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.
This chicken half tandoori ($12) was good, and well priced.
This shahi rice platter ($23) was huge. No one warned us about the sheer amount of food we were ordering. We didn’t even spend that much. It was unreal. The chicken 65 and tata hua gosht was good. The rice was rice, and the dal tadka, something I’ve never ordered by itself, was also nice to add into the mix for a slurry like texture and moistness. This rice platter probably could have fed the two of us just on its own. Great value.
I’ve spent years trying to replicate the first amritsari fried fish dish I ever had, and sadly this ajwain fish ($18) was not it. The crumbs were too crummy for me.
$5 for a mango lassi. Not bad, but not the best.
Overall thoughts: Great value, huge portions. Can recommend, but wouldn’t travel for. Order less, my friend.
We needed to find somewhere local to eat one night when I was on call for strokes. The idea was to have a quick in and out meal, at a place where I could still be back at work within the requisite period to do a quick NIHSS. The quick in and out bit didn’t go quite to plan, but the food was great.
The pappadums were free because they forgot to make our order for 45 minutes. My partner generally likes pappadums, I have no strong interest in them, but I’m happy we didn’t have to pay $1 each for them.
This half tandoori chicken ($18) was great. Such good flavours, whilst remaining not too salty, and so juicy on the inside as well. Served on a sizzling hot plate.
We had some keema naan ($8), garlic naan ($5), and cheese garlic naan ($7). No complaints about the quality here, though I guess it is a bit expensive at $5-8 per bread.
I was a bit embarassed about ordering the Dehli style butter chicken ($25), but this was actually a bit spicy, as well as yummy. It was, as the kids would say, ‘bomb’.
This kulfi, Indian style ice cream with pistachio, was also comped as an apology for the lateness of the meal. It tasted good, and at $7 is a nice novel thing to try. Though we were a bit miffed at waiting quite a while for our food, the subsequent service and free stuff more than made up for it. They were very apologetic.
Can recommend.
Not Just Curries 66 Wigram St, Harris Park NSW 2150 (02) 9893 8202
We paid a visit to Faheem Fast Food’s Strathfield restaurant (they also have one in Enmore) after a day of medium-intensity primary study where I learned and promptly forgot about the determinants of cardiac output, amongst other things.
Though the very entrance of the restaurant had a bit of a uraemic smell, this was quickly overcome by walking deeper into the restaurant, and I’m glad we didn’t allow it to turn us back, because the food was pretty good.
The half garlic tandoori chicken ($14) came out of a fridge at the front of the restaurant pre-butterflied and pre-skewered and straight into an oven (presumably a tandoor, though I won’t pretend that I know what one looks like, nor did I pay close enough attention at whatever magic box turned the raw chicken into cooked chicken. Looking online it does look like commercial tandoors have an stainless steel exterior, so it was probably that). This chicken, though smaller in terms of muscle development to many other chickens, came out extremely juicy and perfectly tasty, probably owing to the lack of thick muscle to try and cook through evenly. It was overall a really well done tandoori chicken, with a superfluous but not unwelcome hint of garlic which I wouldn’t pay 50 cents for again.
It’s very tricky for my partner to walk past a restaurant and not order some kind of potato, and Faheem Fast Food’s aloo baigan ($15.50) was this night’s victim. Though by no means experts in South Asian food, both my partner and I enjoyed this very mild mix of potato and eggplant, though I think I still prefer aloo mutter more (my intern KP made me a very good one recently, and honestly this aloo baigan can’t compete at all. I doubt she will ever see this. By the time this post is published she will probably be a fully fledged psychiatrist.)
Haleem, the king of curries ($18), a mix of four types of lentils and some shredded beef was honestly just fine. I’m glad that they looked at our skin colour and modulated the amount of spice in this “red chilli level” dish, because I don’t think my partner could’ve taken any more. I know that the vibe is for it to be a bit of a thick stew rather than a meat dish, but my disappointment in not having actual chunks of beef to chew between my molars is unbound by actual culture and tradition. Not my thing, but again much appreciated by my partner.
I thought that the cheese and garlic naan ($6) was to cheesy. A lot of complaints, I know, from a guy who can neither pronounce nor make any of this food himself but it is what it is.
OVERALL THOUGHTS Faheem Fast Food’s tandoori chicken was the obvious standout, though the other dishes that we tried enthused my partner much more than they did me. Mazaidar Foods remains my go-to for late night Pakistani and Indian food in the general 10km radius of Parramatta.
Finishing work at 9PM in Westmead means that the best food options available are generally Subcontinental in nature. Mazaidar Foods in North Parramatta is a late-closing Pakistani restaurant, offering a variety of Pakistani and Indian dishes paired with really great and welcoming service.
Mazaidar’s naan was very good. I suspect that part of this was us having it fresh instead of having to wait for naan to be delivered, but really it was just so warm and nice right out of the tandoor. We enjoyed the garlic and cheese naan (Left – $4.75), which had cheese between two layers of bread, a little bit more than the butter naan (Right – $3.50), though both are safe choices.
Sadly the papadums ($3.50) were not free. They didn’t have any spices adherent to the dough – rather these were ground into the flour. My partner didn’t like this as much as most other papadums, but I actually liked them more.
The half tandoori chicken ($10.50) was of normal quality. No better or worse than any other, though the price was quite good.
The seekh kebab (4 pieces for $12) were nice, soft, moist, with a little bit of gamey flavour but not enough to overpower us.
The beef nehari ($17.50) featured huge chunks of beef, slow cooked in a only-slightly spicy thick sauce. The beef was quite tender, and it was quite good to eat with the naan. I’m told that this is quite an authentic nehari as far as neharis go, but I wouldn’t be able to confirm or deny this myself.
My partner loved the Aloo Mutter ($15.50), a thick, spicy curry of potatoes and peas. I don’t normally go for a vegetarian curry, but these two legumes worked synergistically to create a good dish with differing mushy textures. Pretty good.
VERDICT I’m by no means an expert in Pakistani food, but I think that Mazaidar Foods provides both good food and good service for the late night Parramatta market.
Mazaidar Foods 515 Church St, North Parramatta NSW 2151 (02) 9630 0319
This is going to be a quick one. We got delivery from Indian Biryani Restaurant during our last run of nights. I had the Chicken 65 Biryani ($19, pictured) and the Achari Chicken ($14, not pictured). Both were very tasty, and probably a bit too tasty to be eaten alone without any non-flavoured staple food. The Chicken 65 Biryani was very edible and safe. My colleagues had some chicken tikka salad and the butter chicken and allegedly all was good.
My overall impression is this: Not many places deliver to work. It really wasn’t bad and we’ll probably get it again before the year is through.
UPDATE In 2024, we actually went to the store.
Everything was still quite good, and the prices are still really good too. I somehow managed to convince my partner to have mutton biryani ($18.99) which we normally avoid due to a fear of gaminess. Luckily, it was actually quite delicious, and not gamey at all.
The butter chicken ($18.99) was a very normal butter chicken at a very normal price. No complaints, though it’s a bit of an insult to one’s intelligence to end your prices with a .99 suffix. Just call it $19 mate.
The garlic and cheese naan ($5 ea, $10 pictured) was a not a standout, a bit less good than the best ones that we’ve had around the city.
No complaints about this juicy and tasty half tandoori chicken ($14.99), served on a reflective aluminium foil surface for extra ambiance.
Indian Biryani Restaurant 544 Princes Hwy, Rockdale NSW 2216
