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.
These were some wildly good banh mi, recommended by KS and ACHT as their favourites some time in 2021 and finally put into my mouth in May 2022. This was a couple who would commute all the way from Parramatta, where they lived, to Hurstville just for a couple of pork rolls, and while I wouldn’t necessarily go that far (Xcel Roll & Bowl in Parramatta is also great), I can see why.
I could tell you all about the sliced pork roll ($6.50) and what makes it great, but the words would essentially be the same as every other review of a pork roll that I’ve liked. The bread is crispy but not cutting, the salad fillings are plentiful and fresh, and the roll is not oversauced. What really sets out Phu Cuong King’s offering is the fact that extra pate is offered right off the bat as a main menu item. Just an additional $1 will get you absolutely loaded up on that delicious extra pate and Vietnamese mayo and send your mouth to a whole other sphere of creaminess and umami. It’s not something secret that you need to ask for, that you’re worried they might not do. It’s right there on the menu. And it’s glorious.
The $10 crackling pork roll was similarly good, though I made the health-and-self conscious decision not to load it up with additional saturated fats. A friend and colleague commented that $10 was too much to pay for a pork roll, which I used to agree with looking at the prices charged elsewhere for a similar item, but no longer do. No one blinks twice at paying $10 for a hyper-processed sub at Subway or $8.60 for a double quarter pounder made on a production line by high school students so why should we be so miserly when it comes to culturally authentic food made from fresh ingredients by ethnic workers?
THOUGHTS Big fan of the extra pate. Don’t care about the price. Don’t tell my healthcare team.
The purpose of an embassy, if I understand correctly, its to put one’s best foot forward to foster communication and co-operation between parties. Unfortunately for coffee, its Northmead-based embassy does not quite cut the mustard.
Coffee Embassy’s chosen ambassador is their “famous” bacon and egg roll with housemade tomato relish ($8). Though proclaimed to be Northmead’s best on posters on the cafe’s structural poles, I found this bacon and egg roll to be very lacking. Though my first experience with this B&E in 2019 was actually quite positive, it all changed when I visited again in 2021. The 2021 iteration was overall quite a dry roll, with both the bread and bacon lacking any significant amount of moisture. The bacon was unusually hard, difficult to bite, chew, or enjoy. Though it’s Coffee Embassy’s signature dish, I though this roll was one of the worst I’ve ever had.
Moving on from the bacon and egg , we will now discuss this crispy pork banh mi ($8). Though I remember enjoying Coffee Embassy’s pork rolls when I first started eating there in 2019, I have, in recent times, grown accustomed to the excellent quality of crispy pork belly rolls at Hong Ha, Marrickville Pork Roll, and in the rest of the Eastern Suburbs. My most recent trips to Coffee Embassy have instead been met with grief. Coffee Embassy’s pork is drier, colder, and leaner than I had expected, a far cry from the standard crackling pork belly rolls you might get elsewhere. Furthermore, the promised crispiness was not locatable. Not great.
THOUGHTS I don’t know if Coffee Embassy has become markedly worse over the last few years, or if my tastes have just evolved and become more refined. Either way I’m glad that though they are an embassy they are not representative of banh mi as a whole. If you’re already in Northmead, Xcel Roll’s Parramatta store is not that far away.
Saigon Rolls is a small Vietnamese restaurant in St Leonards serving a variety of banh mi, rice paper rolls, and pho. I dropped in on a chilly May morning for a couple of banh mi, eager to fill myself up before a day of minimally catered meetings.
This crackling pork roll ($8) was quite good. Lots of fresh-feeling salads, sufficient meat, at a reasonable price. Not the best I’ve had in my entire life, but did its job well.
The cold meat pork roll with double meat ($9) was really only fine. Again filled with a good amount of salad, I felt that the extra meat was not adequately balanced by extra pate or butter. Maybe it’s my own fault for not asking for double pate as well as double meat, but I find that in most places this balance is made automatically.
Saigon Rolls St Leonards Kiosk 5/436 Victoria Ave, Chatswood NSW 2067 (02) 9410 0988
Some say that Lush (Bowl ‘n’ Roll, nee Food Bar) is dressed as a restaurant but is really just a cafe, while in my opinion they are the complete opposite. Despite its tiny physical footprint and decor befitting a cafe, its extended opening hours and extensive menu of actual food betray its true nature.
This beast of a dish is the Bun Dau Mam Tom & Sea Food Version ($16.90). The intricacies of proportion are difficult to capture without something standardised like a banana for scale, but believe me when I tell you that this was not the amount of food I was expecting to get for $16.90. This plate had a huge variety of ingredients to be eaten individually as one likes or wrapped up in lettuce leaves, as confirmed with my Vietnamese social work friend. The flavour centre of the dish was really the fermented shrimp paste sauce, which was simply something I’ve never experienced before. This brown, almost purple sauce was so deep and rich in flavour, with such a strong shrimpiness, that quite literally only a tiny smattering was required to flavour each mouthful. I’m glad I chose to order this at a time when I was dining alone, as I’m sure that my girlfriend, seafood-averse as she is, would’ve hated this. The strong umami and seafood flavours in this tiny dish of sauce reminded me of a particular Food War based anime where the protagonist would make very fishy things with squids much to the chagrin of his colleagues.
Other elements of note in this dish were the soft and light rice noodle, which flavoured with a light touch of the sauce was very easy eating. The fried tofu was superb, somehow done in a way where it was warm all the way through while remaining soft, with the thinnest imaginable fried outer layer that didn’t negatively affect the soft texture at all. The pork hock was similary soft, warm and delicious. The fish cake and prawns were as imagined, and adding up all of these different proteins you can see that this is actually quite a generous serving. This is really something to try.
Like an absolute fool I thought that I would be safe in ordering this beef roll ($7.50) in addition to the gigantic bun dau mam tom discussed above. Luckily for me, the staff at Lush Food Bar knew me better than I knew myself, and straight up served this banh mi to me fully wrapped up and in a biodegradable plastic bag to take home. My normal go-to banh mi is either the classic cold cut pork or crackling roast pork, and this may very well be the first or second beef roll I’ve ever had. The sheer quality of it, even having survived a trip from Strathfield to the nearest quaternary hospital, a surveillance COVID swab, an hour of incidental teaching, and then a trip home was extra-ordinary. Unlike some rolls this one had the perfect degree of moistness, owing from the mixing of juices from the beef (something you don’t get with pork based rolls), the generous serving of Vietnamese mayonnaise, and pate. Really great.
I also hope you enjoy this photo, which was taken on my balcony after my realisation that most people probably don’t enjoy seeing the bitten, half-eaten rolls that I’ve been posting. I had to lock the cats away so that I could access the balcony safely, so it was really quite an effort.
UPDATE DECEMBER 2022 We went back to Lush, now rebranded Lush Bowl ‘n’ Roll, in December 2022 after I crashed my car and was forced to take public transport, with my partner forced to pick me up from Strathfield station on the last leg of my journey home after nights. Because having to pay for my insurance excess as well as all the other associated costs of being in an accident without a car and without rental car coverage weren’t enough, we ate out.
I had the Lush Special Patties ($21.90), whilst my partner decided to stay in the car. It featured rolls of vermicelli with grilled betel leaf beef, grilled pork, BBQ pork, and sugar cane prawns, with a bit of herbs, cucumbers, and dipping sauce. It was really good, a great variety of different things, with the sugar cane prawn and the BBQ pork my favourite parts. My partner, once finally convinced to come downstairs and eat with me, also enjoyed every portion of this dish, and thoroughly. She could not, in her delirious state, stop talking about how every part of this dish was yummy, even the prawns, which she does not usually like.
My partner didn’t like the roasted pork roll ($8.90), but I didn’t have a problem with it. Her particular complaint was that the crispy pork skin wasn’t particularly crispy, but I think it was her fault for waiting for it to cool down, because it was actually served quite nice and warm. This wasn’t a particularly top tier roll, but it was certainly undeserving of her criticism.
UPDATE JANUARY 2023 My car is still out of action until at least early March (two and a half months for a repair, seriously AAMI comprehensive), which means that my partner is still picking me up from Strathfield after night shift whenever she can. We had yet another opportunity to have a yummy Vietnamese meal at Lush this past week.
We really enjoyed the special patties plate featured above, and thought we’d try the special combination vermicelli salad ($20.50) this time instead. Similar to the Lush special patties, this “salad” featured greenery, some spring rolls, grilled pork, and sugarcane prawn. No attempt was made in forming the vermicelli into a patty shape, but really the concept was essentially the same – we’re not sure if it really deserves being in a whole other section, especially as this “salad” had no more salad than the non-salad item. The loss of the betel leaf beef and BBQ pork we think was not worth the inclusion of the spring roll, which were either vegetarian or insufficiently meaty to result in enjoyment. All other things being essentially the same, I would rate the Lush special patties above this every time, for a dollar more.
The wagyu beef pho ($18.90) had a great soup flavour, plenty of bean sprouts and herb garnish, but was another example of where the label of “wagyu” doesn’t quite live up to expectations. Though I enjoyed this bowl overall (and indeed the broth was more rich and flavourful than many I’ve had in the past year), I didn’t feel that the rare beef was particularly tender – in fact less tender than most pho restaurants that have just regular beef. Cut and quality of meat matters just as much, if not more than the breed of cattle, and I wish I had gotten a special pho (not offered with wagyu) with regular beef instead. I’m sure that would have been even better.
Verdict Enjoyable.
Lush Bowl ‘n’ Roll (ex- Lush Food Bar) 11/23 The Boulevarde, Strathfield Plaza, Strathfield NSW 2135 (02) 9746 9905
I don’t generally have much occasion to visit Winston Hills, but having had Lee Chef’s (amazing) pho no less than six times in the four months that we were locked down it was time to try something new.
The Beef Pho (Large – $15.50) was looking weak both visually and on paper, but turned out surprisingly good. Featuring only beef brisket, rare beef, and beef balls, My Hao’s only beef pho offering leaves out the tendon and tripe that round out a full featured Phở Đặc Biệt. The soup is clear and sweeter than I’m generally what I’m used to, and the “rare beef” is actually cooked almost all the way through by the time the bowl reaches the table. Despite theses subjective and objective shortcomings, I enjoyed this bowl a surprising amount. I think the strength of this bowl of pho really comes down to My Hao’s great use of brisket, which is fatty and moist, but doesn’t go a nanometre past the sweet spot into being too fatty. Not all bowls of pho need to be homogenous, and all things considered the only thing I would change about this pho would be to be a bit more generous with the basil.
This was not the best Pork Roll ($6.50) I’ve ever reviewed on this blog, but it probably looks the best. I can’t believe it’s taken me over 300 reviews (these get queued for ages and the posting order gets switched up, so while this meal was eaten in October 2021 the review could be posted any time into the future – or past? spooky) to realise that people would probably prefer to see a nicely cut cross-section of a sandwich than my haphazard interpretation of such made with my teeth and mouth. I recently found an anaesthetic colleague’s croissant-based Instagram, and the beauty of cut croissants and the lack of wedge-shaped teeth marks in her photos struck me. My Hao expertly served this less-than-expert banh mi cut into halves and on a plate, but I don’t really know how I can emulate this in my usual practice, unless I carry a knife with me at all times. It turns out that’s exactly what she does. I can’t wait to explain this to the cops.
Back to the actual pork roll, I felt that it lost points for being too salty and too sweet and too wet. The bread also happened to be a bit too crusty and a bit too hard, and the restaurant being a full featured restaurant rather than a bakery I wonder if their baguettes are made on site or elsewhere. I was shocked and offended when the only other diners in the restaurant ordered banh mis without pate, but looking at the amount of pate I got in mine I’m not sure it would’ve made much of a difference.
UPDATE WINTER 2025
About three years after my visit to My Hao I had the opportunity to order lunch from them as part of what would be my last meal in this particular part of Western Sydney for some time. I had the bánh xèo (pork – $18)which was quite tasty, very clean, with an absolute lack of insects unlike one of the more recent bánh xèos I remember having at a different restaurant (now closed).
Unfortunately travel was not kind to this particular crispy pancake, rendering it relatively soggy, however the fact that the whole thing was soaked in oil which soaked through the bottom of the box and into the box underneath it gave me adequate evidence to suggest that it was once quite crispy. The fillings were generous and the flavour was good. I had overall no significant complaints, and I am sure that it would have been a delicious meal had I had it at the restaurant. During this meal I also had some pork spring rolls which were equally delicious and remained crispy throughout that trip. I have no photographic evidence of this.
COMMENTS I think that if I’m after the kind of pho that I know I like whilst living in the Parramatta area, Lee Chef still has my patronage I think that if I want to subject myself to some sweeter pho that is outside of my comfort zone I’d continue to explore the rest of Sydney rather than come back to My Hao. I don’t hate them. It just is what it is.
My Hao 1E Caroline Chisholm Dr, Winston Hills NSW 2153 (02) 9688 7631
