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. All meals are independently paid for - the author has no conflicts of interest to disclose.
I came here with work so I couldn’t really take the time to individually review each dish and write down and collect my thoughts. If I remember I will queue this post as an extra in the middle of the normal post cycle, as it really is quite low effort.
We basically had a work dinner at a local Western Sydney restaurant and ordered the banquet menu to absolve individuals of tyranny of choice.
The spring rolls were vegetarian and not bad.
The curry puffs, also vegetarian, were even better.
The Thai beef salad was quite nice – tangy and meaty.
The pork belly in Thai basil was good.
We had a vegetarian Pad Thai but had enough meat to go around from the other dishes that I did not miss the protein in the pad thai itself. I have no photos of it.
I did not fancy the grilled prawns and squid dish which I felt was not that flavourful unless paired with the difficult to administer sauces it came with.
Holy Basil Parramatta Shop 5/330 Church St, Parramatta NSW 2150
In February 2020, before the world knew just how bad the COVID-19 pandemic would be, a Kiwi friend of ours suggested HOUSE OF CRAB. Unfortunately we never made it there – it closed in March due to the pandemic – but we did manage to eat at Kickin’ Inn, a restaurant with a very similar concept.
Kickin’ Inn offers a wide array of seafood which is boiled in sauce and delivered to the table in a plastic bag.. Aside from seafood, Kickin’ Inn also offers a small range of vegetable and chicken based sides. While Kickin’ Inn officially bills itself as halal, I’ve recently come to discover that there are varying types of halal and when my Egyptian colleague called the Lebanese owner to ask he found that it was insufficiently halal for his needs. We will need to catch up with him later at a venue of his choosing.
The service experience was generally fine but a bit odd to start. I was the first to arrive at the restaurant, and not 2 minutes into having taken a seat and been given the menu I was asked if I was ready to order. They knew that I was waiting for 5 others but continued to ask us three times throughout the next fifteen minutes our party slowly filtered in.
It was only when we told them that yes, we were ready to order, that they offered to explain the menu to us. I’ve read similar accounts of this extremely strange experience elsewhere online – it certainly makes more sense to me to explain the menu choices before asking if we were ready to order.
L: Whole lobster, R: Moreton Bay Bugs
While the majority of customers ask for the plastic bag to be emptied directly onto the table (covered in a single-use paper sheet), my colleagues shied away from this and ate directly from their plastic bags in black BDSM style gloves.
I had the Moreton Bay Bugs (8 small halves for $39.95) in Sha-Bang sauce (a mixture of Kajun, Garlic Kajun, Garlic Butter and Lemon Pepper sauces) with a mild spice. The bugs were quite small and not very meaty, but the taste and experience of eating food off a table in gloves and a bib was quite a novel one. While each individual bug was not meaty, the combination of 4 bugs did end up being sufficient for an adult meal.
One thing I will mention is that each time our bugs were served (we had 3 servings for the table) we were told that they were scampi. Because of this, as well as the offer to explain the menu once we were ready to order, I didn’t really get the feeling that the guys who worked at Kickin’ Inn really knew or understood what was going on. Especially as we were told that there would be no scampi available that evening.
My colleagues who had the whole lobster with corn and potato ($49.95), served on the elusive “plate” enjoyed their meals too.
I didn’t realise just how huge the Kickin’ Shrimp Martini ($34.95) would be. It is a giant glass bowl of 15 crumbed and fried prawns in Kickin’s special sauce (read: sweet chilli) atop a bed of hot chips and garden salad. I regret getting this. The prawns didn’t taste like they were great quality, and were a bit bitter as they cooled down. The sauce all collected at the bottom of the glass, which meant that the chips and salad at the bottom got very soggy and tasty. I’m lucky I was able to share this with my colleagues, and I would not get it again.
VERDICT Quirks of service aside, Kickin’ Inn was OK. The serving sizes of the seafood boil was a bit ambiguous and I think that having minimum weights and prices per kg would’ve gone a long way. It just felt too risky to order a “cluster” of snow crab for $54.95 without any indication of how much that could be.
I’m still undecided as to if I will ever go back to Kickin’ Inn. It was an expensive seafoody meal, and I doubt my girlfriend would eve go with me.
4/5 – offers a special experience not found elsewhere
New to Westmead this year, Keramic is a religious café and restaurant situated within a 100 year old (1921) Uniting Church owned cottage, the result of a collaboration between the Kongfucius team across the road and the Parramatta Mission. Originally a family home and subsequently a church coffee shop, the café is nicely decorated with period appropriate furniture, ornaments, and photographs of dead people.
Though there is adequate outside seating with park benches, we chose to sit inside in a well appointed family dining room for our post nights breakfast. I want to draw particular attention to these nice candles that my partner would’ve liked to see. She recently spent $16 on a candle stick from some inner west concept store because she thought they would melt nicely. As the owners of cats I really don’t see when they will come into use. My cat set herself on fire on the stove as recently as last night. (She’s OK)
I ordered Hannah’s Favourite ($15) for my 8:30AM breakfast, a fully lunchy meal consisting of a chicken curry of the day (massaman), sticky rice, and a fried egg. This was a very standard lunch meal that you could get from essentially any Thai restaurant. There was nothing particularly remarkable about this dish – just chicken breast in massaman curry sauce, a cylinder of well proportioned sticky rice, and a moist well-fried egg – though I guess you could say it is remarkable to have such a cultural lunch dish amongst Keramic’s otherwise mostly Western menu.
Late 2023 Update The late 2023 update is that Keramic has clearly established itself in my mind as the best local source for coffee, far surpassing every Zouki-esque establishment within the grounds of the local health faciltiy, as well as local chain competitor Leaf. I normally call or text through my order and by the time I get there the coffee is ready for pickup, giving myself a chance to get in a little walk as well as skipping a long queue for closer coffees generally thought to be less good. The guy who runs the place is also an absolute hero and I’ve been the blessèd beneficiary of a free piece of day old croissant brought for the staff of the emergency department during a call-in for a NIHSS.
The (breakfast) menu has become more Western over the years, although they still run a Thai menu for lunch. The Prawn Star ($25.90) was the most interesting thing available when we visited for a post-nights breakfast in November 2023, featuring some unexciting buttered bread, some nicely fluffy and creamy scrambled eggs, and excellently cooked prawns without a hint of overcook. While good and somewhat wholesome, it suffered by reminding me of the superior chilli prawn scramble from Il Locale, a distant and unfair benchmark from Berry NSW.
Update October 2024
Keramic’s menu has expanded, and their coffee remains the one to beat for the 2145 postcode. The dragon balls ($23.90) were tasty and good, though the crumbed and deep fried eggs (not-Scotch) were too thoroughly cooked for my liking. The pulled pork was flavourful and moist, and the whole plate came together well, with a hint of spiciness from the chilli crisp hidden on the other side of this photo. Yum.
JULY 2025
The 1921 Breakfast Burger ($15.90), with its unmelted slice of cheese, hash brown, onionis, bacon and egg, was reminiscent of the Big Breakfast Burger at Maccas for twice the price. I think at the very least the cheese should’ve been a bit more melted. I don’t think I’d get it again.
Kepos Street Kitchen came highly recommended by a vegetarian colleague of ours. Naturally we went without him to share a meat-heavy meal before a swing at nearby Moore Park.
The Charred broccolini salad, shredded chicken, coarse burghul, herbs ($18) was delicious. As a group we are not the biggest fans of salad, but all members of our party ended up enjoying it. There is a surprisingly generous amount of chicken tucked in with all the greens and grains.
The Burrata cheese, Persian eggplant, pine nuts, volcanic salt ($22) was pretty good. The cheese was firm on the outside and less firm on the inside, as expected. The real star of this dish was the crusty, freshly toasted bread. Delicious.
The Grilled prawns, chermoula, grilled lemon ($27) came with five prawns. The prawns were quite large and tasty, and the lemon was too (though I was tricked by a colleague into an entire quarter of the lemon pictured in one mouthful by itself). I’m still trying to come to terms with paying $5.40 per prawn though.
Kepos meatball sub, coriander paste, grated haloumi, ciabatta ($18) was very good. Plenty of meat and red sauce on crusty warm bread. Very yum and a good serving of meat. A strong recommendation for this one.
The Arayes pita of wagyu mince seasoned with parsley, onion, olive oil, cumin and paprika, chili tomato salad, tahini, pita ($18) started off good, however quickly we found it to be too flavourful and too saucy. You will recognise this complaint of “too tasty” from many of my reviews, and in this case you can rest assured that this was a view that was held by the majority of our group. I would not recommend Kepos Street Kitchen’s Arayes pita.
Pictured here is a half serve of chips, which were provided complimentary as they had forgotten to make our chips. Even this half serving was quite a lot of chips. The chips were fresh and fluffy on the inside, with a cripsy exterior. They may just be the best hot chips I’ve had in a long long time. There’s definitely something special going on, owing perhaps to a proprietary cooking method. At $7 (for twice the chips listed) I would give them a go.
Overall
Pretty much everything we had hit the spot. I can recommend.
We recently had a late dinner after a run of days at Nick & Nora’s, a rooftop bar on level 26 of the SKYE Suites building in Parramatta. Nick & Nora’s is beautifully decorated inside, with a wide bar backed by an extensive collection of liquor and beautiful amber lighting throughout. The view of the (limited) Western Sydney skyline is equally lavish, and on taking everything in we felt immediately underdressed in our scrubs. Perhaps noticing this, our waitress did her best to make us feel welcome with a couple of flirtatious comments directed at my junior colleague DTC.
A side effect of waiting ten days to write this review is that most items that didn’t stand out at the time are merely forgotten. This baller board ($100) of the chef’s selection of cheese and charcuterie was memorable mostly for the pricing. Whilst in fairness the board is quite large and extensive in its selection and it’s difficult to please everyone, nothing on this board really wowed me.
We ordered three servings of the feed me menu ($55 each) to go along with our giant cheese and charcuterie board. Whilst I normally like to go through each item in detail, most of the elements of this tasting menu were simply not that memorable, though special mentions go to the:
Moreton Bay Bug Sliders with cellariac rémoulade and rhubarb sambol in toasted brioche , which were really creamy with an excellent bug to bread ratio. These were a standout of the meal, and probably better than any other lobster or crustacean roll I’ve ever had, not the least owing to the fact that the bug was actually intact and not some minced monstrosity (cf. 101kissa)
Crispy Prawns with lime aioli and finger lime, which were large and juicy, and enjoyed so much by my prawn-averse girlfriend that she actually had 2 instead of her customary 0.
Tequila Compressed Watermelon, which was just a fun new concept that I hadn’t experienced before.
VERDICT I think that while we visited Nick & Nora’s as a restaurant, it’s more of a rooftop bar with food as an afterthought rather than a focus. The Moreton Bay Bug Sliders were great though, and at $11 I would not hesitate to get them as takeaway in the future.
