Tag: chicken wings

Categories
Vietnamese

Jacob’s Vietnamese Place – Ashfield NSW Restaurant Review

We’ve been meaning to go to Jacob’s Vietnamese place in Ashfield for quite a few months now, but have failed each time due to their odd opening hours. Though they open 7 days a week, they both open a bit late for breakfast, and close a bit too early for dinner. It’s a good thing that when they do open in the morning, however, they offer a full on all-day Vietnamese menu.

We had the phở đặc biệt (the special beef rice noodle soup) for $19, which is quite a reasonable price for the size of the meal. There was a good helping of rare beef, tendon, beef balls, and tripe. The tripe and tendon in particular being not something that you see in a lot of pho restaurants these days – including sadly Pho Vien down the road.

The taste of the pho was quite good. It had quite a traditional and flavourful broth, and came with a lot of green onion as well as a very healthy portion of bean sprouts, which I love. Unfortunately I did find  I did find (and my partner found this too) a bit of an unusual and unpleasant taste with the tendon. Even though I normally love tendon, and the texture of the tendon was perfect, the flavour of it was kind of weird. I don’t know why this has happened, if it’s a one-off thing or if it’s a recurrent thing to do with where they sourced it from. But I really didn’t love it.

The other thing that we had on our first visit was the cơm tấm đặc biệt,($19), the broken rice deluxe with the grilled pork chop, shredded pork skin, steamed pork cake and fried egg. This is really a dish that was more than the sum of its parts, many of which were fine in insolation but great in combination.

For starters, we did not love the pork skin, even though I’m sure it was perfectly adequate according to the standards by which pork skin prepared in this manner are usually judged. The egg was fried and fully cooked which is I guess fine, and perhaps it’s only our westernized taste buds that prefer a partially cooked egg. The pork loaf and the pork chop were delicious, with no negative points to say about them, and of course the fish sauce really helped to bring everything together, moisten the rice and make it all great.

First visit thoughts – Overall, the meal was only $38, and really got two adults very full at 10am in the morning, and for the rest of the day.  I had wanted to get some more stuff, and was luckily talked out of it, so we ended up actually going again a few weeks later (prior to this review being published).

On our second visit we started off with some chicken wings ($15), which were quite unexciting, flavoured essentially with salt and not much else, lacking completely in complex spices and flavours apart from the side of dipping sauce and pickled vegetables. It didn’t feel like a restaurant dish, and I didn’t feel like they were any better than what I could do with my air fryer at home.

The bun bo hue ($19) was contrastingly pretty good – a large bowl, with a huge quantity of different meats inside and a nice tangy-spicy taste. It wasn’t the best I’ve had in Sydney, but definitely one of the better in recent times, and probably better than Pho Vien’s down the street.

This beef brisket with bread roll ($19?) was really thick and rich, probably too rich for me to eat having already had my half of the BBH. Neither of us were able to finish it, and we had to take it home, where it was diluted by takeaway frozen broth from Pho Vien and subsequently consumed. That said, the bread was very nice and does mean that their banh mi has potential to be quite good as well. An adventure for next time.

ADVENTURE, NEXT TIME

I returned by myself for some banh mi, thinking that I would get two and eat half of each.

The crispy skin pork roll ($10) was pretty good. I enjoyed the crispy crackling pork, and the flavour of the roll overall, though felt that it was overall a bit light in terms of filling quantity, particularly that of the meat. Something that I did enjoy was that the bread went briefly into a toaster oven before serving, making it nice and warm and crispy.

The feeling of lightness was particularly amplified when it came to the cold cut pork roll ($7), which was so minimal and unsubstantial that there’s no way I could recommend it given the other local options available.

Jacob’s Vietnamese Place
27 Hercules St, Ashfield NSW 2131

Categories
Vietnamese

Pho Vien – Ashfield NSW Restaurant Review

We’ve eaten at Pho Vien, sister restaurant of Madam Ky (RIP), a couple of times in the last few weeks. Here are my thoughts.

The Pho Dat Biet – special beef pho($19.90) was pretty good, a large bowl with a flavourful soup and a generous helping of rare beef, beef brisket, and beef balls. Missing, unfortunately, was any hint of slightly less widely palatable yet still important inclusions such as tripe and tendon, which would’ve elevated this good bowl to the level of an excellent bowl. The first time I had this at Pho Vien I found that, unlike the time we ate at Madam Ky, the soup was adequately hot to handle the inclusion of mass bean sprouts. The second time we ate here my partner’s dad asked for cooked bean sprouts on the side, which to be honest was revolutionary. They came only slightly cooked, raw enough to remain crispy, but warm enough to not thermodilute the soup. What a next level move.

The Com Suon – tomato rice with grilled pork chop ($19.90) is really more my partner’s thing. It was not bad, just generally not what I’d pick overall. The quality of the tomato rice was good, however. Not too dry.

The Canh Ga Chien – deep fried wing ($7.50) came after a long wait and were very salty. Added to that – though the menu said wings, we got four drumsticks. Respecting that many would prefer drumsticks over mid wings due to their greater meatiness, I am not one of these people. I did not enjoy this.

The Bun Bo Hue ($19.50) that we had on our second visit was tasty and inoffensive, again lacking components like pork trotter and blood jelly that usually round out the dish. My partner, normally someone who doesn’t like bun bo hue, enjoyed this bowl, probably for the same reason that I found it lacking.

The Banh Xeo – pancake pork and prawn ($22.50) was crispy and tasty, well filled on the inside. I didn’t find any bugs in my vegetables, which doesn’t seem like a high bar, but seriously considering the last few banh xeos I have at different restaurants in Sydney, this counts as a plus.

Overall we had a couple of pretty good meals at Pho Vien, but I do wish they would add some of the more controversial ingredients to their soups (or at least the option to have them).

Pho Vien
283 Liverpool Rd, Ashfield NSW 2131
(02) 8057 8668

Categories
Thai

Thai 44 (50% Sweet 50% Thai) – Sydney NSW Restaurant Review

This restaurant appears to have two names, “50% Sweet 50% Thai”, as well as “Thai 44”, and is where we ended up having a spur-of-the-moment unplanned dinner on our wedding night, following a less substantial fried chicken snack at Chicken Number Five. I mention the circumstances, because despite the timing, it was not somewhere we had planned to go to specially, we just found ourselves hungry past midnight in the city.

Ever-being fans of chicken wings, we ordered the Fried Chicken Wings (4 for $12.90), allegedly seasoned with Thai herbs, not that this was evident from their flavour. These wings disappointed us, not by their texture or moisture, but merely because they did not feel different to any other wings, and were they to be served at a different restaurant we wouldn’t be able to pick that they were from a Thai restaurant (or Bangkok, as noted on the tax invoice).

The Grapao Pork Belly with 3 Eggs (pad kaphrao) ($26.90) was, in comparison, excellent. We were disappointed to find that the pork mince version was already sold out by the time we ate, but the pork belly did a fine job, even though it didn’t have the small particle size which would have allowed the mince to be mixed into the rice. The pork belly was some of the best I’ve had at a Thai restaurant in recent times, with crispy crackling skin, whereas other competitors have suffered from softness. The flavour of the dish was really enjoyable, as were the truly perfectly fried eggs, with fully set whites and bulbous soft yolks. Incredible.

Overall
Grapao rice good. Chicken wing bad. Can recommend for your wedding night.

Thai 44 / 50% Sweet, 50% Thai
Number One Dixon Shopping Centre
Shop 44/1 Dixon St, Sydney NSW 2000


Categories
Malaysian

Rickshaw Food – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

I stood outside this restaurant pondering the menu for a brief few seconds before a somewhat elderly lady sitting on a bench told me that I should go inside and have their lunch special. At that point I felt too in-it to back out.

We had the curry chicken with egg noodles ($17.80), which came in a lunchtime special with a ice milk tea, pictured below. These noodles were excellent, with a strong peanut flavour (would it be more accurately described as satay curry noodles?), in its thick flavourful sauce. The chicken was juicy and delicious, and the portion provided was overall quite large. Absolutely satisfied with this choice.

I can’t tell you anything about this ice milk tea, which I did not have any of. My friend seemed satisfied.

The seafood dry laksa ($17.80) was not bad, though was not on the lunch menu and thus did not come with a drink. The noodles were thicker than that of the chicken noodles, and this dish’s sauce was also good though less so, and not something that actually reminded me of ‘laksa’. The mussels were very clean.

The Malay fried chicken wings ($15.80) came extremely hot, and burnt my friend’s fingers. They took a long time to cool down to an enjoyable temperature. Once tasted, I found the external skin to be crispy and tasty, however the internal meat I felt was lacking of flavour.

The satay chicken skewers ($16.80) were a bit odd, with the satay much more in the dipping sauce than in the chicken skewers themselves. The satay dipping sauce was very good, however.

Overall
Overall the meal was good, and I would definitely recommend the chicken curry noodles with its thick delicious sauce.

I’m a bit concerned about the 7% discount for cash payments though. Is that legal?

Rickshaw Food
8B/27-31 Belmore St, Burwood NSW 2134

Categories
Vietnamese

Got Pho – Carlingford NSW Restaurant Review

The promise and threat of Got Pho’s wagyu beef pho had loomed in my mind for a long time, and though it was not bad, I don’t think it really lived up to the price point or my hungry expectations.

The Phở Dặc Biệt ($26.50 pictured including $8 for the addition of some rare wagyu beef) was a modestly sized bowl of rare beef, brisket, and balls, with no mention anywhere of the possibility of adding even more special ingredients like tendon and tripe. The meat quantity and quality were both good, though at $26.50 inclusive of extra beef it was hard to justify for the price. I enjoyed the rich flavour of the soup, though had particular issue with the temperature, as it was served relatively warm but not hot enough to adequately heat up the bean sprouts and herbs that were delivered to us separately after we had to ask for them. Problematically we also didn’t know that the the wagyu beef was an $8 addition rather than a $5 addition, as the marker that had changed it from an extra $5 to an extra $8 on our menu had been rubbed off.

We had to ask for this. I don’t know if this is a standard thing or if it was just an oversight in our case.

The pork chop broken rice ($18.50) we were even less enthused about. The pork chop itself was a bit on the thinner side, and therefore drier than recent comparisons like at Ngoodle in Ashfield. The egg, whilst done very well and runny, was plagued by the fact that it had multiple tiny eggshell fragments in it which really made the texture quite unpleasant.

The hot chicken wings (6 for $15) were quite yummy, if ambitiously priced. They were nice and crispy, quite juicy, and also quite spicy. The pickles served alongside them were also very good to temper some of the spice, but I can’t see myself routinely wanting to pay this much for six wings.

OVERALL COMMENT I had high expectations and was ultimately honestly quite disappointed. They seemed super accommodating to a diverse population of patrons, and indeed we did see one large gathering where white kids happily ate their KFC on the same table as their parents’ pho, but issues with shell in the egg, as well as the general price to quality ratio of the food don’t make me want to go back.

And how much can it cost to reprint your menu, or at least properly alter the prices on them when prices change? Surely it’s worth avoiding the confusion? (You will note that the upgrade to wagyu beef option has also suffered an attempt of having its price changed on the menu)