Birthday at Beppi's

Established in 1956 by Beppi and his wife, and still managed by family today, Beppi's made a fantastic choice for a restaurant at which to celebrate my aunt’s recent birthday.

With its charming waiters, brick floors, peach coloured walls and warmly lit decor, Beppi’s is an elegant and friendly Italian restaurant with a fantastic looking wine cellar. Visually, it is similar to the downstairs area of Buon Ricordo.

Walking in, we find the table reserved for the night and each lady is presented with a small perfume gift. As we peruse the soft leather bound menus, we’re offered canapés from a tray and shown the fresh seafood of the day. Waiting for the entrees to arrive, we nibble on bruschetta, rich in garlic and bread, served with curls of butter.

Most of the entrees and seafood options on the menu are offered with the choice of ordering them as entrees or mains. The menu presents a large variety of seafood, pastas and meat dishes.

The entrees arrive and the muscles are cooked to perfection and served with a light broth. Every shell has opened up and none go to waste. The minestrone soup itself is quite thin, with chunks of vegetables. The seasoning is left to the discretion of the diner. Whilst I was enjoying my muscles, I couldn’t help but have food envy over the angel hair pasta sitting across from me. According to my cousin, who was eating it, I had every right to be envious as it was fantastic!

My partner ordered the duck for a main course and commented that the tang from the orange sauce nicely complemented the salty duck. The dish was quite rich and the prosciutto gave a slight crunch to the texture. Across from me, my cousin thoroughly enjoyed the scampi whilst my spatchcock, though a little fiddly, was served with a lovely mild mushroom sauce.

Though the service was initially very good, as the restaurant got busier throughout the evening (mid week), the quality declined and we were left rather thirsty. At one point I noticed a bronzed jug left on a serving table nearby, so I grabbed that to pour water for myself.

As no one was overly full, we all opted for dessert. My partner ordered the crepes, which were lit after being placed on the table. They were hot, sweet and very alcoholic! My chocolate mousse cake was not too rich and was presented beautifully with tightly wound rolls of white chocolate.

As it was a special occasion, a profiterole birthday cake was brought out as a treat. Had we known it was coming perhaps some of us would have skipped dessert!

All in all, a lovely night with tasty, fresh food.

Located

21 Yurong St

Sydney, 2010

Opening Hours

Lunch: Mon-Fri 12-3pm

Dinner: Mon- Sat 6-11pm

Closed Sundays and all Public holidays.

Price

$69 based on two courses

Bamboo Dumpling Bar: Really – A Bar that Serves Dumplings!

With Yum Cha fading from our sights and Tapas becoming all the rage, I decided to revert back to Asian food and give Bamboo in Surry Hills a try. Located behind the pub, it has its own door to enter through further up the street or you can just progress to the back area of the bar and into Bamboo.

It was a quick lunch so we ordered very little, keen to keep it cheap and fast. We started with two orders of five dumplings for $8.50 each (the pork and prawn Sui mai and the chicken dumplings). We also placed an order for the chicken stick rice ($8.50). Ordering is done up at the counter and the food is later brought to your table.

Also on the menu is a selection of daily specials for $10 each as well as spring rolls, skewers, duck pancakes and pork buns.

The restaurant is warm (handy when it’s freezing outside) with inside seating and an enclosed back section made to look like an outdoor area with brighter colours, lighting and decorations. We sat in the back at one of the long wooden tables.

Waiting for our order, we sat listening to the music playing through the loudspeakers and were surprised that instead of Asian sounding guitar or lyrical songs, we were hearing more Spanish sounding music, which changed to something more Western.

The decor is eclectic to say the least with hanging birdcages and rusty bicycles to framed phrases about dumplings!

The food came relatively quickly but we noticed that the chicken dumplings, though listed in five per serve area of the menu, only had four on the plate.

The Sui Mai looked, felt and tasted like dim sum (which isn’t bad if you like dim sum like we do) and the Chicken dumplings were slightly heavier, in a thicker, longer dumpling shell. However their casing led them to be a bit gluey in texture.

The sticky rice was delicious! We dug in with our wooden chopsticks and scooped out mounds of rice, kept hot in the pandang leaf. The chicken was more towards the bottom of the mound, but once we found it, we enjoyed large and small pieces of juicy chicken and proceeded to scrape the leaf for all the rice we could get!

Not a glorious restaurant by any means but great for a quirky no fuss lunch/dinner with mates. Oh and because they’re affiliated with the bar, they’re licensed too!

Bamboo Dumpling Bar
140 Commonwealth Street
Surry Hills, NSW

Price
$8.50-$15.00

Opening Hours
12-10pm (Lunch and Dinner)