Manpuku, Chatswood

With an increasing number of ramen places opening up comes more competition. Chatswood used to be a dead spot for ramen but there's now several options to choose from, including a newly opened Ippudo in The District, and Manpuku.

Interior

I've heard good things about Manpuku in Kensington, so I was excited to see that it had opened up closer to home for me and I could finally taste for myself how it stacks up to other ramen places in Sydney. The location is a bit of a walk away from the main shopping precinct, but this hasn't deterred people from coming. I've been a few times now and it's very popular especially during weekend lunchtimes - so be prepared for a short wait.

Manpuku gyoza - $6.90

Apart from ramen, there's also some tasty side dishes like takoyaki ($5.50), karaage ($5.50) or mini rice bowls. We start with the Manpuku gyoza - a pork pan-fried dumpling topped with Spanish and spring onions. On my most recent visit, this didn't seem like it was on the menu anymore, but I can attest the plain pork gyoza is just as good with a nice crispy base and a tangy dipping sauce.

Tonkotsu shoyu ramen - $14.50, with extra egg - $2

There's a few different types of soup bases to choose from, including chicken soup, pork bone tonkotsu soup, and miso. For most of the soup bases, you can also chose between salt (shio) or soy (shoyu).

The tonkotsu soup is creamy and rich but not too thick. The tonkotsu shoyu is a bit salty for my liking, but the shio version which I've had on subsequent visits, has a pleasant balance of saltiness and umami. Both come with two slices of cha shu, bean sprouts, cabbage, black fungus and a sheet of nori.

Shio gara ramen - $13.50, with extra egg - $2

Mrs Mi, Chatswood

I was waking up from an epic sleep-in on Saturday morning when I got a text from Captain Awesome.

"Hey are you going to that robot restaurant today??"

I usually consider myself relatively informed about new restaurant openings, but this I hadn't heard of. Captain Awesome filled me in on the new Chinese restaurant in Chatswood which has a robot chef, and that as today was their opening day, they would be giving out free bowls of the signature pork mince noodles to the first 88 customers.

I was sold, and clearly Captain Awesome was as well as she'd been waiting for them to open since 10.30am that morning. So we drove out to join her to check out this robot chef in action.

The interior of Mrs Mi

Captain Awesome and a few others had already snagged a table by the time we got there, so we walked right on in, missing the robot chef, and joined them. The restaurant was pretty full and busy, with lots of staff on the floor to help out on the first day of trade.

The menu consists of Northern Chinese specialties, with a focus on dumplings and handmade noodles. We each chose a noodle and also ordered some dumplings to share.

Mrs Mi xiao long bao - $9.80

The xiao long bao were the first to arrive - there's some stiff competition in the XLB arena in Chatswood with the likes of Din Tai Fung and New Shanghai, but Mrs Mi's XLBs are damn good and are a serious contender. The dumpling skins were thin, with several pleats at the top, yet were sturdy enough to hold the flavoursome soup inside.

Braised pork belly with noodles - $13.80

All the noodles at Mrs Mi are sliced by the robot chef into a pot of boiling water. There's a choice of having your noodles in broth or dry. The braised pork belly noodles had some fatty and tender pieces of pork, and some green Chinese vegetables thrown in for good measure. Even though this was a "dry noodle" dish, it still had enough of the braising liquid to coat the noodles with sauce.

Braised beef brisket and tendon noodle soup - $14.80

Khao Pla, Chatswood

I've mentioned before how Thai is not one of my favourite cuisines, but I'm willing to give anything a try if someone tells me it's good. I'd heard good things about Khao Pla in Chatswood, so we visited one Thursday night on the recommendation of Electjai.

Isaan steak tartare - $13

We let Electjai take care of the ordering since he'd been before, and the first thing we ate was this Isaan steak tartare. Raw beef was mixed with roasted rice, chilli flakes and lime juice. I don't do well with too much chilli and while this steak tartare was absolutely delicious, oh man did it burn!

Thai milk tea - $4

The problem with having a low chilli tolerance is that a lot of the time the food is still tasty so you just kind of have to put up with the burning. Luckily there was the perfect foil to all the hot Thai food with this iced Thai milk tea. Sweet, cold and milky, it did the trick in cooling some of the chilli heat, especially from that steak tartare.

Yum mango - $18

Marukame Udon, Chatswood

Making udon noodles in the window

It's a new year, so it seemed only fitting to check out a new restaurant to kickstart the blog this year! You can't miss Marukame Udon on Victoria Street in Chatswood, as at any given time there will be people crowded around the glass storefront, checking out the new restaurant and watching the chefs make the noodles right in front of you.

Menu

You can also ogle at the menu before you go in, and it's probably best that you do because once you join the line, the ordering station is not too far inside. There's lots of different udon options as well as rice bowls. Select your noodles, size and hot or cold, and move down the canteen-style line until a friendly staff member takes your order. Within minutes they will be weigh out your portion of noodles, place them in a bowl, ladle over the sauce or soup and your noodles will be on your tray, ready to go.

Inari sushi and other tempura additions

But don't go rushing off yet, because there's tasty extras to be had! Marukame offers a selection of tempura, including chicken, fish, prawns, vegetables and pork katsu. There's also some inari sushi (rice stuffed inside a sweet tofu pocket), and iced green tea. Once you get the end of the line, a staff member will calculate the cost of the items on your tray, before you pay and go off to add even more things to your noodles, like chopped shallots and crunchy tempura bits.

Tsuke udon with wasabi (large) - $6.90 (left); Tempura white fish - $2.40 and Tempura vegetable - $1.90 (right)

The tsuke udon is a cold noodle option which comes with a small bowl of broth on the side for dipping the noodles into. A small dish containing a wasabi paste sits on top of the bowl of broth for some added heat. The tempura white fish is fried well, with a crunchy batter but succulent flesh inside. The tempura vegetables, or kakiage, is a wonderful mess of shredded carrot, onion, corn and other vegies deep fried in a light batter.

Kamaage udon (regular) - $5.90

PappaRich, Chatswood

It seems as though queueing at new restaurants is the thing to do nowadays. PappaRich has been open in Chatswood for a couple of months now, but it seems as though the queues still haven't subsided and there's still a good forty-minute-or-so wait until you can get a table. Is it the novelty factor or is the food actually that good? A few friends and I decided to join the queue and find out...

PappaRich has a wide range of drinks that spans about 6 pages of the menu! We started with a Milo Dinosaur (definitely something for the Milo lovers out there), some soy milks and barley drinks, as well as a few iced teh tariks.

Iced teh tarik

Seeing as the drinks menu along is 6 pages, it shouldn't be a surprise that the rest of the menu is also quite extensive. Luckily, we were able to peruse the menu while we waited for a seat so that by the time we got a table, we were ready to order. Ordering is done by filling out a form that tells them the dish you want and the quantities, which is then handed over to one of the waitstaff when you are ready.

Roti canai with curry chicken

Lotus Thai, Chatswood

Lotus Thai

Group-buy coupons - love them or hate them, they're definitely a way to dine at a fraction of the price you would normally pay, and often I find they're a good way of trying out new restaurants. Most of the time, I tend to buy coupons to places that I've heard of before, but sometimes it leads me to discover new places that I've never even heard of.

House wine (included in deal)

Lotus Thai was one of those places. After wandering around the apartment complex which it is located in for a few minutes, trying to find the place (tip: look for the string of neon lights), we finally settled down into a spacious dining area which was relatively quiet on this Thursday night. We selected a bottle of house white to start, which is included in the deal.

Chicken and lemongrass soup

There was no need to order as the deal includes a set 6-course shared menu for two, for $49. The chicken and lemongrass soup was swift to arrive and there was enough for two small bowls of soup per person, plus a little extra. The soup was heady with lemongrass and quite flavoursome, reminding me of some of the clear Chinese soups that my mother makes. Hidden in the soup were pieces of chicken on the bone.

Seafood salad

Japan City, Chatswood

Japan City dining area

I love it when a new restaurant opens up in Chatswood since I frequent the area so often that the dining options become a little boring after a while. Taking over the old Borders site is a brand new and spacious Japan City. In addition to all the Japanese homewares sold in the store, the larger shop area means that they have also opened a new "Eat Street" featuring a number of stations selling different types of Japanese food. It's like a Japanese food court which got me all kinds of excited so Sir D and I planned to visit there late on a Thursday night.

One of the entrances to the dining area

Having been barely open for a week when we visited, it was clear that they were still finding their feet as the first waiter I came across looked at me blankly when I said I had made a booking. After a short wait, we were seated and the system was explained to us. There are separate menus for each station and you have to go to each separate station to place your order. You pay the counter and then are handed a buzzer which tells you when your meal is ready to pick up.

Menus

We selected the items that we wanted by looking at the menus on our table. There are about five different menus for the sushi bar, noodle bar, teppanyaki station, tempura station and the dessert bar. After selecting our items, Sir D and I make our way to the separate stations to place our orders. We end up ordering from three different stations which means we end up with three buzzers on our table. I think they could probably do with one counter for ordering and picking up, which also expedites the orders to the separate stations, but it worked out ok in the end because the buzzers were labelled with which station it was from.

Scallop aburi (2 pcs) - $5.90 and Scallop fantasy (2 pcs) - $5.50

Crazy Wings, Chatswood

The newest addition to Chatswood's Eat Street is one that you can smell from a few blocks away. Hang around the Railway Street side of Chatswood station and you will notice the lingering smell of charcoal and spices. Yep, that's Crazy Wings you can smell, the restaurant right next to Mamak serving crazy meat, crazy vegies and even crazy honey toast - all on a stick.

(left) Hot Kid Milk Beverage; (right) Peach blended ice

We order some drinks in preparation for a chilli onslaught. Captain Awesome selects the interesting "Hot Kid Milk Beverage" which comes in a cute mini can and is filled with sweetened milk. The rest of us go for more mainstream items such as the mango blended ice and peach blended ice.

Honey soy crazy wings - $2.50 each (2 wings on each skewer)

You can't go to Crazy Wings without ordering their crazy wings and so we order three of the seven flavour options available. The honey soy is more honey than soy but nevertheless still juicy and flavoursome.

Original crazy wings - $2.50 each (2 wings on each skewer)

The Rice Den, Chatswood

Tempura quail egg skewers (6 eggs) - $8

Those that know me will know that I love food on a stick. Even more when it's been deep fried. And the deep fried quail eggs from The Rice Den are no exception. The eggs are soft and have a slightly runny yolk, and are encased by a crisp tempura batter and drizzled with a sticky teriyaki sauce.

Sesame prawn toast soldiers (3 pcs) - $6

The Rice Den is the newest addition to Chatswood's burgeoning dining scene. It's a small restaurant with Asian comic strip images adorning the walls, and a combination of two-person tables, large wooden tables for shared seating and bar style seats. The food is a mish mash of Asian cuisines rolled into the one restaurant and given a modern twist. The sesame prawn toast soldiers are a good example of this, with the Chinese prawn toast, Japanese wasabi mayo dipping sauce and the overall presentation of the dish being reminiscent of the Western boiled egg and soldiers.

School prawn stack - $12

Red Chilli Sichuan Restaurant, Chatswood

Let it be known that I have a pathetic chilli tolerance. What is a slightly unpleasant heat in Sir D's mouth translates as a burning fire made of a million chillies in mine, and requires gallons of water (or milk, or rice) to extinguish. So I'm a bit hesitant to join Sir D's family for dinner at Red Chilli Sichuan Restaurant since Sichuan food is known for packing quite a lot of heat.

Chinese Tea - $1pp

It's a Thursday night but the place is packed and we have to wait for a table. Sir D has been before with his family so I let them take charge of the ordering for the most part. The menu is pretty substantial and there are chillies alongside the name of the dish to denote the spicy ones.

Special crispy duck (half) - $20.80

We start with a non-spicy dish to satisfy our tastebuds before they get burnt off. Half a duck arrives on our table and the skin is brown and crisp with tender, succulent meat. I'm usually a bit wary of things that claim to be "special" (especially "special sauce") but this duck is cooked and seasoned nicely with a bit of a soy sauce flavour in the skin.

Steamed and deep-fried Chinese bread served with condensed milk (8 pcs) - $9.80

Takeru, Chatswood

Competition is pretty fierce in Chatswood for Japanese restaurants with new ones opening left, right and centre all the time. But Takeru is a little different. Tucked away in a little corner in Victoria Plaza, it offers modern Japanese food with strong Western influences - think Japanese-style pasta and pizza, as well as more traditional favourites like ramen and agedashi tofu.

It's open all day which is great for a late lunch, early dinner or afternoon snack, and prices are very reasonable with most of the dishes under the $15 mark. Today I'm here with a bunch of hungry boys for a late lunch, so as soon as we are seated in the booth we start poking away at the touch screen ordering system (which is the same as the one at Wagaya and Poporo).

Mentaiko potato salad - $7.20

The food arrives in no time, and soon the table is filled with dishes that we ordered only minutes earlier. A big dollop of creamy potato sits on a bed of lettuce leaves, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and corn kernels. The potato is mashed roughly so that there are still small chunks of potato, and the mixture is ever so slightly pink from the addition of mentaiko (cod roe).

Agedashi tofu with soft shell crab - $7.50

Ozeki Sushi, Chatswood

My friends know me well. "Jacq!", said Queen Chu, "there's a new sushi train near Chatswood Chase - lets go check it out!" Queen Chu loves food just as much as I do so without delay we went in our post-uni-exam bliss to eat sushi to our heart's content.

Chicken katsu with cucumber inside out roll - $3.80

We were greeted with the coolness of stainless steel decor and the waitresses directed us to some seats at the bench. We watched the plates of sushi go by on the train and the first thing we noticed was how big the serving sizes were! Giant slices of fish and sushi bursting with more than substantial fillings were going past our eyes and we couldn't wait to dig in. (And I also couldn't wait to take photos with my new DSLR camera =D)

Salmon nigiri - $3.00

Sushi Sagunja, Chatswood

Sir D's new reason for getting out of bed every morning: Aburi scallop sushi from Sushi Sagunja!


This is a sushi train place which opened up recently in the Mandarin Centre foodcourt in Chatswood and they are offering all sushi and sashimi on the train for $2.50 everyday! We couldn't go past a bargain like that so one lunchtime we stopped by to see what they had on offer.


I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to bargains because surely there must be a catch? I thought maybe the sushi wasn't going to be very fresh or maybe there would be not much variety but boy was I wrong! The sushi was very fresh and whilst we were there it was great to see that they were continuously making new sushi for the conveyor.

Salmon nigiri

Tuna nigiri

Salmon belly nigiri

New Shanghai, Chatswood

I had read numerous blog posts about the myriad of Shanghai dumpling places in Ashfield. Cheap and delicious xiao long baos as well as the crunchy, burnished bottoms of the pan fried pork buns. Ashfield was a bit far for me but I was willing to travel the distance until, like magic, New Shanghai opened up in Chatswood!


This has slowly become Sir D's favourite place to eat in Chatswood (any mention of dumplings will see his face light up with enthusiasm) because you can get quite a lot of tasty Shanghainese food without leaving a hole in your hip pocket. Admittedly the service is not so great in that during peak times they really do not have enough floor staff and can come across as being very inattentive, but the food and cheap prices make up for it.

Famous New Shanghai pan fried pork buns - $8.80

When Sir D and I come here we either order the xiao long bao or the pan fried pork buns and tonight, it's the pork buns. These have a bread-like exterior which is nice and brown on the bottom. Inside is a ball of pork swimming in delicious soup. Be careful when you eat these - the first time I bit into one I managed to squirt soup all over Sir D! I probably should have read Not Quite Nigella's instructions on how to eat a soup dumpling beforehand.

Pork and chive dumplings - $7.80