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.

Albee's Kitchen, Kingsford (Sydney)

The first time I heard about Albee's Kitchen was a few years ago. Their famous curry puffs (or karipap) were part of a friend's contribution to a social gathering. To my delight I found a slice of boiled egg in the filling. I was pleasantly surprised at that. It is not often you find curry puffs made with a boiled egg as part of the filling.

Ever since then, I was aware of this Malaysian restaurant but did not have an opportunity to check it out until now. The original restaurant is located in Campsie but a few months ago, they expanded their business with a new outlet in Kingsford.

Our Malaysian lunch turned out to be a feast! Their menu is very extensive and it can be quite overwhelming reading through all the list of available dishes. We made a concerted effort to order dishes not easily available at other Malaysian restaurants. That turned out to be a good strategy!!

Here goes!

Curry puffs

Photo from my take away serving

Pandan chicken

Kuching Style clay pot noodles

Favourite dish!

Salted fish with bean sprout

Butter cereal chicken

PappaRich (Chatswood)

PappaRich is a Malaysian group of restaurants that first started in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2005. Over time it has become a very successful business and has taken off like a rocket in Australia. In Australia, they started in Melbourne (reputedly populated with more Malaysians than any other major city in Australia) which now has up to 5 outlets and in April they wet their feet in Sydney by opening up an outlet in Chatswood.

Stating that it has been a successful opening in Chatswood is an understatement. The queues have been long and sometimes people have had to wait for up to 45 minutes to an hour to get a table.

So for my first venture to the Chatswood outlet, my friend CW and I decided to get there right smack at the opening time of 11.00 am on a Saturday. Even then, there were about 10 people ahead of me waiting for the doors to open. Goodness!!!

Joining us were CW's 2 daughters and 3 of her ex classmates from Malaysia. We were all hungry and definitely wanting to try out different dishes. Before I start describing the food, I think I should explain the food ordering system at PappaRich. There is a preprinted list of menu items on a block pad and we diners get the time to peruse the very extensive menu and note which ones we want and the number of plates for each dish ordered. When we are ready, we press the bell button which is located in the centre of the table. Someone will come around to pick up the order.

For drinks, I had the Barley with Grass Jelly. An interesting combination, one which I have not tried before and I quite liked it. The girls had the Mango Mania, it was quite a colourful looking drink.

For mains, we had:

Biryani Rice with Fried Chicken, Sambal Eggplant and Sambal Prawns

Biryani Rice with Red Chicken and Sambal Prawns

Dry Kuay Teow with Steamed Chicken

Sambal

Sambal is a Malaysian restaurant located in the Sydney suburb of North Ryde. It is not new to the Sydney food scene and in fact, it has been established for many years now. Unfortunately I cannot remember the year I first dined at Sambal. At that time, it was just weeks into its opening.

But over the years I have been here for lunch and dinner with different groups of friends and have also had the occasional take away. But this is the first time I am blogging about it. And about time too!

My friend, SB was in town with his family. Since they were staying in North Ryde, it was the perfect venue to meet up.

When I arrived, it turned out that there was a slight mix up with my reservation. Andrew, one of the owners, forgot to write my booking down in the Booking book. Fortunately, this time, I did the reservation by email and my wonderful smartphone saved the day as I was able to prove my reservation confirmation by showing the reply confirmation email from Andrew. Luckily they found a small table at the corner near the main entrance for me. Poor Andrew was so apologetic but I shrugged it off as a genuine oversight. These things happen and I was only too happy they found me a table. Believe me, the restaurant was packed for a Friday night!

I was excited to show off my heritage cuisine to my friends from Melbourne. SB loves trying out different cuisines but I knew that for his wife and kids, spicy food was not something they would want to venture in.

So these were the dishes we had:

Loh Bak - a classic Penang dish. Minced meat seasoned with 5 spice, wrapped in bean curd rolls and deep fried.

Chicken satay - skewers of grilled marinated chicken served with a peanut sauce and servings of cucumber.

Inchee Kabin - beautifully deep fried chicken marinated in a host of spices.

Hainan Chicken Rice - poached chicken served with rice cooked in chicken stock with garlic chilli sauce.

Temasek Restaurant

Okay, you may be wondering why would I be blogging about Temasek only now? This restaurant has been operating for years and yet this is my first time posting about a meal there. Admittedly I have been there many times over the years but I didn't have a blog then and you really can't be taking photos at a business lunch.

So today is my chance. A dinner with some friends whom I haven't seen for more than 2 years. Yes, you read it right, 2 years!! This time the group decided to meet for dinner at Temasek, which is located in Parramatta.

We arrived at 6.30 pm and the restaurant was already quite full. I cannot believe how popular this place is, even after all these years!

I suggested we go for a banquet menu and we decided on the $31 per head menu. So here are the dishes. Apologies for the quality of the photos. For some unknown reason my camera wasn't behaving that night and the images are not as clear as I would have liked.

Entrees were Spring rolls and Curry puffs - not the best I have had and I was a little disappointed with the lack of flavour. There is definitely room for improvement.

Spring rolls and curry puffs

Mains were Beef rendang, Satay chicken, Singapore chilli prawns, Assam seafood, French beans stir fried with belacan and Ngoh Hiang. Ngoh Hiang is also known as loh bak and is a Hokkien dish that can be described as five spice pork rolls, rolled in bean curd skin and deep fried.

Beef rendang

Satay chicken 

Assam seafood

Jackie M Malaysian Cuisine

I read about a rather good Malaysian restaurant called Jackie M located in Concord. I recall it was in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, about a year ago. It piqued my interest and has been on my mental 'to dine' list since then.

Well, I finally got there. Firstly I must say how surprised I am at how busy Majors Bay Road is in Concord. Wow, I couldn't believe how many restaurants there were and how many people were out there having a good evening. Sorry if this sounds slightly pompous, but it just shows me how little I know about the suburbs that I don't frequent. How much more is there for me to explore in this diverse city!!!

I was excited to be at Jackie M. The thought of getting a chance to meet the renowned Jackie M herself was quite exciting plus I have heard good things about her cooking and how busy her restaurant gets during the weekend.

During the recent Night Noodle Markets in Sydney, I was one of those queuing up at Jackie M's stall and that night I had the very delicious Nasi Lemak Istimewa. The beef rending was tender and oh so delicious.

This time we ordered Roti Canai with chicken curry, Char Koay Teow, Wan Tan Hor Fun with seafood combination, Otak Otak, Hainanese Chicken Rice, Chai Tao Koay and finished off with a large bowl of Ais Campur (or known as ice kachang) and a bowl of Cendol.

Otak otak

Char Koay Teow

What a feast! We thoroughly enjoyed every dish and if there was room in our tummies, we would have ordered more.

Hainanese chicken rice

Roti canai with curry - yummy!

Next time I will ask for more chilli in the Char Koay Teow but even without the kick of the chilli, the dish was well cooked. Loved the smokiness of the noodles or as the Cantonese say 'wok hei'. Jackie's roti is really good, there was a meatiness to the roti that I find lacking in other venues. This was the same comment from CW.

Penang Assam Laksa

Penang Assam Laksa - an iconic dish from the island of Penang, Malaysia. It is not easy to find Malaysian restaurants in Sydney serving this dish. This is mainly because of the difficulty in sourcing the required authentic ingredients. Some of the core ingredients are bunga kantan (torch ginger), tamarind peels, laksa leaves and definitely the mackerel fish.

Penang Assam Laksa

My friend CW invited me and a group of other friends over to her place for lunch. The dish of the day being Penang Assam Laksa. It is not often I get to savour an authentic Assam Laksa so I could not refuse such a tempting invite.

CW's Mum was the cook of the day and her dish was just true to the flavours. There was the sour flavour from the tamarind, the savoury from the soup and spices and the fresh pineapple adding the sweetness that make up the marvelous Assam Laksa.

Garnishings

Fresh pineapple

Yummy, yummy, yummy! All I can say is I had two servings and loved every mouthful. I can't wait for the next invite!

Aunty also served another iconic dish i.e. Fried Kway Teow. I had a mouthful (too full from my 2 bowls of Assam Laksa). As usual Aunty cooked another delicious dish. There were lots of requests for take away.

Fried Kway Teow

I don't know how we did it but we found some space for dessert. There was baklava, espresso chocolate cake courtesy of CW and another friend brought some Muah Chee. I don't recall having this dish when I lived in Malaysia but all the other ladies kindly reminded me that this dish was easily available everywhere and most especially at the night markets. It is made of glutinous rice flour and topped with peanuts and sugar. I quite liked the chewy texture. Interesting!

The Espresso Chocolate cake was lovely and moist. Good job CW!

Espresso chocolate cake

Muah chee

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