Habib's Charcoal Chicken - Bankstown

Habib's Charcoal Chicken

Recently, I have been going visiting a Lebanese Chicken place in Granville once or twice a week. So, I was pleasantly surprised when we decided to head down to Bankstown for Habib's. I've heard a lot about this place. Many of my friends have mentioned how awesomeness the garlic sauce is.

Our chicken is cooking!

Chips with Chicken salt, or should I say heaps of chicken salt with some sprinkles of chips on the side. If you love chicken salt, you would love this place as they provide chicken salt shakers on each table. These french fries style chips is not really my thing, I prefer the thicker cut chips from El Janna .

Chicken Salt with a side of Chips

The main dish! A whole chicken flattened butterfly style and cooked over a real charcoal grill. Cooking over a real charcoal stove really makes it taste much better than the standard BBQ chicken you get elsewhere. This chicken was beautifully cooked, it was not dry and tasted really Charcoaly.

The Charcoal Chicken

The chicken is good, but it's really the condiments that lifts this place above the competition. Garlic sauce is simply divine. I could finish two of these plates of garlic sauce myself. The sauce is very creamy and VERY 'Garlicy'. If you have a date planned for the next 2-3 days, you might want to avoid it. However, this garlic sauce is so nice that its probably worth postponing a date for. The radish and gherkin are quite pickled potent in taste. Its quite overwhelming when eating it by itself. But, with the Lebanese bread, chicken and garlic sauce, it is the perfect addition.

Habib's Famous Garlic Sauce

Assorted Pickles

Tabouli

Lebanese Bread

This is an example of how to eat Habib's Charcoal Chicken.

1. Pull apart the bread

2. Spread garlic sauce on the base of the bread

3. Top with chicken, pickles, and tabouli (fries optional)

4. Roll up and eat

How we eat are Charcoal Chicken

Overall, I was quite impressed from the food. The place is quite big, much bigger than El Jannah and hence would be a nice place for a casual feed for a large group. We came here with about 20 people, the service was good and the staff were friendly. The food is served quite fast and relatively well priced (cheaper than El Jannah).

Compared to El Jannah, this place is actually quite similar. The garlic sauce is probably nicer here, a little bit more creamy and more garlic taste (but very similar) and its cheaper than El Jannah. However, the chicken at El Jannah suits my tastes more because its more crispy on the outside and generally tastes fresher and more grilled.

Ratings

Food - 8.5/10

Service - 7.5/10

Ambiance - 6.5/10

Value for Money - 7/10

Overall - 29.5/40

Habib's Charcoal Chicken

24 Restwell Street

Bankstown

NSW 2200

tel: (02) 9708 2219

An Restaurant - Bankstown

An Restaurant - so pho so good (ah, witty witty)

Our new youth pastor at church has been raving on and on and on about how the BEST pho in town is at Pho An in Bankstown. Not needing much to be convinced, our youth group (a crowd of around 25) trekked down to Bankstown for this supposedly awesomeness pho.

When I eat pho, I think of a modest size restaurant, possibly fit around 50 odd people. At An Restaurant, it was like a giant canteen, the size of a normal Chinese restaurant - except that they just serve pho!

Being able to speak the language, our helpful youth pastor ordered for us in Viet. One minute (or less) after the order was placed, the food was infront of us. Talk about speedy service! Beats any fast food joints I've been to!

One of the most popular pho's of the night was the raw beef pho (Ve) - with the main attraction of the dish being, obviously, the raw beef. The other popular order of the night was the beef special (Tai) which has a combination of raw beef, beef tendon, beef tripe and possibly other beefy things.

Being special, I ordered the Sach, which was beef tripe pho. I have never seen beef tripe cut the way it was (cut somewhat longitudinally, but not completely longitudinally... kind of hard to describe). But I guess my point is, because of the way it was cut, the beef tripe was so super tender and so super able to soak up the flavours of the soup. I was amazed~

All pho's came with onion, and shallot and herbs. There are two sizes. The "medium" was $12, the "large" was $13. Where's the small???

Raw beef noodle - medium $12, large $13

Beef Special - medium $12, large $13

Beef Tripe Noodles - medium $12, large $13

So what makes this pho so great? Was it the bowl of chilli that they give you? The sauces? According to my youth pastor, it's all in the soup. Some of my friends drank up all the soup, to the very last drop. My partner's opinion of the soup was that it felt "cleaner" than most other Viet places. I tried to understand what he meant by this, but he just couldn't verbalise it. I guess the soup was less polluted? But having said that, it probably contained around the same amount of MSG as other Viet pho places.

Nonetheless, although the actual service was minimal, I was in awe of the speed at which the food came out. Food-wise, it was a good viet noodle soup (with the best beef tripe I've ever had). The ice coffee at the place is also quite awesome (tastes like a coffee-lolly). Was it worth the drive down? Well... once in a while it's okay I guess.

Ratings:
Food - 7.5/10
Service - 7/10
Ambiance - 6/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 27.5/40

An Restaurant
27 Greenfield Parade
Bankstown, NSW, 2200
Tel: (02) 9796 7826