Mamak (Chatswood, Sydney)

Back when I was in uni (a long time ago!) in Sydney, I used to despair ever finding decent Malaysian food outside of home cooking. These days it has become a rather popular cuisine and you can find Malaysian food in food courts and restaurants all over Sydney. And in Melbourne, there are heaps more!

Mamak opened up a few years ago and its first outlet was in Chinatown. It started life as a stall at the Friday night markets in Chinatown and became so popular the owners felt compelled to open up a permanent restaurant. Let's just say it was a decision they will never regret!

The Chatswood branch opened up about 2 years ago and it is located at the Chatswood Railway Exchange food zone. By the way this whole area is becoming such a food hub.

My post covers 2 separate visits. The first was a dinner I had with a friend and the second was a recent lunch.

Roti canai - served on the traditional metal tray with portions of dahl, curry sauce and a side of chilli sambal. I found the roti to be light and fluffy. It was of a better standard than my first try of the roti at the original Chinatown outlet many years prior. My friend was also very pleasantly surprised at how good the roti was!

Kari ayam - a rather nice chicken curry with servings of chunky potatoes. It surely would go well with some boiled rice but we had ours with the roti. Yum!

Nasi Lemak with sambal cuttlefish - one of my favourite dishes when I get takeaways from Mamak. For those of you who are not aware of this dish, it is coconut rice served with sliced cucumber, sambal, lightly fried peanuts, fried and crispy anchovies, with a boiled egg. In this case I requested for a serving of sambal cuttlefish too. So good!

Papparich Parramatta (Parramatta, Sydney)

As most of you would know, Papparich is a chain of Malaysian food outlets around Australia and Asia Pacific. The first venue I dined at was the Chatswood branch which was their first restaurant in Sydney. Till today, I think there are queues just to get a table. And that opened over a year ago.

Recently, they opened in Parramatta and the food blogger in me had to check it out. On my first visit I met up with Mel from The Adventures of Miss Piggy and her husband Dave. It was nice catching up with Mel after such a long time and as usual we were busy taking pics of our dishes before we took a single bite.

Deep fried chicken skin - we had to order this, especially since I had yet to try this wonderfully crispy, addictive dish. Yum! I couldn't stop popping one in my mouth every few minutes. Dangerous!!

Nasi Lemak with Beef Rendang - a very popular dish which was ordered by Mel and Dave. Turns out this is one of their favourite dishes to order when at Papparich!

Biryani Rice With Red Chicken and Sambal Prawns - this is one of my favourite dishes to order and it did not disappoint. I do like the flavours of the Biryani rice which was infused with various spices like onions, cardamom and cloves. It makes this rice so much more interesting and full of flavour. The red chicken had a slightly sweet yet slightly spicy flavour. And all this served with a rather large pappadum.

Three Blue Ducks (Bronte, Sydney)

My regular readers must be so over me constantly saying 'this is another place I have been wanting to dine at'. It would seem my list is endless and forever changing to add more and more. But it is the truth so I do apologise to those who do read my blog regularly that I will constantly be saying lines like 'I have been wanting to check it out since it opened'. :)

Three Blue Ducks has been on my list for at least over a year now. There was an attempt to dine there last year with a friend of mine but those plans fell through and this time it all worked out!

It was a Saturday night and I elected for the 6.00 pm seating which meant we would have to leave around 8.15 for the next round of diners. Understandably so as it is a small restaurant and a very popular one at that!

I was so excited be to finally be here and I liked the cool vibe. There were some interesting pieces of mural art on the walls and some antique artefacts hanging on one of the walls. And I do like the corridor of sunshine with plants hanging off the walls! The bar area is located on one side of this corridor and the main restaurant is located on the other side.

We were seated in the bar section and the guys serving us were very friendly. I had a mocktail and CM and JM had cocktails.

We decided to share some small plates and ordered a few mains with the idea of sharing some of the mains too.

We started with:

Chicken liver parfait with Iggy's bread (from the bar menu) - a rustic looking parfait but so so delicious! It was smooth and creamy and quite addictive actually. The bread was beautiful, it had the texture and feel of a mini damper. This was JM's first taste of chicken liver parfait and I think he is now a fan!

Mussels and pipis with chilli and lemongrass - seriously YUM! The chilli and lemongrass sauce should be bottled and sold commercially. It was that good!!

Corn, chawanmushi and crab - I asked for this dish because I was wanted to try chawanmushi and I can't say no to crab. It was a lovely dish, light, summery with beautiful textures of the silky chawanmushi. Delicious!

Beetroot salad with parsley and dates - a fresh looking salad with lovely slivers of beetroot. And on top of that we had a side dish of roasted carrots.

And for mains, we had 2 serves of the Egg hopper, caramelised eggplant curry, yoghurt and Sambal. Mmmm..mmmm. A burst of flavours mingled as I savoured the dish.. there was sweet, savoury and a slight tang from the yoghurt. I found out that the curry had toppings of chilli powder, coriander, eschalot and green onion. Another delicious dish.

Vegetable Curry

Tonight's dinner is vegetable curry. I bought a pre-made vegetarian curry paste from one of the Asian shops near Takapuna. It is a well known brand from Malaysia. Instead of using coconut milk, I used skim milk.

For tonight's version, I used snake beans, organic potatoes, organic carrots, zucchini (in NZ it is called courgette) and cabbage.

I am now converted to the benefits of organic fresh food. I used to be sceptical as I could not understand why I had to pay a whole lot more for organic vegetables/fruits versus the non organic ones. Since being in Auckland, I have been buying fruits and vegetables from the Takapuna Farmers Markets which is on every Sunday morning. There are many farmers selling organic food and the prices for organic food are very reasonable in NZ. So I bought some potatoes and carrots. I can tell the difference even when I am cutting them up and the taste of organic potatoes is amazing. There is a big difference so I am now a convert.