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.
Look, this is really a review of a cookie that I had at Blair St Dairy, because that was closest to where we were and had to be again within a 45 minute window (some kind of magnesium sulfate floaty thing in Bondi Junction – my partner’s idea, but I agreed to go because she wanted me to, and magnesium sulfate is probably my most used drug). It really doesn’t matter though, because it’s only a cookie, and both places are run by the same people.
So what can I tell you about this chocolate chip cookie ($?6.50) that you can’t tell just from the photos? It was big, it was thick. It was warmed up for us before serving, which made it quite nice and soft. It was initially though to be not-too-sweet based on cookie, but opinion was changed to too-sweet once the taste of chocolate chip was established. The oiliness and sweetness of the cookie didn’t quite fit with the overall vibe of The Bondi Local, but these are probably the people who have some extra calories to spare anyway.
We had fun looking at all the Halloween displays outside the homes between our car and the café. You don’t get that as much when your house is worth less than $3 million of inter-generational wealth.
Anyway if you want the cookie and have an acceptable Trigs/HDL/LDL/HbA1c it’s probably more efficient to buy their cookie dough from the shops and bake your own.
Just a stone’s throw away from Slurp! Slurp! (our favourite Eastern suburbs dumpling restaurant to date) is Haven Specialty Coffee, a coffee roaster and cafe specialising in that all important Asian fusion brunch cuisine. We paid them a visit the morning after a particularly difficult ICU night shift for my partner – her first run ever without a more senior colleague on site.
I arrived early as my partner trudged through a prolonged Monday morning handover and enjoyed myself a standard large soy latte ($5.70). The price was significant, even for coffee that is presumably roasted on site. Not being much of a coffee connoisseur I thought that perhaps the first sip had a hint of prawn flavour, but subsequent sips were pretty uncontroversial.
The jackfruit ragu toastie with bacon ($20) was an expensive but loaded sandwich. I always forget what jackfruit is, so I ordered this sandwich expecting a guava-like sweetness which I thought would match well with a bit of salty bacon. It turns out that jackfruit, despite looking kind of tropical, is nothing like guava, not really sweet at all, but with an thicker, chewier, almost mushroom like chew and texture. The majority of the flavour of this toastie was thus a result of the hummus, which also donated a degree of stickiness to the mixture, and definitely added to by the bacon, which was thick cut and unusually expensive (a $5 supplement on top of the $15 base toastie). It would’ve been too mild without it, but ultimately well balanced.
Our other choice was the grilled broccolini salad with a piece of fried chicken ($25). It was actually not that dissimilar from the jackfruit toastie, it too being quite based in hummus and chickpea. At this point I’m not really sure why they’re billed as Asian fusion, as we certainly didn’t have much hummus at my house when I was growing up. This dish was ordered as it was felt to be a bit more wholesome than some of the other options on the menu, and indeed the broccolini, chickpeas, cherry tomatoes, and random greenery were both tasty and likely relatively healthy. The $7 addition for a piece of fried chicken probably tipped the health-rating of this meal back into a state of badness, but further into the realm of goodness in terms of taste. The chicken freshly fried, juicy on the inside with a crispy batter on the outside. It was seasoned minimally but seasoned well, and really added a nice degree of substance and warmth to this otherwise vegan dish.
I begged my partner not to, but she grabbed a nutella choc chip cookie ($6) on the way out. It didn’t amaze or enthral. Not the best cookie going around, but I’ve essentially been spoiled by the S-tier cookies at Cafe Cre Asion and nothing has really done it for me since.
THOUGHTS We had a pretty good meal at Haven, even if we did manage to ruin their only two vegan dishes through the addition of meat. I’d like to come back at some point for their mini French toast with earl grey custard, which looks great.
Pantry Story is one of those out-of-lockdown success stories where a person with the right combination of timing, skill, and social media knowhow is able to launch a brand straight out of their apartment and into an internet base of hungry gourmands. It’s a phenomenon well covered by New York’s Eater, but somewhat less common in the more suburban sprawl of Sydney.
Operating the odd market stall around Sydney’s suburbs and also doing the intermittent batch of pickup orders out of her apartment in Wolli Creek, Mutiara Putri Sucipto draws on her Indonesian heritage to create pan-Asian inspired baked treats of both the sweet and savoury varieties.
This 3 days kimcheese honey focaccia ($7) was really good. The bread was airy and spongy, with a good crispy top layer with a coating of cheese. The kimchi was flavourful but not too strong, and importantly spread not only over the top but throughout the entire loaf. The slight hint of honey added a bit of depth to the saltiness of the cheese and the funkiness of the kimchi without being overpoweringly sweet. Just a great piece of bread.
The 3 days chorizo with sake sauce focaccia ($7) is a newer addition to the menu, and while also good wasn’t as phenomenal as the kimcheese honey focaccia. The quality of the bread remains, this time flavoured with a spread of oven crispied chorizo slices and a light but appreciable sake sauce. Unlike the kimcheese honey focaccia, the flavourings of this one were more limited to the top layer rather than mixed in, hence having less of a lasting and permeating impact on the enjoyment of the whole loaf. Not bad, but second out of the two.
This pandan java cookie ($5.50), like most of Pantry Story’s other cookies is a combination between a cookie and mochi. I seriously enjoyed the soft and thick texture of the cookie, as well as the textural interest added by the layer of mochi within. The flavour was sweet but not too sweet, and ultimately quite pleasant. This was my favourite of the three sweet treats we tried.
The banana bread that started it all, the banana bread with cheesecake filling ($6) was soft, moist, and not too sweet, with a swirl of cream cheese through it. This was an alright banana bread, though not significantly better than the banana bread I’ve had from other places or even made by friends. If I’m being honest the cheesecake swirl did not leave a lasting impression, and perhaps there could have been more of it, or it could have been flavoured more strongly. I wonder if this would’ve been better heated up.
The strawberry milk brochi (brownie-mochi – $7) was the weakest of the bunch. For starters I felt like it was too sweet, both overall but particularly from the pieces of white chocolate spread throughout. The slab of mochi was a bit thicker in comparison to the brownie than it was in the cookie, and whilst that’s probably the point of the fusion item I thought the ratio was better in the cookie. This was also my partner’s least favourite of an otherwise good meal, though her additional complaint which I don’t completely agree with was that she couldn’t actually taste the strawberry in it.
OVERALL THOUGHTS Our haul from Pantry Story was mostly pretty good. The kimcheese honey focaccia and the pandan cookie were the standouts, but generally a strong showing for someone operating out of their apartment. I will watch her career with great interest.
Pantry Story Various market stalls across Sydney Pickup at 15 Guess Avenue, Wolli Creek, NSW
This little cafe just opened up in the Hyper Hyper space in Nowra and I’m here for it. There’s plenty of outdoor seating, good vibes, really artisan food, and good tunes.
I had their Lemon Citrus and Strawberry Tart ($6) on my first visit, with a coffee from next door after a night shift and before my drive back to Sydney. It was really pretty good. Eggy, like a portuguese tart, with a good buttery pastry and a lightly tart component from the strawberry. The best part of all was that it was not too sweet, just the right amount of sweet and sour for a little treat.
This is only an initial impression – more to come as I go back and back. They’re only in their first days now, but I think they’re on their way to becoming a Nowra institution.
SUBSEQUENT VISITS
The Maple Bacon Tart ($8) with tomato, caramelised onion, bab spinach, parmesan, and egg was delicious. It was extremely quiche like but with a puff pastry rather than shortcrust, with a deliciously umami mixture of fillings, as well as a great and highly complex, mildly sweet optional chutney on top. At $8 this was quite well sized and punched above its pricing in terms of flavour and fulfillment. I later brought one of these to my friend and colleague DTC. He appeared to enjoy it.
The Drifter Toastie ($12) with roast beef, potato rosti,beetroot relish, horseradish mayo, Jarlsberg, cheddar, baby spinach and caramelised onion was also a treat. One of the best sandwiches, toasted or untoasted, that I’ve had in a while, each bite of Punch the Ploughman’s drifter was full of flavour and texture. The meat had a tinge of smoke and charcoal grill flavour to it, and the serving of Jarlsberg was very generous. My eating (and romantic) partner especially loved the texture and flavour added by the potato rosti, and yet again this sandwich is a star showing of Nowra’s finest.
Baked on site, this Rhubarb Tart ($6) was not very different to the strawberry tart above, though I think a little sweeter and less tarty given the different fruit.
The Handkerchief Treat ($4), also baked on site, is a delicious mix between a cookie and a cupcake, with a slightly crispy exterior crust and a richly buttery interior. Flavoured with spiced pear syrup, this little treat is not too sweet, reminiscent of nothing in particular from Cafe Cre Asion expect for maybe in its high quality.
The Blueberry Danish, another in-house creation (they get some of their other stuff from Brickfields, but I guess it’s really only worth writing about the stuff they bake on site), was not bad, but probably not as good as some of their other offerings. The pastry of this was quite dense and bready, and I found the filling of lemon curd and blueberry to be a bit sweeter than I’d like.
I’m not usually one for smashed avocado ($12) as I feel like there are often more interesting options available, but after ripping through most of Punch the Ploughman’s menu in our first few visits there was not much left uneaten. I shouldn’t have discounted their avo offering so easily – this particular smashed avo was quite delightful, with a bed of crispy grilled sourdough and a sprinkling of hemp seeds, tomato salsa and pomegranate. This dish, in two easily shareable pieces, exhibited an extremely high degree of freshness and would easily sell for 50% more at any Sydney cafe.
The Brekky Burrito ($15) with mildly-local South Coast Tilba Jersey milk haloumi (though to be honest, Tilba is further from Nowra than Nowra is from Sydney), dukkah scrambled eggs, tomato salsa, avocado, percorino and sriracha had amazing and unexpected kebab energy. Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good kebab, and the overall Middle-Easternness of this burrito (wrapped in a pita, not tortilla) elevated this above every other brekky burrito I’ve had to date.
A rare misstep for Punch the Ploughman is their Brekky Burger ($14), with bacon, scrambled egg, aioli and chilli jam, and avocado on Turkish bread. Though I’m a big fan of the brekky burrito, I had two areas of complaint for this burger, which appears intermittently on their specials board. The first is the bacon, which was in my opinion a bit harder than I would’ve liked. There is always a fine line between crispy and hard, and I didn’t feel like they walked on the right side of that tightrope. My second point of criticism would be about the chilli jam. I understand that it’s trying to be different from all the other bacon and egg offerings in town, but it was a flavour combination that personally did not tickle my pickle. Get the burrito instead. Maybe you can ask them to add bacon to it. I don’t know. I’d be too shy to.
Another item off the specials menu, another item I was less keen on is the Quiche of the Day with salad ($14). You can tell that by this point I’ve already eaten everything I actually want from them. Starting with the positives, the salad was quite good, with the surprise showing of a little bit of smashed avocado and feta. The quiche, however, did not live up to my expectations. It’s vegetarianess wasn’t stated on the specials board, and although I didn’t ask I don’t think that’s necessarily a given for all quiches. It was very pumpkin forward, and whilst I did like the egg and feta I felt that overall it was lesser than their much better maple bacon tart, which is extremely quiche-like in and of itself. I also felt that the special sauce from the maple bacon tart would’ve gone a long way to adding some more flavour to this, but I say that at risk of sounding like I should’ve just ordered the tart from the start. This quiche might be good for someone who is prohibited from having meat or bacon and who wouldn’t miss that extra dimension of umami that a good cured meat provides, but for the non-dietarily-restricted out there there’s definitely a better option already on the menu.
The Journeyman Toastie ($12), the second of their three toasties (the other is vegetarian and I have no plans to try it given my other experiences with their vegetarian food), both in order of me trying it as well as in my enjoyment. This particular toastie consisted of ham, tomato apple chutney, Jarslberg, cheddar, and a whole load of baby spinach. Though it was lesser than the Drifter, I found myself enjoying the synergy between the saltiness of the deceptively thick ham, the sourness of the pickle, and the BBQ-sauce-like tomato apple chutney. The intermingling of flavours was different and new, but also not crazy like that of the brekky burger. A very safe and good choice, though when I brought my colleague DTC a surprise toastie for lunch I got him the Drifter instead.
This vanilla custard tart ($5), baked in-house, was pretty good. It was substantially sized, with a soft and creamy and not-too-sweet filling with the occasional black dot of goodness. The pastry was also soft (sadly), which I did not like as much as the Portuguese tart at Hyper Hyper and supplied by The Portuguese Corner. It came room-temperature, and though I wanted to take it home and heat it up in the oven to see if it would make it any better, it did not survive the 850 metre drive home before it was eaten. There was a red traffic light along the way to blame for that.
This is an in-house raspberry muffin ($5), which was pretty good, with softness, sweetness, and some white custard-cream like substance baked in.
The 14th item I tried at Punch the Ploughman was this chocolate chai cake with strawberries, vanilla cream, and walnuts. My partner had actually saved me some of hers from her previous trip down to Nowra, but sadly one of our cats got to it before me. This cake was not too sweet, with an interesting chai presence and extreme moistness owing to the mountain of cream. The cake pieces were chocolately with a brownie like consistency, which was different. Not bad, but too much for one human.
I finally managed to try the steak and ale pie ($8) at Punch the Ploughman on my final morning in Nowra, after being in town for the last three months. Perhaps the pie was better as a concept rather than a reality, and perhaps I had hyped it up in my mind too much before finally getting to eat it, but sadly it did not hit the spot, flavour-wise. The topping of their house chutney rather than the standard tomato sauce was a good move, but the flavour of mirepox, beef, and ale was exactly as it should have been, but I’m afraid just didn’t hit the salty spot that I was looking for that day. Despite this, I can say with certainty that the consistency and ingredient-packed nature of the filling was far superior to local pie-based competitor Earnest Arthur, whose pies I have found too strong in gravy and too low in solids (but more to my preference in terms of flavours).
This lumberjack hummingbird cake ($6), made by a customer, was not bad. Relatively moist, with a good apple-like flavour and interesting textural differences between the top layer and the body of the cake. I don’t know if it will be a regular thing.
OVERALL I’ve eaten most of their menu, and all but one item that I actually want to eat from Punch the Ploughman. Most of their stuff is great, though their meat pies elude me, as they come on at around 10:30 (after I get home from a night shift) and disappear a few hours after that (before I wake up after my final night shift and drive back to Sydney). What can you do?
(EDIT: See above, finally got the pie)
Both their sweet stuff and their savoury stuff is good, but I would avoid their vegetarian stuff in favour of their meated stuff for the non-vegetarians out there.
Our most recent Marrickville Vietnamese meal was desserted by a trip down the road to Goodwood Bakeshop, a new-ish bakery offering an assortment of savoury and sweet pastries as well as a range of breads baked on premises. Despite their popularity and a small line down the street, our experience was a festival of speed, with good clarity of displays (sans pricing), a limited and focused offering, and a lack of seating all contributing to fast service.
My first and favourite bite from Goodwood was of their Miso Peanut Butter Cookie ($4), a rich and buttery cookie with a soft centre and crunchy exterior, with umami miso and peanut butter flavours that were delicious and most importantly not too sweet. The light coating of roasted sesame seeds on the superior surface of this cookie served to enhance its Asian-ness, making it overall a good cookie that I would recommend to an Asian or non-Asian friend.
The aforementioned peanut butter cookie was eaten on the street outside the bakery, though the four other sweet treats that we tried were eaten at a secondary location.
The Apple Cardamom Hand Pie ($8) was my first non-cookie bite, and sadly too sweet for my taste. I enjoyed the multi-layered pie crust, but felt that the sticky, sweet filling was a bit overpowering of the whole.
I enjoyed the croissant portion of the Lemon & Hazelnut Twice Baked Croissant ($8), with its nice and crispy crust and buttery interior folds, but again felt that the additions, in particular the lemon marmalade filling, was too sweet for my liking.
At the risk of repeating myself, the Pecan Cardamom Orange Scroll ($8) was again too sweet for my liking. The pastry of this scroll was appropriately dense, and I enjoyed the spicy orange and cardamom flavour and generous helping of pecans within. This would’ve been a winner, in my opinion, if the top layer of icing sugar had been left out.
After hearing me complain about the last three pastries, you will be surprised to read of my thorough enjoyment of this vanilla slice($8). This slice offered a reprieve of the sugar load from our previous entries, with an unusually thick and viscous custardy filling complete with black dots, the universal sign of vanilla excellence. While the pastry wasn’t paradigm changing, the filling was in my opinion quite special and most importantly “not-too-sweet”. Excellent.
OVERALL THOUGHTS (AT INITIAL VISIT – JULY 2022) The majority of what I had at Goodwood Festival of Sweetness was too sweet for my liking. As always, it’s possible that my preferences in terms of pastries are culture-bound, as “not-too-sweet” is used as a common phrase to denote praise of a dessert in Chinese culture. I’d like to come back for some savoury treats that will hopefully be not-too-salty.
REVISITED, MARCH 2023
This seasonal hot cross bun ($4) was really solid. There was a great amount of fruit – both of the citrus and dessicated grape variety, as well as a little bit of spice that set this HCB apart from from the crowd. Not too sweet at all.
This everything bagel croissant ($8), ordered for my fiancée in honour of the recent Academy Award winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once, was more than met the eye. I didn’t know, when I ordered that it would be filled with wilted spinach and some feta-like substance (I have reviewed the images and there was no description posted anywhere in the bakery), but I’m glad it was, because $8 would be too much for just a croissant encrusted in some seeds. This ended up being a really tasty combination, with the crunch of the croissant exterior, the butteriness of the pastry, the salty and fragrant sesame seeds and the savoury and creamy flavours from the filling all combining to create an almost spanakopita like croissant (a fitting prelude to the quarter-Greek wedding we went to later that day). This gets a thumbs up from me but not my partner (she does not like spinach, even though this was ordered specifically for her. How rude.)
I have no complaints at all about this miso, eggplant, pumpkin, and togarashi croissant ($7.50) which was yummy with all its vaguely Japanese inspired ingredients combined with good pastry-work.
The last item in our breakfast were these fig danishes ($8.50 each), which they gave us two of instead of one in a very nice gesture as they were nearing the end of day. These were not bad, and I know I’m being annoying because 1) I’m kind of looking a gift horse in the mouth, and 2) literally in my initial review of this place in July 2022 I complained extensively about things being a bit too sweet, but I did think these were not super flavourful. I don’t know exactly the reason – perhaps it was time based – but there just wasn’t a huge amount of flavour in the figs compared to the most recent fig pastry that I had at Lucien in Parramatta. Despite this, I did enjoy them, and in particular was impressed by how big and filling they were for the price, and again the quality of the laminated pastry at the base. We not only enjoyed the first danish on the day we got them, but also the second one on the following morning.
COMMENTS This clearly wasn’t my doing, as Pegfeeds definitely doesn’t (and if I’m being honest, shouldn’t) have the readership or cone of influence to actually affect anyone’s business in any shape whatsoever, but I was really impressed that none of my complaints about extreme sweetness I had the first time around were applicable on my second visit. Instead, both the savoury and sweet flavours were well balanced on my second visit, though maybe a bit lacking in the fig danish.
