It seems to be vegan month here at andyville. My pal Cameron decided to drop by the ‘hood for dinner, and after seeing the Netflix documentary, The Game Changers, by James Cameron, has been vegan for a month. I wasn’t sure where to take him (though Yulli’s on Crown Street is always a good bet). So, Google then tells me that Bad Hombres, which I went to over 2.5 years ago, is now a vegan restaurant!
I’d noticed it, still going strong, whenever I walked down that way, past my gym at Anytime Fitness. My experience before, as you can still read below, was mediocre. I liked the idea, but it just wasn’t comfortable. So, it was great to be able to completely revise my opinion (and my blog-review). Tonight’s meal was delicious, with great service and a good atmosphere.
The thing is: I think it’s a great idea for the planet for all of us to eat less meat. And in order to do that, restaurants are going to need to serve delicious food so that people are eating vegan food for pleasure rather than being virtuous. And Bad Hombres is accomplishing that mission quite nicely.
Crispy eggplant tacos with small diced pieces of pineapple and a squeeze of lime was all kinds of excellent in terms of a flavour and texture combo. Really delicious.
The fries, with a fake cheesy sauce, were crisp and moreish.
Our main was oyster mushrooms in a black bean sauce that came with tortillas. It had a beautiful smoky flavour and was a substantial serving and we were both really impressed.
Add to that an interesting wine menu (we opted for the skin-contact chardonnay) and it was a great night. It was awfully noisy when we came in (at about 8pm) but quietened down. Nice, friendly service and we even got some advice on eating vegan from our waitress at the end. The only thing that was weird was that our table was sticky. Like everywhere. I don’t think it was dirty, but the tackiness of the red paint was off-putting. Or maybe someone is telling me I shouldn’t rest my elbows and arms on the table while I eat!
Here’s my previous review from 17 March 2017:
Bad Hombres is so hip that it doesn’t have a website, nor Facebook page. It only has an Instagram page. The way you make reservations is that you find a mobile number on their Instagram page and then arrange a reservation by SMS. I think that’s pretty modern.
And the idea of pop-up restaurants is just as modern. I’ve been to Good Luck Pinbone lately, and managed to get to Broadsheet Restaurant on Danks Street before it closed. It makes a lot of sense to me. Offer folks something new. Put the focus on the food rather than the decor. Keep and maintain the energy of a cool place, and bow out leaving people wanting more.
Finally, can you get more now, more Sydney, then choosing two popular cuisines, and creating your own fusion, in this case Mexican-Asian? All served up with natural wines. This idea really appealed to me.
So, for all these reasons (plus a fun, buzzy atmosphere, retro Aussie music, and super cool wait staff), I predict huge success for Bad Hombres. Sadly (for us), the experience wasn’t quite as good as the idea. I love the idea of a limited menu, so between the four of us, we got each of the three share plates: a roasted cauliflower plate ($25), and slow-cooked beef short ribs ($38), and pork shoulder ($28), served with chinese pancakes, corn tortillas and butter lettuce. The flavours did have Asian influence with herbs and crispy shallots and XO sauce. But the portions were a bit small to split between four of us, and since we’d already ordered all three of the mains, we didn’t bother to order something else.
It was tasty, but in other ways, the flavours and concept (slow-cooked meat or grilled veg in a wrap) all melded together. The cucumber salad was tasty (always like that idea) and the mahi mahi ceviche tostada was also good. Two of us loved the natural sparkling wine, from Australia, but two didn’t, and one hated it. The dessert of coconut pandan sago pudding with watermelon granita, mint and Szechuan pepper sounded great (and was only $12) but wasn’t a huge hit (as you can see, it’s not a very pretty dish). And while I hail the hip, these old men were probably too grumpy a demographic, sitting in the corner with the speakers blaring music too loud.
I can imagine the review would have been much different if I’d dine here with just one other person, on a quieter night (not a buzzy Friday night), ordering more appetizers and the right amount of food (and I would go for the sparkling wine again…) and being delighted. But for some reason, that night, it didn’t work for us. On the other hand, I don’t think it will matter. I think Bad Hombres (great name also) will be as busy as it wants to me until the moment they pop-down from popping-up.
Is it bad, when judging a vegan restaurant, to start the review with saying how impressed I was that their beef rendang really did taste like meaty deliciousness? But really, it was awesome. My dinner at Golden Lotus Vegan, as suggested by my vegetarian pal, David, also supplied the biggest laugh of the day for me, as when we were waiting to be seated, a woman had gotten up from the back of the restaurant, where she was sitting (and it was so busy she would have had to have waited or made a reservation) and asked the waitress (before leaving): DON’T YOU HAVE ANYTHING WITH MEAT IN IT?
So, as I said, this place is bustling! They seem to have taken over two old Thai restaurants and have enough clients to be busy on both sides. It’s great to see. I think we should all eat a little less meat these days, for the planet’s sake. And it didn’t mean sacrificing any taste. We had a crispy skin duck pancake (vegan of course), and the mock duck really did taste like a charred or crispy piece of duck. What I always want to know is which poor Buddhist monk did they force to eat meat in order to come up with the vegan alternative?
No matter. It was delicious. The rendang was my favourite, I suspect made of jackfruit: the flavours were rich and complex and salty. It went perfectly well with the rice pot, which had rice vermicelli noodles and strips of fungus and vegetables. It could have been a very plain dish, but it wasn’t. A great combo of textures and flavour.
We washed it all down with homemade non-alcoholic drinks ($6 a piece, I think they were). I did think the prices were a little high for casual Asian food, but I shouldn’t mind for food this good.
So, way back when Reynold Poernomo competed on Masterchef in 2015, we paid attention, for obvious reasons, if you saw the show. So, it’s great to see what a success he’s made for himself.
Described as a Korean, Japanese, Asian Fusion restaurant, just opened on Foveaux Street in Surry Hills, I thought: what’s not to love about that? I’ve really developed a passion for modern Korean food lately from some excellent eateries in Sydney (mostly in Surry Hills) and have always been a fan of Japanese food and Asian fusion. How exciting.
I can’t quite remember what would have been there before Tokki: an office building? It’s just renovated and has a lightness about the colour scheme, wood furniture and lighting which makes it feel amiable. We opted for the smaller of the ‘Tokki feeds you’ options, one at $65 and one at $85, though we did sneak in some extra kim chi and edamame to start.
The menu said it was assorted kim chi but it mostly tasted of the cabbage rather than the daikon. It had a rich, fermented flavour: husband said it was almost sparkling, and it was delicious, especially matched with some of the later dishes. We also had edamame which were salted with truffle flavour; tasty as usual though it was a type of bean that had a weird waxy sort of shard in the middle, that was easy enough though to remove from one’s mouth.
Ah, and I also snuck in a cocktail to start, a ‘Cactus Jack’ with Mezcal, lime, pineapple, ginger, agave and basil: it was lovely.
The bao, made famous in this style by David Chang at Momofuku, I believe, come in three varieties. We got ours with Korean Fried Chicken and oh my god, it was perfect. So crisp and tender. At other tables, we saw the full serving of KFC and it looked enormous. Like you wouldn’t be able to eat anything else but the chicken! So we were glad to try the KFC in this way.
The next dish was called ‘Menbosha’ with DIY prawns yuzu siracha mayo and brioche, but to me it was basically a version of the Cantonese prawn toast that you get at yum cha, small crisp deep-fried toast, with shrimp on top, except these had a luscious sauce on them and also came with some nice guacamole.
We were surprised that the next dish was a platter of BBQ with sauces. Really, really tasty, and not a surprise once we found out that the chefs are two Korean brothers who have been serving up Korean BBQ mainly in the last years: this, I think, is their foray into contemporary Asian-Australian fusion. The meat was rich, heavy and delicious.
So, the next dish surprised us, pork belly with some deep-fried gyoza skins and a rather luscious peach pickle mixture. It was tasty (I mean, pork belly: of course) but after the meat tray was too much. We would have preferred a seafood dish or salad.
Our final course, the dessert, was also a surprise: a delicate tart filled with red bean paste and jam and whipped cream. Husband has never liked the very Asian taste and texture of the red bean paste. I thought it was fine.
So, the Alta Building on Goulburn Street at Riley Street was finished at the end of 2011. Which means I’ve seen 7 or 8 years of restaurants and cafes come and go at the ground level. There was Pachamama House, a Peruvian-Japanese place. There was Pisco Pisco, which I assumed was a rename from the same owners. Could there have been Jazz City, a foray into American BBQ? MO Surry Hills, which was always a popular and buzzy cafe around the corner moved into this space and then disappeared not much later. My sense is that it’s one of those cursed locations. Possibly the strange shape of it makes it hard to run. Certainly the large outdoor area should make it inviting, but no one’s ever managed to do it. I feel sad for anyone there.
Out of sympathy, when my pal Davy suggested meeting there, I thought we should give Pelican Hills a go. And truthfully, I heard they had a really rough start. One friend went, intending to go for lunch, and the chef hadn’t turned up so they weren’t serving food. I heard something else negative, though I don’t remember the details. Also, I have cognitive dissonance with an image of a flamingo above the word “pelican”.
So, I was happy to find, for our mid-morning coffee, that the Pelican Hills served up coffee quickly with nice latte art. My large latte was delicious and Davy’s Golden Turmeric Latte was tasty and different. The service was very friendly and they asked me when I paid how everything was. ‘Great,’ I said, and I meant it. So good I’ll be back to try food sometime too.
I’m charmed to discover that rather than tuyo being the Spanish word for ‘yours’, it is in fact a combination of the two owners, Tu and Yo. I’ll be back to try more of the menu
