Kurumac Cafe, Marrickville

My favourite café north of bridge has opened an offshoot in Marrickville. You’ll find the new Kurumac Café in the Addison Road area, which is also home to other great coffee shops like Coffee Alchemy. Kurumac is Japanese for Coolmac. Yes, you’ve guess that right, it’s by the same awesome team behind Coolmac Café in Kirribilli.

Pastries by Bread and Butter Project

Kurumac is a partnership between my homies Eugene Leung and Dika Prianata. The space is very Japanese in terms of minimalism and clean lines. Everything from décor to fittings are smooth and crisp. Then there’s the uber cool murals done by artist Ar-chive. Head chef Jun brings his Japanese café style flair to Marrickville with his Japanese café classics with a twist. I visited them twice this past week.

Their coffee is sourced from Campos. For filter coffee lovers out there, they have a rotating batch ($5) on offer. They had a fruity Kenya available on batch during my visit. They use the Campos Superior blend for their milk coffee. I had a piccolo latte ($4) and it had a full body with milk chocolate notes.

The onigiri rice ball set ($14) comes with miso soup and tamagoyaki. You get two sushi rice balls where 1 is stuffed with avocado and the other with tanaka or Japanese pickled mustard greens. Simple yet addictive! The tamagoyaki were fluffy, slightly sweet and flavoursome.

The grilled salmon congee ($17) is a must try from their all day menu. It’s a Japanese style congee with perfectly cooked grilled salmon and umami packed juicy ikura. To top all of that, it also comes with crispiest and super tasty salmon skin.

The curry scrambled eggs and tempura prawns ($19) on toast was another favourite of mine. Delightful fluffy eggs with Japanese curry and crisped tempura. The creamy chilli sauce also had notes of umami.

The ox tongue curry with koshihikari rice ($24) is available during lunch. The ox tongue was tender and buttery, which is nicely complimented by Jun’s very own Japanese curry blend and dollops of cream. The fragrant koshihikari rice was perfect for mopping up all that delicious curry.

Another dish that y’all need to try is the tempura eel with green tea broth rice ($23) a.k.a. ochazuke. There’s just another whole level of depth to the flavours when you have rice poured with green tea broth and paired with tempura eel. You get earthy, sweet and umami notes and the contrast of textures just works so well.

They have a few beverages that uses Mapo Newtown (my current favourite gelato shop in Sydney) gelato. Their hojicha gelato milkshake was insanely good. There’s a nice balance of that roasted tea and creamy milky goodness.

 

Wagyu beef, udon and prawn fritter

Kurumac is the best of 2 worlds: Japanese flavours and good Australian vibes. Another awesome thing about their spot is that there’s a lot of street parking in the area.

Kurumac

107 Addison Road

Marrickville NSW

Instagram:

Opening hours:

7am to 4pm - 7 days

Crafted Addiction - Marrickville, Sydney

Circa Espresso in Parramatta is not only an established icon in the Sydney cafe scene but it also breeds top-notch alumnus. Take Stitch Coffee roasters and Meraki Merchants for instance. Another ex-Circa barista has recently opened a cafe in Marrickville.

The new Crafted Addiction is located near Marrickville train station. Owner and head barista Yianni designed the shop with old Circa offshoot Three Ropes in mind. The space has a mediterranean vibe to it and some vintage fittings. The food has Modern Australian, Greek and Asian influences.

The coffee here is amazing! Yianni himself roasts the house blend. It is heavy on Ethiopian coffee and nicely blended with some coffee from Peru. It tasted quite bold and fruity in my flat white. Stitch Coffee roasts all the single origin coffees used in the shop. The Colombian coffee I had as an espresso tasted sweet and vibrant with notes of red wine. 

Classic dishes like eggs benedict ($17) is available. You get a choice of either smoked salmon or beef bacon. The lovely salmon came with the usual hollandaise and spinach on toast.

Another classic available with a twist is their pancakes ($18). Stacks of soft pancakes topped with poached pear, calebaut chocolate, and blueberries with earl grey syrup and pear cream on the side. I feel like the pancakes needed to be a bit more fluffy but nevertheless the combination of flavours worked well. Be warned, this dish is massive!

The mixed mushroom broth ($18) udon dish is available for breakfast and lunch. It came with spring onions, swiss brown, enoki, udon and a choice of onsen egg or tofu. I opted for the egg of course. I'm a fan of anything-mushroom broth and this one was just one big comforting bowl of goodness. Majority of the flavours were a good balance of sweet and notes of sour flavour with light umami. The noodles were also perfectly cooked and had a nice chew to it. 

There's more on the menu that I would like to try like sagnaki prawns and Marrickville fried chicken burger. You guys definitely need to check them out for superb coffee, delicious food and excellent service.

Crafted Addtiction

Shop 6/359 Illawara Road, 

Marrickville NSW 2020

Hours:

Monday to Friday 6am to 4pm

Saturday to Sunday 7am to 4pm

The Thievery - Glebe, Sydney

I say this time and time again that our city is so lucky to have such a great diverse food scene. Sydney is home to many restaurants that specialises in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. Glebe alone has many amazing options. If you haven’t been to Thievery, then you need to hit them up!

Many of y’all know that Julian Cincotta is the genius behind the food at Butter Surry Hills and Parramatta. But did you guys know that he is also Thievery’s executive chef? Thievery is a modern interpretation and accumulation of Middle Eastern cuisine and a dash of some Mediterranean flavours. You can also see influences of Julian’s time in the early days of Nomad. The space also has a moody and hip contemporary Middle Eastern vibe. There are tables for two and communal tables on first and second floor. They even have a lovely balcony space.

First and foremost, y’all need to try their burnt butter hummus ($12)! Apparently, using butter in hummus is a common thing in Nothern Lebanon. It should be a common thing in Sydney too in my opinion! Lebanese bread dipped in the caramelised flavour of the butter with paprika in that fluffy hummus was heavenly.

Their Lebanese Fried Chicken or LFC ($16) is off the hook fam! The perfectly cooked juicy chicken fillets covered in beautiful rippled crispy spiced coating with sweet notes were delicious. It came with a sweet and salty black garlic sauce.

Their BBQ King Prawn ($16) is absolutely beautiful. Grilled giant prawns with beurre blanc, za’atar and calvisius oscietra royal caviar.

It’s currently truffle season and there’s a separate truffle menu available. If you like the sound of or have tried their burnt butter hummus, you will want to get your hands on their truffle hummus. Traditional hummus drizzled with truffle butter goodness and fresh Western Australia (WA) Manjumup truffles.

The Aphrodite Haloumi is grilled haloumi drizzled with honey, macadamia dukkah, freshly shaved truffles. It had those salty and sweet flavours that deliciously offset each other with sweet earthy and nutty notes from the dukkah and truffles.

Both food and service at Thievery is top notch. I’m already looking forward to my next visit. Also, just a heads up that Thievery will be doing a Middle Eastern Style Yum Cha from the 7th of August 2018 to the 1st of September 2018.  Check out their website and social media accounts for more details.

Thievery
91 Glebe Point Road
Glebe NSW
Contact: 02 8283 1329

Hours:
Brunch Saturdays: 12.00pm to 3:00pm

Tuesday -Thursday 6pm to 11pm
Friday 6pm to 12 midnight
Saturday 6pm to 12 midnight