Category: Marrickville

West Juliett

Review:

One weekend, my friends took me to a café that I was not quite aware of (it was out of my area). When we arrived at the café, I noticed that it was the café that was always busy when I went past it a few times. The name of the café is West Juliett.

The café described itself as making simple rustic food and coffee. At first I was quite afraid of the queue, but apparently it moved along quite quickly. Since there were three of us, we only ordered three items on the menu.

Breakfast plate of leg ham, ricotta, avocado, poached egg, tomato, toast – $16.90

You got each one of the items stated in the menu in a fashion that reminds me of children lining up their food on the plate. The description on the menu can also serves as a check box: poached egg…tick! Well, butter is not on the list but it was on the plate!

It is obviously rustic… but it is way too simple!

Soft scrambled eggs, cured salmon, sorrel, yoghurt, fennel on toast – $18.90

The soft scrambled eggs dish was more fitting to the rustic description in my imagination. It was simple, yet well presented!

On a side note: the yoghurt was pretty sour to eat on its own.

Poached eggs, avocado, feta, parsley, cress, lemon, dukkah on toast – $16.90

The dish was the best looking out of the three that we ordered on the day. It was full of green vegetables with the poached eggs and toast hiding underneath.

All elements in the dish also married up perfectly.

The final verdict for West Juliett

It felt like your typical weekend brunch at West Juliett. I love the fact that despite the queue we actually got the seat quite quickly. The dishes were pretty big. The taste was also there.

Did you know?

We also ordered the coffee but it was quite so-so. The milkshake was also quite ordinary especially when compared to similar restaurants around the area.

Rating for West Juliett:

7.5 / 10

Taste: 7.5 / 10

Price: $11 – $19 for big dishes

Place: 6.5 / 10

Details:

30 Llewellyn Street, Marrickville 2204

+61 2 9519 0101

https://www.facebook.com/westjuliettcafe

Jun 5, 2015
Old Thanh Huong

Review:

I seemed to be hanging around Marrickville these days and this week’s review is also from Marrickville! It is an interesting Vietnamese restaurant called Old Thanh Huong.

The interesting bit was that we were not there for its Vietnamese dishes. We went there because a colleague recommended a very good Indonesian dish from this restaurant (Yep, an Indonesian dish!).

When we arrived at the restaurant, we were a little bit sceptical. It was far away from hip or modern and the menu consisted of letters and numbers (no shiny pictures, etc). To compound our worries, the restaurant serves Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, and Indonesian food. It is usually never a good sign when you see quite a variety of dishes in a restaurant.

Nevertheless, we soldiered on and proceed with ordering the recommended dish: Chicken in Indonesian-Style Mentega Sauce. Indonesians usually refer it as Ayam Goreng Mentega. To our surprise, the portion was pretty decent and the chicken was awesome! It had a hint of chilli in it but they really nailed it. We also ordered the same mentega sauce but used rabbit as the other meat. Suffice to say, it did not work.

Our next dish was Crispy noodles with duck. It was quite a decent portion and probably the only non-spicy dish of the day. We also ordered XO Sauce Chicken fried rice. To my surprise, it was actually pretty spicy! My Indonesian friends loved it.

We also ordered Vietnamese Pancakes. This was our first time eating Vietnamese pancakes and we were very excited to see the size of the pancake (or technically more like an omelette). The pancake was filled with chicken, seafood and bean sprouts. You also need to eat it with lettuce and the Vietnamese fish sauce. It was very refreshing!

We closed our quite a big lunch with fried banana and ice cream.

The final verdict for Old Thanh Huong

Despite our early worries, Old Thanh Huong’s Mentega Sauce is the dish that will make us want to go back for more!

Did you know?

I know I did not write much about Vietnamese dishes. Chopin and My Saucepan actually ranked Old Thanh Huong the second best pho in Sydney! I actually tried it on my first visit there, but I didn’t take any pictures at that time.

Rating for Old Thanh Huong:

7.0 / 10

Taste: 7.5 / 10

Price: $11 – $20 per main course

Place: 6.5 / 10

Details:

356 Illawarra Road, Marrickville 2204

+61 2 99558 0863

Apr 7, 2015
The Gonis Schnitzelria

Review:

The restaurant that we reviewed this week is pretty well-known for its Schnitzel. As a matter of fact, The Goni’s Schnitzelria owned the bragging rights to be the Biggest Schnitzel in Sydney, probably matched by the Schnitzel Challenge by Austrian Schnizelhaus.

Four of us arrived at the restaurant feeling quite hungry and we decided to order three schnitzels and a bowl of chips (note: the schnitzels don’t come with chips). We were contemplating on ordering two bowls of chips but were quickly stopped by the waitress. In the end I can understand if she might think we were crazy for trying to order three schnitzels and two bowls of chips.

When the first schnitzel arrived, we quickly realised our blunders. The Mediterranean Schnitzel was a gigantic slab with generous parmesan cheese poured over it. Mediterranean is a chicken schnitzel with garlic, basil, pine nuts and walnuts with béchamel sauce.

Mediterranean Schnitzel – $24

We ordered veal for our next schnitzel, Criolla Schnitzel. It was veal schnitzel with a homemade beef mince sauce, corn and garnished with fresh chilli and parsley.

Criolla Schnitzel – $24

Our last schnitzel used cream sauce instead of melted cheese. The Boscaiola Schnitzel came with peas, mushrooms and bacon. The last one looked and felt very heavy. It looked heavy even if we removed the schnitzel!

Boscaiola Schnitzel – $24

Bowl of Chips – $6.50

We left the restaurant with three aluminium baking trays filled with more than half of our leftovers. Well, in the end, we know that we don’t have to cook any meals for the next couple of days!

The final verdict for The Goni’s Schnitzelria

Even with my love to eating big portions, I still could not finish even 40% of the schnitzel. That’s how big the portions were at The Goni’s Schnitzelria!

Did you know?

There are quite a lot of eating challenges that you can do in Sydney if you particularly love challenges. You can read some of them from a post by I ate my way through.

Rating for The Gonis Schnitzelria:

7.0 / 10

Taste: 7.0 / 10

Price: $24 – $27 per schnitzel

Place: 7.0 / 10

Details:

296 Marrickville Road, Marrickville 2204

+61 2 9560 2574

http://thegonisschnitzelria.com.au/

Mar 30, 2015
Mancora Peruvian Restaurant

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Unfortunately, Mancora has closed its doors for good.

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Review:

There was a discussion in the Sydney Food Bloggers facebook page about restaurants in Marrickville. The details were a bit sketchy but it ended up with Gaby from Lateral Eating suggesting that this week’s restaurant in review, Mancora Peruvian Restaurant, was one of the better Peruvian restaurants in Sydney.

We went there for lunch the weekend after the New Year. The streets were so very quiet and lots of restaurants were closed. I have been to a Peruvian restaurant before, so I know what I wanted to order. Having said that, the first two dishes were recommended by the chef as both of them were the ‘must have’s in Peruvian cuisines.

Peruvian sarsa criolla cassava

Our first dish is deep fried cassava with salsa criolla (that purple thingy), grated cheese and that yummy yellow sauce that I guess it was some kind of cheese sauce. I usually am not the biggest fan of cassava, especially when it’s hard to chew. However this cassava was so crunchy and delectable! This is technically a side dish, but I guess it looked more presentable as an entree.

Ceviche Clasico – $23

Diced blue eye fish marinated in key lemon juice with a blend of garlic, chilli, cilantro, Spanish onion & crushed white pepper. Served with caramelized sweet potato, corn & cancha

The chef told us that Ceviche was THE Peruvian dish. Apparently, it even has its own National Day of Ceviche in Peru on the 28^th of June!

We were amazed by the ceviche and it metaphorically begged to be eaten! What’s more enjoyable was that the taste met the delicate presentation.

Arroz D’Mariscos – $28

Marine cocktail mixture with crushed white pepper, Spanish onion & scampi (small lobster). Topped with parsley, lemon & parmesan cheese.

For our first main, the scampi obviously stood out! In addition to the scampi, they also put some seafood into the mix.

Arroz D’ mariscos is probably equivalent of Spanish’s paella. The distinction is that they don’t use Arborio rice.

Jalea Puerto Bravo – $26

Marine mixture of fried calamari rings, baby octopus, fish, prawns, mussel & black crushed pepper. Served with small portion of Peruvian sarsa criolla cassava, cancha, salted slices of dried banana & tartar cream.

Jalea Puerto Bravo is the Peruvian version of the seafood mix you found in fish shops. They have quite a distinct batter. It was soft, but not soggy and had quite a bit of crunch about it.

Oh, and what about that salted banana & tartar cream as your dipping sauce?

The final verdict for Mancora Peruvian Restaurant

It was a very enjoyable afternoon at Mancora Peruvian Restaurant. We love everything served on that day.

Did you know?

I am in love with a Peruvian / South American drink called Chicha Morada (or Purple Corn). If you see it on the menu, ORDER IT!

It is quite interesting how Mancora differentiate weekend and weekday menu. I am actually quite interested in their weekday menu as it has more exotic items in the menu! Usually restaurants divide made the distinction between lunch and dinner menu.

Rating for:

8.0 / 10

Taste: 8.0 / 10

Price: $20 – $30 per main dish

Place: 8.0 / 10

Details:

107 Addison Road, Marrickville 2204

+61 2 8065 6337

Jan 13, 2015