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.
This is less of a restaurant review and more of a grocery store review. The only cooked, ready to eat item that they sell is an egg tart, which is itself only available on weekends.
The egg tarts ($1.50) are however very good, with great colouration, a nice sweet but not-too-sweet filling, and a delicate flaky puff pastry crust, which is in my opinion across the board superior to shortbread crusts. They are served room temperature, unfortunately, and having them warm would make them just a little bit more perfect.
The majority of Best Tastes Dim Sim’s business is in the frozen dim sum game. Best Tastes, along with Hurstville competitor Delight Dim Sim are my two go-to sources for frozen treats like siu mai (shao mai), har gao (xia jiao), and all kinds of other buns, dumplings, and things wrapped in bean curd.
The service at Best Tastes Dim Sim is also extremely straight forward and friendly, you essentially just pick out what you want from their freezers and take it to the front. I even dropped and destroyed an entire box of dumplings (my fault entirely, I was on the phone and holding way too much stuff), that I was not charged for, even though I offered to pay.
Their food is cheap and delicious, and got me through the recent COVID-19 Delta variant lockdown in Sydney without suffering yum cha withdrawal related delirium tremens. A little bottle of Koon Yick chili sauce also goes a long way.
Enjoy
Best Tastes Dim Sim 11 Henley Rd, Homebush West NSW 2140 (02) 8746 0498
Elias Gourmet Pizza is not as gourmet as I’d like it to be.
This meal was ordered via the Deliveroo app. The headline photo showed woodfired style pizza, however what I got was vastly different to the photo.
Gourmet Meat Large Half and Half Pizza – Brabyn St Special, Kalymnos
One of the positive attributes about Elias Gourmet Pizza is that there is no significant surcharge for half and half. I had the Gourmet Meat Large Half and Half Pizza with Brabyn St Special and Kalymnos ($26).
The Brabyn St Special consists of “Beef, pepperoni, roasted capsicum, onion, tomato, jalapenos, double chilli with a side of sour cream”. It is actually quite good, nice and spicy. It would my pick of the two halves.
The Kalymnos consisting of “char grilled meat balls, bacon, fresh tomato, onion & roasted capsicum” wasn’t so good. I thought that the meat balls were dry and a bit tasteless, and too sparse to really make the pizza feel like a meatball pizza – it was rather a pizza with occasional meatballs. I wouldn’t recommend this at all.
The American Smoked Pork Ribs ($28) was actually pretty decent, both in quality and price. I would normally expect to pay $35-40 for this quantity of ribs, so $28 from a delivery app is extremely reasonable. The pork was tender and well sauced but not oversauced, which was a plus. Surprisingly much better than the pizza – perhaps Elias should rename itself to Elias Gourmet Ribs instead.
VERDICT Not really special, wouldn’t recommend their pizza but if you have a hankering for ribs and live within the delivery radius it’s worth a go.
Long Meng Zhu is one of many restaurants that serve Ma La Tang in Mascot’s recently developed high-rise area, located mere footsteps away from its nearest competitor.
The concept is much the same as every other Ma La Tang restaurant. There is a refrigerated display of a variety of meat, seafood, and vegetables. The selection is a bit narrower than what you would find at a larger competitor like Yang Guo Fu Ma La Tang, but still reasonably appropriate. The meat are fresh and were still being actively topped up by the time I visited at around 10:30PM. What sets Long Men Zhu apart from many of its competitors is the array of soup bases on offer. Along with the classic spicy malatang soup, Long Men Zhu also offers a pork bone broth, a laksa broth, and a chicken broth.
I had a selection of sliced meats, vegetables, balls, and tofu in the pork bone broth. Service was fast however I did notice that one of my fish balls was still cold inside. The rest of the food was thoroughly cooked, and I did not get sick afterwards. The pork broth was quite nice and umami, a lighter option in terms of flavour than the usual malatang soup. It was actually so good that I drank most of it at the conclusion of my meal.
A shoutout should also go to the nice man working front of house, who was friendly and made me feel welcome as someone who pretend not to speak Chinese. He is probably the reason why there is a reasonably multicultural patronage at Long Men Zhu.
VERDICT
Pretty good, worth a try! The boss asked me if he would be seeing me at his restaurant more, and I told him to be honest probably no as I’m moving away from the area soon. I do want to bring my girlfriend back though.
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.
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.
