I don’t often land in Bankstown, in fact this was my first visit, so when a friend had a 40th birthday party nearby I wanted to make sure that I managed to sneak a food blog post in. That’s me, obsessed with my blog. I’m the one who measures a place by its blog worthy status and cannot go anywhere twice much to my husband’s annoyance. We had intended to visit The Taste of Egypt on Greenfield Parade as we had never tried Egyptian food before but as we arrived at 10.30pm on a Saturday night, all of the Egyptian goodies were gone. We exited and found ourselves faced with the bright lights of My Canh, a large Vietnamese restaurant which was thankfully still open and serving.

Before we knew it we were seated and examining the huge and varied menu for goodies with over 220 items to choose from. Warm tea arrives in a cute little metal teapot and two small plastic tumblers. I see items such as Chicken’s Feet salad and Beef Fondue (I ask about this later and it’s not cheese but vinegar) but I wanted to try Special Beef Phở ($9) as the evening has a slight chill to it and I know my husband likes noodle soups. I peruse the menu for another less soupy offering and am a little stumped due to the myriad of options. My eyes rest on the Bun with spring rolls and BBQ Pork ($10), something through culinary kismet was featured on an episode of Food Safari just a few days ago. We order this and as for something to drink, the Avocado shake is just begging to be ordered by me and my husband sees the Durian shake and orders this ($4 each). Our waiter is friendly and efficient.

We’re not waiting long at all, within a couple of minutes, the bean sprouts and basil arrive along with plum and chili sauces for the Phở and the Vietnamese dipping sauce arrives for the Bun. In the Food Safari episode they explained that a girl’s marriage worthy status was based on her ability to make this dipping sauce and a prospective mother in law would be served this so she could inspect how well her potential daughter in law could make it. If the seeds and chili float, then it’s good. If not, well I guess you end up in dating Siberia. My Canh’s sauce of course floats.

Avocado and Durian Shake $4 each

Our Shakes arrive and the avocado is a lovely light sweet and frosty shake. It’s also incredibly rich yet still manages to be refreshing so a little goes a long way. I dislike Durian but for the sake of trying it, I sample my husband’s Durian shake. Yes, it’s that smell again. I quickly pass this back to him. I’m convinced my husband only orders Durian due to its reputation and like boys tend to do, he likes to order the most hideous sounding thing and live to tell the tale. He was seduced by the folklore and legend of the Durian being banned from the streets and my description of gagging and running away when my mother first opened one up in our home. He admits that he doesn’t like it and admits it may have been the idea of a stinky fruit that made him order it.

Our Bun and Phở arrives. I try the Bun first - it has nothing to do with an actual bread bun, its a noodle dish with the opaque thin vermicelli noodles underneath a tumble of salad, mint leaves, spring rolls and BBQ pork. I spoon the dipping sauce over the noodles and it’s perfect. I love the crunch of the vegetables and mint and the very fresh crispy spring rolls cut in thirds. The BBQ pork is delicious too and oops I may have found that I ate a bit more than my alloted half.

Special Beef Phở $9

I then try the Phở and the broth is richly flavoured yet light and sustaining. I add some bean sprouts which still remain crunchy and some lemon to give it flavour and its delicious. The fatty beef pieces I dip in the chili sauce which is very spicy especially given the presence of freshly chopped chilis. There is also tripe and meatballs as well as another thinly sliced leaner beef. For me however, adding the basil is overkill and I find it overpowers the Phở broth. My husband likes the basil in it but I pick out the leaves.

As much as I don’t want to move out of my safe, and what some may say is boring North Shore enclave, I do wish we had a late night haunt like this.

My Canh Vietnamese restaurant

29-31 Greenfield Parade Bankstown
Tel: +61 (02) 9796-7586
Open 7 days
11am-11pm
Surcharge for Credit card/add 50c per takeaway container

In the middle of nowhere really, sits a Japanese Ramen restaurant that if you happen to be driving past during lunchtime or dinnertime, you may find a queue of young Japanese people outside waiting for a table. We’d often wonder what was with this place as we drove past perplexed at the eager hordes standing outside. Apparently the only place in Sydney that serves real, Tokyo style ramen, Ryo’s noodles marches to the beat of its own taiko drummer. The tables are shared, you help yourself to water, they don’t take bookings, its cash only, there’s no takeaway menu to be had, yet it still works beautifully.

Tonight is our second visit and I have only one thing on my mind: Miso Bolognaise which I first read about on Grab Your Fork. It was the dish I ordered on my last visit and hoggingly kept to myself abandoning all pretense of sharing and breaking the sacred plate swapping routine with my husband. He wasn’t bothered, he was in love with the Ramen with prawn balls in a tangy pork stock soup. On the last visit, we retired to our separate corners of the table huddled protectively over our respective plate and devoured them like we hadn’t eaten in days.

However tonight, we’re on better behaviour as we have guests, Miss America and Queen Viv. Its 7.45pm and already there’s a small queue outside. As they do not take bookings, we have no choice but to join them and the owner lets us know that we may have a 30 minute wait. Luckily the food gods are looking favourably upon us and they seat our table of 4 within 5 minutes. Seated at the table towards the back we have a good view of the restaurant and when I look to my left I see some autographs from various Japanese sporting celebrities (I had to ask, I would be the last to know sporting celebrities, Japanese or not) but also a familiar looking signature, that of Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai who has a lovely abstract signature/drawing and who visited Ryo’s on the 15th of April 2005. We discuss this with the owner who says that he often gets Chinese politicians and celebrities but he largely has no idea who they are, preferring the sportspeople (his pride and joy being the signature of a Japanese kickboxer).

We ask him what’s good, and he suggests combining items number 2 (Ramen Noodles in a Soy Sauce Pork Soup $10) and 3 (Ramen Noodles in a Spicy hot Pork Soup $10) in a special order. Sounds good to me. We also order Tokyo style ramen ($9.50), Miso Bolognaise ($11), spicy deep fried chicken wings (3 for $4), rice ball with roast pork ($3.50, only 10 of these are made per day!) and, with Queen Viv’s urging of “Craaaaaab!”, the soft shell crab ($5).

A scant 5 minutes later and our large steaming bowls of noodles with stiff nori sheet sails arrive to a grateful and hungry mob. We are sharing tonight and have two bowls of the Combination 2&3 ramen and we dig into the noodles, depositing long noodles into our smaller bowls with spoonfuls of the scarlet tinged soup. The thin slices of BBQ Pork floating on top are soft and delicious with a ring of fat around one edge. The soup is fantastic, earthy and rich, full of the marrow from pork bones and slightly spicy. The noodles as always, are toothsome perfection, with the absolute correct texture.

The Tokyo Ramen has slices of BBQ pork on top too but the stock is a soy sauce based one and its lighter and less hearty but still flavoursome. The soy sauce boiled eggs are appropriated by an appreciated Miss America and my husband who adore them. I’m too busy with my favourite dish, the Miso Bolognaise.

I’ve never seen this dish at any other places and it deserves a special trip just to have this. Even if you’re not a huge fan of miso soup like me, this is gorgeously rich, the miso giving it the sauce a smoky mystery and not that overpowering saltiness that miso soup verges into. Miss America loves it but feels that she couldn’t eat a lot of it as its so rich. I disagree knowing full well that I ate a whole bowl of it to myself.

Our smaller dishes arrive as we’re slurping our noodles appreciatively. The soft shell crab is a whole small soft shell crab beautifully deep fried to a crisp. As I find with all crabs, it looks slightly peeved at us and I wait until Queen Viv pulls it apart before eating it.

The spicy chicken wings are good and there’s a resounding earth shattering crunch as we bite into them and a slightly spiciness. However the rest of the table seems more absorbed in the noodles to pay any attention to these.

The rice ball filled with Roast pork is still one of my favourites. Nothing flash or showy, its comforting snack food with deliciously roasted pork shards and sesame seeds sctattered throughout, not just in the centre. Its hard to portion up into 4 so everyone just helps themselves to a little bit in favour of the ramen so I take the rest of this delicious rice triangle.

Leaning back, patting our stomachs contentedly we marvel that for once, we haven’t over-ordered. Then spying the 6 people waiting inside and 5 outside, we make a quick exit, stage left.

Ryo’s Noodles

125 Falcon St
Crows Nest 2065 NSW
Phone: +61 (02) 9955 0225
Thu-Tue noon-2.30pm, 5pm-9.30pm
Cash only
No Bookings

Yes, I’m one of those people who have always wished for a restaurant that serves Yum Cha at night. Mainly for greed related reasons: I can’t eat as much for lunch as dinner so it allows me maximum opportunity for dumpling consumption. So when my father casually mentioned that Rockdale R.S.L. Club serves Yum Cha for dinner on Wednesday nights, I picked up the phone and booked for the coming Wednesday. There are no trolleys unfortunately but you can order off the menu.

The restaurant is fairly modern with new furnishings and at 7pm there are only 3 other tables so we needn’t have booked (Bingo Night in the next room seems to be where the club patrons are at). We have a look at the Yum Cha picture menu and there is a fairly wide selection of dishes with steamed and fried dumpling lovers well catered for.

Service is never a strongpoint at Chinese restaurants and brusque is usually the word I’d use to describe it. Tonight is no exception, it appears that we need to order from the curt older gentleman and not the courteous younger waiter. There are no prices on the menu so we enquire about what the prices are and he doesn’t seem too impressed. After he consults with the cashier, it seems that items range from $4.40 to over $10 for the BBQ/larger items which is fairly standard for Sydney. There are some dishes that we tried to order but they have run out of: the fried taro pastry, deep fried mince pork dumplings and the steamed prawn rice roll.

The Gai Larn in Oyster sauce ($10.80) is the first to arrive and it is succulent and tender without a trace of stringyness or toughness. The sauce is delicious and I am very glad we’ve had our serve of veggies.

The BBQ Pork pastry triangles ($4.40 for 3) arrive next and they and the plate they’re on are piping hot. I love this chinese version of a meat pie and I find they’re best when hot like this with a deliciously flakey and meltingly good pastry.

The love-it-or-hate-it chicken’s feet ($4.40 for 5) is the next to arrive and two of us enjoy these while the other two look on in disgust. They’re fall-off-the-bone good and we’re both secretly glad that the other two can’t stand them. More for us!

The steamed dumplings then arrive in quick succession:

A must have for me, the steamed spinach leaf dumplings ($5.30 for 3) are delicious, flavoursome and plump.

The steamed prawn and chive dumplings ($5.30 for 3) are a combination of my favourite two types of dumplings and are quickly popped into respective mouths.

Unfortunately I’ve picked the mixed mushrooms and seafood dumplings ($5.30 for 3) which I didn’t realise are the ones that I’ve never liked. Packed with soggy peanuts, I’ve never understood their appeal but they masquerade under different names so I usually end up with a steamer of them.

For me, the true test of a restaurant is their Har Gow, their prawn dumplings. Are they plump and full of whole or halved prawns or are the prawns minced up? I prefer the former and having only found the significantly less tasty minced prawn variety in the freezer section of asian grocery shops means that we inevitably order 4 lots of Har Gows whenever we’re at a good Yum Cha restaurant. Having actually made these several years ago I appreciate how hard it is to make the skin and how expensive the filling can be. The Har Gow here (steamed fresh prawn dumplings $5.30 for 4) are the very good sort and we order two more steamers of these, an additional bonus being that we get 4 of these dumplings per steamer.

The steamed glutinous rice in lotus leaf is the next to arrive. I love glutinous rice normally but I find that this rice is too watery and soft, perhaps a consequence of cooking for lunchtime yum cha and then reheating again for dinner? It also needs soy sauce as without it, there isn’t much flavour.

We decline the Yum Cha desserts as my favourite on the menu are the eggy custard tarts but we reason that they won’t be freshly baked which is how we like them. Our stomachs full, they bring out some warm sesame cookies which are more-ishly good, even better that they’re warm thus giving the impression that they’re freshly baked (nevermind the big bowl I saw outside of them ready to give to guests). The obligatory fruit tonight is orange and its sweet and juicy and rounds off our dinner quite nicely.

A quick inspection of the bill and tea is an extra $1.10 per person but a charge we haven’t seen before is the “sauce” charge for $2.80. I can only guess that means the soy sauce and chili sauce that we’ve had since we’ve partaken of no other sauces. Some eyebrows are quietly raised over this sauce charge but all up prices are a pleasant surprise. They don’t seem hiked up for dinner time and they seem the same as what you’d find at any other Yum Cha establishment for lunch so if we don’t pick up the phone on a Wednesday night, you may find us here.

P.S. I have since learnt that lunch prices are 10% less than those for dinner and that lunch also includes free tea. I wonder if that includes free sauce too!:P

Restaurant 45

Rockdale R.S.L.
45 Bay Street
Rockdale
02-9567-2720
Open 7 days
Yum Cha: Monday to Friday 11:00-2:30pm Saturday and Sunday 10:00am-3:00pm
Dinner: Monday to Sunday 6:00pm-9:00pm. Wednesday night Yum Cha and a la carte