Bevan's Bubble

Restaurants I recommend

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I love food. I love photography. I take photos of the food I eat at restaurants to practise as food photography is considered quite difficult.

The other reason I am writing this, in addition to sharing with others of the good (or bad) restaurants I’ve visited, is to remind me of what I had so that I can order (or NOT order) the food again next time.

I am not paid to write for the restaurants so I can only sample the dishes via multiple visits. The photos will therefore change over time as I take better pictures and try new dishes.

Hope you enjoy them.

Pho Sam Noodle House / SumBo Kitchen

Name: Pho Sam Noodle House / SumBo Kitchen
Address: 12 Oxford Street, Epping, NSW 2121, Australia
Telephone: +61 2 9869 0499
URL: http://www.phosamnoodlehouse.com.au
City: Sydney
Country: Australia
Type of food: Vietnamese / Cantonese
Summary: Reasonably priced, generally good service (depends on the experience of the wait staff), delicious food. Ask for Rosita. She'll look after you.
Date Updated: 7th March 2018
Original Date Published: 9th January 2018

Pho Sam Noodle House and SumBo Kitchen are two different restaurants. Pho Sam serves Vietnamese food while SumBo serves Cantonese food.

The interesting thing is that they share the same address: Pho Sam is downstairs, SumBo is upstairs!

They are both owned by Sam, a very long time Vietnamese Chinese chef and his food are just delicious!

The first of my favourite is Seafood Vegetarian Shark Fins Soup: The name sounds like a contradiction but it's the "shark fins" that's vegetarian. It's "pretend" shark fins. It's "having your cake and eat it too" shark fins.

In recent years, due to the cruelty to the sharks while obtaining their fins, many people have taken a stand to not having shark fins soup. But I love shark fins soup. So, as a compromise, I get to eat "pretend" shark fins while not supporting the killing of sharks.

These "pretend" shark fins are probably made of glass noodles, but they have the same taste and texture as the real ones.

Seafood Vegetarian Shark Fins Soup

The rest of the ingredients in the soup are: fish maw, prawns, egg white.

Add white pepper and red vinegar and this soup is super yum yum!

Highly recommended.

A new chicken dish we tried was Deep Fried Garlic Butter Black Pepper Chicken (酥炸蒜茸牛油黑椒雞):

The aroma, the taste, the tender chicken - absolutely delicious!

Next was chopped chilli preserved tofu water spinach (commonly called tung choi 通菜):

You can't see it but the preserved tofu is blended into the tung choi and the smell and aroma is just great.

Speaking of aroma, another vegetable dish that's highly recommended is the Shrimp Paste Chinese Broccoli (蝦醬介蘭):

Next one is deep fried mixed taro and lotus root:

I'm not a big fan of taro and even less a fan of lotus root but the two mixed together and then deep fried makes a very tasty food stick which is crisp and crunchy on the outside while soft on the inside. You can dip it in the sauce that's provided.

Next one, an old favourite: salt and pepper pork rib.

The aroma of this dish is just wonderful. The "wok hei", which brings out the taste and smell of the ingredients, makes this dish a popular one of mine.

Instead of the standard fried rice, order this:

The Black Truffle Seafood Fried Rice.

Look at the photo. Just yummy.

On a more economical level, this is also a great fried rice to order: Chinese Sausage Fried Rice (臘味炒飯)

Next is the Pork Hock:

It is big. We could never finish it on the night. Always take a doggy bag to bring home. Heat it up with a bowl of rice, makes it another night's dinner!

Next up is Pork Cheeks:

There were a lot of pigs running around with very thin faces that night. The meat was very tender. The "style", I think, was "money cannot buy" (金不換) sauce.

If you like seafood, you can also order this:

XO Sauce Steamed Scallops with Glass Noodles

The next one is a Teochew dish: Sliced Duck Pieces in Soy Sauce (鹵水鴨片)

If you fancy another type of duck, try the Steamed Duck:

This is quite unusual in that it looks like a roast duck but it's actually steamed. Nevertheless, the meat was tender and the texture is just slightly different to a traditional roast duck.

After you have duck, you must have a chicken:

This is "Ba Wang" Chicken. If you've had Hainan Chicken before, this is similar except it's warm:

Pho Sam's fried noodles are also worth trying. What ingredients you want to add is up to you. We ordered Beef Tendon Fried Noodles:

If the Shark Fins Soup is too exotic (or not exotic enough) for you, try this:

The Hot and Sour Soup (酸辣湯). Many restaurants don't do it well but we think SumBo's suit our tastes.

SumBo also serves Pippies in XO Sauce:

The dish comes with deep fried rice noodles to soak up the XO sauce - you can just eat them and not feel that it's too salty.

Next one, another one of my favourites at Pho Sam, is Steamed Vietnamese Pork Rolls:

Pour some of that Vietnamese fish sauce over it and enjoy!

You can't go to a Vietnamese restaurant without trying their Deep Fried Chicken Wings:


We finish off with the traditional Combination Fried Noodles:

It's got beef, chicken, prawns, mixed vegetables.

As you can see, there are many dishes worth trying.

You can't finish them all in one visit - unless you bring a lot of people but then, not everyone will get to try everything.


The boring stuff:

The restaurant is just opposite Epping train station, with 100 steps walking when you exit the station. You can also get there by bus.

There's usually parking on the street but otherwise, there's parking at the back.

Both restaurants can get very busy and when they get busy, they get noisy.

Fine dining they ain't but they are not run down and dingy. It's comfortable in what I called a casual "don't want to cook" night out - where you can just relax and enjoy the food.



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