Categories
Bakery Café

Bench Coffee Co – Melbourne VIC Restaurant Review

We actually visited Bench Coffee Co a few hours before we did their sister store Saint Dreux. Truly falling for the hype and packaging, we spent a great deal of money on some Korean-style dacquoise (their only food offering) and coffee.

The flavour options on offer are Raspberry, Black Sesame, Vanilla Sea Salt, Matcha, and Chocolate, each sandwiched between identical nutty biscuits ($7 each). We chose a box with one of everything, because I am stupid, but at least it meant that we got a nice presentation box to put in the recycling.

The dacquoise at Bench played like a cross between a macaroon and a macaron as imagined by me as a child when I didn’t know the difference. The pastry, identical between all flavours, was semi-sweet, airy and compressible with a strongly nutty almond-like quality. There was possibly too much pastry after the third dacquoise, and certainly by the fifth.

My favourite of the batch was the raspberry, which was fresh and light in comparison to for example the vanilla sea salt which I felt was too oily and buttery. One positive aspect of these desserts is that no flavour was too over-sweet, but this did unfortunately mean that the oiliness and butteriness was able to come more, and probably too much.

The coffee ($4.50 for a long black and $5.50 for a soy latte) was expensive but only normal in quality. I will however commend them on their bottomless complimentary sparkling water on tap, which they even let us fill our drink bottle with.

IN SUMMARY

If there’s one thing I can surmise from my experiences at LT Cardigan’s two Melbourne stores Saint Dreux and Bench Coffee Co it’s that they have an extremely strong social media presence that is very much in excess of their actual food quality. While their food is by no means bad, one would think that, based on how much hype surrounds them online, that their cafes were unmissable Meccas for anyone venturing North of the Yarra. Ultimately what I think is that their marketing guy should get a raise.

Get one dacquoise for curiosity, maybe another if you enjoyed the first. Not the whole lot.

BENCH COFFEE CO. Lt Collins
321 Little Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000

Categories
Japanese

Kuro-Sakura 焼肉黒桜 – Chatswood NSW Restaurant Review

The first time my friends went to Kuro-Sakura for yakiniku, I couldn’t make it. Missing a wagyu BBQ all you can eat buffet weighed heavily on my mind for months, but I finally managed to redirect our small group back so that we could have their $50 pp all you can eat wagyu shabu shabu.

Where shall we begin?

Seating time is generally a strict 90 minutes, but as one of our colleagues was rushing from work in the Eastern Suburbs they allowed us to stay a few minutes extra.

Ordering is via a touch screen tablet, however what you order is not necessarily what you get. Within our set all you can eat menu we had the option of ordering wagyu beef, edamame, lotus chips, and a variety of cabbage, tofu, shirataki noodle, enoki, and udon. What we found, however, was that the number of dishes of each side ordered did not correspond 1:1 with the number of dishes brought out from the kitchen. Ultimately this was fine, however it did mean that we had to order multiple rounds (and wait) rather than just a few.

The quality of the meat was good, with a good amount of intramuscular marbling for the price, but an unfortunate amount of intermuscular fat that could’ve been trimmed.

The vegetables and sides were fresh, and while I was intitially disappointed at the low variety of meat and vegetables on offer, my stance changed as I dug into this perfectly focused wholesome meal.

Drinks available within our all you can eat purchase were soft drink (no sugarfree variants were available), green tea, and iced matcha tea.

VERDICT
A good time. Go hungry.

Kuro-Sakura
15 Oscar St, Chatswood NSW 2067
(02) 8880 4580

Categories
Japanese

Sekka Dining – St Leonards NSW Restaurant Review

As a fan of Japanese food unfortunately trapped on the wrong side of the Harbour Bridge, Sekka had been on my list of restaurants to try for some time. I finally found myself in St Leonards following a day of meetings at a nearby state ministry (the room where it happens), and ignoring my friend WKS’ advice, sat down for a meal at Sekka.

It turns out I probably should have listened.

We started our meal with a number of snacks, the first of which was the scallops in soy chimichurri and shiso ($3.50 each). These were quite good, with good flavour and a well-grilled but not too grilled texture.

Our next morsel was the M8 Wagyu yakitori with onions (2 for $16). While there was nothing wrong with the way these yakitori was cooked (see the cross-section for the nice rarity of meat), the meat was actually quite a bit tougher than expected. I guess that’s what happens when they specify “M8 Wagyu” but not the actual cut of meat provided.

The chicken thigh (skin on) yakitori with ginger and shallot dressing (2 for $14) should have been good, but despite everything in their favour were ultimately middling. The actual chicken of it was quite good – juicy on the inside, crispy skin on the outside. It was in fact so juicy that I burnt my tongue on the juices inside, though that was no one’s fault but my own, it was the path I’d chosen to go. The ultimate problem with this yakitori was, in my opinion, the general lack of flavour to the meat. It could’ve really done with a bit of salt or some tare, and while ginger and shallot is one of my top Asian flavourings I just don’t think it really goes that well with this kind of chicken (it’s great on Hainanese chicken rice, though).

Perhaps most disappointing of all was Sekka’s much lauded chicken wing gyoza (2 for $15). Essentially a chicken wing stuffed with prawn and deep fried (there is a mention of truffle on their menu but I’m not sure where that was hidden), these would’ve been good were they not so blandly flavoured. Frequent readers of this blog know that I prefer lighter flavours than most, but even then these winged gyoza could’ve done with a bit more.

After a procession of minimally inspiring entrees, our main course, the hojicha smoked duck ramen ($23), was actually amazing. The soup flavours were clear, vibrant and balanced, with neither the smoke nor the spicy shansho nor the tea flavours overplaying their weight. The semi-boiled egg was a umami treat, as was each slice of smoked duck breast, each presented with a sliver of skin and fat. Even the noodles were good. This was such a great bowl of ramen that I immediately regretted filling up on all those fried and grilled sides. I would’ve loved to have tried some of their other ramens.

VERDICT
Go, but skip the small plates and head straight for the ramen. That’s where the money is.

Sekka Dining
Shop 1, St Leonards Square, 472-488 Pacific Hwy, St Leonards NSW 2065
(02) 8054 9788

Categories
Café Japanese

Saint Dreux – Melbourne VIC Restaurant Review

With an aesthetic and online cult following that echoes that of a sneaker brand, Saint Dreux’s premium-priced and premium-packed katsu sandwiches had a lot of hype to live up to.

It took us two attempts to eat the promised Saint Dreux katsu sandwich, the first of which was thwarted by a premature closure. We were not alone in our disappointment on this first trip, and shared a failed elevator trip and a lap around the St. Collins Lane centre with two other hungry adults.

This is a photo of the Saint Dreux box before being marred by oily fingerprints. Look at that subtle deep-black colouring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh my God, it even has the name in Japanese under it.

The wagyu katsu sando ($28) was something I had been planning to eat for months, and whilst it was good, I was ultimately somewhat disappointed. I enjoyed the mustard sauce that accompanied both the beef sando and the pork sando pictured below. The saucing ratio – that is, the ratio to sauce to filling to bread, was bordering on perfect, adding a nice flavour and moistness to each bite. The beef, while appropriately moist and tender and juicy, just didn’t live up to the lofty expectations that I had formed in my head through the battery of social media hype, packaging, and expensive asking price. It was a beef katsu sandwich. That’s all.

Though not the advertised promised land of this pilgrimage, I actually found the Pork Katsu Sando ($16) to be more perfect a sando than its beefy counterpart. The pork in this sandwich was juicy, flavourful and tender, equal to the best I’ve ever had. The mustard-like sauce again made a strong showing, providing a familiar tanginess and pungency without any of the secondary sweeter sauce used in most other Australian pork katsu sandos, for example from Sydney’s Kentaro.

THOUGHTS:
Though well presented and highly photogenic, I found the sandos at Saint Dreux to be merely good, but not life changing. I’d recommend a visit only if you’re in the area.

Saint Dreux
St Collins Lane Centre, Level 2, Shop 2, 08/260 Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000
(03) 7016 8973

Categories
Korean

Stoneage Korean BBQ – West Ryde NSW Restaurant Review

My partner and I have a lot of Korean BBQ, but it is rare for us to do it with actual Koreans. Recognising the experience of our senior Korean colleagues HWJ and CJP (both PGY8 medically and PGY30-ish Koreanly), we put our faith in them to lead the meal.

We started off with some pork belly. During this encounter I learned about the difference between the two main types of cooking surfaces used in Korean BBQ. The above pictured grill plate, contrasted with the mesh-type grill plate pictured below, is used preferentially for high-fat cuts like pork belly. The reason for this is that it has far fewer holes for fat to escape into the fire through, reducing the frequency of flare-ups. How did I sleepwalk through life not knowing this until now?

The second part of our highly-focused Korean BBQ experience was the rib eye. The meat was fresh and highly marbled – generally a delight to eat. Our friends knew exactly what they wanted meat-wise, and stuck with it. One pork option and one beef option, and both were very good.

The marinated baby octopus was cooked on the other type of grill – the same type as the beef – that allowed greater direct contact with the heat and more evaporation. I wasn’t a big fan of this octopus, despite it having been ordered at my request. They were large babies.

I just generally love steamed egg. (But I think BBQ Biwon‘s was softer and better)

This soft tofu chilli pot ($10) was cheap (commensurate with its lack of animal protein) but otherwise not much to write home about.

I enjoyed this cold noodle soup ($10) but wonder if in Korean culture these are not meant to be shared. One of my colleagues certainly acted like it was the personal order of the other colleague, but in the end no one stopped me from taking some. Actually very good value.

Other Feelings
The banchan was good, plentiful, and quickly resupplied. The grilles were swapped out meticulously, so as not to leave too much burnt char on them for too long. Service can therefore be considered to be quite good. We paid a total of $55 per person for a very big feed for four humans.

Would I come back? Why not. The nearby Juwon Butchery is also a great place to pick up some wagyu Korean BBQ cuts to take home for a repeat meal a few days down the track.

Stoneage Korean BBQ
1B Chatham Rd, West Ryde NSW 2114
0401 167 688