Chur Burger, Surry Hills

If there's one thing you cannot eat gracefully, it's got to be the burger. But there's just something about burgers that always hit the spot. Definitely not the healthiest thing in the world, but if you're gonna splurge on your health kick, it may as well be on something amazingly delicious like a good old burger right? Alas, I love food too much to ever think about dieting (as do my fellow food lover friends) and that is how my fellow friends Chef Meathead, Miss Dentist-In-Training and I end up at Chur Burger on a Tuesday night - lured in by the promise of $10 burgers.

Pulled pork, Chur BBQ sauce, red slaw & fennel mayo burger, $10.00

There was one burger and one burger only that I was going to order. I only had eyes for the pulled pork. It comes to you looking deceptively small, but this baby's packed to the brim full of pulled pork. Would you like some bread with your pork? Would I ever! The pork was incredibly juicy and wonderfully sweet and simply just worked with the slaw and mayo. Some flavour combos are just meant to be you know?

Crumbed fish fillet, pickled cucumber, lemon mayo & dill burger, $10.00

Miss Dentist-In-Training was ever so kind enough to give me some of her fish burger and I was pleasantly surprised that it was quite nice because I am not normally a lover of things reminiscent of fish fingers. However, my heart was stolen by the pulled pork burger very early on in the night. I gotta say, I think Chur's winning mayo is what makes their burgers so awesome.

L to R: Sweet potato fries, $5.00 / Crumbed fish fillet burger, $10.00 / Strawberry milkshake, $8.00

If you love that artificial strawberry flavour like you can get at those old school milk bars, go for the strawberry milkshake! I personally love it, though I know some people are quite against it, so I really loved drinking the milkshake and feeling like a kid again. Chef Meathead's salted caramel milkshake was also pretty good but he did say it started getting a little bit too sweet the more he drank it.

Sweet potato fries, garlic & lime, $5.00

I'm an avid fan of sweet potato, and I love them baked just plain BUT if I'm going to order them at a restaurant, I would expect more than just the same kind of sweet potato that I make myself at home. I was excited about the garlic and lime but unfortunately I didn't get a taste of either. And I know there's something nice about home style chunky cut chips, but some of the pieces were huuuge. I'm talking half a sweet potato per single chip...

Chips & chilli salt, $5.00

These were much more crispy than the sweet potato fries and don't worry if you can't handle your chilli because the chilli powder wasn't very hot. My friend ended up chucking on a whole tonne of tabasco sauce for that chilli kick he was looking for.

Chef Meathead happily demolishing his pulled pork burger

Seriously do not underestimate the size of the burger! It looks so small but there's so much filling that we all left Chur Burger in a semi food coma-esque state. But we also had a lot of potato to get through (with Chef Meathead ordering a whole batch for himself). I think our eyes are too big for our stomachs - I always want to order everything on the menu! And especially with my friend Miss Dentist-In-Training who has eyes equally as big... We are a bad combo :P

I really wanted to try the chicken wings here but we had nowhere near enough stomach space to do so. Ah, next time. So tell me, do you guys have issues with wanting to order everything on the menu like I do?

Chur Burger
48 Albion Street
Surry Hills, NSW, 2010

Opening Hours
Monday: 11:30am - 5:00pm
Tuesday - Saturday: 11:30am - 10:00pm
Sunday: Closed

Holy Basil 2, Sydney CBD

Wanting to see the Vivid Festival, my family decided to eat out in the city beforehands. Holy Basil always has great food and close by to where I work so I headed off there right after I finished to meet the fambam!

It was my grandparents' first time eating Thai food and they requested nothing be too spicy so I definitely ordered on the mild side of the menu. And of course little pots of green tea for them!

Kai Yang (Laos charcoal BBQ chicken), $13.90

 The first to come out was the grilled chicken which had a lovely marinade that had been grilled to little charcoal-y bits. Delicious on its own, but you could always dip it into the sweet chilli sauce or chilli sauce if you're after that kick. We didn't expect the bowls of rice we ordered o be quite that large - it could easily have served three people per bowl!

Pad see ew (with chicken), $12.90

After enjoying the pad see ew last time, along with the fact that it's a favourite of my sister's, it definitely was a must order! The smoky flavour that permeates the noodles is what makes it so special and I really do like it, albeit the fact that it's just a tad too sweet for my tastebuds.

Gang masaman (beef masaman curry), $16.90

Massaman curry is a very mild curry that's quite creamy from the coconut milk in the recipe as well as the final drizzle on top. It's the best stirred through rice!

Som tam (green papaya salad), $10.90

I definitely wanted to introduce my family to the Thai papaya salad, requesting it to be very mild. I love how my grandma still found it extremely spicy haha! They were surprised that it was actually green papaya, as it's not something they've ever tried before.

Crispy fish (with green mango salad), $44.90

This was what I was looking forward to all night though! I could seriously have eaten it forever...They fillet the fish, cut it into individual pieces which are then crumbed and deep-fried. Nothing is wasted as the head and tail is given to you as well! The batter was very crunchy and extremely moreish as they definitely weren't shying away from the pepper :D It went very well with the green mango salad on top which was my preference over the papaya salad. I thought it was the perfect balance of sweet, sour and salty. I didn't get any hit of chilli, but that wasn't missed with any of my relatives! The family also enjoyed how refreshing this salad was. I think they just couldn't quite get used to the slight pungency of the crab paste used in the papaya salad!

I don't think any of us were particularly in the mood for any dessert so we passed on their house special deep-fried icecream. I should probably check out the rest of their dessert menu next time!

Holy Basil
Shark Hotel 127 Liverpool St
Sydney NSW 2000
http://www.holybasil.com.au

Opening Hours
Daily
Lunch Hours: 12:00-3:00pm
Dinner: 5:00pm-12:00midnight

Taste Of Shanghai, Ashfield

Seeing as we are a healthy Asian family with a healthy appetite for dumplings, I decided to take my family out for dumplings for my mother's birthday! Ashfield is close by, and there are lot of Shanghainese restaurants so naturally that was where we headed.

Shanghai style smoked fish in soy sauce, $10.80

I'm not sure if you all know, but us Shanghainese are very big on having a sweet element to our dishes. In a lot of the meat dishes that are soy-based, sugar is often added. I think this is how my extreme sweet tooth came to be. These pieces of fish had that extra sugar kick I was expecting and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

Grilled onion pancake, $6.80

I grew up eating these spring onion pancakes (my mum makes a mean spring onion pancake - I have cravings for them all the time!) so I had high expectations for these. The flavour profile was very different from the ones my mum makes and the pastry much flakier and fragrant from the oil (I'm suspecting it's because these are deep-fried). While I prefer my mother dearest's version, these definitely were one of the better ones I've had in Sydney.

Shredded pork with cabbage stir fried rice cakes, $10.80

I normally love nian gao, but these rice cakes were quite oily and lacked flavour. If you're feeling like eating rice cakes, I'd head over to New Shanghai just across the road because they do a fantastic stir fried rice cakes with XO sauce!

Beef and bean sprout stir-fried noodle, $10.80

These flat noodles definitely outshone the rice cakes. While the rice cakes weren't great and were quite stodgy, the flat noodles were had that wonderful smokiness that your get from the wok. If only there were more greens and less oil!

Mixed vegetable noodle soup, $9.80

I was surprised how good all the variety of mushrooms were in the mixed vegetables! It was quite salty but when eaten with the noodles and soup, it all balanced out pretty well.

Pan-seared pork dumplings, $9.80

These dumplings had an awesome crispy skin at the bottom and so much soup inside - just as good as the first time I had them here! The marks of a well made dumpling :D I hate it when I bite into the dumplings and it's all dry inside because the soup has leaked out from cracks in the skin...

Pan-fry pork buns with sesame, $9.80

I love sheng jian bao! There's just something about the fluffiness of the exterior... These ones were pretty decent, but for some reason, the bottoms were very thin and there was a lot of dough at the top! It's supposed to be the other way around so that was slightly odd for me while I was eating it. But the bottoms were crispy, and the meat inside was juicy so not much to complain about at all!

The overall bill was extremely cheap - the perks of eating Chinese food out, hey? :)

Taste of Shanghai
264 Liverpool Rd
Ashfield, NSW, 2131

Opening Hours
Daily from 10am until late