Let’s taco bout Taco King Toby Wilson (Ghostboy Cantina) who has teamed up with Jaime Wirth (Drink n Dine) and natural-wine merchant Joel Amos (DRNKS) and given The George in Waterloo a spanking new makeover!

The boys refreshed the interior of the bar area and while there’s craft beers on tap they’ve kept the Melbourne Bitters around for the locals. There’s also a bottle shop featuring natural and organic wines, but most importantly they stock my new favourite prosecco from Puncheon Bottles! Add $20 to any of the wines and you can drink them in the pub and they’ll provide an ice bucket and wine glasses.

The beer garden out back was previously Hughes Barbecue but gone are the cactuses and barbecue smokers and instead there’s a water feature complete with an al pastor water fountain and 2 live eels happily swimming around.

The corn chips ($7) was meant to come with salsa but guacamole arrived instead and I’m not gonna complain about that because guacamole is life and this was the perfect snack with our adult beverages.

First on the taco lineup is the Ensenada fish taco ($7), a warm house-made corn tortilla holds pieces of fried masa flour battered gurnard with shaved cabbage and slivers of crunchy radish. I did find this a touch on the dry side but nothing a whack of their house made hot sauce can’t fix!

I absolutely LOVED the Kingfish ceviche tostada ($7) and not just because of the crispy tostada haha it was the natural sweetness and freshness of the raw kingfish against the sourness of the pickles and crunch of the tostada, everything was so perfectly balanced!

Noods had ordered the Chicken carnitas taco ($6) and assumed I’d also gotten one for myself so devoured it in less than 5 seconds without offering a bite >.< but apparently it was tasty?

So here’s a pic of the plate. Thanks Noods.

I instead had ordered the Barbacoa lamb taco ($6) which was awesome, the lamb was melt in the mouth tender with juicy nubbins of fat. I’d totally order an entire tray of these bad boys next time.

Aaand I had to get the Chorizo Quesadilla ($8) because well, I required cheese and it certainly delivered on the flavour front with spicy chorizo nubbins enveloped in a blanket of melty cheese.

The signature taco is the famed Al Pastor taco although it wasn’t available at lunch but because it was the long weekend and we were having a jolly good time drinking all the drinks, somehow dinner time rolled around and we managed to get the first lot of tacos just as dinner service started up. The corn tortilla holds pork neck marinated in a house-made adobo sauce that’s been slowly cooked on a spit and shaved to order and also a wedge of juicy roasted pineapple to tie things together. It’s a juicy, meaty mouthful and you’ll regret only ordering one.

Oh and we also get the Elotes aka juicy corn cobs slathered with a generous amount of mayo, chilli, cheese and lime.

Make sure you save room for dessert! The Churros ($8) are a revelation, I’ve never particularly loved churros before but these are the absolute bomb! The churros are crisp on the outside and wondrously light and fluffy on the inside. They were drizzled with cajeta, a dulce de leche syrup made with goat’s milk which has the perfect balance of caramel-y sweetness and makes it near impossible for me to resist licking the plate clean.

The George
760 Elizabeth Street,
Waterloo

Hours:
Mon – Thurs: 11am – 12am
Fri – Sat: 11am – 3am
Sun: 11am – 10pm

You know when you eat at a Korean restaurant and they’ll supply you with 1 or 2 free banchan side dishes with your food? Well Myeongdong Korean Restaurant in North Strathfield has become legendary in reputation for providing the most amount of free banchan in Sydney.

As soon as Raff and Phuoc have arrived, we immediately order and a whole flurry of banchan dishes are quickly placed on our table, covering ¾ of the surface area. It truly was the most amount of free banchan I have ever seen! Standout favourites was the thinly sliced fishcakes and surprisingly the spicy radish kimchi. Oh and did I mention that they’ll happily refill any of the banchan? Such value.

The Haemul pajeon seafood pancake ($20) is huge and studded with a generous amount of octopus, prawns, mussels and shallots. The edges are a crispylicious delight and the seafood is juicy and tender.

It was a struggle to wait while the Spicy Pork rib hot pot (medium, $52) is slowly simmering away but we picked at the banchan and not so patiently stirred every few minutes to check if everything was nice and tender.

But patience is a virtue and all that jazz you know? And we were greatly rewarded with meltingly tender pork that just about fell off the bone with but a touch and scooping out the slippery potato noodles and enoki mushroom made for such a heartwarming meal that cold night.

On a return visit, I’ve brought the fam for their first proper meal at a Korean restaurant and to show them the wonders of free banchan. We basically reorder the same foods but we also order the Cold Buckwheat Noodle Soup ($17) which is super refreshing, the noodles are springy with a nice bite but oh boy this is surprisingly filling! While the food is generally large enough for family share style there are some smaller menu items available. Oh and be sure to arrive early ahead of the lunch/dinner rush otherwise be prepared to queue!

Myeongdong Korean Restaurant
2/1 George St,
North Strathfield

Trading Hours
7 days: 10am – midnight

So I’ve always been really skeeved out by spam and all its fake bouncy luncheon meat cousins. I maybe ate it once or twice as a kid but never grew up eating it, never had a spam musubi or a spam sandwich for an arvo snack. So when Viv orders the Pineapple bun with pork luncheon and egg ($7.80) I was all prepared to take a courtesy bite and pass it back to her.

But behold! I am in love! The normally squishy ‘meat’ was pan fried so the edges were crisp and slightly caramelised and the saltiness of it just worked so well against the sweetness of the pineapple bun. And for those not in the know, a pineapple bun aka bolo bao doesn’t contain any pineapple but is named that for its crackly textured appearance. And just look at that gloriously oozy yolk!

We also ordered a normal Pineapple bun with butter ($5.80) too and OH BOY THE BUTTER! I thought oh the butter that’s peeking out looks like a nice amount but I’m sure it’ll just be the edge but nope! It was a giantass slab that filled the entire bun! The CORRECT amount folks!

I mistakenly ordered the Beef brisket with special curry sauce ($13.80) instead of the dried noodle with with beef brisket with special curry sauce ($13.80) argh and while rice is all fine and good I would’ve much preferred noodles with the curry sauce which was slightly sweet but deliciously savoury. There was a good amount of brisket but would’ve liked them to be more tender.

The Baked farmer bread with seafood, spaghetti, white sauce and onsen egg ($18.80) comes with a ‘limited quantities’ warning on the menu and it’s certainly impressively presented. Buuuuut it was kinda bland, even with the layer of melted cheese on top. The pasta in the white sauce needed something like salt or garlic or pepper I dunno, anything! There was also no onsen egg to be seen, unless it had prematurely broken open and spilled its yolky innards inside?

The Tofu Fa ($12) aka soya bean custard is steamed to order. There’s a warning on the menu about the 20 minute wait so we order it at the beginning with all our foods. The wooden pail contains a pretty generous sized metal bowl of silky smooth tofu fa and there’s saucers of sugar syrup and raw sugar on the side so you can adjust the sweetness to your own liking.

Hong Kong Bing Sutt also serve milk tea and their Signature Milk Tea, chilled ($5.30) comes in it’s own glass bottle. If you go with a group they have a family deal drinks special of 4 for $20 and comes in an ice bucket a la bucket of beers lol I have chosen Yuanyang, coffee mixed with milk tea ($5.30) which is strong but sweet and reminds me of my childhood years at the HK cafe in good ol Carlingford Village where my love of coffee first began!

Hong Kong Bing Sutt
Shop 8/11-15 Deane St,
Burwood

Trading Hours:
7 days: 11am – 10pm

Bella Brutta in Newtown is Sydney’s latest hotspot for wood fired pizza, a joint venture with LP’s Quality Meats’ Luke Powell and Porteno’s Elvis Abrahanowicz and Joseph Valor. The restaurant is surprisingly long, the bar lines the wall from the entrance with the pizza oven standing pride of place in the centre of the room. It’s Raff’s birthday and we are close enough to watch all the action of the pizza station with complete with pizza dough tosses.

We start with Cheese fritti with hot sauce ($4 each). The deep fried globes of goats cheese and parmesan are golden and crunchy on the outside with a scorching liquid cheese centre.

But it was just so tasty that we couldn’t help but keep on eating it and burning the roofs of our mouths. The wood fired green pepper salsa that came on the side has us exclaiming at the punch of flavour and saving the excess to dip our pizza crusts into later.

The Clam pizza ($26) has got to be my favourite pizza in Sydney right now. The crust is blistered and puffy, the surf clams are tender and the centre molten with melted pecorino cheese, a sprinkling of chilli and smashed garlic cloves that have an almost jammy consistency.

The special of the day was a 1 month aged ribeye ($40) sourced from the Riverina, done in a veal milanese style and crumbed in panko. The smoked beef fat and lemon vinaigrette was a touch on the too sour side but I can understand its presence for the fatty parts towards the bone. Speaking of the bone, Raff enjoying gnawing away and ripping every last juicy sherrick off until it was nekkid:P

We were stuffed buuuut we spied a Tiramisu ($16) on the menu and had to order it because yolo. Bella Brutta’s version uses both Disaronno amaretto and Amaro Montenegro liqueur and considering how much I hate both liqueurs, I actually really liked this tiramisu and thought it worked well with the generous layers of cream and mascarpone and is that hazelnut I detect? Delicious.

Bella Brutta
135 King St,
Newtown

Trading Hours:
Mon: Closed
Tues – Sat: 5pm – 11pm
Sun: 12pm – 9pm