I’ve been to Banh Xeo Bar in The Cannery in Rosebery a few times now, their bun bo hue is awesome and I love their bone marrow so for my bday lunch with the fam I decided it was time for the ½ Berkshire pig head ($79.50)!

The pig head takes about 30-40mins to roast so we order some dishes to share while we wait. The Lemongrass chicken Banh Xeo ($25) has a 15mins wait warning message but it’s definitely worth the wait. The banh xeo is massive and every bit as tasty as it looked! Super crispy lacy edges and choc a block filled with fragrant chicken pieces and fat beansprouts.

You absolutely have to order the Whole greenback flounder with brown butter fish sauce, lemongrass and chilli ($41.50). It comes with a plate of the lightest, most crisp baguette I’ve ever had and was just oh so perfect for mopping up the incredible sauce, brown butter is seriously the answer to all problems in life. The flounder was perfectly cooked and oh so tender but the fam and I were sad to see that the tail had been trimmed as we love gnawing away at all the crispy bits haha

And now for the main event! The pig head was golden and crisp and the meat in the cheek was just so crazily juicy and fatty. There was enough crackle to go around our table of 5 and we fall into silence as we all sighed with carnivorous happiness.

Meaty cross section! Oh and there’s baguettes lying on the bottom of the pig soaking up meaty juices which was so incredibly rich that I had to admit defeat after a few bites.

The lettuce, pickles and sauces are replenishable thank goodness, the fattiness of the pork will of course get overwhelming so I’d recommend sharing it between 5-6 people.

To stave off the feeling of a heart attack, we wrapped pieces of pork and glorious crackle in lettuce cups and pickled vegetables before drizzling on our selected condiments- chilli sauce, sambal, lemongrass & chilli and fish sauce.

There was also potatoes roasted in beef fat! These were the most incredible roast potatoes I have ever eaten! The outside was so freaking crispy and the inside perfectly soft and fluffy and the flavour just tasted so comforting and savoury.

Banh Xeo Bar (inside the Cannery)
11/61-71 Mentmore Ave,
Rosebery

Trading hours:
Monday: Closed
Tues – Thurs: 12pm – 3.30pm
Fri – Sat: 12 – 3.30pm, 5.30pm – 9.30pm
Sun: 12 – 3.30pm

So a few weekends ago Joy mentioned a croissant shop had popped up inside the Bare Witness cafe in Rhodes and eager to re-live my croissant eating Paris days (which I uh still haven’t blogged about), the boy and I made the trek out to Agent Orange land.

We start with the Original croissant ($4), a perfectly golden specimen and the last one available from the display. The amount of layers is certainly impressive, especially considering the size of the kitchen! The croissant hits all the right check marks with a crisp, golden shell and light, buttery honeycomb innards.

The Pain au chocolat ($4.50) is a beauty and quite large for a chocolate croissant. The pastry is just as awesome as the original and has a couple of sticks of rich dark chocolate snuggled together at the base.

The Pretzel ($4.50) is a beautiful burnished croissant just begging to be devoured. The croissant pastry is a bit more denser, like well, a pretzel. The sprinkle of sesame seeds is very moreish and I reckon this would be perfect if it was a filled croissant with ham and cheese!

The butter cube immediately catches my eye with its perfect cube shape and squillions of layers. On offer that morning was a large unfilled butter cube ($9) or the smaller matcha cream filled ($5) but I’ve chosen the vanilla cream filled butter cube ($5).

But did it live up to the hype? Hmmm. Biting into the cube was pretty much impossible, it was about a cm too tall for a proper top-down bite and eating it sideways against the layers seemed so wrong. I loved the super smooth vanilla cream filling but oh how little the filling was! And the cube itself? While impressive looking with all its layers and perfect edges I felt a bit letdown in taste. I think I was expecting it to be like a palmier, sweet and crisp but instead it was basically a compressed croissant pastry and with a name like buttercube i’d expect it to be… buttery..

The Sticky nuts ($6) however blew my mind! It was exactly like a pecan pie with brown sugar caramelised gooeyness and mixed nuts encrusted on a croissant base. It has the perfect balance of sweetness with a touch of saltiness and all of the textures from crunch to chew.

And I had to get a savoury to balance all the sweets so a Spinach and ricotta ($6) croissant was procured.

The filling in this was nice and generous almost to the point where it was too much haha whinge whinge ikr but I loved this filled croissant, there was enough flaky pastry encasing the smooth cheesy spinach innards. It was pretty filling (although eating 5+ croissants will do that for you lol) and fyi it holds up pretty good reheating in the oven later 😀

Buttercrumbs Croissants (inside Bare Witness cafe)
30 Shoreline Drive
Rhodes

Trading hours:
Fri, Sat, Sun: 8am – sold out