Oh Charlie, what happened here? We could have been so good together. You’re in a great location and with the open windows, are a perfect place to hang out for coffee on a sunny Saturday spring afternoon. And I like your ambiance: a local cafe, nothing pretentious, but with lots of space to sit down.
I was impressed with the way that the coffee looked… but then, something wasn’t quite right in terms of the taste. Brewed too hot? It just didn’t taste like a great coffee. My caramel slice was OK.
And then my pal’s bagel and smoked salmon arrived, and while the bagel was nicely toasted, this meant that the salmon was cooked. Yikes. That’s not the point of smoked salmon on a bagel, where you can taste the smoke and the texture is deliciously soft and cured, but it’s not cooked.
What a great surprise. Passing by this place during the day, on Albion Street, it looks like a curiosity, almost like a pool hall, set up in a garage, exposed copper piping, concrete and brick walls. But at night, with awesome lighting, great music, open kitchen and generous bar space, this place has a great ambience.
It’s matched with inventive, interesting food, a sort of mash-up of Japanese classics with other cuisines. The duck cigar, a sort of long spring roll with duck confit, was delicious.
I loved the idea of taking a prawn toast, a classic from yum cha, and covering it with okonomoyaki flavours and sauce, the classic Japanese pancake.
The sugar snap peas with XO sauce had a very generous amount of what tasted to be homemade XO sauce.
And we loved the udon carbonara, the slippery, chewy Japanese noodles were a great match for a broken egg yolk, cream, and guanciale.
The food is rich. There’s no doubt about that. I’d aimed to go to an Asian restaurant that night for something a bit lighter, and those aims were dashed. But it was delicious.
A few reviewers here seemed confused that it’s Japanese-influenced food but that it’s not cheap Japanese food. Don’t make that mistake: this is an upscale and chic place, not a cheap noodle bar. It’s pricy but not moreso than other places in Surry Hills.
Our dishes above, all served up with a Japanese beer, sake and sparkling water by a charming French waiter were less than $100 for the two of us, and we’re very pleased with this cool addition to our neighbourhood.
[This review from September 2016; I ate at their new location in November 2018 and didn’t even realise it was the same restaurant!]
Still, even though we were in an ugly back corner of the restaurant, too close to some too-bright halogen lights, the service immediately improved. Over the evening, we had a number of nice young waitresses, friendly and efficient, though it was weird, I have to say, that with all of them in black, and their hair tied back in ponytails, I felt like I was in an episode of the Bachelor. Or America’s Next Top Model. About one-third of them were pretty Latinas, and the rest had a very similar look, blonde or bleach blonde hair tied back. I also thought we were in a Robert Palmer video, which was made before any of them were born.
With a tasty drink each, and eating our fill, and with our entertainment coupon, I left $80 for the two of us, including a generous tip. Looking around, there was a great buzz. It’s obviously a perfect place to come after work for those who work in the City, and who are young (at least younger than us), and if you have an eye for pretty young women, you will be pleased with the waitresses. So: good food, reasonable prices, nice atmosphere, pretty good service. Just watch out for that hostess!
Once, long ago, there was a cafe that seemed to be open intermittently and was rumoured to have a bit of a mean owner, and so not do a great business. It always looked amusing though, a little house next to an office building, next to a terrace house on a busy part of Riley Street, near Campbell Street. When it’s closed, as above, it makes you think: how did that cute terrace house manage to remain right there?
Robocog closed down. Apparently, all the owners had a big of a fight, or scandal, but eventually, the two guys took it over, and reopened it as Have2Cafe. Still: pretty good food and coffee, though I knew they were struggling for business. There’s so much competition in Sydney, and in Surry Hills, and it just seemed a lot of work. Still, they were open for a long time, even after I knew they wanted to sell it.
And now, finally: at Kate’s. I asked the Thai woman at the register who Kate is, and she said it’s her daughter, so I assume she looks nothing like the cartoon of the smiling grandmotherly figure. Initially, I was disappointed with my coffee: the way it looked for example, not nearly as defined and pretty as other cafes in the neighbourhood. But after tasting it, I thought it was just fine: good even.
It was clear to me, just from a quick glance, that this restaurant had the right concept for the right location. Right next to the immensely popular Chat Thai in what was once a grocery store that unusually sold Latin American ingredients, Great Aunty Three opened with an ironic, modern wink to Sydney, serving traditional Vietnamese street food, but with a modern twist.
From a Cantonese family, I had many great-aunties, and there were so many family members, they were often numbered (though luckily our family was modern enough that there wasn’t wife one, wife two and wife three). Great Aunty Three may be the third aunt, but is smartly serving up the classics: pho, sandwiches, and rice bowls.
I opted for a pork belly noodle bowl, and with the fresh herbs, various sauces, soft, melting pork… I found it a perfect combination of texture and taste. Really: quite good. I can’t think of any room for improvement. A delicious, simple, well-presented lunch dish.
Tim Ho Wan seems to be taking over Sydney. From the humble beginnings of its Chatswood location, it now has three locations in the CBD. But this makes sense to me: Sydneysiders love yum cha, and the quality of the food is high, and the tastes authentic.
I was curious as to what the Cantonese version of a rice bowl would be. The Japanese version, say a tonkatsu-don or a tempura-don, is pretty much perfection. Japanese rice, with bigger grains than Chinese, and a bit stickier, has a nice addictive quality on its own, but with some Japanese treat on top (eel, deep-fried pork, chicken!) and then some soft-fried onions and a scrambled egg set on top of that: it’s a perfect, simple lunch or dinner.
I ordered the salted fish steamed pork, which is a favourite dish (and decided to treat myself to a Tsingtao beer as well, a good idea). But I’d have to say that it was just mediocre. It tasted fine, but there wasn’t enough sauce or gravy. The Chinese rice underneath is drier than say, sticky rice or Japanese rice, and needed something else with it. The pork was tasty but without variation in texture, reminding me that it’s a nicer dish when one of a number of dishes.
Yum cha in Randwick? What a fine idea. I like the idea of yum cha in any neighbourhood, really, and spotting this listing on Zomato, I thought it would be worth a try. It turned out to be more of a cultural experience than I expected, on an upper floor of the Randwick Labor Club: I suppose they’re giving a go at revamping an RSL with (hopefully) high-quality Cantonese food.
We parked and Randwick feels like a different world from Surry Hills. Hard to find 
parking, it was so busy, on a Thursday around lunchtime, rather nearer to the water, and somehow, while only a ten minute drive from my ‘hood, felt unfamiliar.
We didn’t have to join the club in order to go to the restaurant, though were warned that we would need membership to come back a second time (I’m not sure how they’d enforce that if you kept telling them it was your first time). There is quite a view from the windows of the restaurant: the university, the race track, even the Harbour bridge in the distance. We ticked off what we wanted from the menu. There were some other customers, but certainly not enough to warrant yum cha carts.
I thought the food was fair. The har gow were OK as were the shrimp and scallop dumplings. Not special, but OK. The guy lan was appropriately steamed with oyster sauce. 
My pal thought the salt and pepper squid was really good; I thought it lacked delicacy. I opted for pan-fried taro cakes, rather than what I usually get: the turnip cakes. A bit stodgy with a lack of variation in texture, and a bit too big to be considered delicate.
While the review would have ended up a mediocre 2.5 out of 5 stars, right in the middle, I was surprised by the desserts. The coconut pudding was… pretty much perfect. Soft and wobbly texture, creamy, sweet, not too sweet. And the egg custard tarts had the perfectly flaky crust, and even though we’d let them sit on the table for a while, tasted as if they’d just been out of the oven. They were simple, but really really good. They have earned themselves another star from me for this reason. If you go, go heavy on the desserts, I’d say!
Thai desserts. How I love them. Asian desserts often seem to confuse Westerners as whatever sweetness involved is quite subtle. They might even have a savoury hint to them. On numerous business trips to Bangkok, I discovered different Thai desserts, at times from food stalls on the streets or in shopping malls, or set out as conference snacks.
I don’t know anywhere else but Thanon Khaosan, a stone’s throw from World Square, that produces this variety of Thai sweets, and then lays them out at the front of their shop to tempt people. It works on me. This is a go-to place if I’m in the neighbourhood: a perfect sweet but not too sweet treat, with the tropical flavours of mango and coconut and banana, and somewhat unfamiliar textures of sticky rice or jellies or pancakes.