Tag: sandwich

Categories
Asian Fusion Café

Haven Specialty Coffee – Rosebery NSW Restaurant Review

Just a stone’s throw away from Slurp! Slurp! (our favourite Eastern suburbs dumpling restaurant to date) is Haven Specialty Coffee, a coffee roaster and cafe specialising in that all important Asian fusion brunch cuisine. We paid them a visit the morning after a particularly difficult ICU night shift for my partner – her first run ever without a more senior colleague on site.

I arrived early as my partner trudged through a prolonged Monday morning handover and enjoyed myself a standard large soy latte ($5.70). The price was significant, even for coffee that is presumably roasted on site. Not being much of a coffee connoisseur I thought that perhaps the first sip had a hint of prawn flavour, but subsequent sips were pretty uncontroversial.

The jackfruit ragu toastie with bacon ($20) was an expensive but loaded sandwich. I always forget what jackfruit is, so I ordered this sandwich expecting a guava-like sweetness which I thought would match well with a bit of salty bacon. It turns out that jackfruit, despite looking kind of tropical, is nothing like guava, not really sweet at all, but with an thicker, chewier, almost mushroom like chew and texture. The majority of the flavour of this toastie was thus a result of the hummus, which also donated a degree of stickiness to the mixture, and definitely added to by the bacon, which was thick cut and unusually expensive (a $5 supplement on top of the $15 base toastie). It would’ve been too mild without it, but ultimately well balanced.

Our other choice was the grilled broccolini salad with a piece of fried chicken ($25). It was actually not that dissimilar from the jackfruit toastie, it too being quite based in hummus and chickpea. At this point I’m not really sure why they’re billed as Asian fusion, as we certainly didn’t have much hummus at my house when I was growing up. This dish was ordered as it was felt to be a bit more wholesome than some of the other options on the menu, and indeed the broccolini, chickpeas, cherry tomatoes, and random greenery were both tasty and likely relatively healthy. The $7 addition for a piece of fried chicken probably tipped the health-rating of this meal back into a state of badness, but further into the realm of goodness in terms of taste. The chicken freshly fried, juicy on the inside with a crispy batter on the outside. It was seasoned minimally but seasoned well, and really added a nice degree of substance and warmth to this otherwise vegan dish.

I begged my partner not to, but she grabbed a nutella choc chip cookie ($6) on the way out. It didn’t amaze or enthral. Not the best cookie going around, but I’ve essentially been spoiled by the S-tier cookies at Cafe Cre Asion and nothing has really done it for me since.

THOUGHTS
We had a pretty good meal at Haven, even if we did manage to ruin their only two vegan dishes through the addition of meat. I’d like to come back at some point for their mini French toast with earl grey custard, which looks great.

Haven Specialty Coffee Rosebery
7 Crewe Pl, Rosebery NSW 2018

Categories
Café

Ashfield Apothecary – Ashfield NSW Restaurant Review

Growing up Asian in Western Sydney and visiting only the highly-Asian establishments around the place I never really understood Ashfield as an “Inner-West” suburb. I think as the West has extended westward so has the inner-West, and places like Ashfield have transformed from a suburb of Asian grocery stores and Beijing roast duck restaurants to a suburb of cute little cafes with their own seasonal merch collection.

This pastrami sandwich ($16) was unusually priced but ultimately pretty good, I guess. The collection of flavours and textures with the overnight-cured pastrami, the crispy toasted and seeded bread, the mild Swiss cheese and the crisp sauerkraut was quite pleasant in the mouth, though not in the wallet. I feel like this would’ve been right on the money at $12, but $16 is a stretch.

A more substantial bowl at $22-ish, the roasted eggplant with halloumi was an oily mix of eggplant, walnut feta, and pomegranate, served with ciabatta. Though my partner did not like this uncharacteristically vegetarian choice, I found the mixture of flavours and textures (thanks, walnut) sufficient to maintain interest throughout the course of the meal. Pomegranate brightens up even the most eggplant everything.

Ashfield Apothecary
19 Charlotte St, Ashfield NSW 2131
0423 495 012

Categories
Café Chinese

Hong Kong Bing Sutt – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

I watched Lucas Sin’s cha chaan teng video for VICE at least three times over the last few months of lockdown here in Sydney, and have had a hankering for some Hong Kong Cafe style food ever since. Luckily the Instagram algorithm saw it fit to serve me photos of Hong Kong Bing Sutt’s delicious looking beef noodle soup over the same period of time, and while I was unable to order takeaway via the app (as I am illiterate) I took myself and my Cantonese-speaking girlfriend over there the first chance I could.

Hong Kong Bing Sutt’s milk tea ($5.30) is extremely rich and dark, likely owing to the traditional method of brewing Hong Kong milk tea which undergoes multiple prolonged steeps through a silk stocking filter to ensure deep extraction. While this is only imagined (the brewing of the tea was not witnessed by me), the rich and smooth flavour of the tea was directly confirmed. While the hot version served at the restaurant comes unsweetened with some sugar on the side, HKBS also sells bottled versions of its chilled pre-sweetened milk tea for $7 a bottle, which are also pretty good, if pricey.

The Mixed Beef Noodle ($15.80) was what drew me in initially, and was actually pretty great in reality. It comes default with thin egg noodles, stewed beef brisket, beef tripe, beef tendon, and beef tendon balls, though many of these elements can be customised to taste. The beef brisket was represented by both fatty and less fatty pieces, all of which were rich tasting and cooked to an extreme degree of tenderness. There was no skimping on any of the other components, including the deep soy marinated tendon and tripe, and even shared between the two of us we felt like we each had enough. The soup was flavoured with chu hou paste, which is a traditional sauce for Cantonese style beef brisket, and nice and warming. The noodles were not extraordinary, rather acting as a mere vehicle for the rest of the very good bowl.

I wasn’t such a huge fan of the BBQ Pork and Over Easy Eggs with Rice ($16.80), but my partner loved it. I felt that the big slabs of char siu were actually not as flavoured as I am used to, which was fine, but didn’t help to carry the bulk of the rice underneath as well as I would have liked. The over easy egg was very well done, extremely soft and runny in the centre. It was only at the bottom of the rice that we found some soy sauce. I think ultimately this was a dish that would have been more suited to being served in a claypot with a bit of thick soy sauce on top, and the bowl format just didn’t work as well.

This rice noodle roll was fine, but too vegetarian for me. The rice noodles themselves were soft and not too oily, coated in a sauce of sesame seeds, hoisin, and probably peanut butter. The sauce wasn’t overpowering, but I just like my chang fen with a bit of prawn or meat in it.

The scrambled eggs and beef satay sandwich was pretty yum. This, the rice noodle roll, and the hot signature milk tea came to a combo total of $13.80, which is pretty decent. The satay beef was good, as was the very light and soft scrambled eggs. The bread was mostly de-crusted, although some edges still had a bit of unfortunate crust.

SECOND VISIT

These are the chicken wings in house made Swiss sauce ($8.80). I’ve recently been trying to lower my carb intake, so sadly many of the items on the menu at HKBS were mildly off limits to me on my second visit. The Swiss sauce in this dish is similar to the Swiss made stamp on my Chinese-made “Rolex” “Submariner”. More of an abstract vibe than a statement of origin, Swiss sauces are a purely Chinese based invention, a mixture of sugar, dark soy sauce, and shaoxing cooking wine. Classically boiled and shocked in an ice bath, these wings exhibited a good tender texture with a firm skin, however I must admit that after a couple of wings the strong shaoxing cooking wine flavour put me off having any more.

The beef brisket with special curry sauce and rice ($14.80) was a really good value, large meal of a classic Hong Kong style curry, big chunks of beef brisket, and potato served alongside a ball of rice. I appreciated that the curry and rice were served separately, minimising mess and also the desire to eat all of the rice. The beef brisket was tasty, though in my opinion could have been cooked to a higher degree of tenderness. The flavour of the curry was good overall, with the sauce highly compatible with the supplied rice.

The crispy pork belly with red beancurd sauce ($13.80) was really quite nice. The exterior batter is extremely crispy and made with fermented red bean curd (jiang dou fu 酱豆腐), which imparts a slightly salty, slightly sweet, and quite funky taste to the pork, almost similar to marmite pork ribs. The meat encased in the super crispy batter was moist, tender and fatty pork which tasted great on first eating, especially with the red sauce that neither my partner nor I could pinpoint as sweet-and-sour or sweet-chilli. Unfortunately as with many deep fried dishes this dish was a victim of entropy, and as our meal progressed on the loss of heat to the environment dulled its shine.

VERDICT
Overall I enjoyed, though I think charging $7 for a small bottle of milk tea is a bit absurd.

Hong Kong Bing Sutt
Shop 8/11-15 Deane St, Burwood NSW
(02) 8387 1820

Categories
Italian

Raineri’s Continental Delicatessen – Five Dock NSW Restaurant Review

Though our address doesn’t end in Five Dock, we consider ourselves to be somewhat Five Dock locals (the suburb housing the closest and most accessible Coles to us) even if the moderators of the Five Dock Families Facebook group disagree. After several months of walking past huge lines on the way to the grocery store, my partner and I both found ourselves hungry and free during a weekday before 10AM, and caught ourselves a couple of sandwiches without much of a wait at all.

As someone not particularly experienced with the art of the Italian sandwich, these were phenomenal. We had two different sandwiches ($15 each, pictured is half of each), one with ingredients picked out by my partner (stracciatella, mortadella, artichoke, capsicum, amongst other things), and another by the owner (sun dried tomatoes, prosciutto, fior di latte) between toasted focaccia. The number of possible combinations and permutations of ingredients at the counter was extreme, and I’m glad we were able to get an omakase panini, as it were.

The sandwiches were large, the price quite good, and overall very delicious. The ratio of cured meats to stracciatella was perfect so as to make the overall flavour balanced and not too salty, though this balance was somewhat lost in the panino with the fior di latte and prosciutto. This, as well as the comfortable wetness of the stracciatella would definitely make it my choice for the choice of cheese.

Apart from this, I don’t have any particular menu recommendations. I think any combination of antipasti, cheese, and meats is going to be a winner – the only challenge is getting your sandwich without waiting two hours in line.

Verdict: Quality local option. Will come back. Please petition the admins of Five Dock Families to open it up to nearby Five Dock refugees so that I have a place to understand the common thought surrounding the escalator up from the Coles parking lot.

Raineri’s Continental Delicatessen
97 Great N Rd, Five Dock NSW 2046

Categories
Café Latin American

La Mamita’s – Wollongong NSW Restaurant Review

It is tough for me, as a cat lover, to walk past a cafe with two cats on its banner.

My first visit to La Mamita’s was on the thirteenth of October 2021, just two days after the state of New South Wales had started opening up businesses followed a prolonged COVID-19 related shutdown. I was the only customer in the cafe, an eerie experience as there were at least three or four staff there.

I had a pastrami sandwich ($10), an item that I had seen on their specials board many times before as I walked past to visit different Vietnamese bakeries. The pastrami sandwich was a large, oversided sandwich of toasted bread. The heat from the toasting did not quite transmit through to the fillings ,which included unmelted cheese (perhaps Swiss or similar), bulk pickles, ham, and pastrami. I say the pickles were bulk, as I’m pretty sure every square centimetre of this toasted sandwich had a corresponding square centimetre of pickle – quite a nice and tangy surprise, as some sandwich makers are known to be miserly with their pickles. It was a shame that the cheese was not very melted, as I think melted or otherwise differently arranged cheese may have enhanced the experience. Though this sandwich was not the most gourmet sandwich around, I think ultimately for $10 it did its job.

La Mamita’s Cafe
2B/280 Crown St, Wollongong NSW 2500
(02) 4210 8995