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.
Part of the Parramatta Square redevelopment, Harvey’s Hot Sandwiches promises to bring American-style submarine sandwiches to the rapidly gentrifying slums of Western Sydney.
The Beef Dip Sub ($16) was one of the more unique subs on the menu, featuring a submarine sandwich of heavy onion, beef fillet, horseradish mayo, and lots of provolone cheese served with a small tub of dipping gravy. The sandwich itself was reminiscent of a backyard barbeque, with strong onion flavours and tender beef. The gravy was thin and salty, and though I was keen to try a sandwich dipped in gravy I must admit not many of my bites were dipped. It didn’t add much.
The Nashville Hot Chicken Sub ($16) was the better of the two subs that we had. The chicken was freshly fried and juicy, with good moistness maintained throughout the sub thanks to a healthy smattering of vinegar slaw, pickles, and sauce. We had the medium spicy option (damn hot), which we felt was not very spicy at all, though your tastebuds may vary. Though a good sandwich overall, I am still more partial to the hot chicken sandwiches at Belle’s Hot Chicken (though this is a good Western Sydney alternative).
My girlfriend has never walked past a potato and not eaten it, and so for us Harvey’s Salt and Vinegar Potato Salad ($4) was just destiny. Though we are usually fans of salt and vinegar on potatoes, we felt that this offering was really only okay. The flavouring was actually a bit mild for us, though we did appreciate the dill scattered on top which added an additional layer of flavour.
The Creaming Soda Float ($7) with house made vanilla ice cream was great. I always appreciate when a restaurant’s menu says house made rather than home made (unless the food is being made in a home).
OVERALL Not bad, a bit more fancy than your local Subway, but it’s going to be a tough sell getting your general Western Sydney guys to spend $16 on a sandwich. That said, there are still a few that I want to eat.
We visited A Man and His Monkey on an extra-ordinary windy and cold day in June. Though allegedly outside of the peak COVID-19 season now two and a half years down the track, I made the decision to forgo the warmth of the claustrophobically packed café interior and sit us al fresco next to a non-functional gas heater instead. Some would later call this a mistake, but I would argue that the real mistake was that same person not bringing her own jacket and taking mine instead.
I really enjoyed this grilled salmon salad ($18.50), which truly exceeded all expectations and was exactly what my mouth needed at the time. The salad was a symphony of freshness, primarily composed of the flavourful herby green plants mint, parsley, coriander, spring onion, and a small amount of dill. There was no boring, garden-variety iceberg lettuce in sight, and as such each single leaf provided its own unique flavour. The grilled salmon was able to retain its presence despite being pulled into flakes, with just enough spread out throughout the greenery to exert a umami and fatty mouthfeel. The dried cranberries, another master stroke, provided a textural as well sweet tasting reprieve from the green in just enough quantity, and just when you thought the freshness might get too overbearing the bed of crème fraîche would swoop in with a save.
The poached egg, a $3 addon which I didn’t realise wasn’t part of the salad until re-reading the menu just now, was also excellent.
The men and monkeys of this café are masters of ratio, and all elements of this dish were in the right amounts in perfect harmony. There’s literally nothing that I could imagine that could have made this salad better, except maybe if I had had my jacket back.
Though I loved the salmon salad I didn’t really like the hummushuka with slow cooked lamb ($28). Not being the biggest fan of of shaks to begin with, this particular shakshuka appealed to me even less than normal, with a tomato sauce that was sweeter than usual, a very standard bread, and unfortunately quite unconvincing lamb for the $8 supplement atop the $20 base price. The one redeeming factor of this shakshuka were the again excellent eggs. Having said this, my partner, who chose this item from the menu, did enjoy this dish.
A soy cap for $4.40 is refreshingly reasonably priced these days!
COMMENTS I don’t think I’ve ever stanned for a salad this much in my life. Make sure to make your partner bring her Eastern Suburbs standard-issue North Face down jacket or pay the price.
Our most recent Marrickville Vietnamese meal was desserted by a trip down the road to Goodwood Bakeshop, a new-ish bakery offering an assortment of savoury and sweet pastries as well as a range of breads baked on premises. Despite their popularity and a small line down the street, our experience was a festival of speed, with good clarity of displays (sans pricing), a limited and focused offering, and a lack of seating all contributing to fast service.
My first and favourite bite from Goodwood was of their Miso Peanut Butter Cookie ($4), a rich and buttery cookie with a soft centre and crunchy exterior, with umami miso and peanut butter flavours that were delicious and most importantly not too sweet. The light coating of roasted sesame seeds on the superior surface of this cookie served to enhance its Asian-ness, making it overall a good cookie that I would recommend to an Asian or non-Asian friend.
The aforementioned peanut butter cookie was eaten on the street outside the bakery, though the four other sweet treats that we tried were eaten at a secondary location.
The Apple Cardamom Hand Pie ($8) was my first non-cookie bite, and sadly too sweet for my taste. I enjoyed the multi-layered pie crust, but felt that the sticky, sweet filling was a bit overpowering of the whole.
I enjoyed the croissant portion of the Lemon & Hazelnut Twice Baked Croissant ($8), with its nice and crispy crust and buttery interior folds, but again felt that the additions, in particular the lemon marmalade filling, was too sweet for my liking.
At the risk of repeating myself, the Pecan Cardamom Orange Scroll ($8) was again too sweet for my liking. The pastry of this scroll was appropriately dense, and I enjoyed the spicy orange and cardamom flavour and generous helping of pecans within. This would’ve been a winner, in my opinion, if the top layer of icing sugar had been left out.
After hearing me complain about the last three pastries, you will be surprised to read of my thorough enjoyment of this vanilla slice($8). This slice offered a reprieve of the sugar load from our previous entries, with an unusually thick and viscous custardy filling complete with black dots, the universal sign of vanilla excellence. While the pastry wasn’t paradigm changing, the filling was in my opinion quite special and most importantly “not-too-sweet”. Excellent.
OVERALL THOUGHTS (AT INITIAL VISIT – JULY 2022) The majority of what I had at Goodwood Festival of Sweetness was too sweet for my liking. As always, it’s possible that my preferences in terms of pastries are culture-bound, as “not-too-sweet” is used as a common phrase to denote praise of a dessert in Chinese culture. I’d like to come back for some savoury treats that will hopefully be not-too-salty.
REVISITED, MARCH 2023
This seasonal hot cross bun ($4) was really solid. There was a great amount of fruit – both of the citrus and dessicated grape variety, as well as a little bit of spice that set this HCB apart from from the crowd. Not too sweet at all.
This everything bagel croissant ($8), ordered for my fiancée in honour of the recent Academy Award winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once, was more than met the eye. I didn’t know, when I ordered that it would be filled with wilted spinach and some feta-like substance (I have reviewed the images and there was no description posted anywhere in the bakery), but I’m glad it was, because $8 would be too much for just a croissant encrusted in some seeds. This ended up being a really tasty combination, with the crunch of the croissant exterior, the butteriness of the pastry, the salty and fragrant sesame seeds and the savoury and creamy flavours from the filling all combining to create an almost spanakopita like croissant (a fitting prelude to the quarter-Greek wedding we went to later that day). This gets a thumbs up from me but not my partner (she does not like spinach, even though this was ordered specifically for her. How rude.)
I have no complaints at all about this miso, eggplant, pumpkin, and togarashi croissant ($7.50) which was yummy with all its vaguely Japanese inspired ingredients combined with good pastry-work.
The last item in our breakfast were these fig danishes ($8.50 each), which they gave us two of instead of one in a very nice gesture as they were nearing the end of day. These were not bad, and I know I’m being annoying because 1) I’m kind of looking a gift horse in the mouth, and 2) literally in my initial review of this place in July 2022 I complained extensively about things being a bit too sweet, but I did think these were not super flavourful. I don’t know exactly the reason – perhaps it was time based – but there just wasn’t a huge amount of flavour in the figs compared to the most recent fig pastry that I had at Lucien in Parramatta. Despite this, I did enjoy them, and in particular was impressed by how big and filling they were for the price, and again the quality of the laminated pastry at the base. We not only enjoyed the first danish on the day we got them, but also the second one on the following morning.
COMMENTS This clearly wasn’t my doing, as Pegfeeds definitely doesn’t (and if I’m being honest, shouldn’t) have the readership or cone of influence to actually affect anyone’s business in any shape whatsoever, but I was really impressed that none of my complaints about extreme sweetness I had the first time around were applicable on my second visit. Instead, both the savoury and sweet flavours were well balanced on my second visit, though maybe a bit lacking in the fig danish.
Before I die of dementia afraid and alone I need to tell you guys about these amazing frozen dumplings that my parents bought me. These are plump, with a real filling of meat and chives and a wrapper that far exceeds even the best of your standard Asian supermarket frozen dumplings. My partner grew up in a household without handmade dumplings. For the first 21 years of her life she thought that dumplings were these tiny, poorly filled machine-made things with more dough than taste. Her first encounter of having handmade dumplings with my family is probably what led her to stick with me for this long, and I’m honestly afraid that now that we have found such good frozen dumplings that she may leave me as there is nothing else that I can offer her that she can’t get herself.
They’re actually better than the ones I make myself at home. A pork, prawn and chive variation would be absolutely killer.
We were baited to Firestone by the promise of some truly delicious looking Korean-Italian fusion food on their social media accounts. It turns out all that stuff was on an old menu. This is what we found instead.
I will start with the best dish of the day, the Truffle Mushroom Risotto ($21.90). This vegetarian dish was packed full of different types of mushrooms and truffle oil. It was creamy and umami, and even though it was vegetarian I did not miss the meat at all. Additional sliced or grated truffle was on offer for a supplement, however we declined. While it wasn’t exactly what we were looking for, this dish was very good. I can recommend it.
The Chilli Dog ($12) was chilli only in so far as the sauce was chilli. There was no chilli con carne component, which is what you would expect to get if paying $12 for a hot dog named “chilli dog”. A no go.
I was really not a fan of this miso salmon benedict ($18.90). Unlike most miso salmon dishes on the streets of Sydney, this particular miso salmon was raw salmon, thick-cut, marinated in miso and mirin. It had a too-fishy flavour that kind of repulsed me. The rest of the eggs benedict was absolutely fine, but the salmon left a taste in my mouth that I can still recall to this day (about two weeks down the track).
This iced soy taro latte ($7.70) was solid. Not too sweet. Quite refreshing.
Standard teal cup large soy cappuccino. ($5.50) .
VERDICT A tough sell. Perhaps their Hornsby branch has a more enticing menu.
