Ramen O-San, Haymarket

The year feels like it's only just begun and already there are new ramen shops popping up all over Sydney. The latest one to open is Ramen O-San, which hails from Kyushu, Japan's most southwesterly island that encompasses the prefectures of Fukuoka, Okinawa and Nagasaki, amongst others.

Ramen O-San's Sydney store

Ramen O-San's Sydney shop is the 7th shop to open, with 5 stores already open in Japan and one store in Cambodia. The soup base here is a shoyu tonkotsu base, made by boiling pork bones down for 10 hours and adding in soy sauce at the end. Most of the ramen on the menu is a tonkotsu-based, however there are some which combine the pork bone broth with a chicken or fish stock.

Ramen O-San's menu

I opt for the black garlic ramen, which is basically the original tonkotsu ramen with a bit of black garlic thrown in. There's a streak of black garlic oil on one side of the bowl which is fragrant with garlic flavour and adds another dimension to the tonkotsu soup base.

Black garlic tonkotsu ramen - $10.80

Ramen Kan, Haymarket

Ramen Kan is a little Japanese restaurant tucked away upstairs, accessed by a dodgy looking lift on Hay Street next to Cold Rock. Yes, the lift is a bit dirty-looking and extremely slow and probably needs replacing but don't be put off! Once those lift doors open you will be rewarded with a dining area complete with decorative touches like bamboo and pebbles, and of course fantastic Japanese food.

Soft shell crab salad - $8.90

Ramen Kan offers lunch specials so we opted to have both of those as well as two entrees to share. The first dish to arrive was the soft shell crab salad which had four soft shell crab halves (2 whole crabs) sitting on top of a bountiful cabbage salad with a tangy dressing. The freshly fried crabs had a light batter with a resounding crunch when bitten into.

Salmon salad - $6.90

Shanghai Tang, Haymarket

EDIT: This establishment is now closed.

Finding a place to eat on a Saturday night in Haymarket without a booking and without wanting to queue up is pretty difficult. When Sir D's friend recommended Shanghai Tang which had no queue and looked like it was good value, we decided to give it a go.

Shanghai Tang is located within BreakFree on George on the Mezzanine level, and had a pretty wide range of dumplings, noodles and rice dishes to choose from. The waitstaff were very friendly and helpful with making recommendations and the food arrived promptly.

Traditional Shanghai xiao long bao - $7.80 (8 pcs)

Musashi Dining Bar, Haymarket

Following our fantastic lunch at Marque and watching Julie and Julia, we finished off our day of all-things-food by having dinner at Musashi. Since they don't take bookings after 6pm, we joined the queue and waited for about 30 minutes before getting a table. Which was good in a way since it gave us time to build up an appetite for the delicious food to come.

Grilled jumbo oysters with bacon, butter, garlic, olive oil and soy sauce - $18.00 for 4

We started our meal with one of the specials for the day: grilled jumbo oysters with bacon, butter, garlic, olive oil and soy sauce. These oysters were huge and were grilled to perfection so that they were almost melt-in-the-mouth. The buttery, garlicky sauce was not too overpowering and I loved the sprinkling of crispy bacon bits and spring onions to add a bit of crunch.

Sashimi (main) - $25.80

Poporo, Haymarket

Another pre-theatre dinner - this time Charm and I were watching the long-awaited Wicked! at Capitol Theatre and we were looking for a quick bite before the show. However, I forgot that Thursday was shopping night and that all the usual suspects around the area (Musashi, Chat Thai, Wagaya etc...) would be packed. As a last resort we went to Market City and were surprised to find a new place open which seemed to offer quick and tasty food, which is exactly what we were after.

Touchscreen Menu

 
Poporo calls itself a "Japanese modern cafe restaurant" and offers a variety of burgers, pasta, salad and rice dishes. Apart from the normal Japanese-style rice dishes such as curry rice and omelette rice, they also had something called "doria" which was "oven baked white mornay sauce and melty cheese on tomato rice". Everything was very reasonably priced hovering around the $10-15 mark. You simply placed your order at the touchscreen, paid at the counter and sat down at a table with your number. 

Spinach and cheese penne (cream sauce with bocconcini, tasty, mozzarella, parmesan and spinach) - $10.90

Mamak, Haymarket

Why is it when you can't have something you just want it even more? This is what happened when I found out that Mamak had closed for renovations, which made me crave the flakiness and puffiness of their freshly made roti more so than usual! Luckily they reopened in July and so off we went to satisfy my roti craving.


We head there around 8.30pm on a Thursday night hoping to avoid the queues and although there was a queue it was relatively short and we are seated within 10 minutes.


While we wait we watch the roti chefs flinging dough around and stretching out til it's paper thin, then wrapping it up again to make the roti. Then the roti is placed on a hotplate where it puffs up and becomes golden and flaky. Mmm...