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

Categories
Italian

Pizza by Pietro – South Nowra NSW Restaurant Review

These guys are completely slept on. They operate a RV-cum-pizza-restaurant out of a small yard in sleepy South Nowra, and make authentic, Neapolitan pizza to a standard not achieved within 75km radius. A couple of nurses at work recommended to me the BBQ chicken pizza at other nearby “Woodfire” restaurants, and while I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t gone and don’t have any plans to go, just a chart review of the menu and online images from these places tell me that they could not possibly be as good, at least for what I’m looking for.

The Wild Mushroom Truffle pizza ($23) was an oily and umami delight. The dough was perfectly light and airy with a nice chew to it. The fior di latte, parmesan and olive oil base was quite greasy, though as discussed in the 2004 hit romantic comedy Along Came Polly, the grease was perhaps the best part. The toppings were basic but effective, with a good texture and juiciness to the porcini mushrooms and a tenderness to the asparagus. Overall a good pizza, my partner’s favourite of the two we had, though I personally preferred a more meat-forward alternative.

Enter the Sausage and Italian Spinach ($21), with a beautiful san marzano tomato base and flavourful and meaty Italian pork and black pepper sausage. Each bite was full of flavour, and my partner and I did though about stopping but did not stop at a reasonable limit. We ate way too much pizza in our car on the side of the road.

Comments: Strong recommend, a slice above “normal for Nowra”

Pizza by Pietro
45 Hillcrest Ave, South Nowra NSW 2541
0467 939 838

Categories
French

Oceania (Orleans Moules-Frites) – Spotswood VIC Restaurant Review

Legend has it that if you go to enough random market stalls across the city of Sydney, you can hit a large number of Grazeland stalls without ever leaving the 2000s.

Eaten simultaneously with our raclette from Frencheese was our meal from Oceania, trading as Orleans Moules-Frites for the day.

We had these great coquille St Jacques grilled scallops ($18 for 3), cooked to order under searzall, which such a creamy and umami cheese sauce with wine and parsley that left us wanting another and another.

I was less fond of the mussels in the classic mussels & chips ($22) because it turns out I don’t actually love mussels, but the freshly fried chips in their creamy wine sauce was actually excellent.

Oceania (Orleans Moules-Frites)
Grazeland Melbourne, 20 Booker St, Spotswood VIC 3015 (Permanent stall)

Best way to find them at a market stall may be to message their associated restaurant Bun Tessa.

Categories
Chinese

Tianjin Bun Shop (天津包子) – Campsie NSW Restaurant Review

I’m glad we ate at Tianjin Bun Shop after walking past it, on the merit of its offerings and without having read any reviews online beforehand. It’s the sort of place that people who don’t understand the nature of Chinese fast food love to criticise about brusque (read: hyper-efficient) service, whilst conveniently forgetting every time they’ve gone through a KFC drive through or purchased a quarter pounder from a touch-screen rather than even a real human.

As an illiterate 文盲 who is reliant on Google Translate for basically any Chinese text in this entire blog including these two preceding characters, I’m often very hesitant to order in my limited Mandarin because I never know if what I’m calling a menu item based on the pictures is actually what is written down next to it. Unluckily for me the woman at the counter serving me spoke even less English than I do Chinese, and even asked the customer waiting in line next to me if he could translate, to which he replied that he also did not speak English. Rather than let this be a problem, however, the woman serving me was able to intuit what I wanted based on a bit of broken Chinese and finger pointing, which I think is ultimately good customer service, rather than bad.

I had this chive pancake ($5) which was huge, and filled with fresh and fragrant chives, egg, and vermicelli. The wrapping was thin enough to not bore (some competitors are guilty of using a thicker wrapper, which puts off the filling-to-wrapper ratio), and the whole thing came out piping hot and delicious.

The Chinese burger (jianbing guozi) ($7) was also freshly made, featuring a cracker rather than a youtiao by default. It was pretty good with a classic sweet bean paste sauce, but compared to others was on the drier side, and ultimately in my opinion inferior to the one at Jinweigu Foods across and down the road.

This pork bun ($2.50) was pretty classic, soft bao with adequate filling and classic taste, not too salty, but with just the right amount of flavour. The filling was bitey enough, and not loose like some of the ones around. My partner thought there was too much bread to filling, which I agree with, but no one is holding a gun to your head to make you eat all of it.

Overall verdict: Pretty good, especially the chive pancake.

Tianjing Bun Shop Campsie (天津包子)
180 Beamish St, Campsie NSW 2194