Surasang - Eastwood

Surasang

Another trip to Eastwood for Korean this week with a few friends from church landed us in Surasang, a popular-looking Korean BBQ place next to Eastwood Pub.

I have to admit, my brain's been kind of fried recently and so, I didn't make any attempts to look at the menu or to order, and left it all in the capable hands of my friends. This is what we ended up with :)

Awesome unlimited refills of side dishes (providing you can make the seemingly non-English speaking waiters understand what it is that you want). Most of these were pretty awesome. I particularly liked the seaweed & raddish one. Super yum! My friends seems to favour the sweetened potato one :)

side dishes

Seafood pancake came out looking large and round and plump. Lots of veges scattered throughout (capsicums, beans etc). It was slightly bland and tasteless. Lacked a bit of salt. I'm not sure if it's coz I'm meant to dip it in some kind of sauce but forgot, or if it's meant to be kind of bland...

Seafood pancake

Another already could dish which came out was the Bulgogi. This was really nice and sweet and tender, albiet slightly watery looking. Quite delish :)

Bulgogi

The rest of the things we ordered required us to barbeque it. Dishes came out with slices of king oyster mushroom which I thought was a thoughtful touch. We ordered meats such as prime rib (beef), pork belly, ox tongue, marinated pork rib and ... other stuff? The ox tongue was actually really nice... not too tough yet nice and chewy and seasoned well to taste. Who could ever have thought that french kissing a cow could be so awesome? LOL

From memory, all of the meats were really quite tender and nice.

various meats

We left the place smelling like barbeque (as usual). The food here is quite good and price came to roughly $20 each (for the 8 of us). I guess the only road block is in the communication. The waiter's english isn't really top-notch (but it's still a bit better than our Korean).

Ratings:
Food - 8/10
Service - 6.5/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Value for money - 7.5/10
Overall - 29/40

Surasang
13 Railway Parade
Eastwood
NSW 2122
Tel: (02) 9858 3023

Hwa Gae - Eastwood

For an awesome and long-awaited catchup with a primary-school friend, we decided to grab some Korean food from Eastwood. As Eastwood is generally lined with Korean restaurants (on the Korean side), we were hit with a multitude of options. My friend suggested that we try "Hwa Gae" after reading recommendations about it from a facebook post - hence, we did.

It looked every bit like a normal little Korean restaurant serving the normal Korean dishes, noodles and hot pots. Their menu is slightly less extensive compared to other Korean places but nonetheless, it was enough for us to make our selection.

Hwa Gae

We ended up opting for deep fried dumplings ($7), seafood pancake ($8) and a potato noodle with beef and veges ($12).

The dumplings were fried to a golden brown. However, it tasted every bit like the normal ones you get from the frozen packets (huge packet for like ~$7) in that the meat and filling was all a bit mush.

fried dumplings - $7

The seafood pancake was thick and crispy on the outsides, soft on the inside. There were baby octopuses, squid and other seafood (I didn't actually pay attention to it). It was appetising enough. Nothing too great, not too bad.

Seafood pancake - $8

Halfway through our meal, I noticed that every other patron had their side dishes - all except us. Is it because we're not Korean? We asked the lady and the lady was like "no no side dishes"... and so we asked another one - who reluctantly popped these on our table. The spinach and the potato ones are always my favourite. The tofu bean curd one was nice. The kimchi pancake and the huge chunks of raddish were also OK.

side dishes

Last but not least, our Jap Chae (potato noodles) arrived. It was a bit more watery compared to other potato noodles we've had but luckily, it was still nice and tasty.

potato noodles with beef and veges - $12

To no-one's surprise, we had too much food for the two of us to gobble down. Hence, the pancake was taken home :)

Hwa Gae seems to be a decent place. Nothing too spectacular and I'm sure it's probably not the best Korean food you can get from Eastwood. But, it was relatively cheap, a bit of a chill, and the food was decent.

Ratings:
Food - 7/10
Service - 6.5/10
Ambiance - 6.5/10
Value for money - 8/10
Overall - 28/40

Hwa Gae
8 Railway Pde
Eastwood
NSW, 2122
Tel: (02) 9874 3788

Curzon Hall - Marsfield

This Saturday was met with memories and emotions.

It was my friend's wedding.

It was held at the church mine will be at in a month's time - so I felt my heart skipping a beat throughout the procession. The wedding was met with laughter and tears.

A lunch reception was at Curzon Hall - the place of our high school formal. I remember that I was as sick as a dog on the night of my formal, raging super high temperatures, I still perservered and went - but due to my sickness, most of the night was a blur to me. Since my school formal, Curzon hall had undergone several renovations and hence, it looked absolutely splendid, grand and amazing in the hall which my friend chose for his reception.

Our table :)

Food was served as promptly as could be for around 28 tables. As an entree, we were met with basil linguini tossed with salmon, tasmanian scallops and topped with mixe herbs. It was drenched in a realatively heavy and oily chives & pernod cream. We were all really hungry though and just gobbled this one down. As the portion was rather huge, we were all kind of full by the end of this first course :P

basil linguini with salmon and scallops in a creamy chives and pernod sauce

The meals were broken up with more speeches, more hugs and more laughter. Perfect :)

In terms of mains, there was alternate lamb and chicken. The rack of herb crusted lamb was served on fluffly mash potato, surrounded by fresh rocket leaves, snow peas and drenched with red wine jus. My friend who had the lamb said that it was an enmeshment of just intense sauced up flavour. However, it was difficult to distinguish the specific flavour of each item. All enmeshed according to my friend.

rack of herb crusted lamb

I was lucky enough to escape an untimely death with lamb and instead, got the slow baked grain fed baby chicken. It was really quite tender, and was marinated in fresh garden herbs. A ring of potato, leek and onion was quite endearingly hearty and rich. Scattered everywhere was baby button mushrooms, tiny pearl onions and bits of smoked speck. All this was again drenched in a slightly over-poweringly sauvignon and lemon thyme sauce.

slow baked baby chicken

Then was the bride and groom's speech - and a groom's special surprise song to his lovely new wife.

And before long - there was dessert. A three-toned cylinder of white chocolate, hazelnut and chocolate gelato. It was sprinkled with crushed belgium chocolate and accompanied by mixed berries. The gelato was amazingly yummy. Icey enough, chocolatey enough, sweet yet not too sweet. Mmm... Yummy :)

3-tone gelato

And so, the joyous day was filled with emotions - all happy ones. I would have loved to stick around and reminisce but unfortunately, reality was calling and I had to dash.

Ratings:
Food - 7/10
Service - 7/10
Ambiance - 8/10
Value for money - ?
Overall - 22 + ?/40

Curzon Hall (Lady Mary's Pavilion)
53 Agincourt Road
Marsfield
NSW 2122
Tel: (02) 9887 1877

Foveaux (2) - Surry Hills

I haven't been out to dinner for my parents for AGES - and usually when we eat out, it's at a Chinese restaurant, so it took a lot of persuasion to make them drive all the way out to the city with me to try out innovative non-asian cuisine.

For this ground-breaking moment, I decided to take them to Foveaux, a comfortable little restaurant in Surry Hills.

Seated by a cheery, friendly waiter, we were given space to decide on our menus (much appreciated). It took a little convincing to make my parents order the degustation ($80) and this is what we were served with :

Amuse Bouche of curry, lentils and warm yoghurt soup. You could smell this from afar - slightly a bit too overbearing for my liking. Very curried up - but then the sourness of warm yoghurt kicks in... making it all slightly ugh.

curry, lentils and warm yoghurt

For the first course, there was a choice of either the tomato and olive oil sorbet or the smoked albacore tuna. My parents were a bit shocked by the sorbet. "It's cold and like icecream!" - yes, that's what sorbets are like. I guess they weren't quite expecting it as a first course. The sorbet was accompanied by diced cucumber, baby rocket, cubes of olive jelly and sheep's fetta bits. For decoration, a long paint stroke of capsicum. Awesome presentation - but tastewise... not really my type of dish (nor my parent's unfortunately).

tomato and olive oil sorbet, cucumber, baby rocket, olive jelly, sheep's fetta and capsicum paint

The smoked albacore tuna, on the other hand, was extremely yummy. Very smokey in flavour, tomato salsa on top of the tuna, avocado sauced up, whipped ponzu and decorated with sesame. The textures and the flavours worked really well together :)

cold smoked albacore tuna, whipped ponzu, tomato salsa, avocado and sesame

For course 2, there was a choice of either roasted quail or caramalised venison tongue. The quail was accompanied by a smoked eel croquette, all sitting on a bed of diced beetroot and leaves, and sprinkled through with capers. From the looks on my parent's faces, this seemed just OK.

roasted quail, smoked eel croquette, caper, beetroot and leaves

The caramalised venison tongue was an unexpected surprise. Rather thick chunked, I was amazed that the tongue was really tender and not chewy or tough. Also, being caramelised, it was subtly sweet. What I liked more, however, was the accompanying scampi. It was semi-cooked, leaving a half raw, smooth texture, and being super sweet :) On top of these was the shredded carrot. The tongue and the scampi were swimming in a strong sea urchin custard and rhubarb powder mixture.

caramalised venison tongue, scampi, sea urchin custard, carrot, and rhubarb powder

Next was the fish - either the leather jacket or the mulloway. The herbed baked leather jacket was present sub-par for Foveaux's standards. It looked like a blurb or a mess really. The leather jacket - cooked almost perfectly, was sitting on top a mess of lettuce, and there were blobs of peas and green olive puree. Maybe it was because everything was a green, it wasn't the most visually stimulating. Scattered amongst the greens were bits of braised rabbit. I have to say, I appreciated my mulloway more :)

herb baked leather jacket, braised rabbit, lettuce, peas and green olive puree

My roast palmers island mulloway was perfecto-ly cooked. Super crispy skinned. Super tender and soft and tasty. A rather strong bouillabaisse foam was sitted inside a crepe-y cylinder. White mashed polenta was artistically painted under the fish and on the side of it all, was a little salad of tomato and black olive. All up, it was really really tasty. Really really YUM :)

roast palmers island mulloway, bouillabaisse foam, white polenta, black olive and tomato

In terms of meats, there was either the lamb or the veal. My dad loved the lamb. The rump was cured and smoked to super tenderness and tastiness. To add to the lamby taste, there was the lamb liver puree in two splotches on the side. Tiny amoung of greens were under the lamb. Garlic foam and puffed spelt were spread on top of the meat to add to all the flavours.

cured and smoked lamb rump, liver puree, greens, garlic, and puffed spelt

As I don't eat lamb, I opted for the veal sirloin. This was really really tender - almost melt in your mouth (or as much as it can for a veal sirloin). What caught my attention was the mushroom puree... it smelt AMAZING~ Mushies and parsnip cubes were abundant and drenched in meat juices. Or maybe it was the upland cress and thyme jus... whatever it was, the sauce was really strong, but accompanied the meat well :)

roasted veal sirloin with mushroom puree, parsnip, upland cress and thyme jus

The pre-dessert was my favourite of the night. It was a light milk sorbet sitting on top of a salad of pineapple and topped with crunchy caramelised macadamia. YUM. Cold. Refreshing. Absolutely delicious. It was light in flavour yet it provided a slight relief from all the other flavours which were in my mouth from earlier tonight. I swear I could eat many many of these!

salad of pineapple, milk sorbet and macadamia nut praline

In terms of dessert, I was a little disappointed. There was a banana dish or a ginger dish - neither of which I was a fan of. The banana dish was comprised of banana ice cream, caramalised banana pieces, crumbed digestive biscuit, and a super thin slice of coffee and tonka bean sitting on top. The only thing I liked from this was the coffee and tonka slice - but... I'm biased. I just don't eat banana :)

banana ice cream, caramalised banana, digestive biscuit, coffee and tonka

The other option was a ginger sponge. It was extremely extremely gingery - slightly over-bearingly so. It was on a rather large bed of carrot marmalade and topped with cream cheese ice cream and an interesting slice of candied carrot. It was ... umm...healthy-looking and just strong. Almost sickeningly gingery and sickening sweet. Where's my chocolate?!?! :(

ginger sponge, carrot marmalade, cream cheese ice cream and walnut powder

Ok - so my second experience at Foveaux was slightly mixed. I'm sure my parents would agree, there were good dishes and some which seemed to slightly miss the mark. Service was rather good. And so was the ambiance ... until a super large noisy crowd started dinner at around 9ish.
Would I come back? Well... third time lucky~ I'm a sucker for the way Foveaux tries its best to be creative, mixing odd flavours and textures together to keep us in awe and amazement :)

Ratings:
Food - 7/10
Service - 8/10
Ambiance - 8/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 30/40

Foveaux
65-67 Foveaux St
Surry Hills
NSW 2010
Tel: (02) 9211 0664

Snacks in Cabramatta

By now you might be wondering - geez, how many trips did she make to Cabra recently?
Answer... one.
We just ate heaps and heaps within the period of 3 hours LOL.

Now my friend told me that Red Lea at Cabra serves notably one of the best chips in Sydney. What? It's just a Red Lea. Are you serious?

We snuck a peak at it... pretty average looking.... but as we stood outside scouting the area for a while we realised... OMGOSH sooooo many people came here to buy chips - mainly of the large size. It was pretty amazing! And the longer we stood, the more we smelt it. I think it's the chicken salt.

Red Lea Chicken

We were tempted. Hence, I just HAD to try.
"medium or large?" the guy asked. Erm... small ($3)? I did just have lunch afterall. And wow! The chicken salt is soooo orange! haha. It tasted like pretty average chips. Good crunchiness. Good potato fluffiness. And the chicken salt reminded us of the "shake shake fries" you used to be able to get from Maccas. Good times.

Small Chips - $3

A & A Cakes

My friend was also telling us about mouthwatering sweet donuts you could buy from this Asian bakery. And so, full stomachs or not, we went hunting.

Sweet donuts are best eaten fresh. And I mean... FRESH. If you let it stay in it's paper bag, you will realise that soon, your whole paperbag is oiled up. So take my word for it - eat it straight away! It's kind of crunchy yet soft and chewy on the inside. The middle bits are like sweet crumbly bits ... kinda like ovened condensed milk bits (? Not sure here... I'm only guessing). This is something I usually only eat in HK.

sweet donuts

We also had to get the egg tarts. Puffy and light pastry with smooth egg. Not the smoothest egg bit we've eaten, but it was decent.

Egg Tarts

I have to tell you. My friends are pretty awesome. On top of eating everything we did, they also ate a bowl of pho each :)

So that concludes our Cabra food tour :P

Red Lea Chicken
57 John Street
Cabramatta
NSW 2166
Tel: (02) 9726 3017

A&A Cakes

101 John St
Cabramatta
NSW2166

tel: (02) 9726 5632

Cafe 86 - Cabramatta

Cafe 86

Our friends who we went to Cabra with had did some research and came up with Cafe 86 as the best place for coffee and drinks in the area. When we approached the cafe... it looked a bit ... umm... dicey? Nonetheless, we were game enough.

We wanted a menu - only to be told that it was all on the board behind the counter. The font was a little bit small... and hence, we all had to stand up to check it out. My partner asked for a whole coconut (which is advertised on their board) only to be met by a very very confused waiter...
"glass?"
"no, the whole coconut please"
"glass?" "no, coconut"
"glass?"
"uh...yeh... glass..."

Funnily enough, my friends wanted the iced milk tea and again, were met by confused looks. "Ice tea? there! (pointed to the complimentary jug of iced green tea)"
"nono... iced milk tea"
"huh? no. ice tea there"
"tea with milk"
"???"
"ok, how about the whole coconut?"
"glass?"
"yeh, glass"

young coconut juice

It was interesting. Amazingly, pretty much the whole glass of coconut juice was ice. I'd say, 95% ice, 5% juice :P

I ordered the iced milk coffee. Luckily, no difficulties in getting this order down. And like the coconut juice, there was 95% ice in mine. It's soooo decietful. Feels like you've hardly even touched the drink and yet, there's nothing left. Luckily, the coffee was really nice and strong and sweet. Would have been more satisfying if there was more of it and less ice though LOL

iced milk coffee - $3.80

When we stepped outside, I think I understood why there was so much ice. Most people who seem to consume beverages here seem to chill around... alot. There's chinese chess available for people to play with and they are all seated like they're gonna be there for the next 5 hours. I guess that in 5 hours time, your ice melts - leaving you with just as much drink as you started with. But if you're just in for a quick drink (and by quick I mean, if you want to leave within half an hour of getting your drink), perhaps another place (which serves less ice) would be more recommended :)

Ratings:
Drink - 6.5/10
Service - 5.5/10
Ambiance - 6/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 25/40

Cafe 86
4/29 John Street
Cabramatta, 2166
Tel: (02) 9723 2696

Cafe Bello - Burwood

Cafe Bello

I had extreme cravings for pasta. Super creamy cheese unhealthy pasta. Having some business to take care of in Burwood, we settled for Cafe Bello, an Italian cafe inside Westfield.

It was pretty busy for 2pm - and being relatively hungry, we ordered pretty much straight away. My partner opted for a chocolate thickshake ($5.90) and a cheeseburger ($15.90). His chocolate thickshake was thick and sweet and chocolatey. Nicely ice-creamily thick and rather delish. AND it came is a frosty milk-shake cup which was super super huge. I think my partner felt sick after downing this whole Litre of milk/icecream/chocolate mixture :)

Chocolate thickshake - $5.90

I tossed between a mocha frappe ($5.90) or a mocha thickshake ($5.90). At the end, I decided on the frappe. My partner debated for ages what the difference between the two drinks would be. I guess a mocha thickshake would have more milk + icecream, whereas a frappe would have more ice + icrecream? No matter what the answer is, my drink was awesome! Thick enough. Cold enough. Coffee-flavoured enough. And sweet enough.

Mocha frappe - $5.90

My partner's cheeseburger ($15.90) comprised of a thick beef patty topped with melted cheese and beetroot, lettuce, caramelised onion, and tomato heaped with bbq sauce and with chips on the side. I also eyed the works burger (which had also egg, bacon and pineapple on top of everything else) which was like simply towering! I think the burger was averagely good :)

Cheese burger - $15.90

To satisfy my pasta craving, I chose the penne boscaiola ($17.90). Creamy, loads of bacon strips, small bits of mushrooms, shallots and shaved parmesan all creamed up by a white wine cream sauce. Mmm.... YUM. Very satisfying for my craving. Very very filling.

Penne boscaiola - $17.90

Given that we had a voucher for this place (thanks to the Entertainment book), our lunch came to less than $30. Not bad at all. They also had a huge range of cakes in their display cabinets which, if my stomach had allowed, I would definately have tried.

Ratings:
Food - 8/10
Service - 7/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 29/40

Cafe Bello
Westfield Burwood
100 Burwood Road,
Burwood NSW 2134
Tel: (02) 9745 1545