Categories
Malaysian

Rickshaw Food – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

I stood outside this restaurant pondering the menu for a brief few seconds before a somewhat elderly lady sitting on a bench told me that I should go inside and have their lunch special. At that point I felt too in-it to back out.

We had the curry chicken with egg noodles ($17.80), which came in a lunchtime special with a ice milk tea, pictured below. These noodles were excellent, with a strong peanut flavour (would it be more accurately described as satay curry noodles?), in its thick flavourful sauce. The chicken was juicy and delicious, and the portion provided was overall quite large. Absolutely satisfied with this choice.

I can’t tell you anything about this ice milk tea, which I did not have any of. My friend seemed satisfied.

The seafood dry laksa ($17.80) was not bad, though was not on the lunch menu and thus did not come with a drink. The noodles were thicker than that of the chicken noodles, and this dish’s sauce was also good though less so, and not something that actually reminded me of ‘laksa’. The mussels were very clean.

The Malay fried chicken wings ($15.80) came extremely hot, and burnt my friend’s fingers. They took a long time to cool down to an enjoyable temperature. Once tasted, I found the external skin to be crispy and tasty, however the internal meat I felt was lacking of flavour.

The satay chicken skewers ($16.80) were a bit odd, with the satay much more in the dipping sauce than in the chicken skewers themselves. The satay dipping sauce was very good, however.

Overall
Overall the meal was good, and I would definitely recommend the chicken curry noodles with its thick delicious sauce.

I’m a bit concerned about the 7% discount for cash payments though. Is that legal?

Rickshaw Food
8B/27-31 Belmore St, Burwood NSW 2134

Categories
Café

Plunge 46 – Summer Hill NSW Restaurant Review

I respect breakfast as the most important meal of the day, both from a medical standpoint as well as a cultural standpoint – the post night shift breakfast is probably one of the things that keeps me coming back to work. Despite my respect for breakfast as an institution, I don’t necessarily believe that breakfast should be limited only to breakfast foods, like eggs, beans, and more generally a simple lack of meats made in elaborate ways. So it comes as no surprise that I am an absolute sucker for an all-day menu.

My partner and I ate from Plunge 46’s extensive all-day menu, this morning in the middle of her run of night shifts.

We had this very lovely plate of corn fritters ($22), which is a very standard dish that my partner likes, but this rendition came with some excitement. As you can see from the photo, there was not a whole lot of batter on the corn fritters. The corn kernels themselves were quite visible macroscopically without need for any additional dissection, meaning that compared to others in its category this rendition was quite corn-forward and probably a bit healthier than its competition who are mostly completely encased in batter.

We enjoyed the sour cream, the slightly smashed avocado, the tomato and all the other bits involved, particularly the red liquid, which was somewhat of a salsa-like concoction. My partner was particularly pleased by the appearance of rocket rather than the more common wilted spinach, the two occupying opposite corners in her vegetable tier list. The fritters, topped off with a well poached egg, was overall a strong showing.

The tempura fish tacos ($17.50) that I had read about on the Google reviews before I went were somewhat less exciting (although my partner did enjoy them, to be fair). I found myself eating my allocated taco quite quickly without really being able to taste anything particularly different between the mixture of cabbage, avocado, tomato in this taco compared to the corn fritter dish. Apart from a slight hint of bitterness it was hard for me to really unpack any of the flavours in my little taco that I had, almost as if I basically ate my taco on autopilot without the ability or opportunity to really understand and enjoy it. Perhaps such an assessment is not entirely fair, but I do feel like if it were great, I probably would’ve paid more attention to it.

Luckily for this Plunge 46, there are still quite a number of options on the menu that I’d like to give a go, and it is quite likely that I’ll be back in due course.

Plunge 46
46 Lackey St, Summer Hill NSW 2130

Categories
Bakery Vietnamese

Thuan Thien Bakery – North Strathfield NSW Restaurant Review

Not to be outdone by the banh mi my junior brought for me at work from Nguyen Hot Bread in Canley Vale during our last fortnight together, I picked up a variety of three options and an almond croissant to share on my way to work.

We had a selection of banhs mi. The first to be pictured and discussed is the roasted pork roll ($7), eaten by me, ultra fresh, walking through the hallway at work so that I can provide an accurate account of its quality for the internet. The bread was nice and fresh, slightly crusty on the outside and soft on the inside – no complaints or painful mouth cutting here. The filling sadly was not ideal, with the pork being really quite dry, and uninspiring (again, note that I’ve eaten it fresh in this case.) On subsequent visits the pork has actually been quite good, and I’ve now had banh mi from here at least six times.

The pate I will discuss in this subsequent paragraph dedicated to the original pork roll ($6.50), which was much better than the roast pork. Unlike most porks roll that I’ve had, the pate at Thuan Thien was very thin and spread with a spoon rather than a knife, which I didn’t find too problematic but my Vietnamese friend did not find satisfying. Whilst I agree the volume administered was on the lower end of the spectrum, she was quite disappointed by it. Luckily the standard collection of cold cuts in the original pork roll meant that there was little opportunity for error, and this is overall a pretty good roll, even eaten at our late lunch period after 6 hours in the fridge. There was no mention of the option of extra pate on the menu, but I suspect it’s something you could convince them to do for a little extra. but I now have learned to just ask for it, and it makes it all delicious.

It’s hard to know if this next roll, which I ate at lunch 6 hours after purchase, is the same roll as the roast pork roll, or in fact the BBQ pork roll ($7), which I had also ordered. I guess I should assume that it’s the BBQ pork roll which I had ordered, but it kind of looks nothing like the menu photograph, with not a smidge of crackling in site. Either way, it was surprisingly not as dry as the first roll I had that morning, so there’s a chance that it was in fact different. I should note the inclusion of red onion on this banh mi, which I feel is not that common an ingredient, whilst my friend and colleague, an influencer in her own right, decried the lack of daikon in this store’s offerings (not a problem for me.) I appreciated also the inclusion of a proper buttery Vietnamese mayonnaise, rather than margarine from a tub, which is passed off as acceptable at some establishments.

The almond croissant ($4) was pretty good. Lots of custard inside, and cheaper than Zouki.

Overall thoughts
Will I add Thuan Thien bakery into the rotation? It’s possible – but only because it’s somewhat on the way, now that I’ve started taking tolls to work and A) XCel Roll has dropped off in quality and B) Nhu Y Kings Hot Bread requires a more significant detour.

Update, mid 2025. The quality was better on every subsequent visit, and this is now my regular haunt.

Thuan Thien bakery
199 Concord Rd, North Strathfield NSW 2137

Categories
Japanese

Ryo’s Noodles – Crows Nest NSW Restaurant Review

It’s extremely rare thing for doctors to go on strike, and probably something that many in power thought would never happen again in NSW, the last time in the 1980s (led at the time by a young doctor now known as CSY) relegated to fleeting mentions in review articles in the MJA[1].

I was proud to have been a small part of the doctors’ walkout on the 8th of April this year, when, even though I wasn’t actually rostered to work that day, I attended rallies both in Western Sydney and at the Ministry of Health’s lavishly appointed headquarters (beautiful staircase in that building) at 1 Reserve Road, St. Leonards.

The protest of it all aside, it was quite nice to see a number of my friends and colleagues that I had worked with over the years, all gathered in one place to protest the untenable state of working conditions and compensation in the New South Wales public health system – a product of both successive Liberal AND Labor governments, which has led to the ongoing attrition of both junior and senior doctors from the state public health system into private practice, as well as public hospitals in other states which are able to offer better staffing, conditions, and on average 30% more in terms of remuneration. Though a Labor party win was once thought by some to be the panacea that would fix the crumbling health system, I do love a bipartisan effort at neoliberalism and keeping the workers down.

Politics aside, one of the people I ran into at the strike, at the rally, was a former frequently featured co-diner on this blog, WKS, and we took the opportunity of being on the forbidden side of the bridge to catch up over a meal at Ryo’s Noodles.

Ryo’s Noodles, I suspect, had never seen such a large turnout for lunch on a weekday, as various small groups of doctors had filled up almost their entire venue capacity, and then some, with a number of people in scrubs still waiting outside for a table even as we left.

The gyoza ($9) were pretty good, juicy, filled with pork and cabbage, fried and crispy, though possibly a little bit burnt, more burnt than I would have liked.

The karaage chicken ($12), a classic, no notes.

The ramen itself, soy sauce flavour ($20.50) I felt was kind of overhyped, and did not reach the criticisable level of the sides. Ryo’s Noodles had been part of my consciousness for the past 5 years since I first started this blog, and at the end of the day I felt that their star item was just not bad – a bit saltier than I would’ve liked, with good chaashu but otherwise definitely not life changing as some have influencers have sold it online.

Ryo’s Noodles
125 Falcon St, Crows Nest NSW 2065
(02) 9955 0225

References
1.Yong CS. The Australian Medical Association at 50 years. Med J Aust. 2012 Aug 6;197(3):182-3. doi: 10.5694/mja12.11108. PMID: 22860798.

Categories
Italian

Lupa Pizzeria – Wollongong NSW Restaurant Review

I found myself having an extra night in Wollongong, and was craving some pizza. Both unwilling and unable to go to Kneading Ruby, having exhausted their pretty delicious menu back in 2021, we decided on Lupa, well recommended on the internet, which had a couple of open tables for walk-ins on a Sunday night.

The first thing I noticed about Lupa was this cute logo of a wolf providing milk to piglets? wolflets? the founders of Rome? on their window. It was cute but weird, kind of chaotic and modern.

My partner decided on the pizza, which was the quattro stagioni ($24), with tomato sauce, fior di latte, ham, salami, mushrooms, a single artichoke, and olives. Being simple folk who don’t know much about pizza lore, we had expected all of these ingredients to come mixed on the pizza, however this is not how it was. This pizza came in discrete sections, with Wikipedia stating that each section represents one Italian season.

It was actually very good, with a nice thin crust but with strong, non-floppy structure. The salami was quite delicious, likely an artisan variety rather than something more pedestrian. The artichoke was tender, marinated in some kind of vinegary substance, and the mushroom and ham definitely not problematic either. This pizza was so good that even before our pasta came I was regretting not just getting two pizzas.

The orchiette with pork sausage and mushroom ($22) was the pasta special for the night. It was quite al dente (probably too much for me), and I must admit that I didn’t love it, though my partner enjoyed it, possibly even more than the pizza itself. There was no sauce, instead being more of an oil-based pasta with a hint of aniseed flavour amongst the mushroom and pork sausage. I do wish that we had just ordered two pizzas, but I’m glad that my partner go to enjoy this pasta, and I’m also glad that I wasn’t in a situation where a number of patrons on a different table each ate their own pasta and didn’t get to try anyone else’s food at at all.

As we were leaving, our waiter said our visit wouldn’t be our last. He’s probably right. Yum.

Lupa Pizzeria
98-100 Keira St, Wollongong NSW 2500