Tag: toastie

Categories
Café Korean

Little Couple Cafe – Campsie NSW Restaurant Review

Unlike Rockdale’s former Angry Gnome (RIP), a café named in keeping with the appearance of its owner, Little Couple’s small but cute space near the train station in Campsie is staffed by two seemingly extremely normal sized people.

I rarely post photos of spaces or decor on this blog. I’ve always felt that food always comes first, and that no amount of flowers or lit up branded signage can make up for bad food. However, I really liked how Little Couple was able to maximise the usage of their fairly small space, by providing a nice elevated seating area overlooking the kitchen, above what I presume is their pantry. The airconditioning was a nice reprieve from the 40 degree sun, and it was just a nice place to be. Sadly the mango smoothie ($7.50) pictured in this interior design review we honestly didn’t love. It felt a bit too sugary.

In terms of food we had this LC Beef Wrap ($15), a very reasonable sized toasted wrap with a large portion of bulgogi beef, spinach, tomato, cheese, and aioli. Each bite was juicy and yummy, and based on the quantity of meat supplied as well as the location of their shop, one local Korean internal medicine specialist we discussed the wrap with believes that they must be losing money on each wrap.

The K-Toast ($7) featuring buttered bread sandwiching a cabbage omelette and sugar and tomato sauce I loved less, mostly because I had misread it as a crab omelette. Taken on its own merits it was fine, but not something I’d get again.

Overall thoughts That bulgogi wrap, with this cafe’s prime location, has got to make a great grab and go for train commuters. I only hope their business model can sustain it, because local internal medicine specialist CJP thinks it might not be able to.

Little Couple Cafe
1/199 Beamish St, Campsie NSW 2194, Australia
+61 416 302 724

Categories
Bakery

Milkwood Bakery – Berry NSW Restaurant Review

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 Bourguignon Pie ($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.

Milkwood Bakery
109 Queen St, Berry NSW 2535
(02) 4464 3033

Categories
Bakery

Tuga Pastries – Alexandria NSW Restaurant Review

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.

Tuga Pastries Alexandria
10/112 McEvoy St, Alexandria NSW 2015
0412 664 165

Categories
Asian Fusion Café Japanese

Bloc145 – Redfern NSW Restaurant Review

Some restaurants deserve a wholeheartedly lukewarm response, and in my opinion Block145, a cafe we drove half an hour to eat at, is one of them.

We were tempted by the Salmon Okonomiyaki ($20) and a desire to relive some good meals we had overseas. Unfortunately the gap between expectation and reality was quite large in this dish. While the grilled salmon was well cooked with a crispy skin, that was the first and last superlative of the meal. The okonomiyaki itself I found disappointing, with a high flour content. It was sadly not what I was looking for.

After a recent success at Cafe Mckenzie in Randwick we decided to go for yet another Toastie with truffle oil, honey, and parmesan ($14). Sadly this particular toastie was far less exciting than the benchmark set by its competitor, with no great feeling of substance to it. It was quite small, and I would have much rathered more toastie than a salad I didn’t ask for.

These crispy smashed potatoes ($10) continued our breakfasts’ trend of being completely unsatisfying. I don’t really see what made them crispy or smashed. They really were essentially regular roast potatoes with a sprinkling of salt.

Pictured above, a photo of a bloody mary that I did not have. My partner did.

THOUGHTS
I’m sad about my trip to Bloc145. Their menu has so many wonderful looking items I am left wondering if I simply chose the wrong things, or if my experience would have been like this regardless of what I chose. I wouldn’t go back.

Bloc145
145 Redfern St, Redfern NSW 2016
0403 655 661

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