La Latina, Chatswood

Excluding Salsa's in the Chatswood Chase food court, La Latina is probably the only Latin American eatery around the area. It's a welcome change, with its focus on crunchy corn pockets (arepas) and Colombian coffee. It also sells a variety of South American products, including pepper pastes, chilli sauces, grains (e.g. Bolivian quinoa) and frozen pre-mix smoothies in exotic flavours like lulo, a citrus fruit, and feijoa (also referred to as 'pineapple guava').

Sauces and salsas for sale

The coffee's not bad - Colombian coffee beans, not too milky, not too watery :)

Flat white

I also liked the mango smoothie, but it came with a normal straw, which wasn't practical for this particular drink. It was so thick that I had to drink straight from the glass.

Mango smoothie ($5.00)

The arepas have an addictive light crunch, but they're also quite dense, heavy and a tad overpowering. This is easily overcome by adding hot sauce (see below). It's actually quite magical as the spiciness somehow draws out the flavours of each ingredient and takes the emphasis away from the starchy corn bread. The fillings range from pork and beef to vegetarian. The Boy and I picked similar fillings - chorizo and the "Monster" (containing the whole works - beef, shredded pork, chorizo, sour cream and cheese).

It wasn't love at first bite, but these corn pockets really grew on me. Keen to return to taste the lulo and feijoa smoothies!

"Monster" Arepas ($10.00)

Hot sauce

Chorizo Arepas ($9.00) + Guacamole ($1.00)

Dukbaegi, Chatswood

Dukbaegi is a new Korean restaurant right next door to Makanai (the former site of dessert cafe Zen Q). Its head chef, Danny Hwang, draws on his Korean heritage and influence of his mother's cooking to deliver an admirable range of stone pot dishes - including bibimbap, hot pot and noodles.

I've been here a couple of times already, and it's the Boy's new favourite Korean haunt in Chatswood.

Turnover is high, causing the lines outside to shrink and grow reasonably quickly. We weren't sure whether we could have mandu (Korean dumplings) dine-in, or whether it was a takeaway option only (since the menu suggests that the former is the case). The waiter clarified that we could eat-in with mandu, so when given a choice between steamed and pan fried, we opted for the crunch of the latter.

I had a pork and kim chi mandu, while the Boy chose the chicken, both to be dipped in the soy sauce-based accompaniment. The kim chi in mine provided extra crunch, spice and moisture, but other than that, they weren't too different from each other.

Pan fried mandu ($2.50 each)

Kim chi with pork mandu pp ($2.50)

My main was the BBQ beef bibimbap. Notably, this particular option didn't come with egg (though there are other dishes in the menu that do), and not all the vegetables were typically what you would find in Korean food (i.e. the corn kernels and slices of capsicum). I personally love these vegetables, so I was really pleased with what I had.

The 3 little side dishes were bean sprouts (which I offloaded to the Boy), spicy cold tofu and little bits of Korean pancake).

BBQ beef bibimbap ($13.90)

The first time the Boy ate the chilli prawn hotpot, it was excruciatingly spicy for me (and just tolerable for him). This time, they'd taken the spiciness down a notch, so it was hot but not overwhelmingly so. They're generous with the prawns, and the sauce is really tasty. It's made me believe that their rice dishes are pretty safe choices.

Chilli prawn hotpot ($14.90)

During my first visit, I'd ordered a spicy seafood noodle dish (can't remember the exact name), which was ultra hot. The Korean rice noodles had a lovely texture at times, but they also had a tendency to clump up together, creating hard, starchy and chewy lumps of noodle (which I know is a huge bother to a lot of people).

I'm keen to see how its newly-opened udon neighbour fares.

Baroque Bistro, The Rocks

Last week, I headed to the Aroma Festival in Circular Quay/ The Rocks. I naively hoped to grab a cup of coffee and a lardy hot dog and didn't take some things into account:

1. It was lunch time (albeit a bit late)
2. The lines were insane; and
3. Gourmet sausages always rapidly deplete.

And so, our 'quick and cheap' lunch turned into a couple of not-as-cheap-as-I-wanted open sandwiches at Baroque Bistro. How did this happen?

Well... We were meandering along George Street and turned onto the pedestrian street in-between Guylian and Orient Hotel, where all the food stalls were located. Stomach was rumbling and the crowds made our walking speed a torturous amble. Eventually we made our way along Playfair Street, where the crowd was a little thinner. It was then that we spotted only a petite line at Baroque. We joined it and thankfully only had to wait a few minutes to receive a table (as there were only two of us, we ended up taking priority!). And thus ends my long-winded explanation.

Service was brisk and efficient, providing us with a reprieve.

We decided to go halves with 2 tartines. Both were too soggy to eat without the aid of cutlery, but the flavours were simplistic and pleasant. It was a shame that these were the only two meaty tartines available to choose from, as two pork dishes made me crave for a bit more variety.

The sausage was accompanied with a couple of cherry tomatoes and a lot of onion, which had been sauteed lightly.

Grilled Toulouse sausage tartine ($14.00)

They were more generous with the pulled pork, which was once again surrounded by onion - this time of the less pungent red variety.

Pulled pork shoulder tartine ($14.00)

Overall verdict? Indifferent. The lunch wasn't particularly filling, but it was the early afternoon and we were planning on having dinner in a couple of hours, anyway. Most people probably order dessert after this (there was plenty of stomach room for that!), but we only had a few hours left to do some shopping and decided to leave.

Mother Chu's Vegetarian Kitchen, Sydney CBD

Mother Chu's is one of the many places I tried out while working in the city. It is also one of the few places that I will not be visiting again. This entry will only cover one dish. And though normally I would say that one dish is not enough to form a strong opinion about a place, my dislike of this restaurant does not stem from the food, but from my atrocious experience of Mother Chu's as a whole. The food merely supports my view that a repeat visit is not justifiable.

When I visited around lunch time, it was around three quarters full. It took around 10 minutes for a waitress to serve us, during which our gestures for attention were dismissed. It didn't help that, upon the entry of a woman with a massive pram, they decided to seat her deep inside the restaurant (manoeuvring her through the tiny gaps between tables) rather than at an area where it would be easier for her to situate herself.

When we finally placed our orders, we waited for at least another half hour for our fairly standard meals to arrive. I ordered a wonton noodle soup, which, at any other Chinese take-away shop, would have arrived within ten minutes.

The food itself tasted alright - not bad, but not fantastic either. They did the soup and noodles pretty well (especially considering they would not have been able to use meat-based stock). The vegetarian wontons were slightly sweet - there might have been pumpkin inside. There were also carrots, sliced raw mushrooms, chopped bits of cabbage, and what might have been kai lan scattered throughout.

Wonton noodle soup ($8.80)

Thus ends my rant. Based on the slow kitchen, poor service and mediocre food, I will not be recommending this place to anyone on their lunch break.

Sagunja, Mandarin Centre, Chatswood

Generally, I loathe sushi. Cheap sushi, anyway. And by cheap, I mean those dodgy sushi trains that claim to charge you $2.90 to $5+ a plate with the majority of sushi offered falling within the upper brackets of their price list. The sushi served is often poor quality with dry rice and tough nori.

Sagunja, on the other hand, is different. There is no price hierarchy, which means that it's easier to budget for, the portions are great for the price, and the food is a lot tastier. I've been coming here since they opened yearssss ago, back when all plates were $2.50. Since then, they have raised their prices in increments all the way up to... $2.90. It's distorted billing a little bit, as $20 happily bought you 8 plates. Nevertheless, they allow for split bills, and $2.90 is still a steal in comparison to places like Sushi Bar Makoto.

The number one thing I look forward to is their scallops. They have two types - raw and half-grilled. The raw scallops aren't marinated with anything, so the seafood taste can be a bit too strong for my liking. The marinated half-grilled scallops, on the other hand, are amazing. Every time I go, I stuff my face with at least 4 plates of them and scan the food preparation area eagerly for any activity involving blowtorches.

Raw scallop on rice

 

Half-grilled scallops

The half-grilled salmon below was served with chopped Spanish onion and the same sauce used with the cooked scallops. As with the scallops, the proportion of meat to rice is excellent. 

Half-cooked salmon

The salmon sashimi is fresh, but I tend not to eat more than one plate of these, as my taste buds tire of raw food easily. It wasn't too fishy, but I would prefer that they squeeze some lime or lemon over the top.

Salmon sashimi

The slices of salmon below were attended to by the blowtorch and garnished with Japanese mayonnaise and nori furikake (seaweed and sesame seed mix). The garnishing added a welcome touch of salt.

Half-cooked salmon

Just as a note, if you're like me in the late 2000s and had sashimi-obsessed friends but was unwilling to risk contracting something from the consumption of raw fish, Sagunja does offer a range of cooked dishes. These include takoyaki (octopus balls), plates of teriyaki/ chilli chicken strips, chicken schnitzel sushi, gyoza (dumplings) and deep fried prawn wontons.

Sea Bay, Sydney CBD

As mentioned in my Saap Thai post, I really wanted to check out Sea Bay, as it was recommended by a friend who said they sell cheap dumplings. Sea Bay is a slightly dingy Chinese eatery, but if you're familiar with the ones in Kingsford, you'll be too used to this kind of diner to care too much about the decor, ambience or apparent cleanliness. In this second attempt at entering the premises, we managed to score the last table and were squeezed into a corner.

One thing I was pleased about was the generous portion of chilli oil & flakes, as it's not something generally done in Sydney. The dishes were prepared quickly and came out piping hot.

The first thing I launched myself at was the plate of pan fried meat dumplings. I liked the crunch of the dumpling skin, but when I reached the meat inside, it was evident that the cook had gone wild with the salt.

Pan fried dumplings (meat) ($10.80)

 Secondly, I tried the bean noodle soup - not making the connection that bean noodles are mung bean noodles (which I adore). It was surprising to find tomatoes in the soup, but the mushrooms were standard. I can't say too much about it - tasty but not particularly memorable (and at least it wasn't as salty as the dumplings).

Mushroom and vegetable soup with bean noodles ($10.80)

  Just as with the pan fried dumplings, the boiled dumpling filling was too salty. The effect was perhaps not as bad because the skin hadn't had as much contact with salt as the pan fried skin. The meat they used was the same as the meat in the pan fried dumplings (we didn't get to choose the meat for the boiled dumpling, so the filling was a surprise).

Boiled dumplings ($10.80)

  In conclusion, my dislike of Sea Bay isn't the ear-drum-bursting lunch crowd, or the fact that they've crammed as many chairs and tables as possible into each square metre (making it virtually impossible to get in or out where you're sitting back to back), or that despite these things it's still an immense challenge to get a table. My aversion towards Sea Bay is much more basic than that.

They just need to hold off on the sodium chloride.

Saap Thai, Sydney CBD

My friend and I were heading towards Sea Bay because we heard they served cheap dumplings. Unfortunately, at the time it was peak lunch hour and it was absolutely packed, so we moved on to its neighbour, Saap Thai. Saap Thai is pretty small - we were sitting on one end, at the second last table, so the photo below will give you a pretty good idea of just how limited space is.

Sitting far away from the sun

They were evidently well versed with lunch crowds, as the food came soon after we ordered.

My Panang beef curry with rice was incredibly large - there was an abundance of rice (there must have been 2 rice bowls of it at least) and plenty of beef. The beef was fairly tender and the cut chosen was reasonable (most of the strips were entirely edible, not the sinewy nervy bits that cheap restaurants often give you). The curry was moderately spicy, quite sweet, and slightly milky. The beans and broccoli didn't seem old, making the overall quality of the dish excellent given the price and generous servings.

Panang beef curry with rice ($8.90)

I would like to report a similarly good experience with the sides I had, but they were pretty bland.

Firstly, the vegetarian curry puffs were limp and soggy, while the filling wasn't memorable. I don't know why I even bothered ordering curry puffs in a Thai restaurant, but evidently my mind was elsewhere at the time. 

Secondly, the spring rolls were crispy, but they went overboard with the noodles and there wasn't much else inside. Once again, they lacked flavour. I had a couple of small bites and didn't bother finishing the rest. And once again, I'll think twice before ordering spring rolls at a Thai place. The carrots on which the spring rolls and curry puffs were served looked like dried bits of carrot skin, brown and old.

Vegetable curry puffs x 2 ($2.50); Vegetarian spring rolls x 2 ($2.50)

All in all, a good place for a quick and cheap lunch. Just don't expect much more.

It's Time for Thai, Kingsford

It's Time for Thai is one of the many casual restaurants on Anzac Parade - except slightly nicer than the myriad of Chinese takeaways in the area, with its funky multi-coloured lights and wooden benches. Having eaten lunch at this restaurant various times throughout the past few months, I can definitely say that it fills up quickly but also has quite a high turnover of customers (though be forewarned that the timing of dish delivery is hit and miss).

As with a lot of other 'Thai' restaurants, there is a tendency for the food to be made sweeter to accommodate the local palate. It's Time for Thai is no exception. The pricing of the lunch specials, however, is excellent, resulting in value for money where everything chicken and beef is $10, lamb is $13, and... well... the list goes on.

The lunch menu

When ordering one of their curry or soup dishes, you can choose between rice or roti canai. I've had both their green and red curries, which taste pretty much the same - they're both milky and sweet. The massaman curry is full of potato and meat (beef, in my case), has a fair bit of sweetness, but is also quite spicy. The roti canai is dense but flaky, and, despite being quite small in diameter, is quite filling as they give you two pieces of it (though I'm a fairly small eater).

Beef massaman curry with roti ($10)

I've also tried their noodles stir fried in chilli and basil sauce. Not limited to just rice, you can request both rice noodles and egg noodles! The portions are generous, with plenty of meat and vegetables. The flavour isn't bad and it makes a satisfying lunch.

Beef chilli and basil sauce egg noodles ($11)

Other dishes:

Chicken pad thai ($10)

Crispy chicken with rice + fried egg ($12)

Chicken pad kee mao ($10)

Overall: Value for money

Sedap Rasa, Kingsford

This particular post will be fairly short, as this one involved a quick one dish meal. A few weeks ago, I was strolling along Anzac Parade looking for somewhere to have lunch, and I came upon Sedap Rasa with its giant sign advertising its lunch specials - $8.50 for a plate of rice and 3 side dishes ($7.50 if you flash them your student card). Apologies for the particularly bad photos!

Street view

  Lunch there is done cafeteria-style, with ordering carried out through gesturing at the dishes of choice, the entire selection being stored in the bain maries.

Interior

I'll commence with the rice. To be quite frank, it was terribly stale. Dry and hard in places, it was very much like several days' old leftover rice. It didn't have the same texture as undercooked rice has, which lends greater weight to my suspicions.

Toppings:

1. Deep fried poached egg with chilli - pretty tasty.

2. Curry chicken -  they gave me a bony part of the chicken, which meant that the lesser amount of meat was balanced off with the moist texture of what meat there was. The curry was tasty and milder than the other two toppings.

3. Chopped beans with potato and sambal chilli - the beans tasted surprisingly fresh and the potato complemented it pretty well.

In summary: Bad rice. Pretty good toppings. Though cheap, there are heaps of better places to eat along Anzac Pde though.