Category: Kensington

Kensington was first written in Latin as Chenesitone. The University of New South Wales main campus is also located in Kensington.

Pempek Clovelly

Review:

Generally speaking if you compare it with the price in Indonesia, Indonesian food in Sydney is very expensive! However, if you compare it to Sydney’s food prices, they are still pretty cheap. One restaurant that I frequented is Pempek Clovelly.

Pempek is a traditional fish cake originated from the city of Palembang in Indonesia. The unique aspect of pempek is that it comes with vinegar sauce. The sauce is a combination of palm sugar, garlic, vinegar, salt, and chili. The sauce is an integral part of the pempek dish. So, if you don’t get the sauce right, you will spoil the taste. For those of you who have never tasted pempek before, I must warn you that the dish is sweet and sour. The sweet and sour taste usually dominates the flavour.

These days, you can pretty much get pempek from any big cities in Indonesia. However, it is still considered a rarity in Australia. Pempek Clovelly is one of the few restaurants that sells pempek in Sydney (or Australia).

They have six different pempek: ball, stick, tofu, skin, fish cake with egg (nicknamed ‘the submarine’) and omelette. Personally, I like the submarine and omelette with an extra fish cake skin. Being in Sydney, Pempek Clovelly separated the chili from its vinegar sauce.

Pempek Omelette – $7.50

Pempek Skin – $2.50

In addition to pempek, they also sell quite a variety of dishes that are only priced up to $10. In this occasion we ordered their Chicken Noodles. It was quite a simple chicken noodles with meatballs, mushrooms and veggies.

The final verdict for Pempek Clovelly

Being a specialist in pempek, Pempek Clovelly definitely delivered one of the best pempek I have ever tasted. Pempek is a sweet and sour fish cake. So you might need to adjust your taste palate to enjoy it.

Rating for Pempek Clovelly:

7.0 / 10

Taste: 7.5 / 10

Price: $2.50 – $7.50 per piece

Place: 6.5 / 10

Details:

198 Anzac Parade, NSW 2033

+61 2 9697 0009

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May 20, 2015
Sushi Tengoku

Review:

Back in 2011, I reviewed Sushi Tengoku with one major issue: wait time. So, what’s so different this time around?

Sushi and Sashimi

Sushi was the thing I love the most at Sushi Tengoku. They are nice, extra large, and served pretty fast! We never miss ordering aburi salmon and aburi scallops. Some people said that the sea urchin sushi was nice, but we always have difficulties in trying to find which one to cut from our order.

If you want variety, we suggest you to order sushi or sashimi moriawase.

Sushi rolls and small dishes

Whenever we are in Sushi Tengoku, we always ordered tamago roll and spider roll. Sushi tengoku’s sushi rolls were humongous as always! Trying to finish them was quite a task.

If you can stand fish head, I suggest you to try teriyaki salmon fish head. For only $5, it is by far the best value for money dish.

Specials

Specials are the one place that was problematic last time around. This time, we upped the ante and ordered two specials: Baked Scallops and Volcano Roll.

We were pretty pleased that the baked scallops were served reasonably fast and they were actually bigger. Baked scallops consisted of scallops, salmon, fish roe, and mayonnaise.

The volcano roll was pretty interesting. There were eight sushi maki with charred (aburi) crab meat.

The new verdict for Sushi Tengoku

We’re pretty impressed with the changes that happened at Sushi Tengoku! Still the same gigantic sushi and baked scallops, but now without the ridiculously long wait time!

Did you know?

My Japanese friend once told me that a good sushi was not judged by the quality of meat, but was actually the intricate process to produce its rice!

Sushi Tengoku is the second restaurant that All About Food blog revisited (Churrasco being the other one).

Why do we revisit?

Some restaurants we visit regularly. If we think that the restaurant has improved significantly, we’ll try to get a new post for that restaurant.

Sushi Tengoku’s Rating:

7.5 / 10

Taste: 8.0 / 10

Price: $20 – $30 per person

Place: 6.5 / 10

Details:

121 Anzac Parade, Kensington NSW 2033

02 9663 3388

They don’t have a website, but they do have Sushi Tengoku facebook page.

May 12, 2014
Wow Bulgogi

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Unfortunately, Wow Bulgogi has closed its doors.

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Rating:

6.5 / 10

Taste: 7/10

Price: $50 for the set

Place: 6.5/10

Review:

This will be a very short review of Wow Bulgogi Korean restaurant as we didn’t order individual dishes, but instead we ordered the BBQ plate set menu.

One of the bonus points of eating in Korean restaurant is the complimentary side dishes that they gave you. In Wow Bulgogi, there were five of them! Four of them were given as share plates that consisted of kimchi, marinaded tofu, mashed potatoes, and pickles and a plate of Korean coleslaw. They were all pretty okay with the tofu slightly better than the rest.

For the BBQ set menu, they have three options; easily named Special BBQ Set A – C. The set price starts from $50 and it is not advisable to choose set C unless you have more than two people. Just to let you know, you need to grill the meat yourself.

We ordered Special BBQ Set A and it consisted of marinaded beef ribs, marinaded beef with Korean traditional soy sauce, pork belly, ox tongue, and beef thin skirt. They were only lightly seasoned and didn’t capture my interest.

I was actually more interested in the dish we ordered for our son, steamed egg. It was nice and fluffy. There was another dish that I liked – but the name escaped my mind (such a slacker!!) – They were deep-fried nori rolls with glass noodle inside.

The final verdict for Wow Bulgogi

Wow Bulgogi restaurant is okay for an everyday dining, especially with five side dishes. However, there was nothing to warrant special recommendations to visit the restaurant if you are on the other side of the city.

Did you know?

There was a Korean restaurant in Rosebery that we used to go to that had very similar BBQ set menu. We went to Wow Bulgogi because we thought we would get similar quality dishes.

Unfortunately this restaurant has now closed down.

Details:

174 Anzac Parade, Kensington NSW 2033

+61 2 9697 9282

Feb 15, 2013
Khing Thai

Rating:

7 / 10 Taste: 7/10

Price: $40-$60

Place: 7.5/10

Review:

Before you go nuts on the total price here, I must say that we ordered way too much for our tummy’s capacity. The whole fish was so big that we didn’t even finish a quarter of it! Let’s just rewind a bit, and I’ll explain in more details…

We went to Khing Thai restaurant because we were told by our friend that this restaurant was worth a visit. We were very impressed with the place. It had a nice and cosy feeling about it. They had a nice open kitchen setting (like any modern Thai places these days) and comfy table (and sofa) seating arrangements.

Soft Shell Crab – $9.90 – Deep-fried and crispy salt and peppered soft shell crab served with mixed salad and pickled ginger

The first dish got me thinking ‘I was right to order four dishes’ since it was a solitary crab. It was nice and crunchy with the usual optional sweet chili sauce.

Thai Fried Rice – $10.90 – Traditional Thai fried rice with egg, onion, cherry tomato and Chinese broccoli sprinkle with ground white pepper

The thought began to shift when I saw the fried rice’s portion. The picture didn’t really do justice since it was only compared to the size of plate. We could have just ordered two plates of fried rice and still left with a full tummy!

BBQ Chicken – $14.90 – Sliced chicken breast, grilled and marinated in turmeric powder and traditional Thai herbs served with mixed salad and sweet chilli sauce

Our next dish was a generous serving of BBQ chicken. They were perfectly grilled slices of chicken breast. You had a choice of making it sweeter with the sweet chili sauce or saltier with the soy chili sauce. If you ordered Thai Fried Rice like me, I suggest you leave both sauces and just enjoy it as is. The chicken itself already had a char-grill sweetness to it.

Whole Fish Khing Soy Sauce – $24.90 – Khing Thai’s homemade soy sauce made with young ginger strips, crushed garlic, soy bean, onions and shallots

We were in awe when the fish was brought out. It was one gigantic fish on a plate! They said we were lucky that the fishes in the market that day were all big. The fish’s size didn’t compromise its taste. It was perfectly steamed and very rich in flavour.

The final verdict for Khing Thai

Although it might be just above university students’ price range, Khing Thai delivered larger-than-usual dishes to make up for it. Coupled this with nice seating arrangements and you got yourself a decent place to eat in Kensington.

Details:

1/240-268 Anzac Parade, Kensington

Phone: +61 2 9662 0900

http://khingthai.com/

Nov 4, 2012
Kensington Peking Restaurant

Rating:

7 / 10

Taste: 7.5/10

Price: $25 per person

Place: 6.5/10

Review:

I have heard about this legendary Peking duck restaurant for ages but I haven’t got the chance to visit. I can proudly say that I have now visited Kensington Peking restaurant twice after my initial visit almost a month ago!

Without further ado, I present you the indescribable Peking duck. For the whole duck, we got three-course meal out of it – not bad for a $41 price tag! First course of the duck was Peking duck with side dishes of pancake, cucumber, spring onion, and hoisin sauce. I really couldn’t stop enjoying the crispiness of its skin and the juicy meat.

San choy bow was the second duck course. It was not really my favourite dish since there were a lot more vegetables involved than I would like to. The third course was Noodles with shredded duck. This one was actually a distant last in the actual order of appearance, as with any noodles in a Chinese restaurant.

My group and I had a different opinion about the next dish, drunken chicken. Most of them didn’t like it since it was cold and looked unappetising. On the other hand, I found that the chicken was really great with the rice wine and it was the cheapest dish of the day! I also liked our next dish, Shredded beef, and this time I wasn’t alone. The beef was extra crunchy, fried to perfection and a lot less oily.

Just when you thought you had enough of anything fried, we also ordered salt and pepper white bait. It’s just like the better tasting white baits all over town. The white baits here were slightly fatter, thus meatier, than normal. I kinda like the crunchy one, but the taste was still better than the average. Steamed fish ginger and shallot had a bit more than average shallots but the fish fillets.

I wouldn’t comment the last two dishes since they were just stir-fried vegetables. One was all greens and the other had tofu and beansprouts.

The final verdict: Kensington Peking really lived up to my expectations! They have (in cost-benefit term) the most cost effective Peking duck compared to its taste.

Did you know?

There were plenty of Easter shows happening around Sydney. We went to the one in Entertainment Quarter. It was a free event with a lot less goody bags, but it was still heaps of fun.

Details:

172 Anzac Parade, Kensington NSW 2033

+61 2 9313 7100

Apr 16, 2012
Sushi Tengoku

Rating:

6.5 / 10

Taste: 8 /10

Price: $20 – $30

Place: 6/10

Review:

Before I start this review, I must give you several advanced warnings when visiting Sushi Tengoku. 1. For your convenience, you MUST book in advance. 2. If you want to order Baked Scallops, you MUST mention it when you make the booking. 3. Be prepared to allocate 1 – 1.5 hours of dinnertime since the dishes will sometimes take a while to be served.

I have never found this restaurant to be empty during dinnertime, maybe if you arrived past 9 PM you would have better ambience. The tables were quite densely arranged. They had a very simple menu (a 2-sided list of food) and if you knew your Japanese food, you could order any Sushi, even they were not on the menu!

If you only exclusively eat the Sashimi or the raw Sushi then you might be able to blitz thru the night because they are always the first ones to arrive. With that being said, our first dishes of the night were (surprise surprise) Aburi Scallops and Salmon. These were not your everyday Sushi. They were gigantic! They were so big that you could not even see the rice below the fish (with the case of Scallops, they put two on one rice).

We then had the entrees dishes, Takoyaki and Crabmeat and Avocado Salad. The takoyaki was just average. The salad looked pretty bright and tasted nice. Both dishes were sort of a staple dish that you can get out of any Japanese restaurants in town.

The next dishes that came to our table were the Salmon Head Teriyaki and Sushi Rolls. The first dish might not be for everyone, but I do love fish head. This one particularly was fabulous. They deep fried the fish and dip it in Teriyaki sauce, creating a crunchy, yet soft, fish skin and meat.We ordered two Sushi rolls on this occasion, Soft-shelled Crab and Tamago Roll. The rolls were brilliant, and massive. The crab was crunchy and the tamago (egg) was soft and sweet.

One of our longest wait was the Baked Scallops. But I’m telling you it was worth the wait. It was a quite small dish of baked scallops and salmon on a bed of mayonnaise and fish roe. The real turn off was really the wait, but other than that everything was so perfect.

The final verdict: If you can get past a long waiting time, slightly above average price, and average table setting, then Sushi Tengoku is a good place to eat. I was going to give a higher rating for this one for the taste, but other factors dragged them down considerably.

The sushis are massive and baked scallop is just over the top. If you don’t mind a fish looking at you, then the Salmon Head is really a bargain!

Did you know?

Kensington is also one of the suburbs without an outstanding restaurant. There are several non-chain restaurants but I am not sure of their quality.

Location:

121 Anzac Parade, Kensington NSW 2033

May 11, 2011