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.
I love a good pho, and within Wollongong’s surprising density of Vietnamese restaurants Mylan is said to be one of the best.
I took myself out for lunch for a Beef Special Pho ($17). The restaurant was sparsely populated and diners were well distanced from one another, likely owing to the only very recent reopening of NSW’s restaurants. Service was very fast, with the bowl delivered in well under five minutes.
$17 at Mylan buys you an extremely large bowl of pho, with a healthy mixture of rare beef, brisket, beef balls, and various kinds of tripe. The rare meat was tender, and the brisket was not too fatty. Unfortunately the beef balls did not taste as good or as complex as some other beef balls that I’ve had.
The soup came extra hot, which was great as it maintained its warmth throughout the course of the meal, despite having to transfer much of its heat to the bean sprouts and Thai basil that I added in. The broth itself is a bit lighter in taste than what I usually prefer, but this was made up for by the sate chilli sauce. I do wish that more bean sprouts would have been given for such a large bowl of noodles, but I suspect I was just too shy to ask.
I had such a bad meal at Sushi Train in Maroubra that I just needed to come home and tell you all about it straight away. This is posted some time after the meal, but the content was written contemporaneously.
First, praise needs to be given to the best parts of the meal – the attentive service and the filtered, iced, table water.
The ambience and decor was also nice.
Next, we must move onto the food.
This aburi salmon “volcano” nigiri was our first and in my view probably one of the only pieces that was not awful, owing to the fact that it was drenched in mayonnaise and able to drown out the heavily disappointing rice.
This chicken katsu and cream cheese inside out roll with spicy seasoning on top was also very bad. The chicken felt old, cold, and dry. It did not appeal to me at all.
This is a layered sushi with avocado and aburi salmon, coated in a heavy layer of sauce. My partner found this acceptable, and ordered two of these dishes in favour of others, however I thought it was still quite bad.
The salmon roe (ikura) gunkan wrapped in salmon seemed like it was off to a good start, however with the entire morsel in my mouth it became clear that it was far too salty – probably from the ikura marinade/preservation fluids.
I had high hopes for the uni gunkan (sea urchin), but it just didn’t taste good. It was bitter rather than sweet, and had a strange and unpleasant taste that seems to be the difference between the good quality stuff and the cheap stuff.
The maguro tuna nigri was more bitter than sweet, a problem that I had with a lot of the a la carte nigiri at Sushi Train Maroubra. The serving size of tuna was large and generous, however the quality wasn’t good. Having straight fish on rice really accentuated the low quality of the rice – and the huge quantity. The rice was dry, almost stale tasting, and ruined every subsequent plate.
This is the tako (octopus) nigri. The slices of octopus were extremely difficult to chew, and it did not seem like much consideration was taken in the preparation of the octopus to provide a morsel that was actually edible. After chewing on my octopus for at least 90 seconds straight I gave up. This nigiri also fell victim to the awful rice.
The engawa nigiri was fatty and good, however again let down by the rice.
Ultimately we had a very bad meal at Sushi Train Maroubra – so bad in fact that it helped us to limit our ordering. We would normally spend more as a couple at a place like Sushi Rio or Sushi Hotaru, as the food in these places is much better. A special call out needs to be made for the awful quality rice which left its stain on every morsel it touched, especially in the volume in which it was used.
It is tough for me, as a cat lover, to walk past a cafe with two cats on its banner.
My first visit to La Mamita’s was on the thirteenth of October 2021, just two days after the state of New South Wales had started opening up businesses followed a prolonged COVID-19 related shutdown. I was the only customer in the cafe, an eerie experience as there were at least three or four staff there.
I had a pastrami sandwich ($10), an item that I had seen on their specials board many times before as I walked past to visit different Vietnamese bakeries. The pastrami sandwich was a large, oversided sandwich of toasted bread. The heat from the toasting did not quite transmit through to the fillings ,which included unmelted cheese (perhaps Swiss or similar), bulk pickles, ham, and pastrami. I say the pickles were bulk, as I’m pretty sure every square centimetre of this toasted sandwich had a corresponding square centimetre of pickle – quite a nice and tangy surprise, as some sandwich makers are known to be miserly with their pickles. It was a shame that the cheese was not very melted, as I think melted or otherwise differently arranged cheese may have enhanced the experience. Though this sandwich was not the most gourmet sandwich around, I think ultimately for $10 it did its job.
I wish I could have written just a nice little paragraph about my meal at Yod amongst a number of other Thai restaurants in Haymarket, but unfortunately one little thing made the whole experience turn a bit sour.
I had this Grilled Chicken Thigh Fillet (Gai Ping (ไก่ปิ้ง))($12.90), which was pretty good. It was nicely grilled, with a mildly sweet marinade that was not too sweet, and a tangy and spicy dipping sauce. There was nothing to complain about of the food at all, but the odd experience came when paying.
The point of service payment system rang up with a price of $14.90, even though both the large format menu clearly displayed outside the restaurant, as well as the menu handed to me when I ordered both displayed a price of $12.90. The woman working the till told me that $12.90 was the old price, and that I must have seen an old menu, but this was clearly the price on the menu that they had handed me. She wouldn’t let it go, and even when we called her supervisor across even she said the same thing. I must have seen an old menu. I realise that $2 is just $2, but at this point it became a sticking point for the two of us. She flipped in disbelief through at least six or eight other copies of the menu at the front counter, all of which said $12.90, all the while maintaining that these were all just old copies of the menu.
There were no new menus showing the “new” price to speak of.
Ultimately with some fight they relented and charged only the advertised and clearly printed price. It would’ve been a lot more graceful for them to accept that they were wrong immediately – if literally all of the menus in your restaurant are “old”, then they are the menu.
Despite the good food this whole process felt dirty to me and I will make a wholehearted effort to never go back.
And before you ask, I have the photos and the metadata.
Yod 462/40-54 Campbell St, Haymarket NSW 2000 0466 554 642
Wollongong instituion for over thirty years and recommended by some guy on Reddit as the best Japanese food in Wollongong, Roppongi was the first restaurant we ever dined in at in Wollongong following the October 2021 COVID-19 repoening. It didn’t live up to the hype.
DECOR While Roppongi looks quite casual from the outside, its interior is well designed, with plenty of wood panelling and features that lend a more traditional Japanese vibe to the place. There are two separate dining rooms, and after our vaccination records were checked we were lead to a timber floored room where we were instructed to remove our shoes before entering the dining room where we had the option of sitting on the floor, or for the less flexible of us, dangling our legs under the table.
The combination sashimi ($18) was the most impressive dish of the night, with fresh tasting fish and what I think was likely freshly ground wasabi. The real deal.
The vegetable tempura ($14.80) was unexpected. Most of the time when we order vegetable tempura we are given discrete slices of vegetables that have been coated in tempura batter and deep fried. Roppongi’s version was served as clumps of shredded vegetables mashed together, giving it a quality reminiscent of those vague deep fried vegetable patties. Also strange to this dish was that roughly thirty minutes later we were served a bowl of udon soup to go with it, only to have the waiter return after a few more minutes, ask us if we’d touched it, and take it down to the next table. Keep in mind this was only a day after the state started lifting out of its COVID-19 restrictions.
The Vinegared Combination ($12) of vinegar-marinated cucumber and seafoods was quite nice, though I feel they could’ve cleaned the mussels more as I definitely had to spit some beard out of my mouth. On top of this, I felt that the choice to add seafood extender to an otherwise quite nice dish of sea animals was a strange one that kind of cheapened the vibe of the entire dish.
The featured component of the Teppanyaki Beef Rolls ($16.80) was quite nice, with tender juicy beef wrapped around garlic and spring onions. The side component, the stir fried vegetables, were pretty disappointing and reminiscent of something you’d get from a cheap Chinese takeaway, with plenty of low-cost bulk added through onion.
The Chicken Skewers ($8) with onion and capsicum were, as you an see here, a little burnt. The flavour of the soy saue on the chicken was good, but the burntness of the vegetables as well as the reappearance of onion in this dish let it down.
COMMENTS Ultimately I was disappointed. While the sashimi was truly good, the rest of our meal was quite off-kilter, and if this is the best Japanese food that Wollongong has to offer then Sydney is only 70km down the road.
