The contents of this blog are matters of opinion formed over one more visits. There has been some artistry applied and metaphors and similes should not necessarily be taken literally. All meals are independently paid for - the author has no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Full disclosure, I’ve had these photos sitting on my computer for the past six months because I’ve been a bit burnt out from Pegfeeding about my Melbourne trip, especially as out-of-Sydney experiences aren’t really why anyone reads this blog anyway. Keen noticers will have noticed that Melbourne reviews have been going up outside of the regular schedule, as they do not form the core content of this blog. I think ultimately the delay is OK though because this is going to be a positive review.
The prelude to our meal at Scopri was us calling an unnamed popular CBD Italian restaurant, confirming that they were still open in the early afternoon, then arriving there about 15 minutes later only for them to gaslight us and tell us they were closed until their dinner service. It is only thanks to them that we were able to have quite a nice meal in a suburban neighbourhood restaurant a little bit out of the way.
The house made bread was pretty good, and complimentary, which made it even better. It was rusty on the outside and gooey and glutinous on the outside, served with some olive oil for dipping.
This Quail Risotto was excellent. It was a daily special so I don’t know how much it was, but whatever it was it was worth it. The sauce was incredibly rich, with a combination of the earthy umami of the mushrooms and the funk of the gorgonzola. The mushrooms were plentiful, and their texture interspersed within the al dente grains made for a good mouth-experience. It’s rare that the protein isn’t a highlight of the dish, and whilst the quail was juicy and also good, ultimately it was the risotto itself that did it for me.
This Agnolotti del Plin ($35) with roasted rabbit, pork, and veal finished in butter and sage was also delicious. The combination of different animals was not weird at all, and only resulted in a very meaty and satisfying filling to each angolotto. The sagey, buttery sauce was divine, and excellent to be mopped up with the aforementioned house baked bread.
The Pappardelle Ragu D’anatra ($35) was a more standard approach to a duck ragu pappardelle, which was tasty and good but not a highlight in view of the high level of excellence achieved by the risotto and agnolotti. But won’t disappoint if ragu is what your craving. This photo is of half a serving of the full size.
This is a good and gigantic tiramisu ($10) that is off menu and asked for specifically.
OVERALL The dining experience was pleasurable. As introverts we appreciated not being interacted with, just as we are sure that the other diners probably enjoyed being looked after more closely by the host. We also liked that each of the mains were split into two servings for ease of sharing, even though we had absolutely just planned to pass our plates around like uncultured animals. A nod from me.
I am becoming increasingly convinced that Jowoon Oh is incapable of cooking a bad meal. As silent followers of his career ever since we first ate at Casoni back in 2020, my partner and I have been salivating over the perfectly framed overhead shots of pasta and other goodies on his Instagram all year, finally finding the opportunity to consummate things last night.
We started with this free bread and cultured butter. I don’t always have a lot to say about free bread, but this bread was actually different. It had a nice sweetness and fruitiness, reminiscent of a mild raisin toast without the raisins. I think it was delicious on its own, and actually better without the slightly herbed cultured butter. This bread inspired us to buy some raisin toast at the local supermarket on the way home. It was that good. I wonder if we could’ve had more bread. I guess we could’ve asked.
The photos in this review aren’t really good, and as I told our dining partners EH and EC they’re really just here to provide proof that we actually attended, lest anyone complain that I’m slandering them for no good reason (not that that’s going to be a concern here – this is going to be a generally positive review). Despite the poor photo quality, I’m pretty sure this shade of pink was the actual colour of the wagyu tartare ($6 each, 4 pictured). This snack of wagyu and corn on bread was really quite good, with a good synergy between the charred corn, a little bit of fermented chilli, and the wagyu beef. It was served on a tiny quarter of grilled focaccia, which was served warm and oily – a delicious contrast to the cooler meat topping.
I didn’t love the bone marrow on garlic bread with ciauscolo and salsa macha ($26), which I didn’t feel was a particularly cohesive dish. I enjoyed the nice and toasty garlic bread, which had slight hint of the memory of Casoni’s black garlic bread, but didn’t really know how the bone marrow went with or added to the rest of the dish.
I also did not love the chargrilled kingfish collar with blood lime salsa ($26). I find that kingfish collar is often quite fishy, even as someone who does enjoy both fish and kingfish specifically. I didn’t have much of this, but I did enjoy the 11chargrilled lemon as a juice on top of the fish.
This casarecce with spanner crab, sweet corn, caviar, and kombu ($34) was really good. So umami and creamy, and though the spanner crab itself was a little difficult to identify, this didn’t really detract from the experience.
The linguini with Moreton Bay bug, scallop XO, and salmon roe ($38) was also very good. We had this one first, thought it was great, and were blown away by how good the other pasta was as well. We thought that both pastas were on the top tier of pastas that we’ve had in Sydney.
The grilled duck breast with burnt mandarin and freekeh ($39) was probably some of the best duck we’ve ever had. We’ve been known to mostly enjoy Cantonese roast duck, and not enjoy any of the other more Westernised ducks that we eat, but this one was actually very good. The meat was tender, with a crispy and flavourful skin and nice citrus jus. I had actually forgotten that we had ordered this dish, and it was a pleasant surprise when it came.
We finished with the hazelnut semifreddo cremino, nutella, nougat and popcorn ($16), which combined coldness with sweet and salty flavours in a manner similar to salted caramel popcorn.
OVERALL THOUGHTS We had a really nice meal at Osteria di Russo & Russo, enjoying most of what we had, but in particular the pasta. The Korean chefs of Sydney are doing great things in the Italian and French domains, and we continue to follow their careers with interest.
I don’t know why it’s taken me 9 months to write this review. I don’t have any particularly good excuses, apart from the fact that we had eaten at so many places on our short trip to Melbourne that I had felt a little bit burnt out by all the reviewing, leaving it up to now, when I’ve run out of other things to procrastinate on, to do.
As it’s been nine months, this should not be considered a particularly comprehensive, or even useful piece of writing. It’s more just a few thoughts that I still remember pieced together from notes I jotted down during the meal, and some pictures to prove to myself in later years that I did indeed eat here on the 19th of April 2022.
We started the night with a number of snacks. Featured in the foreground here is oyster, coconut curry vinaigrette, shallot, pepperleaf, prepositions are of course not needed in high end cuisine. I enjoyed this deliciously creamy oyster, with its hint of curry flavouring. One of many creamy oysters we had that trip.
The next snack to discuss is this cracker of carrot, macadamia satay, sunflower, kakadu plum, with a good crispiness and a flavour that I think reminded us of tom yum, unless that was about the oysters.
The caramelised trout, green mango, muntries, prawn cracker was strongly reminiscent of the classic Chinese canned fish known as fried dace with black beans, commonly made by Nanmen Bridge company and sold in a yellow and red oval tin.
The ‘otak otak’, spanner crab curry, finger lime, rice crisp was yummy, and even though there was plenty of curry it was still easy to appreciate the sweetness and crabbiness of the crab.
The buttermilk roti, Sunda’s vegemite curry, a lauded secret item that you have to know about to order as a $20 supplement really wasn’t all that. The roti was very cripsy but hyper oily, but the flavour of the vegemite was at least pretty mild. We were advised that this was a must-not-miss at Sunda, but really I think you can miss it relatively safely. Not game changing.
This heirloom tomato, white sesame, davidson plum, pomelo salad was very fresh, so much so that I jotted down at the time “So fresh, hits of 2021” (I don’t know why specifically 2021, it was 2022 when I had this meal). There was a bit of a yellow curry-like (we found later that it was the white sesame curry paste) paste at the bottom of the tomatoes that had a night sweet and lightly spicy flavour., and some mouthfuls were a bit like white sugar on tomato, a common Northern Chinese snack dish.
The pork belly, rainforest tamarind, rhubarb, daikon radish was a pretty good entree. The meat was extremely tender, with the meat bits having great mouthfeel but unfortunately with too great a fat to lean pork ratio. The meat, “marinated with rainforest tamarind, coconut sugar and pomegranate molasses” as per Khanh Nguyen’s social media was very tangy, and in fact a bit too tangy for us. The lightly pickled daikon radish sheet, thin to the point of translucency, brought the tang back down a notch into mild enjoyability with a hint of sweetness.
The less good of our two mains was the bannockburn chicken, thai sausage, gai lan, bush apple. The gai lan was pretty good, cooked to a normal degree that you might find in any Chinese restaurant, not extraordinarily special. The chicken wrapped within it was moist and tender, delivered over the course of four or five separate slices, enough volume we thought. The Thai sausage had much ginger flavour. The bush apple went unnoticed. This was not an unreasonable main, but paled in comparison to our other choice.
Though people sing praises about their vegemite roti, I think Sunda’s true star dish is their koshihikari congee in a burnt onion broth with pickled cauliflower, confit egg yolk and paperbark oil. I’ve never enjoyed a congee as much in my entire life. This was such a warm and wholesome bowl, with a high degree of creaminess, soft delicate rice grains, and an almost potato mash-like soupy quality. The texture of the carbohydrate was creamy and the taste was mild, but the pool of broth surrounding it was absurd in its complex mix of sweet, salty, and sour flavours. The crispiness of the mushroom, cauliflower, and greens added great textural variation, whilst the opulent slow egg brought it all together with a third. Such a standout.
The gem lettuce, blood lime, shallot, nasturtium salad was truly an experience in whatever. Some of the leaves were a bit better, we did not enjoy. Unlike lilies, the nasturtium appear to be non-toxic to cats. Would you pay for your kitty to have dialysis?
I think this is the coconut sorbet with pineapple and kaffir lime granita, coconut jelly, desert lime jam, coconut yoghurt and sprinkled with candied green peppercorns. I didn’t love it – I think the pineapple was too pineapple for me.
The our take on pavlova, lychee, pandan, pepperberry was my preferred dessert, my more enjoyed part being the pepperberry ice cream. I am also fond of the Van Diemens Land Pepperberry & Leatherwood Honey ice cream that is available in tubs from some supermarkets though, and I did not think restaurant this was particularly superior. Neither of these two desserts really stood out.
We finished with petit fours, lamington pandan caneles with davidson plum. I am proud to announce that in the time between eating at Sunda and writing this review I now know how to pronounce “canelé” after being schooled by a guy at a bakery in Dulwich Hill NSW.
Quick verdict: We paid $130pp excluding drinks but including the vegemite roti, and I think it would be easy to recommend going back. We already had accommodation, and it would’ve been annoying to move between hotels, but when we ate at Sunda there was a promotion where you could book a night in hotel together with your meal for an extremely cheap price. Might be worth doing for Melbourne suburbanites looking for a nice South-East Asian fusion dinner.
I don’t have great familiarity with Filipino food, but after a somewhat frustrating experience at the local FedEx station I decided I’d give it a go. I ordered two items that were warmly received by Sir Manong’s Google reviewers, though I should’ve known from the number of times my waitress checked that it was must me dining that two dishes at this restaurant was far too many for one man.
The Crispy Beef Kare Kare ($28) was a very large pot of thick and oily peanut sauce, filled with beef brisket that had been fried with some kind of tallow-like coating, accompanied by some most welcome fresh bok choy and beans. I must admit that whilst I enjoyed the peanut sauce, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the beef. The white stuff coating the beef pieces just felt like I was eating lard or tallow, a memory that is evoking feelings of nausea as I write this. The parts of the beef that weren’t coated in white stuff were thankfully spared from this, and the fresh vegetables were also a redeeming feature. I did enjoy the meal with a bit of fishy bagoong paste, though I found it too salty to use very much of.
The Crispy Pata ($27) was again huge, but actually quite excellent. In thinking about how large these dishes were, I guess the alternative would’ve been that I would be here complaining had I spent $27 on pork knuckle and not received an absolute feast. I don’t know where they were able to find pigs with such large feet, but this plate was gigantic. The pork knuckle was quite well cooked, with a hyper crispy skin with some of that characteristic collagen-aided stickiness and a moist muscle interior. The serving of sauerkraut-like pickled cabbage was extremely welcome, its acidity helpfully cutting through the fat, as was the excellent vinegary dipping sauce.
OVERALL COMMENTS Though I wouldn’t go back for the beef kare kare, the crispy pata was actually quite wonderful. Just remember to bring at least three friends or be prepared to pay 50 cents per takeaway container.
Sir Manong Eastern Creek Quarter, T16/159 Rooty Hill Rd S, Eastern Creek NSW 2766 (02) 8608 3734
Here are just some quick thoughts about the food from a recent work dinner to celebrate the end of the clinical year. I’m in a bit of a post-alcohol phase right now so I cannot comment on the drinks, though I understand from my colleagues that they did flow freely.
These nachos ($18) were pretty alright. I enjoyed their freshness and minimal seasoning, and found myself coming back to them when I wanted a break from the rest of the saltfest. They are vegetarian, though can be optioned for another $5 with some spicy pulled chicken.
It had been a good long while since I had had fried onion rings ($12), and these ones were far superior to what I remember from Hungry Jacks (Burger King) in the early 2000s. These onion rings were large, moist on the inside with a crunchy batter on the outside. They were delicious warm, though a bit too salted for my liking. The horseradish ranch sauce was pleasant, but again it was a bit salty for me to have any significant quantity of it.
The Vic Chicken Wings ($16) were texturally good – crispy on the outside and moist on the inside, but similarly to the onion rings they were quite salty. This was a theme that was continued by the salt and pepper squid ($19, not pictured).
I wonder if perhaps having oversalted and overseasoned food may however be synergistic at a pub where the markups on beverages may be a more significant profit maker than the food. I have no other way to explain why the textures hit so well, yet the salty taste for such a large majority of their food is so strong.
The Vic on the Park 2 Addison Rd, Marrickville NSW 2204 (02) 9114 7348
