Categories
Indonesian

Ria Ayam Penyet – Parramatta NSW Restaurant Review

I’ve never been invited to dine at a restaurant in exchange for social media exposure, and I think this probably has to do with my general aversion to lying to people. I write this blog essentially for my own memory, so that I can look back and know which places I liked and which places I didn’t like, even if I develop some kind of cognitive impairment in old age. Ria Ayam Penyet’s newly opened Parramatta branch upheld the tradition of not inviting me for free food (and to be fair, my social media reach outside of this blog isn’t even worth a blip on anyone’s radar), but did get my business after I saw them featured on an old high school mate’s Instagram, who did get to eat for free. I guess the system works.

Ria’s front page dish is their Ayam Penyet ($11.90), pictured here with the addition of a Telur Penyet ($1.50 – fried egg). This is a dish of deep fried chicken maryland, accompanied by a piece each of deep fried tofu and tempeh, fried crumbs, fresh sliced cucumber, some garden salad, and sambal sauce. I thought the chicken itself was a little bit drier than I would have liked, though my partner had no problems with it. My previous experience of Indonesian fried chicken, at Ayam Tulang Lunak in Mascot, was more palatable, though to be fair a completely different dish. I enjoyed the fried tofu, and in particular its extremely thin batter, similar to what I’ve had at Vietnamese restaurants but haven’t been able to find in Chinese cuisine. We opted for the sambal ijo (green chilli) sauce over the classic sambal terasi as my partner is less spice tolerant, and enjoyed its varying and complex textures, as well as the sense of freshness it added to the dish. Overall, this dish had pretty reasonable flavour and variety, and was good value for the excellent price.

The telur penyet, fried egg, was nothing to write home about.

The Rawon ($11.50) was next up. It is a black beef soup with fried shallots, garlic crackers, and sambal. While I enjoyed the taste of the soup with its beefiness and black pepper flavour, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed by the quantity of the beef inside. I’ve taken this photo of the soup with two pieces of cutlery inside simply to prop up the small amount of beef available, otherwise you would not be able to tell from photos that it contained any meat. The beef itself wasn’t amazingly tender or special either, but I would’ve just liked more of it to chew on. The garlic crackers were alright, especially with the sambal which I liked better than the sambal ijo reviewed above.

This Basko beef bone side soup ($2.50) was quite nice, if extremely oily. It had a rich beefy flavour, and seems to normally accompany the full Basko dish with meatballs and noodles. At $2.50 it was very fragrant and delicious, and would be a good recommendation for your starving university student looking for something cheap, warming, and energy dense.

OVERALL
I’m sad I didn’t get the full Basko experience, but it’s probably not really that good for me anyway. There are lots of things that I’d come back to try, were my metabolic profile not so bad.

Ria Ayam Penyet Parramatta
312 Church St, Parramatta NSW 2150
(02) 7809 0899

Categories
Chinese

Yummy Duck BBQ – Zetland NSW Restaurant Review

Yummy Duck BBQ and Brazilian Flame Barbecue sit on either side of a particularly long traffic light. It was this extended wait at a traffic light on my way to Brazilian Flame that first put me on to Yummy Duck BBQ, and I am glad that it did.

I visited Yummy Duck BBQ just before a night shift in the emergency department. I ordered in English, and asked to eat in but with an extra takeaway box in case I couldn’t finish my meal either due to abdominal or time constraints. It seems like something got lost in translation, however, as I ended up getting my meal served directly in those takeaway containers.

Roast duck and rice

The roast duck and rice ($13.80) was very cheap and very tasty. The amount of roast duck provided was extremely generous for the price, not to mention quality. The skin was nice and crispy, and the meat the perfect amount of juicy and tasty. The greens on the side were a nice touch, and the juices from the duck seeped into the rice below, providing it with a nice quacky flavour.

Wontons

The wontons ($10.80) are your average meat-focused wontons served in an extremely salty clear broth with seaweed and shallots. While the wontons themselves are good with plenty of meaty filling, the broth does let the dish down and takes it from a recommend to a don’t recommend.

DISCUSSION
Yummy Duck BBQ seems to have its own cohort of faithful locals. During my brief visit to Yummy Duck I witnessed warm interactions between the staff and not only the predominantly student-aged Asian crowd but also middle-aged Caucasian men in high-vis alike. I would characterise this loyalty to Yummy Duck is well deserved – they have some of the best roast duck I’ve had in the past three years, and will definitely be my go to while I’m still living in the area.

Yummy Duck BBQ
392 Botany Rd, Zetland NSW 2017
0415 773 777

Categories
Café

Naked Brew – Erskineville NSW Restaurant Review

Let me tell you first about a vibe, and then about the food.

We try to avoid the Inner West as much as possible, as I’m terrified of parking in small spaces and crowded streets. Naked Brew was an exception to this, and we were able to find street parking not far from the cafe on a weekday morning.

My partner and I are currently working week on, week off schedules, which means that even though we live in the same apartment we don’t get to see each other for 7*24 hours in a row, and then we spend the whoe next 7 days together. This is good and bad.

Our waitress made note of the fact that we had turned up to eat at 10AM on a weekday, and made significant and quite consistent conversation about how nice it was that we were able to spend time with each other. She told us that she and her partner never had days off together, as she was working in the cafe most days and him at his job. She reflected with us on how sad it was for her and how nice it was for us, and I am empathetic to her situation.

The Buddha Bowl was great. We had it with pork belly and poached egg. All of the components – the seeds, the carrots, corn – complemented each other well, and the dressing was nice and creamy as well.

To be completely honest I have no recollection of what this dish was, nor can I identify it from the currently online menu. I also don’t recall how it tasted but I think we liked it because I remember liking the restaurant overall and I don’t think I would’ve if only one of our two dishes were good.

I can recommend Naked Brew to a friend or colleague. Food is good. Vibe is fine if you like to chat. Dog friendly.

Naked Brew
110 Swanson St, Erskineville New South Wales 2043
(02) 9557 1628

Categories
Bakery Vietnamese

PiPi’s Pork Rolls – Unanderra NSW Restaurant Review

I walked nine kilometers today on a quest for what’s been lauded by some as Wollongong’s best banh mi, at QP Bakery in Berkeley. It was only when I arrived at QP that I found that they, like any other self-respecting eighteenth century bakery, are a cash only establishment. Much to my dismay with only six dollars in coins in my pockets, their most basic pork roll started at $7. I re-embarked on my sad journey to my partner’s apartment to the dulcet tones of Josh Farkas and Adam Thomas and instead ate at one of the many hot bread shops I had passed along the way.

This crispy crackling component of this Crispy Pork Belly Roll ($9.50) wasn’t quite what I expected. While the majority of crackling pork belly rolls that I’ve experienced have had a semi-dry, semi-oily-wet crackling that is both crispy and chewy – similar to what you would get from a Hong Kong BBQ restaurant, the crackling at PiPi’s was more reminiscent of what you would get from a snack food packet. Though I have seen actual evidence on their Facebook page of them cooking their crackling themselves, the crunchy crispiness but also the dryness of their pork crackling actually led me to initially believe that it was store bought rather than made in-house. While I don’t profess to be expert enough to truly judge banh mi by their traditional standards, I suppose that it’s probably acceptable to have either kind of crackling in your pork roll.

Crackling aside, I think PiPi’s crispy pork belly roll is actually quite good. The pork belly itself was nice, soft, and moist. The salads provided were balanced, and sauce was applied in an appropriate and conservative manner. I’d probably have this roll again.

I have no serious hitting commentary about PiPi’s classic Vietnamese Pork Roll ($7.50), though I will note that their pate is a bit different to the usual pate that I seem to get at Sydney banh mi-eries. It had a stronger flavour than I’m used to, more akin to the pates you would get at your local supermarket than the lighter flavoured pates normally used. Aside from this, this banh mi was slightly over-soyed (or Maggied, as it were), though still perfectly edible and ultimately not too salty.

CONCLUSION
I just don’t know why there are places in the 21st century not offering card payments, but I’m glad that PiPi’s Pork Rolls isn’t one of them. Not a bad lunchtime option if you’re a local, but I wouldn’t drive to the Illawara for a banh mi.

A friendly driveway dog I met on my walk.

PiPi’s Pork Rolls
135 Princes Hwy, Unanderra NSW 2526
0450 909 109

Categories
Chinese

Mr Sun’s Fried Buns – Waterloo NSW Restaurant Review

Nestled on a side street off Waterloo’s Gadigal Avenue is Mr Sun’s Fried Buns, a homely neighbourhood restaurant serving a variety of both bun and non-bun fare. A surprising amount of care has been put into the restaurant’s decor, which features bamboo steamers hung upside down in stacks from the ceilings as well as stuck onto the walls.

Mr Sun’s fried buns are not your regular shengjian bao. Though their fillings are authentic to the standard, the wrappers used by Mr Sun in his headline buns are much thinner, providing an optimal meat to juice to bread ratio that both delights the senses and allows the lucky patron to eat fit more buns into their digestive tract.

We had a combination of pork buns (left) and prawn buns (right) (4 for $10). A deeper dive is not possible at this stage as I’ve just forgotten how they tasted, however I can promise you that they tasted good. I thought it was a shame that they only offer two different flavours of buns cooked in this style, and I think that they would even benefit from offering all of their dumpling fillings in buns cooked this way. They were just great. I could have easily filled up on these.

The Chinese Spinach and Pork Wonton in Soup ($14.50) was a warming and wholesome dish. The soup was a nice semi-clear broth with a good but not too strong flavour, probably packed more with MSG than NaCl. It was topped with some bean cured, shallot, and seaweed, the last two elements adding additional umami. The wontons were a good size and had a nice, large, meaty filling. This wonton soup is better than that at nearby Yummy Duck BBQ.

I have no complaints about these boiled Scallop and Prawn Dumplings (12 for $15.80), though again I wish they would make all of their different dumpling varieties into their fried buns. I think it would be a real winner.

The Steamed Rice in Claypot with Braised Pork ($18.50) really didn’t look like the image provided, nor was it really congruous with the name of the dish. While I can accept this kind of thing as a takeaway or delivery meal (no restaurant is going to give you an actual claypot to take home), I don’t really go to a restaurant so that I can eat in a foil tray. Indeed there was nothing about this dish to indicate that it had ever even met a claypot, let alone been in one. To its credit, the dish did taste good, with a some of the rice having been made crispy, and not only the right sauce and pork to rice ratio but also the right amount of cabbage to keep things fresh. Regardless, they shouldn’t have shown a picture of food in a claypot if they weren’t going to serve it in one.

DISCUSSION

The food, particularly Mr Sun’s signature fried buns, tasted quite good. Unfortunately cleanliness, particularly of the cups for drinking water, was an issue, and I think it’s a restaurant best approached in the style of the Middle Ages, where beer was safer to drink than water.

4/5 with cleanliness negative modifier

Mr Sun’s Fried Buns
15 Hatbox Pl, Waterloo NSW 2017
0414 598 188