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.
The Portuguese Corner doesn’t actually exist anymore as a restaurant, but they do still exist as a supplier of delicious savoury and sweet tarts to Nowra local coffee roaster and cafe Hyper Hyper, also known as the mother-joint of Punch the Ploughman, which has been extensively reviewed on this site already.
While Punch the Ploughman serves a variety of in-house and externally sourced (mostly from Sonoma Bakery) treats, their cohabitant venue Hyper Hyper has only a small pie warmer of delicious warm treats, with no cross-pollination between the two.
First, the Portuguese Tart ($5). A bit sweet, but served deliciously warm and gooey from the pie warmer, with an excellently buttery puff pastry that carries through to all of their savoury tarts. Pretty good, and preferred over Milkwood in Berry’s.
The Village Chorizo Tart ($6) was my favourite savoury tart. Again with lovely puff pastry, and a great umami filling. Good balance of flavours.
The Kale and Goat Cheese Tart ($6) is a relative masterclass on how to make a vegetarian quiche, and with its interesting mix of sourness from the goat cheese and vegetable flavours it is far superior to the quiche from Punch the Ploughman next door.
I did not feel that the Bacon and Spring Onion Tart ($6) was quite as good as the Village Chorizo Tart, though they clearly both come from the same school of meat-supplemented quiche. The bacon strips on top were a bit hard and difficult to eat in my opinion, though overall it was still better than the aforementioned vegetarian quiche next door. The egg was also better.
In summary these expensive little tarts (really mini quiches) are all quite good (though I don’t know how Portuguese the savoury ones are), and I can only hope that one day they may rise again and spread their joy from a place that isn’t the pie warmer of someone else’s cafe.
I went many times to Milkwood Bakery but with varied levels of enjoyment.
The Portuguese Tart ($4.20) had a nice and crispy and crunchy pastry, but I didn’t enjoy the (lack of) warmth to the filling and found it overall to be a bit oily for my taste.
The Vegan Carrot Sesame Cake ($5.50) was chosen as they had run out of their far superior regular carrot cake (reviewed down below). I liked that as compared to their regular carrot cake a small portion was available, and though it did not taste as rich or as good as the standard option it was ultimately not bad, especially as they had hamstrung themselves with the strict avoidance of any dairy.
I enjoyed the pastry component of the Beef and Pork Sausage Roll ($7.20), which was oily and flaky. The meat was thick and well textured, but in my opinion too salty to tick every quality box.
The Wagyu toastie ($13.50) had a pastrami like wagyu meet with cheesse and beetroot. It was alright, but not the best toasted sandwich of the Shoalhaven area.
I enjoyed the chocolate exterior of the Lamington ($3.50) but really quite hated the texture and taste of the sponge.
This carrot cake is actually very good. The cake itself was nice and moist with an unusually large helping of walnuts, with good flavour, and I also quite enjoyed the frosting. It is certainly much more pleasant than the vegan version also sold at Milkwood. I only wish that this could be sold in a smaller portion, though we had no difficulty inhaling this delicious cake in its entirety.
The Beef BourguignonPie ($8) was pretty good, though I’m not sure it was exactly $8 good. It was quite mushroomy, and perhaps I would give it a higher rating if I were a paid shill for Big Mushroom, who look like they’re splashing out on the social media influencers these days.
And finally, the Blueberry Custard Tart ($6.50), with its shortbread crust. I’m sure it is clear by now that I have a lot of opinions for someone who can’t bake himself, but this crust felt just a bit floury for my liking. Was a big fan of these huge juicy blueberries though.
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.
My first review of a market stall with multiple locations and random opening times. Not too sure how the format of these will go, since there’s not really a home base as far as I can tell to direct people to, especially for the Google Maps pin.
I came across Natas & Co. at the Wentworth Point Cambridge Markets a couple of weeks ago, though they open in numerous locations across the city.
As a big fan of the humble Portuguese tart, and to the annoyance of my partner who is probably sick of them by now, I could not stop myself from ordering both a regular and a lemon tart.
The traditional Portuguese custard tart ($4.50) and the lemon Portuguese custard tart ($4.50) were probably similar enough to review in the same paragraph. Both tarts had a good, flaky pastry, but both I felt were let down by the sweetness of the filling. The lemon tart did have a lemon tinge to it, though the difference was minimal. I think by now it has become a theme that whilst I enjoy a good pastel de nata, I would much prefer one that isn’t as sweet as even the top tarts the city has to offer. It is probably therefore a matter of personal opinion that I wasn’t a huge fan of the filling of these tarts, rather than a problem with the tarts themselves.
Another day, another bakery – this one just a stone’s throw away from my partner’s GP, who has a particular interest in promoting long-term behavioural change where it comes to modifiable risk factors for non-communicable disease.
Tuga Pastries is perhaps best known for their Pastel de Nata (Portuguese Tart – $4.50), often being mentioned in the same breath as Sweet Belem when it comes to Sydney’s pastry tier lists. Though I’ve had Tuga’s Portuguese tarts at other cafes like Ashbury’s 3 Tomatoes, the experience was far better eating it fresh from the source. The filling on this tart was extremely gooey and creamy, with a fresh-out-of-the-oven warmth that coated and curled around the tongue. The pastry was similarly warm, fresh, buttery, and flaky, though if I had one complaint about this pastel de nata overall would be that it was a bit too sweet for my taste. Despite this, I would rate this above Sweet Belem‘s based on textural factors.
This great big slab is the Pork, Lamb and Harrisa Sausage Roll ($9), an attempt to fancy up the humble Australian classic that I feel met quite limited success. It features quite a thick block of finely minced meat wrapped in puff pastry, served with an extremely stock standard tomato sauce that for some reason we couldn’t get enough of. I personally found this sausage roll a bit lamby for my liking, and would’ve liked a coarser texture than what was offered here. Wouldn’t get it again.
I had no love for this 3 Cheese Toastie ($13), which I found quite dry, especially with all its seeds. I think the only way to make it better would be to add some kind of moist vegetable or meat to it, which would ruin the concept of it being a cheese only toastie. Maybe I just don’t like cheese-only toasties, but my partner, who chose this item, did not like it either.
This pear danish ($6) was really quite good. I enjoyed the flaky, buttery pastry, but more suprisingly I enjoyed the pear, which looked sweeter than it actually tasted. It was, in fact, not too sweet.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by how dense and ricotta-y this blueberry ricotta tart ($6.50) was. Didn’t love it.
OVERALL THOUGHTS Though much of what we had at Tuga was a bit hit and miss, there’s no denying the high quality of their pastel de natas. These are probably my favourite Portuguese tarts in Sydney right now, and for that reason alone I’m looking forward to the next time I have to take my partner to the doctor to hear about why we shouldn’t be eating so much.
