pie ($8.40) was really quite pleasant, with mild flavours, creamy and not too fishy. Again, lots of (yummy) goop, with only odd chunks’o’fish.

GENERAL VIBE: I don’t know if I’m really describing what I’m trying to say adequately. It is highly possible that if they chose to use mince instead of large chunks of steak and fish and prawn, they might be able to better spread their protein throughout the pie. The fact that they probably do in fact use more expensive and larger portions of meat means that it leaves entire mouthfuls of just pastry and gravy without anything to chew on, and concentrates the pleasure of meat-eating onto other mouthfuls. I don’t know that the overall consistency of their pies are accurately conveyed on the cross-sections on their website.

The flavours are mostly good (barring the Peking duck sausage roll), but I personally would prefer balance. Otherwise if you’re going to go the chunky steak route then to put in enough steak to fill the entire pie, though $8.40 is already quite a lot to pay for a meat pie, and more steak would certainly mean even more money than that.

Two pies per breakfast is too much pie for a guy trying to not eat that much pie.

Earnest Arthur
(02) 4422 4000
171 Princes Hwy, South Nowra NSW 2541

Categories
Japanese

Sashimi Shinsengumi 刺身新鮮組 – Crows Nest NSW Restaurant Review

My partner took us to this paint and sip thing in Crows Nest, which was great because it meant that I finally got to try the Sashimi Shinsengumi takeaway platter from around the corner. Though I’ve never gotten my act together or friends in a row to book out their restaurant for omakase, this $140 of nigiri (2x$50+1x$40 sets) made for a reasonable substitute. While I think that a little bit of variety would have been nice in the form of temaki or other things, the price to performance ratio here was pretty good, with generous servings of all fish provided. My partner, who I think has a bias against sushi that’s not eaten within a restaurant, would tell you that the sushi lost points the moment it left the door, but I think it retained its freshness and quality by the time we ate it.

This was way better than the other paint and sip ladies’ cheeseboards.

Sashimi Shinsengumi 刺身新鮮組
5/7-11 Clarke St, Crows Nest NSW 2065
0402 359 697

Categories
Vietnamese

Phở cây đa (Pho Cafe) – Bankstown NSW Restaurant Review

It’s not immediately obvious to casual readers of this blog, but I’ve actually been kind of burnt out of writing this and this is my first entry in six months. There’s a huge backlog, and every day that passes with the photos on my phone the memory of each meal becomes fainter and fainter.

That said, I have been able to work up the spoons to describe this solid pho I had in Bankstown today after a five star plastics clinic appointment (and overall patient experience from the moment my cat bit me to now – I made sure that adequate and effusive shout outs were made to all the registrars and residents involved in the case on the official patient feedback form) at Auburn Hospital.

This Pho Dac Biet ($20) was on the more expensive side of things, but had a great depth and richness of flavour to the broth, and was brimming with all the requisite meat and meat products including tripe, tendon, rare beef, brisket, beef ball, and bone. This was a far cry from those fake special phos where they mix up rare beef, brisket, and beef balls and call it a day, this was a real special pho, and really good. The serving size was ample, and importantly had ample hotness to warm up all of the herbs and bean sprouts that I stashed within it.

This was a quality bowl at a high price, one of the only offerings on their limited English menu laminated and stuck to the wall next to my table. There were multiple other non-pho menus in non-English languages throughout the restaurant, but for me, this was enough.

To their credit, card was accepted with no surcharge.

Phở cây đa (Pho Cafe)
92 Bankstown City Plaza, Bankstown NSW 2200
(02) 8102 5968

Categories
Chinese

MC Golden Tower – Haymarket NSW Restaurant Review

One of the first meals my partner and I shared together back in 2012 was at Market City’s food court, where we piled as much food as we could onto a plate of fixed surface area, and I watched in adoration as she finished all of the food when I could not.

I took her back to Market City when I proposed to her to try and relive this experience. Sadly the exact restaurant from 10 years ago was either unidentifiable or nowhere to be found, but MC Golden Tower (officially just “Golden Tower” post their renovation) seemed an appropriate substitute.

There was no self-serve on this visit, and it’s highly possible that this particular restaurant has never offered that at all. We had a number of choices (2 or 3 for a set price) served by the shop clerk with an experience somewhat marred by poor communication even though we do speak some Chinese between the two of us. Our choices of braised eggplant and soy chicken were honestly quite good for this hyper-cheap food court meal, though I wasn’t a huge fan of the fried rice which I felt was a bit wet and sticky compared to gold standard fried rice.

Golden Tower
Market City Food Court, 9-13 Hay St, Haymarket NSW 2000
(02) 9212 1100