Tag: fried chicken

Categories
Asian Fusion Café Korean

CNR58 – Concord NSW Restaurant Review

Brunch that is slightly Asian is my favourite kind of brunch, and CNR58 brought the slightly Korean goods to the table this mother’s day just passed.

The Miso Salmon Eggs Benedict was a commination of things that I generally like, but don’t necessarily go together. This particular miso salmon was my third or fourth in recent times, and compared to its competitors in the Western Sydney sphere I found the salmon to be cooked well, but underflavoured. The miso on offer was really just a hint, and I feel that a stronger flavour could’ve added a lot, especially in view of the similarly low-taste pile of sliced cucumber. The eggs benedict side of the dish, on the other hand, were faultless. Arranged in two separate toast islands for the couple that loves to share, the eggs were poached to a runny perfection often sought but rarely seen. A dish half good half middling (does that make it three quarters good?)

The Chicken & Waffles was a very surprising dish. Having seen all the Korean staff manning the restaurant I had expected some combination of Korean fried chicken and waffle. What I got instead was chicken in more of a tempura batter than the classic Korean fried chicken batter, with a sweet maple-tabasco sauce that made the entire meal highly reminiscent of Chinese restaurant honey chicken. Apart from the unexpected sweetness of the dish the bacon was well cooked, and the waffle had a far nicer texture and flavour than my other most recent waffle experience at 3 Ronin.

I thought the Chicken Sausages were uninspiring.

VERDICT
We actually went to CNR58 in seek of their lunch menu, only to find out that it only starts at 11AM (nowhere online is this suggested to be the case). The dishes I had for breakfast were in the grand scheme of things only OK, but I would still go back to try their promising looking lunch and dinner offerings.

Categories
Asian Fusion Café Japanese

Devon – Surry Hills NSW Restaurant Review

My partner and I are big fans of Dopa – Devon’s offshoot donburi restaurant in Darling Square. We’ve been going regularly over the past few months, however it had been a long time since we had dined at the mothership in Surry Hills.

We went suckered in by pictures of uni laden foods on instagram, and I made my partner promise me that she would let us leave and eat somewhere else if they had run out (as is often the case at Dopa, I’m sick of being baited and switched).

We dined on a Sunday morning in an empty restaurant, much different to how it was like when we had last dined in 2019. As predicted, they were out of uni, however a craving for a pork katsu sandwich prevented us from leaving.

My partner had a matcha latte while I, as an inferior Asian, had an iced matcha soy latte. While I can’t speak for my partner’s drink, I can say that my iced matcha soy latte was not as good as the one that I had at 101kissa. There was just something so powdery and nice about the iced matcha soy lattte from 101kissa, whereas this one was a weird blend of sweet and bitter that didn’t tickle my tastebuds in quite the right way.

Devon’s pork katsu sando ($16) is cut into two portions and served in a cardboard box. The sauce is spread evenly through the sandwich, which is a selling point, however this is where the compliments end. I felt that the pork itself was not as juicy or tender as in the pork katsu sandwich I had at Cafe Kentaro. I also felt that the sandwich was overbreaded, with the bread to filling ratio too great, adding an unneeded and unwanted blandness to the taste. The size and construction of the sandwich halves were also inferior to the three pieces at Kentaro, and made the sandwich difficult to eat.

While Devon’s pork katsu sando probably stands fine on its own to a person who has never had a good pork katsu sando, it fails in comparison to that at Kentaro, a few kilometres away.

I didn’t enjoy the salted egg yolk cheesy curly fries ($13). Perhaps it’s because we’ve had just so much salted egg yolk foods in the past few weeks that I’m sick of it, but I think the more likely reason is that these chips were oily but dry. Their thinness did not help, as the higher surface area to volume ratio increased the radiative heat loss from the food, making them too cool and yucky too quickly.

My partner ordered the omurice with salmon sashimi in ponzu sauce. We were quite surprised to find that the omurice was served separately to the salmon. The salmon was cold but the omurice was warm. While the omurice itself was quite delicious with its mushroomy gravy, I don’t think it really worked as a combination. I wonder if it’s the responsibility of the wait staff to sway you away from bad choices. Either way, that was not what happened here. What happened here was a thoroughly noncohesive dish.

I’m sad to say that I didn’t really enjoy our trip to Devon. While I love their rice bowls at their Haymarket offshoot Dopa, our trip back to the mothership was disappointing.

Devon Cafe
76 Devonshire St, Surry Hills NSW 2010
(02) 9211 8777

Categories
Chinese

Hot-Star Large Fried Chicken – Liverpool St, Sydney CBD NSW Review

My first ever experience of Taiwanese Fried Chicken Steak was at the now defunct 3Q Fried Chicken on George St many many years ago (or was it at Hot Star in Melbourne 2013 ? I can’t remember but I don’t want to lie to you, and especially not to myself). Since then I’ve had many different styles of Taiwanese fried chicken, at many different places. The sheer ubiquity of the Hot-Star brand, and the generally dependable quality of its food make them one of my go-tos.

While I’ve eaten at Hot-Star on Liverpool St many times, most of which have been late at night, I only have this single, poorly mosaiced photo to share. Hot-Star, for the uninitiated, specialises in large fried chicken, basically breast that has been butterflied and beaten into flat submission, battered, fried, and offered with either regular or spicy seasoning.

The result is delicious and always fresh. While no doubt offensive to the cardiovascular system, they are quite appealing to the senses.

Hot Star Large Fried Chicken – Liverpool St
96 Liverpool St, Sydney NSW 2000

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
Korean

Bibimbar – Chippendale NSW Restaurant Review

My partner and I love us some Korean food, and Chippendale’s recently opened Bibimbar, with its delightful play on play on words, broad menu, and inner city location was just the restaurant we were looking for for a quick but filling lunch.

It’s kind of difficult being in a relationship with someone who has a different taste in Korean fried chicken than your own. Nine times out of ten my partner will want to have sweet and spicy fried chicken (Dakgangjeong – 닭강정), and at restaurants that don’t offer two flavours in one serving that’s normally what we will get. We were glad that while Bibmbar doesn’t offer half and half on their half fried chicken, this choice was in fact available on their Wing Wing ($19) – a serving of twelve pieces of fried chicken wings and drumsticks.

I thought the chicken wings were well fried and flavoured, with the honey garlic wings taking the top spot in my heart. I actually did also enjoy the sweet and spicy fried chicken, more than I expected, and I think this has to do with Bibimbar’s careful attention to detail and making sure that the sauce was not so strong to be overpowering. We did also get a special creamy onion sauce for dipping ($2) though I think it is absolutely not a critical component of the meal and you’re not really missing out on anything without it. The chicken was very good as is.

The last time I had kimbab was probably back in 2003, out of my fourth grade friend Soo Hon Lee’s lunchbox. (This will be an exciting throwback for him if he has a Google alert set up for his name). No disrespect to Soo Hon and Soo Chan’s mother, but Bibimbar’s version of Kimbab (with bulgogi beef) ($14) was both better and more elaborate than what I remember. I really loved the fresh taste of the included vegetables, and the nice crunch in the mouth whilst chewing through them. This extreme freshness complimented the umami flavours of the mayonnaise, egg, and bulgogi beef very well. The ratio of fillings to rice was very good, ensuring entertainment throughout the entire mouthful. The “addicting soy sauce”, as mentioned on the menu, was actually quite a bit different to normal soy sauce, though I don’t know what exactly is in it (perhaps cocaine). I have no real barometer for kimbab except for home cooking for a nine year old’s packed lunch, but I can tell you that this was a good dish.

Jjapaguri, popularised by the Academy Award winning film Parasite, is a usually humble mixture of chapagetti and neoguri noodles – essentially a ramen and udon with spicy and black bean flavours. Bibimbar’s Jjapaguri ($34) is a little less humble – a large 30cm dish of noodles, fried tofu, some kind of fried dough cruller, cabbage, enoki, wood ear fungus, and beef brisket in a black bean sauce that’s cooked on a portable butane stove at the table. It was a really huge and delicious dish, though I’m not too sure what the actual benefit of being cooked at the table was. It was wholesome, hearty, and filling, great value with great flavours. I can really recommend this.

VERDICT
Bibimbar’s wholesome, hearty meals were an absolute delight. I can really recommend them to anyone looking for a reasonably priced and authentic Korean meal.

Bibimbar
69 Abercrombie St, Chippendale NSW 2008
(02) 8964 0900