Monday, August 15, 2005

Bad places I've eaten lately

At the risk of turning this blog into a bitch-fest...oh what the heck, here goes.

Toss'n'turn, next to the Capitol Sq light rail stop, is a crêperie that is truly crâpe. I ordered a crepe with seafood, mornay sauce and parmesan cheese and what I got was a nice enough crepe, but filled with tasteless frozen seafood half-heartedly heated through with some pasty grey sauce. The parmesan was not noticeable at all.

Golden Fang Malaysia (sic) and Chinese Restaurant is located on City Road, Chippendale, next to the University of Sydney. This place has always intrigued me because Malaysian cuisine is very rare in Sydney. It also always seems packed on Friday nights, so I figured it might be worth giving a go for a late dinner on a Monday night.

Alas alack, what a disappointment - they had run out of Hokkien noodles, so my first choice of Hokkien fried noodles was unavailable. My second choice of salted fish fried rice arrived within a minute of me ordering it: highly suspicious if you ask me, but nice quick service.

The neurotic and megalomaniacal manageress bossed her down-trodden waitress around as she showed me to my seat. I bet she couldn't wait to go to the Ball.

The fried rice was incredibly oily, soft and the salted fish of poor quality: very salty without a lot of flavour. The rice grains were squishy and overcooked, liberally coated with oil: yuk.

The roast pork with belachan sauce caught my eye so I ordered it for takeaway. It arrived before I finished the fried rice, so I sampled a bit. I like a bit of stinky belachan - I think it smells delicious.

But this is where I was wrong. This dish assaulted me with it's poor execution and lack of thought. The belachan was not roasted, nor was the onion base given enough time to reduce and caramelise. The whole dish stunk of wet and raw onion. I was nearly tempted to leave it on the table as a message that it was incredibly unapalatable. I took it home, nevertheless, as I hate to waste food. Perhaps I can push this onto the bf, pair it with some rice or noodles. Perhaps I can improve it...who knows.

After leaving the restaurant I was accosted by a strange Asian man who held a small card up for me to read: Can you give me $10 for some food and a ticket to Melbourne, all written in the Chinese cursive roman script. How odd, to beg with a note. I rudely sniffed at him and turned away, but had an after thought that I should have given him that awful belachan roast pork. Oh well, perhaps it was for the best; I wouldn't have wanted to subject him to that offensive dish either.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh well, for 10 bucks, in the midst of Chinatown in Sydney, what do you expect? Better luck next time.

David said...

Sydney foodie:
Yes, it's quite a weird one running out of hokkien noodles. But your story about running out of dough at a pizza shop is the best. That would be akin to running out of rice at a Chinese restaurant.

kuponuts:
I think you've misread my post: Golden Fang is not in the middle of Chinatown, neither is Toss'n'turn. The price of fried rice was not $10 - that was the amount of money the beggar was asking me.