Tag: poached eggs

Categories
Bakery Café Indian South Asian

The Fold – Dulwich Hill NSW Restaurant Review

Though I’ve lived in Wentworthville in the heart of Sydney’s South Asian community for a total of eleven years now in two separate runs, I still don’t really have a good gauge on South Asian food. It’s hard for me, as someone who didn’t grow up in the culture, to know what’s actually good and what’s actually bad, so I must apologise in advance if my thoughts about Dulwich Hill’s The Fold are coloured by my complete lack of cultural competency.

We started our meal with this quite-good Sri Lankan Iced Coffee ($7.50), which was essentially a mixture of chai spices, coffee, and vanilla ice cream (AKA a cold dirty chai). It was quite enjoyable, though a bit expensive, and I had no qualms about recommending it to a random vegetarian who walked into the restaurant just as we were leaving.

The Appa-Appa with free range chicken curry ($24) was a plate consisting of two plain hoppers and one hopper with an egg in it, along with side pots of a mild chicken curry, lunu miris (sambal paste), and seeni sambol (a less spicy onion sambal). We enjoyed the chicken curry, though found it to be extremely mild – likely a product of the restaurant being in Dulwich Hill rather than Pendle Hill. I have literally no standard to compare these hoppers with, but can remark that I enjoyed the crispy thin edges much more than the bases, which I felt were a bit too thick and bready. Again, I have no idea if that’s how it’s meant to be. This is just how I feel.

To illustrate how out of my depth I am here, after eating it as a taco I found out via the internet that you are not meant to eat hoppers as a taco.

The Butterfruit Pann with two poached eggs ($21) was really just another name for avocado toast, but with one delicious twist. This otherwise standard avo toast came with a tiny but delicious pot of pineapple chili relish, with a fascinating sweetness that went incredibly well with the bread and avocado, and elevated each and every bite. I only wish that the pot were a bit larger as we ran out two thirds throughout our meal.

Look at this SICK cutlery.

INTERIM THOUGHTS
The food at The Fold was really not bad, and even the otherwise standard avo toast had a nice little twist that elevated it to a new level. Their pastries on display also looked quite good, and though I don’t know if they’re made on site I think I will end up coming back at some point to eat them all.

RETURN
On a subsequent visit to grab some pastries I learned that they are in fact all made on site. There’s an assortment of relatively standard French as well as South-Asian inspired pastries, though for this visit I erred on the side of caution.

The Plain Croissant ($5.50) was certainly, as described, a plain croissant. I took a leaf from my friend the Sydney Croissant Hunter’s book and brought a serated knife to capture a cross-section from my visit, though in doing so left quite a mess on their table. I wasn’t blown away by this croissant – it was adequately crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, but keep in mind that I’m not a croissant expert, and I got this about half an hour before closing, so it wasn’t quite fresh out of the oven.

Next up is this Salted Caramel & Macadamia Scroll ($8.50), a hefty and dense bread-like creation that was a meal in and of itself. Entire bites of this were devoid of any caramel, but this was not so much a problem as this scroll truly reminded me of my love for bread. The salted caramel swirl tasted a little bit dark-cooked (I don’t want to say burnt, I doubt it was ever on fire), and ultimately I think my craving would have been equally served by some stock standard brioche or something.

The Portuguese Tart was a bit sweeter than I usually like, but I enjoyed the flavour as well as the pastry. Even my partner, who doesn’t usually like Portuguese tarts, enjoyed this. It is a shame that she dropped it on the floor before she was finished.

I actually really enjoyed this Black Forest Cake ($8.50). I often get black forest cake thinking that I’ll like it, but it’s never really lived up to my expectation until now. The Fold’s black forest cake was absolutely lovely, with plenty of moistness, dark chocolate, and a discrete and highly tasty cherry layer sandwiched between two layers of dark sponge. Every part of this cake, including the well proportioned mousse-like icing was well executed, and this is now the best black forest cake I’ve ever had.

The Fold. Sri Lankan Inspired
402 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill NSW 2203
(02) 8068 2226

Categories
Café French

The Hardware Société – Melbourne VIC Restaurant Review

I managed to avoid eating at Hardware Société in my six years as a Melbourne local, but as fate would have it broke my streak on a recent visit back.

This Twice Baked Cheese Souffle ($23) didn’t really live up to expectations, though not more so than any other menu item that we had at Hardware Société. What I would consider the focal components of this dish – the cheese souffle and poached eggs – were actually quite good. I enjoyed the cheesy taste and the airy but somehow still creamy and dense (is this an oxymoron?) texture of the souffle, as well as the perfect runniness of the masterfully poached eggs. What didn’t quite appeal to me was the multigrain bread doused in an oil, pickled grapes, and nuts that my partner thought tasted a bit stale, and the salad whose limited freshness I felt was inadequate to counter this.

Some restaurants excel on taste and presentation but fail on their portion sizes. Hardware Société does more or less the opposite with their gigantic Confit Free Range Chicken ($26.50), with a truly larger than normal chicken maryland, pulled from some monster of a bird. Though I was in awe of the size of this chook, I was not so inspired by the actual flavour of the meat, which I found to be bland despite the better-than-usual texture of both the meat and the crispy skin covering it. The herby potato salad was much enjoyed as are most potato dishes by my partner, though I felt that there was a lot of room for some additional heat to be added to the system. The swirl of green tangy sauce was perhaps the only thing I truly enjoyed on this plate.

This hot chocolate ($7.50), served deconstructed in classic Melbourne fashion, was quite good, if a bit sweet. Note the addition of a miniature Easter egg, as if it were a little apology for the 15% public holiday surcharge across the menu.

The soy latte ($5.30) was truly quite small, expensive, and unspectacular.

THOUGHTS
I had quite a few good and special meals on my recent trip to Melbourne, but my trip to Hardware Société wasn’t one of them. It’s possible that we simply chose the wrong items on their menu, but I don’t think I’d give them a second chance to find out.

The Hardware Société
10 Katherine Pl, Melbourne VIC 3000
(03) 9621 2100

Categories
Bakery Café

Brasserie Bread – Banksmeadow NSW Cafe Review

Another day, another feed. Today’s breakfast was eaten at Brasserie Bread, a bakery and cafe a mere ten minutes walk from our home.

The bulk of this review is actually about the second time I ate food from Brasserie Bread – the first time was a couple of takeaway sandwiches following a night shift several weeks before. The Smoked Chicken Sambo with avo, provolone cheese, roast tomato & aioli ($14) was quite good, while The Brasserie BLT Sambo with bacon, iceberg, tomato on Sourdough Batard ($12) was very middling.

While the wait for just a couple of sandwiches the first time felt like forever, the wait for dining in was actually very minimal. This is my story.

This glossy looking rhubarb and strawberry tart I must admit was only okay. I thought it was a bit too cakey and not tarty enough for my liking. Beautiful, though.

The apple crumble, in contrast, was relatively divine. Absolutely great interplay of crispy pastry textures, crumble, apple, and sauce.

My partner ordered the Eggs Your Way on Toast with Pepe Saya Butter, a mere $10 for a delicious and wholesome meal. She loved it so much that I caught her making heart eyes at the perfectly liquid yolk atop Pepe’s cultured butter. The chorizo that I spent $4 adding on was a waste – an absolutely not necessary addition to this already perfect dish.

The Slow Cooked Beef Brisket Sambo with housemade pickled cabbage slaw ($14), in comparison with the simple wholesomeness of the eggs on toast, was a letdown. I found the beef a bit unflavourful, a disappointment matched with its boring texture. Not even the yummy pickled cabbage slaw and sauce could save it. The second letdown of the dish was the oppressive quantity of soft crusty bread. I understand that Brasserie Bread is first and foremost a bakery, but I feel that they really missed the mark on the filling to bread ratio, and consequently I cannot recommend this sandwich.

COMMENT

I liked the little pastries and I liked the simple toast and eggs. The beef brisket sandwich was a bit of a letdown, but from memory their smoked chicken sandwich was actually quite nice. It was a cheap and cheerful local breakfast.

4/5 sauerkrauts

Brasserie Bread
1737 Botany Rd, Banksmeadow NSW 2019
1300 966 845

Categories
Bakery Café French

Croquembouche Patisserie – Botany NSW Café Review

Wow! This review has really been a long time coming.

When we moved to Botany in January 2020 one of the first things we did, before we even started unpacking, was load up Zomato and look for places to eat. Croquembouche Patisserie caught our eye, and since then we’ve eaten there at least ten to fifteen times over the course of a year.

Croquembouche bills itself as one of top French bakeries in Sydney, and as the only French (non-Vietnamese) bakery I’ve ever been to I’d have to agree. We’ve eaten so many things at Croquembouche that I will only review our favourites.

The Reuben Sandwich is huge and flavourful. It’s actually the first thing I ever got from Croquembouche and has become a regular favourite. I would recommend to get it toasted.

The Ham and cheese croissant with béchamel sauce is excellent. The croissant is fluffy, and the béchamel makes the whole thing very creamy. They do an alternate ham and cheese croissant with gruyere which is a bit more expensive but I don’t like as much – no béchamel.

The Citron tart is my partner’s favourite thing from Croquembouche. In her words, “it’s probably the best lemon curt tart [she’s] ever had. Its balance of tanginess and sweetness is pretty perfect, and I wonder if it has some other complex citruses in there as well. Lemon parts are one of [her] favourite desserts, and [she] thinks that Croquembouche has one of [her] favourite tarts [she’s] ever tasted. You can’t quote me word for word, because I refuse to have non edited words and thoughts on a public platform. You’d better not be continuing to write what I’m saying.”

There is a healthy assortment of crepes on offer, which are all delicious and packed with ingredients like cheese, meat, and mushrooms.

This salted caramel tart was quite good, and not too sweet. This is coming from someone who generally doesn’t like salted caramel.

Croquembouche also offers an assortment of hot meat pies and sausage rolls. They’re pretty standard, and not really at the level of perfection as their other stuff.

Through the course of the year we had an assortment of fruity dessert pastries, which were mostly good and not too sweet.

This was an expensive but elevated hot cross bun.

The level of glaze on this apricot tart is enough to reflect stars in distant galaxies.

$10 for a bacon and egg roll and a coffee is actually quite a good deal. Unfortunately I think not everyone in the café can make coffee, and the wait for coffee during the morning rush can end up being a bit long.

My girlfriend loves chocolate mousse.

Some kind of savory bread of which I have no recollection. Looks cheesy.

This was a really nice sandwich, maybe Cuban, maybe something else, packed with ingredients including a generous amount of pickle. I’d get it again.

Look at this slice of unnamed tart.

Tart of berry. Small but concentrated.

This is one that surprised me. You would never expect such a dish sitting in the counter to have such perfectly poached eggs. Indeed this an entire brunch dressed as a sandwich. Really good, but flies under the radar.

I had a couple of these truffle and salami sandwiches throughout the year. Very tasty, but very oily.

The Salmon and Dill and Chicken and Dill sandwiches are also quite yum. A very pleasant dill taste mixed into a mayonnaise-like sauce with either salmon or chicken rillettes. I’ve never had one uneaten for long enough to take a photo.

THOUGHTS OTHER THAN EFFUSIVE PRAISE

If there’s one somewhat negative component of Croquembouche Patisserie it may just be the exquisite amount of care and time they put in to make the coffee and toast the sandwiches. I’m often in a rush in the morning before work, so I know to get my sandwiches untoasted and without coffee. Their food is also quite rich and buttery, which may be a problem in terms of long-term cardiovascular risk.

Having gone so many times in 2020 and not at all since moving to Western Sydney in February 2021, I wonder if these guys think I’ve died.

Croquembouche Patisserie
1635 Botany Rd, Botany NSW 2019
(02) 9666 3069

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.

Rolling Penny Divorced Eggs

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