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Café

Homage Specialty Coffee – Parramatta NSW Restaurant Review

Tucked within the outside wall of a semi-smelly carpark in Parramatta is a small café serving what is probably Western Sydney’s best coffee, and some very good toasties.

Staffing at this carpark café is quite minimal, with only two people working to serve the teeming masses from the local legal community. The wait for my two toasted sandwiches (which were premade, mind you – all that had to be done was put them in the sandwich press) took about twenty minutes.

This bolognaise jaffle ($10 I think) is probably the best jaffle I’ve ever had, though the only of reference that I have for comparison are those made by my father (he owns a jaffle maker, but has no other formal jaffle making qualifications). The bread was suitably crispy, and the warm gooey cheesy filling of mince, tomato and cheese was warming and full of flavour. Well executed.

The mushroom toastie ($15-ish) was also very good. It was stuffed full of pickles and cheese, which gave it a good tangy flavour not found in all mushroom toasties. The mushroom added quite a bit of bite and chew to the toastie, and I didn’t even miss the lack of meat in it. The one complaint, if I were to nit-pick, would be that the tangy, salty flavours of this toastie might have just been marginally too flavourful for me. Nonetheless, a good toastie.

This soy latte may actually be the best I’ve had in my life. I’m not familiar with all the fancy terms reviewers use to describe coffee, but I know quality when I taste it.

EARLY THOUGHTS (MAY 2021)
The food was good, and the coffee was amazing. There is an unfortunate dearth of free parking in the area, and the nearest easily accessible free parking is probably in Westfield Parramatta (a 9 minute walk). I also think that given how busy they were on the day they’re probably bringing in enough revenue to buy another sandwich press. This could potentially cut their service times for a toastie down from twenty minutes to something a bit more reasonable. Having said all this, I’d definitely still recommend Western Sydney dwellers pay Homage a visit.

5/5 (coffee bonus)

A NEW LOCATION (MAY 2022)
A year after my first visit to Homage I had the opportunity to take a number of my colleagues on our customary post-night shift breakfast to their new location on George St Parramatta, just around the corner from their old spot but now with ample room to cater for their loyal customer base.

I had some kind of Veggie Bowl (vaguely $22, the menu has since changed), a vegetarian offering of quinoa, broccolini, carrot, avocado, beetroot and other greenery which I ruined (ethos-wise, not taste-wise) through the addition of grilled chicken ($3) and a fried egg ($3). Though it’s been a little while since I’ve had it, I remember enjoying the variety of tastes and textures, and the complexity of such an offering for a Parramatta breakfast.

Even a year later, Homage’s coffee remains probably the best I’ve ever had. I don’t know how they do it.

JULY 2022

My colleague ELT had such an enjoyable meal at Homage on our May 2022 visit that she insisted we go back after our run of night shifts in July 2022. Beating some kind of mid-morning rush, we entered the empty café at 10AM just before it was swamped by hordes from the surrounding office buildings on their daily coffee run.

I had the Mediterranean Baked Eggs ($20), again a vegetarian dish at its base that I ruined with the addition of chorizo ($3). Our wait for food was a little longer than expected owing to the single hardworking guy at the back, and while opinion around the table was varied, I thought it was worth the wait. Homage’s baked eggs was a surprisingly wet and runny dish, best eaten with a spoon rather than a fork. This held for both the tomato base as well as the very softly baked eggs, the yolks of which were unexpectedly creamy and pleasurable, though not something I’d go out of my way to eat ordinarily. The loading of dill, pine nuts, pomegranate, and vegetables including capsicum, chickpea, and eggplant was generous and added both textural and flavour interest above and beyond that of your regular garden variety baked egg dish. Brickfields sourdough bread was served with Pepe Saya butter, a high-end choice that surpasses budget alternatives and surely deserves a mention on the next printing of the menu. The chorizo was unnecessary and therefore not recommended, owing to the good balance of flavours within the base dish.

REVISIT, OCTOBER 2024
A series of excellent visits to Circa led us to not patronise Homage for over two years. On our October 2024 attendance we found that Homage no longer carries Five Senses’ Crompton Road as its ‘house coffee’, rather now having their own house blend from the same roaster.

I had this chilli scram with extra chorizo. The scrambled egg was deliciously fluffy, and if a little salty when eaten in combination with the cheese on top. The chilli oil was tasty and umami, but again more salty than spicy, in my opinion, limiting how much of it I could have. I neglected to note down how much this cost, but the chorizo was a salty topper that was definitely not needed – the dish stood strongly on its own without any additional meat. Reading back, I can’t believe I literally fell for the same chorizo trap twice in a row. Hopefully this post prevents others from suffering the same fate. The eggs were great though.

THOUGHTS
With its diverse all-day menu and coffee so good that it’s a bit suspicious, Homage Specialty Coffee enters the A tier of Parramatta’s cafes, nestling vaguely alongside Circa and Lil Miss Collins, and earning a spot within our regular post-nights brunch cycle. Seasonal variability in their food menu would take them to the next level.

Homage Specialty Coffee
Shop 1/71 – 73 George St, Parramatta NSW 2150

Formerly: Beneath City Centre Carpark, Shop 2/71 Horwood Pl, Parramatta NSW 2150

Categories
Café

Rolling Penny – Newton NSW Cafe Review

Tempted by the positive reviews on Google Maps, we rolled into Newtown for a very sunny 8AM breakfast at Rolling Penny. Our waiter cheerfully let us know that there was a whole new menu starting today, which disappointed me very deeply as I had already had my mind set on what I wanted. Luckily what I wanted was still on the menu, albeit renamed and with a small price increase.

Rolling Penny Twice Cooked Roast Chicken

The Twice Cooked Roast Chicken ($18) with burnt butter sauce, mixed greens, roast garlic, beer pickles, garlic sprouts on brickfields ciabatta roll is the latest reincarnation of Rolling Penny’s famous chicken baguette. The sandwich had a mild and balanced flavour, with the creamy white sauce accentuating the umami of the moist chicken. The bread was soft on the inside yet crispy on the outside. My partner didn’t like that the pickles interrupted the otherwise warm and smooth taste of the chicken roll, but I enjoyed that they were there to punctuate the blissful smoothness with a bit of sharp tang. Overall the chicken roll is comparable to the chicken baguette at Cafe Mckenzie, and if you like one then I recommend you try the other. I can recommend this expensive sandwich.

Rolling Penny Portabello Mushroom

Excuse the awful photo, but the Portabello Mushroom ($17) with mushroom jerky, braised leeks, smoked mozzarella, radicchio & truffle aioli on a brickfields ciabatta roll looked as good as it tasted. We made the decision to add pancetta ($5), which turned out to be absolutely the right choice. The mushroom roll was incredibly juicy and rich, with lots of cheese and umami flavours. This got old quickly, however, and I found that the pancetta really did a great job at adding some variety in terms of texture and flavour. I would even go so far as to recommending the pancetta as an essential add on to this roll, which unfortunately takes the total to $22, a thoroughly expensive sandwich. I did not like the mushroom roll as much as the chicken roll.

The lighting and our positioning was unable to suitably capture the visual appeal of Rolling Penny’s Divorced Eggs ($18.50) – 2 poached eggs, salsa verde, romesco sauce, toasted pistachios, Meredith farm feta served on brickfields rye and caraway. The Divorced Eggs was visually arresting, a celebration of bright and contrasting colours with its salsa verde and romesco sauce. We did not, however, enjoy this dish as much as we did the two rolls. The two sauces were good, but too tasty, and the overall ratio of sauce to bread and other less tasty components hung on the too tasty side of the scales. Each mouthful, especially towards the end of the meal, was so drowned in flavour and saltiness that it was difficult to enjoy. The eggs were well poached, and I did peek a giant pot of eggs with an Anova sous vide cooker on the counter. The toasted pistachios were my favourite ingredient of the dish, and added some variety to the otherwise mushy texture of the sauce and eggs. I wouldn’t get this again.

Last of all, the coffee was very good. My partner liked that they gave me a red cup and an orange saucer, and her an orange cup with a red saucer. I didn’t notice.

Overall verdict: I enjoyed the chicken and mushroom rolls thoroughly, although both were quite expensive. I would recommend coming here but it has to lose a point for 1. price and 2. the divorced eggs.

Rolling Penny
583A King St, Newtown NSW 2042
(02) 8056 8897